Michael Crichton 1942 – 2008…Physician, Novelist, Screenwriter & Director
Luxury Beliefs And Energy Policy: The Fatal Conceit
The article quoted here is by energy economist Tilak Doshi from last year. It remains entirely relevant. It is published in Forbes magazine which has a paywall, but they give non-subscribers 4 free articles per month so it should be available to everyone.
Predicated on unfalsifiable climate models and a hockey-stick global warming chart of suspect provenance, Western policy makers assure us that “the end is nigh.” We are told that this is the “scientific consensus”, an established truth which the BBC, for example, holds such that it sees no need to allow contrarian views on any of its programs. Michael Crichton, in common with the great physicist Richard Feynman, was emphatically opposed to this view when he said:
“I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you’re being had. Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics… The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus. There is no such thing as consensus science. If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus. Period.”
What have luxury beliefs to do with the proclaimed “scientific consensus” on climate change? Rob Henderson who coined the term defined them as “ideas and opinions that confer status on the rich at very little cost, while taking a toll on the lower class.” This was an update on the sociologist Thorstein Veblen’s century-old theory of conspicuous consumption. Veblen wryly portrayed a shallow, materialistic “leisure class” obsessed by clothes, cars, consumer goods and climbing the social ladder.
Here is a photo of Crichton with Steven Spielberg, Harrison Ford and others to give you an idea of how tall he was at 6′-9″.
Also, this is a great speech by the scientist and member of the House of Lords, Matt Ridley, about the political obsession with climate change and the catastrophic results coming as a result.
RTWDT.
I follow a guy on FB whose channel is “Meat Dad”. He’s a butcher, and shows how to save money by buying big chunks of meat and breaking them down yourself. I kid you not….FB put a “graphic warning” label on his video. I guess the images of cutting raw meat are more than the censors could handle. Vegans are so touchy.
I was thinking about making a grilled cheese in my fancy toaster oven.
but then I realized I don’t know how to make a grilled cheese in a toaster oven.
So I guess I’ll just dirty up a pan for the stove.
One local weather guy just predicted seven straight days without rain, starting Saturday.
That’s a nice start.
How about three more straight weeks after that.? Be fine with me.
I think I’m going to try to whack some weeds around my garden tubs. The replacement reels for the whacker arrived and I’m not planning on being out of it tomorrow. I pulled my first banana pepper today, along with some more green beans. I’ve started my bag of green beans in the freezer. I was making some hard boiled eggs, so I used the same boiling water and ice water for my green beans. Blanched and now frozen, ready for future use.
Hubby offered to pay my fees at the Pearland natatorium so I could use the pool there. He wants me to be better. Another reason I married the man. That, and he lubs me. He really, really lubs me.
Greetings from the Captain Cook hotel in swankalicious Anchorage, Alaska. The photo was from the train ride in from the port of Whittier. Other than when I look in my wife’s eyes, I haven’t seen this much spectacular scenery and objective beauty in the last 15 years combined than I have in the last 7 days. The 500 mile long Tongass National forest is a glittering jewel of geography and a treasure for humanity.
Today was a busy one keeping up with what was going on in DC as well as what was going on in Texas, different paths for each. Things can change by the minute it seems in both places.
Home stuff is much more easily followed.
The Disney company is evil.
Arrrrgh!
Finished up the mower maintenance today. Changed the deck belt. Changed the oil.
After making a few lovely passes, I had a problem. My diagnosis is that one mandrel is bad. Best replace both.
At $42 each!
Arrrrgh!!
Wagonburner @ 2:16 PM
Why will anyone continue to live there ?
California is going to increase gasoline and diesel taxes by 50% this year, next year and the year thereafter.
The vast majority of that container traffic from China and Asia offloads onto trains to ship to the other lower 47 states. If they stop the trains there, the Pacific freight will simply stop coming to California and will find other more expensive ways to deliver. Costs will increase, so will prices and inflation will continue to roar away.
These are the reasons why I worry about my grandchildren in these days.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JEWB8Jzdq8
I’m not taking this medicine during the daytime anymore. It makes me want to sleep all day and now I’m nauseous. I can’t live like this. Back to the Tylenol or Aleve.
11:35 texpat I wonder if the dim bulbs at CARB have considered what that rule change would cost? We all know the answer: either “no” or “don’t care”. o There are likely no electrical locomotives with the power to pull a mile and a half of train. o There aren’t enough electrified tracks to even get goods out of the state, let alone within the state. o Trucks would be required to replace the lost rail capacity, which is second only to marine in terms of efficiency and environmental impact. o Trucking in combination with the cost of electrifying track… Read more »
My good friend who is 77 walks his border collie down to a nearby park every morning so Mikey can burn off some of that endless energy. There’s about 4 or 5 other geezers who show up there each morning also. They bring donuts and coffee and everybody has a good time swapping stories. One of the guys has a couple of 70-80 lb dogs and he decided to try the heavily advertised Farmer’s Dog dog food. This man said it was going to cost him over $600 a month to feed his two dogs if he stayed on the… Read more »
If Peter Pan was an ugly, non-binary girl and Tinkerbell was obese and repulsive we wouldn’t have this problem. The Left is not content to merely destroy institutions, it has to crush even human ideals of beauty and humor. And romantic fantasy be damned…we can’t have that, by God ! In a February post, Disney confirmed it pulled Tinker Bell from the Meet & Greet at the Walt Disney Resort at Town Square Theater at the front of Magic Kingdom. In the below tweet:“Tinkerbell (sic), unfortunately, has become a problematic image for our guests; specifically young girls. Specifically, in terms… Read more »
This story is about Yoseph Haddad, a famous Zionist Arab-Israeli and IDF veteran. He is an avid hater of terrorists and travels for speaking engagements around the world. I didn’t know the largest contingent of expat Palestinians lives in Santiago, Chile. Haddad also raised the alarm before Oct. 7 about the Arab threat to U.S. universities. Following an April 2022 visit to a university in Santiago, Chile, home to the largest Palestinian population outside the Middle East, Haddad told Hebrew media that the fearful state of Jews on the campus was a preview of where American universities were headed.“Jewish students,… Read more »
Mr. C. breaks and discusses the news that Red Lobster is filing for bankruptcy and also the decision of Mickey D and other fast food chains to removed the self serve, free refill dispensers from public access, if not removing the free refill option altogether. Why? The real condition of the economy, of course, and not the ear swill of “bidenomics is great”! If all variable costs and the biggest fixed cost are rising, then the price of the output product must also rise — everywhere, all across the industry, from crustacean chains to french-fry foodies. In the face of… Read more »
Texpat has been busy this morning! And all good stuff, too. Thanks, Texpat, for being you and for being here. I’m just getting going. I woke up, took a painkiller for the sciatica, but then a headache landed on my head with both feet and decided to do the macarena up there. I laid down after my coffee and rosary time; sometimes a lay down is all I need. Not today. So, I decided to eat something and take a Tylenol. I need to do some gardening and since I’m fully medded up, I may try for treadmill time after.… Read more »
I don’t even know what to say or how to react to something this transparently stupid and suicidal. Newsom, large trucking companies and the Teamsters Union have already ruined free market rules at West Coast ports like Long Beach and Oakland by driving small companies and owner/operators out of business. Companies have been shifting to railroad shipping for the vast inbound container traffic from Asia because of the trucking debacle. Remove rail ability and those ports will eventually close and the world’s ocean freight calculus will respond by avoiding California altogether. A coalition of 74 House lawmakers is raising the… Read more »
I have a front page headline story on book publishing coming up that will blow your mind.
Scientific publishing is imploding. See Quote of the Month at 9:04 AM. Follow the science they said ! Don’t be an ignorant, white nationalist anti-vaxxer ! Climate change and you’re gonna die ! This is a full excerpt from a Wall Street Journal article behind their paywall. Fake studies have flooded the publishers of top scientific journals, leading to thousands of retractions and millions of dollars in lost revenue. The biggest hit has come to Wiley, a 217-year-old publisher based in Hoboken, N.J., which Tuesday will announce that it is closing 19 journals, some of which were infected by large-scale… Read more »
Meanwhile at the University of California at Davis,
Is the Backlash to Universities Becoming Real?Many on what’s been called the “New Right” argue that conservatives have historically been uncomfortable with the exercise of power. But this is not the whole story. A simpler explanation for what took so long for Republicans to act is that politicians did not consider campus leftism to be a major priority, and neither did their voters. As recently as 2015, 68 percent of Democrats and no fewer than 56 percent of Republicans expressed “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in higher education. By 2023, those numbers were down to 59 percent and 19 percent.… Read more »
Shannon, call your office ! Today, TPPF’s David Dunmoyer, Campaign Director for the Better Tech for Tomorrow campaign, will provide invited testimony before the Texas Senate Water, Agriculture & Rural Affairs Committee on the importance of modernizing cybersecurity for Texas’ water infrastructure.“Rogue foreign actors from countries like Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran are specifically targeting the water sector in rural Texas with repeated, destructive cyberattacks,” Dunmoyer said. “We saw this recently with the attacks on the Muleshoe and Hale Center water systems, illuminating the need for state action. Ultimately, these attacks support influence operations from hostile nation-states, with each successful attack solidifying… Read more »
Sherri Sylvester picks Winners & Losers each week for the Texas Public Policy Foundation. These are quotes from her list for last week ending on Friday. While Harvard, MIT and Penn whine that they can’t shut down the encampment protests on their campuses, University of Texas System Board of Regents Chair Kevin Eltife is at the top of the Winners list this week for a trifecta at Wednesday’s Regents meeting when he said flatly that divestment is not an option for the Longhorns. Eltife also dismissed a threatened vote of no confidence against UT President Jay Hartzell by UT faculty, saying when it comes to the… Read more »
Uh-oh ! I thought this investigation was about Biden, Garland and the DNC taking out Cuellar because of his anti-abortion and anti-open border positions. It is certainly convenient to eliminate the last decent Democrat in the House although Henry seems to have had both hands and feet in the cookie jar. Two former consultants to U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar have agreed to plead guilty to assisting the lawmaker in laundering hundreds of thousands of dollars from a Mexican bank. Colin Strother, the South Texas Democrat’s former campaign manager, and Florencio “Lencho” Rendon struck separate deals with the U.S. Department of… Read more »
Quote of the Month
All you have to say to people who went to college is “Experts say” … As I’ve said for years, for the secular college graduate, “Experts say” is what “Thus sayeth the Lord” has been to religious people for thousands of years. They have just exchanged authority from the Lord to “the experts”…
-Dennis Prager
Marine Corps Quantico Incident
Here is a report from the local Potomac MD newspaper covering the story I cite at 8:03 AM. It’s actually quite good and covers a number of attempts by foreign nationals to illegally enter military bases across the country.
Like Pam says: It is only a matter of time. By: Marine Times, May 15, 2024The Marine Corps prevented two people from breaking onto a Marine installation in Virginia on May 3 and turned them over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.The two people drove up to the Fuller Road Gate of Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia, in a box truck and were stopped by military sentries, Capt. Michael Curtis, a spokesman for the base, said in a statement to Marine Corps Times on Tuesday.“When asked, the operator of the truck informed the military police officers they worked for a company subcontracted by… Read more »
Brain fog this morning, I do not understand this statement at all.
The death of mainstream, network news cannot come soon enough. I know there are people like Shannon and Super Dave who insist on eradicating brain cells by watching these people, but they have used up every last excuse for their existence. It is nothing but an endless parade of lies. We are not talking here about little white lies or lightly shading the truth. What we are faced with are huge, dark evil lies meant to manipulate the citizenry and destroy innocent people’s lives. They come now every damned day. Die, you bastards. A former Situation Room officer said former… Read more »
Lockheed C-121 Constellation the military transport version of the Lockheed Constellation also used as a VIP and even presidential transport aircraft. Hard to argue she is one of the most beautiful aircraft to have ever graced the skies, I usually refrain from opinion but there it is.
More required reading and this looks like a good one. I’ll try my best to RTWDT
Mornin’ GJT, Gang
Mornin er’body. I shall read, the whole damned thing.