This report as usual is well structured and logically written, that it is a joy to read it everytime. Many thanks Dr. Rob, I do appreciate your work very much.
I didn't bother reading the report on the 2020 election when I heard about it earlier. I have zero belief in that Republican conspiracy theory. I did follow the back and forth on that during the period after the election - and there was NEVER the slightest evidence for vote rigging. Zero. Nada. Every single Republican challenge was shot down in the courts.
And now we have this new report - from the Heartland Institute. It took me two minutes to look up this "Institute" in Wikipedia:
The Heartland Institute is an American conservative and libertarian public policy think tank known for its rejection of both the scientific consensus on climate change and the negative health impacts of smoking.[2]
Founded in 1984, it worked with tobacco company Philip Morris throughout the 1990s to attempt to discredit the health risks of secondhand smoke and lobby against smoking bans.[3]: 233–234 [4] Since the 2000s, the Heartland Institute has been a leading promoter of climate change denial.[5][6]
So much for the Heartland Institute... And so much for their "report", which I won't even bother to read. Bullshitters gotta bullshit.
Cheers Richard. I'm not with them on smoking but Climate Change i.e. global warming - is a myth. I've been studying it since 2018 when I still believed in it. You will be surprised how many scientists out there believe the earth to be cooling. I provided a link to one of them. I don't think that we should dismiss the claims of organisations just because they don't agree with a mainstream narrative such as 'Climate Change'. But the Heartland Institute will be biased even if some of what is written about it may not be true.
My opinion on climate change is simple: I'm not a climatologists - and neither are you ("you" meaning anyone who isn't a climatologist.)
Climatology as I am aware of it is a complex science that mixes in many other sciences and spends a lot of time futzing with computer models which may or may not be programmed correctly. This is a new science which is ripe for making mistakes especially when it has been politicized and therefore there is a political agenda on both sides.
I remember the Club of Rome computer models back in the 70s that claimed we'd all be piled high in pollution by now. Never happened. And some experts in computer modeling pointed out that their models were simplistic at best, if not downright wrong.
So there's no point in my trying to become an expert on the topic and trying to decide which camp is correct. Most people do so based on whatever POLITICAL side they fall on and they believe whatever the scientists on their side say. Same with the Covid and vaccine conspiracy theories. On the latter, I did my own research using pre-Covid studies, so I know the conspiracy theories are bullshit because they were done before it became politicized.
The other thing I know for certain: If there is a climate crisis, it won't be solved until it's too late and requires vast amounts of money and new tech to fix it. Because everyone will put it off until they don't have a choice. This is what human societies and especially governments do.
As I've said many times, and just today in fact elsewhere, humans only change when it physically or emotionally hurts so bad they no longer have a choice. That's how humans are wired. It's a scientific fact.
I watched a video or read an article (or both, I forget which) the other day that pointed out that your body is designed to conserve energy as its primary mission. So any time you think about exercising, the body and brain generate emotions that say, "stay on the couch and eat pizza instead because that's easier." It doesn't care if in the long term, you'll die from diabetes or heart disease because genetically, you should have reproduced by then - and that's all genes care about, reproducing. And if you don't reproduce, then you should die - evolutionarily speaking.
So I couldn't care less about the whole climate issue until and unless it starts to cause me actual problems. And I might not even be around by then (although I intend to be.)
The Heartland Institute, if you follow the Wikipedia outline of their backers and founders, are "Big L" Libertarians - or as anarchist Bob Black once said, "Republicans who smoke dope." So obviously they're on the side of declaring that Joe Biden stole the election - even as the Republicans, as journalist Greg Palast has proven, spend all their time rigging votes by manipulating the electoral districts across the country and scrubbing the voter registration lists of anyone who sounds like a minority that might vote Democrat. In other words, hypocrites.
So I'm paying zero attention to them. The Brennan Center did a study of conventional vote fraud, e.g., ballot box stuffing, in America going back decades and found it doesn't exist except in mostly local and state elections and it's usually detected and prosecuted or reverse when it does happen.
It's extremely hard to do ballot stuffing vote fraud because 1) you have to do it in an undetectable manner which means your fakes can't be so many as to be obvious, and 2) you have to be able to predict how many fakes you need which means you have to predict the probable number of legitimate votes. And then you also have to evade the vote monitoring which as I recall in 2020 was especially fierce because Trump had already claimed BEFORE the election that the Democrats were rigging it.
Again, I watched the arguments all through 2021. Every Republican claim was debunked. Every court case thrown out. And Trump's lawyers nearly got disbarred for their tactics.
And now I'm supposed to believe some Republican think tank? LOL I got better things to do - like watch the new Netflix series in Japanese called "House of Ninjas". Watched the first 3 episodes last night, gonna watch more tonight. So far it's pretty good. Good looking Japanese babes, enough ninja fighting to keep me hooked, and an interesting plot: a family of retired ninjas who used to work for the Japanese government are lured back into action against a rival clan who is running a cult and planning some sort of catastrophe a la the Aum Kyo sarin gas attack that actually happened some years ago in Japan. Check it out: https://www.netflix.com/title/81465101 The show can be downloaded from http://rlsbb.to/ where I get all my TV show. Or here: https://sanet.st/blogs/myhdstore/house_of_ninjas_p_s_webrip_h_plex.4719297.html
Thanks for that Richard but I don't have time to engage in a debate with you. My view on global warming/cooling is that the latter is more likely than the former based on the many hundreds of hours I have devoted to study. But I am not saying that I know that Global Cooling is true. At the end of this solar cycle we will have a better idea. And the belief that governments say they have in global warming is affecting all of us because some policies are driven by this alleged belief.
First. To be a "Climatologist" you must first deny Physics.
Second: The only Science adhered to by the Climate Change/Global Warming Cult is Political "Science" which is an oxymoron, light on the oxy.
Fact. California's Reservoirs are at 80% of Full Pool. The end of Snow Season in the Sierras is still another 6 weeks away, or more. And Spring rains and the snow melt are all going to go into the Reservoirs. "Californians are all gonna die from Drought" not in vogue for the moment.
Third, a relatively helpful compound like CO2, the basis of all animal and plant life, is not pollution. The materials that make up Electric Cars are Horrific Polluters.
"However, the distance between Stalingrad and Berlin is 1723 miles whereas the distance between Bakhmut (Artemovsk) and Kiev is 447 miles."
What's that common line? "It's not the years, it's the mileage." Well, in military affairs, it's not the years or the miles, it's the combat effectiveness. The Germans had it even after they were losing. I suspect Ukraine won't have it.
Right now, the stories are their front is collapsing - in certain places, at least - with Ukrainian troops running, not withdrawing in orderly fashion. This is what I and others like Ritter predicted: an army holds until it doesn't. And after that, the losing army takes its greatest losses in retreat. We're seeing a significantly increased body count in the Russian MoD reports in the last couple weeks.
And this is still while Russia allegedly has not committed the bulk of its available forces. They appear to be relying on their smart bombs to do the damage in Avdeevka. Apparently every time they see a concentration of Ukrainians, they drop one of those on them. The Ukrainians sent in one of their best remaining units, maybe a thousand or more men - and got hit with two Iskander missiles that wiped them out in their staging area.
I heard Ritter say the Russians he talked to during his last visit to Donbass were saying that by May the Russians would be at the Dnieper and by August or September it would be over.
Last August and September, I predicted the front would collapse within 6-9 months and possibly in half that time. We're 7 months in to that time frame and it looks like it's happening. I also said that further advances would take more time, perhaps months.
I also said that once the Russians finished off Donbass, they would shorten their lines, consolidate their forces into an armored fist which nothing the Ukrainians could muster would be able to deflect, then head straight for Kiev, only deviating if significant Ukrainian forces emerged from places like Odessa. I suspect that is still the plan if the time frame is to finish this by end of summer.
Expending effort seizing all sorts of side terrain like southern Ukraine is nothing to the purpose if the Ukraine government remains in existence. The only reason to do that is if you feel threatened by the remaining forces being able to threaten your flanks as you advance. I doubt the Ukrainian forces remaining after being forced back over the Dnieper will be able to threaten the Russian advancing army.
Ritter says he expects the Ukraine government to decamp to Lvov, but that such a move will destroy its credibility if it can't defend Kiev. So I would expect the Russians to ignore Odessa and the rest and simply head straight to Kiev - and then to Lvov.
I reiterate that in my view this ends when Russia controls all of Ukraine and installs a new Military District in western Ukraine. All the BS about a "rump Ukraine state" and "Ukraine insurgency" is just that without an ounce of common sense about it.
Can’t help but notice in nearly all of the photos of tractor/ farmer protests the seemingly universal adoption of the safety vest (“Gilet Jaunes” (sp?) first used by French protesters a few years ago. The revolution will not be televised, but bloggers and journalists like The Busker are doing the righteous work of keeping us aware and informed. Power to the People! (I’m an old hippie, couldn’t resist✌️)
Local Weather is interpreted by Political Climate Change. In the area where I live, hundreds of miles of reservoirs behind Hydro Electric Dams, built in the 1960s, have created a huge "Heat Sink" holding millions/trillions of calories/BTU's which Mother Nature had not done previously. And that has certainly warmed up the valleys in winter, and shifted the snow line higher than normal.
But for the young and gullible, the profitable, political science of climate change is the dullard's way out.
Excellent report - as usual...
Really glad you enjoyed it. Thanks.
This report as usual is well structured and logically written, that it is a joy to read it everytime. Many thanks Dr. Rob, I do appreciate your work very much.
Appreciate your praise also - thank you.
I didn't bother reading the report on the 2020 election when I heard about it earlier. I have zero belief in that Republican conspiracy theory. I did follow the back and forth on that during the period after the election - and there was NEVER the slightest evidence for vote rigging. Zero. Nada. Every single Republican challenge was shot down in the courts.
And now we have this new report - from the Heartland Institute. It took me two minutes to look up this "Institute" in Wikipedia:
The Heartland Institute is an American conservative and libertarian public policy think tank known for its rejection of both the scientific consensus on climate change and the negative health impacts of smoking.[2]
Founded in 1984, it worked with tobacco company Philip Morris throughout the 1990s to attempt to discredit the health risks of secondhand smoke and lobby against smoking bans.[3]: 233–234 [4] Since the 2000s, the Heartland Institute has been a leading promoter of climate change denial.[5][6]
So much for the Heartland Institute... And so much for their "report", which I won't even bother to read. Bullshitters gotta bullshit.
Cheers Richard. I'm not with them on smoking but Climate Change i.e. global warming - is a myth. I've been studying it since 2018 when I still believed in it. You will be surprised how many scientists out there believe the earth to be cooling. I provided a link to one of them. I don't think that we should dismiss the claims of organisations just because they don't agree with a mainstream narrative such as 'Climate Change'. But the Heartland Institute will be biased even if some of what is written about it may not be true.
My opinion on climate change is simple: I'm not a climatologists - and neither are you ("you" meaning anyone who isn't a climatologist.)
Climatology as I am aware of it is a complex science that mixes in many other sciences and spends a lot of time futzing with computer models which may or may not be programmed correctly. This is a new science which is ripe for making mistakes especially when it has been politicized and therefore there is a political agenda on both sides.
I remember the Club of Rome computer models back in the 70s that claimed we'd all be piled high in pollution by now. Never happened. And some experts in computer modeling pointed out that their models were simplistic at best, if not downright wrong.
So there's no point in my trying to become an expert on the topic and trying to decide which camp is correct. Most people do so based on whatever POLITICAL side they fall on and they believe whatever the scientists on their side say. Same with the Covid and vaccine conspiracy theories. On the latter, I did my own research using pre-Covid studies, so I know the conspiracy theories are bullshit because they were done before it became politicized.
The other thing I know for certain: If there is a climate crisis, it won't be solved until it's too late and requires vast amounts of money and new tech to fix it. Because everyone will put it off until they don't have a choice. This is what human societies and especially governments do.
As I've said many times, and just today in fact elsewhere, humans only change when it physically or emotionally hurts so bad they no longer have a choice. That's how humans are wired. It's a scientific fact.
I watched a video or read an article (or both, I forget which) the other day that pointed out that your body is designed to conserve energy as its primary mission. So any time you think about exercising, the body and brain generate emotions that say, "stay on the couch and eat pizza instead because that's easier." It doesn't care if in the long term, you'll die from diabetes or heart disease because genetically, you should have reproduced by then - and that's all genes care about, reproducing. And if you don't reproduce, then you should die - evolutionarily speaking.
So I couldn't care less about the whole climate issue until and unless it starts to cause me actual problems. And I might not even be around by then (although I intend to be.)
The Heartland Institute, if you follow the Wikipedia outline of their backers and founders, are "Big L" Libertarians - or as anarchist Bob Black once said, "Republicans who smoke dope." So obviously they're on the side of declaring that Joe Biden stole the election - even as the Republicans, as journalist Greg Palast has proven, spend all their time rigging votes by manipulating the electoral districts across the country and scrubbing the voter registration lists of anyone who sounds like a minority that might vote Democrat. In other words, hypocrites.
So I'm paying zero attention to them. The Brennan Center did a study of conventional vote fraud, e.g., ballot box stuffing, in America going back decades and found it doesn't exist except in mostly local and state elections and it's usually detected and prosecuted or reverse when it does happen.
It's extremely hard to do ballot stuffing vote fraud because 1) you have to do it in an undetectable manner which means your fakes can't be so many as to be obvious, and 2) you have to be able to predict how many fakes you need which means you have to predict the probable number of legitimate votes. And then you also have to evade the vote monitoring which as I recall in 2020 was especially fierce because Trump had already claimed BEFORE the election that the Democrats were rigging it.
Again, I watched the arguments all through 2021. Every Republican claim was debunked. Every court case thrown out. And Trump's lawyers nearly got disbarred for their tactics.
And now I'm supposed to believe some Republican think tank? LOL I got better things to do - like watch the new Netflix series in Japanese called "House of Ninjas". Watched the first 3 episodes last night, gonna watch more tonight. So far it's pretty good. Good looking Japanese babes, enough ninja fighting to keep me hooked, and an interesting plot: a family of retired ninjas who used to work for the Japanese government are lured back into action against a rival clan who is running a cult and planning some sort of catastrophe a la the Aum Kyo sarin gas attack that actually happened some years ago in Japan. Check it out: https://www.netflix.com/title/81465101 The show can be downloaded from http://rlsbb.to/ where I get all my TV show. Or here: https://sanet.st/blogs/myhdstore/house_of_ninjas_p_s_webrip_h_plex.4719297.html
Thanks for that Richard but I don't have time to engage in a debate with you. My view on global warming/cooling is that the latter is more likely than the former based on the many hundreds of hours I have devoted to study. But I am not saying that I know that Global Cooling is true. At the end of this solar cycle we will have a better idea. And the belief that governments say they have in global warming is affecting all of us because some policies are driven by this alleged belief.
First. To be a "Climatologist" you must first deny Physics.
Second: The only Science adhered to by the Climate Change/Global Warming Cult is Political "Science" which is an oxymoron, light on the oxy.
Fact. California's Reservoirs are at 80% of Full Pool. The end of Snow Season in the Sierras is still another 6 weeks away, or more. And Spring rains and the snow melt are all going to go into the Reservoirs. "Californians are all gonna die from Drought" not in vogue for the moment.
Third, a relatively helpful compound like CO2, the basis of all animal and plant life, is not pollution. The materials that make up Electric Cars are Horrific Polluters.
Many thanks for that Tam. I don't want to get involved in this too deeply. If we do get a 'Grand Solar Minimum' at the end of this cycle and this results in a mini-ice age - as some, such as Valentina Zharkova, believe, we will at least know that the earth is cooling. Anyone interested in debunking the 'warmist' propaganda being peddled should look at Tony Heller (https://www.youtube.com/@TonyHeller). If you want to learn more about Climate Science and the sun, try https://www.youtube.com/@TheGrandSolarMinimum. They feature work by John Casey and Zharkova. https://www.youtube.com/@OppenheimerRanchProject is also good. If you have learned the basics and want something more complex, try https://www.youtube.com/@Suspicious0bservers. Here is an example of his work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEWoPzaDmOA&t=2273s. I could provide lots more links but I have dwelled on this enough.
"However, the distance between Stalingrad and Berlin is 1723 miles whereas the distance between Bakhmut (Artemovsk) and Kiev is 447 miles."
What's that common line? "It's not the years, it's the mileage." Well, in military affairs, it's not the years or the miles, it's the combat effectiveness. The Germans had it even after they were losing. I suspect Ukraine won't have it.
Right now, the stories are their front is collapsing - in certain places, at least - with Ukrainian troops running, not withdrawing in orderly fashion. This is what I and others like Ritter predicted: an army holds until it doesn't. And after that, the losing army takes its greatest losses in retreat. We're seeing a significantly increased body count in the Russian MoD reports in the last couple weeks.
And this is still while Russia allegedly has not committed the bulk of its available forces. They appear to be relying on their smart bombs to do the damage in Avdeevka. Apparently every time they see a concentration of Ukrainians, they drop one of those on them. The Ukrainians sent in one of their best remaining units, maybe a thousand or more men - and got hit with two Iskander missiles that wiped them out in their staging area.
I heard Ritter say the Russians he talked to during his last visit to Donbass were saying that by May the Russians would be at the Dnieper and by August or September it would be over.
Last August and September, I predicted the front would collapse within 6-9 months and possibly in half that time. We're 7 months in to that time frame and it looks like it's happening. I also said that further advances would take more time, perhaps months.
I also said that once the Russians finished off Donbass, they would shorten their lines, consolidate their forces into an armored fist which nothing the Ukrainians could muster would be able to deflect, then head straight for Kiev, only deviating if significant Ukrainian forces emerged from places like Odessa. I suspect that is still the plan if the time frame is to finish this by end of summer.
Expending effort seizing all sorts of side terrain like southern Ukraine is nothing to the purpose if the Ukraine government remains in existence. The only reason to do that is if you feel threatened by the remaining forces being able to threaten your flanks as you advance. I doubt the Ukrainian forces remaining after being forced back over the Dnieper will be able to threaten the Russian advancing army.
Ritter says he expects the Ukraine government to decamp to Lvov, but that such a move will destroy its credibility if it can't defend Kiev. So I would expect the Russians to ignore Odessa and the rest and simply head straight to Kiev - and then to Lvov.
I reiterate that in my view this ends when Russia controls all of Ukraine and installs a new Military District in western Ukraine. All the BS about a "rump Ukraine state" and "Ukraine insurgency" is just that without an ounce of common sense about it.
Thanks once again Richard. You and Ritter could be right.
Can’t help but notice in nearly all of the photos of tractor/ farmer protests the seemingly universal adoption of the safety vest (“Gilet Jaunes” (sp?) first used by French protesters a few years ago. The revolution will not be televised, but bloggers and journalists like The Busker are doing the righteous work of keeping us aware and informed. Power to the People! (I’m an old hippie, couldn’t resist✌️)
Hey - I'm also an old hippie. Cheers.
Local Weather is interpreted by Political Climate Change. In the area where I live, hundreds of miles of reservoirs behind Hydro Electric Dams, built in the 1960s, have created a huge "Heat Sink" holding millions/trillions of calories/BTU's which Mother Nature had not done previously. And that has certainly warmed up the valleys in winter, and shifted the snow line higher than normal.
But for the young and gullible, the profitable, political science of climate change is the dullard's way out.