Principled Perspectives: September 2022

Tuesday, September 27, 2022

QUORA: ‘With the current worldwide heat crisis (July 2022), how can anyone doubt the reality of climate change?’

I posted this answer, slightly edited:

Those who “see” climate change in this year’s summertime heat waves affecting some areas simply don’t know what they’re talking about. Heat waves no more prove the reality of climate change than religionists who “see” God in the heat waves (or any other weather events) proves the existence of God.

Of course, the Earth’s average global temperature is slowly warming. The warming, in turn, alters weather patterns in some areas, causing gradual, long-term shifts in some climates. But the mental linking of every news-worthy weather event to climate change is an indoctrination tactic geared toward a political agenda. An example of this tactic is Big Media’s coordinated world-wide, one-sided propaganda campaign, called the Covering Climate Now initiative. The purpose of this media cartel, dishonestly parading under the honorable label of “journalism,” is “a project . . . aimed at strengthening the media’s focus on the climate crisis.” It’s a virtual given these days that any news report on extreme weather events will include “climate change” or “climate crisis” in the report, without any causal fact that links climate change to the event. Such a one-sided campaign ignores the genuine human catastrophe that would follow from the efforts to “fight climate change” by stifling economic growth and the reliable energy needed to power it.

As this question demonstrates, climate change has taken on faith-based, quasi-religious overtones.

And it’s not only not helpful. It’s downright dangerous, because it leads people to support policies of energy deprivation that restricts peoples’ access to the reliable low-cost energy needed to protect themselves from heat and other weather extremes. Although some of these extremes may be marginally more intense, nothing currently happening in weather is unprecedented or anything resembling a “climate crisis.” In truth, what is not being recognized is the enormous human progress on commanding climate dangers that fossil fuels and freedom have enabled, and the danger the crusade against fossil fuels means to continuing progress, especially in light of the equally vociferous campaign against nuclear power. The issue is not “the reality of climate change,” which no one disputes. The question I would ask is “In light of this summer’s heat waves, how can anyone doubt the vital human necessity of reliable cost-effective energy, such as fossil fuels and nuclear power?”

I’ve posted other answers on this subject:

QUORA: ‘Why is there such strong pushback on climate change at the same time as we are seeing overwhelming proof of weather extremes in the USA?’

QUORA: ‘Why, even if the evidence is overwhelming, do many deny the risks our planet is running with climate change?’

QUORA: ‘What is, in your opinion, the best solution to climate change without destroying the economy?’

Friday, September 23, 2022

Jasmine Winters Double Standard on Abortion ‘Access’ Undercuts Abortion Rights

In I work at an abortion clinic and know that access to abortion is difficult, even in New Jersey, New Jersey Star-Ledger Guest Columnist Jasmine Winters writes on the difficulty some women have accessing abortion in NJ despite state laws guaranteeing that right. Some women don’t live close to abortion providers, so must travel to get to one, sometimes as far as 100 miles. This is a financial hardship for some, and one can sympathize with their difficulties.

Winters also focuses on anti-abortion activists’ intimidation tactics. Patients at clinics often are

forced to deal with anti-abortion protestors who harass them and try to block their entrance to the clinic. It’s a common misconception that these protestors are silent and unobtrusive, or speak to patients with compassion and in good faith. The reality is that anti-abortion extremists are acting as vigilantes to try to take away patients’ rights to access care in a safe environment.

Again, one can sympathize with the staff and patients of these clinics who must deal with these bullies. Such tactics are not free speech or legitimate protests. They are harassment and thuggery.

Then came this bait-and-switch that undercuts Winters whole article:

And people who don’t have insurance should be able to rely on state funding — we have enough for everyone in our community. We should also protect our state’s providers as well as patients who come from out of state from being sued, extradited, subpoenaed, or criminalized in any way by states with cruel abortion bans.

[my emphasis]

Once Winters pivoted from the right to access abortion to the “right” to access other peoples’ wallets in order to pay for that access, she exposes herself as no better than the “extremists” she condemns for wanting to physically intimidate and block women from entering abortion clinics. She calls for forcing taxpayers to pay for abortions, which is also an act of a bully, which is made worse under cover of law, which is legalized aggressive force.

“My body, my choice” necessarily includes “my money, my choice.” Life is an integration of body and mind, the spiritual and the material. A person must work to earn the money needed to access the goods and services one’s life requires. It follows that a person must be free to make the necessary choices regarding the buying of these values. When Winters says women “should be able to rely on state funding,” she is saying the taxpayers who fund the state (or rate-payers who fund health insurance) should be denied their own choice on how they spend their own money.

One can sympathize with people who have trouble affording abortion or any other good or service. But that doesn’t justify what amounts to legalized theft. Money belongs first and foremost to the individuals who earned it—not to the “community”; not to the state; not to abortion clinic workers; not to the pro-abortion rights faction; and not to Jasmine Winters. But to the individuals who earn it in the first place. And only those individuals have the right to decide how they spend their money, including whether to pay for another person’s abortion (or any other material value)*. When Winters asserts “we have enough for everyone in our community,” she is arrogantly claiming to speak for everyone. But she has only the moral right to speak for herself and her own money, not everyone else and their money.

As a strong supporter of reproductive freedom, including abortion rights, it disturbs me tremendously when people like Winters equate the right to abortion with the right to force other people to pay for their abortion. Such package dealing undercuts and destroys the argument for abortion rights. You cannot defend one right by violating another right. There is no “right” to violate the rights of others. Your body and your money are both equally your property, and only the individual has a right to decide what to do with her body and her money.

* [As this sentence implies, I am against the entire redistributive welfare state. So I am fully consistent.]

Monday, September 19, 2022

Biden’s Right: America Faces a Grave Threat. Contra Biden, It’s Not Primarily From ‘MAGA Republicans'

In a fiery midterm campaign speech, President Joe Biden warned earlier this month of a grave threat to “American democracy.” He pointed the finger at “MAGA Republicans” as the source of that threat. As CNN reported:

“As I stand here tonight, equality and democracy are under assault,” Biden said. “We do ourselves no favor to pretend otherwise.”

Biden attempted to separate Trump’s most loyal followers from the Republican Party as a whole. And as he concluded, he sought to strike a more upbeat note, saying it was still within voters’ power to rein in the nation’s darkest forces.

But the heart of Biden’s address was a ringing alarm bell about what he called “an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.”

“MAGA forces are determined to take this country backwards. Backwards to an America where there is no right to choose, no right to privacy. No right to contraception, no right to marry who you love,” he said, striking on cultural issues Democrats believe can help them win in November.

Most news coverage focussed on Biden’s attack on Donald Trump-supporting MAGA Republicans.

But they missed “the elephant in the room,” the much greater threat exposed in Biden’s speech—his reiteration of the reactionary, anti-American ideology of Biden and his own party, that “the fundamental right to vote is the right from which all other rights flow.” That premise is the outright rejection of the revolutionary concept of inalienable individual rights, a denial of the very foundation of the American republic.

From what I have observed, most, as I’ve said, missed this critical significance of Biden’s diatribe, including prominent conservative voices like those at Fox News, which incessantly replayed Biden’s attacks on Trump and MAGA.

Most, but not all. At least one notable observer got it right—Jacob Sullum, writing for Reason. Sullum’s prescient piece is Trump Disregards Democracy, While Biden Ignores Its Dangers: The president's attack on the "extreme ideology" of "MAGA Republicans" elides the tension between majority rule and individual freedom. In a particularly important passage, Sullum correctly observes:

Biden says "the freedom to vote and have your vote counted" is "the most fundamental freedom in this country." The Framers saw things differently. They understood that unconstrained democracy, like unconstrained autocracy, poses an intolerable threat to liberty. The constitution they produced is chock-full of provisions that check the will of the people, including limits on the federal government's powers, requirements for passing legislation, and explicit recognition of rights that the people's representatives must respect, no matter what the majority demands.

Amen!

Sullum goes on to point out how Biden twists and shreds the words of the U.S. Constitution to back up his reactionary claim. Pointing out the hypocrisy of Biden’s Democratic Party, and echoing what I’ve observed earlier, Sullum observes:

Based on Biden's words and deeds, we have a pretty good idea of what he believes about the proper size and scope of government. He thinks politicians selected by "the People" can do whatever they want, provided they do not impinge on the specific freedoms that he values. When it comes to abortion, contraception, and same-sex marriage, the majority does not rule. But when it comes to nearly everything else, the people's will—or, more realistically, Biden's perception of it—prevails.

In fact, Biden’s own democratic ideology make even the rights to abortion, contraception, and same-sex marriage alienable by elected representatives. That’s exactly what the Supreme Court did in overturning Roe v. Wade—It sent those rights into the hands of state legislatures, where Biden’s “the freedom to vote" will have the power to strip away the rights to abortion, contraception, and same-sex marriage. If the vote is "the most fundamental freedom in this country," then no right is safe or sacrosanct from tyrannical elected legislatures, including the right not to be enslaved, no matter what Biden’s preferences.

I suggest reading Sullum’s article in it’s entirety. It’s a gem in America’s philosophically challenged culture.

The main beef I have with Sullum is that I think he significantly understates the Biden threat relative to Trump. But that's a minor quibble. I posted Sullum's article on Facebook, with this preamble:

Biden's attack on "MAGA Republicans" masks the much more dangerous totalitarian democracy espoused by him and his party. In truth, the Democratic Party has been a reactionary force against Americanism since its founding in 1828, when it came into being on a platform that included the "right" of majorities to vote minorities into slavery—exactly what you'd expect under democracy fundamentalism. The Democrats' hypocracy concerning abortion aside, a party that embraces the principle that "the freedom to vote is the most fundamental freedom" is an enemy of a free society and of America.

Sullum's analysis coincides in most respects with my long-standing views and of my take on Biden vs. Trump. Trump, whom I despise and would find it hard to vote for again, is nonetheless clearly the lesser of two evils hands down. I will renounce voting altogether before I'd ever vote Democrat.

Sunday, September 11, 2022

The U.S.Constitution: Nick Goldberg’s Scheme to Transform Our Liberty Document into a Democratic Socialist Manifesto

Next week is Constitution Day. So it’s a good time to assess threats to our Constitution.

Abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass called our original Constitution “a glorious liberty document.” Yet it has been under threat at the most fundamental level almost since it was adopted, most notably from reactionaries that would reinterpret the Founding of America from a republic to a democracy, such as the Progressive Democratic Party.

In Our problems actually start with the Constitution, Nicholas Goldberg, an associate editor for one of America’s leading media outlets, the Los Angeles Times, clearly highlights the threat.

Using the well-worn reactionary argument that The U.S. Constitution has outlived its usefulness in our modern world, Goldberg proposes revisions that can only be described as radically reactionary.

The Constitution created the undemocratic U.S. Senate that allots the same representation — two senators — to a state like Wyoming, which has fewer than 600,000 people, as it does to California, with nearly 40 million people.

The Constitution was designed to limit the concentration of political power through a separation of powers and checks-and-balances between the governmental branches for the purpose of protecting individual liberty. While the House of Representatives gives a direct democratic power to the people as individual voters for the purpose of directly choosing representatives, the Senate gives power to the state governments, through their legislatures, for the purpose of choosing senators. This bicameral Congressional arrangement is part of the checks-and-balances design. Yes, smaller states have proportionally more influence than the larger in the Senate. But the larger states have massively more influence in the House.

As long as tyranny, or the threat thereof, exists in humanity, it’s hard to make the case that the need for constitutional protections against tyranny have outlived their usefulness.

It established the voting system that allows presidents to be elected who did not win the popular vote.

Indirect democracy is part of the checks and balances. It tempers the irrational passions of popular majorities by breaking democracy down into smaller competing majorities. Of course, the Electoral College does not eliminate the popular vote, since the popular vote in each state ultimately determines the Electors. What Goldberg objects to is the irrelevance of the national popular vote in presidential politics. But so what? The American system is based on the primacy of individual rights, not the primacy of democracy.*

It's got antiquated — and dangerous — provisions, such as the anachronistic "right to bear arms," which reflects long-forgotten concerns dating to post-revolutionary America. Today, no countries protect gun rights in their constitution except the United States, Guatemala and Mexico.

The right to life is fundamental to all rights. The right to self-defense is inherent in the right to life. The right to possess the means of self-defense is fundamental to the right to self-defense. Hence, the right to bear arms. Violent criminals still exist. As long as criminals exist among us, gun rights will never be antiquated.

What's more, constitutional thinking has evolved since 1787. Today, most new constitutions include far more enumerated rights than ours, notes David Law. The right to education, for instance, and to privacy, food, healthcare and housing. Many modern constitutions protect reproductive rights, freedom of movement, the right to unionize and the rights of the disabled. Today, more than 100 national constitutions include explicit references to environmental rights. The rights of women are singled out for protection in 90% of today's constitutions.

This is truly the provision that would destroy America.It would subvert the very concept of rights.

The Founding generation rebelled against what they believed were the erosion and violation of their rights as Englishmen by the British parliament, which they had believed were sacrosanct. Realizing that individual rights dependent on government are tenuous, the Founders knew they needed a new objective grounding for rights. They turned to the Enlightenment thinkers like John Locke, and discovered the concept of Natural Rights. Natural Rights theory holds that individuals are free by nature. Individual rights, which define that natural liberty, are thus derived from the scientific study of man’s nature and man’s relationship to broader nature. Rights, to the Founders, are inalienable and precede government, which is instituted to protect those rights. Government neither creates nor denies rights. It recognizes rights and bases its laws on these facts of nature. **

So-called Progressives revert back to the pre-American concept of rights. Governments, they hold, create rights.

Consequently, denying the Founders, most of Goldberg’s litany of “rights” are not rights at all. They are privileges granted to some at the expense of others. A “right” to material benefits that others must be forced to provide are really empowerments of some to enslave others. The right to property is fundamental to living, because the product of one’s labor is the means of living. A Constitution that empowers the government to seize private property to pay for, say, others’ education is not a liberty document. It is a blueprint for tyranny and the enslavement of the nation. A government with the power to enforce such economic “rights” is a government operating on the premise that the state owns the nation’s wealth and has first claim on it, rather than those who produced that wealth. That is a slave premise, and the exact reversal of America’s foundational recognition of property rights as a natural inalienable right.

Goldberg selectively attacks free speech—“Let's ban corporate money from politics!”

He calls for “a frank, no-sacred-cows discussion” about revising the Constitution. Apparently, freedom of speech is one of the sacred cows he wants to slay.

To be sure, the Constitution could use some pro-liberty reforms to strengthen it. But given the state of the culture, opening up that can of worms today would be a huge risk and more likely end in disaster for Constitutional liberty. So, for now, we’ll have to settle for our somewhat flawed Constitution. That’s OK, because it’s still a glorious liberty document. If Goldberg’s alterations become reality, that will no longer be the case. The American Revolution will have died.

It’s true that we’ve already strayed far from the purpose of the Constitution. The pervasively anti-liberty regulatory welfare state has been built on disregard for the Constitution. Some might argue that Goldberg’s reactionary changes would merely formalize where we’ve already gone, so it’s no big deal.

But it’s a very big deal. As long as the pro-liberty thrust of the Constitution is preserved, we who fight for a rebirth or re-Founding of America’s Revolutionary principles, and to finally fulfill the Enlightenment promise of a fully free society, will have the Founders’ gales of liberty at our backs.

To repeat, opening up the Constitution to major revisions today based on “a frank, no-sacred-cows discussion of what works and what doesn't” would be a disaster. Goldberg blames the Constitution for just about everything wrong—or what he sees as wrong—in America. “We'll never solve our problems” until we update the current Constitution to one “that addresses the issues that concern us today, not those that faced a new republic in the long-ago past,” he says. But the issues that concerned the Founders were deep philosophical and historical issues that remain as relevant to us today as they were at the time of the Founders. Human nature, after all, has not changed. The Founders weren’t primarily concerned with transient issues of the day. They had history and posterity firmly in mind. Just read The Federalist Papers.

Whatever flaws the Constitution has, it is still a liberty document. It’s a republican document, not a democratic document. Goldberg’s proposed radical alterations would reorient it into an anti-liberty democratic socialist document, unleashing unlimited government power on Americans as happened in Venezuela and, perhaps next, Chile. Let’s keep it a liberty document.

* [The 17th Amendment greatly weakened, though did not destroy, the Senate’s power. That Amendment mandated popular elections of senators, stripping the power to select senators from the state legislatures. It should be repealed. That said, before the 17th Amendment, the states were already moving toward direct popular elections of senators, as they had long done in regard to the Electoral College electors. The most-used method, adopted by 28 of the then-45 states, was the “Oregon Method.” Thus, popular elections for senators were coming. The crucial difference was that state legislatures retained control of the process, thus maintaining the balance of power between the federal and state governments.]

** [Ayn Rand refined and advanced this concept of Natural Rights. She showed that rights are actually moral concepts, not entities intrinsic in man’s nature. But she agrees that the justification for these moral concepts is still to be found in the scientific study of man’s nature and man’s relationship to broader nature.]

Wednesday, September 7, 2022

Samantha Tassillo’s Irresponsible Call to Turn Weather Reporting into Political Propaganda

Fresh out of the indoctrination camps we call "higher education," Samantha Tassillo comes out full of fire for the noble ideological ideal of Climate Supremacy. And she wants to kill weather reporting to advance her agenda. In a New Jersey Star-Ledger guest column, Tassillo demands, Listen, weather reporters, don’t say it’s hot if you won’t say why. Citing reports on heat waves this summer, she writes

From reading these news stories I wouldn’t have known that the sweltering weather and global warming were connected.

Of course, you wouldn’t have known, because they’re not. The sweltering weather is connected to known atmospheric conditions that have historically caused sweltering weather.

In combing through recent articles on nj.com, I did find one single letter to the editor that mentioned greenhouse gas emissions as the cause of the summer heat waves, back in June of this year. Thank you, Walter Korfmacher from Westfield. I appreciate you.

Well, the only problem is, Kormacner is wrong. True, a degree or two difference on a hot day may be attributable to the increase in CO2, which is likely at least partially responsible for the mild warming of the past 150 years or so. But they are not a cause of the heat waves. That amounts to the claim that this summer’s heat waves would not have happened if not for human greenhouse gas emissions. That’s absurd. It doesn’t even rise to the level of plausible speculation. It’s pure fantasy. What is a fact is that without air conditioning, these heat waves would be as unbearable as they have been throughout most of human history, a degree or two cooler notwithstanding.

Otherwise, in the eight articles published about the heat wave in recent days, not one of them mentioned climate change, global warming or greenhouse gas emissions.

Of course they wouldn’t.* They’re reporters, not climate theorists. Mentioning “climate change, global warming or greenhouse gas emissions” would be irrelevant to specific weather event reports.

If reporters aren’t going to mention that carbon emissions are causing the heat waves, then there’s no sense in mentioning the heat at all. [?] A denial of one is a denial of the other. [??] We might as well live as if wet-bulb temperatures above 95 degrees Fahrenheit don’t exist. [???]

The idea that without carbon emissions heat waves wouldn’t happen may come as a surprise to the framers of the U.S. Constitution, who had to work through 1787s “unbearably hot and humid Philadelphia summer to hammer out the Constitution.” It may come as a surprise to the Europeans of 1757, which endured a heat wave more brutal than 2022. And back then, the Northern Hemisphere was smack in the middle of the climatically turbulent Little Ice Age. History is replete with myriad other examples like these. In fact, just in my informed experience, which spans 73 years, temperatures above 95 degrees Fahrenheit are common summertime occurrences, often reaching well past 100° F here in Jersey (1966 comes to mind). Reading this guest column, I feel like we’re in Twilight Zone territory that this even has to be pointed out.

Heat waves a sudden, brandy new occurrence, thanks to carbon emissions, climate change, global warming, and greenhouse gas emissions?

This would be cartoonish, except that it’s passed off as journalism in NJ’s largest newspaper.

It’s apparent that the Star-Ledger doesn’t even bother with fact checking any more. If it did, it would have flagged the preposterous claim that “carbon emissions are causing the heat waves.” But then, what would you expect from a charter member of the world propaganda cartel, Covering Climate Now(CCN). CCN is a massively one-sided big media project that is underpinned by the assertion that “the climate emergency is here.” This media cartel is the last link of a climate “knowledge system” in which influential thought leaders communicate to the public the knowledge that starts with basic scientific climate research. But the media twists the conclusion into the false climate catastrophist, anti-fossil fuel, non-impact-on-nature standard to the general public, under cover of the generic, authoritative-sounding “science says.” **

The climate is changing in many places as the average temperature of the Earth gradually warms. And, yes, some weather extremes have probably become marginally more extreme due to the warming. And, yes, human activity is undoubtedly part of the cause. This is a valid subject to explore, and I have no problem with studying the possible correlations between weather extremes and climate change, human induced or natural. Unfortunately for climate change fire-breathers like Tassillo, current studies have not yet uncovered much in the way of evidence for increased weather extremes, as former Obama science advisor Steven E. Koonan documents in his informative book, Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn't, and Why It Matters. One interesting fact Koonan observes is that daily record highs are in fact holding steady, with a slight downward bias. This chart hardly confirms Tassillo’s absurd claim that this year’s heat waves are a sudden, unprecedented result of climate change:

But climate theorizing, educated guessing, and speculation are beside the point when reporting on specific weather events. Weather has causes related to long-understood—and sometimes still little understood—atmospheric conditions. Cold and warm fronts, upper- and lower-level pressure systems, jet streams, and El Niños/La Niñas are a few of the causes. Geography also often plays a big role in regularly occurring weather extremes. Climate change is not one of them. Climate is not real, like weather. It is an average of weather measurements in a particular area over a long period of time, usually decades.*** So climate change can only be measured in decades, not by heat waves or any other weather events. To say climate change causes weather is like saying my bowling average causes my individual game scores. It’s reversing cause-and-effect, and it’s preposterous.

Weather reporters should not be sucked into doing the political propaganda bidding of climate catastrophists, confusing readers with erroneous claims of climate change causes. They should stick to the actual facts, or lose all credibility. Knowing the actual causes of weather phenomena is vital to predicting weather and preparing warnings of impending dangerous weather extremes. Spouting off about climate change causing extreme weather would be useless to people who need real information about weather. Scaring us into being perpetually hunkering down as if weather disasters were just around every corner is not helpful. 99.9% of the time is spent in tranquil weather, or bad weather that we are protected from due to modern technology. And if severe weather threatens, simplistic climate change/eliminating fossil fuels “causes/solutions” will not teach us how to actually prepare for the dangers. Incessant Chicken Little sky-is-falling proclamations about heat waves won’t do us any good. Only facts and knowledge can do that. Weather forecasts of impending heat waves, and why, are useful. Climate hysteria is not.

Tassillo is dead wrong. Climate change has no place in weather reporting. Her claim that climate change caused this summer’s heat waves has no scientific or historical validity. (It is, in fact, a quasi-religious view.)

Silly as her premise is, Tassillo resorts to a truly cruel tactic which I can’t let pass—comparing the failure to “report” climate change as a cause of heat waves with the failure of some to fully account for slavery in antebellum America.

You might’ve even heard of Ellen Bresler Rockmore’s viral New York Times article from 2015 on “How Texas Teaches History”: in the passive voice. She scours Texan American History textbooks, only to find that the writers manipulated language to diminish slaveowners’ culpability for the treatment of slaves.

The authors penned sentences like “severe treatment was very common” and “[w]hippings, brandings, and even worse torture were all part of American slavery.” These statements position the act of slavery as something inherent to the age, not something that individuals were responsible for — something that they could have changed.

Whether Tassillo is correct about Texas history books is beside the point. The cruel point is to place weather reporters who exclude mention of climate change on the moral level of the writers who allegedly manipulated language to diminish slaveowners’ culpability for the treatment of slaves! It’s hard to overstate how morally abominable this is. Shame on Samantha Tassillo, and shame on the Star-Ledger for publishing this trash.

Neglecting to mention climate change in articles about heat waves paints a passive picture of the world in a very similar way. These articles implicitly reimagine extreme weather as something that happens independently of us, which we know not to be true . Perhaps these writers have omitted it to avoid being “political,” but news about climate change doesn’t belong in the op-ed section.

Unfortunately, much of it does. Extreme weather is something that has always happened independently of us. But Tassillo is not interested in facts, and she doesn’t want reporters to be, either. She obviously hasn’t yet escaped the iron grip of climate indoctrination, and may never. But she should really start thinking for herself. And she desperately needs to check her moral premises. Equating honest weather reporters with slaveowners is cold bloodedly unjust to weather reporters, not to mention insulting to the slaves who were forced to labor in the fields during summer heat waves. (Yes, Samantha, there were heat waves during the plantation slave era.)

If Tassillo gets her way, then all weather reporting would belong on the op-ed pages—meaning, weather journalism would effectively end. That would be a shame for anyone seeking genuine news coverage of weather events, especially for a life-long weather buff like myself. Climate speculations have no place in a news article reporting on this summer’s heat waves or on any other weather events. The fact is, though, that some mention of climate change or some variation of “scientists say” or “experts say” in weather reporting is already way too common. Weather “reporting” is already moving away from real journalism. It’s not too bad, yet. Let’s not completely destroy it. People need real facts. Weather reporting and articles covering the speculative relationship of weather to the broader, long-term phenomenon of climate change are not the same thing.

* [If true. I’ve seen plenty of articles on the heat wave that do mention climate change.]

** [A knowledge system is a multi-step process. It is the way basic expert research is communicated to the general public in consolidated, easily understood form. In terms of climate, it is devastatingly indoctrinating, denying the public the proper consolidation of the objective facts about climate, energy, economics, and liberty as they relate to climate. Alex Epstein explains this distorted “knowledge system” in his book Fossil Future.]

*** [The National Centers for Environmental Information, a division of the National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration, calculates U.S. climate normals over 30 year periods. The World Meteorological Organization and National Weather Service rely on this data. The 1991–2020 U.S. Climate Normals are the latest in a series of decadal normals first produced in the 1950s.]