John Hinderaker:
So the question naturally arises: why should the United States have anything to do with the U.N.? I understand why Russia wants the U.N. to exist, and why the 57 Islamic countries that dominate the General Assembly want it to exist, and why evil regimes like Iran’s that gain political cover by being appointed to the U.N’s Human Rights Council want it to exist, and why tiny third-world countries that are hard to find on a map, but get equal votes in the General Assembly, want it to exist. But why should we want the U.N. to exist? Why should we support it?
I don’t think there is a good answer to that question. The U.N. purports to have moral authority superior to ours, but that is a lie. The U.N. has no moral authority at all; certainly less than that of the United States. The U.N. does obvious evil in the world, and I can’t see any substantial good to outweigh that evil. If there are specific agencies of the U.N. that actually do something productive, they could easily be reproduced in a post-U.N. world.
Steven Hayward:
Anyone who shows up to work at the Pentagon or State Department wearing a keffiyeh scarf should be summarily fired. Would FDR have tolerated a federal employee who wore a Swastika to the office?
David Strom:
The Biden decision to cut off new LNG export facilities is a big win for Russia, which has already seen its exports recover after a significant dip due to Europe seeking other sources—particularly the United States. Biden helps Russia, harms Europe, and delivers a blow to American jobs—especially in Red states.
Oops. I am sure everybody involved is thrilled by Biden’s decision.
To put the icing on the cake, Russia is also a major coal exporter, and coal is an alternative to natural gas for electricity production. Germany is already firing up its coal plants—even tearing down a wind farm to open a coal mine. Biden’s decision will likely increase prices for natural gas outside the US.
Last I checked, coal emits far more CO2 than natural gas. Geez.
David Strom:
CNN wants you to know that Australians should be angry that Australia exists because the indigenous peoples lost their continent to the colonizers.
I looked it up, and there may have been as few as 300,000 and as many as a million and a half aborigines who lived on the continent, which is approximately the size of the United States. It is possible that the total reached as high as 3 million at one point, although that is a very high estimate.
To put that into perspective, 300,000 illegal aliens entered the United States in December alone. Not including the “gotaways.”
In other words, CNN thinks that adding a few million White people to a continent the size of the US is appalling because 300,000 people should own an entire continent. But 300,000 people is also insignificant enough a population that it is no big deal that the same number of people invaded the US in a single month.
Steven Hayward:
Cost, scale, and density are the three main points of any good energy analysis (I call these the “Energy Triumvirate”), and is what I drill students about from the first day of class to the last day of class. A lot of current energy enthusiasms, like solar and wind power—not to mention batteries for cars and the grid—are hugely resource intensive, which makes their tradeoffs over fossil fuels far from a slam dunk, as we have mentioned here many times in the past.
Jazz Shaw:
What’s being observed in Chicago and other places is that the EV batteries in many models lose up to 20 percent of their charging capacity when the thermometer falls below the freezing point. If the car’s heater is running on full blast (as you might expect in such weather), the capacity can drop by more than 40%. And that means the available range you can drive is reduced by that much as well, so you need to plan your trip around where the next charging station is.
Even if you manage to find one, you will further need to hope that it’s not backed up by frustrated drivers like the one mentioned in the linked report. Wait times of up to two hours were encountered and the cars were charging much more slowly than usual. At the Chicago charging station mentioned above, multiple vehicles wound up having to be hauled away by tow trucks. All of the waiting around was made all the more miserable by the frigid winds and snow.
