Category: In the News

This “news story” is a work of satire. All linked quotes, however, are 100% real.

6 November 2017

AP – Hours after a gunman killed at least 26 church-goers in Sutherland Springs, Texas, and in the wake of a string of national tragedies over previous weeks including the depraved massacre of 58 people by a “lone wolf” gunman in Las Vegas only 35 days earlier and the Puerto Rican landfall of Hurricane Maria just 11 days before that, Americans widely acknowledged on Monday they had entered a new Great American Mourning Episode (GAME) observed by tradition following any such travesty on U.S. soil. Variously held for a period of weeks or months, the GAME features, by mutual agreement of all patriotic American citizens and in respectful observance of the suffering of the victims of the tragedy, a usually unspoken moratorium on any insensitive public discourse related to possible root causes of the disaster or potential methods of preventing similar travesties in the future.

This exceptional American tradition was exemplified particularly well by presidential counselor Kellyanne Conlady immediately following the August landfall of Hurricane Harvey, the first of 4 major hurricanes to ravage the U.S. coastline during this year’s unusually active hurricane season.  Just hours after its landfall in Texas, a news reporter callously deviated from the spirit of the GAME by seeking to question Conlady about whether “climate change” might be a contributing factor to the hurricane’s ability to drop a record-smashing more than 4 feet of rain on Houston, whereupon Conlady justifiably responded, “…we’re trying to help the people whose lives are literally underwater, and you want to have a conversation about climate change. I mean, that is—I’m not going to engage in that right now because I work for a president and a vice president and a country that is very focused on helping the millions of affected Texans, and, God forbid, Louisianans.”

EPA administrator Scott Prune expressed a similar patriotic sentiment hours before the state of Florida was slammed by Hurricane Irma, a multi-record-setting hurricane roughly twice the width of that state.  When questioned by an indurate reporter about the possible role of “climate change” in stirring up the most savage hurricane season on record, Prune appropriately put the reporter in his place: “To have any kind of focus on the cause and effect of the storm versus helping people, or actually facing the effect of the storm, is misplaced.  …to use time and effort to address it at this point is very, very insensitive to [the] people in Florida.” Appropriate comments indeed from the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, who we must assume had by that time put a pin in all considerations of the Environment in expectation of personally performing manual labor as part of Florida relief efforts.

Hours after the October 1 Las Vegas massacre, White House press secretary Sarah Slanders similarly urged appropriate observation of the GAME. “There’s a time and place for a political debate, but now is the time to unite as a country,” Slanders solemnly reminded members of the media. “We haven’t had the moment to have a deep dive on the policy part. We have been focused on the fact that we had a severe tragedy in our country and this is a day of mourning, a time of bringing our country together, that has been the focus of the administration this morning.”

These exemplary demonstrations of patriotism epitomized the vital principle of the GAME, that any misguided efforts to identify and discuss the merits of potential policy adjustments to prevent future calamities would only serve as distractions from the proper acknowledgement and consideration of the suffering of fellow Americans.

Indeed, the GAME demands, for all who love America, that terrestrial considerations of practical human action should rather be transcended by prayer, in the form of devout appeals to any of various higher deities to ease the suffering of the afflicted and grant relief from such tragedies in the future. Americans widely admit no documented evidence of any of the major deities obviously meddling significantly in natural events or the collective fortunes of large groups of people for thousands of years. Even in those ancient times, literary evidence suggests interference of deities only in the context of vigorous efforts on the part of a human population to improve its own fortunes. Nevertheless, the documented power wielded by the deities in those times was unquestionably awesome, so the Strategy of Prayer is widely considered a “Hail Mary play” that might eliminate future human tragedies without resorting to the sorts of terrestrial human actions forbidden by proper observation of the GAME.

External observers have questioned the wisdom of the GAME, saying it might delay sorely needed actions that could prevent future horrific events. Foreign analysts have often referenced the apparent incongruity of the GAME with pragmatic American reactions to other types of problems. Aidan O’Sullivan of Limerick, Ireland pointed out, “If’n a baseball cums crashin’ through yisser picture windy, Oi’m juicy sure yer open de door roi away ter see wha’ wee kid did it, even as you’re also mournin’ de loss of yisser windy.” While true, Aidan’s example misses the point of the GAME, which has to do with the sheer size and depth of tragedy that can result only from a category 5 Atlantic hurricane or a crazy loner wielding an AR-15 legally enhanced with an ARMATAC SAW-MAG 150 round dual drum magazine, a Slide Fire bump stock, a Black Rain silencer, and a Vortex Optics Crossfire II Riflescope purchased on Amazon Prime with free overnight shipping.

Immediate, pragmatic action is entirely appropriate for day-to-day setbacks like busted picture windows.  A hurricane landfall on a major city or a gunman in an elevated firing position menacing a dense crowd of T-shirt and sandal clad concert-goers with 20 or more military grade firearms, however, is uniquely capable of generating a scale of mayhem – scores of dead and hundreds or thousands of human lives forever altered – that can only be properly observed by strict adherence to the GAME.

Disturbingly, an in-depth investigation by our reporters revealed that a small minority of Americans failed to uniformly observe the GAME. Indeed, in the same year that Americans from Puerto Rico to Texas were struggling to recover from a multi-record-setting string of ferocious hurricanes, Terry Dinan, an economist and environmental policy expert at the Congressional Budget Office, furtively wrote of her suggestions to link scientific knowledge about hurricanes to future public policy. “Hurricane damage in the United States is likely to increase substantially in the coming decades as a result of both climate change and coastal development,” she insensitively opined. “Two primary strategies for limiting such increases are mitigation, which entails reducing global emissions of greenhouse gases, and adaptation, which entails reducing exposure or reducing the vulnerability of exposed property. A coordinated global effort to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions could lessen hurricane damage between now and 2075…” Fortunately, Dr. Dinan wrote her crass comments in the obscure and little-read journal, Ecological Economics, sparing the collective psyches of Americans suffering the effects of 2017’s active hurricane season from the damage that might have been inflicted had the callous suggestions entered the mainstream media.

In private moments, several citizens quietly confessed some trepidation about the limits the GAME might place on Americans’ ability to engage in the collective discourse necessary to develop robust solutions to some of the nation’s most pressing problems. “It had been a full month since the Las Vegas shooting, and I‘d just gotten back to starting to think about whether some type of common-sense gun legislation might help reduce the body count when some nut becomes unhinged and decides to kill a bunch of innocent people in a school or at a concert,” explained Larry Swingvoater of Green Bay, Wisconsin. “Now, another maniac decided to open fire in a church, so of course I can’t think about policy while those poor people are suffering. But what I worry about is, if these hurricanes and mass shootings keep happening so close together, when WILL I think about that stuff? Anyway, I’m back to praying now – maybe that will eventually pay off.”

Others wondered aloud what the solutions from a supernatural deity might look like, should the Strategy of Prayer prove successful. Would future tragedies from climate change ultimately be averted by solutions resembling the “solar technology,” “wind technology,” or “battery technology” rumored to have been developed by human scientists and engineers? Or, might a deity prove capable of providing sustainable bioenergy derived from multitudes of burning bushes? Or, tidal energy afforded by repetitive parting of the earth’s seas? Might an entity akin to the Holy Spirit provide a bullet-proof energy field around the nation’s innocent civilians, enabling Americans to maintain casual public availability of thrilling, adrenaline-pumping battlefield style firearms without risk to young schoolchildren?

A handful of fringe citizens, who made their controversial remarks on condition of anonymity so as not to be identified as GAME-violators, expressed the cynical opinion that the GAME poorly serves American politics and is actually the result of a “cruel and selfish conspiracy” by a few well-funded special interests with outsized influence on U.S. legislative policy. “This is not patriotism, but simply a transparent political delay tactic,” claimed Jon Faiknaim, whose name has been changed in this article at his request. “Every time a hurricane or a gun-toting madman kills a bunch of people, politicians in the pockets of the fossil fuel industry and the National Rifle Association call it ‘insensitive’ to talk about policy changes that would solve some of our most urgent public problems but harm the narrow interests of those minority stakeholders. Then, everybody forgets about the problem the moment another issue of critical national interest demands consideration. Like the linguistic etymology of the word, ‘covfefe,’ or how football players arrange their limbs during pre-game performances of the National Anthem. Then, the next time one of these tragedies occurs, the irrational cycle repeats itself.” Fortunately, these cynical expressions of doubt were rare.

On the whole, proper observation of America’s GAME was alive and well Monday thanks, in no small part, to the stellar leadership example of President Donald Tweety, who so inspirationally addressed the nation following the earlier Las Vegas massacre. “I think the only message I can say is that we’re with you 100 percent,” Tweety remarked from the relative safety of his Secret Service perimeter, when asked by a reporter if he had a message for the citizens of Las Vegas. “I said, ‘If you’re ever in Washington, come on over to the Oval Office,’ and they’re all saying, ‘We wanna do it, how do we do it?’ And believe me, I’ll be there for them. But the message that I have is we have a great country and we are there for you, and they’re there for us,” Tweety continued, apparently extending his generous presidential invitation to the citizens of Las Vegas not dead of gunshot wounds.

But our national leader’s statements were most inspirational as he bravely defended the sanctity of the GAME when questioned by an unruly member of the press pool about whether “we have a gun violence problem.”

“We’re not going to talk about that today. We won’t talk about that,” Tweety responded, later adding that a gun policy debate “at some point, perhaps … will come.”

This article is a work of satire intended to highlight, in an entertaining way, the absurdity of our ongoing public “debate” about climate change, despite a virtually unanimous consensus among scientists. See other articles on this fact-based website for more information about that consensus, a primer on the science of climate change, and a compendium of climate change effects we can already plainly see.

AP — On Wednesday, with an air of confidence reminiscent of their controversial “climate change” allegations, the world’s scientists were apparently nearly unanimous in predicting a strange astrophysical event, during which they outrageously claimed portions of the Earth’s population will experience partial, or even nearly total, darkness in the middle of the day. During this event, which scientists dubbed a “solar eclipse,” astronomers and astrophysicists explained that the moon will pass directly between the Earth and the sun from the vantage point of some observers in North America and around the world, temporarily blocking, or “occulting” the sun’s light.

“It’s a sort of weird and very cool phenomenon, but actually not as rare as many people think,” said University of California — Berkeley astrophysicist, Rhonda Rokitpantz, Ph.D. “In fact, a solar eclipse is visible somewhere on the Earth’s surface about once every 18 months. A total solar eclipse only occurs at a given location on the Earth about once every 360 years, though, so if you get a chance you should definitely check it out. You’ll be able to see stars in the middle of the day!”

As if these outlandish claims weren’t enough, scientists further claimed the ability to forecast exactly when this event will occur at any given point on the Earth. Indeed, NASA, an American organization dedicated to space and earth sciences, was found to have wantonly expended American taxpayer money on an entire webpage dedicated to the phenomenon and alleged upcoming event including, among other content, tables of calculated locations and times of “solar eclipses” as far into the future as the year 2100.

Many people and organizations worldwide, particularly in Europe, appeared to be taking the world’s scientists’ astrophysical forecasts at face value. A company based in Stavanger, Norway, timeanddate.com, was displaying on its website highly specific predictions. For example, a search on “Hudson, Wisconsin” on that website alleged the 2017 “solar eclipse” would commence at precisely 11:44 am on Monday, August 21, reaching maximum coverage of the sun at 1:07 pm and ending at 2:29 pm.

When questioned about how they could possibly have any confidence in such specific predictions, scientists widely referred to astronomical studies that have occurred since a mathematician and astronomer named Nicolaus Copernicus, a European, first proposed in the 1500’s that the Earth orbits the sun.

“The work of Copernicus was a breakthrough,” said NASA astronomer Morgan Meteorlicker. “It enabled the correct understanding of astronomical observations over the centuries since, and the development of mathematical equations that now empower us to predict a variety of astrophysical phenomena, like eclipses, with great accuracy.”

It was difficult to find scientists dissenting from the sensational view that darkness will occur in the afternoon next Monday in many American cities. In fact, even scientists in very different disciplines appeared to accept the claims with a high degree of confidence, citing a “scientific method” evidently discussed frequently in scientific circles. Scientists widely professed an almost religious faith in this “scientific method,” by which they claimed observations by scientists are reviewed by rival experts prior to detailed publication in “peer reviewed journals,” whereupon researchers in other disciplines perform related experiments to verify consistency with the published research, resulting in the correction of errors and emergent “scientific theories” widely held as revealed truths about the natural world.

Mayo Clinic neurologist Georgina Graymattur, a scientist not expert in astronomy, explained, “I’m not an expert in astro-anything, but astronomers have been applying the scientific method to this since Copernicus and publishing their work in peer reviewed journals like Science and Nature. They have a long history of making accurate predictions with those equations of theirs. Heck, they’ve successfully landed remote control cars on Mars! At this point, if NASA says there’s going to be a solar eclipse next Monday, I’d say you can take that to the bank.”

Indeed, astronomers and scientists specializing in ophthalmology were teaming up on Wednesday to warn of potential health hazards arising from the impending astrophysical “eclipse” phenomenon.

“You do need to take care not to look directly at the occulted sun during the solar eclipse,” said ophthalmologist Bartholomew Beedyiyes. “The sun appears less bright during an eclipse, which prevents the normally unconscious things, like squinting, that you usually do to protect your eyes from the sun’s UV radiation. Because of that, your eye won’t properly protect its delicate retina when you look at an eclipse, and you could sustain permanent eye damage.”

For those interested in viewing the upcoming “eclipse,” scientists recommended wearing protective eye wear, so-called “eclipse glasses,” which were being offered for sale by many companies.

Many American leaders were more circumspect about the scientists’ alarmist claims. President Donald Tweety took to social media early Thursday morning, tweeting, “This is obviously yet another Chinese hoax aimed at tricking middle class Americans into spending their hard-earned wages on ridiculous Chinese-manufactured cardboard glasses.”

EPA administrator Scott Prune lent his considerable technical authority to the argument, stating in a press conference, “I think that measuring with precision the motions of celestial bodies is something very challenging to do and there’s tremendous disagreement about the degree of impact of the moon on the sun’s shininess, so no, I would not agree that we are certain to experience darkness during the day next Monday.” Prune then argued for a “Red Team/Blue Team” process to discuss the merits of the astrophysical claims, over the objections of scientists who alleged that proposal, in fact, precisely described their obscure “scientific method.”

A Reuters poll revealed that a majority of Americans believed there was something to the scientists’ claims, though a minority of those polled believed it was likely to impact them directly. Some strenuously questioned the elitist scientists’ claims.

“The moon and the sun both shine, so it seems to me that if they teamed up they would only shine brighter together,” said Ronald Randumpurson of Sundusky, OH. This commonsense argument, apparently highlighting an obvious fact the egghead scientists had missed despite their years of college and self-important faith in complicated “equations,” cast substantial doubt about the scientists’ claims for many observers.

A web search on the issue revealed many dissenting views as well. Willard Wannabegeek, a self-described entrepreneur and blogger, wrote on his blog, “The moon has a diameter of only 2,159 miles, while the sun has a diameter of 864,576 miles. Since the area of a disc is proportional to the square of its diameter, this means the frontal area of the sun is 160,362 times that of the moon. It’s simply not mathematically possible for a disc to obscure another disc that is over 160,000 times larger.” This alternative explanation, involving numbers, mathematics, and technical language, was as convincing to many as the assertions of the “mainstream scientists.”

Still other Americans, including lawmakers, emphasized their inability to fully evaluate the claims. Senator Dirk Dumbutt (R-WI), said in a press interview, “Look, I’m not a scientist, so I can’t comment on whether it’s possible for the moon to pass in front of the sun, and I can’t recommend buying so-called eclipse glasses. The fact that the government, in which I have a leadership role, employs a multitude of expert scientists to study this stuff surprisingly turns out to be of no use to me in evaluating the issue one way or the other.”

Many lay people seemed to echo Senator Dumbutt’s views questioning the knowledge of so-called “experts.” “I know the Earth experiences frequent periods of darkness,” explained Athens, Georgia resident, Kenny Kluliss, “but I can’t say for sure the cause or whether the sun or moon is mainly responsible. It could just as well be primarily the luminosity of the blessed sap, as others have purported. Or, it could be that the UN just wants to control the glasses I put on my face.”

Our reporters asked NOAA climatologist, Doreen Damitshot, if the scientists’ sensational claims about the upcoming “eclipse” were analogous to their similarly outrageous assertions regarding “anthropogenic global warming.”

“Well yes,” she said, “that issue is similar in that scientists in a variety of disciplines have been studying it for a long time and have reached a compelling consensus that it’s something we should be paying attention to and doing something about.”

By and large, while largely sympathetic to the scientists’ point of view, Americans appeared to be taking a wait-and-see attitude with respect to the controversy. President Tweety offered one suggestion: “If you’re worried about the sun hurting your eyes, you’ll be safe from the sun mining coal underground. I love coal miners!”

In March, 2017, residents of the Hawaiian island of Kauai connected a 54,978-panel solar farm to giant battery packs provided by Tesla, creating the world’s largest photovoltaic-battery combination power plant. The batteries store electricity generated when the sun is up for use at night, enabling the 13 megawatt solar array to provide power around the clock.

This power plant has reduced Kauai’s fossil fuel consumption by 1.6 million gallons per year and brought the proportion of its power from renewables higher than 40%, well on the way to the island’s goals of 70% by 2030 and 100% by 2045.

Tesla has contracted with the Kauai Island Utility Cooperative to operate the solar plant, providing electricity to island residents at a guaranteed flat rate of 13.9 cents per kilowatt-hour for the next 20 years. This is well below the current Hawaiian average electricity rate of 28.3 cents per kW-h and competitive with the U.S. overall average rate of 12.2 cents per kW-h (source: U.S. Energy Information Administration).

Watch this short news report to learn more:

Read more here.

This is the nature of renewable energy in 2017. It’s here now. It’s available. In many cases, it’s competitive in cost with fossil sources. (The installed price of solar photovoltaic systems has been falling year on year for decades.) It can provide complete, local-scale energy independence and insulation from the market forces that cause fossil fuel prices to vary. It has no greenhouse gas emissions. Its provision requires no miners to get black lung. With continued investment, it will only get better and better.

While many of us appreciate the seriousness of global climate change, I think many people may under-appreciate the rampant availability of the solutions.

When we are talking about choices between future scenarios, we are really talking about just that: choices. We have everything we need to make dramatic steps toward solving this problem and ensuring a livable future Earth for generations to come.

In fact, last month a group of scientists published in the prestigious journal, Science, a very readable, technical roadmap for meeting the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement. It’s a short but sobering read. We definitely don’t have much time left to engage in idiotic arguments about whether global warming is even happening.

On the other hand, our President has vowed “massive infrastructure spending” to get Americans “off of welfare and back to work rebuilding our country.” I think that’s great. I can’t imagine a more impressive, job creating, value creating national infrastructure project than this one.