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Month: January 2023

Look what we’ve done to ourselves

“They knew all they needed to know”

ExxonMobil scientists predicted the climate crisis with astounding accuracy as early as 1977, a new Harvard study reveals.

The new analysis on the precision of company scientists’ predictions could be powerful fuel for cities and states that are suing ExxonMobil, accusing the fossil-fuel corporation of violating consumer-protection statutes, lying to investors, or committing racketeering.

“This analysis is a stick of dynamite in these cases,” Patrick Parenteau, professor and senior fellow of climate policy at Vermont Law School, told Insider in an email. “It is the kind of incriminating evidence that can really influence a jury.”

Published in the peer-reviewed journal Science on Thursday, the study compares early ExxonMobil climate models to those from other scientists at the time, and to the actual rise in global temperature that has occurred since then.

According to the study, 63% to 83% of global warming projections from the company’s scientists have turned out to be accurate matches of real-life temperature rises in the decades since.

These projections had an average “skill score” of 66% to 78% — higher than the scores ranging from 38% to 66% reported by NASA scientist James Hansen when he testified to Congress in 1988.

graph shows exxonmobil climate projections lining up with reality
A graph from the study, showing ExxonMobil’s projections compared to observed changes in temperature. 

Despite having this precise information about the consequences, ExxonMobil publicly denied that global warming would happen, spent decades attempting to discredit public research that predicted it, and touted the myth that the planet was actually cooling.

At the same time, the company shored up its infrastructure against the coming climate changes.

“That is arguably quite malicious conduct to not only continue your business, but to indeed accelerate production,” Karen Sokol, a professor specializing in climate law and policy at Loyola University New Orleans College of Law, told Insider.

“Right now we’re at a point where it’s getting increasingly painful and expensive to exit a fossil fuel economy,” she said, pointing to the energy crisis in Europe. “There was a time when we could have done this in a much calmer way where there wasn’t as much damage.”

Todd Spitler, a spokesperson for ExxonMobil, sent the following statement to Insider via email: “This issue has come up several times in recent years and, in each case, our answer is the same: those who talk about how ‘Exxon Knew’ are wrong in their conclusions.”

“Some have sought to misrepresent facts and ExxonMobil’s position on climate science, and its support for effective policy solutions, by recasting well intended, internal policy debates as an attempted company disinformation campaign,” Sptiler added. “ExxonMobil’s research in climate science has resulted in nearly 150 papers, including more than 50 peer-reviewed publications that the Company has made available to the public. ExxonMobil’s understanding of climate science has developed along with that of the broader scientific community.”

An investigation by InsideClimate News previously revealed that ExxonMobil’s scientists began warning its executives about the dangers of burning fossil fuels in 1977, when the company was called Exxon.

The company’s products could release so much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere that global temperatures rise 2 to 3 degrees Celsius, those scientists predicted.

That’s exactly the track global warming is on right now. The new analysis reveals far more detail about those early Exxon scientists’ projections, digging into the data from internal company documents.

“It’s one thing to kind of have the impression that they were vaguely aware of global warming decades ago, but it’s another to see the numbers and realize that they actually knew as much as anybody,” Geoffrey Supran, a Harvard historian of science who led the analysis, told Insider. “Arguably, they knew all they needed to know.”

The evidence is now irrefutable but they’re still lying about it. And right wing politicians have managed to turn it into a populist cause convincing their followers that it’s all a hoax perpetrated by woke communists to destroy their freedom.

Here’s Trump in his E. Jean Carroll deposition(trying to establish that he’s a liar who calls everything a hoax):

The war on science is getting hotter every day. Just look at this monumentally STUPID flap over gas stoves this week as the entire right wing rose up as one to screech in unison about the jack-booted thugs who are coming for your kitchen appliances. Or the GOP House legalizing indoor smoking at the US Congress. It’s only a matter of time before they withdraw the ban on DDT and put lead back in gasoline.

Impeachment expungement?

It’s on the menu!

Who says these House Republicans don’t have an agenda to benefit the American people?

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said Thursday that he’s willing to take a look at expunging an impeachment of former president Donald Trump by the Democratic-led House.

Trump — now a 2024 candidate — was impeached twice during his four-year presidency: in 2019, for withholding military aid from Ukraine in exchange for political favors, and in 2021, for inciting the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

In the previous Congress, groups of Republicans floated resolutions to expunge both impeachments. Supporters of the latter included Rep. Elise Stefanik (N.Y.), the Republican conference chairwoman.

Asked at a news conference about the prospect of an expungement now that Republicans control the House, McCarthy said, “I would understand why members would want to bring that forward.”

[…]

In the last Congress, Stefanik and then-Rep. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) backed a resolution to expunge Trump’s impeachment over Jan. 6.

“Democrats used their second impeachment resolution to once again weaponize one of the most grave and consequential powers of the House,” Mullin said at the time. “This was never about the Constitution; it was rooted in personal politics.”

Mullin, now a U.S. senator, had sponsored a similar resolution to strike Trump’s first impeachment.

Stefanik, who is No. 4 in House GOP leadership, said last year that the Jan. 6 impeachment was a “sham process.”

“President Donald Trump was rightfully acquitted, and it is past time to expunge Democrats’ sham smear against not only President Trump’s name, but against millions of patriots across the country,” she said.

The Democratic-led House ignored the resolution, which had more than two dozen Republican co-sponsors. But with Republicans in the majority, such a resolution could get a vote.

Maybe they should think about expunging the January 6th Committee and Mueller Reports too. This seems to be their new thing. Don’t like the way the presidential vote turned out? Substitute fake electors to pretend it didn’t!

That’s the ultimate revelation of the Trump years: just act like up is down and black is white and you can get tens of millions of zealots and fools to believe it.

The pig king of Mar-a-lago

Last night I came across a tweet that linked to excerpts of Trump’s deposition in the E. Jean Carroll defamation case and it actualy shook me a little bit. I thought nothing could surprise me about him, but this actually did. He was crude, nasty, obnoxious and incredibly stupid on a level that exceeded even my very low expectations.

Former President Donald Trump claimed that E. Jean Carroll, who has accused him of sexual assault, said that “rape was sexy” and “indicated that she loved it” when he was deposed in connection to her defamation lawsuit in October.

Judge Lewis A. Kaplan unsealed a portion of Trump’s deposition on Friday after his lawyers lost a bid to keep them private. 

Carroll, the longtime advice columnist for Elle magazine, is suing Trump for defamation after he said she made up a rape allegation about him to sell her memoir. He denies having had any sexual contact with her.

In the October deposition, Trump misrepresented comments Carroll made about the allegation in an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper.

“She actually indicated that she loved it. Okay? She loved it until the commercial break. In fact, I think she said it was sexy, didn’t she? She said it was very sexy to be raped,” Trump said.

Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan then asked the former president: “So, sir, I just want to confirm: It’s your testimony that E. Jean Carroll said that she loved being sexually assaulted by you?”

He responded: “Well, based on her interview with Anderson Cooper, I believe that’s what took place.”

Trump repeated the claim that Carroll described rape as sexy several times and suggested that Cooper was in a “panic” over her comments, so he called for a commercial break.

In the 2019 interview, Carroll told Cooper that she did not like to use the word rape because it “carries so many sexual connotations” and that “most people think of rape as being sexy” and “think of the fantasies.”

By comparison, she said that her encounter with the former president “was not sexual. It just hurt.”

Carroll accused Trump of raping her in an article for New York Magazine in June 2019. She claimed he assaulted her in a dressing room of Bergdorf Goodman, a luxury Fifth Avenue department store, in the mid-1990s. 

Trump strongly refuted the claim, and in response, Carroll sued him for defamation, claiming that his calling her a liar negatively impacted her reputation and career. 

During Trump’s often combative deposition, carried out on October 19, 2022, at Mar-a-Lago, the former president called Carroll’s lawyer a “political operative” and “a disgrace” and threatened to sue her.

It’s actually much, much worse than that. He repeatedly insulted the lawyer calling her a political operative, repeated that Carroll is not his type, and basically just acted like a complete asshole throughout. I’ve never seen anything like it.

You can read it here. It’s just excerpts, starting with some from Carroll and then the last half or so of Trump and doesn’t take long. You get used to thinking that this former (and possibly future) president is an unrepentant jerk but then he takes it up another notch and you’re shocked all over again that tens of millions of our fellow Americans love him.

“He didn’t even do anything wrong”

You wanted to lock Hillary up.

You want to impeach Biden.

But the only one who you say didn't do anything wrong is Donald Trump, who not only mishandled documents but also spent over a year refusing to give them back when asked, then gave some of them back, lied about …

… giving them all back, after failing to comply with a lawful subpoena, all after getting impeached for inciting a violent insurrection in an attempt to overthrow the Constitution, submitting fraudulent electoral certificates to defraud the United States and obstruct …

… a congressional proceeding, getting impeached for unlawfully withholding aid to an allied nation in order to extort its government, obstructing an important federal criminal and counterintelligence investigation, running a private company that has since been convicted …

… of tax fraud, paying suspiciously low amounts of federal income tax and refusing to disclose his returns by lying about being audited, sexually abusing literally dozens of women, one of whom he raped, and paying $130,000 in hush money to a porn star, …

… among many, many, many other things.

Originally tweeted by George Conway🌻 (@gtconway3d) on January 14, 2023.

Better Huppke than me

Your daily dose of outrage

Photo by Federico Cardoner via Flickr (CC BY 2.0).

Mockery is too good for them. Rex Huppke tries anyway:

Greetings, fellow Americans. I am writing this column from atop a gas stove I have patriotically chained myself to in case President Joe Biden sends one of his communist stovetroopers to confiscate my beloved cooking appliance.

According to the same people who warned me the government was coming for my guns, my hamburgers and my ability to say “Merry Christmas,” the nanny state is now poised to take away my gas stove. Based on what I’m seeing on Fox News and hearing from gas-loving lawmakers, it could happen at any moment!

A U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission report notes that gas stoves have been found to emit harmful fumes that can aggravate childhood asthma. Banning appliances that cannot be made safe is an option, say regulators. Then again, maybe they can be made safer.

Team Daily Outrage was off! So was Huppke:

And I listened to Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, who suggested the ban on gas stoves that the libs claim does not exist (on the spurious basis that it does not exist) is a “red line” Americans won’t tolerate. “I would counsel mass disobedience in the face of tyranny in this case,” Carlson said.

Amen! I completely agree with what Carlson and others told me to think, and there’s no way I’m going to forgo my constitutional right to be in a continuous state of unbridled rage by “learning more about the issue” or “considering the fact that if a nanny state exists, it’s really, really bad at nannying since I still have a closet full of guns, a freezer full of hamburgers and a yard full of still-up Christmas decorations.”

I’ve been watching for the jack-booted thugs for years now and have yet to spot any. For those inclined to take pot shots at them, good luck finding ammunition. Every time one of these daily outrages crops up (meaning daily), the Outrage Brigade cleans out the shelves at the gun stores. The resulting shortages are proof positive that the Deep State is behind them.

As for, you know, data suggesting that “children living in a household with gas stoves have a 42 percent increased likelihood of already having asthma and a 24 percent increased risk of developing asthma at some point in their lifetime”? Bah!

Huppk rants:

Sure, whatever you say, “science.” I’m not about to let peer-reviewed evidence of potential adverse health impacts on children stop me from protesting a federal ban I’m imagining. I’m too busy pushing for a local ban on drag queen story hours, which I KNOW are harming children based on the nones of peer-reviewed evidence I’ve been shown by no one.

I’ve heard depression can become a “set” in the mind if left untreated. Who is going to treat the millions addicted to their daily dose of outrage? Perhaps the Consumer Product Safety Commission should launch a study on the longterm effects of exposure to that.

Friday Night Soother

Baby sloth!

Baby Sloth Born New Year's Day at London Zoo
Baby sloth. ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF LONDON

On Thursday, the London Zoo announced the birth of its first animal in 2023 — a two-toed sloth born on New Year’s Day.

Before sixteen-year-old mom Marilyn gave birth, she was closely monitored with regular ultrasounds during her 10-11 month pregnancy, the U.K. zoo said in a press release.

Because of a sloth’s long gestation, the nocturnal mammals native to South America are well-developed at birth, so they can eat food and hold on tight to their mother shortly after entering the world.

“We were delighted to finally spot a tiny baby exactly where it should be, clinging onto Marilyn’s tummy, as she curled up in her favorite tree,” sloth keeper Veronica Heldt said of the first time the zoo spotted the baby animal.

“We’ve nicknamed the little one Nova, which means ‘new’ in Latin, as we couldn’t have asked for a better start to the new year,” the zoo shared in its release. The London Zoo won’t know the youngster’s sex until vets confirm it through a DNA test.

Male or female, the newborn is a valuable addition to its species. Once the newborn’s sex is confirmed, its details will be added to the European Studbook, which is part of a coordinated breeding program for two-toed sloths, according to the zoo.

More adorable baby sloth footage:


The NY Times gives Trump a little gift

Kellyanne Conway wrote an op-ed for the NY Times about how poor Donald Trump is treated so badly. It’s as awful as you would imagine. I thought J.V. Last at the Bulwark handled it well:

The New York Times is such a liberal media bubble that it paid Kellyanne Conway and handed her real estate on its opinion page for a piece about Donald Trump. Because Kellyanne has a long history as a straight shooter and honest broker who can give truthful and unbiased information while adding value for Times subscribers.

Three cheers for both sides.

Look, I’m not here to rag on the Times. I just want to talk about a single paragraph in Kellyanne’s piece:

Trump Derangement Syndrome is real. There is no vaccine and no booster for it. Cosseted in their social media bubbles and comforted within self-selected communities suffering from sameness, the afflicted disguise their hatred for Mr. Trump as a righteous call for justice or a solemn love of democracy and country. So desperate is the incessant cry to “get Trump!” that millions of otherwise pleasant and productive citizens have become naggingly less so. They ignore the shortcomingsfailings and unpopularity of President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris and abide the casual misstatements of an administration that says the “border is secure,” inflation is “transitory,” “sanctions are intended to deter” Putin from invading Ukraine and they will “shut down the virus.” They’ve also done precious little to learn and understand what drives the 74 million fellow Americans who were Trump-Pence voters in 2020 and not in the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Where to begin?

When you picture “communities suffering from sameness,” do you think about Trump voters, or Biden voters?

Sure looks like Trump’s support suffers from an awful lot of sameness: White evangelical Protestants, mostly without college degrees. It’s the Biden supporters who are all over the map: Whites, Blacks, Catholics, Protestants, religious and not-religious; college educated and non-college educated.

As for the media bubbles people keep themselves in, say what you will about the woke socialist antifa subscribers of the New York Times—but they are paying their hard-earned money to get the views of Kellyanne Conway and Ross Douthat. How about the people watching Fox News and Newsmax and reading the Federalist and Townhall? Is both-sides journalism a thing at those places, too?

And are Democrats really blind to the weaknesses of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris?

That is not the impression I get from the liberal culture!

But it’s this line that really grinds my gears:

They’ve also done precious little to learn and understand what drives the 74 million fellow Americans who were Trump-Pence voters in 2020 . . .

For starters, one thing “they” did was nominate the most moderate Democrat available who set his campaign up with the explicit goal of winning back some white working-class voters.

And he succeeded.

In office, the Biden administration has pursued a mostly bipartisan agenda focused on the economy and jobs and has left the Democrats’ progressive wing largely unfulfilled. So as a piece of analysis, Kellyanne is objectively wrong. Whether or not Biden has succeeded, Democrats have clearly been trying to understand what drove Trump voters and win them back.

But the best part—the pièce de résistance—is Kellyanne belittling Democratic efforts to understand the desires of 74 million Trump voters while making no attempt whatsoever to understand what drove 81 million Biden voters.

And all this in the course of a piece in which Kellyanne displays nothing but scorn, dismissal, and mockery for 81 million Biden voters.

As always: Projection is the sincerest form of Trumpism.

KellyAnne is just issuing the usual rightwing grievance about how Republicans get no respect. They’re all so hurt that the rest of the country doesn’t agree with them that they are now deluding themselves that they actually do but their votes are being stolen by nefarious commie loving moonbats. They sound like toddlers wailing, “why won’t you listen to me!!!”

As to why the NY Times decided to give Conway the space to spew this tired whine I can’t imagine. But I’m sure that Trump is very pleased and will reward her with a plum job on his campaign. It’s hard to imagine why anyone else would.

Desantis is desperate for his own immigration crisis to demagogue

So he invents one

He’s at it again:

In the midst of implementing its own controversial new program for dealing with the flow of migrants across the U.S.-Mexico border, the White House on Wednesday criticized Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida for deploying the National Guard to handle the arrival of undocumented immigrants from Cuba.

“We are talking about people who are coming from countries, who are dealing with political strife,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said at Wednesday’s press briefing. “They’re trying to find asylum — and he’s treating them like pawns.”

She charged that DeSantis was “not dealing with the problem. He’s actually creating a problem.”

Last week, DeSantis deployed the National Guard to deal with what his office described as an “alarming influx of migrants landing in the Florida Keys,” though it was unclear just what the Guard’s role would be.

According to the governor’s office, 300 migrants fleeing Cuba and other countries landed at Dry Tortugas National Park last week, and another 45 made landfall at Key West.

DeSantis’s office did not answer a Yahoo News request for comment. But when he deployed the Guard, the governor lambasted the White House.

“As the negative impacts of Biden’s lawless immigration policies continue unabated, the burden of the Biden administration’s failure falls on local law enforcement who lack the resources to deal with the crisis,” he said.

The governor’s move came after President Biden announced a new “parole” plan that would allow up to 30,000 migrants per month from Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Haiti to receive asylum in the United States, provided they applied from their home countries via smartphone app, without making a perilous overland journey to the border. The plan also includes an agreement from Mexico to accept 30,000 deportees from those countries apprehended in the United States.

I assume that DeSantis has done polling that says the Cuban community wants him to use Cuban immigrants as pawns. That would be a big switch from the past when Cubans were given special dispensation because they were fleeing Communism which,last I heard, was still a big boogeyman on the right. Maybe the Florida Cubans have fully assimilated into the far right of the GOP and hate all immigrants now, I don’t know.

I sure hope the National Guard can handle all 300 immigrants who made their way to Florida looking for asylum. It’s quite a challenge, I’m sure.

Donald Trump feminist

He’s already picking out his running mate

He’s making a list and he’s checking it twice:

With his last vice president seemingly gearing up for his own White House run, Donald Trump is now sifting through binders full of MAGA women to find his next running mate. Rather than choose a safe and conventional option, as he did in 2016, Trump appears intent on running with a loyalist this time––someone who, unlike Mike Pence, would walk into the fires that he will inevitably spark instead of trying not to get burned themselves.

Atop the former president’s 2024 VEEP list, which was detailed in a Daily Beast report Thursday, are GOP representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene and Elise Stefanik, both of whom have been steadfast defenders of his since he left office.

At present, Greene seems to be the most viable option on the reported list, despite (or by virtue of) her long track record of outrageous remarks and incidents. The Georgia Republican, who is riding high after championing Kevin McCarthy in his hard-fought victory for the Speaker’s gavel, has been one of the biggest fundraisers for Republicans in the House since winning the election in 2020. And thanks to her speeches at Trump rallies, she is already a fan favorite among the MAGA faithful. If the plan for Trump’s third presidential run is to simply lean in, then allying with Greene would accomplish that.  

As for Stefanik, her conservative credentials are less solid. Despite being a noted Trump critic in the 2016 election and early in his presidency, the New York lawmaker has since remade her image by zealously linking herself to Trump. Case in point: She was the very first House member to endorse his 2024 campaign after serving as his congressional guard dog during both of his impeachments.

Another potential name floated in the Daily Beast report was Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democratic congresswoman turned Fox News contributor who likely caught Trump’s notice during her many appearances on Tucker Carlson Tonight. Suffice it to say, choosing Gabbard—an Army Reserves officer who rose to national prominence after a short-lived run in the last Democratic primary election—would be highly surprising.

What wouldn’t be, however, is South Dakota governor Kristi Noem. The Republican became a rising star on the right thanks to various red meat stunts she pulled during the pandemic, including her use of COVID-19 relief funds to promote tourism in South Dakota in the middle of a case surge. She also questioned the usefulness of masks and social distancing and followed Trump’s lead after he falsely hawked hydroxychloroquine as a possible miracle drug.

But even with her growing name recognition, Noem still governs a relatively small state that would already go for Trump in a general election, which runs contrary to conventional wisdom on choosing a vice president who could cast a wider net.

Last among the parade of possibles is Kari Lake, the former local news anchor and failed GOP candidate for governor. She has never served in public office but easily won the gubernatorial primary in Arizona last year thanks to a Trump endorsement. After losing a tight race in November, she has spent weeks pumping crackpot election-fraud theories rather than conceding––a track record that is not likely to win over any moderates or make a splash big enough to appease Trump’s detractors on the right.

No Nikki Haley? I guess he’s heard that she’s going back on her promise not to run if Trump announces.

Marge is really the only choice. She has two full years of congressional experience which is vastly more than Trump had when he ran for president, so she’s actually overqualified. And she’s incredibly popular all across the land because of her effervescent, positive personality.

She’s the ticket, no doubt about it.