Is This Study Really a Death Blow to Global Warming Hysteria?
RUSH: Daily Caller. Not that this is gonna matter to them, but get this. “Scientists Say New Study Is A ‘Death Blow’ To Global Warming Hysteria — A new study out of Germany casts further doubt on the so-called global warming ‘consensus’ by suggesting the atmosphere may be less sensitive to increases in carbon dioxide emissions than most scientists think. A study by scientists at Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Meteorology found that man-made aerosols had a much smaller cooling effect on the atmosphere during the 20th Century than was previously thought.
“Why is this big news?
“It means increases in carbon dioxide emissions likely cause less warming than most climate models suggest. … ‘Going forward we should expect less warming from future greenhouse gas emissions than climate models are projecting,’ write climate scientists Pat Michaels and Chip Knappenberger with the libertarian Cato Institute, adding that this study could be a ‘death blow’ to global warming hysteria.” No, it won’t be, because it’s not about the science, just like the Indiana law is not about same-sex marriage.
All of these things are manufactured and contrived.
Global warming has no scientific facts promoting it.
2,000 Illegal Immigrant Children Arrive in US Every Month
RUSH: There’s something else happening out there that very few people are even aware of, and it happened again last year at this exact time. “More than 2,000 illegal immigrant children continue to arrive in the US each month, according to Department of Homeland Security statistics compiled by the Center for Immigration Studies.” Now, that’s not possible, because Obama and his buddies in the media have said the flood of illegal alien children stopped long ago.
But I guess they were wrong. The flood of illegal alien children continues. Two thousand have been arriving every month since January. “While more illegal immigrant children are entering the country this fiscal year than at this point in fiscal years 2012 and 2013, the number of children crossing the border has not yet surged as it did last year.” So, what, we’re supposed to say, “Well, okay, no problem then”? Just because it’s not surging like last year?
“The Center for Immigration Studies’ report shows that 84% of the children crossing the border are teenagers, most of whom are male.” See, teenagers are not considered children in Central America. But these are “gifts of love.” Isn’t that what we’ve been told? Central America is giving us gifts of love! How can we object? Why, they love these kids in Central America, and they’re giving them to us! Who are we to be critical of love? Gangs may be getting a little thin here as most of them keep going to prison, so we might need a replacement operation.
That could be part of what this is.
But it continues, folks. While everybody’s looking at the other way at all the so-called bigotry and homophobia in Indiana.
Econ Professor at Obama Alma Mater: If You Understand Economic Theory, You’re Probably a Bad Person
RUSH: RUSH: Here’s the story about the liberal professor from Occidental College. Her name is Lisa Wade, and she says that “if you have an understandings of economics, you are likely a bad person.” Now, you’re thinking, “How does that work?” Well, she says that that’s what she discovered. “That was her finding in an article she published this week, titled ‘Are Economics Majors Anti-Social?’ The first word in the piece was simply, ‘Yep.'” I have it right here. I printed it out.
“Are Economics Majors Anti-Social?” She “writes that if you have taken classes on economics, you ‘are less likely to share, less generous to the needy, and more likely to cheat, lie, and steal.'” That’s if you understand economics. “She largely bases her belief on a study from 2010. In the study, students were asked if they would like to contribute money to a liberal political group or a group that is pushing for lower tuition, possibly by asking for more subsidies from taxpayers.
“Students with an understanding of economics were less inclined to donate to these groups than students with other majors. And for that reason, Dr. Wade has declared that they are ‘anti-social.'” So, in other words, the study basically relies on the fact that economics students decided they were not gonna contribute to liberal groups. The more economics they understood, the less likely they were to donate to liberal causes and special interest groups.
Now to some extent, I know why she’s saying this. This is why economics isn’t taught properly. I think the teaching of economics has been corrupted like so much of the educational curricula has by people on the left, and I wouldn’t be surprised if before all is said and done, that the study of economics… There are always gonna be MBAs, always gonna be Harvard. The Ivy League is always gonna teach it.
But at the high school level and undergrad working in college, I think economics is gonna be nonexistent or it’s gonna be so biased or so tilted, that Economics 101 is basically gonna end up being the redistribution of wealth. That’s how it’s gonna be taught. In fact, that may be the case now. Because there is one thing you learn when you learn economics. I’ve always said about economics, it’s just nothing but common sense. It’s complicated common sense.
By that I mean, whenever you have a genuine question of economics, not such as supply-side… Well, that would suffice, too. I have myself been stumped on economics questions. For example, one of my favorites was presented to me many, many moons ago by my friend, Professor Hazlett. It was a little trick question. Somebody had asked him, “You know, I don’t understand something.”
We were in Kansas City, and we were at a restaurant called Stroud’s, which is renowned for its fried chicken and gravy. Oh, it is to-die-for stuff! They also have on the menu fried shrimp, and it is the biggest shrimp you have ever seen. Somebody asked Professor Hazlett, “How come I don’t see big shrimp like this at any restaurants close to the water? How come bigger shrimp are right here in the heartland of the country, in Kansas City?
“Why in the world can I find gigantic shrimp here but not East Coast?” Professor Hazlett said the answer to that is found in economics. Rather than answer it, he threw it to the table to see what we would come up with. The short answer of it is, in his theory, it all came back to shipping costs. I’m not gonna spend time here going through it. But once he explained it, it made total perfect sense.
But it was not a question that people were gonna be able to figure out themselves without a certain basic knowledge or understanding of economics. Everything that I have discovered when I’ve learned… I don’t have any formal training in economics. So when I say it’s the most difficult, confusing, common sense thing, what I mean by that is, economics questions are really confounding. But if you talk to somebody who really knows the subject, the answer is crystal clear, perfect, common sense.
What happens when you have a full fledged… I think this professor’s concern is that a full-fledged understanding of economics reinforces the ever-present, all-important role of production and self-reliance in the entire equation, as opposed to the problems and the inequities and the difficulties of dealing with redistribution, which require the construction of massive, inefficient bureaucracies.
When you learn, for example, that… Let’s say $1 of welfare benefits in this country. I don’t care if you say Social Security, whatever the welfare benefit is. Twenty years ago, it cost 78¢ to extend $1 of warfare benefit to a recipient. The meaning that the net benefit was 22¢. The bureaucracy soaked up 78¢ of every $1 that was being spent on welfare. Because the bureaucracies grow, and they exist to exist, and they grow to make it difficult to ever get rid of them.
Bureaucracies, by their nature, are inefficient. When you start talking about production and productivity and margins and economies of scale, what you conclude is that people who are directly involved in the production process for themselves — self-reliance, whatever — is much more efficient. People ended up with much more money that way. They are much more rewarded. But that flies in the face of the entire “compassion” angle that can behind the redistribution of wealth.
I’m sure this professorette knows it. I have no doubt that’s what this professorette means. Now, this story kind of clouds it because it’s based on a study that students educated in economics were less inclined to donate to the Democrat Party. Well, why would that be? The more educated in economics you are, the more you’re gonna conclude, “It’s up to Democrat Party to find its own money. It’s not my responsibility! Let them get their own money.
“I don’t have to donate to them. Let them go produce their own.” That attitude of self-reliance? That is anathema. That is just deadly to liberal economists who believe that the way to riches for themselves and the way to equality and all of these other unachievable goals, in their world, is the redistribution of wealth. It’s this belief that the golden goose is always gonna be golden, and that eggs laid by the golden goose are always gonna be golden.
And there’s never gonna be a shortage of geese and there’s never gonna be a shortage of gooses or eggs because they just exist! People that believe in the redistribution of wealth do not understand they kill off the golden goose, because eventually you run out of other people’s money. So even though this professorette will not admit real reason, I think I understand exactly why she writes this. I also believe this is why true, genuine economic theory probably isn’t being taught and probably won’t be.
Instead, they substitute (for what really is economics) political theory, such as the redistribution of wealth. It’s always shrouded in fairness. “Capitalism? Unfair, mean-spirited, survival of the fittest, and only a few ever really prosper and do well, and they do it on the backs of the poor (sniffles) and the uneducated, and it’s inherently unfair.” That’s what they teach in the economics curricula today.
Which is not what economics is! I’ve always believed that if more people understood economics, pfft! We’d have a much easier task here at overcoming the sales pitches of the left, just like the people at Hillsdale College believe that the more people who really understood and cherished the Constitution, the much easier the task we’d have of defeating the left would be.