We surely live in a fog these days that has nothing to do with weather conditions. On the best of days many are unable to see the obvious in front of them, let alone anything the least bit sophisticated. They are prisoners of a mindset, a swamp, so thick and so vast that they have little chance of escape.
Welcome to the “Deep State.” Here are three examples where the fog has begun to clear, even as it continues to roll back over us.
“Mr. Smith Goes to Washington”
Consider the Deep State hidden inside the Environmental Protection Agency. A year ago, Oregon native and Wall Street Journal investigative reporter Kim Strassel warned of Deep State activities within the agency that were designed to undermine the new Trump Administration and those scientists who dared to question Obama’s grasp of science. (“Oregonians are helping to drain the swamp in Washington, DC,” NWC July 2017)
Deeply buried within the 14,172 employees of the EPA was an Obama era official whose job was ostensibly “Scientific Integrity.” But in reality she was to keep scientists who disagreed with the EPA’s Endangerment Finding on carbon dioxide from having their say. Obama wanted to make sure that his signature plan to regulate and tax carbon dioxide would never be undercut by those who understood the truth. Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. It is vastly beneficial.
At the request of the Heartland Institute, we traveled to Washington, DC to confront the EPA official. As soon as she realized that we would be attending a meeting she intended only for those promoting climate hysteria, she canceled it. But we went ahead anyway and reached out to administration officials and to politicians on nearby Capitol Hill. Our efforts blew the cover that this Deep State operative needed to continue her dirty work in private.
In the year since, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has taken very strong action to ensure real scientific integrity, by rejecting all “secret science.” The agency now requires, as do many scientific journals and societies, that researchers disclose the data that they have used to reach their conclusions. It is no longer acceptable to merely say “trust us.” And they no longer allow those who have lucrative contracts with the EPA to sit on science advisory boards approving their own work!
Fast forward to today and you will see the Deep State striking back by recasting our trip to Washington as sinister (“Emails show EPA, climate-change deniers cooperating,” the Associated Press via The Oregonian May 26, 2018). Welcome to the propaganda arm of the Deep State.
To cut through this latest attempt to restore the fog, these questions need answers. Why the name-calling? How are scientists “climate-change deniers” when they want to discuss both natural and unnatural climate-change? Why is the Far Left so worried about real scientists doing what they do best, namely practicing their profession? Why are scientists (even some Democrats) so up in arms about the former Obama Administration? Why did Nobel Laureate in Physics and former Obama supporter, Ivar Giaever, say in response to Obama’s climate hysteria “With all due respect Mr President, that is not true”?
Russian collusion
For more than eighteen months now we have been treated to endless allegations that President Donald Trump “colluded” with the Russians. The problem with this conspiracy theory, as with most, is that it has no factual basis. Russia is far from the threat she once was and far from our major adversary. China makes no secret of her desire to bury us now, as the former General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Nikita Khrushchev, once claimed he would do to us.
It has been said of Russia today that she is “a gas station pretending to me a country.” With an economy similar in size to Italy, Russia has limited clout. She can certainly engage in the disinformation for which she has always been famous. And as the world’s largest oil producer, she can manipulate energy markets. So, a good question might be “Are the Russians colluding with anyone to drive up the price of gasoline?” That is far more likely to be a viable question than wondering if Trump is secretly pals with Putin.
As it turns out, the Russians have been colluding – with the Saudis and their OPEC partners to reduce the amount of crude oil they send to market, in yet another attempt to drive up oil prices. By reducing output 1.8 million barrels per day, they have driven up the price of a barrel from about $50 to $75. That has in turn driven up the price of gas by about a dollar per gallon.
But oil is unlikely to return to $100 a barrel anytime soon, because we hold the Trump cards! President Trump has encouraged the production of American oil by eliminating unnecessary regulations, by building pipelines that President Obama blocked, and by allowing the export of American crude oil and refined products. This makes us the rising star in energy markets and will soon make us the world’s largest oil producer, surpassing both Russia and Saudi Arabia.
The collusion to drive up prices has a silver lining for us, because we need higher prices to extract our oil with horizontal drilling and fracking than do the conventional producers. At the present price of about $75 per barrel, we can tap our vast reserves and keep the price from going higher. The Saudis previously tried the opposite strategy of pumping more oil to drive our producers out of business. That did not work, because we merely idled our production until prices rebounded.
The Democratic Party is trying to blame President Trump for the rising cost of gas, when in fact his policies have rescued us from dependence on foreign suppliers. With US crude oil production up 25% in just a year to 10.62 million barrels per day, we are no longer at anyone’s mercy. We are in the driver’s seat.
Reuters has called the American shale oil boom “Donald Trump’s Revenge” as the previous nonsense about “Peak Oil” has completely evaporated. They reported that US oil “now floods Europe at the expense of OPEC and Russia.” We have inked contracts to provide great quantities of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) to the Far East. Trump is also making American coal great again, especially overseas.
Climate change and the military
The legions of unemployed Obama era political appointees are finding ways to continue their Global Warming crusade. After serving as one of Obama’s major advisers on climate, Alice Hill joined the Hoover Institution at Stanford University to continue preaching climate catastrophe. Her latest essay under the heading “Expert Voices” maintains that “Ignoring climate change only compounds its national security risks.” She wants the US military to retain “climate change” in its vocabulary “to keep the country safe.”
The most obvious question when someone is echoing a refrain from the Obama era is “What expertise does she really have?” Or does she believe that we are all experts on everything?
Hill is a long-retired judge, having “served as Supervising Judge on both the Superior and Municipal Courts in Los Angeles and as Chief of the white-collar crime prosecution unit in the Los Angeles United States Attorney’s Office.” She has no scientific or military background.
Her use of a Navy photo showing many US aircraft carriers lined up in port at the US Naval Station, Norfolk, Virginia is telling. She contends that the base “is prone to floods that have worsened with sea level rise.” That may be nominally correct, but scientists would point out that the very slight sea level rise we are experiencing has been occurring for centuries. And anyone with military experience would point out that having so many aircraft carriers neatly lined up creates the same vulnerability that sank much of the Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor! What should command our attention?
One has to wonder if Judge Hill has any idea of the “white-collar crime” that she is promoting? Professor of Mathematical and Theoretical Physics, Gerhard Gerlich might help her to understand. “To derive climate catastrophes from these [climate model] computer games and to scare Mankind to death is a crime.”
Perhaps the most important question to ask is why the fog of disinformation from the Deep State continues to be so persistent? Is this a manifestation of ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome’ borne of an intense dislike of this President or has the swamp just come into better focus now that we finally have a President who is willing to confront the endless obfuscation?
Gordon J. Fulks lives in Corbett and can be reached at gordonfulks@hotmail.com. He holds a doctorate in physics from the University of Chicago’s Laboratory for Astrophysics and Space Research.
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