The Sound Of Settled Science

The Vikings – Newly discovered evidence is upending our understanding of how early settlers made a life on the island — and why they suddenly disappeared

Amid that calamity, so the story goes, Greenland’s Vikings–numbering 5,000 at their peak–never gave up their old ways. They failed to learn from the Inuit, who arrived in northern Greenland a century or two after the Vikings landed in the south. They kept their livestock, and when their animals starved, so did they. The more flexible Inuit, with a culture focused on hunting marine mammals, thrived.
That is what archaeologists believed until a few years ago.

Well, it did fit a convenient narrative.

O, Sweet Saint Of San Andreas

Hear my prayer.

If spending is the equivalent of prayer to a leftist, “climate change” is the equivalent of Christian “end-time” cultism. Let me share with you a very recent, and very relevant, example. Over the past week, we here in sunny insane California have faced the prospect of a major calamity as three merciless months of near-nonstop rainfall have led to the possibility of a massive failure at the tallest dam in the U.S., in Oroville, near Sacramento. It’s a big deal; 188,000 people have been evacuated. Concerns about how the aging Oroville Dam would fare in the face of record rainfall were raised years ago, but the state and the feds ignored them.
The story has been amply reported locally and nationally. But what the press conveniently leaves out of its coverage is the underlining theory behind the dam inaction: climate-change apocalyptics had convinced the Silly Putty-brained California powers-that-be that rain was never returning to the state. Quite literally, new dams, and improvements on old ones, were rejected because a doomsday cult had convinced politicians that water was “over,” that the drought that began in 2012 was not a passing thing but an “era,” something that would last decades if not a century. And why build new dams if there’ll be no water for them to hold? Why refurbish old ones if there’s no chance they’ll ever be filled again?

h/t

More Pavilions At Volkfest

It could never happen here.

A Danish man who posed a video of himself setting fire to the Quran on Facebook has been charged with blasphemy in the first such prosecution for 46 years.
The 42-year-old suspect put the clip, entitled “Consider your neighbour: it stinks when it burns” to a group called “YES TO FREEDOM – NO TO ISLAM” in December 2015.
Jan Reckendorff, from the public prosecutor’s office in Viborg, said: “It is the prosecution’s view that circumstances involving the burning of holy books such as the Bible and the Quran can in some cases be a violation of the blasphemy clause, which covers public scorn or mockery of religion.
“It is our opinion that the circumstances of this case mean it should be prosecuted so the courts now have an opportunity to take a position on the matter.”

That was a joke, of course. It’s already happened here.

Party Of Soros

It’s about time;

Claiming people are being paid to riot, Republican state senators [in Arizona] voted Wednesday to give police new power to arrest anyone who is involved in a peaceful demonstration that may turn bad — even before anything actually happened.
SB1142 expands the state’s racketeering laws, now aimed at organized crime, to also include rioting. And it redefines what constitutes rioting to include actions that result in damage to the property of others.
But the real heart of the legislation is what Democrats say is the guilt by association — and giving the government the right to criminally prosecute and seize the assets of everyone who planned a protest and everyone who participated.
[…] The 17-13 party-line vote sends the bill to the House.

These aren’t “protests” — this is the left advancing its political agenda through the threat of mob violence, and governments have been far too slow to react. But then again — as key actors in government and media view these mobs as ideological fellow travellers (they share the same donors) they’ve been content to stand down, and allow the intimidation tactics work to their perceived political advantage.

And Just Like That

Trump to reverse Obama-era environmental rules in executive orders

The orders will instruct the Department of the Interior to lift a ban on new coal mining leases on federal lands and will instruct the Environmental Protection Agency to make changes to greenhouse gas emissions curbs on electric utilities, according to the report on Monday.

Caveat: Report is based on “unnamed sources” at the Washington Post. Probably Bannon, laughing uproariously into the phone.

Heckuva Job, Barry*

Telegraph;

British Islamic State fighter who carried out a suicide bombing in Iraq this week is a former Guantanamo Bay detainee who was paid £1 million compensation by the government.
Jamal al-Harith, a Muslim convert born Ronald Fiddler who detonated a car bomb at an Iraqi army base near Mosul, was released from the US detention camp in 2004 and successfully claimed compensation after saying British agents knew or were complicit in his mistreatment.

And of course, there’s this.

He was freed following intense lobbying by Tony Blair’s Labour government.

(*Update: Heckuva job, Kate… “2004”.)

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