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Do you follow the science? Do you have an aversion to the scolds who routinely declare code reds for humanity? Perhaps you’re being driven to despair. But we at Ricochet hope to see you flourish, we want to see you b(j)orn again! Our guest this week is the absorbingly optimistic Bjørn Lomborg, exactly the man to set us straight on the U.N. climate report and the cataclysmic media circus that’s followed. The fellas also get into infrastructure – whatever that means – and the attendant endemic of thoughtless dishonesty. Also, Rob got a smidgeon of hope from some youngsters recently and Peter needs some recommendations for a good binge-worthy TV series: help him out in the comments!
Music from this week’s show: O-o-h Child by The Five Stairsteps
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@blueyeti is it just my imagination or is there some off timing at least early on? I don’t usually expect james and rob to be talking over each other.
The guys will keep me company in the morning as I always listen to this podcast on my Saturday run, but I read the description and happen to have just wrote on Ricochet about what I think is a binge worthy television show: The Kominsky Method. If you go to that write up on the Main Feed, other members chimed in with their suggestions for other good shows in the comments. :)
Binge-worthy TV, past and present:
Elementary
As Time Goes By
Slings and Arrows
Eli Stone
Lethal Weapon (Seasons 1&2 only)
800 Words
After Life
Yellowstone
The Queen’s Gambit
Friday Nights Lights
The Great British Baking Show
Longmire
Miranda
Corner Gas
Bosch
Justified
Just what I needed! Thanks, Lois!
I’ve seen half of these–but that leaves the whole other half. Thanks, Mark!
I’m looking at it now. Does seem like some tracks got shifted. Will upload a new version in a few minutes. Thanks for the heads up.
There was an unusually long gap between Bjorn’s first long reply and Peter responding to it, and then talking over each other especially starting about 28:20 in the original version.
I’ve enjoyed some of these, especially Friday Night Lights, Justified, and Longmire. I love the set of Yellowstone, and I think the acting is good, but I just couldn’t relate as much as I wanted to any of the characters in the first season to become “invested.” Cooking shows are always something we watch when we want something that can be fast forwarded or run with half attention. But some of these I’ve never even heard of!!! Corner Gas??? Per the action heavy list, I wonder if any are funny?
Update: New version uploaded. Delete the version you have and re-download to get the corrected version.
This was a complicated to show to put together (mostly having to do with the extremely idiosyncratic way that Zoom outputs audio files). Apologies and again, thanks for the catch.
“Actually” @roblong plants do BETTER in warmer climate, and with more CO2, aka “plant food.”
I noticed the same effect – there’s some issue with syncing, I think
Be sure to “refresh” so you get 556a.mp3
Wait until the greenies object to covering the oceans with oil-producing algae which reduces light available to sea creatures… And results in dangerously cooling the oceans causing ocean life to die…
@roblong John Kerry is 1 year younger than Joe Biden. And 4 years younger than Nancy Pelosi. (She’s 3 years older than Biden.)
It’s not just “It’s the end of the world but I don’t want to use nuclear power or clean oil…” it’s also “and I just bought another waterfront mansion that I fly back and forth to with my private jet.”
But @jameslileks you can’t tweet or comment on youtube etc, anonymously. So even if you connect to Twitter/Youtube via a VPN, by signing into your account – and you can’t NOT sign into your account, if you want to tweet/comment/etc – they still know who you are. And you can get banned, deleted, etc. VPN provides no protection for that.
There was an episode of the original Kolchak series that involved decapitated bodies rising up to seek revenge, until they were reunited with their head. Episode title is “Chopper.”
It was never explained why revenge against their killer was only needed if the body and the head were separated.
Advocating a carbon tax? Bjørn Lomborg sounds like a nut.
Carbon taxes are idiotic. The Left treats carbon taxes like a religion. Can’t you guys just tithe and go to a regular church like normal non-sun god folk?
Besides the rich people with electric Telsas and mega-mansions covered in government-funded solar panels do not worry about carbon taxes.
The United States federal excise tax on gasoline is 18.4 cents per gallon.
In Sweden, I think the tax is 8.425 kr per liter. That’s about what maybe $3.83 per gallon — and that’s just the taxes!!! I think the total price is about $5.80 a gallon.
Europeans seem to hate the size and resources of the United States. Hate and envy never accomplished much of anything good.
I think Bjørn Lomborg just wants to hurt the United States — just slightly less.
Corner Gas (Canadian) is hilarious nonsense. Miranda (British) is is as funny as it gets for me.
And Slings and Arrows (Canadian), think funny Shakespeare theater company. A classic.
I beg to differ. Miranda is the planet the Reavers came from, in Firefly/Serenity.
Ha! Try The Vicar of Dibley.
The cognitive dissonance is amazing. Bjorn flip-flops continually between “GW is a problem that must be stopped” and “GW has no downsides”. The reality is that the social cost of carbon is negative. More fossil fuel use is *good* for humanity. We spend about 10% of GDP on energy and the Warmists want that cost to double (like Germany) or worse. That just makes people poor, sick and uncomfortable. Four million Africans die *each* year because they don’t have cheap energy for cooking and water. I imagine most the five million people dying from heat and cold would be saved by cheap energy. The *only* moral choice is to pursue cheap energy, which is fossil and nuclear.
I’m not a big fan of nuclear energy, but Angela Merkel and the largest European NATO country (sorry unfree, fanatical Turkey) jumping in bed with Putin isn’t a solution either, especially while the presidential shell of Joe Biden blocks oil from Canada yet begs for it from OPEC.
I think diversified energy sources probably have to be the best solution anyway.
@peterrobinson – We also just finished the latest season of Line of Duty and are looking forward to Sunday night’s season four finale of Unforgotten. We’re watching the latter on the PBS Masterpiece streaming channel (via Amazon Prime), which is where you’ll find my top recommendation, the original Belgian production of the clever mystery series Professor T. With all respect to the entire Brit cast of the English language adaptation, see the original.
Koen de Bouw adds multilayered complexities of humor, madness, genius, and humanity to the title role. It’s one of the finest characterizations I’ve seen on TV, right up there with Dennis Franz on NYPD Blue (always worth an heroic 261 episode binge itself, now more than ever) and, on the other side of the law, Ian MacShane’s brilliant Al Swearingen on@jameslileks deservedly beloved Deadwood. Unlike Franz and MacShane, Mr. de Bouw does it all without the distinct advantage of David Milch’s writing.
As a palate-clearing sorbet at the end of any evening with an intense drama binge, I’ll recommend another @jameslileks favorite, the original live CBS black & white prime time What’s My Line? Instead of bingeing, we like to string this one out one episode per night, moving forward one week in history each time. While you don’t want to miss the classic Steve Allen panelist period, or Ernie Kovacs’ memorable guest shots, I do recommend joining the free YouTube subscription archive around 1959, to see the abrupt changes in fashion (and the tamping down of Bennett Cerf’s condescending sexism) when Kennedy style and attitudes hit the country. Tell me if you think Dorothy Kilgallen is as tough an interrogator as Sipowicz, and isn’t Arlene Francis an amazingly intuitive listener when she makes guesses based on the slightest audience reactions to questions?
Three more for the road: a women’s and couples favorite with three strong female investigators, Scott & Bailey a Manchester-set police procedural written by Sally Wainwright; another actor’s tour de force, David Suchet in Agatha’s Christie’s Poirot ; and in modern day Brittany, see the fine French newcomer Agathe Koltes with the excellent Phillippine Leroy-Beaulieu in the lead as a formidable middle-aged homicide investigator stuck reporting to her ambitious, fast-rising daughter.
You’ll notice that most of my recommendations work as standalone hours (often with season-long subplots) but for each I think you’ll be just as eager to see the next hour as with any and all arcs of the to be continued variety.
I bet Kyle Kulinsky could kill imitating this effete snob who wants to fight people across the globe using a class of Americans he won’t listen to, judges harshly, and for whom he has obvious contempt.
I’m eager to hear others’ reactions to Rob’s persistent belief that America’s young people — its young boys, especially — are rolling their eyes at most Woke shibboleths — particularly the ones having to do with Race.
Where the culture is concerned — where Wokeness is concerned — it is astonishing to me that even as Rome is burning, Rob continues to maintain that someone left the oven door open.
Which raises the question: What would Rob need to see in order to be persuaded that most (not all, mind you, but most) Americans under the age of 30 fall into two overlapping categories where Wokeness is concerned:
1) Those who have fully embraced the new Woke religion, and —
2) — those who have not fully embraced it, but — like most compliant majorities throughout world history — are not sufficiently alarmed by it to put up much of a fight?
What would Rob need to see?
Even those who don’t fully embrace it may not mind using it as a tool to force out older workers to make room for themselves.
That’s another Rob Long argument: That a lot of “Wokeism” is more of an economic cudgel than a de facto (and growing) religious movement. He’s wrong, my friend. Big time. And that means, on this issue, that you are too.
“Bjorn [Lomborg] flip-flops continually between ‘GW is a problem that must be stopped’ and ‘GW has no downsides’.” It would be more accurate to say that he never “flip-flops” between these positions.
His position has always been, global warming is a problem, but the sky is not falling. He argues that, while the conventional solutions would do more harm than good (especially to the poor), there are rational things we can do to limit the damage. For example, he advocates carbon taxes as the least harmful ways to reduce the production of CO2.
On the subject of the poor being harmed by unwise attempts to reduce CO2 production, no one has done more than Bjorn Lomborg to publicize these problems.