News
Space X and NASA launch aborted 16 minutes before takeoff
From NASA’s youtube page – coverage of pre-launch right up to last minute cancelation.
Next launch date is Saturday at 1:22 PM Mountain time
Return for live launch on Saturday:
Watch history unfold as NASA and SpaceX launch astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley to the International Space Station. This mission marks the first time since the retirement of the space shuttle in 2011 that humans will fly to the space station from U.S. soil. Tune in Saturday as NASA and SpaceX provide joint, live coverage from launch to arrival at the space station. Teams are targeting 3:22 p.m. EDT for the launch of the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft atop a Falcon 9 rocket from historic Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Learn more about the mission: https://www.nasa.gov/launchamerica/
Censorship Industrial Complex
Biden Agencies Have Resumed Censorship Collaboration With Big Tech, Dem Senate Intel Chair Says
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By JASON COHEN
Agencies in President Joe Biden’s administration have resumed their perceived disinformation censorship collaboration with social media companies, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner told reporters at a recent security conference, Nextgov/FCW reported.
The administration stopped “misinformation” censorship collaboration with social media platforms after a July Missouri v. Biden ruling to prevent federal agencies from coordinating with social media companies, but recently restarted this work, Warner # reporters, according to Nextgov. He said the cooperation resumed as the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case, now called Murthy v. Missouri, in March, where multiple justices indicated they supported the Biden administration’s viewpoint that it has the right to work with platforms to combat what it believes is harmful content.
Democrat Senator Mark Warner says there’s a “voluntary agreement about disinformation and misinformation in elections” between “all 20 of the major social media companies” pic.twitter.com/YmIyAuJBrw
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) April 21, 2024
“There seemed to be a lot of sympathy that the government ought to have at least voluntary communications with [the companies],” Warner said, according to Nextgoc. He also reportedly called on the Biden administration to take strong action against any foreign countries that try to interfere in the 2024 election.
The agencies include the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), according to NextGov.
“If the bad guy started to launch AI-driven tools that would threaten election officials in key communities, that clearly falls into the foreign interference category,” he added.
A district court judge issued an injunction in July preventing certain officials in agencies from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to the FBI from communicating with social media platforms to censor speech, characterizing the government conduct exposed by the plaintiffs in the case as arguably “the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history.”
Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, expressed concern during March oral arguments about restricting the government’s ability to persuade companies to take action when necessary, such as when terrorists disseminate speech on a platform.
The justices also questioned whether the plaintiffs could prove their platforms censored their speech as a direct result of the government.
Facebook executives believed they were engaged in a “knife fight” with Biden’s White House on COVID-19 censorship, according to a recent House Judiciary Committee report. Biden accused the platform of “killing people” in July 2021 for not censoring so-called COVID-19 misinformation, and unearthed WhatsApp messages between Facebook executives revealed that they were unhappy about the president’s remarks.
Warner, the White House and the FBI did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment. CISA declined to comment, but notified the DCNF about an Election Security hearing in the coming weeks with the agency’s Director, Jen Easterly.
Environment
Scientific Report Pours Cold Water On Major Talking Point Of Climate Activists
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
The purveyors of climate doom will not tolerate the good news of our planet thriving because of modest warming and increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide. However, a recent scientific paper concludes that an optimistic vision for Earth and its inhabitants is nonetheless justified.
Widely accepted data show an overall greening of Earth resulting from a cycle of natural warming that began more than 300 years ago and from industrialization’s additions of CO2 that started in the 19th century and accelerated with vigorous economic activity following World War II.
Also attributed to these and other factors is record crop production, which now sustains 8 billion people—ten times the population prior to the Industrial Revolution. The boost in atmospheric CO2 since 1940 alone is linked to yield increases for corn, soybeans and wheat of 10%, 30% and 40%, respectively.
The positive contribution of carbon dioxide to the human condition should be cause for celebration, but this is more than demonizers of the gas can abide. Right on cue, narrators of a planet supposedly overheating from carbon dioxide began sensationalizing research findings that increased plant volume results in lower concentrations of nutrients in food.
“The potential health consequences are large, given that there are already billions of people around the world who don’t get enough protein, vitamins or other nutrients in their daily diet,” concluded the The New York Times, a reliable promoter of apocalypse forever. Among others chiming in have been The Lancet, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the National Institutes of Health.
Of course, such yellow journalism lacks context and countervailing facts —elements provided in “Nutritive Value of Plants Growing in Enhanced CO2 Concentrations” published by the CO2 Coalition, Arlington, Virginia.
Any deficiency of nutrients from the enhancement of plant growth by elevated carbon dioxide “are small, compared to the nutrient shortages that agriculture and livestock routinely face because of natural phenomena, such as severe soil fertility differences, nutrient dilution in plants due to rainfall or irrigation and even aging of crops,” says the paper.
And while there is evidence of marginal decreases in some nutrients, data also show that higher levels of CO2 “may enhance certain groups of health-promoting phytochemicals in food crops” that serve as antioxidants and anti-inflammatory compounds, says the paper, which lists seven authors and more than 100 references. The lead author is Albrecht Glatzle, a member of the Rural Association of Paraguay and a former international researcher of plant and animal nutrition.
Among other points made by the paper are the following: Throughout a majority of geological history, atmospheric CO2 concentrations have been several times higher than today’s, which are less than optimum for most plants; atmospheric warming from even a quadrupling of CO2 concentrations would be small compared to natural temperature fluctuations since the last glacial advance more than 10,000 years ago.
Having virtually no scientific basis, the “green” movement’s hostility to carbon dioxide seemingly ignores the gas’s critical role as a plant food. As the paper notes, “CO2 is the only source of the chemical element carbon for all life on Earth, be it for plants, animals or fungi and bacteria — through photosynthesis and food chains.”
The so-called greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide— perversely exaggerated to support climate fearmongering— is a life-saving temperature moderator that keeps Earth from freezing over.
The obvious benefits of CO2 is “an embarrassment to the large and profitable movement to ‘save the planet’ from ‘carbon pollution,’” write the authors. “If CO2 greatly benefits agriculture and forestry and has a small, benign effect on climate, it is not a pollutant at all.
More CO2 is good news. It’s not that complicated.
Gregory Wrightstone is a geologist; executive director of the CO2 Coalition, Arlington, Va.; author of “Inconvenient Facts: The Science That Al Gore Doesn’t Want You to Know” and “A Very Convenient Warming: How modest warming and more CO2 are benefiting humanity” and a co-author of “Nutritive Value of Plants Growing in Enhanced CO2 Concentrations.”
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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