News, Entertainment, Enlightenment
The Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System built on five square miles of environmentally sensitive desert on the California-Nevada border is only producing about half the electricity expected.
The plant, the world’s largest, opened in February and was backed by $1.6 billion in federal loan guarantees.
We got an email yesterday, Nov. 12, from White House counselor John Podesta entitled “This is a big deal”
Lucky it didn’t come from Vice President Joe Biden because we would have had to censor it.
Anyway Podesta was praising the Climate Change Agreement a.k.a US Impoverishment Agreement, Obama made with China on Nov. 11.
“The U.S. will set a new target of cutting our net greenhouse gas emissions 26 percent to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025. And President Xi announced new plans to increase the share of renewable energy and nuclear power that China uses to roughly 20 percent by 2030 — up from only 8 percent percent in 2009 — and, for the first time, set a target for when China will max out its carbon emissions,” Podesta said.
Slick. We cut energy use dramatically while they expand it dramatically.
Who voted for these idiots? OK, other idiots but the upside is these voters appear to have gotten sadder but wiser over the last six years and may be less idiotic.
Anyway, CNN is quoting an unnamed “senior administration official” who says “Congress may try to stop us, but we believe that with control of Congress changing hands we can proceed with the authority we already have.”
All we’ll do is point out that treaties must be ratified by the Senate.
And since when did Democrats start praising nuclear power?
The global warming debate ends. It is over.
Or should be anyway.
The claim that man is causing Mother Earth to warm is baloney say the real experts in the field.
John Coleman, meteorologist and co-founder of the Weather Channel, said in a letter to the Hammer Forum held at UCLA on Oct. 23, that:
It should be noted that the premise of the forum was that global warming is happening and unless you put us self-proclaimed smart types in charge of everything you are all going to die.
Princeton physicist William Happer backed up Coleman with this:
In a related matter, Daniel Botkin, professor emeritus in the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology at University of California Santa Barbara has ripped the concept of anthropogenic (man-caused) global warming (AGW) in an article that has appeared on the National Parks Traveler website.
He points out that climate change is cyclical and that sea levels have been rising about a “foot or two a century” since the end of the last ice age 14,000 years ago.
Ask yourself this: if anthropogenic global warming was happening why are those most concerned about it not screaming to replace carbon-dioxide-pumping coal and natural gas plants with zero-emission nuclear ones? Why are they actually demanding the ripping down of zero-emission hydro-electric dams? Where is the push for telecommuting?
A battery that can be recharged up to 70 percent in only two minutes has been developed by Nanyang Technology University it is being reported.
These batters will also have lifespans of over 20 years, which is more than 10 times that of the existing lithium-ion standard.
If this report is accurate, it will mean electric cars might start to make sense . The vehicles could then be recharged in just minutes and battery replacement would not longer be akin to buying a new car every year.
Still, to make things truly carbon-emission free, the coal and natural gas plants doing the charging would have to be replaced. The only realistic carbon-emission free options as of now are nuclear and hydro.
With all the stories regarding celebrity deaths and such, it sure is easy to see why its hard for the old media to find some room concerning the West African Ebola epidemic.
Today’s Philadelphia Inquirer did manage to sneak in a few paragraphs on page 4 about how its going to last six more months.
As of yesterday, Aug. 15, the reported toll was 1,145 deaths and 2,127 cases of the disease.
The World Health Organization (WHO) claims the reported toll “vastly underestimate the magnitude of the outbreak.”
The New York Times, to its credit, is taking the matter seriously, as is Matt Drudge.
Other stories of interest not getting much mention is a report that Ukraine has attacked Russian troops — something denied by Russia — and leaves changing color in Pittsburgh due to record cold temperatures pretty much putting paid to all claims of global warming.
What a solar storm looks like
Civilization almost ended in 2012 just as those crazy Mayans had predicted.
A massive solar eruption happened on July 23 of that year that would have fried just about all circuit boards on Planet Earth if it hit us.
If it happened two weeks earlier it would have.
Without circuit boards water would not be pumped, electricity would not be transmitted and automobiles made after the 1980s would not have started.
Food would spoil in refrigerators and freezers. Hospitals would be paralyzed.
The death told would likely be in the billions.
And it almost happened.
A solar storm of that magnitude did strike Earth but that was in September 1859 and it was no big deal.
But that was well before computer chips and power was produced by muscle and steam, and food for storage was either salted or dried or kept in ice houses.
Things are different now.
A solar strike is inevitable. NASA is giving one a 12 percent chance of happening in the next decade.
It strikes us as being far wiser to invest in shielding our infrastructure to resist it than following the Chicken Little proponents of global warming. This would mean investing in upgrades for power facilities and water pumping stations. It would mean making sure that all emergency vehicles can withstand an EMP blast — basically the same thing. It would mean encouraging world automobile makers to design consumer vehicles with the appropriate shielding. It would mean factoring in EMP shielding in home design and educating the average person on how best to shield his home.
One wonders about the lack of discussion about such matters.
July 1936 is once again the hottest month on record according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
Two years ago it declared July 2012 to have supplanted it.
The change was discovered Sunday, June 28, during a check of NOAA data by climate blogger Anthony Watts.
“The past, present, and future all seems to be ‘adjustable’ in NOAA’s world,” Watts said.
The NOAA had July 2012 at 77.6 degrees Fahrenheit and July 1936 at 77.4 degrees Fahrenheit.
The new figures show July 1936 to be 76.8 F and July 2012 to be 76.77 F.
The change was made about a week after climate blogger Steven Goddard revealed that the NOAA was discounting contemporaneous records and using computer estimates.
By Jim Vanore
In science, self-satisfaction is death. — Jacques Monod
As Features Editor for the Cape May County Herald during the housing boom of the early 2000s, I assigned a story on lumber alternatives for new housing construction to a relatively new assistant.
Several days after I assigned the story, he turned in (what he thought was) the finished product. His 1,200 words praised a new, sustainable wood source that was not widely available and used by only three builders in the entire county—all of whom he had interviewed for the article.
“Why,” I asked, “are there only three companies using this material?”
“it’s just too expensive,” he replied quite assertively.
“Then you should state that in the article,” I said. “Plus, I see where you only interviewed three people—in fact, the only three that use this lumber.” I handed the paper back to him. “Now get me some interviews with contractors that don’t use the material, and find out why. In essence, get their side of this.”
The kid was damn mad about this. “How many more contractors do you want?” he demanded.
“Well,” I said in my best avuncular tone, “you got three that use the stuff; now get three that do not.”
As he continued to silently stare at what he apparently thought was his completely unreasonable editor, I told him what all journalists should know, but most of whom must constantly be reminded: “A newspaper’s job is to be objective,” I said. “Give both sides of the story, if you will. When we stop allowing both sides of an argument to plead their case, we lose credibility.”
He added two more interviews with contractors that had decidedly opposite views to the first three, making the overall article (somewhat) more impartial. But for the rest of his time under my supervision, he held my proclivity for fact-finding against me.
He wasn’t a journalist; never really let himself develop into one. You can study journalism, you can be trained as a journalist, but unless you develop a journalist’s heart…
Having spent my early grammar school years within walking distance of Independence Hall, my journalist’s heart was nurtured on the history of the United States. That heart experienced its first cardiovascular contractions when I learned of what went on at those antique desks inside the hall (we could sit in them in the early 1950s) back in 1776. It experienced a shot of adrenaline when I studied the Constitution a short time later, and settled into a steady rhythm by the time I read—and understood—the Bill of Rights.
But just as with physical cardiac health, you need a journalistic EKG once in a while to make sure you’re not suffering from arrhythmia. The Philadelphia Inquirer provided me with an unscheduled checkup on page A27 of their June 13 edition. In an article unabashedly titled, “Don’t give equal time to climate-change deniers,” the author, an environmental professor at a local college, proposes that the media close off any further discussion because, he wrote: “There is only one side of this story.”
He—like my young editorial assistant mentioned above—displayed his indignation at an unnamed news organization that aired a segment on global warming which presented those who said we should be concerned, and those who held the opposite view. Imagine! They actually presented both sides of an argument!
The unraveling of the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) scam is becoming more apparent with each passing week. The latest blow to Chicken Little’s 21st century incarnation comes from the revelation by Steve Goddard that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has been replacing real temperatures with data created by computer models.
The effect has been to make older temperatures seem cooler while more recent ones seem warmer.
Goddard compares current temperature graphs with those based on measurements taken at the time that show the United States has been cooling since the 1930s which is the hottest decade on record.
The official claim is that we have been getting hotter since them.
Christopher Booker of the U.K.’s The Telegraph has an excellent article about it.
Hat tip Cathy Craddock
Global Warming Crisis Debunked Decisively
Professor Christian Schluchter of the University of Bern — that would be in Switzerland for any Obama voting hipsters– has decisively debunked the alleged crisis called global warming.
Schluchter found 4000-year-old chunks of wood at the edge of Swiss glaciers in the 1990s. This indicated that back in the day the Alps were almost glacier free, even through the time of Christ.
That’s right, back in Roman times when there was no cars and coal plants it was a lot, lot warmer.
This would mean that any warming has nothing to do with man and warm is a lot better than cold.
This means we don’t have to sacrifice our freedom and modern conveniences to appease Gaia, and enrich and empower shysters.
No, Obama-voting hipsters, Switzerland is not in the United States. It’s in Europe. That’s on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. You know when you go to the Jersey Shore to get drunk and see the big waves? Europe is on the other side of the big waves.