Re-Blogged From WUWT
This title is from a Bloomberg article that bemoans the loss of trust in mass transit from a health perspective.
Officials across the nation are worried that as the coronavirus pandemic persists, commuters will avoidtaking buses and trains, and opt for their cars, potentially leading to dangerous new levels of air pollution.
Guest “set our people free!” by David Middleton – Re-Blogged From WUWT
Shelter in place has been an EPIC FAIL…
‘Shocking’: 66% of new coronavirus patients in N.Y. stayed home: Cuomo
By DENIS SLATTERY
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS |
MAY 06, 2020ALBANY — The majority of recently hospitalized coronavirus patients in New York are people who have followed the precaution of staying home, Gov. Cuomo said Wednesday.
The governor said it was “shocking” that 66% of new coronavirus hospitalizations are people who are either retired or unemployed and not commuting to work on a regular basis.
[…]
“This is a surprise: Overwhelmingly, the people were at home,” Cuomo said during a briefing on Long Island. “We thought maybe they were taking public transportation, and we’ve taken special precautions on public transportation, but actually no, because these people were literally at home.”
[…]
Apparently, shelter in place just “fattened” the curve. Now… let’s flatten the hell out of this curve…
By Roger Caiazza – Re-Bloogged From WUWT
According to Resources for the Future, carbon pricing is a climate policy approach that works by charging industrial sources for the tons of emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) they emit. I have been following this for quite a while and think that despite the attractiveness of the theory there are practical reasons why it will not work as advertised.
I am prompted to prepare this summary of my concerns because a coalition has asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to hold a technical conference or workshop on carbon pricing. In my opinion this coalition consists of vested interests that do not consider the effect on ratepayers.
Chris White – Re-Blogged From WUWT
Civil rights leaders are criticizing a common talking point among environmentalist activists who say hydraulic fracking disproportionately hurts black people and other minority communities.
Revs. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson and National Urban League president Marc Morial said they oppose an abrupt move away from fracking, according to an Axios report Monday. They said the technique for producing natural gas helps black people who struggle with high energy prices.
Morial was particularly rough on activists who said their anti-fracking position is tie in with social justice matters.
For the first time since it became a state, California could lose a seat in the House of Representatives, according to a new 2019 population estimate released by the Census Bureau.
On Monday, the Census Bureau population estimates found that the national population growth slowed in 2019. It also found that California, New York, and some 25 other states lost residents through domestic migration in 2019.
As a result, California is poised to lose a House seat for the first time since it became a state in 1850. The population data also found that California experienced its slowest population growth since 1900.
By Ken Haapala, President of SEPP – Re-Blogged From WUWT
Quote of the Week: “We know what’s happening now. It’s the past that keeps changing.” – Old Russian Joke
Number of the Week: 110 million people now drowning?
THIS WEEK:
By Ken Haapala, President, Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP)
Grim Future? Historical discussions of the human condition reveal that humans tend to identify themselves as members of like-minded groups. As discussed in the June 1 TWTW, in his farewell address, George Washington called such groups “factions.” Christopher Booker identified the common thinking of such factions as groupthink. In a post on his web site discussing Climategate, Roy Spencer addresses this issue stating that one of the few scientists who changed their mind after Climategate was Judith Curry: “She is now a well-informed and unabashed skeptic of the modern tendency to blame every bad weather event on humans.” He goes on to write:
The Week That Was: October 26, 2019, Brought to You by www.SEPP.org
By Ken Haapala, President, Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP)
Quote of the Week – “Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.”— George Bernard Shaw [H/t William Readdy]
Number of the Week: $11.69 billion up 31%
Alarmists in Local Media – Using Surface Data: The huge propaganda push by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on the need for “climate protection” has resulted in many strident claims in the local media, many becoming colorful slogans such as “climate crisis”, “climate chaos”, etc. Joseph D’Aleo, a Certified Consulting Meteorologist, and a fellow of the American Meteorological Society (AMS) has long addressed false ideas about climate change both in the AMS and in the public. D’Aleo was a founder of the Weather Channel and of WeatherBell Analytics, LLC. He is a pioneer in seasonal forecasts based on evidence and statistical modeling. As with many well-known skeptics who rebut the unsubstantiated claims that carbon dioxide is causing dangerous global warming, D’Aleo has been called a shill for oil companies and suffered many other politically motivated attacks.
There’s been a standoff between New York City and utility company National Grid going on since May of this year. As you may recall, plans for a new natural gas pipeline from New Jersey were killed off by the state government under pressure from environmental activists. As a result, National Grid wound up imposing a moratorium on new gas hookups because the current supply was insufficient to serve additional customers. This has resulted in more than a thousand potential customers being unable to be hooked up.
Now the Governor has come up with a unique plan to end the stalemate. Using an obscure state law regulating utility companies through the power of the Public Service Commission, Andrew Cuomo (who helped kill the pipeline project) is simply ordering the utility to hook up the gas lines anyway. (New York Post)
By Roger Caiazza – Re-Blogged From WUWT
One of the biggest issues with plans to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy is intermittency. At some point that can only be addressed by energy storage but tracking down those costs is difficult. I recently found a recently released report from the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL): “2018 U.S. Utility-Scale Photovoltaics-Plus-Energy Storage System Cost Benchmark” that provides information that can be used to estimate the costs of the energy storage option.
According to the NREL summary, authors Fu and Margolis, along with fellow NREL researcher Timothy Remo, provide NREL’s first cost benchmarking of energy storage and PV-plus-storage systems. The abstract for the report states:
By Jonathan Allen – Re-Blogged From IJR
The United States has confirmed 695 measles cases so far this year, the highest level since the country declared it had eliminated the virus in 2000, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Wednesday.
The resurgence, which public health officials blamed in part on the spread of misinformation about the safety of vaccines, has been concentrated mainly in Washington state and New York with outbreaks that began late last year.
“The longer these outbreaks continue, the greater the chance measles will again get a sustained foothold in the United States,” the CDC warned in a statement. It said outbreaks can spread out of control in communities with lower-than-normal vaccination rates.
Michael Bastasch – Re-Blogged From Daily Caller
The Permian basin, now the world’s most productive oil and gas field, is booming — so much so that there’s not enough pipeline capacity to carry out all the natural gas it produces, meaning much of it is flared.
How much? Some 553 million cubic feet per day, or enough to power every home in Texas, according to data from Rystad Energy compiled by Bloomberg.
The mismatch between pipeline capacity and production is nothing new, but flaring in the Permian basin, which straddles parts of Texas and New Mexico, jumped 85 percent in the last year. (RELATED: Trump’s Latest Executive Order Could Derail A Favorite Tactic Of Climate Activists)
Michael Bastasch From The Daily Caller – Re-Blogged From WUWT
President Donald Trump signed a pair of executive orders aimed at speeding up oil and gas pipeline permitting, including limiting the ability of activists and states to block key energy projects.
Trump signed the orders Wednesday at an International Union of Operating Engineers’ training center near Houston. Some labor unions have pushed back against Democrats’ anti-fossil fuel agenda, including the recently introduced Green New Deal.
By Reuters – Re-Blogged From Yahoo
New York energy company Consolidated Edison Inc said on Friday it still plans to impose a moratorium on new natural gas service in parts of Westchester County after March 15 despite a $250 million plan by the state to reduce energy usage.
“The moratorium will still go into effect after March 15,” Con Edison spokesman Allan Drury said, noting the company needs to stop hooking up new gas customers to avoid compromising gas system reliability because of limited space on existing interstate pipelines into the region.
Westchester County is north of New York City.
By Bloomberg – Re-Blogged From Newsmax
This tax season, many wealthy Americans are getting an expensive jolt.
The Republican tax overhaul signed by President Donald Trump more than a year ago provides plenty of perks for the rich. But not all well-off folks are treated alike under the new law. A controversial provision that helps pay for huge corporate tax cuts punishes residents of states with higher income taxes—most of which, but not all, lean Democratic.
By setting a $10,000 cap on how much Americans can deduct in state and local taxes, or SALT for short, Washington created a pricey problem for the privileged in some parts of the country. Now that the first tax season under the overhaul is here, that reality is hitting home—and the thought of moving to a low-tax state may suddenly look more attractive.
The Week That Was: February 16, 2019, By Ken Haapala, President, SEPP
Brought to You by www.SEPP.org, The Science and Environmental Policy Project
Quote of the Week: “Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better” – attributed to Albert Einstein.
Number of the Week: $425 billion plus back-up
A Note on Outgoing Longwave Radiation (Infrared Radiation): TWTW is trying to prepare a clear explanation of the effects of greenhouse gases and how the effects can be measured. They cannot be measured from the surface. The theory involves specialized fields such as theoretical molecular physics and mathematics such as integral equations. The physicists who review TWTW requested that TWTW explanations be reviewed by specialists to ensure there are no significant errors. This is being done, but the discussion of outgoing Infrared Radiation has been delayed.
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The Green New Deal: There has been a great deal written about the Green New Deal over the past week. Many criticisms are linked below to include absurd claims by the promoters. Among the more outrageous claims of the proponents not discussed are analogies to the Marshall Plan and to the mobilization for World War II. It is apparent that proponents do not understand either.
By Associated Press – Re-Blogged From Newsmax
Amazon.com Inc. abruptly dropped plans Thursday for a big new headquarters in New York that would have brought 25,000 jobs to the city, reversing course after politicians and activists objected to the nearly $3 billion in tax breaks promised to what is already one of the world’s richest, most powerful companies.
“We are disappointed to have reached this conclusion — we love New York,” the online giant from Seattle said in a blog post announcing its withdrawal.
By John Rubino – Re-Blogged From Dollar Collapse
The “public pension crisis” is the kind of subject that’s easy to over-analyze, in part because there are so many different examples of bad behavior out there and in part because the aggregate damage these entities will do when they start blowing up is immense.
But most people see pensions as essentially an accounting issue – and therefore boring – so it doesn’t pay to go back to this particular well too often. Still, New York City’s missing $100 billion can’t be ignored:
New York City Owes Over $100 Billion for Retiree Health Care
From Energy In Depth, by Lea Giotto – Re-Blogged From WUWT
A top environmental lawyer for New York City says that the goal of the City’s climate litigation efforts is to restrain industry activity, an apparent contradiction to what the City has stated in recent legal filings in federal court. This admission could have a significant impact on the case moving forward.
By John Rubino – Re-Blogged From Dollar Collapse
The idea that as more people move to Hurricane Alley and other storm-prone places, the future cost of those storms will rise – and that we’re not accounting for that future cost and are therefore likely to be shocked by it – makes intuitive sense.
Now some recent studies have fleshed out the numbers, making it possible to tell this story visually (courtesy of yesterday’s Wall Street Journal). So here goes:
Re-Blogged From Restore American Glory
It wasn’t that long ago when people all over the country were moving to San Francisco and other areas of Northern California, dreaming of living the good life, with great weather and fine neighbors. Now we’ll concede that some portion of the city’s reputation was forged from PR campaigns, vacationing Americans who didn’t see the whole picture, a mythological 1960s origin story, and hell, maybe even “Full House.” But there’s no doubt that however overblown the city’s reputation was a few short years ago…well, it ain’t the city it used to be.
These days, you have a major Chicago-based medical association pulling their annual 15,000-attendee convention out of San Francisco because the place is turning into an unsafe garbage dump. Oh, did we say “garbage?” We meant feces. Because that’s what mysteriously showed up on a sidewalk in San Francisco last week: A 20-lb bag of human excrement. This is what the city looks like today.
By Steve Goreham – Re-Blogged From WUWT
Opposition to oil and gas pipelines produces sensational headlines. Protests of the Keystone XL, Dakota Access, and numerous smaller projects are well-covered by the media, creating the impression of an industry halted by public outcry. But the US pipeline network is steadily expanding and safety is improving.
By John Rubino – Re-Blogged From Dollar Collapse
Home prices are still rising pretty much everywhere in the US, with California as usual leading the way. State-wide, the median CA home is now above $600,000, up 9% year over year. In San Francisco County, homebuyers are paying an average of 18% above the asking price, and price per square foot is now more than $1,000.
Even Silicon Valley residents, who are used to this kind of thing, are finding it remarkable. See ‘Facebook is taking everything’: rising rents drive out Silicon Valley families.
By John Droz Jr. – Re-Blogged From http://www.WattsUpWithThat.com
Indian Point Nuclear Power Station in New York. It sits on the east bank of the Hudson River, about 36 miles north of Midtown Manhattan, plans to shut down both of its operating reactors by April 2021.
Re-Blogged From Stratfor
The shift from a premodern farming society to a modern industrialized society, for example, hinged on the increased participation of women in the workforce. Many nations today, such as Japan, face demographic decline or economic stagnation. And in order to maintain growth, these countries are being forced to combat the legal and social barriers that have kept women out of the workforce. Even in regions such as the Middle East and North Africa, where women have explicitly been prevented from participating in public life, governments are hoping to encourage growth by embracing reform efforts that incorporate women into their economies.
(ANNE-CHRISTINE POUJOULAT/AFP/Getty Images)
Re-Blogged From http://www.WattsUpWithThat.com
Foreword: One of the craziest – and potentially far-reaching and harmful – lawsuits in recent memory is wending its way through our legal system. Filed by several California and New York cities and counties, the legal action asserts that major oil companies are causing rising seas, floods, repeated climate and weather disruptions, and an “existential threat” to humanity and our planet.
The oil companies have known about these risks for decades, the litigants continue, but failed to disclose the information in annual reports, stock offerings and other documents. The litigants seek compensatory damages, abatement of the alleged threats, attorneys’ fees, punitive damages and disgorgement of corporate profits. As my article explains, it is a classic shakedown … by cities and counties that have collective unfunded pension obligations in the hundreds of billions of dollars.
By Bob Van Voris – Re-Blogged From Bloomberg Businessweek
As climate-change lawsuits against the oil industry mount, Exxon Mobil Corp. is taking a bare-knuckle approach rarely seen in legal disputes: It’s going after the lawyers who are suing it.
By Bloomberg – Re-Blogged From Newsmax
Natural gas surged to 60 times the going rate as howling blizzard conditions stoked demand for the furnace fuel across the U.S. Northeast.
Spot prices for the fuel used to heat homes and generate power recently reached a record $175 per million British thermal units in New York, according to Consolidated Edison Inc. That’s a far cry from the $2.93 that U.S. gas futures have been averaging on the New York Mercantile Exchange this winter.
By Andrew Kerr – Re-Blogged From Western Journalism
The CEO of Apple-Metro Inc., a company that operates about 40 Applebee’s restaurants in the New York metropolitan area, said he’s been forced to cut at at least 1,000 servers in the past year as a result of New York’s recent minimum wage hike.
“We have 1,000 less servers this time this year than we did this time last year,” Zane Tankel told Fox Business’ Stuart Varney on Monday.
That amounts a two-thirds reduction of his total workforce, Tankel said. Continue reading
[From the ‘Unclear on the Concept Department’ (Nuclear generates ZERO CO2 emissions!) – Bob]
By Jeremy Deaton – Re-Blogged From NexusMedia
New York governor Andrew Cuomo announced plans this week to close the Indian Point nuclear power plant, which supplies electricity to New York City and surrounding areas. The plant’s two working reactors — which account for roughly 10 percent of the state’s power generation — are slated to go offline in 2020 and 2021, more than a decade ahead of schedule.
Some environmentalists celebrated the closure. Others lamented the loss of a carbon-free source of energy, despite nuclear power’s potential hazards to humans and wildlife.
By Mac Slavo – Re-Blogged From http://freedomoutpost.com
Being on the hook is not going to be pretty when interest rates are raised back up, and debts come due. At a personal level, it will mean more stress and juggling to make ends meet. For the larger economy, it will mean cities and states unable to meet obligations or balance their budgets – ending in bankruptcy, and bailouts. Meanwhile, millions of people are relying on that money to keep coming in order to survive. Something is going to go very wrong.
Relying upon government to function and send you money is not a secure plan.
The mathematics are terrifying and dismal, and so is being caught up in these collapsing states.
By Jeff Dunetz – Re-Blogged From The Lid
This post comes from the “Department Of I Told You So.” Back in August we reported that a Heritage Foundation study looked at the effect of the $15.00 minimum wage on a state by state basis the progressive program would put between 7 and 9,000,000 Americans out of work. The first indication that the unemployment wave may be happening is the latest news that McDonald’s is planning to expand its digital self-serve ordering stations and table service to all of its 14,000 stores in the U.S.
By Onan Coca – Re-Bloggd From http://www.Constitution.com
In 2004 President George W. Bush ran a hard-fought reelection campaign against a popular, if doofy, Democrat opponent John Kerry. For all of his faults, Kerry was far more well-liked and far less scandal plagued than today’s Democrat candidate. Bush was able to eke out a reelection victory mostly on the shoulders of his decisive reaction to the 9/11 tragedy.
In fact, the 2004 election made the phrase “security moms” famous, as the once known “soccer mom” had suddenly awakened to our dangerous new world where Islamic terrorism was the reality and her “mama bear” instincts had taken over. The “security mom” knew she had to do all she could to care for her loved ones, and that now meant using her vote to keep them safe.
By Walid Shoebat – Re-Blogged From http://www.FreedomOutpost.com
(Note: If pictures/videos don’t display, please go to link at bottom of page. -Bob)
We now know that the Chelsea bombing and other bombings suspect Ahmad Khan Rahami was trained in Afghanistan and slipped the eye of the intelligence. Investigators first identified Rahami Sunday afternoon by identifying him through a fingerprint. The cell phone on the pressure cooker device was also found.
A man who described himself as a childhood friend of Rahami told the Herald the suspect had made a life-changing trip to Afghanistan two years ago.
“At one point he left to go to Afghanistan, and two years ago he came back, popped up out of nowhere and he was real religious,” friend Flee Jones, 27, said of suspect Ahmad Khan Rahami. “And it was shocking. I’m trying to understand what’s going on. I’ve never seen him like this.”
By Connor Wolf – Re-Blogged From http://freedomforce.com
Seattle, which recently passed a $15 minimum wage, has seen the loss of 700 restaurant jobs despite the rest of the state seeing huge increases, according to a Wednesday report.
In its report, the American Enterprise Institute looked at restaurant job growth in both Seattle and the rest of Washington. The state itself has gained 5,800 industry jobs since January. Seattle, however, lost 700 jobs in the same time. The state minimum wage is $9.47. Back in June Seattle passed its own minimum wage of $15 an hour. The city ordinance is designed to phase in over the course of several years. It will reach $15 an hour by 2017 for most employers.
“One likely cause of the stagnation and decline of Seattle area restaurant jobs this year is the increase in the city’s minimum wage,” the reportspeculated. “It looks like the Seattle minimum wage hike is getting off to a pretty bad start. Especially considering that restaurant employment in the rest of the state is booming, and nearly 6,000 more restaurant workers are employed today than in January.”
Seattle was the first place to pass a $15 minimum wage measure and became the first major victory for supporters. San Francisco and Los Angeles followed not long after and now many cities have either enacted it or are considering it. Some states are also giving the $15 minimum wage serious consideration. Currently it has not passed on the state level.
By Cathy Burke – Re-Blogged From http://www.NewsMax.com
Half of immigrant households, both legal and illegal, received some kind of public assistance in 2012, compared with 30 percent of non-immigrant families enrolled in welfare programs, a new report shows.
According to the Center for Immigration Studies’ 52-page study, which examined the Census Bureaus’ Survey of Income and Program Participation data, welfare use rates are “a good deal higher than use rates shown by other Census data.”
By – Re-Blogged From http://www.Mises.org
The state of New York has voted to raise the hourly minimum wage from $8.75 to $15 following fast food workers’ protests. Governor Andrew Cuomo and New York City mayor Bill de Blasio and their families will pitch in the additional $6.25 per hour to help support low-wage workers in the fast food industry. “This is just the beginning. We will not stop until we reach true economic justice,” Cuomo said. “As much as fast food workers need and deserve a raise – and we know they do – we must ensure that every worker gets a living wage,” de Blasio filled in.
Well, not really. The state will raise the minimum wage, but Cuomo and de Blasio do not expect to foot the bill. Instead, they’re happy to sign the dotted line because they are on the receiving end. The “raise” effectively buys them a lot of votes using other people’s (and corporations’) money. For this reason, it is no surprise that Cuomo considers the vote “one of the really great days of my administration.”
Re-Blogged From http://www.Newsmax.com
Each day between 2003 and 2013, an average of 830 Americans relocated to one of the nine U.S. states with no state income tax, while 944 people moved out of the nine states with the highest personal income tax rates.
That’s one of the findings disclosed in a new report from The Heritage Foundation, “1,000 People a Day: Why Red States Are Getting Richer and Blue States Poorer.”
States in recent years have divided into two camps, which the report’s authors call the “red state model” and the “blue state model.”
