NC Media Watch

Camp Site at Tahoe

Russ Steele

Picture of our campsite with the family relaxing around the campfire. Sorry the picture is a bit blurry, I forgot not turn on the flash and it was dusk.

The GMC 2500 WiFi hotspot is rather slow, we must be on the edge of the Verizon broadband coverage.

Loading up and heading out again

Russ Steele

Since we arrived back in Nevada County on the 16th of July we have been preparing for our next trip, the Annual Family Camping trip to Lake Tahoe. For years we went camping almost every summer when our four girls were growing up. When they went off to college we included the boy friends in our camp outings.  About six years ago, during a family get together, the girls expressed a desire to return to family camping, and proposed an annual return to Sugar Pine Point, where we had a wonderful experience in the late 90s.

We did not go to Sugar Pin Point last year, due to Caitlin and Travis June wedding in Mendocino, so everyone is anticipating this return trip to Lake Tahoe. When we left on our cross county jaunt there were some strongly worded suggestions that we better return in time for the family camping trip to Sugar Pine Point at the end of July.

We have been busy preparing: cleaning the trailer, repairing the furnace. rehanging an exterior door that was about to fall off, building some more retractable shelves and doing general fix up.  Today we load the canoe, stock the refrigerator, and make our final clothing adjustments to match the weather, and fuel up the GMC and make the final adjustments for our family camping trip on Thursday.

Our trailer will be the anchor for several tent camp sites, and will be big attractor for the four grandkids, thus Grandma had to rig for kids on board. Since Sugar Pine Point is a dry camp, with no power, water or sewer we also had to do some reconfiguring, cooler chest, making sure the generator was loaded with extra gas, and there is lots of firewood on board the GMC, plus some extra guest chairs, plus our bikes. More stuff than we had on the cross country trip.   

While all this was going on, we made multiple trips to Roseville for family birthday celebrations. Way too many July birthdays, Christmas in July, Ellen's mom called it. With each birthday party the excitement grew more intense. We now have a complete hiking/biking/canoe schedule, with meals assigned and menus planned. Grandpa is looking forward to sitting under a tree and reading, and maybe doing a little blogging if the GMC-2500 hotspot is working, while baby sitting a daughters new puppy.  I will try to take some pictures to share.

Viscount Monkton of Brenchley critiques Real Climate guru

Russ Steele

A Lefty commented that blog readers should consult realclimate.org for a critique of Monckton's paper, Climate Sensitivity Reconsidered, which was published in Physics and Society in July 2008, so we can get both sides of the story. 

Monckton has posted a response to Gavin Schmidt's "FalseClimate" critique of his paper here (PDF)

If you like this Monckton, you will love this shorter rendition of Monckton’s Litany, by Peter Gallagher. Enjoy!

Do you see the problem?

Russ Steele

Here are the latest employment figures for Nevada County, published in The Union today.

Nevada County’s June employment rate of 6.6 percent was the highest in 10 years, according to the state’s Employment Development Department.

In May, the unemployment rate was 6.4 percent. In June 2007, it was at 4.7 percent. The state’s jobless rate stood at 6.9 percent in June of this year.

Job losses have occurred across the board in the past year in Nevada County.

The natural resource, mining and construction industries have seen their workforces decline by 12.7 percent; leisure and hospitality by 8.5 percent, and retail trade by 5.5 percent since June 2007.

The number of government jobs on the federal, state and local levels in the county, meanwhile, has increased by 5.3 percent in the past year.

Did you spot the growth in government jobs? Jobs we are paying for with our tax dollars. The economy is tanking the the government is growing. What are we getting for our tax dollars? What services are these new government employees providing?  Really? Show me! 

Politics and reality collide

Russ Steele

Nancy Pelosi: “I’m trying to save the planet; I’m trying to save the planet,” she says impatiently when questioned. “I will not have this debate trivialized by their excuse for their failed policy.”

Peter Huber in Forbes: "Contingency planning should entail strategic responses to a warming globe, a cooling globe and a globe whose climate reverberates with laughter at human hubris."

Checking Dire Predictions (edited)

Russ Steele

I am reading Dire Predictions, by Mann and Kumps, which they call the "illustrated guide to the findings of the IPCC." I am comparing the graphics in the book with graphics I have seen on Climate Audit and at Watts Up With That. Here is a graphic from page 67 showing a graphic which compares James Hansen's three global warming projections with GISS weather station data. This is the authors justification for accuracy of James Hansen's climate model. 

Click for a larger image.

Is this another case of do as I say, not as I do?

Russ Steele

We are all familiar with AL Gore's the earth is in peril claims while he continues to fly around the country spewing CO2, rides in big cars that sit with the engine running and the AC on while he is speaking, and has a house that consumes as much energy as 20 neighbors homes.  He wants us to conserve, while he is consuming more that an average person.

While I was reading the California Air Resource Board Scoping Plan, which list options for how we should be saving energy and reducing greenhouse gases by 2012, I was wondering if CARB was more like Al Gore, telling us what to do, but not doing much to reduce their carbon footprint. So, I sent them an e-mail requesting some information. Details here.

Unfortunately I only got back answers to my telecommuting question, as CARB does not keep track of how employees get to work. CARB has 1200 employees and they have 100 employees that telecommuters at least 1 day a month, with 25 who telecommute at least two days a week.

If you cannot find it, it may not exist

Russ Steele

I was checking out the newest search engine Cuil.com this morning. Cuil.com was created by some former Google engineers and launched this morning. Typing in one of my favorite topics here is the results:

We didn’t find any results for “Global Warming”
Some reasons might be...
    •    a typo. Please check your spelling.
    •    your search includes a term that is very rare. Try to find a more common substitute.
    •    too many search terms. Please try fewer terms.
Finally, try to think of different words to describe your search.

I typed "global warming" into Google and discovered 56,600,000 results for global warming. Not a great speller, I often use Google to check the spelling of a word, as they ask, "did you mean?" Yea, that is the word I wanted. Cuil.com needs a similar feature once they discover global warming.

Climate Change Update, the good news and bad news

Russ Steele

The good news: Governor Vetoes Climate Change Curriculum, details from the Mercury News: 

California public students will stick to reading, writing and arithmetic, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger decided as he vetoed a bill late Friday that would have required climate change be added to schools’ curriculum.The measure, sponsored by state Sen. Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto, also would have required future science textbooks to include climate change as a subject.

The bad news: The state bureaucrats are not throwing in the towel. The Integrated Waste Management Board’s Office of Education and Environment, along with Environmental Protection Agency, are creating an environmental curriculum for K-12 students that includes climate change issues.

More bad news:  Dire Predictions: Understanding Global Warming, The illustrated guide to the findings of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), by Michael Mann and Lee Kump showed up on my door step yesterday.  This is picture book is full of Mann's hockey sticks, with extensive justification for James Hansen's models and James Lovelock's outrageous predictions of life on earth in a CO2 dominated world.  A quick glance shows most of the charts and graphics stop in 2002 to 2005, before the current cooling became more evident. The eye grabbing graphics are sure to be a big hit with the uninformed feeling crowd. Those with thinking skills will find strong critiques of Hansen's models, data adjustments, and process at Climate Audit, and Watts Up With That.   More on Dire Predictions as I plow through the crap and scan some of the eye catching graphics for some critiques.

Our State Senator at The American Thinker blog

Russ Steele

 

I am a regular reader of the American Thinker, along with Rush Limbaugh, and was surprised when I saw who wrote this Thinker article California Legislature: More Uninsured, Please.

For out of town readers, State Senator Sam Aanestad is an oral surgeon who represents the 4th California Senate District and serves as Vice Chair of the California Senate Health Committee. He pulled my children's wisdom teeth before he got into politics.

According to Sam, the California Legislature is about to enact another costly health care bill:

AB 1962 would impose a mandate for every individual health insurance policy to cover maternity benefits regardless of whether the person needs, wants or can afford this coverage.

The bill would force the following Californians to pay for comprehensive pregnancy coverage:
Women who have had a hysterectomy
Men
Post-menopausal women
Couples who can't have children
Men after vasectomy
Women after tubal surgery to prevent pregnancy

If AB 1962 were enacted, it would become illegal in California for an insurer to try to sell an individual health insurance policy without obstetrical coverage.

I guess we all have to pay for the delivery of all those uninsured illegal immigrant babies, even if we are not capable of having a child.