NC Media Watch

The Unintended Consequences of feel good decisions

Russ Steele

I hate low-flow flush toilets!  Ellen and I have a travel trailer and visit campground across the nation. Although we have a bathroom on board, it is some times more convenient to use the public campground facility.  Cuts down on the number times we have to use the dump station. Many of the RV parks have upgraded their facilities with low-flow flush toilets and more often than you would expect they are plugged, close to over flowing.  In my experience, your have to flush a low-flow flush toilet multiple times to get the waste product to disappear down the drain.  This seem to be contrary to the intended purpose of saving water.

Now we learn of another unintended consequences of those low flush toilets from a story in the San Francisco Chronicle.  

San Francisco‘s big push for low-flow toilets has turned into a multimillion-dollar plumbing stink.

Skimping on toilet water has resulted in more sludge backing up inside the sewer pipes, said Tyrone Jue, spokesman for the city Public Utilities Commission. That has created a rotten-egg stench near AT&T Park and elsewhere, especially during the dry summer months.

The city has already spent $100 million over the past five years to upgrade its sewer system and sewage plants, in part to combat the odor problem.

Now officials are stocking up on a $14 million, three-year supply of highly concentrated sodium hypochlorite – better known as bleach – to act as an odor eater and to disinfect the city’s treated water before it’s dumped into the bay.

I wonder of anyone ever thought about the unintended consequences of less water in the sewer system before mandating low-flush toilets?  If one of our standard flush toilets break, I am going the junk yard and find replacement. No low-flow toilets for our house! We do not need any unintended consequences.

Hunt for the Truckee Weather Station

Russ Steele

The Truckee Weather Station temperature data was used in a US Forest Service and UC Davis study of global warming the the Sierra. I wrote about the station and the study here.

Today Ellen and I drove up to Truckee to observe the snow pack and have lunch at the JAX Truckee Dinner. While there we decied to track down the COOP Weather Station associated used in the study. According to the NOAA/NCDC data base the staion is located at the Truckee Ranger Station.

We went to the new Truckee Ranger Station, at 10811 Stockrest Springs Road, just outside of Truckee, where I asked the Ranger at the Front Desk where the COOP weather station was located. She said that the station was not located at the Ranger Station,  it has been located at Mr. Huber's home for years.   According to the Ranger at the desk, after Mr Huber retired from the Forest Service he took the temperature  and other readings at his home and brought in the monthy data for transmission to NCDC untill he died. 

According to an Obituary in the Sierra Sun for Donald Peter Huber he died in October of 2009.

Don retired from the US Forest Service in 1985, but stayed active in the community . . . he was also known as the weather man, keeping accurate records of Truckee weather for almost 40 years. After nearly 50 years in the Truckee area, Don moved down to Carson City in June to relax and to be closer to his daughter, Christie, and her family.

This is inconsistent with the information given to me by the Ranger. I am goiing to assume that  Mr. Huber stopped recording the weather in June of 2009. According the the NCDC the Period of Record is from 9/ 1/1904 to 5/31/2009.

 

Photo Sierra Sun.

The part of the story that interested me is that since 1985, Mr. Huber has been recording the weather, including the temepratures at his home in Truckee for 24 years. We have no idea of the environmental conditions surrounding the weather station sensor. Was it co-located with a BBQ? How close was it to his house?  Was it near the A/C?  According to the NCDC Record the station was moved in 1985, and then again in 2006. From the Obituary it would appear that when Mr. Huber moved the station moved.  The problem is the NCDC record inidcates the COOP is located at the Ranger Station.


It is hard to put too much faith in the validity of the temperature record, when the station data is clearly wrong. The question is, what else was wrong? Mr. Huber may have done a great job, he certainly appears to be a dedicated weather observer, but there are unanswered questions.  Since the Study Team did not evaluate at the meta data before declaring there is global warming in the National Forest, how valid was the study based on this weather station? 

High-speed trains or effective highways?

Russ Steele

Ellen and I took a quick trip to Truckee today to check out the snow pack and have a great lunch at JAX Dinner in Truckee. They have some great home made potato chips!  I also wanted to check out the Truckee COOP  weather station that was used in a Forest Service Study of Global Warming in the Tahoe and El Dorado National Forests. More on the missing COOP in another post.

On thing this is very evident from our trip -- I-80 is falling apart.  Our teath chatter all the way from SR-20 to the Downtown Truckee exit, except where Caltrans had done some repairs this last summer.  Why are we sepending huge sums on high-speed rail when our highway infrastructures is falling apart?  Fixing the highway produces lots of jobs for a broad rage of business. 

This discussion of the rail vs highway issue is from the National Journal Transportation Blog  High-Speed Rail vs. Modal Neutrality
 
Isn't it curious that an Administration devoted to the principle of  multi-modalism is so obsessively determined to promote a single mode of its own preference -- that of high-speed rail? All three governors who rejected the federal HSR grants --- Govs. Walker, Kasich and Scott --- told Sec. LaHood that their states could badly use that money for more urgent needs of fixing roads, bridges and transit systems and, in the case of Gov. Scott, rebuilding Florida's ports in anticipation of the Panama Canal expansion. Yet Sec. LaHood turned a deaf ear to those requests, insisting that the stimulus money must be spent on high-speed rail --- even though money spent on other modes could have been just as effective in creating jobs. After justly condemning "stove pipe" mentality and modal biases in federal decisionmaking it is ironic to find  the Administration ignoring its own principles of modal neutrality in such a blatant manner.

Exit Question:  Should we continue to pursue high-speed rail and let our higway infrastructure collapse?

Prop 23 Update: Green sector killing more jobs that it creates

Russ Steele

Last year a study in Spain indicting that every green job created by government subsidies killed 2.5 in the regular job sector. Now we have a study from Scotland: Green Sector Cost More Jobs Than it Creates.

Government support for the renewable sector in Scotland is costing more jobs than it creates, a report has claimed. A study by consultants Verso Economics found there was a negative impact from the policy to promote the industry. It said 3.7 jobs were lost for every one created in the UK as a whole and that political leaders needed to engage in...

Now there is job growth for you, from 2.5 jobs lost to 3.7 jobs lost.  That is not a trend we would like to sustain in California, however our political leaders are unwilling to learn the lessons of Europe.

Exit Question: When California's renewable energy sector is studied, how may real jobs will it have killed?

Prop 23 Update: Doom and Gloom in Silicon Valley

Russ Steele

During the Prop 23 debates in Nevada County our local lefties assured us the Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and big money investor in green tech were going to be the savors of California’s economy. Apparently that was just a progressive pipe dream, one that comes from what ever it is they smoke. Reality is not negotiable. 

The 2011 Index of Silicon Valley is the result of an annual conference of business leaders, with over a thousand attending this year. The report was first published in 1995 by the Joint Venture Silicon Valley Network and distributed for free over the Internet, but the server was down this morning. I could not down load the latest Index. However, the newgeography web site has a report by Tamara Carleton, a grad Student at Stanford. She found the Index had bleak indicators and a gloomy outlook for the Silicon Valley.

The event provided Valley insiders a moment to reflect on the economic storm, and the mood was darkly optimistic. A persistent phrase tossed out was the “new normal,” old Wall Street jargon describing a repressed economic environment. Growth is too slow to bring down the unemployment rate, and government intervenes to save a struggling private sector.

You can read the rest of the article here and hopefully the server will be back on line.  A server link is in the article. Here are two excerpts that caught my eye, relative to the Prop 23 debate.

It’s a dismal state of affairs if you ask the local old guard. Judy Estrin, former chief technology officer of Cisco Systems, grumbled that one problem was outsourcing. Too many startups were adopting the practice in her view, and she told the audience, “Don’t automatically go to China.”

Others were concerned that jobs were being shipped simply to towns east across the bay. Much ballyhooed and well-subsidized sectors, such as cleantech, would not produce enough jobs to be economically meaningful in the recovery. Attendees were fearful that the Valley has lost its edge.

My emphasis added.  The big money in Silicon Valley spent over $30 million dollars to defeat Prop 23, and we were assured that green jobs were  the wave of the future. What happened?  Where all those green jobs? China?  What about any jobs?  One more insightful paragraph from Tamara’s article.

For all the money being generated, Silicon Valley is not producing more jobs in the local economy. Many startups look to Facebook as a leader in the social media space. Its user base of 600 million has generated a massive population that dwarfs that of the U.S. Yet the company has only about 2000 employees. Facebook presents a conundrum. Is it an innovative global leader that has mastered the art of efficient scaling that is the beginning of a new era in Silicon Valley, or has Facebook become the antithesis of economic growth for the U.S. administration?

Exit Question: Is this the new normal, California companies creating wealth without creating more jobs in the state?

Watts Up With That - Best Science blog in 2011

Russ Steele

My friend Anthony Watts’ blog Watts Up With That was voted the best Science Blog in the 2011 Bloggies.



Congratulations to Anthony and his cadre of guest posters and his team of moderators who keep the discussion on track and civil. Well done to all! It has been a real previlage to be an occasional guest poster over the last year.

Herman Cain wins the Tea Party Patriot's American Policy Summit Straw Poll

Russ Steele

According to CNN Herman Cain a conservative talk show host and former Godfather's Pizza chief executive, won the American Policy Summit's presidential live straw poll on Sunday. The result of this poll may be upsetting to our local lefties who often claim the Tea Party Patriots are just a bunch of racists.

Here is Mr. Cain’s stem winder at CPAC:




Herman Cain rallying support for Governor Walker:

Next phase of Citizen Journalism - Adopt-a-political leader

Russ Steele

When states need some one to clean up the highways, they asked organizations to adopt a segment of a highway and keep the trash picked up. Citizens responded, from a single person, to a family, a church, a civic organization all have adopted highway segments and assumed responsibility for keeping it clean.

Now the Tea Party is asking citizens to adopt a Congressman. ABC News has the story:

After playing such a pivotal role in the November elections, Tea Party activists vowed they would keep a close eye on Congress. They weren't kidding.

The Tea Party Patriots, one of the largest organizing groups of the movement, want to assign personal bloggers to track every member of Congress, not just the ones they supported.

The group will launch a recruitment drive this week coinciding with a weekend policy summit being held in Phoenix for state and local coordinators. Shelby Blakely, a stay-at-home mom from eastern Washington state who is organizing the project, said she has little doubt they will be able to round up enough people to tackle a job that she describes as "citizen journalism meets adopt-a-congressman."

"One of the strengths that the Tea Party has is we have a massive army," Blakely said. "We have millions of manpower hours and thousands of people willing to do heavy lifting."

Read the rest of the story here. According the article the Tea Party Patriots are reworking their website to accommodate for the hundreds of blogs and are developing training for what they hope is a flood of first-time bloggers.  I am volunteering to be a local trainer for all those first timers who want to get involved. Let me know if your are interested.

I am hoping that idea also catches  on in California and we have bloggers tracking state legislators, mayors and city council member.  I am thinking of setting up a local blog to test some of these concepts, by tracking the Board of Supervisors and City Councils.  If you agree, please comment and I will organize a meeting.

Power and Internet back up -- robust blogging to resume.

Russ Steele

Our power came back on at 6:15 and our COMCAST broadband about the same time.  The broaband comes from Grass Valley, and the power from Nevada City. We are right at the convergence  point. We had a Grass Valley phone number from AT&T, now on Vonage. But, when we signed up for an AT&T line for our security systems it was a Nevada City number. We are on the boundary between the two systems and it gets confusing at times.

Bottom line, we are back on PG&E Power and our COMCAST broadband is back on line. Now if we can just get the three feet of snow the driveway plowed.

Cost of CARB: California Gas Prices break $4.00

Russ Steele

As global conflicts grow, the price of a barrel of oil keeps climbing on global markets. As a result regular gas is now $4.00 a gallon at some station in San Francisco. Details here. Diesel is now well over $4.00 a gallon with one San Francisco station selling at $4.49 a gallon. Details here. There are still bargains for those will willing to search for cheaper prices. Costco has regular gas at $3.51

While those prices have not reach the four dollar mark locally, the San Francisco prices could impact those planning a long weekend in the Sierra.  Some potential tourist visitors could choose to spend their time and money closer to home base.

Local fuel prices continue to climb according to the latest entry in the Cost of CARB base line graphic. 


Click for a larger image.