NC Media Watch

Prop 23 Update: CA Cap and Trade Delayed for a year

Russ Steele

Sac Bee has the AP Story here.

California regulators on Wednesday said they would give power plants, refineries and other major polluters another year to comply with a new state program that provides financial incentives to emit fewer greenhouse gases.

Mary Nichols, chairwoman of the Air Resources Board, said in testimony before a state Senate committee that the government is giving California's major polluters until 2013 to comply with its cap-and-trade program.

Most polluters previously were to have begun cutting emissions under the program in 2012. The program was passed in December by the board, which said it hoped other states would follow suit since Congress had failed to pass national climate change legislation.

"This would not affect the stringency of the program or change the amount of emission reductions that the program will achieve, keeping us on track to meet the 2020 target required by AB32," Nichols said.

Well, this one more year for the cooling to become more evident from the forecast Grand Minimum. However, the real cooling is still ten years off.  In the mean time we will see our weather pattens bounce up and down, but continue to trend cooler and cooler.  Scientific sanity may yet prevail.

In the mean time, the Republican's could win the House, Senate, and Presidency, and this whole AGW bull sh*t will be quickly dispatched, as we start the true economic recovery free from EPA socialism.

Read the rest of the story here.

Amazon Termination Notice

Russ Steele

I have been an Amazon Associate for about 5 years enabling me to potentially benefiting from the sale of the books listed on left side this page and any future books that I might write and sell on Amazon. However, I have been notified that my Amazon Associates Contract will be cancelled when Governor Brown signs into law a bill  that specifically imposes the collection of taxes from consumers on sales by online retailers, which he did today.

Amazon writes in my termination notice:

We oppose this bill because it is unconstitutional and counterproductive. It is supported by big-box retailers, most of which are based outside California, that seek to harm the affiliate advertising programs of their competitors. Similar legislation in other states has led to job and income losses, and little, if any, new tax revenue. We deeply regret that we must take this action.

As a result, we will terminate contracts with all California residents that are participants in the Amazon Associates Program as of the date (if any) that the California law becomes effective. We will send a follow-up notice to you confirming the termination date if the California law is enacted. [Note bill was signed today.]

While my benefits have been very small, it is estimated that there are about 10,000 California based Associates that sell products through Amazon. Many are home base business that use Amazon’s marketing and distribution power to reach billions of customer around the globe.

The cancelation of these Associate Contracts will essentially shut down these business and potentially return 10,000 more people to the CA unemployment rolls.  How stupid can our legislators be to kill off 10,000 entrepreneurial business for the promise of a few dollars in tax revenue.

Exit Question: Were you, or someone you know, a California Amazon Associate?   

Local lefty blogger promoting myth of AGW

Russ Steele

Our local lefty blogger writes at the Sierra Foothill Report:

CREDO Action, an arm of the national group Working Assets, is targeting our Congressman Tom McClintock for a “shockingly irresponsible” vote on climate change.

“As The New York Times reported earlier this month, climate change is literally contributing to the destabilization of our food system,” according to the group. “So it’s shocking that 238 members of the House, including McClintock, were more concerned with casting a vote to deny that climate change is affecting our planet than to implement a new, common-sense policy to help prepare for global warming, and plan for ways to prevent disastrous disruptions in our food supply.”

Agriculture experts are feeling “a rising unease about the future of the world’s food supply,” it says, adding: “It only makes sense that the Department of Agriculture would pursue a policy to protect our nation’s ability to grow food.”

Then our lefty blogger points the reader to a CREDO petition  "to send a strong message to Congress that denying the reality of climate change is totally unacceptable."

I am impressed to read that Congressman McClintock jointed with 237 other member of the House, all demonstrating that they are more scientifically literate than the lefty feel gooders who are sending petitions in support of global warming. If they were not too busy drafting petitions they might have observed that in the last 15 years we have not seen any global warming.

I do agree that the Department of Agriculture should pursue a policy to protect our nation’s ability to grow food during the coming drastic cooling, the result of the next Grand Minimum on the sun.  Rather than prepare for warming, we should be concerned about how we are going to grow food when our springs some later and fall earlier and there are not enough summer degree days for crops to ripen. This is what happened during the historical grand minimums, and three separate groups studying the sun have concluded we are about to experience extended periods of fewer sunspots, and the potential for a cooler earth.

Reason Video: "What the fracking is going on"

Russ Steele

After using fracking technology for over 60 yeas on 100,000 wells a year there is no evidence that fracking technology contaminates water wells according to the EPA. So why all the fuss?  After all natural gas is a relatively clean and cheap fuel, and the use of fracking has massively increased Americas energy supply by 250 - 500 years, with more yet to be discovered. 

Reason TV has  been looking into the issue and has produced a video, but the real bottom line (my emphasis added):

The problem with fracking isn’t that it’s particularly new or dangerous. The methodology has been in use for decades, and it is as safe as other drilling processes. The real problem is that it could produce relatively cheap hydrocarbon energy for a very long time, and that’s what has environmentalists worried.

Why are the environmentalist worried?  Because it competes with their wind and solar renewable fantasy.  Cheap low carbon natural gas will makes these renewables non-competitive, while creating more real "brown"jobs than all the mythical "green" jobs combined.  So, the envirnmentalist strategy is to eliminate or constrain the use of the very technology that makes this cheap low carbon energy avilable to American consumers. Tell the environmentalist to frack off, while consumers frack on.

Blaming Bush for the down economy will not fly in Nov 2012.

Russ Steele

Walter Williams said Obama will be elected to a second term here.  However, the economy my rule the day in the election booth.  The poll was of registered voters, it could be worse if the poll was likely voters.

President Barack Obama is in a fragile position as the 2012 campaign begins: Only 37 percent of registered voters approve of his handling of the economy, his lowest rating ever, according to a new McClatchy-Marist poll.

Another ominous sign for Obama: By nearly 2-1, voters disapprove of how he’s handling the federal budget deficit, expected to hit a record $1.5 trillion this fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30.

“It’s a real caution sign … the four-year lease on the White House is very much dependent on how people end up looking at the economy,” said Lee Miringoff, the director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion, which performed the survey.

More details here and here. Obama's regulatory agencies (EPA,DOE,DOT) continue to shoot his chances for an economic recovery in the foot, maybe even both feet.  No economic recovery and the lease on the White House will not be renewed for Obama.

Not unprecedented, but certainly odd last week in June

Russ Steele

Here is a satellite view from Watts Up With That


URGENT – WINTER WEATHER MESSAGE
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE SACRAMENTO CA
233 PM PDT MON JUN 27 2011

..UNSEASONABLY COOL AND SHOWERY WEATHER SYSTEM TUESDAY AND
WEDNESDAY.

.A VERY DYNAMIC AND COOL LOW PRESSURE SYSTEM CONTINUES TO APPROACH NORTHERN CALIFORNIA FROM THE GULF OF ALASKA AND WILL MOVE OVER THE SIERRA NEVADA TUESDAY AFTERNOON INTO WEDNESDAY. THIS SYSTEM IS PROJECTED TO BRING WELL ABOVE NORMAL PRECIPITATION AMOUNTS FOR THIS TIME OF YEAR ALONG WITH CHANCES OF THUNDERSTORMS.

The other unusual end of June event is the lack of sunspots.  Detail at spaceweather.com

QUIET SUN: June is going to end on a quiet note. Solar activity is very low with only a few small scattered sunspots posing no threat for strong flares.

One has to wonder is the unusual June weather and lack of sunspots during Cycle 24 connected? 

An energy and job creation lesson for California

Russ Steele

Peter Grover writing at the Energy Tribune -- Emission Control, We Have a Problem discusses an important connection to energy and wealth creation, which has a direct connection to job creation. He focus on Romney failure to understand the connections, but Grovers analysis could also apply to California's Democratic political leaders.

Take Mitt Romney’s hopping around over energy and climate during his opening event of the 2012 campaigning season on June 6. Front-runner (by a nose) for the GOP ticket he may currently be, but in the knowledge of energy stakes he’s already running on empty. Speaking at his first town hall event in Manchester, NH, Romney said how he “believed the world’s getting warmer”, that it’s “important to reduce our emissions of pollutants and greenhouse gases” and, most intriguingly, how he envied “European-style energy efficiency”. For a man whose electoral chances rest on his claimed grasp of economics, Romney’s “beliefs” don’t appear rooted in well-articulated mathematical facts.

ooo

If Romney and co knew their economics as well as they claim, they would understand the direct correlation between the level of energy consumption and national wealth creation. As I have said elsewhere “The relative wealth and poverty of nations is entirely definable by its per capita energy consumption”. Romney, like many of his associates, does not appear to understand that U.S. energy demand is not just the result of its wealth but also its cause. The speedy industrialization in China, India, Brazil and elsewhere strives for the same end: greater national wealth, for which it will need increasing sources of preferably cheap but efficient energy. Why else has China been on a global shopping spree for hydrocarbons while the West tries yet again to make windmills pay?

I think that Romney's failure to undestand the connection of energy consumption and wealth creation, which produces jobs, has also escaped our Democratic leaders in Sacramento.  Wind and solar cannot provide the energy needed for business to prosper in California, which will in turn creates the jobs needed for an economic recovery.  Being liberals, our Democratic leaders appear to be a mathematically challenged as Romney. 

Oops, Google exits the smartmeter power monitoring business

Russ Steele

I have written about the SmartMeters and monitoring in previous blog posts.  It appears the only monitoring that people are really interested in is their monthly bills and they could care less about monitoring their power consumption every 15 minutes.

The Google blog has this PowerMeter announcement:

In the coming months, we’re going to retire two products that didn’t catch on the way we would have hoped, but did serve as influential models: Google Health (retiring January 1, 2012; data available for download through January 1, 2013) and Google PowerMeter (retiring September 16, 2011). Both were based on the idea that with more and better information, people can make smarter choices, whether in regard to managing personal health and wellness, or saving money and conserving energy at home. While they didn't scale as we had hoped, we believe they did highlight the importance of access to information in areas where it’s traditionally been difficult. More details here.

The real bottom line is discussed at C/Net News:

Google's departure is a "market correction," said OPower's Kavazovic who predicted that other companies with similar products or a direct-to-consumer strategies will struggle. Tech companies that work through utilities with an incentive to boost efficiency of their consumers have a better chance of succeeding, he said.

"It's unclear that consumers are willing to pay for energy monitoring products, and yet there are real costs in building and provisioning such products. Google found out that they would have to invest millions to make this work, and yet there was not clear ROI," he said.

Exit Question:  Were you a Google Power Monitor user?

Panama Canal Expansion, more economic pain for California

Russ Steele

Joel Kotkin has an interesting article in Forbes on The Rise Of The Third Coast: The Gulf Region’s Ascendancy In U.S.

This is the part of the article that I found most interesting, as California attempts to jump start it's economy. When I graduated from the Air Force's Air Command and Staff College in 1973,  I was short four credit hours for my BS degree in Social Science at Troy State University. The Air Force arranged for me to stay in Montgomery for the summer and write a paper on The Strategic Value of a Second Panama Canal. 

While a second larger canal had military significance enabling the more rapid movement of the Navy's largest aircraft carriers between the Pacific and Atlantic, it also had more of an impact on commercial shipping, at the time oil. Now with the deployment of large super-container carriers, it will have even more of an impact, especially in the Gulf States which are rapidly growing their economic power structure.  

"This reflects a long-term shift of money, power and jobs away from both the North Atlantic and the Pacific to the cities of the Gulf. The Port of Houston, for example, enjoyed a 28.1% jump in foreign trade this year, and trade at Louisiana’s main ports also reached records levels."

"This growth stems from a host of factors ranging from politics, demographics and energy to emerging trade patterns and new technologies.One potential game-changer is the scheduled 2014 $5.25 billion widening of the Panama Canal, which will allow the passage to accommodate ships carrying twice as much cargo as they are able to carry currently. This will open the Gulf to megaships from Pacific Basin ports such as Singapore, Shanghai, Pusan and Kaohsiung, which have mostly sent their cargos to West Coast ports such as Los Angeles and Long Beach. Some analysts predict that more than 25% of this traffic could shift to Gulf and South Atlantic ports. “More of Asia will be heading to this part of the world,” says Jimmy Lyons, CEO of the Alabama State Port Authority."

As more of the Pacific Basin traffic shifts to the Gulf Coast through a much wider Panama Canal, jobs will also shift to Gulf Coast Ports.  Fewer ships to unload means there will be fewer jobs in California port cities of Los Angles and Long Beach.  This will have a ripple down effect down through the whole transportation industry in California, with fewer containers to ship eastward. Fewer jobs for California.

 

Conservative Advantage: Numeracy and scientific logic in the climate debate!

Russ Steele

AGW Warmer Chris Mooney writes about a scenario that has been playing out in Nevada County for years, as conservative and liberals debate global warming and the human contributions to that warming.  Mooney references a study by Dan Kahan and his colleagues at Yale, and elsewhere, who found that knowing more about science, and being better at mathematical reasoning has resulted in more climate science skepticism directed at the unproven theory of anthropogenic global warming.

Chris Mooney:
"The surprise—for some out there, anyway—lay in how the ingredients of this stew mix together. For citizens as a whole, more literacy and numeracy were correlated with somewhat more, rather than somewhat less, dismissal of the risk of global warming. When you drilled down into the cultural groups, meanwhile, it turned out that among the hierarchical-individualists (aka, conservatives), the relationship between greater math and science knowledge and dismissal of climate risks was even stronger. (The opposite relationship occurred among egalitarian communitarians—aka liberals)."

This is bad, bad news for anyone who thinks that better math and science education will help us solve our problems on climate change. But it’s also something else. To me, it provides a kind of uber-explanation for climate skeptic and denier behavior in the public arena, and especially on the blogs."

It certainly has played out on our local blogs. The more science and math oriented blogs have relied on real world data for their assessments, rather than unproven computer models and blind faith in UN IPCC Reports for their assessments. 

Two of my favorite science and math related blogs are Anthony Watts', What Up With That and Steve Mc Intyre's Climate Audit Mooney had this to say about both:

". . . if you go to blogs like WattsUpWithThat or Climate Audit, you certainly don’t find scientific and mathematical illiterates doubting climate change. Rather, you find scientific and mathematical sophisticates itching to blow holes in each new study."

I rather think that NC Media Watch and Rebane’s Ruminations have blown some holes in the local liberal's AGW religious fervor. 

H/T to Tom Nelson