NC Media Watch

Cost of CARB: Cap and Trade Back on Track for 2012

Russ Steele

Reuters has the story:

A California appellate court has ruled that state regulators can proceed with plans to implement a carbon cap-and-trade system, a decision that puts them on track to launch the market as scheduled in January 2012.

Who is going to get access to the Carbon Tax Slush Fund has yet to be determined according to the report:

Key decisions, including how to allocate billions of dollars worth of pollution permits to utility companies and how to use revenue raised from the auction of those allowances, have yet to be made.

One thing is clear, the rate payers and the tax payers will be footing the bill for CARB's Cap and Trade program.

Exit questions:  Will your budget handle these extra energy cost?  If not, what are you doing to stop CARB?

Is this proof that Al Gore cannot use the Internet?

Russ Steele

Al Gore's blog:  Ice and Snow Disappearing from Mt. Rainier June 26, 2011 : 2:57 PM

The effects of the climate crisis are hitting closer and closer to home:

"About 14 percent of the ice and permanent snow atop Washington state's Mount Rainier melted in the past four decades, a new study suggests. Researchers arrived at that figure by comparing the estimated thickness and extent of ice seen in a 1970 aerial survey with those measured in 2007 and 2008. All but two of the 28 glaciers and snowfields on the mountain have thinned and shortened at their lower edges . . .
Al's source was Washinton Post.

I wonder if the Gorical noted that the study ended in 2008 and it now 2011. If the Gorical had checked the Internet, he would have discovered that Mt. Rainier is covered in snow this year, as we are now in a cool PDO with a La Niña weather pattern. Details on Cascade snow pack here.   

[June 21, 2011] Too much snow will keep the Sunrise area in Mount Rainier National Park closed through the Fourth of July weekend and until at least July 8, according to park officials. Also, the White River Campground won’t open until July 1.

As the accompanying photos show, there really is a lot of snow still waiting to melt away at Sunrise.
 

I wonder if it occurred to the Gorical that 1970 was near the end of a 30 year cooling period, followed by a warming period that ended about 2000, and we are now going back to a cooling PDO.  If the Gorical knew how to use the Internet, he would be up on the latest snow fall events on Mt. Rainier.

But, then again the Goricals mission is not the truth, but to scare people to join his anthropogenic global warming religious cult.

More at WUWT and Tom Nelson

Earth Encounter of the Asteroid Kind

Russ Steele

The earth has been visited may time by asteroids, some which have left a an indelible mark. However, this visitor on the 27th of June is just passing overhead at 7,500 miles above the surface at about 6:30 am PDT. 


More details at Spaceweather.com which provided the above graphic.

Forget "green" jobs, it's the "brown" jobs that count!

Russ Steele

I am not sure that California will ever figure it out, but Pennsylvania, North Dakota, West Virginia, Colorado, Wyoming, Texas, Oklahoma and Alaska have broken the code to job creation.  Where you say? In mining, oil and gas extraction.  An article in New Geography has the details:

The six fastest-growing jobs for 2010-11, according to EMSI’s latest quarterly employment data, are related to oil and gas extraction. This includes service unit operators, derrick operators, rotary drill operators, and roustabouts. Each is expected to grow anywhere from 9% to 11% this year, in an otherwise stagnant economy.

But that’s not all. A mixed bag of other extraction and petroleum-related jobs—wellhead pumpers, all other extraction workers, geological and petroleum technicians—are also expected to see healthy gains. In total, nine of the top 11 fast-growing jobs in the nation are tied in one way or another to oil and gas extraction.

While California is breaking wind for their energy, the fossil fuel states will have the jobs and wealth to play a larger roll in future elections. The next great devide will not be between the red and blue states, but between the fossil fuel states that are creating "brown jobs" and those that are blowing in the wind looking for "green jobs."

Local left growing concerned about Territorial Dispatch reach

Russ Steele

The Territorial Dispatch is a free weekly newspaper serving Yuba County, Sutter County, and Nevada County.  I have been seeing more and more of this newspapers in key locations around the community, as have the left and they are concerned.  Read some of their concerns in the comments here.

The Territorial Dispatch is owned operated by John and his wife Kitty O’Neal. They have published the Territorial Dispatch from Marysville for over nine years. Since taking over nine years ago they have grown  the Territorial Dispatch from a once a month paper to a weekly publication.

Dan Logue recently recognized the paper as the Small Business of the Year in his District.  Logue said. “With one of the largest distributions of any North State publication, the Territorial Dispatch is a very important part of our rural news community, providing news and information services to many remote cities and towns.”

I recently received a request to re-publish one of my CABPRO Off the Top of My Head articles on the Forest Service Planning Document in the paper.  That would be my second article to be published the Territorial Dispatch, with more in the future.  I have given the Editor permission to use any material his staff finds useful on this blog as long as I get some attribution and a URL link. 

You can download the current online edition here.

Cost of CARB: Latest fuel prices update.

Russ Steele

The price of crude oil continues to decline, with the release of 60 million barrels of crude from national stockpile reserves. However, it is not clear that this will result in a drop in fuel prices over all, even though the gas fell in the futures market by 14 cents.

It is still too early to see any changes in local fuel prices. The gas price decline has slowed in Nevada County, California and across the nation.  Diesel prices have ticked up in Nevada County, while they have leveled off in California and the United  States.

Supreme Court, the supreme global warming skeptics?

Russ Steele

Lawrence Solomon, writes in the Canada's Financial Post:

The justices of the United States Supreme Court this week became the world’s most august global warming sceptics. Not by virtue of their legal reasoning – the global warming case they decided turned on a technical legal issue — but in their surprising commentary. Global warming is by no means a settled issue, they made clear, suggesting it would be foolhardy to assume it was.

“The court, we caution, endorses no particular view of the complicated issues related to carbon-dioxide emissions and climate change,” reads the 8-0 decision, delivered by the court’s acclaimed liberal, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

The court decision noted that the Environmental Protection Agency itself had “Acknowledg[ed] that not all scientists agreed on the causes and consequences of the rise in global temperatures,” before suggesting readers consult “views opposing” the conventional wisdom.

Specifically, the justices’ recommended reading was a superb profile of Princeton’s Freeman Dyson, perhaps America’s most respected scientist, written in the New York Times Magazine, March 29, 2009.

Freeman, an unabashed skeptic [and a member of the GWPF’s Academic Advisory Council], believes that carbon dioxide, rather than being harmful, is both necessary and desirable, arguing that “increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.”

Somewhat in the same vein, Justice Ginsburg notes carbon dioxide is necessary and ubiquitous, and thus shouldn’t be the target of indiscriminate attacks. “After all, we each emit carbon dioxide merely by breathing,” she notes, repeating a point that Dyson couldn’t have said better himself.

Full decision of the Court is here.  I am looking for the YouTube video of Freeman Dyson explaining his views on global warming, but ran out of time this morning.  Stay tuned for the update.

Gold, Gold, Gold, I tell you there is Gold in them there hills!

Russ Steele

The local left is once again all a twitter about the possibility that those evil capitalist and job creators, are raping the land by mining for gold, ignoring the fact that Mother Nature put those precious metals there for humans to find and use. More details here.

The left always wants to know what Congressman McClintock and State Assemblyman Logue are doing to create jobs in Nevada County. However,  when these two leaders support gold mining, which creates jobs, the left starts damning these leaders for supporting mining. 

Consider this from Gold Pan of California: 

Tom McClintock (R-CA) is mad as hell and wants Governor Brown's assistance to squash 2 paragraphs of impending legislation which, if enacted, will kill the California suction gold mining industry.

In a terse written communication yesterday to Governor Brown, McClintock stated "Destroying 4,000 jobs when California is suffering from 11.9 percent unemployment is simply insane."

McClintock is referring to a bogus $1.8 million "budget deficit" which was supplied by anti-mining foes in order to provide a "cut" to the budget of the Department of Fish and Game, who oversees the suction dredge gold mining program. Although erroneous, passage of the language will close the industry forever in California.

Consider this from a local lefty blog on the Idaho Maryland Mine summer PR campaign.

I wonder if this is one of the “facts” you might hear: “The project has strong public support,” according to the mine’s website. “The City of Grass Valley completed an independent survey where 72 percent of residents supported the project, 16 percent were undecided and 12 percent opposed it.”

It’s going to be a tough row to hoe coming to the “truth” about the proposed project with unqualified statements like that. I wonder if “truth serum” is handed out at the booth. No counter argument or facts, just casting doubt on the facts presented. 

And, then there is this:  Dan Logue and Tea Party are teaming up to support gold mining at the 16 to 1 Mine in an upcoming meeting on June 29th, Esterly Hall, 336 Crown Point Plaza, 6:30 to 8:30 p.m.

Guest Speakers;
Assemblyman Dan Logue
Third Assembly District, Mike Miller, President
Original 16 to One Mine

The Original 16 to One Mine in Alleghany is about an hours drive from Nevada City, and is the last operating gold mine in Northern California. It was incorporated 1911 and has been in operation since 1896.

Several weeks ago, I got a call from Mike Miller, President of the Original 16 to One Mine asking if we could help him with some serious problems he was having with our State government. The California Regional Water Control Board has been suing the mine over the quality of the water that the mine releases and runs into the nearby Kanaka River. This suit has been going on for at least ten years. Mike has reams of documents that show that his water is as clean as any water in Kanaka Creek and beyond. But, government agencies, run by bureaucrats, just keep forcing the mine to spend money on lawsuits that they cannot afford. They are now down to 3 employees instead of the 15 that they need. This is part of a story about government overreach and the power they exert on us and our economy.
After I called Assemblyman Dan Logue, he immediately called Mike to discuss the problem. Then he had a meeting with Mike in Sacramento so they could discuss how to proceed. Assemblyman Logue has taken up the 16 to One Mine issue, and he will tell us what he and his staff are trying to do to help his constituents.

You can read the rest here  You can speak to Dan Logue about his views on gold mining at the Tea Party Meeting above.

If you would like to share your views on gold mining with Congressman McClintock he is having a Town Hall Meeting in South County on June 30th, from 6:00-8:00pm, at the Higgins Lions Community Center.  For more information contact 916-786-5560.

Tracking impact of the next Grand Minimum

 Russ Steele

One of the main impacts of the next Great Minimum, that some scientist are calling the Eddy Minimum, will be on agriculture. Astronomer John A. Eddy in 1976 wrote a landmark paper in Science entitled ‘The Maunder Minimum' in honor of Edward W. Maunder, an earlier astronomer who had examined the period during 1645-1715 when sunspots became extremely rare. It was also a period when the world experienced succesive crop failures.

WorldCrops.com has this to say about the Maunder Minimum and crop failures.

During one 30-year period within the Maunder Minimum astronomers observed only about 50 sunspots, as opposed to the thousands in modern times. The science is robust, and based on a systematic programme of observations conducted by the Observatoire de Paris. What is notable is that the Maunder Minimum coincided with the middle, and coldest part of, the so-called Little Ice Age, during which Europe and North America experienced bitterly cold winters.

During the Little Ice Age the northern hemisphere cooling was only “modest”, according to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, at less than 1° C. But what may have been only ‘modest’ cooling on a hemispherical basis still had dramatic effects. The Baltic Sea regularly froze in winters, such that people took sledge rides between Poland and Sweden, with seasonal inns established en route. In the winter of 1780, New York harbour froze, allowing people to walk from Manhattan to Staten Island. Successive harvest failures in France in the late 18th century were commonplace, and the resulting famines helped spark the French Revolution. North European males lost on average 2.5 inches in height by the early 1700s, the result of inadequate diets and associated diseases. And the knock-on effects of the cooler climate were manifold and self-reinforcing; Europe’s fishing fleets declined, as their main catch, cod, moved further south to warmer waters. It wasn’t all bad news, though. During the Little Ice Age, Spanish conquistadors returned from South America with a new staple foodstuff, suitable for the cool and damp climate of the Andes and which flourished in the new cooler and wetter climate in Europe – the potato.

One method for the tracking the impacts of the Eddy Minimum will be to track the changes in agricultural prices over the next decade at web sites like WorldCrops.com.

Cross Posted at Dalton Minimum Returns

Reality check: Unions killing jobs

Russ Steele

Powerline has this Michael Ramirez cartoon which nicely captures the viciousness of the union bosses and their henchmen at Obama's National Labor Relations Board, and of their attack on American workers.