Blu Electronic Cigarettes – A Sorta Review

By William Teach November 8, 2013 – 4:33 pm

This is not something I plan on getting too deep into, a definitely different from what I usually write about. If you didn’t know, I smoke. I don’t do drugs. If I ended up in Colorado I wouldn’t take a toke. I used to, a long time ago, but I find pot unexciting. I don’t drink much. I like smoking, but I did want to cut down, and maybe quit.
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Surprise: Warmists Blame Typhoon Haiyan On “Climate Change”

By William Teach November 8, 2013 – 2:41 pm

Obviously, we have to start with Joe Romm’s Climate Progress, funded by George Soros

Super Typhoon Haiyan is making a beeline towards the Philippines and thousands of people in vulnerable areas are being relocated to prepare for the impact of the strongest storm on the planet so far this year.

According to Climate Central, extremely warm surface waters, 2-3°F above average for the last few months in the western tropical Pacific, have fueled Haiyan’s growth. As of late Thursday morning (U.S. time), Super Typhoon Haiyan had top sustained winds near 190 mph (equivalent to a Category 5 hurricane), according to the Joint Typhoon Warning Center. (snip)

Human activity driving fundamental changes in the climate is likely causing sea surface temperatures to warm, which can in turn intensify extreme weather events like Super Typhoon Haiyan. In September, warm waters fueled Typhoon Usagi as it headed towards Hong Kong.

This was even before landfall in the Philippines. Here’s the India Times

The Philippines is battered by an average of 20 major storms or typhoons each year, many of them deadly, but scientists have said climate change may be increasing their ferocity and frequency.

HuffPo

Climate scientists continue to search for insight into how manmade global warming, which is increasing sea surface temperatures along with changing air temperatures and the amount of moisture in the air, may be altering tropical storm systems like Haiyan. The most recent report from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) found that “it is virtually certain that the frequency and intensity of the strongest tropical cyclones in the North Atlantic has increased since the 1970s,” but that there is less evidence of changes being detected in other ocean basins.

Examiner

Climate change. Extreme weather. Super Storms. Already being called “The strongest storm in recorded history,” Hurricane Yolanda aka Haiyan, made landfall today in the Philippines, with recorded winds of up to 195 miles per hour.

Sources go on and on. They really can’t help themselves. The Australian notes

Masters said the previous record for the strongest typhoon to make landfall was Hurricane Camille, which hit Mississippi in the US with sustained winds of 190 miles an hour in 1969.

Interesting, because 1969 was during a period of downward trending temperatures, which led to so many scientists and news articles wondering if an ice age was approaching. Also

However some scientists say it is premature to blame climate change, and the Philippines has endured many devastating typhoons that have each claimed many hundreds of lives.

Obviously, those scientists just don’t understand the New Consensus and Talking Points.

Of course, the 195mph figure is an estimate. The Washington Post notes

Weather officials said Haiyan had sustained winds of 235 kph (147 mph) with gusts of 275 kph (170 mph) when it made landfall. That makes it the world’s strongest typhoon this year, said Aldczar Aurelio of the government’s weather bureau.

So, at least for landfall, lower. But, one has to wonder why the destruction seems so minimal compared to, say, Hurricane Andrew.

Storms are simply a part of the natural order. We would be remiss in forgetting the human toll, though. Warmists use them as a prop for their pseudo-religion.

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If All You See…

By William Teach November 8, 2013 – 1:00 pm

…is heat induced snow, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is A View From The Beach, with a post on a crazy lady running for Texas governor.

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Remember How “Climate Change” Was Supposed To Destroy Coffee?

By William Teach November 8, 2013 – 10:22 am

We’ve been bombarded with stories like

Yeah, about that

(Business Recorder) Arabica coffee prices sank to 6-1/2 year lows and teetered on the brink of $1 per lb on Wednesday as investors continued to bet on lower prices due to expectations of record crops in top-growers in South America, while cocoa eased from the previous day’s spike.

Wait, a record coffee crop? How is that possible? Oh, wait, my bad, I forgot that Warmists predict doom 50-100 years out. Because all their short term predictions fail, so they have to try and scare people based on something that “might” happen.

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Bummer: Uninsured Not Checking Out Healthcare.fail

By William Teach November 8, 2013 – 7:20 am

At least not at the moment

(Politico) Less than a quarter of uninsured Americans who plan to get health insurance through the Affordable Care Act exchanges have been to an exchange website, a new poll shows.

Asked if they’ve been to any government health insurance website since they were launched on Oct. 1, only 22 percent of the uninsured who said they planned on using the exchanges said yes, according to a Gallup poll out Friday.

Among uninsured Americans in total, the number is less than one in five: Only 18 percent said they have been to any exchange website.

As to those who have been to an Exchange website, one has to wonder how many surfed over on a lark, in order to see the #Fail or something else, with no intention to obtain insurance. I’ve been on 404Care.gov multiple times, but I have insurance. The question from Gallup was very simple

Perhaps some were very concerned over the fact that, at least for healthcare.gov, security measures are pathetic, if not wholly absent. The certification for the website may have been fraudulently signed.

Meanwhile, Politico also notes that the young healthies aren’t signing up, either

Everyone knows that a couple of million young, healthy people will have to sign up for Obamacare to succeed. But there’s one big problem with that: They’ll probably wait until the last minute.

While older and sicker people have good reason to more aggressively try to get covered, the younger, healthier people aren’t likely to exhibit much patience with a balky website. They’re likely to put off the mandatory insurance sign up until much closer to the March 2014 deadline.

The turd of a law rests upon the notion that young healthies will sign up and pay through the nose in order to cover the older and/or unhealthy. Not happening. Liberals like those at the Politico are really, really hoping that they will sign up at the last moment

One recent study by the Commonwealth Fundfound that one in five visitors to the state or federal enrollment sites was aged 19 to 29, and about half were 30 to 49. The Obama administration wants seven million people in the exchanges by the end of March, 2.7 million of them aged 18 to 35.

Team O and their backers are telling people to Not Panic yet, there is still time before the March 31 deadline. On April 1, they’ll probably….Blame Republicans.

BTW, Obama supposedly apologized for people losing their health plans. Not for lying about keeping your plan dozens of times, of course.

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White House To Issue “Sweeping” Mental Health Rules

By William Teach November 8, 2013 – 6:58 am

Many were wondering on Thursday why HHS chief-incompetent Kathleen Sebelius was heading to Atlanta. Some wondered whether she would announce a delay for Obamacare. Nope

(The Hill) The Obama administration will issue long awaited regulations Friday that require insurers to treat mental illness and addiction the same as physical illnesses, current and former lawmakers said.

In testimony Thursday before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee, mental health advocate and former Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.) said Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius would announce the action during a speech in Atlanta. Members of the panel familiar with the rule-making also said the regulations would be issued Friday.

The Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act of 2008 was passed through a rider on the TARP legislation in October 2008, following on the heals of the 1996 Mental Health Parity Act, which had sunset provisions and was reathorized multiple times. One has to wonder exactly why it took the Obama administration 5 years to enact the rules of the MHPAEA.

One also has to wonder why this is a big deal, considering the there all already rules in place for the 1996 law that require insurers to treat mental illness the same as physical illness, and to provide coverage for mental illness via health insurance. Let’s ask the NY Times

The rules, which will apply to almost all forms of insurance, will have far-reaching consequences for many Americans. In the White House, the regulations are also seen as critical to President Obama’s program for curbing gun violence by addressing an issue on which there is bipartisan agreement: Making treatment more available to those with mental illness could reduce killings, including mass murders.

In issuing the regulations, senior officials said, the administration will have acted on all 23 executive actions that the president and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. announced early this year to reduce gun crimes after the Newtown, Conn., school massacre. In planning those actions, the administration anticipated that gun control legislation would fail in Congress as pressure from the gun lobby proved longer-lasting than the national trauma over the killings of first graders and their caretakers last Dec. 14.

So this is really about changing the subject. I wonder if any intrepid reporter will ask Sebelius why it took the Smartest President Evah!!!! 5 years to finalize the rules.

While laws and regulations dating to 1996 took initial steps in requiring insurance parity for medical and mental health, “here we’re doing full parity, and we’ve also taken steps to extend it to the people covered in the Affordable Care Act,” the senior official said. “This is kind of the final word on parity.”

Anyone else think that this will mean an even bigger jump in insurance prices? However, the law itself does not apply to any business with 50 or less employees. Will Team Obama note that?

Crossed at Right Wing News and Stop The ACLU.

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Alaskans Losing Their Plans They Like, “But It’s Not Really What You Think”

By William Teach November 7, 2013 – 5:55 pm

Yet more Americans losing their plans because of Democrats and Obamacare

(Alaska Dispatch) Premera Blue Cross, Alaska’s largest health care provider, said last week that about 5,400 Alaskans on individual plans received cancellation notices in September, because those plans do not meet the requirements under the Affordable Care Act. That’s more than half of the 9,000 Alaskans who have individual health care plans through Premera.

The letters informed Alaskans of the cancellation, and says they’ll be matched up to a new plan that most closely matches their old one, and automatically enrolled in the plan.

Sure, it’s not the same as 150K losing their plans in Oregon, but, then, this is just one provider, and the population of Alaska is smaller. The article then goes on to wonder if the letters are “deceptive”, because they don’t mention healthcare.fail and folks will automatically be enrolled in a much more expensive plan if they do nothing. But, why the cancellations/changes?

The Affordable Care Act changed the requirements for health care plans. All plans in place after the bill was signed into law were dumped, and replaced with plans that have more benefits and restrictions, and often higher costs.

There are “10 essential health benefits” that all insurance coverage must carry, including maternity care, behavioral health treatment, prescription drugs, laboratory tests and preventive services. There are no lifetime coverage caps, so people can receive as much coverage as necessary throughout their lives.

Insurers have no choice.

  • 300,000 from Florida Blue
  • 160,00 from California’s Kaiser Permanente
  • 119,00 from California’s Blue Shield
  • Some reports say over 700,000 in California will lose their plans
  • From Pennsylvania, Insurance Highmark in Pittsburgh and Independence Blue Cross in Philadelphia plan to cancel 20 percent and 45 percent of their total plans
  • 800,000 New Jersey residents will see their plans go away
  • We know Colorado residents are losing their plans, since Michelle Malkin was a recipient of a cancellation notice.
  • We know folks in States like North Carolina are losing their plans, we just don’t know how many. Yet.
  • 140,000 in Minnesota
  • 150,000 in Oregon
  • 290,000 in Washington state

So far.

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“Pause” May Last For Another 20 Years

By William Teach November 7, 2013 – 2:25 pm

So says a new study

(Daily Mail) The 17-year pause in global warming is likely to last into the 2030s and the Arctic sea ice has already started to recover, according to new research.

A paper in the peer-reviewed journal Climate Dynamics – by Professor Judith Curry of the Georgia Institute of Technology and Dr Marcia Wyatt – amounts to a stunning challenge to climate science orthodoxy.

Not only does it explain the unexpected pause, it suggests that the scientific majority – whose views are represented by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – have underestimated the role of natural cycles and exaggerated that of greenhouse gases.

The research comes amid mounting evidence that the computer models on which the IPCC based the gloomy forecasts of a rapidly warming planet in its latest report, published in September, are diverging widely from reality.

The pause means there has been no statistically significant increase in world average surface temperatures since the beginning of 1997, despite the models’ projection of a steeply rising trend.

This is in the context of the “stadium wave”, where cycles come and go. You can read more about this over at Judith Curry’s blog. As I always state, we will see what we see.

Then you have this

(The Hockey Schtick) Dr. Jasper Kirkby, head of the CLOUD Experiment at CERN in Geneva notes in the video lecture below that if one extrapolates the current lull in solar activity, an extended period of no sunspots similar to the Maunder Minimum could occur by 2015. The Maunder Minimum was responsible for the Little Ice Age and lasted for 70 years.

Now, this goes back to a 2011 lecture series which highlighted the roll of the Sun in driving climate (which Warmists tend to minimize or ignore). Again, we shall see what we see. What we are seeing is the failure of Warmist models, and talking points, to predict climate. Hence their reliance on yammering about what will happen in 50-100 years, when most will have forgotten the prognostications.

Read: “Pause” May Last For Another 20 Years »

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If All You See…

By William Teach November 7, 2013 – 1:00 pm

…is a world flooded due to using plastic water bottles, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Raised On Hoecakes, with a post on a home invasion where the homeowner pulling a gun is “bizarre behavior”.

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Sorry, Colorado Residents, 250K Of You Can’t Keep Your Plan

By William Teach November 7, 2013 – 9:21 am

Um, surprise?

(Fox News) Almost 250,000 Colorado residents have or will have their health insurance plans cancelled under ObamaCare, the state’s Division of Insurance said Wednesday.

A spokesman for the agency said in a press release that the plans are being cancelled for numerous reasons, one being that some of the plans do not meet the new requirements for patient care under the Affordable Care Act.

The agency stated that so far under ObamaCare, 106,083 people in the individual market have lost their plans and 143,116 people in the small group market have lost theirs.

Fortunately, Delaware signed up 4 people.

So: Alabama (87,000), Alaska (5,400), California (279,000), Florida (300,000), Kansas (20,000), Kentucky (280,000), Michigan (140,000), Minnesota (146,000), Montana (20,000), New Jersey (800,000), New York (100,000), Oregon (150,000), Wyoming and (2,600), Pennsylvania (64,000), Washington (266,000), Wisconsin (9,000 – Madison only), District of Columbia (76,000 – Washington D.C. metropolitan area, includes Maryland and Virginia), Colorado (250,000)

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