If All You See…

By William Teach May 31, 2013 – 1:00 pm

…is an evil CO2 infused beer causing the end of all species, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Five Feet Of Fury, with a post highlighting true idiocy regarding the atomic bomb defeating Japan.

Read: If All You See… »

Posted in If All You See | 2 Comments | Trackback URL

Bummer: Hybrid Drivers Could Pay More In North Carolina

By William Teach May 31, 2013 – 12:55 pm

Gee, who would have seen this coming? (via GC from Raised On Hoecakes)

(News 14) North Carolina drivers who use hybrid cars could end up paying for it in the long run.

State lawmakers in the Senate have proposed drivers pay an additional fee if they drive a hybrid or electric car.

They are the car industry’s answer to going green. Gas prices are a big reason the hybrid cars have become more popular but if you own one in North Carolina it could cost you.

One item in the Senate budget calls for drivers to pay an additional fee when they renew their car registration. For hybrid cars the fee would be $50, electric cars the fee would be $100. Since hybrid cars use less gas supporters say the fees would help the state collect that money they lose from the gas tax back in order to fund road projects.

What’s happening is that the State, like most states and the federal government, rely upon the revenue stream from gas taxes (NC’s is one of the highest in the country). When people are using less gas that stream is reduced, so they have to make up the shortfall somehow. And this is one way to do it (I have an article somewhere back in the archives about this, sorry, no time to find it before work). It is a direct outcome of the Government’s policies for better CAFE standards and causing gas prices to rise. And then government complains about the dip in the revenue stream.

I will say that I disagree with this notion of higher fees: government needs to learn to do more with less, not penalize people for doing what government wanted them yo do.

Read: Bummer: Hybrid Drivers Could Pay More In North Carolina »

Posted in Energy, NC News | 1 Comment | Trackback URL

Warmist: Global Warming Induced Cold Bad For Birds

By William Teach May 31, 2013 – 10:25 am

I bet Warmists can smell the color green. Or, possibly, “facepalm Red” (via Tom Nelson)

(Laura’s Birding Blog) This year’s exceptionally cold spring is exacting a toll on many birds. …

We can never blame any particular weather event, or any individual seasonal weather pattern, on climate change, but ironically, this freakishly cold spring is consistent with predictions for a steadily warming planet.

Read: Warmist: Global Warming Induced Cold Bad For Birds »

Posted in AGW Idiocy, Global Warming | 3 Comments | Trackback URL

Obama Has “No Patience For People Who Deny Hotcoldwetdry”

By William Teach May 31, 2013 – 8:31 am

This from a the guy with the largest “carbon footprint” on the planet

(The Hill) President Obama, echoing his new Energy secretary’s recent comments, said late Wednesday that he’s open to new climate policy ideas but has no interest in battling over whether climate change is real.

“If I’ve got somebody who has a different approach to dealing with climate change — I don’t have much patience for people who deny climate change, but if you’ve got creative approaches, market-based approaches, tell me about them,” Obama said at a Democratic fundraiser in Chicago.

I’d guess Obama has no patience for himself, since he is actually denying “climate change”

But Obama may have invited fresh debate Wednesday by noting, “We also know that the climate is warming faster than anybody anticipated five or 10 years ago.”

Surface air temperatures have increased more slowly than predicted over the last 10 to 15 years, leading to ongoing analysis among scientists of reasons why, such as the role of oceans in heat uptake and other factors.

As I’ve written time and time again, according to the Met Office data the world temperature has risen a tiny 0.28F since 1990 and 0.14F since 1997. If the Modern Warm Period is so horrible, why aren’t Vikings farming in Greenland? The temperatures are not warm enough now to do what the Vikings did back during the Medieval Warm Period.

If Obama is really concerned, he can start by not taking the constant fossil fueled flights criss-crossing the county followed by huge motorcades, all for short campaign style appearances or fund-raisers. Oh, and big motorcades to go play golf. And turn that AC off in the White House, because it is Bad for hotcoldwetdry. Open the windows, catch the fresh air. Stop using washers and driers, which are also bad for hotcoldwetdry. The White House has huge grounds, perfect for line drying.

Read: Obama Has “No Patience For People Who Deny Hotcoldwetdry” »

Posted in AGW Idiocy, Barry Obama, Climahypocrites, Global Warming | 3 Comments | Trackback URL

Good News: Obama Holds IRS Agent Accountable By Giving Him A Promotion

By William Teach May 31, 2013 – 8:08 am

As the House Ways and Means and Oversight committees get ready to question IRS employees at the Cincinnati office, we learn something interesting

(Washington Examiner) President Obama may have promised “to hold the responsible parties accountable” for the Internal Revenue Service targeting of conservative non-profit groups, but one of the agents at the center of the scandal was recently promoted, an IRS source tells The Washington Examiner.

Through 2012, then-Exempt Organization Specialist Stephen Seok signed many of the intimidating letters sent to conservative nonprofits. For example, this January 2012 letter sent to the Richmond Tea Party demanded the date, time and location of all group events, as well as copies of all handouts provided at the events, and the names and credentials of all organizers. Seok also demanded the names of all speakers and the contents of the speeches they made.

According to WXIX-TV/Fox 19 in Cincinnati, Seok is no longer an exempt organization specialist. He has since been promoted to  “supervisor IRS agent.”

Obviously, Obama did not promote Seok himself, but as the head of the Executive Branch, what is he doing, other than Making Pronouncements That He’s Upset And Will Do Something? Because rarely does Obama’s Pronouncements Of Being Upset turn into actual action.

An interesting tidbit from that WXIX link (which wasn’t discussing the promotion, but did mention his grade), which goes back to May 21st

The six Cincinnati workers we have identified, who sent scrutinizing letters to conservative groups with words including “patriot, liberty, tea party or 9-12” in their names are Mitchel Steele, Carly Young, Joseph Herr, Stephen Seok, Liz Hofacre and a woman identified only as Ms. Richards.

But according to the IRS employee directory that FOX19 has obtained exclusively, each of these agents has a different manager and then above them a different territory manager.

So how did this disparate group in different chains end up doing the same thing, ie, targeting Conservative groups? Maybe there’s a bit of ESP going on. Or, perhaps

So who in the chain of command would have received all these flags?  The answer, according to the IRS directory,  one woman in Cincinnati, Cindy Thomas, the Program Manager of the Tax Exempt Division.  Because all six of our IRS workers have different individual and territory managers, Cindy Thomas is one manager they all have common.

When is she going to be questioned? WXIX reports she may be called. There shouldn’t be any “may” about it.

Crossed at Right Wing News and Stop The ACLU.

Read: Good News: Obama Holds IRS Agent Accountable By Giving Him A Promotion »

Posted in Barry Obama, Current Affairs | 2 Comments | Trackback URL

Say, Where Do Greenhouse Gases Come From?

By William Teach May 30, 2013 – 4:13 pm

If you’re thinking “well, mostly from nature, especially since the oceans put out 16 times more CO2 than Mankind does, and water vapor is the #1 GHG”, well, um, it seems Grist and the Warmists forgot that part

Here’s a tiny version of a large, information-dense graphic from research consultancy Ecofys:

(WT: I’m giving you the tiny version)

You should click and look at the big version, or better yet get the PDF from Ecofys and zoom in really close, where you can see the sectors further broken down.

Now, if you head over to Grist or click on the PFD link you might notice what is missing: natural sources of GHGs, which are considerably larger than anything Mankind does. But, that would harm the narrative that Mankind is evil (say, I wonder how much GHGs the websites and servers for Grist and Ecofys, as well as the Disqus commenting system Grist uses, put out. And the computers they use. And the electricity to run them.)

No grand conclusions to draw, just something to think on. Every one of these sources can be dialed down, through conservation and efficiency if nothing else, but off the top of my head I’d say the easiest targets for rapid emission reductions, in no particular order, are: 1) stop chopping forests down, 2) zero out emissions from residential and commercial buildings, 3) capture methane everywhere, from agriculture to energy to solid waste, 4) reduce vehicle-miles-traveled with densification and transit, then electrify the hell out of everything else in transportation.

All by Government decree, right? You first, chumps.

Anyway, what do you think? What are the top-line lessons of this graphic?

Well, mostly that Warmists are liars and full of mule fritters, hiding the full measure of GHGs. And that they do not understand science or reality.

Read: Say, Where Do Greenhouse Gases Come From? »

Posted in AGW Idiocy, Global Warming | 3 Comments | Trackback URL

If All You See…

By William Teach May 30, 2013 – 1:00 pm

…is horrible concrete releasing vast amounts of CO2 causing the planet to boil, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is The Blogmocracry, with a post on the evils of a “living Constitution”.

Read: If All You See… »

Posted in If All You See | 4 Comments | Trackback URL

Oh, Noes: “Climate Change Thaws Out 400 Year Old Plants”

By William Teach May 30, 2013 – 11:33 am

We’re doomed!!!!!!

(Grist) As glaciers melt and slowly recede from the land they once covered, we don’t really know what we’re going to find there. Scientists have already found plants that have been chilling out under glaciers for about four centuries — plants that, now that they’re out from under the ice, have decided to start growing again.

These plants are of a specific type, called bryophytes. Plants like this (moss is one example) don’t have vascular tissue to shuttle water and nutrients around, which means they deal better with harsh Arctic winters. When a team of scientists from the University of Alberta was poking around the receding Teardrop Glacier, they happened upon a patches of bryophytes sneaking out from under the ice — “these huge populations coming out from underneath the glacier that seemed to have a greenish tint,” the lead researcher, Catherine La Farge, told the BBC.

Obviously, this means dooooooooom! So much doom that Sarah Laskow, the Grist article writer, offers up

We’re kind of nervous about what else might be under there. Santa Claus? Frozen aliens that will end civilization as we know it? (That would probably be better for the planet as a whole.)

Yeah, another Warmist with fantasies of killing off the human population.

But, consider, switching to the original BBC article

Plants that were frozen during the “Little Ice Age” centuries ago have been observed sprouting new growth, scientists say.

That is exposing land that has not seen light of day since the so-called Little Ice Age, a widespread climatic cooling that ran roughly from AD 1550 to AD 1850.

But the retreating ice at Sverdrup Pass, where the Teardrop Glacier is located, is uncovering an array of life, including cyanobacteria and green terrestrial algae. Many of the species spotted there are entirely new to science.

How’d they get there in the first place? How’d they grow in the first place? Magic? Alas, poor Warmists, they grew when the climate was warmer, pre-LIA, and then were covered during the LIA, meaning, I’m sorry to tell you, that there are natural climate variance periods, just like the current one we are in.

Read: Oh, Noes: “Climate Change Thaws Out 400 Year Old Plants” »

Posted in Collapsing Science, Global Warming | 3 Comments | Trackback URL

The Lois Lerner State Of Oppression

By William Teach May 30, 2013 – 7:26 am

Rich Lowry provides an opinion piece over at The Politico on the real problem with Big Government, entitled The Lois Lerner State

It is appropriate that the worst scandal of the Obama administration— the IRS targeting of conservatives — is a scandal of administrators and bureaucrats, of otherwise faceless people endowed with immense power over their fellow citizens and running free of serious oversight from elected officials.

They are the shock troops of the vast bureaucratic apparatus of the federal government. Its growth has been one of President Obama’s chief goals, and the one he has had the most success in achieving. He has greatly enhanced the reach and power of regulatory agencies that are an inherent offense against self-government, even when they aren’t enforcing the law in a biased way.

The administration’s corruption isn’t bags of cash or lies about interns; it is the distortion of our form of government by sidestepping democratic procedures and accountability and vesting authority in bureaucrats. The administrative state is, fundamentally, the Lois Lerner state.

What have we seen? Officials pleading the 5th along with seemingly having no knowledge as to what is going on in their federal agencies. Spying on the news media as harassment and an attempt to chill freedom of the press. Unaccountable bureaucrats targeting Conservative groups while giving Liberal groups a free pass. Homeland Security Police monitoring, harassing, and attempting to intimidate citizens using their First Amendment rights to free speech, demonstrate peaceably, and asking for redress of grievance. The EPA instituting regulations going well beyond what the legislative branch authorizes, and harming individuals, companies, and the economy.

Let’s further not forget that Congress, in some cases, such as Obamacare and Dodd/Frank, gave and gives federal agencies massive amounts of power, latitude, and discretion. Obamacare is chock full of mentions that the head of HHS “shall do” and “can do”, leaving it in the hands of bureaucrats to make most of the rules as they see fit. Lowry mentions that in the piece, as well.

Currently, it is the Gang of 8 immigration bill. Its architects want to do for immigration what Obamacare does for health care and Dodd-Frank does for the financial sector — invest an administrator (in this case the secretary of the department of Homeland Security) with extraordinary discretion, and entrust a bureaucracy with an enormous task beyond its capacities (the orderly, rapid processing of 11 million illegal aliens).

We can’t blame this solely on Obama: it’s occurred under most presidents. Under Bush we saw the creation of DHS, though they were never used as a STASI like apparatus federal police force. The creation of the TSA. Though we never saw the overreach and personal violations as they instituted very intrusive full body patdowns. Under Obama, an unengaged POTUS who has used his bully pulpit to attack private citizens and entities that have different political points of view..a violation of the spirit of the 1st…, the power and abuses by federal agencies has grown tremendously. And seemingly unaccountable to The People. Let’s see you give the answer to your bosses that people like Holder and the IRS officials gave, see what they think of your performance. Or, try doing the same with the IRS if they come calling.

Read: The Lois Lerner State Of Oppression »

Posted in Constitution, Current Affairs | 10 Comments | Trackback URL

AP: You May Be Losing That Health Plan You Like Under Obamacare

By William Teach May 30, 2013 – 6:54 am

Nice to see that the Associated Press finally notices something that Obamacare opponents pointed out even before it was passed

Like your health care policy? You may be losing it

Many people who buy their own health insurance could get surprises in the mail this fall: cancellation notices because their current policies aren’t up to the basic standards of President Barack Obama’s health care law.

They, and some small businesses, will have to find replacement plans — and that has some state insurance officials worried about consumer confusion.

Many medium and large companies will also be dumping their plans for a variety of reasons, including the above, concern that one employee will obtain insurance through an exchange (meaning the company has to pay the fine for all its employees), it’s cheaper to let employees get insurance through the exchanges, and others.

The goal is to cover most of the nation’s nearly 50 million uninsured, but even Obama says there will be bumps in the road. And discontinued insurance plans could be another bump.

Now it’s 50 million? It was originally 30-40 million…oh,right, Obameconomy. Lots of people without jobs.

But supporters of the overhaul are betting that consumers won’t object once they realize the coverage they will get under the new law is superior to current bare-bones insurance. For example, insurers will no longer be able to turn people down because of medical problems.

They can’t turn people down now, even before exchanges go into effect. But, they can charge people out the ying yang for the coverage. And it’s not just “bare bones coverage plans” that will be dropped for the reasons, including being not in compliance.

Other bumps on the road to the new health care law include potentially unaffordable premiums for smokers unless states act to waive them, a new $63-per-head fee that will hit companies already providing coverage to employees and dependents, and a long-term care insurance program that had to be canceled because of the risk it could go belly up

Wait, wait, what’s this $63 per head fee? This is the first I’ve heard about it, but, apparently the news noticed it (quietly) back in mid-December 2012. It’s a fee designed to offset the cost of covering those with pre-existing conditions, to the tune of $25 billion. So, yet another fee/tax in a Bill chock full of fees/taxes.

The National Association of Insurance Commissioners says it is hearing that many carriers will cancel policies and issue new ones because administratively that is easier than changing existing plans.

So individuals and companies will have to then go insurance shopping. The insurance companies will surely send notices that include options, but people will have to deal with looking through it all, and it could include higher up front costs

“You’re going to be forcibly upgraded,” said Bob Laszewski, a health care industry consultant. “It’s like showing up at the airline counter and being told, ‘You have no choice, $300 please. You’re getting a first-class ticket, why are you complaining?'”

It seems that, so far, the majority of promises made about Obamacare have had expiration dates. This is exactly the train wreck opponents said it would be, with over 16,000 pages of regulations written so far, costs going up up up, overall government outlays going up up up, companies shifting employees to 30 hours or less, and not being able to keep your plan.

Crossed at Right Wing News and Stop The ACLU.

Read: AP: You May Be Losing That Health Plan You Like Under Obamacare »

Posted in Barry Obama, Healthcare | 3 Comments | Trackback URL
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