If All You See…

By William Teach May 11, 2013 – 1:00 pm

…is champagne that will be be made in Siberia due to climate change, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is The People’s Cube, with a post on “stylistic editing”.

Read: If All You See… »

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Hooray! Fish And Wildlife OK With Condor Deaths From Wind Farms

By William Teach May 11, 2013 – 12:42 pm

Sucks to be a condor, which is a federally protected bird on the endangered animals list, listed as “critically endangered”, being one of the world’s most rare birds. There’s only around 226 left in the wild

(LA Times) Federal wildlife officials took the unprecedented step Friday of telling private companies that they will not be prosecuted for inadvertently harassing or even killing endangered California condors.

In a decision swiftly condemned by conservationists and wildlife advocates, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said operators of Terra-Gen Power’s wind farm in the Tehachapi Mountains will not be prosecuted if their turbines accidentally kill a condor during the expected 30-year life span of the project.

PS: They also exempted a private development which includes luxury homes and golf courses. And, yes, I’m on the side of the condors. Just because I’m not a Warmist doesn’t mean I’m not an environmentalist.

Read: Hooray! Fish And Wildlife OK With Condor Deaths From Wind Farms »

Posted in Energy, Environment, Global Warming | 10 Comments | Trackback URL

Cows?

By William Teach May 11, 2013 – 9:47 am

Read: Cows? »

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Immigration Bill Mandates Biometric Information On All Adult Americans

By William Teach May 11, 2013 – 7:43 am

Everyone should Tweet Marco Rubio and ask him what this is all about

(Wired) The immigration reform measure the Senate began debating yesterday would create a national biometric database of virtually every adult in the U.S., in what privacy groups fear could be the first step to a ubiquitous national identification system.

Buried in the more than 800 pages of the bipartisan legislation (.pdf)  is language mandating the creation of the innocuously-named “photo tool,” a massive federal database administered by the Department of Homeland Security and containing names, ages, Social Security numbers and photographs of everyone in the country with a driver’s license or other state-issued photo ID.

Employers would be obliged to look up every new hire in the database to verify that they match their photo.

While the idea is interesting in terms of verifying who the person applying for a job is and whether they are legally eligible to work in the USA, and it’s certainly easier to match a photo from a government issued ID to a photo held in a database, one has to wonder about the privacy concerns raised.

This piece of the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act is aimed at curbing employment of undocumented immigrants. But privacy advocates fear the inevitable mission creep, ending with the proof of self being required at polling places, to rent a house, buy a gun, open a bank account, acquire credit, board a plane or even attend a sporting event or log on the internet. Think of it as a government version of Foursquare, with Big Brother cataloging every check-in.

Let’s not forget that your Social Security number was meant solely for identification to the Social Security administration, now it’s used for lots and lots of different things, including Obamacare identification and tracking.

Perhaps if the legislation provides hard assurances that this will not go any further, it might be palatable. But, said promise would be as worthless as “if you like your insurance, you can keep it”.

Read: Immigration Bill Mandates Biometric Information On All Adult Americans »

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CO2 Passes 400ppm, Global Climate Shrug Shoulders

By William Teach May 11, 2013 – 7:00 am

Warmists have been anticipating CO2 hitting the CO2 mark with glee, much like they anticipated death milestones during the Iraq war (well, at least while Bush was president), and now they get their wish

(NY Times) The level of the most important heat-trapping gas in the atmosphere, carbon dioxide, has passed a long-feared milestone, scientists reported Friday, reaching a concentration not seen on the earth for millions of years.

Yet, the global temperature is stagnant, and it only rose a miniscule .28F since 1990 and .14F since 1997.

The best available evidence suggests the amount of the gas in the air has not been this high for at least three million years, before humans evolved, and scientists believe the rise portends large changes in the climate and the level of the sea.

Justin Gillis means the best water pool scrying, because over 80% of the lower 48 has been below average during 2013. Hurricane activity has been below average for years. Tornado activity is way below average. Antarctica’s temps have been flatlined or dropping. This spring has been the coldest on record (so far). Europe saw it’s 4th harsh winter out of the last 5. Alaska’s average temp has dropped 2.4F over the last 10 years. Lots of instances of snow in the Middle East.

“It symbolizes that so far we have failed miserably in tackling this problem,” said Pieter P. Tans, who runs the monitoring program at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that reported the new reading.

Virtually every automobile ride, every plane trip and, in most places, every flip of a light switch adds carbon dioxide to the air, and relatively little money is being spent to find and deploy alternative technologies.

And Warmists still haven’t given up their own fossil fueled vehicles. Kyoto was a failure. Carbon markets are at junk bond status.

Warmists have been proclaiming doom since 1988. Before that, people, including those at the NY Times, were proclaiming doom from a coming ice age. Before that, from warmth. And cooling. And warmth. This goes back to the late 1800’s, when newspapers were able to do mass printings. So far, no doom, and the global climate is failing to respond to the Warmist’s computer models.

If you want to have fun, head over to the Memeorandum link, then to the liberal sites listed, and ask them why they haven’t given up their own fossil fueled vehicles.

Crossed at Right Wing News and Stop The ACLU.

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

Strange: Most Media Spent Little Time On Benghazi Hearings

By William Teach May 10, 2013 – 2:44 pm

Well, you’ve already been treated to the E-trade baby and his shocked face, so I’ll spare you

(MRC) Wednesday’s congressional hearings on the September 11 terrorists attacks in Benghazi provided a stark contrast between Fox News Channel and MSNBC. From the time the whistleblower testimony began at 11:36am through their conclusion after 5pm, FNC devoted 108 minutes to simply airing the hearing with no anchor commentary. MSNBC, in comparison didn’t allow any live coverage. Instead, the cable network aired a scant five minutes and 20 seconds of taped snippets of testimony.

CNN came in second, allowing a mere 17 minutes of footage. After the 2pm hour, CNN lost all interest, instead the network’s anchors eagerly promoted the coming verdict in the Jodi Arias murder trial. (FNC’s reporting on the story after 2pm dropped off to five minutes of taped footage.) The hearings commenced at 11:36 and so did Fox’s coverage. CNN waited until noon to break in and MSNBC came in last at 12:17 (with a taped report and discussion only).

That’s 108 minutes of live coverage for Fox News, 17 for CNN, and zero for MSNBC.

I’m not particularly surprised that CBS, NBC, and ABC did not provide live coverage, they rarely do, people might lynch them if they pre-empt the soaps. But, let’s look at the evening news

(MRC) In total, the three network evening newscasts gave a combined 19 minutes 12 seconds to coverage of the kidnapping case, while only 10 minutes 3 seconds to the new Benghazi revelations. A nearly 2-to-1 disparity.

[UPDATE: On Thursday night, May 9, ABC’s World News and the CBS Eevening News didn’t mention Benghazi. NBC Nightly News offered 27 seconds on House Speaker John Boehner’s call for the release of State Department e-mails.]

None led with the hearings. Nor did their morning shows on Thursday provide real coverage, only 7 minutes overall to 56 for Jodi Arias. Just imagine if Obama was a Republican, or had John McCain been president. Consider the wall to wall lead story coverage for Abu Ghraib for weeks, an issue which the DoD had been investigating for 6 months prior to being exposed, and conducted by low level soldiers being jerks, where no-one was killed nor really injured, just their feelings.

Related, the talking points for Benghazi were changed 12 times, per ABC’s exclusive (kudos for printing the story, perhaps someone other than CBS’ Sharyl Attkinson is interested in journalism before politics). Obviously, the liberals linked in the Memeorandum pull are spinning furiously.

Read: Strange: Most Media Spent Little Time On Benghazi Hearings »

Posted in Barry Obama, Current Affairs, Democrats, War On Terrorism | 5 Comments | Trackback URL

If All You See…

By William Teach May 10, 2013 – 1:00 pm

…are non CFLs using vast amounts of power causing the world to burn, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Nice Deb, with a post on SEAL Team 6 families going after the government.

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Posted in If All You See | 1 Comment | Trackback URL

Why The New Star Trek Doesn’t Interest Me

By William Teach May 10, 2013 – 12:40 pm

You can call me a Trekkie. I grew up constantly watching repeats of the original Star Trek. I loved the Next Generation. Deep Space Nine. Voyager. Most of the movies, especially The Wrath Of Khan. I’ve moved on from reading the books, but, when they first started being published, I read them religiously, either buying them or getting them at the library. Over time, I probably purchased or borrowed 60-70 Star Trek books, most of them revolving around either the original Trek universe or pre-Kirk times. I still have a few around, though I donated most to the local libraries here in Wake County when I moved about 6 years ago or in Brielle, NJ, when my parents cleaned everything out to move to their smaller retirement house.

But, now we get to the reboot. I enjoyed the way JJ Abrams made it happen by splitting off to a new time line (though, if we look at the original timeline, there is no way in hell children and babies, as well as pregnant women, would be on a starship traveling into the far reaches of dangerous space, which was the whole point of the original program, per the books….yeah, geek mode on). Here’s: the problem:

..the whole thing breaks down when you realize that Kirk hadn’t even gone through the full course for Star Fleet Academy, and was still essentially a “young adult”, when he’s given command of a starship, the equivalent of giving a 1st year Annapolis cadet command of a carrier.

That’s the comment I left over at the UK Independent for their film review of Into Darkness (via BenK’s news dump). I can’t get beyond that part. Kirk had barely started as a cadet when they had this call up for everyone to get on a ship and go fight. He hadn’t graduated. He hadn’t even commanded a shuttle. Maybe he has the mental ability to do the job, and demonstrated that, I guess, but was there no one else in the chain of command to take over the Enterprise than a kid who had no experience, and surely hadn’t had time to “learn why things work on a starship”? Does anyone think that Star Fleet Command would hand over the US Navy equivalent of a carrier to Kirk once the emergency was over, promoting him to captain? Or would they have assigned someone who had been around for awhile, and perhaps fast tracked Kirk, once he frigging graduated, to becoming a command officer, sticking him on a small ship as a 2nd or 3rd officer to learn under someone who has, you know, experience?

It makes no sense, and, yeah, I know, movie. But, there’s pushing the boundaries of believability and then there’s flying several galaxies beyond. So, yeah, I have no intention of seeing the movie, nor renting it on DVD.

Read: Why The New Star Trek Doesn’t Interest Me »

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Obama’s Completely Separate OFA Still Trying “Climate Change” Campaign

By William Teach May 10, 2013 – 12:07 pm

Most polls typically find “climate change” to be low on the priority scale for Americans, with things like jobs, the economy, making government more efficient, and so many other issues taking precedence. If you’re just discussing real environmental issues, the care for the issue rises. Throw in “climate change”, it drops. So, of course the completely independent from Obama Organizing For Obama Action is pushing the issue hard

(The Hill) The advocacy group born from President Obama’s reelection campaign is blasting Republicans who doubt the science supporting climate change, saying GOP lawmakers who deny a human cause of climate change are wearing “tin foil hats.”

The email from Organizing for Action (OFA) is the latest effort by the pro-Obama group to criticize GOP climate skeptics.

“Break out the tin foil hats, folks,” it says.

“House Speaker John Boehner and the chairman of the House Science Committee are both unsure whether the science behind climate change – the stuff that shows pretty clearly that carbon pollution produced by humans is damaging our environment – is real,” adds the email from OFA Chair Jim Messina, who was Obama’s campaign manager.

Some days I’m sorry I removed all my email addresses from Obama’s lists (but then I remember how often I was getting spammed, and that they were sharing the data all over the place), because I miss this kind of craziness. Anyhow, as far as tin foil hats go, remember these numbers:

  • 0.28F increase in global temperature since 1990
  • 0.14F increase in global temperature since 1997

Not particularly scary, wouldn’t you say? But, if OFA is truly worried about “climate change”, they should concern troll Obama and all the other Democrats who continue to take fossil fueled flights and travel in fossil fueled autos, telling them to stop. Furthermore, they should concern troll Obama and the Dems to refuse to take campaign donations from all oil and coal companies. And divest their portfolios from the same.

Read: Obama’s Completely Separate OFA Still Trying “Climate Change” Campaign »

Posted in AGW Idiocy, Barking Moonbats, Barry Obama, Democrats, Global Warming | 1 Comment | Trackback URL

Obama’s Wonderful DOE Green Programs Spent $26 Billion On Less Than 3,000 Jobs

By William Teach May 10, 2013 – 7:52 am

Don’t worry, Obama’s cool with this, it’s Someone Else’s money, and he can always get more

(Institute for Energy Research) Without much fanfare, the Department of Energy (DOE) recently updated the list of loan guarantee projects on its website. Unlike in 2008, when Barack Obama pledged to create 5 million jobs over 10 years by directing taxpayer funds toward renewable energy projects, there were no press conferences or stump speeches. But the data are nonetheless revealing: for the over $26 billion spent since 2009, DOE Section 1703 and 1705 loan guarantees have created only 2,298 permanent jobs for a cost of over $11.45 million per job.

Shocker, eh? Cue the E-trade baby

I still hate those commercials. Just like I hate wasting taxpayer money on endeavors that are mostly bound to fail. Most of the waste on the DOE list comes from solar company investment. Cue the E-trade baby again.

As the astronomical cost of the DOE’s loan guarantee program indicates, subsidizing renewable energy is not a good deal for taxpayers. But loan guarantees are just one of the ways the federal government bankrolls risky green energy projects. Energy-related tax preferences cost taxpayers about $13.5 billion in FY 2012, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation. But solar and wind power, for which the majority of the tax preferences for renewable energy were directed, produced only 3.6 percent of the nation’s generation in 2012. In addition, the Treasury Department’s 1603 grant program, which offers cash payments to renewable energy companies, cost taxpayers $5.8 billion in 2012. Many states also subsidize green energy through tax preferences as well as requiring renewable electricity mandates that require a specified amount of electricity to be generated from qualified renewable sources like wind and solar.

While attempting to create more alternative energy sources is a laudable goal, doing it in this manner is clearly wasteful and worthless

Read: Obama’s Wonderful DOE Green Programs Spent $26 Billion On Less Than 3,000 Jobs »

Posted in AGW Idiocy, Barry Obama, Energy | 5 Comments | Trackback URL
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