Around $31 Trillion At Risk From Climate Emergency (scam) Or Something

I’m actually surprised the big players in the Credentialed Media aren’t talking this up. They’re usually down with running scary fables of climate doom

Cities can lessen economic impact of climate change with green infrastructure

The loss of natural areas and declining biodiversity are putting the economies of many cities around the globe at risk. That’s according to a new report from the World Economic Forum, the organization behind the annual meeting of world leaders in Davos, Switzerland.

According to the report, about 44% of GDP in cities around the world is at risk of environmental disruption by flooding, drought, intense heat and pollution. That’s some $31 trillion dollars.

Notice there’s no timeline provided.

Over hundreds of years, humans have paved over streams and wetlands and cut down forests to build cities. Todd Gartner, who directs the Cities4Forests initiative at the World Resources Institute, said cities are now feeling the impact of that.

“More floods, worse air quality, food insecurity and higher unemployment,” said Gartner. In 2019, the World Economic Forum found that flooding alone cost cities more than $46 billion dollars.

That sounds like it has everything to do with land use, not global warming, natural or anthropogenic.

Many cities around the world are trying to change that trajectory by investing more in “green infrastructure” or “nature-based solutions.”

“We used to just call it nature before it was largely decimated,” said Kate Orff, a professor at Columbia University and the founder of the landscape architecture firm SCAPE.

“So, trees to clean our air, low points, woodland forests and floodplain forests to help absorb floodwaters, etc.,” Orff said.

How about tearing down parts of big cities? Oh, right, they’d rather take more money in taxes and fees, along with more control of citizens.

Read: Around $31 Trillion At Risk From Climate Emergency (scam) Or Something »

WHO: Chinese Coronavirus Pandemic Could Maybe Be Over By End Of Year

But only if nations go full Woke

COVID-19 health emergency could be over this year, WHO says

The worst of the coronavirus pandemic — deaths, hospitalizations and lockdowns — could be over this year if huge inequities in vaccinations and medicines are addressed quickly, the head of emergencies at the World Health Organization said Tuesday.

Dr. Michael Ryan, speaking during a panel discussion on vaccine inequity hosted by the World Economic Forum, said “we may never end the virus” because such pandemic viruses “end up becoming part of the ecosystem.”

But “we have a chance to end the public health emergency this year if we do the things that we’ve been talking about,” he said.

WHO has slammed the imbalance in COVID-19 vaccinations between rich and poor countries as a catastrophic moral failure. Fewer than 10% of people in lower-income countries have received even one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.

Ryan told the virtual gathering of world and business leaders that if vaccines and other tools aren’t shared fairly, the tragedy of the virus, which has so far killed more than 5.5 million people worldwide, would continue.

See, it’s so easy. All these rich countries which spent oodles of money developing vaccines, and already give a lot of aid in money, goods, and services, should simply give up their vaccines (which are already being sent in quantity to 3rd world shitholes developing nations). Further, it’s mostly 1st world nations, and some 2nd world ones, that are getting nailed with Omicron right now, and the vaccines have been shown to not stop infections. The 3rd world is mostly safe.

Ryan also waded into the growing debate about whether COVID-19 should be considered endemic, a label some countries like Spain have called for to better help live with the virus, or still a pandemic — involving intensified measures that many countries have taken to fight the spread.

“Endemic malaria kills hundreds of thousands of people; endemic HIV; endemic violence in our inner cities. Endemic in itself does not mean good. Endemic just means it’s here forever,” he said.

But, being still in pandemic gives some in government more power to control citizens.

Fellow panelist Gabriela Bucher, executive director of the anti-poverty organization Oxfam International, cited the “enormous urgency” of fairer distribution of vaccines and the need for large-scale production. She said resources to fight the pandemic were being “hoarded by a few companies and a few shareholders.”

You know, it’s interesting that none of them are aiming any barbs at China, which released this virus, and is putting out completely BS reports on infections, hospitalizations, and deaths among their citizens.

In a separate press briefing Tuesday, WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the omicron variant “continues to sweep the world,” adding there were 18 million new COVID-19 cases reported last week.

China is simply absolved. How about demanding China gives their vaccines to the developing world?

Read: WHO: Chinese Coronavirus Pandemic Could Maybe Be Over By End Of Year »

Climate Emergency Has Outsized Effect On Latinos Or Something

If this were an actual science the cultists wouldn’t have to play a Race Card or scaremonger: the science would speak for itself

Climate change hits home for Latinos

climate change joke

Latinos in the fight against climate change will gather this week during a virtual summit highlighting the community’s growing environmental activism.

The big picture: Climate change and pollution have outsized impacts on communities of color in the U.S.

  • Unsafe water is more common and studies show people of color are more vulnerable to wildfires and environmental disasters fueled by climate change.
  • A newly released Harvard study found majority Hispanic, Black and Asian neighborhoods across the country are consistently exposed to higher levels of pollution particles.
  • Climate change and pollutant exposure also cause greater displacementwealth loss and long term health issues for people of color.

By the numbers: 81% of Latinos in the U.S. consider addressing global climate change a priority, compared to 67% of non-Hispanics, according to a Pew Research Center poll.

Now, see, here’s where the problem lies: things like unsafe water, higher pollution, and pollutant exposure are environmental issues, and have zero to do with the climate crisis scam. But, instead of working to fix those environmental issues the climate cult rolls them into their policies, which never actually fix the issues. They just waste time and money on things that won’t help. And year after year after year those environmental problems persist.

Read: Climate Emergency Has Outsized Effect On Latinos Or Something »

If All You See…

…is heat snow from Other People driving fossil fueled vehicles, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Gates Of Vienna, with a post on thee Wuhan flu tales from Germany.

Read: If All You See… »

Why Are Capitol Police Arresting Protesters?

OK, they’re Very Stupid people, but,  regardless of my opinion of their politics, they are engaged in their 1st Amendment Right to protest peaceably and petition for redress of grievance. On the steps of the U.S. Capitol, pretty much the main point of those provisions. Protesting government. Especially Congress.

There’s a quote at the top of this blog “If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all,” which is, interestingly, from super-leftist Noam Chomsky (who doesn’t really practice what he says). Perhaps it should be “If we don’t believe in the 1st Amendment for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.” Who are they bothering? Are they really doing anything but sitting there and singing and calling out? And freezing, but, that’s their problem. Let them protest. If I was in D.C. I’d be tempted to go sit with them just to get arrested and say “I don’t agree with them, but, they have the Right to do this.”

Read: Why Are Capitol Police Arresting Protesters? »

Surprise: Rapid Chinese Coronavirus Tests Are No Guarantee

Biden’s been on a roll as of late, pushing rapid at home tests and N95 masks. He wants to send people tests for use at home (and you know the COVID cultists are ordering them right now without need, and those who actually need them won’t get them when they think they might be infected). How well will those tests work? (at Washington Post behind paywall)

They relied on rapid coronavirus tests to gather safely. Some wish they hadn’t.

Rona MacInnes, 54, was determined to do everything possible to protect her elderly mother as her family prepared to gather for Christmas in Pennington, N.J.

With her son returning from study in Dublin, MacInnes hoped serial at-home coronavirus tests would catch a coronavirus infection he might bring home. The college junior would take six rapid tests before the holiday, all of which returned negative results. But it would become clear only later – after he had spent time with his grandmother – that he had been infected the whole time. Several days after gathering for Christmas, he got a positive result back from the first available lab-based PCR test he was able to book.

The result floored and frightened MacInnes, creating fresh worries about her 80-year-old mother. The family quickly booked an appointment to get a PCR test for her mother that came back negative.

“Thankfully none of us have developed symptoms,” MacInnes said.

The promise of at-home tests to tell people whether they are infectious has been undercut not just by anecdotal reports like MacInnes’s, but by preliminary data that suggest some of the rapid tests may be less sensitive to the now-dominant omicron variant. Studies suggest they detect infections most reliably two to five days after exposure in people with high viral loads who are experiencing symptoms, which is why people are urged to take the tests serially. But even then, they are not foolproof. And for those who have taken pains to find out if their sniffle and sore throat might be harbingers of covid-19 to protect others, contradictory test results are often dismaying.

So, you have a bunch of COVID cultists constantly taking test after test after test, burning them up, while having no symptoms. Like using pregnancy tests after having no sex for a couple months. All to think they’re safe. Rather than not putting themselves in position to catch Wuhan flu. Much like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She wasn’t careful, even though vaccinated and boosted.

A New York woman who relied on negative rapid test results to go out with her friends on New Year’s Eve only to get back a positive PCR test result afterward said she believes the at-home tests offer “a false sense of security.”

They aren’t protection. They aren’t security. They’re for if you think you’ve been exposed and/or showing symptoms.

The Food and Drug Administration acknowledged the issue on Dec. 28, noting that “early data suggests that antigen tests do detect the omicron variant but may have reduced sensitivity.” A week later, a small preprint study that has not yet been peer-reviewed found the rapid tests failed to detect the virus on day zero and day one after infection for 30 individuals in New York and San Francisco. In 28 of those cases, PCR tests indicated that the patients’ virus levels were high enough on those days to make them infectious. (Several authors of the study serve as unpaid board members of SalivaDirect, a PCR test protocol affiliated with the Yale School of Public Health.)

A different big study found that Abbott’s BinaxNOW rapid test failed just 10% of the time. But, for the most part, the rapid home tests require a certain level of antigens to be detected. The smarter decision would be to focus more on the full PCR tests, find a way to bring costs down.

“Some people turn positive two days after exposure, some three days, some four days, some five days,” said William Schaffner, professor of infectious diseases and preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University. “All of this leads to a great deal of confusion.”

That uncertainty is why the tests were never designed to be used “as a ‘Get Out of Jail Free card,’ ” to leave quarantine or isolation, he added.

So, the vaccines do not prevent this? Huh. Still worth taking, since they mostly protect people from getting the harsh symptoms. But, Brandon’s idea to send the tests? A joke.

Read: Surprise: Rapid Chinese Coronavirus Tests Are No Guarantee »

Your Fault: Milder U.K. Winters Save Around 27,000 Lives Per Year

Darn you and your fossil fueled vehicle addiction! How dare you eat evil moo cows! It’s horrendous that you have central AC, a gas furnace, and a refrigerator!

Death warmed up: How Britain’s milder winters have ‘saved’ half a million lives

Half a million fewer people died in England and Wales as a result of cold weather as the climate warmed over the past 20 years, latest data from the Office for National Statistics has suggested.

Between 2001 and 2020, there was a decrease of 555,103 deaths associated with warm or cold temperature, about 27,000 a year, with the vast majority of the fall, 509,555, because of fewer people dying from the cold.

The Met Office has found that the period 1991-2020 was 0.9C warmer than the 1961-1990 average, while the 10 warmest years recorded have occurred since 2002.

To calculate what impact the changing temperature had on deaths, the ONS looked at how temperatures had impacted health conditions between 1990 and 2000, and calculated the change in the following two decades.

Let’s not forget that the 60’s through late 70’s was a slight cooling period, which would skew the temperatures for that time period down.

The figures showed that there were 108,722 extra hospitalisations associated with warm days over the period, but these did not lead to more deaths.

The ONS said that the findings confirmed climate change was affecting health in England and Wales, but said Britain’s temperate climate meant that the impact on deaths was limited and much of the health risk could be alleviated. (snip)

Cold weather can trigger respiratory and heart conditions, worsen dementia symptoms and depression, cause lethal injuries from slips, trips and falls, and increase car accidents.

The ONS study found that the biggest impact on mortality declines had come from falls in respiratory deaths, with 336,882 fewer deaths in the 20-year period compared to previous years.

There were also 270,280 fewer cardiovascular deaths and more than 100,000 fewer deaths from dementia of Alzheimer’s, with some conditions overlapping.

Of course, they go on to mention anthropogenic climate change. Why can’t this be mostly natural? Just like during the Medieval Warm Period, the Roman Warm Period, and others. None of which were caused mankind.

Read: Your Fault: Milder U.K. Winters Save Around 27,000 Lives Per Year »

Who’s Up For Massive Tax Raises In California To Pay For Universal Health Care

But, see, health care will be totally free! That’s what those advocating for it tell us

California weighing proposal that could double its taxes

California lawmakers unveiled a new bill at the beginning of the year that would establish a single-payer health care system – an ambitious plan that would be funded by nearly doubling the state’s already-high taxes.

A new analysis from the Tax Foundation, a non-partisan group that generally advocates for lower taxes, found that the proposed constitutional amendment would increase taxes by roughly $12,250 per household in order to fund the first-of-its-kind health care system. In all, the tax increases are designed to raise an additional $163 billion per year, which is more than California raised in total tax revenue any year before the pandemic.

The proposal includes three main revenue raisers, according to Jared Walczak, a fellow at the Tax Foundation: Higher income taxes on wealthy Americans, a payroll tax on certain employees’ wages for large companies, and a new gross receipts tax.

Under the bill, the top marginal rate on wage income would soar to 18.05% – well above the median top marginal rate of 5.3% and the state’s existing rate of 12.3%. There would be an 18-bracket system, with higher taxes kicking in for individuals earning more than $149,509.The highest rate would apply to those who earn more than $2,484,121.

Totally free, right? Just wondering, how many of the rich folks in California would leave for other states immediately? How many non-rich will skedaddle to greener, cheaper pastures when they realize they’ll be paying for?

California would also expand the payroll tax paid by employees who earn more than $49,990 in annual income if they work for a company that has more than 50 workers. Walczak noted the plan could deter small businesses from expanding by inadvertently creating a tax cliff. For instance, if a company that had 49 workers earning $80,000 each hired one additional employee, they would suddenly create a tax bill of more than $90,000.

Finally, the state would also adopt a new 2.3% gross receipts tax (GRT) on qualified businesses minus the first $2 million in annual gross receipts, at a rate more than three times that of the country’s current highest GRT.

How many businesses will more out of state? I wonder if all the Hollywood business will be good with this? But, hey, California should give it a whirl. Every experiment needs an experimental group, right? And no complaining from all the Democratic Party voters in California, as this is what they’ve been pushing for.

Read: Who’s Up For Massive Tax Raises In California To Pay For Universal Health Care »

Your Fridge Is An Agent Of Climate Catastrophe Or Something

How many times have I mentioned in the If All You See posts (like here and here) about seeing an evil fridge? Some might think I’m kidding. I’m not. There are other posts about the climate cult hating on refrigerators, and now we add

How the Refrigerator Became an Agent of Climate Catastrophe

A couple of years ago, in spring, my wife and I took our dog for a walk near Bantam Lake, in northwestern Connecticut, a few miles from our house. In swampy woods on the lake’s northern shore, we noticed a double row of lichen-spattered concrete pillars, each one four or five feet tall. The rows began at the edge of the water and extended maybe two hundred yards into the trees. Nearby was a narrow canal filled with water and dead leaves, crossed in several places by wooden bridges that looked like shipping pallets. In a rectangular clearing beyond the inland end of the canal, we saw two parallel strips of concrete, hundreds of feet long and more than a hundred feet apart. They made useful walking paths over the mucky ground.

I learned later that we had seen ruins of the Berkshire Ice Company, which ran a harvesting operation on the lake a century ago. Each winter, at that site, Berkshire employed a hundred and forty men, many of whom lived in bunkhouses. They worked from three in the morning until six at night, seven days a week. Teams of horses pulling sleigh-like “scorers” cut grid lines in the ice, and men with long handsaws followed the lines. The ice, to judge from old photographs, was more than a foot thick. The concrete pillars that we saw supported a conveyer belt. It moved freshly cut blocks away from the lake to an immense icehouse, which stood on the concrete footings that we had used as walking paths. The icehouse held sixty thousand tons. Train cars could be loaded from two sides of the building at the same time.

OK….. This reminds me of those cooking instructions, where they have to give you a life story before giving the recipe. Anyhow, this story goes on and on and on, even delving into AC, till we get to

Much of the world’s recent growth in cooling capability has been an adaptive response to global warming. The problem is self-perpetuating, because the electricity that refrigerators and air-conditioners run on is mostly generated by burning fossil fuels. There are other climate impacts. Hydrofluorocarbons—which, for decades, have been the volatile compounds circulating inside most new cooling equipment—were widely adopted as refrigerants because they don’t have the same destructive effect on the Earth’s ozone layer as their immediate predecessors, chlorofluorocarbons. But hydrofluorocarbons are greenhouse gases with hundreds or thousands of times the warming potential of carbon dioxide. Last year, the Environmental Protection Agency adopted a rule phasing down their production and use in the United States by eighty-five per cent over the next fifteen years. But vast quantities are still being manufactured. Leakage is a common problem, and not only when old refrigerators and air-conditioners end up at the dump.

This is all your fault!

If increased energy efficiency makes over-all energy consumption go down, as the I.E.A. and the D.O.E. suggest, then why does our warming problem keep getting worse? Defenders of efficiency as a climate strategy argue that the amount of energy our machines use today would be vastly higher if our machines were as inefficient as they were ten or twenty or fifty years ago. But the flaw in that argument is easy to see. If the only refrigerators we could buy now were thirties-era G. E. Monitor Tops, Cumberland Farms wouldn’t have an entire wall filled with chilled soft drinks and drinking water (in minimally recyclable plastic bottles, which themselves would not exist without the efficient refrigerated display cases that keep them cold). Similarly, if the only way to fly from one coast to the other were to hitch a ride with the Wright brothers, you wouldn’t travel to California for Christmas.

Y’all are willing to give this up, right? More story

My wife and I lived in Connecticut without air-conditioning for thirty-seven years. The summers are getting hotter, though, and we’re both in our sixties and therefore more susceptible to heat-related health problems. In December, we installed a modern four-zone air-conditioning system in our house. Because the system is so energy efficient, a consortium that includes the state and two electric utilities covered part of the cost. The transaction encapsulates the main flaw of America’s principal response to climate change: we increased our annual energy consumption by making a luxury addition to our house and got credit for helping to save the world.

Luxury edition. Everyone can afford this, right? And your fridge is evil.

Read: Your Fridge Is An Agent Of Climate Catastrophe Or Something »

If All You See…

…is a swollen river from too much carbon pollution driven rain, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Diogenes’ Middle Finger, with a post on many Americans having a Ralphie Ovaltine moment.

Read: If All You See… »

Pirate's Cove