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Miscellany
This might be one of the worst articles I’ve ever read. Its dripping with the biases of the writers, in no way illuminates the deep divisions behind the bill, and fails to give equal time to both sides.
No wonder we’re about to damage our economy irreparably.
Jamie posted this at 11:05 AM EDT on Friday, June 26th, 2009 as CHANGE!, Convenient Truth, Journalism
Some New York-based publication has a story describing how now the new compact florescent light bulbs still suck. This complaint is specifically about how short their lifespans can be if not used “properly.” You probably didn’t know how to properly treat the light bulbs you were buying:
Experts and bulb manufacturers say that consumers need to play a role in solving the problems by learning more about the limitations of compact fluorescent bulbs. The Federal Trade Commission has begun to study whether it should force improvements in the labels of the bulbs.
Better labels might have helped the Zuerchers, the San Francisco couple. Initially, they put regular compact fluorescents in virtually every socket in their home, including enclosed ceiling lamps, dimmable fixtures and areas where lights are turned on and off frequently.
But some of those applications require specialized, more expensive bulbs, something the Zuerchers say was not made clear on the label of their Feit bulbs or on any sign they saw posted at Costco.
Yeah, right. A crappy light bulb is being marketed as the be-all-end-all of the green movement, and it’s Costco’s fault for not putting up signs detailing that these light bulbs should not be used in most of your household sockets? How many lights do you have that aren’t “enclosed ceiling lamps, dimmable fixtures, or areas where lights are turned on and off frequently”? The crappiness of these bulbs should, but won’t, cast a whole new light on the government’s idiotic decision to mandate them within a few years. One might suspect that environmentalists would be bothered by the government mandating that its citizens use mercury-containing products of questionable life span; one would be wrong. Nope, we’re still on a path to ban the incandescent bulb and give me constant headaches.
I do have a story of the unreliability of CFLs. I bought a rather large one (equivalent to a 175 watt bulb) to put in an outdoor socket back in late 2007. As soon as it got cool here in Austin, the bulb just stopped working. I had used it maybe a dozen hours, tops. Since I didn’t use the light that much, I didn’t bother replacing it. Then one day in summer 2008, it just started working again. It kept working all through this last winter, and we haven’t had a problem with it. So maybe these people complaining about their bulbs being crappy, instead of going through the hassle of finding a way to legally dispose of these hazardous materials, should just leave them in the socket and try again in several months. Anything in the name of saving the environment, right?
Apollo posted this at 4:03 PM EDT on Saturday, March 28th, 2009 as Convenient Truth
Barry’s appointing a bona fide Socialist to be “climate czar.” What does he have to say about this fact?
Mr. Obama’s transition team said Mrs. Browner’s membership in the organization is not a problem and that it brings experience in U.S. policymaking to her new role.
“The Commission for a Sustainable World Society includes world leaders from a variety of political parties, including British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who succeeded Tony Blair, in serving as vice president of the convening organization,” Obama transition spokesman Nick Shapiro said.
Fantastic. So the socialist party in Britain supports an international organization of Socialists, and the incoming Obama administration considers this a defense to charges of socialism? Indeed, the fact that she’s a Socialist is a positive! She has experience! Yay!
Of course, when people called Barry a socialist during the campaign, they were ridiculed. Now that he’s creating a new position and appointing a Socialist, we’re supposed to be thankful that she’s got such great experience.
P.S. It should be noted that Barry can’t even find his own Socialist “czar”; she was EPA administrator for the entire Clinton administration.
Apollo posted this at 11:53 PM EST on Sunday, January 11th, 2009 as Commie Recrudescence, Convenient Truth, That's Not Change!
In a story about the EU preparing to ban television sets that upset their climate gods, I read this:
The moves, which follow last week’s withdrawal of the 100W incandescent lightbulb…
Yikes! I’m something of a lighting fanatic, so this probably offends me more than others (I use the particularly inefficient Reveal bulbs), but good-frickin’-grief. Can there be a better metaphor for Europe’s consent to rule by bureaucrats and fealty to environmental extremism than the banning of bright light bulbs?
Apollo posted this at 2:29 AM EST on Sunday, January 11th, 2009 as Convenient Truth, I bid you stand: Men of the West
They’re running shows on the History Channel that wholeheartedly buy in to it. It’s now on the level of Holy Grail conspiracies and random unconfirmed “monster” sightings.
Apollo posted this at 9:54 AM EST on Tuesday, December 9th, 2008 as Convenient Truth
Is the Czech Republic. The Bohemians have long been a contrarian people, and since throwing off the Soviet yoke, they’ve managed to elect presidents name Vaclav who have stood tall for freedom. Here’s Klaus in his continuing attempt to call out environmentalism for its efforts to crush freedom.
Apollo posted this at 8:54 PM EDT on Tuesday, May 27th, 2008 as Convenient Truth
From the WSJ:
In his climate speech on Monday, Mr. McCain exhibited (as the press usually does) a complete lack of consciousness of the fact that evidence of warming is not evidence of what causes warming. Yet policy must be a matter of costs and benefits, adjusted for the uncertainties involved. Which brings us to today’s irony: He who finds a six-figure earmark an affront to humanity is prepared to wave through a trillion-dollar climate bill without, as far as anyone can tell, a single systematic thought about costs and benefits.
I miss Fred.
Hubbard posted this at 12:26 PM EDT on Wednesday, May 14th, 2008 as Audacity of Hype, Convenient Truth
To give a twist to one of Governor Schwarzenegger’s favorite lines, California has the ideas of Sparta and the power of Athens. The state and reality are not on speaking terms. To get an idea of what’s going on, this long but informative essay in City Journal gives the details:
In 2000 and 2001, numerous rolling blackouts and power outages caused billions of dollars in damages in the state. The degree to which rapacious power-company executives and traders were responsible for the shortages remains open to debate. But what isn’t in question is that California had insufficient power to meet demand and that officials had let the state’s infrastructure for moving electrons become frayed and overloaded. Having adequate power supplies would have shielded consumers from any private-sector perfidy.
Republican state senator Tom McClintock underscored the real problem, which went well beyond Rancho Seco, in a speech to a Silicon Valley group in 2001. “From 1979 to 1999, generating capacity of over 45,000 megawatts was proposed to the [California Energy] Commission,” he said. “Only 4,500 megawatts was approved. Nuclear power plants were forbidden, and Rancho Seco and San Onofre Unit One,” another nuclear reactor, “were shut down prematurely. . . . For 27 years, this state has actively discouraged the construction of new power plants, and the day finally arrived when we ran out of power.” Indeed, California’s capability to generate electricity actually decreased slightly from 1990 through 1999.
Not even California’s flat per-capita energy consumption could save it from blackouts, since its population had been soaring. During the 20-year period that Senator McClintock noted, the number of California residents jumped from about 23 million people to 33 million. Today, the figure is closer to 38 million, and it could top 45 million by 2020. The cumulative demand proved too much for the aging system.
During New York’s decline, Mario Cuomo sadly observed, “The future once happened here.” That can now be said of California.
Hubbard posted this at 9:15 AM EDT on Thursday, May 8th, 2008 as Convenient Truth
The basic equations underling Anthropomorphic Global Warming Theory are apparently completely outdated:
Miklós Zágoni isn’t just a physicist and environmental researcher. He is also a global warming activist and Hungary’s most outspoken supporter of the Kyoto Protocol. Or was.That was until he learned the details of a new theory of the greenhouse effect, one that not only gave far more accurate climate predictions here on Earth, but Mars too. The theory was developed by another Hungarian scientist, Ferenc Miskolczi, an atmospheric physicist with 30 years of experience and a former researcher with NASA’s Langley Research Center.
If the basic math used to compute future changes in temperature are wrong then AGWT needs to be completely rethought. It has been quite apparent for some time that a system as complex and chaotic as global climate defies complete understanding, but at the very least the climate hysterics should have their basic equations down.
The Washington Post, however, has not shown much interest in this latest development and instead publishes a front page article feeding the hysteria. Never mind that those computer models are most likely based on the same equations that were debunked in the previously linked article.
Its also interesting to note that the majority of climate hysterics focus on prevention instead of adaptation. The entire history of our planet is one of constant (in geological terms) climate change – adaptation has been the key to survival of all life on earth and I see no reason for humans to change this.
Jamie posted this at 2:02 PM EDT on Monday, March 10th, 2008 as Convenient Truth
My purchase of a hybrid last year may have disastrous consequences.
Apollo posted this at 3:04 PM EST on Tuesday, February 26th, 2008 as Convenient Truth
The level of scientific illiteracy on the part those panicking over global warming seldom surprises me. But this, from the very intelligent Michael Bloomberg, blows me away: “global warming in the long term has the potential to kill everybody.”
How hot does he think it’s going to get? Aside from questions of whether anthropogenic global warming is a hoax, there’s absolutely no circumstances in which global warming kills “everybody.” Hell, I think the worse case scenarios I’ve seen leave the earth with a population not far below today’s, just living in different spots (sorry Holland). These global warming types don’t even understand their own stupid theory, or else they’re willing to discard it as needed to properly scare people. I’d believe either.
Apollo posted this at 10:24 AM EST on Tuesday, February 12th, 2008 as Buffoon Watch, Convenient Truth
The report is more persuasive at debunking the predictions of polar bears going extinct this century — the fear that’s being stoked to build support in the U.S. for listing them as a “threatened” or “endangered” species even though it’s not clear that their overall numbers are declining. The report points to, among other sources, an amusing analysis of the polar-bear predictions conducted by three researchers, including J. Scott Armstrong of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Armstrong, the editor of a standard text, “Principles of Forecasting,” is the originator of what he calls the Seer-Sucker Theory: “No matter how much evidence exists that seers do not exist, seers will find suckers.”
Dr. Armstrong and his coauthors, Kesten C. Green of Monash University and Willie Soon of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, conclude that the most influential forecasts of polar-bear populations violate at least 73 of the 90 relevant principles of scientific forecasting. They criticize the forecasters for making large extrapolations based on sparse data and questionable models, relying too heavily on a single expert, ignoring contradictory data and tailoring conclusions to fit a political goal (listing the polar bear as a “threatened” species).
Knut posted this at 2:07 PM EST on Friday, February 1st, 2008 as Convenient Truth, Science & Evolution
Sigh, I thought we were better than this.
I miss Johnny Howard already.
Jamie posted this at 2:08 PM EST on Monday, December 3rd, 2007 as Convenient Truth
This is a very interesting graph:
Remember that hockey stick graph touted by, among others, Al Gore and the IPCC? Yeah turns out – big fat lie. See the problem with climate alarmists is that they make two very false assumptions 1) Average global temperature should never change and 2) Our current temperature is the optimal temperature. Never mind that history, geology and climatology prove the first assumption to be demonstrably false and that that evolutionary biology has proven the second to be false as well.
Jamie posted this at 3:26 PM EST on Tuesday, November 13th, 2007 as Convenient Truth
This story about cities in California turning lights off for an hour seems acceptable enough, if a little goofy, until you get to this part:
Much of the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz, and Los Angeles International Airport will go dark between 8:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m., apart from essential safety lighting.
Whoa there! There are going to be lots of people still in the airport at that time. Surely there’s a better way to save the planet than turning the lights out on travelers standing at baggage claim trying to figure out which black rolling suitcase is theirs. LAX sux enough as is; in the dark it must be horrifying. Maybe they could just recycle these things instead?
Apollo posted this at 7:37 PM EDT on Saturday, October 20th, 2007 as Convenient Truth
