If All You See…

By William Teach January 11, 2022 – 1:00 pm

…is horrible carbon pollution created heat snow, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Sister Toldjah, with a post on the Washington Post deleting a tweet after the White House complained.

Read: If All You See… »

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Almost 2 Years On, CDC May Recommend Using Better Masks

By William Teach January 11, 2022 – 10:30 am

And what happens if, probably when, the CDC recommends this? All the states, cities, and companies with mask mandates will then require people to do this, and we’ll have more mask trash in the streets and waters

U.S. CDC may recommend better masks against Omicron – Washington Post

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is considering updating its mask guidance because of an increase in the number of Omicron-related coronavirus cases, the Washington Post reported on Monday.

The agency will likely advise people opt for the highly protective N95 or KN95 masks worn by healthcare personnel, if they can do so consistently, the newspaper reported, citing an official close to the deliberations.

The CDC guidance is expected to say that if people can “tolerate wearing a KN95 or N95 mask all day, you should,” the report said.

So, what if you can’t? What if it really bothers you? What if it gives you headaches? I put on a simple cloth mask I keep in my car for running into places that require them, but, at work, or for long periods, I wear an Under Armor mask. They’re $25, but, well worth it for comfort. The others rub the back of my ears and give me headaches (anyone who wears glasses knows about how sensitive the back of ears are). Anyhow, looks like that WP story is not paywalled

The updated guidance is expected to say that the best mask is the one that is worn consistently and correctly. N95 masks, which were predominantly used in health-care and industrial settings before the pandemic, are supposed to be individually fitted and are sometimes hard to wear all day, physicians and other health-care personnel have said. The CDC guidance is expected to say that if people can “tolerate wearing a KN95 or N95 mask all day, you should.”

So, they’re difficult to wear? Huh.

N95 masks are approved by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, and are designed to filter up to 95 percent of particles, according to the CDC. KN95s are supposed to meet a comparable Chinese standard, but there is no Chinese regulatory agency ensuring that, said Anne Miller, executive director of Project N95, a nonprofit organization that distributes free N95s and children’s masks in the United States.

We care about Chinese standards why, exactly? They released this virus.

In Milwaukee, the health department over the weekend started handing out a half-million free N95 masks at testing and vaccination sites and public libraries, according to news reports. In Connecticut, the state announced it would distribute 6 million free N95s. In suburban Maryland, Montgomery County Public Schools is providing KN95 masks to teachers, staff and students.

How soon till mandatory? Anyhow, you can apparently reuse one, but, consider

N95 respirator – When removing the mask, hold the edge of the straps attached to take of the N95 mask. Don’t touch the inside part of the respirator. Wash hands before and after it. Gently remove the mask so as not to disseminate contaminants on the mask. Place the mask in a plastic bag or zip-lock bag. You can also store them in a breathable container such as a paper bag between uses. Secure the bag tightly. Place the plastic bag into garbage can or biomedical waste disposal unit. Never put on a new mask until you have properly washed your hands.

The thing is, most people are going to be touching it all day with their hands. They’re going to be taking it off (the funny one is when people take it off to speak closely to people) all day long. So, basically, it won’t help.

Read: Almost 2 Years On, CDC May Recommend Using Better Masks »

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The Next Climate Crisis (scam) Fight Will Be Over Your House

By William Teach January 11, 2022 – 7:00 am

How dare you say these people are Fascist! They just want whats best for you, even if you don’t want it

The next front in fighting climate change: your home

The Build Back Better bill, if it ever comes to pass, now seems unlikely to include any major climate change provisions. But we can still reduce our own carbon emissions, starting with our own homes.

About 20% of greenhouse gases in the US come from homes. And the homes of the wealthiest Americans, who can most easily afford climate-saving modernizations, emit about 25% more greenhouse gases per capita than those of lower-income residents. These are problems we can solve, as homeowners, with new technology, and through government incentives.

When we think about our home’s carbon footprint, most of us think of solar panels, but switching to electricity from fossil fuels for heating our home’s air and water may be even more important. More than half of the energy homes use is for heating and air conditioning, and nearly two-thirds of US homes rely on fossil fuels for heat.

They want to force you to no longer be able to use natural gas. Many places are stopping the construction of new homes using natural gas. Obviously, the next step is to force those with existing NG hookups to switch them. That’d be rather expensive.

End permits for buildings heated by fossil fuels

I have NG for heating and the fireplace. It’s a whole lot less expensive than electricity. I wish the water heater was on NG.

Give homeowners electrification incentives

Let’s print more money! And, if you don’t except, you’ll be force to do this.

Use more eco-friendly materials and construction methods

Ones which will be a lot more expensive, to start.

As home construction, power generation, and heating and cooling technologies change, we just have to make sure our thinking changes, too. Home ownership now comes with new responsibilities, and new opportunities to leave the world better than we found it. This involves learning about a new kind of economics, not only to own a home, but to run it. Our goal can be not just to benefit our own family, but all of us.

Or, these cultists can, with all do respect, fuck off and mind their own business.

Read: The Next Climate Crisis (scam) Fight Will Be Over Your House »

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Biden Vaccine Mandate Is A Proxy War About The Administrative State

By William Teach January 11, 2022 – 6:45 am

This is a big question: are we a Nation of Law or a Nation of Men? Meaning, is it about laws based on the Constitution, or, are they all fungible, and can be changed on a whim, changed by feelings? Can the Executive Office simply find some little rational in a previously passed law where they can force The People to do what the Government wants? We know where Democrats are on this, as shown in this Time piece

The Danger of the Supreme Court Undercutting Biden’s Vaccination Rules

….

The major questions doctrine may sound like a dry crumb next to Justice Breyer’s admonitions, but how the Court applies the doctrine in this case could have even broader implications for our lives than the OSHA’s vaccination rule itself. At its heart, this is an argument over how much leeway federal agencies have to act or, as the Justices repeatedly put it in the argument, “Who Decides?” Justice Elena Kagan’s questions showed why federal agencies, which have significant expertise and can be held publicly accountable through presidential elections, should be given the leeway to take leadership positions on emerging issues such as vaccines to counter an unprecedented pandemic. Justice Neil Gorsuch’s questions, by contrast, suggested that Congress and State Governments should be the leader on major public health policies, noting that Congress has had a year to act on the question of vaccine mandates and chose not to. One answer to that challenge is that Congress has not acted because it gave that power to OSHA. A more realpolitik answer, though, is because there is no way the Democrats have the votes for such a law.

There’s a lot to unpack in just that one paragraph. First off, yes, at the heart is how much leeway the agencies should have to act, and the answer should be “none that isn’t Constitutional first and specific per a duly passed Legislative Branch law.” Second, if Democrats do not have the votes, well, that’s the way the Republic is supposed to work. If they cannot convince enough people to vote for it, well, then it should not be passed. Third, if that power is not specifically delegated to the Federal government, then it is reserved for the States and The People.

Fourth, if the feds can simply do what they want, then freedom is gone, liberty is gone, choices are gone, a government by the people for the people is gone. We’re simply an authoritarian nation ruled by elites, by people, some of who are elected, many who aren’t, with no accountability.

On its surface this is a case about vaccine mandates, but it is also a proxy war over the heart of the administrative state. If the Court applies the major questions doctrine in this case, that precedent will be used to constrain other agencies from acting in new, unprecedented dramatic situations, forcing them to wait for explicit authorization from Congress to act; authorization that may never come. Depending on what you think of the balance of power between Congress and the Executive that could be good or bad. But, if as it appears likely, the conservative Justices will block the ETS on this or an adjacent theory, the immediate casualty of this proxy war is the public’s health. The rule is estimated to save over 6,500 lives and prevent 250,00 hospitalizations over six months, although these estimates were pre-Omicron.

And what will they apply it to next? What might they decide next is For Your Own Good?

While reading tea leaves from oral arguments is always perilous, these arguments suggest that the Supreme Court is willing to upend the public health consensus that these federal initiatives are vital in favor of limiting the power of federal agencies. Some more narrow vaccine regulations will, like the one issued by CMS, likely survive because they are more closely tied to health care. But it is very likely that the Court may remove the most effective tool we have in combating COVID-19, comprehensive vaccine mandates that reach as many Americans as possible. That is a very high cost to pay in terms of sickness, hospitalizations, and deaths to change the balance of power between Congress and the Executive branch.

Just because you have consensus, and let’s not forget how many times they have been wrong during the Wuhan flu pandemic, doesn’t mean you get to just do what you want, not in our system. That may work in China, Russia, or Venezuela, among others, but, that’s not our system. I think everyone should get a vaccine. I won’t force them to do so.

Read: Biden Vaccine Mandate Is A Proxy War About The Administrative State »

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This Is Weird: US Emission Roared Back Post Lockdown

By William Teach January 10, 2022 – 4:14 pm

I would have thought that members of the Cult of Climastrology would have stopped driving their fossil fueled vehicles, and, instead, purchased an EV, or taken public transportation, or a bike or something

US emissions roared back last year after pandemic drop, figures show

Planet-heating emissions roared back in the United States in 2021, dashing hopes that the pandemic would prove a watershed moment in greening American society to address the climate crisis, new figures have shown.

Following the onset of the pandemic in 2020, millions of people switched to working from home, car and airplane travel plummeted and industrial output slowed. This led to a sharp drop in greenhouse gas emissions, spurring predictions that a newly shaped American economy would emerge to help banish the era of fossil fuels.

These forecasts may well have been baseless, however, with the new research showing that US emissions rose by 6.2% last year, compared to 2020. While emissions were still 5% down from 2019 levels, the jump in pollution as people returned to previous rhythms of life was greater than last year’s overall economic growth.

“We expected a rebound but it’s dismaying that emissions came back even faster than the overall economy,” said Kate Larsen, a partner at Rhodium Group, the independent research firm that conducted the analysis. “We aren’t just reducing the carbon intensity of the economy, we are increasing it. We are doing exactly the opposite of what we need to be doing.”

What’s this “we” stuff, Chump? You can do this in your own lives, leave the rest of us who do not want to join in on the little scheme of marching up and down the square restricting our modern lives out of it. Piss off. F off. Take your authoritarian beliefs elsewhere. Of course, they do not want to, because the same people who call Republicans Fascists for wanting *checks notes* less government and more personal freedom want to force people to comply with their cult beliefs, while not doing a darned thing in their own lives. They never were really able to take advantage of Wuhan flu to implement their cult beliefs, thankfully.

Meanwhile, Brandon is doing more to skyrocket energy prices

Biden Administration Blocks Natural Gas Project In New England

The Biden administration approved a plan to block a new natural gas power plant that would’ve powered 500,000 homes from being built in Connecticut.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) approved the plan proposed by utility company ISO New England — an electricity provider in the northeast — effectively killing the project, E&E News reported on Wednesday. In November, ISO New England submitted the plan to block the Killingly Energy Center project over delays

I don’t want to hear complaints for the New England liberals, who are getting what they asked for, when their energy is costlier and less reliable, especially during the cold winter months.

Read: This Is Weird: US Emission Roared Back Post Lockdown »

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If All You See…

By William Teach January 10, 2022 – 1:00 pm

…is a world flooded by carbon pollution, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Doug Ross @ Journal, with a post on Larwyn’s Linx and 7 COVID conspiracy theories that came true.

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Bad For Dems: New AP Poll Has Economy Overshadowing Wuhan Flu

By William Teach January 10, 2022 – 10:30 am

Biden isn’t doing a good job with either

Inflation up, virus down as priorities in US: AP-NORC poll

Biden Brain SuckerHeading into a critical midterm election year, the top political concerns of Americans are shifting in ways that suggest Democrats face considerable challenges to maintaining their control of Congress.

A poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds that management of the pandemic, once an issue that strongly favored President Joe Biden and his fellow Democrats, is beginning to recede in the minds of Americans. COVID-19 is increasingly overshadowed by concerns about the economy and personal finances — particularly inflation — which are topics that could lift Republicans.

Just 37% of Americans name the virus as one of their top five priorities for the government to work on in 2022, compared with 53% who said it was a leading priority at the same time a year ago. The economy outpaced the pandemic in the open-ended question, with 68% of respondents mentioning it in some way as a top 2022 concern. A similar percentage said the same last year, but mentions of inflation are much higher now: 14% this year, compared with less than 1% last year.

Consumer prices jumped 6.8% for the 12 months ending in November, a nearly four-decade high. Meanwhile, roughly twice as many Americans now mention their household finances, namely, the cost of living, as a governmental priority, 24% vs. 12% last year.

The link to the AP-NORC poll article is here, and the toplines here. And this is all with a massive oversampling of Democrats, with a D/R/I of 46/37/18.

85% have experienced higher grocery and gas prices. 57% electricity. Those are not good numbers. 34% say 2022 will be better than 2021, 15% say it will be worse, and 50% will say won’t be much difference. Not good numbers for Joe and the Dems. Only 33% say the country is headed in the right direction. Too bad they didn’t ask if the policies of Biden and his Congressional Comrades were helping or hurting.

Read: Bad For Dems: New AP Poll Has Economy Overshadowing Wuhan Flu »

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Indoctrinated Children Push Parents To Do Something About Climate Doom

By William Teach January 10, 2022 – 7:00 am

Parents should give them what they want, and tell the schools to make the teachers who indoctrinate the kids to do something

Children ‘push’ their parents to fight climate change

The look of the children has a decisive influence on the actions and decisions of the parents. It might seem like a no-brainer, but & mldr; Could it be scientifically proven to be true, for example, when making decisions related to climate change? This is what a group of researchers from the University of Exeter, in the United Kingdom, has studied through a curious experiment developed in Innsbruck, Austria. And the answer is yes’, parents are more aware of the need to act against global warming if they are being watched by their children.

The so-called Individual voluntary climate actions are necessary to reduce the damaging effects of climate change. But provide a benefit to the environment by reducing the individual carbon footprint supposes an economic cost for the individual.

On the basis that people with children are “genetically related to the next generation & rdquor; and they have “an incentive and a responsibility to take care of the well-being of your children& rdquor ;, a group of scientists predicted that parents would be especially likely to participate in voluntary climate actions when observed by their offspring. More than if the looks were coming from other observers.

There’s some weird syntax, I assume from a bad copy and paste, but, regardless, it goes to this study here, Climate Action for (My) Children,

Individual actions—referred to as voluntary climate action (VCA)—are needed to reduce climate change’s harmful effects (Goeschl et al. 2020). VCA takes different forms on an individual level; however, one key unifying aspect of VCAs is that they necessitate incur a cost to the individual to provide a benefit to the environment, a general public good that is largely consumed in the future (Fischer et al. 2004; Diederich and Goeschl 2014; Hauser et al. 2014; Lohse and Waichman 2020). Examples of VCAs include investing in energy-saving technology (e.g., solar panels), switching to CO2-friendly purchasing habits (e.g., buying less red meat), or even engaging in small, everyday behaviors, such as spending less time in the shower (Wynes and Nicholas 2017). In our study, we are interested in VCA that has a long-lasting positive effect on the environment (Layton and Levine 2003; Steinke and Trautmann 2021): we focus on CO2 offsetting, using a foresting program that plants climate-efficient trees, as such programs have become increasingly widespread and available as means for individuals to help reduce their “carbon footprint” (Kollmuss et al. 2010).

Hmm, those aren’t much in the way of actions, eh? How about

Same thing for the adults.

Read: Indoctrinated Children Push Parents To Do Something About Climate Doom »

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Very Few North Carolina Government Employees Fired For Being Unvaccinated

By William Teach January 10, 2022 – 6:45 am

Unlike in the private sector, where businesses and hospitals are terminating employees, government doesn’t seem to want to get rid of government worker bees

Few state employees fired over Covid requirements

When North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper first announced efforts to have most state employees vaccinated against Covid-19 or tested weekly, his directive made clear workers could be fired if they didn’t comply.

“Until more people get the vaccine, we’ll continue living with the threat of a very serious disease,” Cooper said in a July 29 news conference.

But more than five months later, efforts to encourage state employees to get vaccinations have been mixed. Two departments lag behind the 70% vaccination rate of all North Carolina adults, and the state has seldom made good on Cooper’s dismissal threat.

State agencies have wide enforcement latitude, with many choosing not to fire a single person. In one department where inmates are being vaccinated at greater rates than prison officials, public safety workers are now receiving hundreds of dollars in bonuses if they get their shots.

North Carolina agencies say they are taking a measured approach to compliance, with firings being a last resort. Through Friday, 32 workers had been fired since Cooper’s July announcement, a dismissal rate of 0.06%, according to data the Office of State Human Resources provided to WRAL News. Most of the dismissals have come in the state health department.

Cooper’s order covers more than 53,000 employees. Seventy-seven percent of them are now fully vaccinated, up 12 percentage points since the state began sharing data in September.

Thirty two. And, even though the state is trying to bribe already overpaid public employees, with all their perks and benefits, with $500 checks for getting vaccinated (taxpayer money), they aren’t worried, because they work for government. I’m sure their unions are protecting them. Not that I want them to be fired for being unvaxxed (I want a lot of unnecessary positions gone, though), it’s just that why should private companies Do Something when government won’t?

And, when I look across at states like California, NY, Oregon, and other Dem run ones, you’re really seeing the same thing. Unless you’re a vital health care worker in a government run facility, then you’ll be kicked out the door.

Read: Very Few North Carolina Government Employees Fired For Being Unvaccinated »

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Say, What If Doing Something About Hotcoldwetdry Is Incompatible With Democracy Or Something

By William Teach January 9, 2022 – 3:38 pm

We’ve seen this before, where climate cultists of all levels are enticed by authoritarian nations like China, and want to emulate them. Where they’re enthused by 1st and 3rd world nations forcing people to act in a certain way. It is, at it’s root, a Fascist movement, just like the parent Progressive movement. And the peons never seem to understand that all the bad stuff will hit their own lives

What if democracy and climate mitigation are incompatible?

In the past 14 months, the United States and Germany both held national elections that placed climate change policy squarely at the center of national debate. The fact that two of the world’s five largest economies committed to addressing the world’s most pressing crisis through public discourse followed by public voting was an unprecedented democratic experiment.

It did not work out as optimists hoped. On the one hand, the victorious parties in both countries vowed to achieve what was necessary to prevent the worst effects of climate change from occurring, in accordance with the international climate agreement unanimously approved in Paris in 2015.

But on the other hand, in neither country can the resulting policies be described as fulfilling that promise. (snip through Germany’s issues)

A similar slippage between campaign ambition and watered-down governance has occurred in the United States. Democrat Joe Biden’s election platform vowed that the country’s electricity sector would be carbon-free by 2035 and that the entire US economy would achieve full carbon neutrality by 2050—promises that the Biden administration has never disavowed.

But the central policies intended to achieve those timelines have no realistic chance of passing Congress. The administration will receive nowhere close to the $2 trillion that Biden said would be necessary to fund renewable energy infrastructure.

That’s because government is supposed to listen to The People, not rule them, not in free societies.

In a 2018 report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a UN group of climate scientists, declared that achieving carbon neutrality by mid century was the only way to prevent global temperatures from rising above 1.5 degrees—beyond which, Arctic ice would melt (and ocean levels would rise) far more quickly, humans would more frequently suffer heat death, and vast numbers of species, from insects to sea coral, would end up on the verge of extinction.

In other words: Democracy works by compromise, but climate change is precisely the type of problem that seems not to allow for it. As the clock on those climate timelines continues to tick, this structural mismatch is becoming increasingly exposed.

And as a result, those concerned by climate change—some already with political power, others grasping for it—are now searching for, and finding, new ways of closing the gap between politics and science, by any means necessary.

The tensions between existing methods of democracy and the problem posed by climate change are perfectly legible in domestic politics but most evident in international politics.

In other words, the climate cult wants authoritarian government. It’s a very long piece, let’s skip to the end

That the world’s democracies are witnessing a growing spectrum of climate radicalism, both from the bottom up and the top down, is not to suggest that authoritarian systems would do any better in solving the relevant political and economic issues involved in moving beyond the carbon economy.

But it is a sign that democracy, in its current form, is not necessarily the path to a solution. It might, instead, be part of the problem.

Yes, they do want authoritarianism.

Read: Say, What If Doing Something About Hotcoldwetdry Is Incompatible With Democracy Or Something »

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