Good News: California To Make Homes More Expensive With ‘Climate Change’ Requirement

Just too be clear, there will be no “Hurricane Ida is climate doom” stuff, not unless I run into something really egregious, really pure moonbat. I’ve seen this all before, as have you. There’s nothing new in their doomsday fearmongering, and we all expected the climate cultists to link/blame Ida on Other People driving fossil fueled vehicles and eating tasty burgers. That’s what cult members do. So, over to California, where even the NY Times notices what climate realists have been saying, namely that the policies cause prices to skyrocket

California’s Plan to Make New Buildings Greener Will Also Raise Costs

California has led the nation in fighting climate change by encouraging the use of renewable energy and electric cars. Now the state is taking on an even harder challenge — reducing emissions from homes, businesses and other buildings that have to be heated, cooled and powered.

This month, state regulators updated California’s building code to require new homes and commercial buildings to have solar panels and batteries and the wiring needed to switch from heaters that burn natural gas to heat pumps that run on electricity. Energy experts say it is one of the most sweeping single environmental updates to building codes ever attempted by a government agency.

But some energy and building experts warn that California may be taking on too much, too quickly and focusing on the wrong target — new buildings, rather than the much larger universe of existing structures. Their biggest fear is that these new requirements will drive up the state’s already high construction costs, putting new homes out of reach of middle- and lower-income families that cannot as easily afford the higher upfront costs of cleaner energy and heating equipment, which typically pays for itself over years through savings on monthly utility bills.

The median single-family home in California sells for more than $800,000 compared to about $360,000 nationwide, and businesses pay more for rent in cities like San Francisco and San Jose than anywhere else in the country. A big reason costs are higher in California is that the state is not building enough homes, something lawmakers tried to address last week by advancing legislation that would allow more than one home on each parcel of land.

Adding solar panels and a battery to a new home can raise its cost by $20,000 or more. While that might not matter to somebody buying a million-dollar property, it could be a burden on a family borrowing a few hundred thousand dollars to buy a home.

“You’re going to see the impact in office rents. You’re going to see it in the cost of the milk in your grocery store,” said Donald J. Ruthroff, a principal at Dahlin Group Architecture Planning in Pleasanton, Calif. “There’s no question this is going to impact prices across the board.”

Surprise? Of course, it might be nice to have solar in California due to the state’s problem with having enough power, leading to brownouts and blackouts, some of them planned. But, yeah, it is going to cost prices to rise for buildings, which will lead to cost of goods and services to rise. Even more than they already are.

Chris Ochoa, senior counsel for codes and regulatory and legislative affairs at the California Building Industry Association, said the builders support efforts to address climate change. But he believes more needs to be done to retrofit existing buildings with more energy-efficient systems, too. Otherwise, new homes, with more efficient and advanced systems, will become even less affordable to first-time buyers.

Next up, forcing retrofits on existing homes. Who’s going to pay for it?

OK, one bit of crazy from the Washington Post

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If All You See…

…is Extreme Weather from carbon pollution, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is American Elephants, with a post on living in the golden age of stupidity.

Read: If All You See… »

Fauci Wants A COVID Vaccine Mandate For School Kids

Well, this is one way for Government to take power away from parents

Fauci says COVID vaccination mandates for school children ‘good idea’

Dr. Anthony Fauci says he thinks it’s a good idea amid the surge in coronavirus cases, due to the highly contagious delta variant, to mandate COVID vaccinations for students to attend schools.

“I believe that mandating vaccines for children to appear in school is a good idea,” the chief medical adviser for the White House said Sunday in an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “We’ve done this for decades and decades, requiring polio, measles, mumps, rubella, hepatitis. So this would not be something new requiring vaccinations for children to come to school.”

The Culver City Unified School District, a small school district in Los Angeles, last week appeared to become the first district in the nation to require students 12 years and older to be inoculated.

Fauci’s comments come a week after the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine won full approval from the federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA). With the Pfizer vaccine fully approved and with children across the country heading back to school, more than 100 congressional lawmakers last week urged the FDA to give initial authorization for COVID vaccines for those under 12 years of age as soon as possible.

It would be one thing if the COVID vaccines were at least 90% reliable in stopping people from getting COVID, in the way other required for school vaccines stop things like smallpox or how the tetanus vaccine works. However, they aren’t even close. Especially with all the fast mutating versions. But, to require kids get a vaccine that is showing to be able to stop it around 50% of the time? Sure, it usually means that if you have the vaccine that symptoms will be mild. Or not

(WRAL) WRAL Fayetteville reporter Gilbert Baez has been hospitalized after testing positive for COVID-19.

Baez, who was fully vaccinated, was hospitalized on Thursday at Cape Fear Valley Medical Center in Fayetteville after he diagnosed with bacterial pneumonia following his positive COVID-19 test the day prior.

“My doctor says the fact that I was vaccinated helped me battle the virus,” Baez said Friday. “I’m OK as long as I sit still, but the slightest movement triggers uncontrollable coughing and struggles with breathing.”

In fairness, without the vaccine it could have been worse. Or not. We don’t really know.

(WRAL) Duke University employees will have until Oct. 1 to prove they have received the COVID-19 vaccine, or be terminated and ineligible be rehired at Duke in the future.

In a message sent to employees, Duke leaders said faculty and staff can apply for a medical or religious exemption, but anyone approved will still have to do daily symptom monitoring, weekly surveillance testing, wear a mask and other COVID-19 safety protocols.

Employees have until 10 a.m. to receive and show documentation of vaccination. Duke officials said so far, 91 percent of employees have already completed the requirement.

Those who have not shown they are fully vaccinated by the deadline will be placed on administrative leave. Employees will then have seven days to either receive the single-dose Johnson and Johnson COVID-19 vaccine or the first dose of the Moderna or Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine.

Of course, when we are vaccinated, we get our lives back, right? Or, will they continue to require masks and other measures?

‘Hell no’: Some police officers and their unions oppose vaccination mandates

Hours after the Food and Drug Administration fully approved the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine Monday, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot made an emphatic declaration: “City employees are absolutely going to be required to be vaccinated.” (snip)

The same day, John Catanzara, the president of Chicago’s Fraternal Order of Police, which represents the city’s rank-and-file officers, made it clear that he did not intend to comply.

“It cannot be mandated,” he told the Chicago Sun Times. “It’s that simple.”

“Our members don’t want to be mandated to do anything like that,” said Catanzara, who did not return multiple phone and email requests for an interview this week.

Huh

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HHS Plans To Treat Climate Crisis (scam) As Public Health Crisis

Well, of course they will, gotta keep that cash flowing and get more involved in controlling citizen’s lives

Climate Change to Be Treated as Public-Health Issue

The Department of Health and Human Services is preparing to launch an office that will treat climate change as a public health issue, designed to address what the White House says are health risks including those that disproportionately affect poor and minority communities.

Many details of the new Office of Climate Change and Health Equity, which will report to a White House climate task force, were outlined in a January executive order on climate, part of President Biden’s efforts to use the power of the federal government to address the environmental effects of changing weather.

People familiar with the planning for the new office said resources are being assembled now, without providing further details. The HHS declined to comment, including on when the new office would be operative, but the agency’s website says a briefing is scheduled Monday morning regarding the Biden administration’s “efforts to tackle the climate crisis.”

The new office is likely to spur initiatives touching on many aspects of healthcare, according to people briefed on the planning and White House releases. It is expected to offer protections for populations most at risk—including the elderly, minorities, rural communities and children—and could eventually lead to policies compelling hospitals and other care facilities to reduce carbon emissions, the people said.

The move is certain to draw opposition from many Republicans and conservative activists who criticized HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra during his spring 2021 confirmation process for policy positions he took while serving as California’s attorney general. These include his support of “environmental justice,” a movement that focuses on preventing a disproportionate share of negative environmental consequences for any population.

The rest is behind the Wall Street Journal paywall, have at it if you have access. The thing about “environmental justice” is that you the climate cult thinks all “minorities” are pretty much incapable of doing anything on their own, that they cannot survive without the Helpful Hand of Government. What’s the word for looking down on “minorities”, thinking so little of them? Oh, right, racist. That’s what the whole environmental justice movement is about. Racism.

This whole push will give the federal government even more power over your healthcare and the way you live your life, and will surely lead to more fights and lawsuits from private organizations and Republican states as the federal government continues to over-step their Constitutional boundaries.

Read: HHS Plans To Treat Climate Crisis (scam) As Public Health Crisis »

British Question Biden’s Mental Health, Warned Joe Hold’s Grudges

Joe’s doing a heck of a job in his first 8 months

British Warned Biden ‘Holds Grudges’ After UK Govt Sources Say He’s Gone ‘Gaga’

Biden Brain SuckerBoris Johnson has been warned that Joe Biden “holds grudges” after members of the British government questioned his mental fitness following “completely mad” press briefings on Afghanistan.

The warning follows a report in The Sunday Times that a British government minister said President Biden “looked gaga” while speaking to the press, with a government aide describing the American as “doolally” and the newspaper noting that “Such thoughts are normally never whispered in Whitehall, let alone briefed.”

“Doolally” is an insult with a strong pedigree in Britain, stemming from the name of a town in India where a sanatorium for soldiers rendered temporarily deranged by fever were sent in the 1800s.

U.S. sources have indicated that the 78-year-old Democrat is unlikely to appreciate the rich history of this description of his mental state, however, telling The Telegraph — which is close to the British government — that he is emphatically “not ‘gaga’” and in fact has “actually picked up his game quite a bit since the [election] campaign.”

“The Brits have their view. But they should be careful. What’s been said is offensive and he will remember it. He actually has a long memory,” the source warned the right-leaning newspaper.

“It’s always been his way that if somebody says something really bad to him, or about him, he doesn’t speak to them again. He does bear grudges. Boris Johnson should know that,” they added threateningly.

On the bright side, Joe probably can’t remember much of anything these days

Prime Minister Johnson, despite being described as something of a “British Trump” by left-wing commentators, had no love for Biden’s predecessor, and has hitherto adopted a sycophantic approach to the Democrat, describing his presidency as a “breath of fresh air” and saying it was “highly likely” he was “not going to disagree with the President on anything” at the G7.

Biden’s botched withdrawal from Afghanistan seems to have marked the end of this honeymoon, however, with the British leader having hinted strongly that he feels the situation there was forced upon him and America’s other allies by the White House.

Reports indicate that Johnson was unable to get the President to take a call from him for over 24 hours as Kabul fell to the Taliban, further souring relations.

Joe didn’t seem to be talking to any foreign leaders, and after the last trainwreck of a G7 video meeting, I wouldn’t be surprised of the leaders of France, Germany, and the UK, and possibly even Canada, are not interested in talking with Joe nor working with him. He’s not trustworthy. Say what you will about Trump, when our allies needed America Trump made sure the U.S. responded with help.

(UK Daily Mail) The mother of a Marine killed in the Kabul airport attack called President Joe Biden a ‘dementia-riddent piece of crap’ as the president meets with families of the 13 fallen service members on Sunday

‘My son was one of the Marines that died yesterday,’ Kathy McCollum said in a radio interview on Friday of her 20-year-old late son Rylee.

‘[He was] getting ready to come home from freaking Jordan to be with his wife to watch the birth of his son,’ McCollum said. ‘And that feckless, dementia ridden piece of crap just sent my son to die.’

Of course, criticism of Joe’s actions like this won’t make it into the U.S. media, where they have to protect Joe. Have you seen anything in the NY Times, Washington Post, ABC, CBS, NBC, etc, about Secretary of State Antony Blinken being on vacation in the Hamptons just hours before Kabul fell?

Yeah, he did. I almost wanted to give he a break, because people who wear watches often check them. I’ve seen it done at funerals and weddings and other times one should be paying attention. But, he conscientiously checked it, doing it surreptitiously. He knew he was doing wrong. It would be like the minister checking their watch as the moment of silence ended.

Read: British Question Biden’s Mental Health, Warned Joe Hold’s Grudges »

Bummer: Air Conditioning Is Killing The 21st Century

It’s all your fault because you won’t turn your AC off and just swelter like it’s 1499…er, no, wait, that was during the Little Ice Age, so, 1199, during the Medieval Warm Period

Air conditioning is one of the greatest inventions of the 20th Century. It’s also killing the 21st

When did indoor air become cold and clean?

Air conditioning is one of those inventions that have become so ubiquitous, that many in the developed world don’t even realize that less than a century ago, it didn’t exist. Indeed, it wasn’t so long ago that the air inside our buildings and the air outside of them were one and the same, with occupants powerless against their environment.

Isn’t progress wonderful? Not to climate cultists

Eric Dean Wilson, in his just published book, “After Cooling: On Freon, Global Warming, and the Terrible Cost of Comfort,” dives deep into the history of this field. It took more than just inventing the air conditioner to make people want to buy it. In fact, whole social classes outright rejected the technology for years. It took hustle, marketing skill, and mass societal change to place air conditioning at the center of our built environment.

Crichton: Now to get to the heart of the book, you focus on the rise of air conditioning, but you start by giving readers a wide view of what life was like before its invention. Why did you do that?

Wilson: This was a surprise — I did not go into the book thinking that I was going to find this. Before air conditioning really took off in the home, there was a really different sense of what we would call personal comfort, and something that I really argue in the book is that what we’ve come to think of as personal comfort, and specifically, thermal comfort, has changed. What I argue in the book is that it’s really in part a cultural construction.

Personal comfort today is bad.

Now, I want to be really careful that people don’t hear that I’m saying that it’s entirely a construction. Yes, when we get too hot or too cold, then we can die, for sure. But what’s really interesting to me is that there’s a lot of evidence to show that before air conditioning began at the beginning of the twentieth century, people weren’t really hungry for air conditioning.

People weren’t hungry for burgers, airplanes, or surfing before they were invented. Sitting out at the beach for a tan wasn’t a big thing before the 20th Century, either. Times change.

Crichton: I’m jumping ahead, but what does the future look like as global warming persists and our cooling increases in line with that heat?

Wilson: In so many cooling situations, there are major alternatives, like redesigning our buildings so that they require way less energy and way less cooling. There are really amazing architects who are looking to things like termite mounds, because the colonies that they build sort of have brilliantly engineered rooms with different temperatures.

That said, I was surprised how much our opinion on comfort could change by simply understanding that it could change. I think that we have to make the world of tomorrow desirable, and we can take a nod from the commercial advertising industry. We have to sell this future as one that we actually want, not as something that we’re giving up. And I think the narrative is always like, “Oh, we have to stop doing this, we have to lower this, we have to give this up.” And that’s certainly true. But I think if we understand that as not something that we’re giving up, but actually something that we’re gaining, then it makes it a lot easier. For people, it makes it feel a lot more possible.

Ah, they have to sell people on doing away with AC and living like ants. Good to know.

Read: Bummer: Air Conditioning Is Killing The 21st Century »

If All You See…

…is an Evil fossil fueled vehicle causing Bad Weather, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Weasel Zippers, with a post on the Pentagon spokesperson walking away from a tough question on ISIS.

It’s country women week!

Read: If All You See… »

Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup

Patriotic Pinup Melody Owens

Happy Sunday! Another gorgeous day in the Once And Future Nation Of America. The Sun is shining, the birds are singing, and, well, the NFL starts soon. I guess that’s OK. I’ll only be watching Giants games, no others. This pinup is by Melody Owens, with a wee bit of help.

What is happening in Ye Olde Blogosphere? The Fine 15

  1. Legal Insurrection covers a Marine commander relieved from duty for demanding accountability from leadership
  2. Knuckledraggin My Life Away notes a professor condemned as racist for doing a colorblind study
  3. Jihad Watch discusses the Taliban cutting a gay man to pieces
  4. Geller Report News highlights the Taliban mass executing people
  5. Gates Of Vienna covers a French judge suspending vaccine passports in a region of France
  6. Flopping Aces wonders if doctors will also refuse to treat obese people like they do the unvaccinated
  7. DC Clothesline notes the CDC is pivoting to guns after ending COVID
  8. Datechguy’s Blog covers radical feminists acting saner than our government
  9. Cold Fury discusses what we can learn from COVID tyranny in different countries
  10. Chicks On The Right notes a judge requiring a man to get the vaccine as a term of parole
  11. bluebird of bitterness has your Cat Saturday
  12. American Greatness highlights the Progressive campaign to keep white people hating themselves
  13. Newsbusters covers the LA Times whining about hate mail after all their hate towards Larry Elder
  14. Pacific Pundit discusses sick, frail Biden falling asleep on Israel’s PM
  15. And last, but not least, Powerline Blog notes how other countries see the Biden admin

As always, the full set of pinups can be seen in the Patriotic Pinup category, or over at my Gallery page (nope, that’s gone, the newest Apache killed access, and the program hasn’t been upgraded since 2014). While we are on pinups, since it is that time of year, have you gotten your “Pinups for Vets” calendar yet? And don’t forget to check out what I declare to be our War on Women Rule 5 and linky luv posts and things that interest me.

Don’t forget to check out all the other great material all the linked blogs have!

Anyone else have a link or hotty-fest going on? Let me know so I can add you to the list. And do you have a favorite blog you can recommend be added to the feedreader?

Read: Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup »

Chicago Judge Strips Mother Of Custody Rights For Not Being Vaccinated

This is probably the first case in the U.S. where Government has stripped a private citizen of their Rights due to vaccination status

From the link

A Chicago mother is appealing a court order that revoked her parental visiting rights because she declined to be vaccinated against the coronavirus .

When Rebecca Firlit and her ex-husband of seven years participated in a child support hearing via video call on Aug. 10 for the purpose of determining the terms of shared custody of their 11-year-old son, Cook County Judge James Shapiro inquired about Firlit’s vaccination status. After Firlit told the judge she did not receive the vaccine because of adverse reactions she has had to other vaccines , he ordered her to be stripped of her parental right to visit her son until she has been vaccinated.

“I think that it’s wrong. I think that it’s dividing families. And I think it’s not in my son’s best interest to be away from his mother,” Firlit told local Fox-affiliate WFLD.

Firlit, who has spoken with her son on the phone and through video calls, hasn’t visited in person in over two weeks in compliance with the judge’s order.

“It had nothing to do with what we were talking about,” she said of her vaccination status. “He was placing his views on me and taking my son away from me.”

Her lawyer further stated that this was not in the judge’s jurisdiction and purview, as the father didn’t even bring the subject up. Oh, and there’s pretty much nothing within the law that allows this. The appeal should be interesting, and should be looking at the judge himself for this invasive and unconstitutional ruling. He might be saying “well, it’s for the welfare of the child”, but, the child is around plenty who are not vaccinated. This is a judge who simply decided to intervene with his own beliefs. And, maybe she can’t get the vaccine. Even the CDC notes that some have bad reactions and shouldn’t get it. How many more will decide to do the same?

Meanwhile, in Washington state

(King5) The Washington Federation of State Employees (WFSE) filed a lawsuit Thursday in an attempt to stop Gov. Jay Inslee’s vaccine mandate from going into effect after the state and the union failed to reach a bargaining agreement.

The complaint filed in Thurston County Superior Court alleges the state “failed to bargain the effects of [the mandate] in good faith” with the union, according to a release from WFSE.

The vaccine mandate, passed down by Inslee in early August, requires most state employees, healthcare workers and K-12 employees to be fully vaccinated by Oct. 18 or face losing their jobs.

Interesting. Government unions are allowed to bargain with mandates, but, private citizens aren’t? Private citizens have to simply suck it up and deal with it?

Read: Chicago Judge Strips Mother Of Custody Rights For Not Being Vaccinated »

Woman With Extinction Rebellion Goes Topless For Protest

Update: apparently, the tweet with the XR lunatic (nice boobs, though), was deleted, you can see the video here.

What are the unhinged lunatic Marxist Extinction Rebellion folks up to?

Extinction Rebellion Protesters Paint London Red

Extinction Rebellion protesters poured red paint over the entrances of city institutions as they marched through London’s financial district in a protest against the ‘“blood money” on which they say the UK economy is built.

In what appeared to be the biggest mobilization so far this week by the environmental protest group, several thousand demonstrators took a tour of the city, stopping off at the banks and law firms they saw as most culpable in the climate crisis.

All week, groups based on local areas, or around issues such as gender, race or politics, have staged actions in different locations in central London. On Friday, the protest was staged in solidarity with black, brown and indigenous people, especially in the developing world.

Awesome! Committing vandalism while all the uber-white XR folks white-knight for the black, brown, and indigenous people, who mostly do not care, except in terms of getting free cash. This is seriously a 1st World white people issue

Activists then went to the Guildhall, from where the financial district is governed, and sprayed the building with red paint. At 3 pm, they reached Paternoster Square, where the London Stock Exchange is located, for rallies and a speech. A mass civil disobedience was planned. “Today’s protest is highlighting that racial, social and climate justice are all intertwined,” said Bhavini Patel, from east London, an activist with XR Unify. “There is no separation and we recognize that, because where’s that profit going and how does it impact us?”

I’m starting to think this has nothing to do with science. Nice of the cops to do absolutely nothing in the face of vandalism.

But, maybe that’s cause they were distracted? (below the fold, don’t need this popping up on your work PC screen

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Read: Woman With Extinction Rebellion Goes Topless For Protest »

Pirate's Cove