COVID “Model” California Now A Massive Mule Fritters Show Of Contagion

By William Teach January 1, 2021 – 8:26 am

Remember when so many states wanted to follow the California model? How the media said California, a state run lock, stock, and barrel by Democrats, was Doing It Right when it came to bat soup virus? All the lockdowns, restrictions, police arresting people out and about who weren’t anywhere near another human being? You know the hit parade. Now?

Once a model, California now struggles to tame COVID-19

Ambulances waited hours for openings to offload coronavirus patients. Overflow patients were moved to hospital hallways and gift shops, even a cafeteria. Refrigerated trucks were on standby, ready to store the dead.

For months, California did many of the right things to avoid a catastrophic surge from the pandemic. But by the time Gov. Gavin Newsom said on Dec. 15 that 5,000 body bags were being distributed, it was clear that the nation’s most populous state had entered a new phase of the COVID-19 crisis.

Now infections have been racing out of control for weeks, and California has routinely set new records for infections and deaths. It remains at or near the top of the list of states with the most new cases per capita.

Experts say a variety of factors combined to wipe out the past efforts, which for much of the year held the virus to manageable levels. Cramped housing, travel and Thanksgiving gatherings contributed to the spread, along with the public’s fatigue amid regulations that closed many schools and businesses and encouraged — or required — an isolated lifestyle.

Perhaps all those liberals in California are just not wearing their masks, right? Right! California is basically looking like Italy in March/April.

Another factor could be a more contagious variant of the virus detected in Southern California, although it’s not clear yet how widespread that may be.

Seems as if that’s just an excuse to shift the blame from Gov Gavin Newsome and other politicians.

California’s woes have helped fuel the year-end U.S. infection spike and added urgency to the attempts to beat back the scourge that has killed more than 340,000 Americans. Even with vaccines becoming available, cases are almost certain to continue growing, and yet another surge is expected in the weeks after Christmas and New Year’s.

The article does attempt to offer reasons, such as very dense housing, but, there are plenty of areas in the nation, and the world, where they have dense housing and not this big of a problem.

In March, during the early days of the pandemic, Newsom was hailed for issuing the nation’s first state stay-home order.

The Democrat eased business restrictions in May, and when a broader restart led to another surge, imposed more rules. In early December, with cases out of control, he issued a looser stay-home order. He also closed businesses such as barbershops and salons, halted restaurant dining and limited capacity in retail stores. The latest restrictions apply everywhere except in rural Northern California.

But Dr. Lee Riley, an infectious diseases professor at the University of California at Berkeley, said that while the state managed to flatten the curve of rising cases, it never effectively bent the curve downward to the point infections would die out.

Thing is, it was never going to stop it, just delay the inevitable. Yes, things were very much in flux early on. We know slightly more now. But, really, we knew enough to not have to deal with the authoritarian lockdowns, and the whole world which pulled these dictatorial craziness are dealing with a massive resurgence.

Masks? How’s that working out? Now it’s just time to wait for the vaccine, which is coming

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Climate Cultists Demand Removal Of Politician For Wrongthink

By William Teach December 31, 2020 – 7:29 pm

We apparently cannot remove politicians for sending COVID patients to nursing homes, instead giving them awards. Nor for misusing their offices, major campaign finance offenses, and more. Nope. But, Wrongthink?

Pennsylvania lawmaker subject of removal petition over climate change views

Butler County Rep. Daryl Metcalfe, one of the General Assembly’s most conservative members with a habit of sponsoring impeachment resolutions, now faces a removal petition of his own.

The Better Path Coalition asked House Speaker Bryan Cutler, R-Lancaster, to remove Metcalfe as majority chairman of the House Environmental Resources and Energy Committee this week over his views on climate change.

“A minimum qualification of the person who wields the most power on climate policy in the legislature is that they accept climate change,” said the coalition in a letter signed by 42 other groups opposed to his chairmanship and delivered to Cutler this week. “Metcalfe is an unabashed climate denier.”

Karen Feridun, co-founder of the coalition, said 70 percent of residents support climate action as the toll of weather-related disasters grows more severe each year. In 2020 alone, such natural disaster have cost the country $16 billion, the coalition said.

OK, they just want him gone from the committee, which seems to be about the environment and energy, real issues, not the climate crisis scam

“Speaker Cutler has no choice but to seize this opportunity to name a chair who has the skills and the basic understanding of science needed to address the unfolding climate crisis,” she said.

Oh, he has many choices, and the one he will probably take is for the climate cultist Democrats to go pound sand.

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If All You See…

By William Teach December 31, 2020 – 1:00 pm

…is an Evil gas fireplace causing big winter storms from carbon pollution, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Blazing Cat Fur, with a post on the year Big Tech became the ministry of truth.

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Did Nashville Bomber Believe Lizard People Run The World?

By William Teach December 31, 2020 – 10:30 am

My bet was on the homicidal lunatic believing in the “5G is evil” conspiracy theories, since it involved AT&T (potentially). How about this?

Nashville bomber linked to ‘lizard people’ myth, investigators say

As investigators search for a possible motive behind the Christmas Day suicide bombing that rocked downtown Nashville, injuring three people and destroying several buildings, new details have emerged about the peculiar beliefs of the suspected bomber.

NBC News reported Wednesday that investigators have obtained evidence that Anthony Quinn Warner, who died in the explosion, may have subscribed to a conspiracy theory that many of the world’s most powerful figures, from Barack Obama to the late Bob Hope are actually evil, lizard-like extraterrestrials in disguise. Officials told NBC News that investigators, who have been questioning friends and acquaintances and searching for clues of a possible motive for the bombing, have become aware of statements Warner made about the lizard people conspiracy theory — though it wasn’t immediately clear what those statements were. Authorities also reported that Warner made statements to others about hunting possible aliens during previous camping trips he took in his RV.

The so-called lizard people conspiracy theory has taken a back seat to some of the newer and more widely publicized baseless beliefs that have come to dominate the conspiracy landscape in recent years. But in 2013, a survey conducted by Public Policy Polling found that 12 million Americans believed that the country was run by lizard people in suits.

Oh, but, wait

In some ways, lizard people believers were a precursor to QAnon, the insidious pro-Trump conspiracy movement that has snowballed from the dark corners of the internet into mainstream social media feeds and even the halls of Congress over the last three years. Like QAnon, which was founded on the myth that President Trump is secretly working to dismantle a “deep state” cabal of satanic pedophiles, the lizard people theory holds that a secret network of blood-guzzling “global elites” have engineered tragedies from the Holocaust to 9/11. But it gets worse: The nefarious world leaders and Hollywood celebrities responsible for so much misery are not actually humans but shape-shifting reptilian creatures of alien descent.

Yeah, we had to get some Trump Derangement Syndrome included.

Federal investigators have reportedly been trying to determine whether Warner also believed in some of the more contemporary yet equally absurd conspiracy theories that have been circulating on the internet about 5G wireless communication networks. The Christmas morning explosion took place outside an AT&T building in Nashville, knocking out 911 service and disrupting AT&T service across the state. AT&T is one of the American telecommunication companies involved in rolling out 5G, the latest standard for broadband cellular networks, which is expected to dramatically increase data transfer speeds. [Verizon, which owns Yahoo News, is also a provider of 5G technology.]

I guess I wasn’t out of bounds when I was noting the 5G aspect late on Christmas day on blogs and such.

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We’re Saved: Massachusetts To Mandate All Vehicle Sales To Be EVs By 2035

By William Teach December 31, 2020 – 7:03 am

If this is so important, why not, say, 2022? If there are so many climate cultists in Mass., why are they not buying EVs in huge numbers right now?

Mass. to require all new cars sold to be electric by 2035 as part of climate-change measures

Governor Charlie Baker’s administration on Wednesday released a plan that will require the state to dramatically cut greenhouse-gas emissions in the next decade and beyond through a raft of changes, including by mandating that all new cars sold in the state be electric by 2035.

Among the changes the state plans over the next decade: retrofitting 1 million homes to use electricity for heating instead of gas and oil, cutting commuters’ driving miles by 15 percent, and dramatically increasing offshore wind power generation.

Where’s the electricity coming from to replace the gas and oil? Will they forcibly retrofit homes above the wishes of the home owners? How, exactly, will they make commuters reduce their miles? And, it will be interesting when politicians and rich folks jam up the works so that their views aren’t blighted.

The state’s new legally binding commitment to reduce the state’s carbon emissions to 45 percent below 1990 levels by 2030 is among the most ambitious of such pledges by governments in the United States and the rest of the world. Achieving that milestone would put the state on track to reach “net zero” fossil-fuel emissions by 2050, a goal announced this year by Baker’s administration.

It’s nice and all, but, most pledges to Do Something about Hotcoldwetdry have failed. Few keep their personal ones, few governments keep theirs. Let’s start with forcing the Gov’s office to become net zero right now.

The state strove to balance its ambitious goals with the need to maintain a thriving economy and prevent residents’ living costs from ballooning, Theoharides said. The changes will benefit Massachusetts residents by improving air quality — leading to savings in health costs up to $100 million per year by 2030 — and through the creation of thousands of high-quality local jobs, officials said.

Crazy pipe dreams of climate cultists who won’t change their own lives but want to force Other People to change theirs.

Massachusetts currently has about 30,000 electric vehicles on the roads, a number which may include hybrid vehicles, officials said. They set the goal of increasing that number to 750,000 by 2035, when all new “light-duty” vehicles, or passenger cars, sold will be mandated to be zero-emissions, meaning either electric or hydrogen fuel-cell cars, which also run on electricity.

Not “may include”, it does include. And the majority of those 30k will be standard hybrids, gas engines with electric battery assist. And a smattering of plugin hybrids. And then a few rich folks with Teslas. If this is so darned important, why is the Gov not switching to one now, along with all the people in his office?

And, why can’t these people just mind their own damned business?

Read: We’re Saved: Massachusetts To Mandate All Vehicle Sales To Be EVs By 2035 »

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We Can Reduce The Spread Of COVID By 30% By Closing One Place Or Something

By William Teach December 31, 2020 – 6:45 am

It’s such a simple thing, you know. Can you guess what that place is?

Closing This One Place Could Reduce the Spread of COVID by 30 Percent

When it comes to reducing the number of new COVID cases, there are many ways individuals can help limit the virus’ spread, like wearing a mask, practicing social distancing, and washing hands both thoroughly and often, just to name a few. However, new research reveals that there’s one public health measure that can drastically reduce the rate of COVID growth—and all it takes is shutting down a single spot. Read on to discover how experts say we could be significantly lowering COVID numbers, and for the latest expert-backed news about the virus, Dr. Fauci Just Gave This Warning About Stopping COVID Entirely.

According to a Dec. 2020 study published in the journal PLOS One, there’s one COVID control measure that’s proven more effective than any other when it comes to slowing the spread of the virus: closing down workplaces. While there are clear economic ramifications associated with doing so—and it’s not feasible for workers in every industry to perform their jobs remotely—the study’s authors found that workplace closings implemented at the highest applicable policy level could reduce viral spread by an estimated average of 32.5 percentage points.

See? It is simple. We’ll just close workplaces. We’ll essentially just close the economy. Man, if only we had tried this back early on, you know? Oh, they want to close even more? How about we start with making the news media and politicians non-essential workers, see how they feel?

The research also found that restrictions on internal movement, stay-at-home requirements, public information campaigns, and school closings were the next most effective means of limiting the spread of COVID.

How’s that worked so far? Nations with much more restrictive movement orders, like Italy, Germany, and the UK, are floundering. Public information nagging? Perhaps they should spend more time on social distancing, washing hands, and not touching your face like early on, instead of mask naggings. Schools? OK, then let’s reduce the education funding since they don’t need the buildings anymore.

It feels like so many of these articles are about being informative, they’re about telling Other People that they should Comply.

Read: We Can Reduce The Spread Of COVID By 30% By Closing One Place Or Something »

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Climate Cultists Still Wishing For Lockdown Or Something

By William Teach December 30, 2020 – 3:00 pm

Of course, they want Lockdown for everyone else, not themselves

Could Covid lockdown have helped save the planet?

When lockdown began, climate scientists were horrified at the unfolding tragedy, but also intrigued to observe what they called an “inadvertent experiment” on a global scale. To what extent, they asked, would the Earth system respond to the steepest slowdown in human activity since the second world war?

Almost one year on from the first reported Covid case, the short answer is: not enough. In fact, experts say the pandemic may have made some environmental problems worse, though there is still a narrow window of opportunity for something good to come from something bad if governments use their economic stimulus packages to promote a green recovery.

During the northern hemisphere spring, when restrictions were at their strictest, the human footprint softened to a level not seen in decades. Flights halved, road traffic in the UK fell by more than 70%. Industrial emissions in China, the world’s biggest source of carbon, were down about 18% between early February and mid-March – a cut of 250m tonnes. Car use in the United States declined by 40%. So light was humankind’s touch on the Earth that seismologists were able to detect lower vibrations from “cultural noise” than before the pandemic.

They say not enough, but, look what happened. Think they don’t want to do more? Plus all their Statist “green recovery” idiocy?

Meanwhile

2020 was meant to be the year of climate action. Instead, it crowned a wasted decade

2020 was supposed to be the watershed moment for action on climate change, the year the world woke up to the challenge and started taking it seriously. Instead, it has symbolically topped a decade of wasted climate promises.

Inspired by a wave of climate activism, national leaders were expected to come up with new, more ambitious plans for how to cut emissions over the next decade.

The coronavirus pandemic has derailed those plans, giving some governments a new excuse to stall. But Covid-19 definitely hasn’t stopped climate change.

This pandemic with all those who got sick, died, lost their jobs, lost their businesses, etc, is just so damned inconvenient for the climate cultists, eh?

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If All You See…

By William Teach December 30, 2020 – 1:00 pm

…is a grape orchard which will be decimated by climate change, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is A View From The Beach, with a post on some Russiagate.

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Up To 1.5 Billion Masks Could End Up In The Sea This Year

By William Teach December 30, 2020 – 10:30 am

If you’ve read this blog for a while, you know I may not be a believer that climate change is mostly/solely caused by Mankind (and, heck, even if it is, it’s being used as an excuse to institute Statism around the world), but, I do believe in the environment. It’s bad enough have masks (and gloves) all over the place, because people are too lazy to properly dispose of them. Well generously refer to them as “assholes”. And now

Report: Over 1.5 Billion Masks to Pollute Ocean This Year

Over one billion of the 52 billion masks produced in 2020 will pollute the world’s oceans, warns a report published by an environmental group out of Hong Kong.

OceansAsia said the masks will both contaminate oceans with plastic and harm already vulnerable marine wildlife.

“Single-use face masks are made from a variety of meltblown plastics and are difficult to recycle due to both composition and risk of contamination and infection,” OceansAsia’s report states. “These masks enter our oceans when they are littered or otherwise improperly discarded, when waste management systems are inadequate or non-existent, or when these systems become overwhelmed due to increased volumes of waste.”

The report estimates nearly 7,000 tons of plastic could pollute the ocean and may take roughly 450 years to break down.

It’s a dual problem. The masks aren’t properly disposed of and they do not break down correctly. And, really, you know lots of those blue mask people buy are ending up in the oceans and other waterways.

The report also highlights various animals that have died due to masks. In September, a penguin was found dead on a Brazilian beach with a mask wrapped up inside its stomach, according to a local marine conservation organization, Instituto Argonauta.

“The consequences of the large number of people who frequented the beaches of the North Coast of São Paulo on the extended holiday of September 7 may have cost the life of a Magellan penguin, whose cause of death is linked to a mask that was found inside his stomach,” read a statement from the non-profit.

It’s just one example, and probably limited, but, the plastic and other pollution in the oceans is bad enough. The report recommends wearing cloth mask (which, of course, really do not stop diseases, but, make people feel better). I’ve seen lots of those cheap ones you get at the convenience store lying in the roads and parking lots, too.

Read: Up To 1.5 Billion Masks Could End Up In The Sea This Year »

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New York Times Has Some Climate Cult Resolutions From Warmists

By William Teach December 30, 2020 – 8:11 am

I’m still waiting for the NY Times to abandon using fossil fuels to gather, create, and distribute their version of the news, particularly the paper editions. And turn the heat down to 60 during the cold weather. And only use solar and wind for their giant building

New Year’s Resolutions for the Planet

  • I finally want to join a climate action group. Lisa Burghardt, Germany
  • I plan on planting 50 trees in my childhood home in Croix-Des-Bouquets, Haiti, this coming year. Josette Teneus, Massachusetts
  • My next vehicle purchase will be an electric car. Jamie Wertz, Virginia

Those are three that start out this piece. I’m wondering if Josetta plans on taking a fossil fueled trip to Haiti to plant them, or just paying Someone Else to do the work? And seriously, is joining a group actually Doing Something?

In December, we asked the readers of our newsletter Climate Fwd: and our Twitter followers what they were planning on doing differently in 2021. We got some amazing responses. If you’re thinking of making a “green” New Year’s resolution, here are a few ideas, collected from those replies.

Get involved in your community.

Self-improvement is a classic theme of New Year’s resolutions. But to improve the planet, collective action is important. And the best thing you can do is get involved. At the national and state level, that means voting, for starters. And locally, it means helping to make changes in your community: in schools, in local groups or at the town hall.

And people wrote

  • My goal this year is to WRITE MY LEGISLATORS!!! This is an important year to help influence policy.
  • Engage with local educators and support curricula that broaden awareness of climate change and its mitigation.
  • Writing letters for the Sierra Club to support climate change legislation and candidates who are committed to working on climate change.
  • Spread awareness to everyone I meet about the harmful effects of animal products on our climate, which requires collective change starting from us.

So, not doing a damned thing to change your own life?

Travel differently. (Or just less.)

Transportation is a big part of nearly everyone’s carbon footprint, whether it’s the daily commute or that vacation flight. Personal and commercial transportation is the United States’ biggest contributor to greenhouse gases, at about 28 percent of the total.

Says the company which uses lots of fossil fuels and has a, get this, travel section.

  • Exploring the options of traveling by ship to replace planes.
  • I bought myself a bike light on Black Friday so I can bike and walk more often.
  • I resolve not to travel, by air, for pleasure only, in the coming years.

Buying the bike is nice, but, like the other three it is only a pledge, not really an action. “Exploring”. “In the coming years.” So, not right now.

There are two more sections, one on electricity and little things at home, and no one is offering to really do anything substantial, and no one is saying they are doing these things now. Surprise?

Read: New York Times Has Some Climate Cult Resolutions From Warmists »

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