Category Archives: Climate Scam

Posted on by

The wealthy love them some fossil fuels!

The [ughh!] Magnolia Network is, this Saturday morning, running reruns of This Old House, season 41, originally broadcast in 2019-2020, a major, expensive, remodel of a home in Westerly, Washington County, Rhode Island. Westerly is a beach resort town which in the 2020 election gave 55.6% of its votes to Joe Biden; Washington County as a whole voted 58.57% to 39.20% for Mr Biden.

And what did the obviously wealthy homeowners, in liberal Rhode Island, in a show originally meant for the liberal Public Broadcasting System, choose for this project? One episode shows the installation of a 1,000 gallon underground propane tank, for their heating system, their water heater, their range, and their fireplace.

The remodeled kitchen; note the gas range. Click to enlarge.

The homeowners chose comfort, the homeowners chose fossil fuels!

Now, it is entirely possible that Scott and Shayla Adams, the homeowners,[1]The homeowners’ names were given on both the show and the website, so I am not doxxing them. were among the smarter people in Westerly, and voted for President Trump; I have no way of knowing that. But in one of our more liberal states, in very blue New England, we’re seeing reasonably wealthy homeowners eschewing the calls of the global warming climate change activists to go all-electric, and choosing what they believe is the better choice for themselves.

References

References
↑1 The homeowners’ names were given on both the show and the website, so I am not doxxing them.
Posted on by

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.

Posted on by

The climate activists don’t want you to have a choice! The truth is simple: the American left are pro-choice on exactly one thing

I found this story on my Google reader feed on my iPad on Monday morning, and of course it caught my eye . . . because, due to what the Weather Channel called ‘Winter Storm Izzy,’ ice and heavy wet snow weighed down power lines and tree limbs, and we lost electricity at 8:04 PM EST on Sunday.

The campaign to ban gas stoves is heating up

Mike Bebernes · Senior Editor · Saturday, January 15, 2022 · 4:56 PM

Over the past three years, dozens of cities across the country have banned natural gas hookups in newly constructed buildings as part of a growing campaign to reduce carbon emissions from homes. The movement scored a major victory last month, when New York City’s outgoing Mayor Bill de Blasio signed into law a ban on gas hookups in new buildings.

Though new laws apply to the entire home, the policy debate often focuses on one room in particular: the kitchen. Gas stoves account for a relatively small share of the emissions released by a typical household, but they’ve become a proxy for a larger fight over how far efforts to curb at-home natural gas consumption in the name of fighting climate change should go.

Natural gas consumption accounts for 80 percent of fossil fuel emissions from residential and commercial buildings, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. One study estimated that New York’s ban on its own would create an emissions reduction comparable to taking 450,000 cars off the road. But the movement has met significant pushback. About 35 percent of U.S. homes use gas for cooking, and surveys show that many people are resistant to switching to an electric or induction range. The gas industry has also launched a massive lobbying campaign that has helped convince 19 Republican-led states to preemptively bar local governments from imposing bans on natural gas.

There’s more at the original.

Our remodeled kitchen, including the propane range! All of the work except the red quartz countertops was done by my family and me. Click to enlarge.

I have previously noted that “it seems that everybody wants a gas range.”

We did, too. So when we remodeled our kitchen in 2018, we installed what Mrs Pico wanted, a gas — propane in our case, being out in the country beyond natural gas lines — range, replacing the old electric one that came with the house when we bought it.

We had other reasons, as well. Our house was all electric, and our first winter here was miserable. It got colder than usual for a winter in central/eastern Kentucky, and the electric heat pump just wouldn’t keep up very well. Then, when we lost electricity for 4½ days in an ice storm, it was decided: we would not depend just on sparktricity for heat, cooking and hot water. We added a propane fireplace and water heater as well, so if we lose electricity again — and we’re pretty much at the end of the service line, last ones to get service restored out here — we’ll still have heat and hot water and can cook.

Yes, my wife and I remodeled that kitchen all by ourselves, with help from my sisters and, occasionally, a nephew, but no ‘professionals’ were involved. The plumbing, the electrical, the drywall, the floor and backsplash time, the cabinet installation, the wallpaper, the window installation, everything you see — and you can click on the image to enlarge it — with the exception of the red quartz countertop installation was done by us.

Last March we had the floods, and while the flooding did not damage our house, it did trash the HVAC system. It was in the mid-forties in March, and, after a day getting the propane tank back in position — it had floated, but since I had tied it to a tree, didn’t float away — we had heat from our propane fireplace.

And the past few days? The electricity went out at 8:04 PM on Sunday, and wasn’t restored until 5:45 PM on Tuesday. While it got up to around 40º Tuesday afternoon, it was below freezing on Sunday, and on Sunday and Monday nights.

So, what did we have? We had heat, from the propane stove, and we had hot water, from the propane hot water heater, and we even had French toast for breakfast this morning, cooked on the propane stove.

Were it up to the climate activists, we’d have been cold, dirty, and hungry.

Climate change activists see gas bans as a powerful way to reduce the greenhouse gases created by buildings, which account for about 13 percent of total U.S. emissions. They argue that — unlike burgeoning technologies like a green power grid and electric vehicles — clean alternatives to gas heaters, appliances and stoves are readily available to most consumers. Critics of the bans, on the other hand, are skeptical of how much they’ll really reduce emissions, worry about increasing costs for homeowners and argue that market-based solutions will be most effective at promoting a transition to electrified homes.

Range from the Generation Next house, Newton, MA. Click to enlarge.

Thing is, that’s not what people want! In it’s 2018 season, This Old House worked on it’s ‘Generation Next‘ house in Newton, Massachusetts, and the obviously well-to-do homeowners in very, very liberal Massachusetts, in Middlesex County, which gave 71.00% of its votes to Joe Biden, chose natural gas for heating, hot water, and cooking.

Perhaps the homeowners were among the 26.11% of Middlesex County voters who cast their ballots for President Trump!

Also see: William Teach, Your Fridge Is An Agent Of Climate Catastrophe Or Something

For my family, gas was the logical choice. We live way out in the country, and when the power goes out, it can be out for a long time. For my older daughter, who bought a 1924 bungalow in Lexington, when her heating system had to be replaced — which was when she bought the place, and we knew it — the choice was also gas, though she didn’t update to a gas range. In the middle of the city, if the power goes out, it’s unlikely to be out for days at a time. A gas furnace can keep a home nice and warm even on the coldest of days, something heat-pump based HVAC systems have trouble achieving.

But if these choices were the logical ones for my family, they were choices the climate activists not only didn’t want us to take, but don’t even want us to have. They want their choices to be our choices, our only choices, because, well because they’re just better than us.

Posted on by

The left love them some authoritarian government . . . when they are in power

A few days ago, William Teach noted an article from The Business Standard:

    What if democracy and climate mitigation are incompatible?

    The COP framework is ill-matched to solving climate change in a timely fashion because it does not solve the international governance dilemma at its heart

    by Cameron Abadi | Sunday, January 9, 2022 | 11:05 AM

    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.

There’s a lot more at the original. But the two money paragraphs are further down:

    Representatives from the US and German governments say their policies are the result of the necessary compromises demanded by the democratic process. But it is fair to wonder whether that is just another way of restating the problem. . . . .

    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.

Now comes Talking Points Memo:

    This Supreme Court Case Could Make Or Break The Biden Presidency (And The Planet)

    by Kate Riga | Thursday, January 13, 2022 | 10:29 AM EST

    The Supreme Court will hear a case in February that could decide the future of the Biden presidency — and gut its ability to mitigate climate change in the face of congressional inaction.

    The case, West Virginia v. EPA, centers on the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. Should the Court move to limit what the EPA can do, that, alone, would be incredibly significant.

    But the Court, with its heavily conservative slant, could take the opportunity to go further, slashing the power of federal agencies across the board, a move that would hobble the Biden administration’s ability to enact its climate agenda as well as a long list of other priorities.

    “There is a significant likelihood that how the Court handles this case will affect how much leeway agencies have to interpret authority statutes going forward,” Jonathan Adler, founding director of the Coleman P. Burke Center for Environmental Law at the Case Western Reserve University School of Law, told TPM.

    On environmental policy in particular, Congress has been unable or unwilling to pass major legislation for about 30 years, a stasis that has continued even as the dire threat of climate change has become evident. That leaves agencies like the EPA as the only entities available to take up the slack, slowing climate change through their regulatory and rule-making abilities. If the Court limits the EPA’s power to regulate, there are no strong, dependable avenues left on the federal level to make environmental policy.

Here is the fundamental error that the left assume: that because Congress has not passed the legislation they want, Congress has somehow failed to act. No, by not changing the law, Congress have said, in effect, we are happy enough with the laws already on the books.

    Fear of the Court’s potential for aggression here is not mere speculation. Last week’s arguments over a couple of Biden administration vaccine mandates gave the justices ample time to air their skepticism over the exercise of agency power, even in a case concerning health-care facilities where the agency’s congressionally-given authority is fairly explicit.

One thing is abundantly clear: Congress have given up far too much of their power to the executive branch, and mid-level bureaucrats who write ‘regulations’ which Congress would never pass if the members had to do something really radical like actually vote on them. If the President — any President — sometimes seems like a tinpot dictator, it’s because Congress have ceded to the executive too much authority in the first place.

    But the Court could go further, using this case in its quest to limit agency power. One of the tools the conservative justices could use to achieve that is the major questions doctrine, which holds that some issues are of such economic and political significance that the Court will assume that Congress did not intend to delegate that power to the agency unless the statute is specific.

    It’s squishy, and gives the justices significant power to smack down regulations: how do you determine levels of economic and political significance? How do you decide what statutory language is specific enough to count?

    The conservative justices also showed a willingness to approach cases through the lens of this doctrine in the vaccine mandate case last week, many suggesting in their questioning that Congress needed to be much more specific in its conveyance of authority.

Heaven forfend! that the Supreme Court say that it should take an act of Congress, rather than a decree from OSHA, that people would have to accept an injection into their bodies, or lose their jobs!

Do we really want to give to bureaucrats the authority to require the acceptance of a vaccine the long-term effects of which have yet to be tested? Do we really want to give to bureaucrats the authority to completely alter our entire energy production and transportation systems? That’s what Talking Points Memo seems to want, for one simple reason: what they want government to do are things which 535 individual Representatives and Senators would never pass, because they are, in the end, responsible to their constituents, to the actual voters.

If the public don’t want it, it should not be forced on us by government.

Posted on by

Climate Cult: Forget The Electric Vehicles You Can’t Afford. People Need To Drive Less

Or, the climate cultists could simply mind their own business and stop trying to force everyone to Comply. Maybe stop using fossil fueled vehicles in their own lives

Letters to the Editor: Electric cars aren’t a climate change panacea. We need to drive less

To the editor: Electric cars shouldn’t be regarded as the silver-bullet solution to lowering automobile emissions. While they don’t run on gas, their batteries create their own set of environmental problems. (“California isn’t on pace to meet its climate targets. Here are 3 ways to cut pollution faster,” editorial, Dec. 19)

What we need is to use our cars less. We have to stop looking at cars as the only viable option to get from Point A to Point B. We can start by carpooling to work, taking the bus to run an errand and riding a bike for short trips.

A few tweaks in our driving habits can go a long way toward reducing our carbon footprint, electric or not.

What’s this “we”, Sparky? I do not see many Warmists doing this in their own lives. I haven’t met many EV owners who are doing it due to ‘climate change’. I mean, good grief, they have barely rolled out pushing for everyone to be forced to drive an EV (which most cannot afford) and now we have to get rid of them.

To the editor: There seems to be a delusion among those who formulate climate policy that if they set a pollution reduction mandate, it will surely happen.

The mandates and targets never have the supporting, well-conceived, detailed plan for how to reach the goals. Broad guidelines like “increasing the percentage of zero-emission vehicles sold” are made, but they rarely have the how-to specifics.

The populace gives lip service to climate goals while legislators avoid the draconian measures that would be required.

Let’s face it: There is no way that California will meet its legal mandate to cut emissions 40% below 1990 levels by 2030.

Where are the concrete, specific goals from Warmists in their own lives to cut their own emissions? But, really, this person’s point is correct: most in government do not have real plans, probably because even the most hardcore realize they can’t make them happen.

Meanwhile, here are 22 of the “most anticipated” EVs (you have to look at the Canoo Lifestyle vehicle. Very silly looking). For those with pricing, the least is $34470. Most are way, way more. That’s affordable, right? And, while stocks soared in 2021, they’re expected to go way down in 2022. Because anticipation is not the same as people actually buying them. They’re toys for the upper middle class and rich.

Posted on by

AOC, NY Dems Unhappy Over “Peaker” Power Plants

See, these types of plants are rather necessary for peak power loads, especially as efficient, effective, low cost, reliable power plants are shuttered

Three House Democrats ask watchdog to probe ‘peaker’ power plant pollution

Three House Democrats from New York on Tuesday called on a federal watchdog to investigate pollution generated by “peaker” power plants, or those that only generate electricity during periods of high demand.

House Oversight Committee Chair Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) joined Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.) in calling on the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to investigate the effects of such plants on local communities.

The lawmakers noted that the plants are both less energy-efficient than standard power plants and are frequently located in lower-income or predominantly minority neighborhoods.

“Addressing the use of peaker plants, which can emit twice the carbon and up to 20 times the nitrous oxides of a typical plant while operating significantly less efficiently, represents a high-impact opportunity to reduce climate risks and tackle a life-threatening environmental justice issue,” they wrote. “We request GAO’s assistance in reporting on key data to assess damage, uncover health burdens, calculate economic costs, and identify alternative solutions to the use of peaker power plants.”

A couple points here. First, why is this the business of the federal government in the first place? This is clearly a state issue, regardless of Los Federales wanting to make ‘climate change’ a thing. This is all about New Yorkers having the power necessary to Do Life. Second, here are 3 federal representatives wanting to make sure that their constituents, along with all the other residents of NY, are short on power. All while they spend most of their time in D.C. How about investigating peaker plants in D.C.? Or would that be inconvenient for AOC, Maloney, and Clarke?

There are 89 peaker plants in New York City alone, including 28 in or near Maloney’s district and 16 in Ocasio-Cortez’s district. An area in western Queens with a number of such plants has become known as “Asthma Alley” due to its disproportionate rates of the respiratory condition.

Wwll, hey, y’all in NYC voted for these Socialist lunatics, so, you’re willing to give up all that power generation, right?

Posted on by

Weathering the storm

My good friend William Teach noted, ten days ago, an article by Saul Griffith, in which he claimed that, to save Mother Gaia, there was one thing that we absolutely had to do:

    Now, finally, much of the world has become convinced, first-hand, that global warming is not only real but heating up more rapidly than we expected, unleashing irreversible impacts. Many people feel despair and helplessness in the face of doomsday predictions already in evidence. And yet, I’m optimistic that we can solve this problem in time to keep our planet livable for future generations.

    I have to be optimistic. I’m the father of young children and I want them to not only survive what humanity has done to our planet, but experience the awe of the natural world that I enjoyed as a child. But I’m also a scientist, and I approach the problem like an engineer. What do we need to build to fight global warming? Can we do it in time to keep the planet under the 1.5-2.0 degrees centigrade warming that can avoid a tipping point toward climate disaster?

    Squinting at the data, I see a way forward, but the urgency can’t be underestimated. The answer is actually quite simple and requires no miracle technology: we must electrify everything, fast. That means not just the supply-side sources of energy; we’ve got to electrify everything on the demand-side—the things we use in our households and small businesses every day, including cars, furnaces, stoves, water heaters, and dryers. I’m optimistic because over the last two decades the advances and cost reductions in electric vehicles, solar cells, batteries, heat pumps, and induction cooking mean that what we need can now be purchased at roughly price parity with the fossil fuelled incumbent.

Mr Griffith doesn’t bother to tell us just how poorer Westerners, much less poorer people in the rest of the world, can simply afford to go out and replace working gas ranges with electric induction cooktops, or gas or heating oil furnaces with electric ones. Even the environmentally-conscious show, “This Old House,” showed remodeling of a house, in cold Massachusetts, adding a new gas-fired furnace, in 2018, because gas heat is simply more reliable and efficient in New England. I did have to replace my electric HVAC system last spring, as the old one was destroyed in the record flooding last March.[1]The river gauge jammed at 28.18 feet, so the flooding crest was guesstimated, but it was the historic crest, topping the previous record of 39.37 feet. The flooding got into the crawl space … Continue reading That was $5,896.00, and fortunately we had the money, but a lot of people around here did not.

In January of 2018, our first winter here, an ice storm knocked out the electricity for 4½ days . . . and our house was ell-electric. Electric heat pump for heating and cooling, electric range for cooking, and an electric water heater for hot water. My wife headed to our daughters’ apartment in Lexington and stayed there, nice and comfortably, but I had to stay at home, to take care of the critters, and make sure the plumbing didn’t freeze. I was able to get a lukewarm shower the second morning, as the water in the tank had cooled but wasn’t cold, but that was the extent of it.

By the time the sparktricity was restored, it was down to 38º F inside the house. Fortunately, the weather outside was in the upper twenties to mid thirties that week; had it been down in the teens or lower, it could have been a much worse problem.

Now, our house is a fixer-upper, which we knew when we bought the place. One thing my darling bride (of 42 years, 5 months and 27 days) wanted was a gas range; almost everybody wants a gas range! But, after that first winter, and 4½ days without electricity, and a farm which is at the end of the line as far as Jackson Energy Cooperative is concerned for restoring power, we decided: a gas — propane in our case — water heater and fireplace for backup heating would be a very wise thing.

Our propane fireplace. Click to enlarge.

Yesterday evening, they came into play! A serious storm knocked out power not just to us, but much of the county. It was raining hard, and was very windy. But that propane fireplace did its job, keeping the house warm.

Mrs Pico was not at home at the moment; a hospital nurse, she wouldn’t get off until 7:30 PM, so supper hadn’t been cooked when the electricity failed. It was when she arrived home that she told us how widespread the power outage was. But, with that gas range, supper was no problem.[2]The electric pilot didn’t work, but the caps could be easily lit with a match. The oven will not work without electricity. It wasn’t the supper we had planned, hot wings, because we cook those with an electric air fryer, but my younger daughter — our daughters were visiting for the weekend — whipped up bacon and eggs on the range top.

Oil lamp and candles on the kitchen counter.

Of course, it was dark in the house, but candles, and a oil lamp — more fossil fuel there! — provided illumination.

Had Saul Griffith had his way, the house would have cooled down uncomfortably, and there’s have been no cooked meal for us. Morning showers? He’d not have wanted us to be able to take them.

As it happened, the sparktricity came back on a few hours later, but I remembered January of 2018; since Mrs Pico was had volunteered for an extra shift this morning, a shower was necessary for her.

Still, to quote Game of Thrones, winter is coming. My closest neighbor has told me that the power has been out here for as long as two weeks in the past, when bad snow and ice storms have brought down power lines. We are now prepared, though Mr Griffith doesn’t want us to be.

References

References
↑1 The river gauge jammed at 28.18 feet, so the flooding crest was guesstimated, but it was the historic crest, topping the previous record of 39.37 feet. The flooding got into the crawl space underneath our house, but stopped one concrete block, about 7½ inches, below the wooden structure. Our house was saved, but the HVAC system was lost.

Flood insurance is expensive. One woman I know had flood insurance, but to keep the expense manageable, she had a $10,000 deductible, and her losses were slightly under $10,000.

↑2 The electric pilot didn’t work, but the caps could be easily lit with a match. The oven will not work without electricity.
Posted on by

Fear is the mind-killer!

William Teach noted New York Times columnist Tom Friedman’s paean to fear:

    When you see how hard it’s been for governments to get their citizens to just put on a mask in stores, or to get vaccinated, to protect themselves, their neighbors and their grandparents from being harmed or killed by Covid-19, how in the world are we going to get big majorities to work together globally and make the lifestyle sacrifices needed to dampen the increasingly destructive effects of global warming — for which there are treatments but no vaccine?

Perhaps, just perhaps, when the plebeians see the patricians taking 118 private jets to the ‘climate summit’ COP26, they simply aren’t convinced that global warming climate change emergency is all that much of an emergency. Whether Mr Friedman took a private jet or, gasp!, flew commercial I do not know, but we do know that he’s been flying all over the globe to attend these things, telling us that he has “been to most of the climate summits since Bali in 2007”.

Yeah, if I could get the Times to pay for a vacation in Bali, I’d go, too!

But Mr Friedman hit upon the instrument of control the government, at all levels, have been trying to use: fear! When he complains that some people are not cooperating with the message that COVID-19 could harm or kill people’s grandparents, neighbors, and themselves, he frets that people, free people, are just not going to go along with the “lifestyle sacrifices” the patricians demand of others, though seemingly not of themselves.

But he needn’t worry: there have been plenty of people who were filled with fear, and are still filled with fear. From The Philadelphia Inquirer:

    The catharsis of attending my first concert of the COVID-19 era | Opinion

    I didn’t realize how profoundly being home with only myself and my boyfriend for company had affected me until we started venturing out into the larger world.

    by Rachel Kramer Bussel, For The Inquirer | November 5, 2021

    “Is this your first time?” a stranger asked me in an elevator at the Met as we tried to find our seats at the St. Vincent concert a few weeks ago.

    Stunned, I stared back at her, trying to form an answer. How did she know? Did I look stricken by the nerves I’d felt bouncing around for weeks as I tried to decide if attending a public event was finally safe? I eventually nodded.

    “You have two masks, just like me. It’s my first too,” she said. We both knew she meant it wasn’t our first concert ever, but our first pandemic outing.

    I didn’t realize how profoundly being home with only myself and my boyfriend for company had affected me until we started venturing out into the larger world. For the last few months, we’d been going to a local grocery store to supplement our Instacart deliveries, but beyond that and work interactions, we hadn’t been close to such a large group of people since before the mid-March 2020 lockdown.

There’s a sadness in that: Miss Bussel has just told us that her boyfriend and she had virtually shut down their social lives for nineteen months. For the “last few months” they’d worked up the nerve to venture out to go to the grocery store, apparently when they’d missed putting something on their Instacart order. Of course, they were willing to put other people at whatever risk they were afraid to take themselves, because Instacart requires living human beings to put together the grocery order, and living human beings to drive through Egg Harbor Township[1]Miss Bussel noted in her original that her home is in Egg Harbor, so my noting it does not constitute ‘doxxing.’ to deliver the orders. The stressful social situations Her boyfriend and Miss Bussel avoided themselves they thought little of putting on other people.

    I was expecting to enjoy hearing St. Vincent perform for the first time, but I wasn’t prepared for the sense of catharsis the communal experience would be. I looked around at my fellow concertgoers, at the dazzling chandelier, at the dancers and musicians onstage, and felt deeply grateful that I’d said yes to attending. In August, I’d reluctantly had my boyfriend sell our long-awaited tickets to see Sleater-Kinney and Wilco at the Mann Center, even though that was an outdoor show. The risks felt too great.

    But having received my Pfizer booster shot two days before the St. Vincent show, and knowing the Met requires a COVID-19 vaccination or a recent negative test, I felt that was a risk worth taking.

Uhhh, if Miss Bussel got her COVID-19 booster shot two days prior to attending the concert, it hadn’t had time to work yet![2]“At least 12 days after receipt of the third dose, the SARS-CoV-2 infection rate was 11.3 times lower in the booster group than in the control group (95% confidence interval [CI], 10.4 to … Continue reading

Of course, she was reassured by the fact that other concert goers had to show their papers! Wir müssen Ihre Dokumente sehen![3]Full disclosure: I received my initial dose of the Moderna vaccine on April Fool’s day, and the second on Cinco de Mayo. I’d really liked to have gotten the booster on Veterans’ … Continue reading

The author continued to tell us how she is now facing decisions about what her boyfriend and she can and cannot, should or should not, do to return to a normal life, but I have to wonder: after nineteen months of seemingly abject fear, is it reasonable to think she ever can just turn it off? The ‘experts’ are now telling us that SARS-CoV-2 will be with us forever, though it will become endemic and not be classified as a panicdemic pandemic. Miss Bussel revealed that she has asthma, which could mean that, if she became infected, the disease could be worse for her. Nevertheless, at least to judge from the photo she supplied to the Inquirer, as well as on her website, she’s a fairly young woman, and younger people, while still susceptible, tend to have far less serious outcomes.

Life is full of risks, and COVID-19 is but one of them. Miss Bussel was in about as much danger driving to that concert from a traffic accident as she was of contracting the virus. And since we know that even those who have been vaccinated can contract and spread the virus, going to that concert did not reduce her risk of contracting the virus to zero.

What government, governments at all levels, have done, is to spread fear through our society, fear of contracting a disease which can be deadly, and is deadly in a small percentage of cases, to the extent that it has crippled our society. The American Automobile Association has reported that Thanksgiving travel plans appear to be near pre-pandemic levels, despite Joe Biden’s soaring gasoline prices, but that simply tells us just how much restrictions and fear disrupted Americans’ lives in 2020. Many Governor’s, including Kentucky’s Andy Beshear, issued orders restricting how many people, and from how many households, people could have in their own homes for Thanksgiving last year, orders that I am proud to say the Pico family ignored. For government to have tried to virtually cancel Thanksgiving is something that only induced fear could accomplish.

We must not fear! As Frank Herbert wrote, fear is the mind-killer, but fear is also the freedom killer, the liberty killer! We allowed fear to get people to obey unconstitutional orders from state governors, orders restricting our freedom of religion and freedom of peaceable assembly. When we let fear get us to go along meekly with government diktats that infringe on our individual rights, we enable governments to keep doing so. They only need to instill the next subject of terror and fear to be able to do so.

References

References
↑1 Miss Bussel noted in her original that her home is in Egg Harbor, so my noting it does not constitute ‘doxxing.’
↑2 “At least 12 days after receipt of the third dose, the SARS-CoV-2 infection rate was 11.3 times lower in the booster group than in the control group (95% confidence interval [CI], 10.4 to 12.3), for an absolute difference of 86.6 infections per 100,000 person-days.”
↑3 Full disclosure: I received my initial dose of the Moderna vaccine on April Fool’s day, and the second on Cinco de Mayo. I’d really liked to have gotten the booster on Veterans’ Day, but the county health department would have been closed for the holiday, so I got it on the 9th. It was my choice — well, actually, my wife, a hospital nurse, asked me to do so, because she says she puts me at risk, since she treats COVID patients — but I absotively, posilutely refuse to carry around the vaccination records. I will not comply with “Ve need to see your papers!”
Posted on by

Good news from the Bluegrass State

This is great news on the opening day of COP26

Governor Jim Justice (R-WV) is a bit of a scumbag, owing millions of dollars to the Commonwealth of Kentucky for violations at his old, closed down coal mines here, money he hasn’t paid. Well, now he’s going to start to make it right, and to do so, he’s going to reopen four coal mines in the Bluegrass State, to do the required strip mine reclamation work, and produce coal to help pay for it.

    Official: Companies will hire workers, resume production at four Kentucky coal mines

    By Bill Estep | November 1, 2021 | 3:32 PM EDT | Updated: 3:40 PM EDT

    Companies tied to West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice plan to resume coal production at several surface mines in Eastern Kentucky, including two where state regulators argue Justice missed deadlines to finish reclamation, according to the president of the companies.

    Jim Justice’s son Jay, president of the Justice Companies, said companies have begun work to start producing coal at the Bevins Branch and Beech Creek mines in Pike County, the Bull Creek mine in Knott County and the Infinity mine in Harlan County.

    When all four are up and running, they will employ 120 people in mining jobs and another 30 in support positions, Jay Justice said.

There’s a lot more at the original, but the important part that I see is that 150 jobs will be created, and the left should be pleased: coal mining jobs are normally good paying union jobs!

Eastern Kentucky has become a very poor region as the coal mining industry slowly waned; 150 new jobs will certainly be welcome. More, coal mining creates downstream jobs, for the railroads and trucking, to haul the coal that is produced.