Liberal Area to Phase Out Natural Gas Furnaces and Water Heaters -- but not stoves
Aiming for cleaner air is reasonable but electric heating does not do as good a job and looks set to be costly. If this goes ahead, the smarties will invest in an AGA -- a mainly British stove that has long been used to double as a heater. It was originally designed to burn hard coal!
The San Francisco Bay Area will begin a “gradual phaseout” of gas-powered water heaters and furnaces, which will be banned after 2026, The Hill reported Thursday.
Reportedly, the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD) voted this week to approve new rules to eliminate nitrogen oxide emissions from water heaters and furnaces. Going forward, the sale of NOx-emitting natural gas water heaters will be prohibited beginning in 2027. In 2029, the sale of NOx-emitting furnaces will be banned. “Large, commercial” water heaters that emit NOx will be banned in 2031.
“The 1.8 million water heaters and furnaces in the Bay Area significantly impact our air quality, resulting in dozens of early deaths and a wide range of health impacts, particularly in communities of color,” Philip Fine, executive officer of the Air District, said in a statement to the outlet. “This groundbreaking regulation will phase out the most polluting appliances in homes and businesses to protect Bay Area residents from the harmful air pollution they cause.”
The Hill noted that a separate fact sheet from the agency said that the only zero-NOx appliances available in the are electric appliances. A press release from the BAAQMD said that the regulations do not affect appliances used for cooking, such as gas stoves, which was previously a target for Democrats.
“The new amendments will safeguard public health against the hazards of these pollutants and prevent an estimated 85 premature deaths, as well as dozens of new asthma cases, in the Bay Area each year,” a statement from the agency added.
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/madelineleesman/2023/03/16/san-francisco-n2620704
**********************************************Climate change experts' bullying is not about helping the Earth, it is about controlling us
It's been a tough couple of years for the experts. When it comes to big public policy questions, complicated adult stuff like war and disease and the economy – really the only things that matter – the assumption in Washington has for many years been that you should not worry about it. Don't sweat the details. That's not your role as a citizen and as a voter. We don't have that kind of democracy, the kind where you might actually participate. No, your job is to trust the experts and their conclusions and then obey them.
But COVID kind of blew that up. If there's one thing we learned from that disaster, it's that public policy experts very often had no clue what they were talking about. Your hippie aunt in Mendocino County knew a lot more about how to beat a flu virus than your average virologist on CNN. They're not going to tell you to go outside, get some exercise, some sunlight, some fresh air, stop eating junk food, turn off your computer once in a while, spend time with other people. Be healthy. That advice worked. The experts, by contrast, made you get the vaccine and that did not work.
By March of 2021, people are starting to figure this out. Anyone who was paying attention in America understood that the experts, many of them, were full of it. And it was exactly at that moment that The Atlantic Magazine in Washington published a piece pushing back against a growing consensus. That story was entitled "Following Your Gut Isn't the Right Way to Go."
It's hard to think of a funnier headline, really mostly because it's so spectacularly absurd. You should always trust your gut, obviously. It is the one thing that will never betray you. But The Atlantic Magazine wanted you to know that your natural instincts are, in fact, worthless. "The experts had a rough year," the magazine concedes, "but we still have to trust them." Right.
Actually, we don't have to trust them and on big questions of public policy, we absolutely should not trust them. It's a democracy. But Washington is continuing to demand that we do trust them. Why? There may be a reason. Maybe COVID isn't the only big project they have in mind for us, a project the experts will justify and MSNBC.
And indeed it's not. There is the climate change agenda and the climate change agenda is the single most ambitious effort to remake human civilization in all recorded history, and it's coming. In fact, it's already in progress. The only reason that millions and millions of Americans aren't protesting in the streets tonight over this effort to completely overturn their lives is that on some level, many people still do trust the experts, at least on climate change, but should they?
We were pondering that this morning when we saw that the world's most famous climate change expert, Greta Thunberg of Sweden, just deleted a tweet she wrote in June of 2018.
Fridays For Future climate activist Greta Thunberg attends a news conference with climate activists and experts from Africa, in Stockholm, Sweden January 31, 2020. TT News Agency/Pontus Lundahl via REUTERS
Fridays For Future climate activist Greta Thunberg attends a news conference with climate activists and experts from Africa, in Stockholm, Sweden January 31, 2020. TT News Agency/Pontus Lundahl via REUTERS (TT News Agency/Pontus Lundahl via REUTERS)
Here it is: "A top climate scientist is warning that climate change will wipe out all of humanity unless we stop using fossil fuels over the next five years." That scientist, of course, was a Harvard professor so obviously that prediction was going to be correct, but here we are still driving our Silverados and still alive and some of us are still happy.
So, it does make you wonder if Greta Thunberg, the greatly revered Greta Thunberg, a perennial finalist for the Nobel Peace Prize, could have gotten that so wrong, what else have the climate experts gotten wrong and how long have they been getting it wrong? Well, fortunately, the Competitive Enterprise Institute has done the research on this, and it turns out these people have been very wrong for a very long time. In 1969, The New York Times was printing climate hysteria from an expert called Paul Ehrlich "We must realize that unless we are extremely lucky, everybody will disappear in a cloud of blue steam in 20 years."
That was Paul Ehrlich in 1969. Well, here it is, 2023, and that same Paul Ehrlich, who's now 90 and still publishing books and still being cited on "60 Minutes," is still telling us that we're all going to die. Now, clearly, Paul Ehrlich had some sort of traumatic childhood. He's been inflicting it on the rest of us for over 50 years, and for 50 years, his fellow experts have taken him seriously.
Jordan Peterson tells Tucker the religious structure behind the climate cult of the leftVideo
Now, back then, of course, climate change didn't mean global warming. It meant a new ice age. In 1970, The Boston Globe reported, "Scientists predict a new ice Age by 21st century." According to the Globe, "air pollution may obliterate the sun and cause a new ice age in the first third of the next century." An ice age!
In 1972, Brown University's science department sent a letter to the White House explaining that they had "deep concern with the future of the world because this ice age falls within the rank of processes which produced the last Ice Age." Two years later, in 1974, the Guardian reported, "Spy satellites show new ice age is coming fast" and the report cited for moral weight analysis carried out at Columbia University. Then, a few years later, 1977, the actor Leonard Nimoy – who was not a science expert technically, but played one at one point on television – shot this video.
LEONARD NIMOY: If we are unprepared for the next advance, the result could be hunger and death on a scale unprecedented in all of history. What scientists are telling us now is that the threat of an ice age is not as remote as they once thought. During the lifetime of our grandchildren, arctic cold and perpetual snow could turn most of the inhabitable portions of our planet into a polar desert.
Hunger and death are an unprecedented scale! Someone else with a tragic childhood he inflicted on the rest of us.
But by the early 1980s, when the ice didn't arrive well, the expert decided the problem wasn't too much cold. It was too much heat. It was global warming. In 1989, the Associated Press ran this story "A senior U.N. environmental official says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the earth by rising sea levels if global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000." In other words, 23 years ago.
That same year, 1989, a climate expert called Jim Hansen met with a reporter from Salon. According to Salon, Hansen explained that within 20 or 30 years, "The West Side Highway, which runs along the Hudson River in Manhattan, will be underwater," Underwater! We checked tonight, and actually it's congested, but still a road.
Then in March of 2000, the Independent newspaper had a piece explaining that snowfalls are now just a thing of the past: "Snow is starting to disappear from our lives." The piece quoted a climate expert claiming that "children just aren't going to know what snow is." No idea what snow is! It'll be a relic of the Ice Age, but of the great inferno of global warming.
Then in 2004, amazingly, civilization still existed. The Guardian predicted that, "Major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a Siberian climate by 2020" – which is a little confusing because global warming doesn't typically produce a Siberian climate. And it was around this time that they decided, "Hey, we don't want to get pinned down on the details. Will it be too hot? Will it be too cold? We don't want to say. Something bad is going to happen, so we're going to call it climate change."
And that paved the way for Al Gore, who in 2006 released his famous documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth." The beauty of An Inconvenient Truth is now that it's been well, inconveniently more than 15 years since it came out, we can fact-check its claims. Here's the trailer.
AL GORE: If you look at the ten hottest years ever measured, they've all occurred in the last 14 years and the hottest of all was 2005. This is Patagonia 75 years ago and the same glacier today. This is Mount Kilimanjaro 30 years ago and last year. Within the decade, there will be no more "Snows of Kilimanjaro."
Al Gore also said there would be no ice in the Arctic. He quoted researchers, climate researchers, experts, and he explained that, "The North Pole will be ice-free in the Summer by 2013 because of manmade global warming." Now, it does take a certain level of hutzpah to make a prediction that precise and Al Gore made many of them and all of them turned out to be wrong and for a normal person, that would be a cue maybe it's time to retire. I'm rich on Google stock. Maybe I could just stop talking because, of course, I've been disgraced by my own foolish predictions,
But no, he kept going, and he was helped in that by the entire news media. It makes you wonder why? News organizations exist to bring you the news, to assess whether things are true or not, but if all of them collude to hide lying, you have to ask, is there something else going on here? We will let you decide. We do know that by 2006, NBC News informed the world that, "a leading U.S. climate researcher says the world has a ten-year window" (till 2016) "a window of opportunity to take decisive action on global warming and avert catastrophe." Of course, by their predicted date, Donald Trump became president, but that's not what they were predicting.
In 2008, the Associated Press reported that according to a top NASA scientist, "in 5 to 10 years, the Arctic will be free of sea ice in the summer." That didn't happen, but of course, no one was ever held to account for bad predictions. So, this kept going. John Kerry, now our climate czar, cited that very same science in 2009. Watch.
JOHN KERRY: You have sea ice, which is melting at a rate that the Arctic Ocean now increasingly is exposed. In five years, scientists predict we will have the first ice-free Arctic summer.
What's hilarious is this is a guy who's never had a job. He's only been in politics. He never did one useful thing. He's not a scientist. He has never done research. He's actually not an expert. But because he's way more aggressive than you are and because he has access to the media, which amplify his claims, he poses as one.
Now, what's strange about the prediction you just heard is that John Kerry's prediction contradicts Barack Obama's famous climate prediction from a year earlier. You probably remember this.
BARACK OBAMA: Because if we are willing to work for it and fight for it and believe in it, then I am absolutely certain that generations from now we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs for the jobless. This was the moment when the rise in the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.
Sad to watch that. All the cheering people, they seem so sincere. He's going to save the world and control the weather. He's Jesus. But in fact, the global healing Obama promised at the beginning of his first term never came and neither the global destruction. Here, by the way, is Neil deGrasse Tyson, another great predictor of things, saying that by 2014, the Statue of Liberty will soon be underwater.
NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: You know what I tell people? This really wakes them. Here in the New York metropolitan area, I say, you know, if we lose the ice caps, you know how high the water will be? "Oh maybe a couple of feet." No, it would come up to the Statue of Liberty’s elbow, the one that's holding the Declaration of Independence. That's where the waterline will be.
That man is a scientist and of course, climate does change it, as always, change. In fact, the landscape we live in now is formed by climate change. The glaciers are a product of climate change. The climate is changing now. It never stops changing. That is a process that we didn't cause and that we can't control to any great degree, we will never be able to control and there are upsides to it and downsides to it.
Biden warns climate change 'damning' entire generation: 'Mother Nature let her wrath be seen'Video
By the way, if the Earth is indeed getting warmer and it seems to be, well, then that will make more arable land in places like Canada and Northern Europe. So, like everything in this life in the temporal world, it's a mixed blessing, but you only hear the downsides, which tells you a lot. It tells you this is not science. It's manipulation. These aren't reports from the experts. These are threats.
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No—ESG Doesn’t Offer Investors More Choices, Nor Is It Part of the Free Market
On Feb. 28, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) wrote an impassioned appeal in The Wall Street Journal for Republicans to support environmental, social, and governance (ESG) scores because ESG ostensibly represents the free market at work, by offering investors more “choices.”
Schumer appears to be deeply confused about how ESG operates. Or, more likely, he’s pandering to his powerful donors; pro-ESG asset management titan BlackRock reportedly donated more than $100,000 to Schumer’s reelection campaign in 2022.
Whatever the case may be, in reality, ESG results in the complete opposite of what Schumer claims. Putting aside the highly problematic “woke” metrics ensconced in all ESG frameworks, ESG at its core is designed to centralize decision-making power among an enormously powerful public-private cartel of elites and international organizations. It blatantly attempts to fundamentally transform the economy by severely altering traditional methods of assessing risk and allocating capital and credit. Rather than being judged solely based upon material factors such as revenue and the quality of goods and services, entities under ESG are judged based upon their commitments to arbitrary, subjective, political goals such as mitigating climate change and advancing social justice causes.
Businesses deemed by this elite cabal to be sufficiently committed to said goals are given a “high” ESG social credit score, and are rewarded with substantial capital in-flows, tax breaks, grants, access to special financial vehicles, preferential contracting, and other advantages. Businesses assigned “low” ESG scores suffer from reduced or eliminated access to capital, credit, and even insurance.
Just listen to Bank of America CEO and Chairman Brian Moynihan, who also runs the World Economic Forum’s International Business Council. At the WEF’s 2022 Annual Meeting in Davos, Moynihan committed to using the financial clout of his entire institution, including the funds of individual investment account holders. As Moynihan put it, “200,000 people, a three trillion-dollar balance sheet, 60 billion in expenses; you start aiming that gun, and you take that across all these companies, it is huge. … [The companies] delivering on the metrics will get more capital, the ones that won’t will get less.”
With so much wealth in the hands of a relatively small group of players who are committed to using their capital for ESG objectives, companies have little choice but to comply and pursue those objectives, lest they risk dying on the vine. There’s little to no actual choice involved, for the business or the investor.
For instance, entire industries such as oil and natural gas extraction, tobacco sales, and firearm manufacturing are often designed to be screened out from investment funds, loan offerings, and insurance underwriting, with many large asset management firms like BlackRock divesting heavily from critical economic sectors. These fund managers even target much of the agriculture sector due to its supposedly high carbon dioxide emissions, further exacerbating negative food supply shocks. This occurs, regardless of whether investing in such industries would result in financial gains for the investors who have entrusted asset managers with their hard-earned money.
Asset managers—including the fund fiduciaries charged with safeguarding and growing retirement accounts and pension funds—have a legal responsibility to their investors. And, investors often don’t even know that these fiduciaries are using their funds to pursue political objectives at the expense of financial returns.
The result is that investor choices are limited by the fund managers to those companies that produce less greenhouse gas emissions, have the “right” ratio of white, black, Asian, and Latino employees, and donate to the “proper” political causes such as Black Lives Matter and Planned Parenthood.
I would bet that if these investors’ wealth had been allocated based purely upon financial metrics, and diversified to include companies involved with fossil fuels, firearms, or agriculture, they would have seen substantially higher returns on their investment in recent years. In fact, many studies have shown ESG-centric funds significantly underperform compared to traditional funds.
Using a natural experiment, University of Chicago researchers found that none of the highest-rated sustainability funds they studied outperformed any of the lowest-rated sustainability funds—though the former received more capital than the latter.
In December 2022, Bloomberg analyzed the 10 largest ESG funds by assets as compared to the S&P 500 index. Eight of the 10 funds performed worse, many substantially so. For instance, Vanguard’s FTSE Social and its ESG U.S. Stock both suffered year-to-date losses of minus-20.6 percent, compared to S&P’s minus-14.8 percent. The Brown Advisory Sustainable Growth Fund suffered a staggering minus-28.1 percent loss, nearly double that of the S&P index fund.
Regardless of the financial performance aspect of ESG investing, intentionally screening out companies involved with certain industries distorts the marketplace and the macroeconomy, and limits choice. Moreover, decreasing investment flows to vital industries such as energy—which is the lifeblood of any economy—results in reduced research and development that drives economic growth, and less prosperity for everyone.
Ultimately, rather than letting the invisible hand of the free market decide where investment should flow, the intervention of ESG factors into investment decisions fundamentally changes our entire financial and economic systems. Controlled investment is the antithesis of a free market, and is very similar to a socialist or fascistic command-and-control economic model. And, unsurprisingly, those advocating for this new economic model stand to gain the most.
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‘Climate Alarmism’ Is New Form of ‘Colonialism’ That Infringes on Sovereignty, Researcher Says
OXON HILL, Md.—The Earth is warming, and while many worry about the potential consequences of the change, it is not unprecedented or dangerous, and will be a net benefit for humanity, Vijay Jayaraj said.
Numerous figures in the mainstream media have pushed “climate alarmism,” but Jayaraj, a research associate at the nonpartisan, nonprofit CO2 Coalition, debunks the claim, calling it a new form of colonialism.
“There is a growing sentiment among the leaders in the developing world about imperialism and reemergence of colonialism, in which they see an enforcement of restrictive energy policies from the Western leaders,” Jayaraj told The Daily Signal during an interview at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference earlier this month. “So, it’s in a form of an imperialism and climate alarmism, which is now infringing upon the rights of the poor people and dashing their hopes about having a future where they can have reliable energy access.”
The consensus of the climate change narrative is not being determined by scientists, but by “unelected political leaders” who use climate policies as “the Bible for policymaking,” he said.
“And we have a fair number of people in the conservative movement who do embrace, or are sympathetic towards, these reports,” said Jayaraj, who holds a master’s degree in environmental science. “And that is a problem, because this is a war against human well-being, not only in the developing world, but also in the developed West.”
He discussed the benefits of using nuclear energy as an alternative to fossil fuels, and how even evidence from the meltdowns at Fukushima and Chernobyl have not been as “detrimental to human health,” but “the left runs with the idea.”
Fighting back against the set climate narrative is difficult due to the potential for professors and scientists to lose their funding “or position,” Jayaraj warned. “So, it’s unfortunate, but we do have a lot of peer-reviewed scientific journals that are not talked about in the mainstream media,” Jayaraj emphasized. “And all people have to do is access Google Scholar and search for the terms that they’re interested in, their wide range of articles and scientific publications that do not agree with the current dominant climate narrative.”
Jayaraj thinks the American people are unfortunately in the grip of the mainstream media, which push the exaggerated climate crisis to those who do not have the time to look more closely at those issues.
“So, if you don’t have time to look into facts and read for yourself, you are just going to look at the headlines, and you are just going to assume that that is true because it’s on every leftist media,” he laments. “And you go, ‘Well, I think that’s the consensus, and I’ll go with that.’ But we do know that science is not based on consensus.”
“Science is based on scientific methodology, where you refute and challenge whichever theory is being put forward,” Jayaraj said. “And I think that’s all the more reason for media groups like yours to educate people on this.”
Jayaraj thinks the best way forward is to be more “people-centric,” in a way that “enables people to flourish.”
“So, that’s a way forward. I believe there are a lot of lawmakers in the conservative party who are very good at this, and I hope the tide turns in the coming years, and they are elected, and they can come forward with sensible energy policies,” Jayaraj concluded.
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My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Jim Hansen and his twin
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