Politics

Obama's "for the children" climate change video announcement – only a few hundred views so far

13 years ago
Anthony Watts

AP: Obama says he’ll unveil climate plan in Tuesday speech ‘for the sake of our children’. It seems though, that the world is making a collective yawn (consensus?) so far given the views. The video has been up for several hours and has only a few hundred views and has 437 “likes” as of this writing.

obama_cc_video

The video description says:

At 1:35 on Tuesday June 25th President Obama will speak at Georgetown University on the growing threat of climate change. He will lay out his vision of where we need to go, to do what we can to address and prepare for the serious implications of a changing climate. Tune in at whitehouse.gov/live

This quote from the video makes me laugh and angry at the same time:

“We’ll need scientists to design new fuels and farmers to grow them,” he said. “We’ll need engineers to devise new sources of energy and businesses to make and sell them.”

The hell with “new fuels and farmers to grow them”, biofuels are low return on investment and raise the cost of our food supply; just get a Thorium reactor program started. The technology has been around for years, and the Chinese are already headed down that path.

0 0 votes
Article Rating

Discover more from Watts Up With That?

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.

184 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Gail Combs
June 23, 2013 6:41 pm

Tom J says….
I agree with most of what you said except for one fabrication. Unemployment is actually ~22 to 23%.

John Williams on Lies, Damned Lies and the 7.8% Unemployment Rate Shadowstats.com Author John Williams wonders if politics are at play behind the latest jobs report, which shows 114,000 new U.S. jobs since September and a 0.3% drop in unemployment since August. Investors need to know how seasonal factors and month-to-month volatility affect the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ reports. In this exclusive interview with The Gold Report, Williams explains why he doubts that we are in a recovery. The take-away? Look at the unadjusted figures before you sell your gold.
….John Williams: I normally put out a commentary on the numbers, and, in this one, I raised the possibility of politics as a factor. The problem is very serious misreporting of the numbers and the result is what appears to be a bogus unemployment rate. The BLS reported a drop in the unemployment rate from 8.1% to 7.8%, three-tenths of a percentage point, which runs counter to what is being experienced in the marketplace.
….What few people realize is that the headline unemployment rate is calculated each month using a unique set of seasonal adjustments. The August unemployment rate, which was 8.1%, was calculated using what BLS calls a “concurrent seasonal factor adjustment.” Each month the agency recalculates the series to adjust for regular seasonal patterns tied to the school year or holiday shopping season or whatever is considered relevant. The next month, it does the same thing using another set of seasonal factors…. [So it is not just temperature data that is ‘adjusted, do you think they hired Hansen’s brother at BLS?]
The BLS knows what the actual number is. It has an actual estimate for August, which is consistent with September, but it doesn’t publish it because it says it “doesn’t want to confuse data users.” But it is putting out numbers that have no meaning month-to-month. One month before the election and a month after Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke announced Quantitative Easing (QE) 3, is not a time to have inaccurate numbers. The BLS should publish the consistent numbers now.
TGR: You have said that BLS has been using this recalculation method for years. Do you feel that this month the numbers were more skewed than usual because of the political timing?
JW: Because there is no transparency in the calculation and reporting process, it leaves open the possibility of manipulation. What has happened here, though, is that in the wake of the economic collapse, the seasonal factors have been heavily distorted and are not stable on a month-to-month basis. Where the concept originally might not have made that much of a difference, it does make a big difference now. I suspect that is why we woke up to such a screwy unemployment rate this time around….
http://www.theaureport.com/pub/na/14523

More from John Williams.

…Up until the Clinton administration, a discouraged worker was one who was willing, able and ready to work but had given up looking because there were no jobs to be had. The Clinton administration dismissed to the non-reporting netherworld about five million discouraged workers who had been so categorized for more than a year. As of July 2004, the less-than-a-year discouraged workers total 504,000. Adding in the netherworld takes the unemployment rate up to about 12.5%.
The Clinton administration also reduced monthly household sampling from 60,000 to about 50,000, eliminating significant surveying in the inner cities. Despite claims of corrective statistical adjustments, reported unemployment among people of color declined sharply, and the piggybacked poverty survey showed a remarkable reversal in decades of worsening poverty trends…. http://www.shadowstats.com/article/employment

In 1970, 25% of the labor force was employed in manufacturing now we are burger flippers and sales clerks for Chinese crap.

…despite President Obama’s claims of a domestic manufacturing renaissance, U.S.-based industry’s share of total nonfarm employment has now sunk to 8.82 percent – below even its level in February, 2010, when manufacturing employment reached its absolute low point during the recession. The reason: Since that time, manufacturing has re-added jobs less than one-third as fast as the total nonfarm economy.
Given the continually rising, manufacturing-dominated, job-killing U.S. merchandise trade deficit with China, and Beijing’s ongoing trade and broader economic transgressions….
http://americaneconomicalert.org/view_art.asp?Prod_ID=6430

….Based on wage figures, half of Americans are in or near poverty.
The IRS reports that the highest wage in the bottom half of earners is about $34,000. To be eligible for food assistance, a family can earn up to 130% of the federal poverty line, or about $30,000 for a family of four.
Even the Census Bureau recognizes that its own figures under-represent the number of people in poverty. Its Supplemental Poverty Measure increases, by 50%, the number of Americans who earn between one-half and two times the poverty threshold.
4. Based on household expense totals, poverty is creeping into the top half of America.
A family in the top half, making $60,000 per year, will have their income reduced by a total tax bill of about $15,000 ($3,000 for federal income tax and $12,000 for payroll, state, and local taxes. The Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Census Bureau agree that food, housing, and transportation expenses will deduct another $30,000, and that total household expenditures will be about $50,000. That leaves nothing.
Nothing, that is, except debt. The median debt level rose to $75,600 in 2009, while the median family net worth, according to the Federal Reserve, dropped from $126,400 in 2007 to $77,300 in 2010….. http://www.alternet.org/economy/real-numbers-half-america-poverty-and-its-creeping-toward-75-0

Does the US government do NOTHING but LIE?

0
Gail Combs
June 23, 2013 6:46 pm

Doug Huffman says:
June 23, 2013 at 7:37 am
The fluxed fuel fluid simply solidifies after a leak! What provides the shielding from the fuel now that it is exposed?….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
It goes in a dump tank if I recall correctly (I can’t hear videos any more) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbucAwOT2Sc

0
TomRude
June 23, 2013 6:51 pm

Watch how these clowns will take drastic taxing measures anyway and then claim temperatures are going down thanks to their action…

0
Darren Potter
June 23, 2013 7:13 pm

“We’ll need engineers to devise new sources of energy …”
Here you go Biff…
http://moviesblog.mtv.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/fusion-lamp-1-400.jpg

0
Darren Potter
June 23, 2013 7:16 pm

John says: “See if I got the web address correct: whitehouse.gov/lie”
Try whitehouse.gov.kenya/manchurian.candidate

0
Gail Combs
June 23, 2013 8:12 pm

benfrommo says: June 23, 2013 at 7:45 am
There is more to it than that. On average, a few years ago the average farmer lost $15,000 a year farming. So the USDA changed how they figure farm income. Now they ‘adjust’ farm income to include their estimated rental price of the house!
The other problem is while food prices have gone up and the profit margin for the middle man has gone up farmers get diddlesquat because of monopsony. Now we have Obummers Food Safety Modernization act that adds paperwork, regulations and the threat of heavy fines and or jail. Oh and with a one liner attached to any bill it will also regulate your home garden link
The final law was ‘Modified’ but as we learned with NAIS once the political decision is made nothing stops the implementation. On February 5, 2010, USDA Sec. of Agriculture Tom Vilsack announced that the opposition was so great, the ill-fated NAIS brain child of the US government was now ended. The cost, complications, record keeping time, and potential enforcement fines made the whole thing stink … In listening sessions held to “hear the voice of the people” it had unearthed over 90% opposition to NAIS… To not labor-on with this continuing burden of government versus people, NAIS is back, now called Animal Disease Traceability (ADT) and with the same diminutive text – government gobbledygook…. So despite major opposition NAIS has just been implemented, not by law but by bureaucratic regulation via the Federal Register over the major protests of the American people. (NAIS was one of the top concerns unearthed by Change.org)
And if the FDA and USDA are not enough trouble we also have the (self-snip) EPA

“(EPA) is preparing to issue a proposed regulation that is twice as stringent as the current dust standard, and is more stringent than background levels of dust in many parts of the U.S,” Thies told the congressmen.
“Incredibly, we are talking about dust kicked up by tilling fields and harvesting crops, cattle movements, and pickups driving down dirt roads,”she said. “For agriculture, the current standard is already very difficult and costly to meet—doubling it would be virtually impossible.”
http://naissucks.com/wordpress/?p=497&cpage=1#comment-1775

…the food bill for short, it gives the FDA authority and power for additional enforcement, including fines, penalties, license revocations and new requirements, and control over processes and harvest. All of this will add additional cost, which will just get passed on to the consumer, but that’s not even the worst aspect of the bill. Here are some of the troubling elements:
* Puts all US food and all US farms under Homeland Security and the Department of Defense in the event of contamination or an ill-defined emergency.
* Would end US sovereignty over its own food supply by insisting on compliance with the WTO, thus threatening national security.
* Would allow the government, under Maritime Law, to define the introduction of any food into commerce (even direct sales between individuals) as smuggling into the US.
*Imposes Codex Alimentarius on the US, a global system of control over food.
* Would remove the right to clean, store and thus own seed in the US, putting control of seeds in the hands of Monsanto and other multinationals, threatening US security.
* Includes NAIS, an animal traceability program that threatens all small farmers and ranchers raising animals.
* Would allow the government to mandate antibiotics, hormones, slaughterhouse waste, pesticides and GMOs.
So, how do you think that’s going to impact the agriculture industry? Well, it only gets better if the House bundles it together with HR 2749. Here are the hidden details of it:
* $500 annual registration fee on any “facility” that holds, process or manufactures food – “farms” are exempt.
*Empower the FDA to regulate how crops are raised and harvested – this would eliminate organic farming and lead to the forced purchase of products as mandated by the government.
* FDA would be granted the power to order a quarantine of a geographic area, which includes “prohibiting or restricting the movement of food or any vehicle being used or that has been used to transport or hold such food within the geographic area.” [Not to mention slaughter animals and burn buildings see Depopulation ]
* FDA has the power to make random and warrantless searches of the business records of small farmers and local food producers without evidence that there’s even been a violation.
* Creates severe criminal and civil penalties for each violation
http://naissucks.com/wordpress/?p=506

The local Ag extension service is holding classes to ‘train farmers’ in the paperwork requirements. In a comment at http://www.warmwell.com a UK Dairy farmer faced with similar regs (they originate from WTO/UN) found that he spent 60 percent of his time filling out paperwork.
In the EU you can see the results of regulating farmers.

The Battle to Save the Polish Countryside
Julian Rose exposes the scandal of EU’s deliberate policy to get rid of family farms for the benefit of the corporations and gives a personal account of his battle
….the chair-lady said: “I don’t think you understand what EU policy is. Our objective is to ensure that farmers receive the same salary parity as white collar workers in the cities…To do this it will be necessary to shift around one million farmers off the land and encourage them to take city and service industry jobs to improve their economic position. The remaining farms will be made competitive with their counterparts in western Europe.”… This was greeted with a stony silence, eventually broken by a lady from Portugal, who rather quietly remarked that since Portugal joined the European Union, 60 percent of small farmers had already left the land. “The European Union is simply not interested in small farms,” she said.
What happens when a nation joins the EU
….That ’game’ was all too familiar to me. Spend hours out of your working day filling in endless forms, filing maps and measuring every last inch of your fields, tracks and farmsteads; applying for ‘passports’ for your cattle and ear tags for your sheep and pigs; re-siting the slurry pit and putting stainless steel and washable tiles on the dairy walls; becoming versed in HASAP hygiene and sanitary rules and applying them where any food processing was to take place; and living under the threat of convictions and fines should one put a finger out of place or be late in supplying some official details…
Losing out to corporate serfdom
Throughout this time, I clearly remember the sense of losing something intangible beyond recall; losing something more valuable than that which was gained on the eventual arrival of the subsidy cheque.
What we were losing was our independence and our freedom; the slow rural way of life shared by traditional farming communities throughout the world. You cannot put a price on this immeasurably important quality. It is a deep, lasting and genuinely civilised expression of life.
So now the Poles, with their two million family farms (half a million of them bigger than the small family farms mentioned earlier), were going to be subjected to the same fate, and Jadwiga and I felt desperate to try and avert this tragedy. An uphill struggle ensued, which involved swimming strongly against the tide and risking the wrath of the agribusiness and seed corporations who were gleefully moving-in behind the EU free trade agreements while a bought-out government stood aside.
What these corporations want (I use the present tense as the position remains the same to-day) is to get their hands on Poland’s relatively unspoiled work force and land resources. They want to establish themselves on Polish soil, acquire their capital cheaply and flog the end products of Polish labour to the rest of the world for a big profit.
Farmers, however, stand in the way of land acquisitions; so they are best removed. Corporations thus join with the EU in seeing through their common goals and set about intensively lobbying national government to get the right regulatory conditions to make their kill….

After the Henshaw ( Henshaw Documents ) and other incidents do you think anyone in his right mind would risk being a farmer? I quit selling and now produce only for my family. I am now raising a few sheep for the hand craft wool trade and a 100 ac farm now lays idle. The risk of stealing cars is a heck of a lot less then the risk of being a farmer these days.

0
mojo
June 23, 2013 8:37 pm

“Hope to see you there”?
Big Brother meets The Prisoner

0
Eli Rabett
June 23, 2013 9:01 pm

As of 12 AM Monday morning the count is up to 101,378.
[most likely much of it due to the traffic WUWT generated for it -mod]

0
CodeTech
June 23, 2013 9:24 pm

Hmmm- compare that to how many views “Call Me Maybe” gets per hour…

0
SAMURAI
June 23, 2013 10:12 pm

Steve Rasey says:
“It isn’t the physics that is holding back LFTR. It is the chemistry and metallurgy. Even when we solve the technological problem of the reprocessing, who wants a smelter or oil refinery in our back yard. So there is still a NIMBY problem with a safe reactor.”
========================================
Actually, a test LFTR reactor was built in the 60’s and ran flawlessly for 5 years at Oak Ridge Labs, so this a proven technology.
There isn’t a metallurgy problem. There are plenty of metals that can easily handle 1600C of heated liquid salts.
There also isn’t a chemical problem as the liquid state of LFTR salts allows easy chemical removal of neutron-eating Xenon gas and easy recycling of the U233 produced in the Thorium fission process, which is fed back to U233 core, while the LFTR is operating at 100%….
LFTRs convert 99% of Thorium to energy thereby decreasing the amount of nuclear waste/mWh by a factor of 200 compared to LWRs. LWRs only convert 0.5% of U235 to energy before the U235 fuel pellets need to be reprocessed due to Xenon gas contamination/degradation).
In addition, LFTRs run at single atmospheric pressure as opposed to 100 atmospheres of pressurized water required for LWRs.
No water is required to run LFTRs as they use gas turbine generators instead of steam generators, so they can even be built in barren deserts (try that with LWRs). If there IS a leak to a LFTR core, the liquid salts simply drain to a containment tank by gravity and solidify when the salts naturally fall below 600C.
LFTRs are so safe that when the Oak Ridge test LFTR was operating in the 60’s, the scientists didn’t want to monitor the reactor over the weekend, so on Friday night, they’d simply turn it off, the salts would naturally drain to the holding tank and solidify. Monday morning, they’d heat up the holding tank to 600C, pump the liquid salts back into the reactor, and the fission process would continue unabated until Friday night came rolling around and they’d switch off again…
Try THAT with a LWR and see what happens… boom…!
While eco-wackos try to come up with ridiculous reasons why LFTRs shouldn’t be built, China moves on with their LFTR program and will eat our lunch AGAIN when their LFTRs come on line around 2025.
And so it goes……until it doesn’t……

0
Michael
June 23, 2013 10:37 pm

301+ views simply means that it hasn’t recalculated how many views it has received in a while. If it received a billion views in the last hour, it could still be at 301+.

0
rogerknights
June 24, 2013 12:56 am

“We’ll need engineers to devise new sources of energy …”

Rossi’s already done it. He’s got a big partner that will be silently gearing up for production in the next year. Then economies will mitigate away from carbon without nudging from governments.

0
Stephen Rasey
June 24, 2013 1:00 am


You have proven my point. Your discussion focused on the reactor and its safety and paid little heed to the reprocessing side of the process.
In a working LFTR generating commercial power, there is fission and the creation of daughter products and chains of decay. Reactor poisons accumulate. Dealing with these poisons is the trick. Check out Wikipedia LTFR:Removal of Fission Products This is all chemistry.
This reference from the Appropedia (see “Ease of Reprocessing”) has more detail.

The “one fluid” reactor was mechanically much simpler. …. By carefully sculpting the moderator rods, and modifying the fuel reprocessing chemistry, thorium and uranium salts could coexist in a simpler, cheaper but efficient “single fluid” reactor.
However, the reprocessing chemistry was much more complex. No simple, proven methods could separate the the nuclear ashes (fission products) from the fuels.

It then goes on to say:
All the salt has to be reprocessed, but only every ten days.

A sparge of fluorine removes volatile high-valence fluorides as gas, including uranium hexafluoride containing the uranium-233 fuel as well as other isotopes of uranium; neptunium hexafluoride; technetium hexafluoride and selenium hexafluoride containing the long-lived fission products technetium-99 and selenium-79, as well as fluorides of various strongly radioactive short-lived fission products such as iodine-131, molybdenum-99, and tellurium-132. See fluoride volatility for boiling points. The volatile fluorides are condensed from the sparge fluorine, reduced back to less volatile lower-valence fluorides, and returned to the reactor.

It goes on for several more paragraphs…. but I think you understand how I equate this as a cross between smelting and fractional distillation in an oil refinery in a sealed environment.
I repeat. The reactor itself looks very safe. The LFTR fuel reprocessing might even be much safer than conventional U-Pu reactors with LTFR having much shorter half-lives of the waste products.
The amount of waste involved is about 800 kg per gigawatt-year generated …., [very impressive] so the equipment is very small. [Sorry, this does not follow. — maybe only 0.01% is waste, but you are processing 10% of the core per day.]
Continuous, remotely controlled, reprocessing of the core, at a rate of 10% of the core per day, of a high-gamma ray, high temperature molten-salt amalgam of Thorium, Uranium, Actinides, and a dozen other fission products is no easy feat.
Note well that the 2-fluid core (U-233 core, Thorium blanket) is mechanically more complex, but allows for a simpler reprocessing. A 1-fluid core is the mechanically simpler design (and the one most talk about), but requires the more complex reprocessing scheme. So it is important not to confuse the differences.

0
SAMURAI
June 24, 2013 1:45 am

Michael says:
“301+ views simply means that it hasn’t recalculated how many views it has received in a while. ”
==============
As of a few minutes ago, this Obama video has now risen from 301 views to….. 456 views….
Not so much interest in a “bold new plan” to waste $100’s of billions of more taxpayer money (or should I say bogus printed money) to solve a “problem” that doesn’t exist.

0
Cho_cacao
June 24, 2013 2:17 am

Well, as the number of views now reached something like 200,000, it might be time to change the title…

0
Bruce Cobb
June 24, 2013 3:34 am

Page views are now up to 334,115, with 1,979 thumbs up and 965 thumbs down. I’m wondering why there aren’t more thumbs down. Are people really that paranoid?

0
RichieP
June 24, 2013 3:35 am

‘SAMURAI says:
June 24, 2013 at 1:45 am
As of a few minutes ago, this Obama video has now risen from 301 views to….. 456 views…’
Hmm, well it’s now over 192,000 at 11.30am BST June 24th. Clearly been farmed out to one of those companies that bumps you up the google ratings.
Those of us in the EU and Australia will likely bid you all in the States a rueful welcome to the new world of ‘carbon’ taxes, so we can all freeze together in the coming cold winters.

0
RichieP
June 24, 2013 3:38 am

Bruce Cobb – are there different counters depending on where in the world one is? I’m UK, and, as I just posted, it’s 192K+ here.
Thumbs up and down are pretty much the same as you state.

0
Bruce Cobb
June 24, 2013 4:12 am

@Richie, well I just had another look, and the counter now says 192k+, as you said. Then I noticed the “subscribe” button had the number 334,115. Honest to god, I wasn’t looking at the subscribe button by accident before, as I wasn’t even aware of it. I guess people subscribe to keep track of the replies. Weird.

0
RichieP
June 24, 2013 4:25 am

Bruce:
‘Then I noticed the “subscribe” button had the number 334,115. ‘
That, I think, is the number of subscribers to the full White House youtube channel, rather than the number of views of this specific item.

0
Doug Huffman
June 24, 2013 5:29 am

Alexander Feht says: June 23, 2013 at 8:55 am “How, exactly, do I escape the gun of the U.S. government? I’d be mightily obliged to know.” You must read more carefully. He has power only if you want to LIVE under his gun. One escapes such living by self-immolation as our Patriot Forefathers, your’s Russian and mine, taught us.

0
Markopanama
June 24, 2013 7:03 am

For the record as of this morning there were about 230,000 views with about 2000 likes and 1000 dislikes. Not exactly a ringing endorsement.

0
Eli Rabett
June 24, 2013 7:07 am

Now at 251,662 views with Like 2,059 Dislike 1,006. Of course there are numerous other copies with much smaller numbers of viewers, but these numbers are for the version the Whitehouse uploaded to their site on YouTube.

0
Kevin Kilty
June 24, 2013 9:22 am

Gary Pearse says:
June 23, 2013 at 9:35 am
“just get a Thorium reactor program started. The technology has been around for years, and the Chinese are already headed down that path.”
And if you follow the links, in the linked article, the Chinese plan to develop and patent the technology. It was successfully developed at Oak Ridge, Tennessee in the 1960s. Are we going to be buying American tech back again from the Chinese?

I’ve a friend, retired from GE Nuclear, who knows more about reactor designs and costs than anyone else I know. He estimates the capital investment of getting a successful thorium reactor going as about $300 Billion.
The 1960s project is now so old, and the personnel long retired and gone, that it is exactly like starting all over again. So, we can buy from the Chinese if they get a reasonable design working, or we can pay for it ourselves again. Which is the better economic deal? I dunno.

0
EW3
June 24, 2013 9:45 am

So he makes the speech on June 25th.
Then he is in South Africa on June 26th.
Gives no chance for debate or discussion.

0
1 … 5 6 7 8
wpdiscuz   wpDiscuz

Related Posts

Oil and Gas Politics

How One Arrest Could Refill the Strategic Oil Reserves Biden Drained

7 days ago
Guest Blogger
Climate Politics Energy Politics

Three Examples of the “Theft Industrial Complex” in 2025

1 week ago
Guest Blogger
Oil and Gas Politics

Venezuelan Oil: Statism to Liberation?

1 week ago
Guest Blogger
Politics Science

How a PNAS Study Confuses Institutional Authority with Truth

3 weeks ago
Charles Rotter