Guest rebuttal by David Middleton
Houston can’t afford to accept Trump’s view of climate change [Editorial]
By The Editorial Board Dec. 1, 2018 Updated: Dec. 4, 2018
President Trump frequently acts like he knows what he’s talking about even when it sounds like he doesn’t. That’s a bad trait for anyone, but especially the president of the United States. He’s counted on to provide reliable information that helps the public understand situations and make wise decisions. Instead, Trump’s misstatements put people’s lives in danger. Consider his latest dismissal of climate change.
Confronted with a report issued by 13 federal agencies within his own administration that said climate change left unchecked could ruin the U.S. economy, Trump said he didn’t believe the assessment. Maybe that shouldn’t be surprising, coming from someone who only weeks ago in a 60 Minutes interview said although he didn’t think global warming was a hoax, “I don’t know that it’s man-made.”
It may serve Trump politically to ignore science, but his willful ignorance comes with a price that others will be left to pay. Ignoring climate change means ignoring the role it played in the severity of Hurricane Harvey and other violent storms. It means failing to take steps now that will help limit the loss of lives and property that will occur if Trump’s denial of reality continues to direct this country’s environmental policies.
The Fourth National Climate Assessment said: “Earth’s climate is now changing faster than at any point in the history of modern civilization, primarily as a result of human activities.”
[…]
The Natural Resources Defense Council lists ways…
[…]
A recent study by two Harvard University researchers…
[…]
We agree with Trump that people need jobs. However, they also need protection from devastating storms…
[…]
Self-serving politicians who suggest the price to slow global warming is too high, or it’s enough that the United States is doing more than China, or insist that climate change isn’t man-made should read the Trump administration’s own report. Then urge your members of Congress to pass new legislation that would fill the dangerous regulation void the president is creating.
Another gem from the Chronicle…
Science, not oil and gas cheerleading, is needed in Texas classrooms. [Editorial]
By The Editorial Board July 25, 2018
ExxonMobil Corp. announced this month that it would join the corporate exodus from an influential conservative nonprofit group following a clash over climate change policy. The nation’s largest oil and gas company provided a strong voice on the green and winning side of a debate over whether or not to push to loosen regulation of greenhouse gases.
Even as ExxonMobil and the world’s other major energy companies have finally started envisioning a lower-carbon world, here in Texas, the Texas Natural Gas Foundation is endorsing a science education curriculum for a future workforce that seems mired in the past. Although industry advocates collaborated with the University of Texas and a state energy office to engage teachers to prepare the curriculum, an investigation by the Austin American-Statesman’s Asher Price found that they worked closely with the curriculum writers and offered edits to the material.
State Rep. Jason Isaac, co-founder and president of the Texas Natural Gas Foundation, told the Statesman he wanted to “get the bias against certain Texas energy resources out of our schools.”
[…]
Here’s the problem: it largely ignores climate change and global warming. By relegating a global environmental crisis to a supplementary teacher’s guide, the curriculum turns its back on the facts. Science, not industry cheerleading, is what is needed in the classroom.
In a ham-handed attempt to sway public opinion, the curriculum describes solar and wind power as “perceived” renewable energy sources and says there is a “debate” about whether using renewable sources is better for the environment. Instead of contemplating a gradual shift to renewable energy, the curriculum describes the ending of nonrenewable energy as “devastating to us socially as well as economically.”
[…]
First off… There’s a scene in the movie Tropic Thunder that perfectly describes the Chronicle’s editorial board… (Warning: this clip may offend sensitive people)…
Now that I finally found a reason to use that clip in a post, let’s move on…
I can understand the fact that the Houston Chronicle editorial board was almost certainly just parroting what they’ve heard about NCA4 and all the other crap they spouted. I have almost no doubt that no one on the editorial board has even looked at NCA4 Volume I or Volume II, much less read or understood it. But… What I can’t understand is the Houston Chronicle’s apparent total ignorance of the city of Houston, Texas.
Aug 22, 2018
Proximity Counts: How Houston Dominates the Oil Industry
University of Houston Energy Fellows
Bill Gilmer, Director of Institute for Regional Forecasting, C.T. Bauer College of Business
Say Detroit, and people think cars. Houston is no different. The city’s oil and gas industry is a broad reflection of the industry as a whole, from the oil and gas extraction, oil services, machinery and fabricated metals that make up the upstream sector to the midstream pipeline construction and management; the Houston Ship Channel is home to a major downstream refining and petrochemical complex. This article focuses narrowly on Houston’s upstream oil business and explains why it stands well apart from other oil-producing cities like Midland, Tulsa or Oklahoma City.
When we think of Houston and oil, the better economic model is an oil city, in the same way other cities operate as headquarters and technical centers for their respective industries, such as Detroit and the auto industry, San Jose and tech, New York and finance, and Hollywood as home to the movie industry.
Houston stands apart from other oil-producing cities in both its scale and its daily operations. There are 175,000 Houston-based employees working directly in production, oil services and machinery and fabricated metals, and tens of thousands more serve as suppliers or contractors. Measured statewide, oil-extraction workers based in Houston earn 64.5% of the sector’s payroll in Texas, and almost half of the U.S. total. For oil services, Houston’s share of Texas extraction payrolls is 45.3% and 32.0% for the U.S. (See Table 1 for details on this and other comparisons.)
[…]
Historical Accident
The best way to think of Houston’s upstream oil sector is as a cluster of headquarters and technical companies like Wall Street, San Jose, Detroit or Hollywood. All these cities operate on similar fundamentals, driven by key decision makers, major suppliers and a deep concentration of technical talent. Once these cities form, the proximity of hundreds of industry-specific companies generates large cost savings for every company that join the cluster, and these lower operating costs becomes the glue that binds these cities together for decades.
Historical accident often plays an important role in the formation of these cities.
[…]
For Houston, the historical trigger was Spindletop in 1900, serving as the first of a string of salt dome discoveries in southeast Texas that would bring a huge new wave of American oil production. A series of new discoveries led from Beaumont to Batson, to Sour Lake and on to the Humble oilfield near Houston. Houston emerged as the closest big city with good telegraph and rail connections, the economic development equivalent of today’s internet and big airport.
Inside Houston’s Oil Cluster
As any industrial cluster forms, the key actors are a group of decision makers. For Houston and the oil industry these are the oil producers, who decide whether to drill for oil or gas, where to drill, arrange the financing and share the profit or loss. These local producers can be large integrated oil companies like BP, Shell, Chevron or ExxonMobil, or independents like Anadarko, Apache, Burlington Resources or EOG.
Suppliers then join the cluster to be near the decision makers. Chief among Houston’s local suppliers are the big three oil service companies of Baker Hughes, Halliburton and Schlumberger. The service providers work with the producers at the wellhead on each project, carrying out the geology, drilling, downhole testing and ultimately delivering hydrocarbons to wellhead. Houston has long been the heart of a global oil services industry. In the 1960s, when oil was discovered in the North Sea, for example, the British set a public policy goal of becoming a major oil-service provider. When the oil was gone, they could would carry these skills forward to future discoveries. Unfortunately for the British, the Texan lead in experience, patents and a history of work in frontier oil horizons simply could not be overcome.
Closely related to oil services, and often overlapping with services in many companies, is a large local machinery and fabricated metal industry that specializes in oil products. Howard Hughes, for example, patented the rotary bit in 1909, and founded the Sharp Hughes Tool Company on Houston’s Second and Girard Streets. And Houston’s “machine shop row” on Hardy Street was in full swing by the 1920s.
[…]
Bill Gilmer is director of the Institute for Regional Forecasting at the University of Houston’s Bauer College of Business. The Institute monitors the Houston and Gulf Coast business cycle, analyzing how oil markets, the national economy and global expansion influence the regional economy. Gilmer previously served the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas for 23 years, retiring from the bank as a Senior Economist and Vice President.University of Houston Energy Fellows
We are thought leaders in energy from the University of Houston.We represent University of Houston students and faculty, appointed as UH Energy Fellows from across the energy-related colleges to ensure the subject is covered from a wide array of viewpoints as we seek to engage the public, other thought leaders and policymakers in a national conversation about energy. The University offers expertise in a range of energy-related areas, including international natural resource law and development, research into the science, engineering, economics, logistics and policy surrounding hydraulic fracturing and unconventional resources, offshore drilling, alternative energy, sustainability and energy conservation. In addition, UH offers the nation’s first subsea engineering program, a minor in Energy and Sustainability and is a research powerhouse with two energy related federally funded national research centers – one researching high-temperature superconductivity and electric energy storage and one concerned with the sustainable and safe development of energy resources in the Gulf of Mexico.
UH Energy is the University of Houston’s hub for energy education, research and technology incubation, working to shape the energy future and forge new business approaches in the energy industry.
Here are the tables from Dr. Gilmer’s article:
The Houston Chronicle is essentially calling for the destruction of the city of Houston in order to save it from climate change. They literally want to “destroy the village in order to save it.”
On top of the fact that oil industry jobs are among the highest paying in Houston, eight of Houston’s top twenty-five employers are oil, oilfield service or petrochemical companies.
| Houston’s Largest Employers | Employees | Industry | |
| Memorial Hermann Health System | 24,000 | 9.5% | Health |
| The University of Texas MD Anderson | 20,000 | 7.9% | Health |
| United Airlines | 15,000 | 5.9% | Transportation |
| The Methodist Hospital System | 14,985 | 5.9% | Health |
| Exxon Mobil Corporation | 13,000 | 5.2% | Oil |
| UTMB Health | 12,448 | 4.9% | Health |
| Kroger Company | 12,000 | 4.8% | Grocery |
| Shell Oil Company | 11,892 | 4.7% | Oil |
| National Oilwell Varco | 11,563 | 4.6% | Oil |
| Schlumberger Limited | 10,000 | 4.0% | Oil |
| Chevron | 9,000 | 3.6% | Oil |
| Baylor College of Medicine | 8,924 | 3.5% | Health |
| ARAMARK Corp. | 8,500 | 3.4% | Food Service |
| Haliburton | 8,000 | 3.2% | Oil |
| Pappas Restaurants, Inc. | 8,000 | 3.2% | Restaurants |
| HCA | 7,855 | 3.1% | Health |
| Hewlett Packard Enterprise | 7,500 | 3.0% | Tech |
| The Dow Chemical Company | 7,000 | 2.8% | Oil |
| AT&T | 6,900 | 2.7% | Tech |
| CHI St.Luke’sHealth | 6,800 | 2.7% | Health |
| Jacobs | 6,220 | 2.5% | Construction |
| H.E.B. | 6,000 | 2.4% | Grocery |
| Texas Children’s Hospital | 6,000 | 2.4% | Health |
| BPAmerica, Inc. | 5,500 | 2.2% | Oil |
| KBR | 5,089 | 2.0% | Construction |
| 252,176 | 100.0% |
Note that The Houston Chronicle is not on this list. Houston clearly could afford to lose the Chronicle and cannot afford to accept most of the alternatives to President Trump’s view of climate change.
So the Houston Chronicle editorial board believes wind and solar can replace conventional sources. Do they also believe in socialism, unicorns, and the Easter Bunny?
I believe the answer to your question is an emphatic yes.
I second MarkW.
The numbers of health workers looks a bit scary. Especially considering, although they are neccesary, that they are financed by the workers taxation. Having Health workers numbers approaching par with the others, (who effectively have pay them and provide their infrastructure) is a bit scary.
Cheers
Roger
http://www.thedemiseofchristchurch.com
Houston is major medical hub and hospitals tend to need to hire a lot of employees, particularly lower paid employees. The Medical District might just be bigger than the Energy Corridor.
https://www.osha.gov/oshstats/work.html
Having lived here since 1963, watching the Houston Chronicle devolve into irrelevancy by way of mind numbed ignorance continues.
Real journalists would have noticed that the report was a cut and paste of lobbying propaganda by notorious okigarch Tom Steyer.
Real journalists would wonder how a blatantly anti- science bunch of alarmist hype could possibly end up in a government report.
….but this is the 21st century and journalists are only a bit more plentiful than Carrier Pigeons.
Yes
The Chronicle should focus their criticism on Houston’s lax zoning that allows building houses in flood zones.
In a truly free-market economy (none of which exist today, of course), insurance companies would make short work of the problem insofar actual “flood zones” (and their opposite, e.g., the”fire zone” of Paradise, CA) are concerned.
Lax? More like nonexistent.
You are conflating zoning with building codes.
The building code in effect during Harvey already required the minimum floor elevation to be one foot above the 100-year flood elevation. In April, it was raised to two feet above the 500-year flood elevation. This results in an increase of about 2-1/2 feet.
The absence of zoning allows a dynamic commercial real estate market where redevelopment follows market demand rather than zoning edicts driven by political donations. Most residential properties in Houston have Deed Restrictions (some dating from the 1950’s) that protect against disruptive activities. No, you can’t build a liquor store in the middle of a residential neighborhood.
Please do a little research before sounding off.
Trump didn’t believe the assessment of 13 federal agencies within his own administration that said climate change left unchecked could ruin the U.S. economy, or of 17 intelligence agencies that confirmed Russia attempted to interfere in the 2016 election.
That’s because they’re both shining examples of fake news.
Human beings are committing slow suicide, apparently accelerating daily. Wyoming just elected an anti-gas, anti-oil, anti-coal governor (member of the Sierra Club, donated to anti-coal groups, etc) apparently because they’re too stupid to do anything but for the MALE name they recognize and, of course, anyone with an “R” after their name. So, they are saying “Wyoming is crap, let’s destroy it and that will help”. At least Wyoming is nothing more than a stage stop where people live until they can move somewhere else. It’s kind of an excuse, I guess. Not sure if that applies to Houston.
If only we could get politicians to literally go around stabbing people in the back, maybe, just maybe, people would get a clue. Until then, slow suicide by stupidity.
“..as it was, as it is, as it always will be.”
But it blows my mind! I’ve studied human psychology and its common sense equivalent, peopleology, for over 40 years and I have yet to understand how someone moves (escapes) from a socialist run country and its negative environment to the US and then votes for a progressive/socialist! Or some of my “progressive/socialist” friends (yes, I have a few) that bitch and moan like a Republican about government regulations and spending of tax payer money – – and then vote for a democrat! Talk about stupid is, as stupid does! Yes, yes. I know. They cannot see the world as it really is, but only as they “think” it should be – – – – it’s got be chromosomal … or drugs…
Thoughts, Texas is large enough to be broken into different states. Houston can ban all energy except wheels powered by gerbils…..
Therein lies the future. Secession.
The only recourse for those desiring freedom and protection from the rising hammer of communism is to secede.
Texas would / will be a great example.
Cheers.
Wally, you obviously don’t understand. Secession was rendered illegal by the fact that the Union won the war against the Confederacy, case closed.
As Lincoln himself so succinctly put it, “Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government and form a new one that suits them better.”
No wait. You mean, Mr. President, that the POWER is the right, not the RIGHT itself, as the Declaration of Independence clearly stated?
By your logic, Sir, if Hitler had won (perhaps you’ve met somewhere since then), his victory would have IPSO FACTO condemned all of his conquered peoples — including those of the US — to eternal governance under the Third Reich, with no recourse but to fight their way out IF THEY HAVE THE POWER?
Me, I find it highly — and indeed, tragically — ironic that following the Union’s victory, its school children were soon indoctrinated to pledge allegiance — as countless “grownups” still do — to an “indivisible” that was founded on the exact opposite principle.
Methinks this says something about who we are, what we have become, and why “Climate Change” is even a subject of discussion.
The pie chart above shows health as 40% of Houston’s economy and oil as 30%. I guarantee that if oil’s 30% goes away, so will health’s 40%.
Some activities produce wealth. Some activities can’t proceed without wealth but are necessary to those primary producers of wealth. It gets complicated.
The pie chart is just of the top 25 employers, not the entire Houston economy. It doesn’t necessarily reflect the entire Houston economy.
However, you are correct. If oil went away, much of the rest of Houston’s economy wouldn’t fare too well.
David, you’re right, it’s oil that drives Houston. When I worked for CONOCO they sent me to Charm School outside of Houston, near Mickey Gillies bar, you know that place with the mechanical bullshit deal? Where is Mickey anyway, he could straighten this out.
There’s a Gilley’s in Dallas now. We had a company party there back in about 2007.
” If oil went away, much of the rest of Houston’s economy wouldn’t fare too well.”
If oil went away most of humanity would SOON follow.
I think that there was a study that determined about half the human race would be dead in 90 days.
I think you need to throw in coal and natural gas, but problems with potable water and sewage would kill off every major city in the Northern Hemisphere within 4-5 weeks. Then things start to really get bad.
Hungry people do irrational things. And a hungry city would explode badly. They’d burn the city to the ground within two weeks, then head for the country, where the country folk with shotguns would be waiting. It would get messy quick. I think it’d be more like 90% in 90 days.
It’s hard to grow vegetables. It takes knowledge, time, and resources. Something a hungry city doesn’t have. Doubly so when the looting and burning starts.
Hungry people may do irrational things, but head outside the city for the country?
No, not likely. They do NOT know where their food really originates. They think it comes from The Store, whatever that is. Maybe 1% would leave the city, but the rest would stay there and rot, and probably feed on each other, once raccoons, coyotes and stray cats ran out.
You think I’m kidding? I’m not.
Ron,
+10
Second the motion, Oil drives Houston. After the ’80s recession the city leaders actively set out to diversify, and they have made some progress, the ’08 recession didn’t empty out entire neighborhoods like the ’80s recession had. Oil drives Houston so much that I would point out both the Restaurants and the Food Service companies on your list are there to feed those oil workers (OK, maybe in proportion to the percentage of payroll going to oil company employees), and each and every one of the Construction companies listed probably obtains more than half their revenue from projects directly related to the Oil companies on the list, whether it’s offices or exploration, transport and storage of oil. I know this, and I have not lived in Houston since 2006.
I’ve lived in Dallas since 1981 and I’ve been commuting to Houston since 2016. Over the past 37 years, I’ve spent a lot of time in Houston. The city is definitely far more diversified now than it was in the 80’s and 90’s… But it’s still very much an oil town.
Pappas restaurants certainly “launder” a lot of climate wrecking cash… As do Kroger and HEB. KBR used to be part of Halliburton… And I do think a lot of their construction work is oil industry related. I thought about putting them in the oil group like I did with Dow Chemical.
Anyone remember Houston in the mid-80’s when the price of oil plunged? The list of foreclosures in the newspapers was several pages long.
That’s when I moved down here and bought my house. 🙂
Mike in Houston
I also bought a house off those foreclosure lists. Lost it in the divorce just 3 years later, but my ex made a pile of money when she sold it just one month after the divorce was final. I think those foreclosure lists wer winding down by the time I bought mine, it was 1990 when I closed.
https://www.osha.gov/oshstats/work.html
commieBob, health won’t go away. It just would wither.
..comments says it all…even their target audience is not falling for it
I’ve always been wryly dismissive of the Left-wing Houston Chronicle. They are historically a rag that likes to promote their “investigative” brand of journalism. But this series of pieces by their editorial board really make the point about why they should be dismissed out of hand. No serious thinker, no serious scientist (note I said “serious”) has proven or believed that Hurricane Harvey was caused or worsened by “climate change.”
P.S. Looking at that list of Houston’s largest employers along with the pie chart, the Chronicle should be worrying that Houston “cannot afford” nationalized medicine in the form of “Medicare for all.” Talk about what that would destroy.
Yes and the health % keeps going up every year as we get older and ever increasing cost of technology squeezes out some more days onto each dying patient. On top of that the non competitiveness nature of health allows monopolistic profits. However since everyone values human life = infinite cost, we always pay. I am afraid that increasing health costs will grab a bigger bite out of the economy until we are able to cure the disease of dying. A long wait I am afraid. I hope that this climate scam doesn’t last as long.
I was looking at a list of American presidents. link It’s interesting to note that in the 1700s to the early 1800s, presidents lived a reasonable lifespan. As the 1800s progressed and almost to the end of the 1900s, they died younger. Since Gerald Ford died in 1977 at 93 years old, no president has died at an age younger than 93. I find that remarkable. Surely it’s attributable to improvements in medical care.
Naw, its obviously due to climate change don’t you see!
But backwards to the expectations of CAGW. The last presidents should be dying younger, not older.
C-Bob:
“Since Gerald Ford died in 1977 at 93 years old”
Well, perhaps political life….
His physical life ended Dec. 26, 2006 – yes at 93 y.o.
Doh! Brain fart.
Since Nixon died at age 81 in 1994, no former or sitting American president has died younger than 93.
I subscribed to the Houston Chronicle for many years, then they went “full retard.” After an email exchange with their science and business editor and seeing no glimmer of intelligence, I canceled the subscription. I’ve not regretted it.
This is from today’s WSJ, and very relevant:
“Unfortunately the U.S. media have become a positive hindrance to public understanding. Consider that systemization of banality known as Axios. Last week it told its presumably politically engaged readership that the way to “be smart” about climate change is to understand that “In climate science, one side is the scientific consensus, and the other is a small but vocal faction of people trying to fight it.”
In other words, reduce everything to a binary question of believers vs. deniers, good guys vs. bad guys. Here’s the sad truth: This narrative is mostly an invention of journalists for their own convenience. It relieves them of having to understand a complicated subject.
I’m not trying to be funny. Over the past 15 or 20 years, the climate beat has been handed over to reporter-activists who’ve decided that climate science is impenetrable but at least nobody ever got fired for exaggerating the risks of climate change.
Their ignorant crisis-babble is why electorates everywhere now believe climate and prosperity are necessarily at odds. Every study, including the U.S. government’s latest, shows the opposite: Continued prosperity is essential to mitigating the risks of climate change.”
Here is link to the full WSJ editorial:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/press-is-the-enemy-of-climate-1543966906?mod=hp_opin_pos2
The Dallas Morning News followed a similar trajectory. Back when Dallas was a two-newspaper city, the Dallas Times Herald was a left-wing rag and the Morning News was a little right-of-center. When the Times Herald folded, the Morning News drifted left. Now it’s also gone “full retard.”
The Morning News used to have a somewhat conservative voice that made it a regional paper worth paying attention to…but rather than stick with walhat a made them different they followed the deceased Herald’s full retard mode as you note and now have nothing to distinguish them or justify a subscription.
There is a difference between Theoretical Physics and Empirical Physics.
Let’s take the energy levels of the helium molecule.
You can either solve the Schrodinger equation (with certain assumptions).
Or you can actually measure them.
What I found very surprising was how much difference there was between theoretical and actual.
(The book was by Bleaney and Bleaney – I do not remember the exact title).
Climate Science is essentially theoretical – it is based on a model.
There is a big difference between forecasts from the model and reality.
Climate Scientists are telling us to ignore reality and believe the model.
In the extreme, they actually alter data that falsifies the model.
Richard Feynman took only 1:02 to explain the difference between theory (made up by human beings) and experimental measurements (“facts”). See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OL6-x0modwY ; if the link doesn’t work, Google “feynman experimental method”.
As for the helium molecule (I assume you mean He2), LCAO-MO (Linear Combination of Atomic Orbitals to form Molecular Orbitals) is a simple theory that does explain why the (He2)+ molecular ion consisting of 2 He nuclei and a total of 3 electrons is relatively stable, whereas the He2 molecule with 4 electrons is not stable in the ground electronic state (higher electronic states in which one of the outer electrons is boosted to outer Molecular Orbitals are stable – see Table 39 in “Spectra of Diatomic Molecules” by Gerhard Herzberg (2nd edition, D. Van Nostrand, 1950) ). However, these are 5 or 6 body problems, and there is no exact closed-form solutions (even if we consider only the motion of the electrons, they are 3 or 4 body problems). So yes, simple theory does not give exact answers, and more complicated theories involving perturbations start to resemble epicycle theory….
The relevance to this discussion is that the 18 year hiatus in global warming, despite continual increases in CO2, casts doubt on the accuracy of the computer predictions to date. No competent scientist doubts that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and that doubling its concentration will have some effect on increasing temperature, but the magnitude of 3 degrees predicted by the IPCC is a factor of 4 or 5 too high (1.5 degrees is still too high by a factor of 2 to 2.5), and in the real world of finite wealth and resources we ought not to waste them on unnecessary and foolish proposals.
Randall Mills has a theory that calculates atoms larger than hydrogen in a closed form.
Randall Mills GUT-CAM theory is worse than junk. His hydrinos are impossible from first principles, and his one issued patent comprises equitable misconduct against the USPTO. Wrote about it extensively as a major example in ebook The Arts of Truth.
Andre Rossi is up there with Mills. How can these people continue to find investors?
He-4 are bosons and obey Bose-Einstein statistics below 0.8 K. Poincare discovered chaos theory in trying to solve a 3-body problem in celestial mechanics. He proved there is no general analytical solution to 3-body problem. Or I cool the bosons near absolute zero to form Bose-Einstein condensate and they all occupy the lowest quantum state. That’s solving n-body problem by brute force :-0
https://www.google.at/search?client=ms-android-samsung&q=blaney+%26+blaney+uncertainty+principle&spell=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiI4dyz0ozfAhUSLewKHfVsDPYQBSgAegQICxAC&biw=360&bih=560
What is amazing is that the 30%-36% of the people are producing enough wealth to keep the rest of the city running. Oil and maybe tech are the only actual producers. The rest are just consumer services.
I’ve been thinking about this line for a few years:
Nihilism will be imposed until it is seen not to work.
Kind of like, “The beatings will continue until morale improves.”
Houston TX should look afield at Paris France (not TX), burning from Macron’s greeny enthusiasm.
The tough Minister Philippe said no tax is worth the security of a country. and backed down for now.
Just waiting for the performance at COP24 right at the Polish coal headquarters Katowice with thousands of workers.
An economy that’s 10% smaller than it might have been in 2100 is “ruining the economy”?
I’ve always known that reporters were innumerate, but dang, do they have to work so hard to show it?
When do people start realizing that is impossible to live without fossil fuels or, at least, point me to a place.
The rag hides the criminal negligence of elected officials – remember Harvey? A $25 billion tag for flood control etc, was considered to high by those very bailed out agencies.
Trump was elected on infrastructure. And that looks like the single theme of Dem cooperation.
Didn’t the Chronicle publicize Kathryn Hahoe’s and Dressler’s “permanent drought” prophecy?
I think they did.
Will Happer advises Trump on climate matters.
Happer’s little finger knows more physics than the entire editorial board of the Houston Chronicle.
By the way, the 2019 edition of Heartland’s Climate Change Reconsidered is available for reading.
Scroll down the page for links to pdf versions of the “Summary for Policymakers” and the full text
” He’s counted on to provide reliable information that helps the public understand situations and make wise decisions.”
I don’t really see that as a president’s job. It should be the job of the Fourth Estate. That is their only justification for existence. Unfortunately, they have become a Fifth Column and largely see their job as being propaganda providers. They have lost credibility and so I guess someone has to step into the vacuum created. However, the MSM is constantly trying to undercut the president and de-legitimatize him, making it more difficult to help the “public understand situations.” It is a thankless job.
The Houston Chronicle will not accept editorials critical of climate alarmism. Turned me down twice last year although I have penned many op-eds with them. Totally Left and anti-fossil-fuels. Their business columnist Chris Tomlinson, who just happens to be married to a solar executive, piles on also. I have covered the Chronicle’s bias at MasterResource (scroll down): https://www.masterresource.org/?s=Houston+Chronicle
It’s literally as if the Chronicle doesn’t even know where Houston is.
That’s a good one. Maybe he’s on cloude 9 with the teachers of the curicullum, aware of Texas but Houston far in the mist:
“here in Texas, the Texas Natural Gas Foundation is endorsing a science education curriculum for a future workforce that seems mired in the past. Although industry advocates collaborated with the University of Texas and a state energy office to engage teachers to prepare the curriculum, an investigation by the Austin American-Statesman’s Asher Price found that they worked closely with the curriculum writers and offered edits to the material.
State Rep. Jason Isaac, co-founder and president of the Texas Natural Gas Foundation, told the Statesman he wanted to “get the bias against certain Texas energy resources out of our schools.””
It seems that it is always the high-density population centers that are looking for redistributive change schemes to subsidize and mollify their unsustainable democracies.
The cities carry the burdens of the whole states’ social problems.
The unemployed, the homeless, the however disadvantaged can’t survive on the countryside.
Last hope big city.
You just have to look to see who owns the Houston Chronicle
There it is again,
AEUHHH!!!!
Every time 😅
Oh! So 13 bureaucrat “Agencies” disagree with MY President about the (bullshit!) financial COSTS of Global Warming (sic)? Oh Boo Hoo! We should all “believe” the bureaucracies … because they are “official” bureaucracies? Set-up by Deep Stater’s who mean to regulate EVERYTHING and thus remove the last few FREEDOMS of a supposedly FREE People? Who use the JUNK science of Global Warmism to enslave the people?
Good to know. Filed in the waste bin – Houston Chronicle
It’s an appeal to authority.
45 years ago, the Lefty press picked at authority relentlessly. Now they support it. It’s as if they really didn’t hate authority, just who had it.
The … Question Authority … bumper stickers on the back of VW Vans in Berkeley have been replaced with … OBEY … or in my best Cartman voice … Respect mahy Uh-THOR-a-tee!!
Bumped into this quote today. I think it applies.
“Blind belief in authority is the greatest enemy of truth.”
– Albert Einstein
Dare I say the Houston Chronicle is the enemy of truth? Or does that sound too Trumpish?
BWTM
Why are 13 agencies involved? I think we have a prima facie case that at least 10 can be eliminated NOW, before the Christmas rush.
The Houston Chronicle editorial boards frequently act like they know what they are talking about even when it sounds like they don’t. That’s a bad trait for anyone, but especially the editorial board of a major newspaper (that should have an obligation it’s community). They used to be counted on to provide reliable information that would help the public understand situations and make wise decisions. Instead, the Houston Chronicle provides self serving misstatements (and even propaganda) the put people’s lives in danger.
There is reason newspapers such as this are going downhill
From the article: “President Trump frequently acts like he knows what he’s talking about even when it sounds like he doesn’t. That’s a bad trait for anyone, but especially the president of the United States. He’s counted on to provide reliable information that helps the public understand situations and make wise decisions. Instead, Trump’s misstatements put people’s lives in danger.”
Well, I think it is the Houston Chronicle Editorial Board who are acting like they know what they are talking about when they really don’t.
The Houston Chronicle Editorial Board is counted on to provide reliable information that helps the public, but here they are presenting baseless claims as established fact. Here’s an example
From the article: “Ignoring climate change means ignoring the role it played in the severity of Hurricane Harvey and other violent storms.”
Human-caused climate change (that’s what they mean when they say climate change) cannot be shown to have played a role in any extreme weather. The Houston Chronicle Editorial Board should show us the evidence on which they base this claim. Since there is no such evidence, the Houston Chronicle Editorial Board is feeding the public a bunch of disinformation.
Trump has it right and the Houston Chronicle Editorial Board has it wrong, and they cannot show otherwise.
And if we do as they say…merely give up many of our freedoms and fork over $10 – $50Trillion.
Then…..according to their own inflated numbers….
THE PROBLEM WILL STILL NOT BE FIXED…hardly affected at all. Maybe 0.01C.
Makes one suspect other motives….No?
The Age of Information is the Age of Dizinformation.
When all the schools and universities are tilted leftward.
when all the press is manically leftist,
when all the dolts of Hollywood proclaim socialism,
when all the newspapers trumpet collective policies,
when many of the social media giants are committed fellow travelers,
What in the Hell do you think is going on?
‘President Trump frequently acts like he knows what he’s talking about even when it sounds like he doesn’t. That’s a bad trait for anyone’
Now THAT’s Progressive projection is I’ve EVER seen it.
Texas has more installed wind generation capacity than any other state. Over 21,000 MW. The max load on the Texas grid in 2017 was 69599 MW. Max load wind production in 2017 was 16080 MW. These peaks did not occur at the same time. Without natural gas and coal. We would not have electricity in Houston, or any other part of Texas.
http://mis.ercot.com/misapp/GetReports.do?reportTypeId=13424&reportTitle=Hourly%20Aggregated%20Wind%20Output&showHTMLView=&mimicKey
Wind doesn’t totally suck in Texas… It works pretty well in Spring and Fall, when demand is lowest.
Enron and wind power in Texas. Google it.
Enron, carbon credits, carbon credit futures, Ross Perot, wind power, wind power utility power line easements and right-of-way (billions).
Before Lisa Falkenberg was named the Chronicle’s vice president/editor of opinion this year, she wrote a column about taking a Trump yard sign out of her father’s yard during the 2016 campaign so her young daughter wouldn’t see it. Today, one of their columnists, Erica Grieder, wrote about a Socialist Democrat Judge the editorial board endorsed in this years midterm election. Here’s an excerpt from her column:
“But beyond that, the endorsement noted, Bynum, 36, has a reputation as an impressive criminal defense lawyer who cares deeply about his clients.
Plus, my colleagues thought his election might be a fun experiment.
“He offers a clear alternative to the status quo, and even people wary of his socialist credentials should be curious to see if he can deliver,” the Chronicle’s editorial board said.”
Yes, just like you (not me) should be curious to see what a convicted murder is going to do when…
(inappropriate metaphor. mod)
WSJ Columnist takes press to task over climate reporting, cites facts, uses numbers:
“Press Is the Enemy of Climate: It’s easier to tell a story of good vs. evil than to understand the science.” By Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. on Dec. 4, 2018.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/press-is-the-enemy-of-climate-1543966906
There are lessons in the media’s psychiatric moment last week over the newly published U.S. National Climate Assessment. Let’s give the New York Times credit. It was braver than just about every other news organization when it said, in its lead sentence, the “damage will knock as much as 10 percent off the size of the American economy by century’s end.”
I can’t figure out where the Times got this, but it’s the difference between, say, 2% and 1.86% annual growth over the next 82 years and happens to be about right. How does this justify the dire adjectives it was swathed in? It doesn’t. I suspect that’s why every other news report, including the Journal’s, relied on adjectives alone rather than giving numbers—because the numbers just aren’t that alarming.
What does the National Climate Assessment actually say? In 2090 the U.S. will experience annual climate-related costs of $500 billion. Notice that $500 billion, to echo a widespread misinterpretation of the Times report, is not 10% even of today’s economy (it’s 2.5%). It’s 10% of 1971’s economy.
Steven Koonin, a former Obama administration official and physicist, made a similar point last week on these pages. He calculates that, after climate costs and modest assumptions about growth, 2090’s economy would still be 3.8 times larger than today’s. If so, $500 billion in annual costs would amount to just 0.6% of GDP. Understand too that many costs enumerated in the report are not detractors from gross domestic product but contributors to it. Building a sea wall adds to GDP. Constructing a house to withstand 2090’s weather adds to GDP.
Weirder still, I saw not one news report that ventured to say what the expected temperature would be in 2090. Maybe that’s because doing so would reveal that these relatively bearable costs arise under a worst-case scenario for emissions, known as RCP 8.5, which would further undercut the media’s hysterical adjectives. This is a shame because all such studies, including the new U.S. assessment, show that the biggest threat to climate is a lack of prosperity.
* * *
Put aside scientific uncertainties, which we haven’t talked about. The clear lesson of last week’s U.S. government report and every other official assessment is that climate change is not the end of the world. We can handle the cost and we can also handle the cost of avoiding a portion of climate change through sensible tax policy. …
Unfortunately the U.S. media have become a positive hindrance to public understanding. Consider that systemization of banality known as Axios. Last week it told its presumably politically engaged readership that the way to “be smart” about climate change is to understand that “In climate science, one side is the scientific consensus, and the other is a small but vocal faction of people trying to fight it.”
In other words, reduce everything to a binary question of believers vs. deniers, good guys vs. bad guys. Here’s the sad truth: This narrative is mostly an invention of journalists for their own convenience. It relieves them of having to understand a complicated subject.
I’m not trying to be funny. Over the past 15 or 20 years, the climate beat has been handed over to reporter-activists who’ve decided that climate science is impenetrable but at least nobody ever got fired for exaggerating the risks of climate change.
Their ignorant crisis-babble is why electorates everywhere now believe climate and prosperity are necessarily at odds. Every study, including the U.S. government’s latest, shows the opposite: Continued prosperity is essential to mitigating the risks of climate change.
How come the USA Federal government agencies are anti TRUMP regarding Climate Change. Who controls them ?
MJE
I would think you are probably not a resident of the US. The bureaucracy is semi-permanent, and mostly tends to adhere to the Democratic Party. Firing a so-called civil servant is usually not worth the trouble.
The Republican Party can blame it’s earlier incarnation in the 1880’s for the “reform” of civil service, rather than the previous “spoils system” , where positions were truly political appointees.
Michael, have you heard the term “Deep State”? Well what you are commenting on is the Deep State in action. The Deep State is entrenched bureaucrats (who were there long before the current president was elected and will be there long after he is gone).
“Self-serving politicians”
If Trump only cared about being loved he would spout green platitudes. His skepticism is the politically risky route. And exactly what you’d expect from a man who couldn’t care less if he is loooooved.
“Earth’s climate is now changing faster than at any point in the history of modern civilization,”
When was the start of modern civilization? Was it 1880, perhaps? Does anyone really believe there has been more climate change during the last 20 years than in any other 20 year period since 1880? (Pick your own year for the start of modern civilization, it won’t change anything.)
Did somebody never hear of the climate hiatus we just went through?
Or, are they speaking of the El Nino period we just went through? Is an El Nino event now climate instead of weather?
Yes, an El Niño event is climate since biblical times:
https://www.google.at/search?client=ms-android-samsung&biw=360&bih=288&ei=INcJXIKpG5GasAfQzKSwCA&q=the+pharaoh%27s+dream+of+the+seven&oq=the+pharao%27s+dream+of+the+seven&gs_l=mobile-gws-wiz-serp.
how could it be otherwise – climate since biblical times!
El Niño events have existed before the Neolithic Age.
and of course the Pacific Decadal Oscillation too.
Climate!
I will echo your call of B$. You think this is bad try this on for size.
“Why 536 was ‘the worst year to be alive’” By Ann Gibbons on Nov. 15, 2018
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/11/why-536-was-worst-year-be-alive
Ask medieval historian Michael McCormick what year was the worst to be alive, and he’s got an answer: “536.” Not 1349, when the Black Death wiped out half of Europe. Not 1918, when the flu killed 50 million to 100 million people, mostly young adults. But 536. In Europe, “It was the beginning of one of the worst periods to be alive, if not the worst year,” says McCormick, a historian and archaeologist who chairs the Harvard University Initiative for the Science of the Human Past.
A mysterious fog plunged Europe, the Middle East, and parts of Asia into darkness, day and night—for 18 months. “For the sun gave forth its light without brightness, like the moon, during the whole year,” wrote Byzantine historian Procopius. Temperatures in the summer of 536 fell 1.5°C to 2.5°C, initiating the coldest decade in the past 2300 years. Snow fell that summer in China; crops failed; people starved. The Irish chronicles record “a failure of bread from the years 536–539.” Then, in 541, bubonic plague struck the Roman port of Pelusium, in Egypt. What came to be called the Plague of Justinian spread rapidly, wiping out one-third to one-half of the population of the eastern Roman Empire and hastening its collapse, McCormick says.
536 Icelandic volcano erupts, dimming the sun for 18 months, records say. Summer temperatures drop by 1.5°C to 2.5°C.
536–545 Coldest decade on record in 2000 years. Crops fail in Ireland, Scandinavia, Mesopotamia, and China.
540–541 Second volcanic eruption. Summer temperatures drop again by 1.4°C–2.7°C in Europe.
541–543 The “Justinian” bubonic plague spreads through the Mediterranean, killing 35%–55% of the population and speeding the collapse of the eastern Roman Empire.
The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire (The Princeton History of the Ancient World) Kindle Edition
by Kyle Harper
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071SLPWVL/
Here is the monumental retelling of one of the most consequential chapters of human history: the fall of the Roman Empire. The Fate of Rome is the first book to examine the catastrophic role that climate change and infectious diseases played in the collapse of Rome’s power—a story of nature’s triumph over human ambition.
Interweaving a grand historical narrative with cutting-edge climate science and genetic discoveries, Kyle Harper traces how the fate of Rome was decided not just by emperors, soldiers, and barbarians but also by volcanic eruptions, solar cycles, climate instability, and devastating viruses and bacteria. He takes readers from Rome’s pinnacle in the second century, when the empire seemed an invincible superpower, to its unraveling by the seventh century, when Rome was politically fragmented and materially depleted. Harper describes how the Romans were resilient in the face of enormous environmental stress, until the besieged empire could no longer withstand the combined challenges of a “little ice age” and recurrent outbreaks of bubonic plague.
Tropic Thunder? Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
People like the reporters (let’s not call them journalists, because journalism implies a degree of integrity and editorial standard that 99% of them today do not live up to) simply parrot a belief, mostly based on the new priesthood’s edicts—the new priests are called “experts”, although I have yet to see one proven to be expert at anything in particular.
The approach, mindlessness and tools of intimidation, used by the church and by socialists for many years, are in common use today. And why not? They work. They work especially when the population is intellectually lazy, and when the schools and media are under control.
I thought it might take longer for the US to devolve into a socialist cesspool, but the process seems to have accelerated.
Houston can’t afford to accept Trump’s view of climate change:
OK, Houston Chronicle – urge your members of Congress to pass new legislation that would fill the dangerous regulation void you trapped yourself.
Houston Chronicle. Pity!