All kinds of outside work is easier when you don’t have to worry about heat stroke. Painting is easier without worrying about sweat dripping on the wet paint.
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Speaking of heat waves, it was 107 years ago that a heat wave slammed the northeast, killing an estimated 2000 in New England alone. Temperatures in excess of 100°F slammed cities from Baltimore to Bangor for eleven days. While I didn’t see any reports about the relative humidity, I am assuming it was probably very high which added to the misery.
No air conditioning. Fans and ice were luxuries. Removing clothing was not considered an option due to the morals of the time which only added to the injuries and deaths.
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At the other end of the temperature spectrum, it has snowed in Capetown, South Africa.
Obviously it’s all global warming’s fault…or Al Gore was visiting South Africa.
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Between all of the hate directed against Trump and his staffers, intolerance towards Trump supporters including attacks against minors, fake news propagated by a major news organization (AP), Democrats trying very hard to make good economic news appear to be awful along with their promises to raise taxes, re-impose taxes and regulations done away with by Trump, open the borders, impose sanctions on anyone and everyone disagreeing with them, is it any wonder people are turning away from the Democrat party and joining the #WalkAway movement?
It appears the DNC is doing everything it can to make sure it will lose the mid-term elections. Of course I expect they’ll be trying to figure out what happened and will crank up the rhetoric and calls for confrontation and violence against anyone not supporting them. And should that happen I expect there will be bloodshed and it will be their ‘supporters’ committing it. Then, of course, they will decry the actions of those who defend themselves by wounding or killing their assailants.
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Mind you, this is only one poll, but this one by Rasmussen shows that 74% of likely US voters prefer a free market economic system over a socialist system.
We’ve seen more than enough socialist economic systems to know that they just don’t work. Such a highly controlled economic system has one major flaw and it always has – it short circuits all of the market feedback systems and the economy doesn’t respond to the needs of the consumers. Shortages of needed goods become a constant experience. Even if those goods are available their quality will be low. “Standing on line” will become an everyday experience…except for the governmental elite. They will not be standing in line for anything. They will have access to goods and services that everyone else cannot get.
Socialist economic systems could work, but only one way: keep the damn people out of it. If everything were controlled by an AI it might work. But once people get involved in controlling any aspect of the economic system it will deteriorate and become highly dysfunctional.
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Gee, I remember when ignorance of the law was no excuse. But in Canada all you have to be is from a different culture in order to be acquitted of sexual assault.
The perpetrator has been in Canada for 3 years. He understands the laws there. But because he is from Syria he gets a free pass? I have a feeling that if tried something like that someplace like Texas he’d either be convicted, or assuming he didn’t get dead by the actions of one of the parents of his victims. (“Why did you shoot the victim 17 times?” “Well, your honor, he just plain needed killin’.” “Oh, why the heck didn’t you just say so? Case dismissed!”)
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Despite not being part of either the Kyoto Protocols or the Paris Accords, the US has managed to lower its CO2 emissions to a level not seen since 1985.
How many other nations have managed to even come close to matching the US in lowering their CO2 emissions? Let’s take a count, shall we?
Hmm. Nope, not that one…or that one.
Ahh, here we are!
None. Not one. NOT. ONE.
We could do even better if we decided to go whole hog for nuclear power, specifically the Third or Fourth Generation plants. If we can get thorium reactors online we’d have all of the energy we would ever need, wouldn’t have to use up large tracts of land for solar or wind, could get rid of all of the existing nuclear fuel waste, build small modular reactors (which lowers costs) and cluster them together rather than building One Big Reactor, and make our power generation system more dispersed. Then the only need we’d have for natural gas-fired power plants would be as ‘peaker’ plants, power plants used to hand peak demands. (Nuclear plants don’t throttle up and down very quickly. Gas plants can be brought on and off line quickly, hence their use as peaker plants.) Our CO2 emissions could be reduced by an even greater extent.
Of course I expect the ‘usual suspects’ to discount the decrease in the US emissions and find some way to blame other nation’s failures to reduce their emissions on us.
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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the summerfolk up for the Fourth of July holiday have headed home, the lake has calmed, and where I’m glad Monday is arriving so I can get some rest.