The traffic.
Starting around noon on Friday the traffic into New Hampshire was quite heavy. A lot of that traffic was bound for the Lakes Region as we saw a lot of it in my town as summerfolk arrived to open up their cottages and summer homes. The local state park ‘camping’ area was almost full when I went by there yesterday afternoon. Parking lots at the local shopping centers were full earlier yesterday morning. About the only place that wasn’t as busy as I had expected was our town boat ramp as the weather wasn’t conducive to launching boats – cool, very windy, and a lot of white caps out on the lake. Not that some folks weren’t launching their boats, but the usual line we see at the ramp wasn’t there. I have a feeling there will be one tomorrow as the weather is supposed to be pretty nice and warm.
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Michael Mann hasn’t received a fraction of the abuse he so richly deserves.
Michael Mann's Legal Defeat and the Climate of Accountability
There was a time, not so long ago, when climate scientist Michael Mann could bully critics into silence with the mere threat of a lawsuit. He was the face behind the infamous "hockey stick" graph, a man lauded by progressives, featured in Al Gore's documentary, and embraced by a media eager to label skeptics as dangerous deniers. But the courtroom, as it turns out, is no place for manufactured myths or moral grandstanding.Mann’s downfall was of his own making, pushing his infamous climate “hockey stick” chart as a warning and going after anyone who disagreed with his findings. However, it turns out his findings were bogus, the mathematics of his chart designed to give the hockey stick graph regardless of the data used.
A Washington, D.C. court just handed Mann a bruising legal defeat. After more than a decade of litigation, he has been ordered to pay over $1 million in attorney's fees to the very people he accused of defamation: National Review, the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), and writer Rand Simberg, a former PJM contributor.
Even more humiliating, the court revealed that Mann grossly misrepresented his financial damages. Once celebrated as a martyr for the climate cause, he now stands exposed as a fabricator, not just of projections, but of personal injury.
The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) elevated the hockey stick to icon status. Schools taught it. Politicians cited it. Al Gore plastered it in "An Inconvenient Truth," like a gospel.Too bad this court case hadn’t been decided before Mann’s suit against Mark Steyn, where Mann was awarded $1 million USD in a defamation suit against Steyn. It turns out that Steyn was telling the truth and Mann’s reputation is trash. The million dollar award was later reduced to $5000.
But critics soon noticed that something wasn’t right. Canadian researchers Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick uncovered glaring flaws in Mann’s methodology, showing that his algorithm could produce a hockey stick shape even when fed with random data. This wasn’t just bad science; it was political theater dressed in lab coats.
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I mentioned in yesterday’s post that one of the things we need in order to bring back nuclear power is a reduction in over-the-top regulations. It looks like that it is finally going to happen, something that is long overdue.
Donald Trump took a huge step toward ensuring America's energy future by signing four executive orders that gave the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) a long-overdue overhaul.I have seen how overregulation, hostile legislation, and licensing delays can add billions of dollars to the cost of building a nuclear power station.
Currently, it takes about 12 years to plan, design, and construct a nuclear power plant, according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO). Getting all the license approvals takes an average of five years.
One of Trump's executive orders directs the NRC to streamline its rules so that it takes just 18 months to approve applications for a new reactor.
Another order directs the Energy and Defense departments to explore placing reactors on federal land, thus bypassing the NRC entirely. It would also allow those departments to develop their own faster, more efficient approval process for building nuclear reactors.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum participated in the signing ceremony in the Oval Office.
“This is a huge day for the nuclear industry,” said Burgum, adding: “Mark this day on your calendar. This is going to turn the clock back on over 50 years of overregulation.”
I remember when the project to build two nuclear power plants in Seabrook, New Hampshire started. The projected cost of the project was $800 million for the two units. Construction started in 1976...and it all went downhill from there. Between lawsuits filed by anti-nuclear groups, temporary restraining orders that stopped construction on more than one occasion, changes in NRC regulations that required “do overs” on parts of the plants already completed, then a governor hostile to nuclear power that pushed legislation to make a long existing funding mechanism known as CWIP – Construction Works In Progress – illegal, that ended up bankrupting one of the utilities involved in the project and financially damaging some of the others which in turn caused abandonment of the one of the two units being built.
Seabrook Unit 1 was finally completed and went online in 1990. The final cost?
$6.2 billion, almost eight times the projected cost, and for only half the original project.
Modern plants are not going to be built in the same fashion as the Generation I and II power plants, all of which were in effect custom built. Even two nuclear plants built side by side at the same time were not identical, something that greatly increased the cost. The French got it right when they built their nuclear power plants because they all used the same design, sections were built in a factory, and almost 80% of all of France’s electricity comes from nuclear. And the did it for a fraction of the cost of what it cost the US.
If we want ‘green’ reliable electrical power, nuclear is the way to go, at least for baseload generation.
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Yeah, this doesn’t surprise me at all. Then again, I am an engineer...
How The A.I. Takeover Might Affect Women More Than Men.
Women are more likely to have their jobs replaced by generative AI, and they are slower to adopt AI technology into their work. Eight out of ten women in the workforce are in ‘occupations highly exposed to generative AI automation,’ compared to six out of ten men, said a 2023 analysis by the Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise.Much of what the linked article states makes sense. However, it might not happen nearly as quickly as some folks think because, quite frankly, there isn’t enough electricity to run all those A.I. data centers that will be needed to take over all those jobs, at least not yet.
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This doesn’t surprise me in the least knowing just how much of a failing society the Pyrite State has become over the past four decades...and it was all done on purpose.
Parents Pulling Their Little Ones Out of California Public Schools in Massive Numbers.
Parents are saving their children. The left has destroyed a generation of young minds. No country can thrive let alone survive the destruction of the mind.As dire as the numbers are I have to wonder if there isn’t another possible explanation for the decline, that being that there aren’t nearly as many children in California as there used to be. It could be because of a low birthrate. It could be that because families are leaving California in growing numbers because they can no longer afford to live there or state regulations are making it increasingly difficult to do business there. It could be a combination of all of these things.
There are now 20 percent less 1st graders than 12th graders. Los Angeles Times: California public school enrollment has declined for the seventh straight year and the number of students from low-income and homeless families has increased as many school districts throughout the state face financial pressures to downsize. Statewide, perhaps the most stark figure is a comparison between enrollment in 12th grade — 488,295 students — and in 1st grade — 384,822. That’s a more than 20% difference between the size of the class leaving school and the size of the class beginning its trek through the public school system.
Why wouldn’t a parent want their precious little one in a California public school? After all, they rank in bottom quarter of public schools across the nation—at number 38. Golden State public schools are 42nd in high school graduation rate and 43rd in college readiness.
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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee where the summerfolk have returned, the weather isn’t quite as nice as we would have liked, and where this Monday has an entirely meaning than other Mondays.