Another Groundhog Day; another set of uncorrelated predictions. Animals can’t predict the weather—nor can humans. I predict that human warming prognosticators will be ranked with groundhogs as presumed weather forecasters: no correlation between their predictions and future temperatures.
According to an Associated Press story about badly behaving groundhogs (they bite and run away), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration analyzed the furry rodents’ forecasts (your tax dollars at work). The results? No correlation between the mammal’s shadow and six more or less weeks of winter. A local StarNews blogger reports that Punxsutawney Phil, the most famous groundhog, today predicted six more weeks of winter, despite other fuzzy deniers who predicted a predictably shorter winter. (link) It’s common knowledge that this has been a mild winter throughout most of the US of A.
Actually, groundhogs don’t much care about all this. Offered food, they might show themselves, but that’s the extent of their contributions to forecasting—similar to global warmists. These humans, however, desperately want to talk about weather projections, and expect government to do something about them—even before they may, or may not, occur.
We federal taxpayers (decreasing in numbers) support a Climate Prediction Center at the National Weather Service, despite the fact that down-to-earth weather predictions beyond a few days are conjectural at best. Current predictions are based on such things as historical cycles, the Sun’s activity, air mass movements and cloud cover.
Climatologists have a pretty good record of observing current regional weather conditions and predicting land temperatures and chance of rain for a few days; and tracking storms in real-time. However, on a given day, air temperatures can be minus 60 degrees below zero (Fahrenheit) at interior Alaska and plus 120 degrees at the Sahara Desert. Daily variations in any location at certain latitudes have less, but a still dramatic spread.
For example, here in Wilmington, N. C. on Groundhog Day 2012 land temperatures reached 72 degrees (until 4 p.m. at the airport); the low will be 50 degrees—daily predictions are accurate nearly to one degree. However, sites within 50 miles will vary by several degrees or more. “Normal” high/low for this day (at the airport) is 58/33. But the record high here was 82 (1950) and the record low was 14 (1936); a 68 degree difference.
Records from the Weather Service from last year’s Groundhog Day show snow-cover on more than half the nation with destructive blizzards; this year most states had mild temperatures at 50 degrees or higher.
You don’t have to be a climate scientist to observe historical records and realize that “global warming” activists predicting that our lifestyles will lead to climate-driven catastrophe have perpetrated a huge hoax on us. Think of them as evolutionary forms of the groundhog.
No CommentsWe have too many social meddlers—people who presume to have visions that they want to impose on all of us. Call it arrogant, conceited or another adjective describing an attitude of superiority, these people claim knowledge and authority they don’t have.
Local “activist” Tom Looney stands out as a poster-boy for that group. Mr. Looney got face-time and voice in a recent Wilmington StarNews article about Titan Cement. (link) Looney also gets frequent air-time from another self-appointed visionary, local talk show host Curtis Wright.
Looney, whose name descriptively fits some of his views, thinks that those of us who support free-market principles and trust the decisions made by business people are “hopelessly out of touch.” He attacks the decision by Titan America to rebuild a cement plant near Wilmington. Looney blames the Wilmington Industrial Development group for the decision; calling it “inexcusable.” He refers to the company as a symptom of a “disease.” Who’s out of touch?
Titan people did not make their location decision to upset Looney’s fuzzy visions of the “economic identity” of this region—they need the site because that’s where the raw materials necessary to produce cement are located. That’s probably too mundane for a smart high-tech guy like Looney to consider, but it’s the company’s call. Titan’s decision is none of his business.
Looney envisions “growth triggers in the rapidly changing global, national, state and local economy”—whatever that means it “should leave out heavy industry such as cement,” according to him. That prejudicial comment should discredit his contribution, but he’s prominent in the StarNews article.
The story cites him as a “successful business executive.” That’s fine. We can admire that. But his narrow experience in the “fast-paced technology sector” doesn’t lead to a preposterous assumption that he has been given divine guidance to control an economy. When Looney presumes to know the best mix of businesses for this, or any, region he daydreams far beyond his knowledge and experience. It’s inconceivable that any one person or group has the wisdom or perception to manipulate an economy; ultimately presuming to know what’s best for individuals. But that attitude goes beyond foolish, it’s dangerous.
Activists with imperious attitudes inevitably lead us to statism. Unable to convince others to follow their flawed visions, they will resort to government power to force them on us. We may simply laugh off their overbearing self-importance, but they pose a threat to our individual freedom.
No CommentsAs suspected and predicted, Jayne is no longer the chief in Leland. Much more on this developing story. From WWAY:
LELAND, NC (WWAY) — Leland has fired police chief Tim Jayne. The information came in a news release sent by the town today to area media, but which excluded WWAY, which has reported extensively on the issues within the Leland Police Department and with Jayne.
In its release, which WWAY received after other media outlets, the town said “The Town of Leland has implemented an institutional reorganization in order to improve organizational efficiency and customer service. Several positions were eliminated as a part of the restructuring, and several new positions will be advertised in the coming weeks.
“The reorganization includes the elimination of three administrative positions and one position within the Building Inspections Department. Also included in the move is the release of Timothy Jayne as the Town’s Police Chief. Deputy Chief Karl Smith will serve as interim chief until a long-term interim chief is appointed or a permanent replacement is hired.”
“The Town is ready to move in a new direction,” Hollis said in the statement. “The moves we have made will improve our organizational efficiency and allow us to better serve the public and our employees.”
Now we’ll see how the Brunswick County Commissioners move to remove fellow commissioner Warren from the board at DSS. This could get ugly and here’s hoping that some leadership will lead to a strongly worded rebuke, but I doubt it.
(StarNews) – A Brunswick County Superior Court judge has ruled that the county commissioners do have the power to remove Commissioner Charles Warren from the county social services board.
Warren’s fellow commissioners had scheduled a hearing to remove him but were blocked by a temporary restraining order issued by a judge Jan. 12 after Warren filed a lawsuit .
After hearing arguments on both sides Monday, Judge Jack Hooks on Wednesday denied Warren an injunction, so the commissioners are free to reschedule their hearing.
Commissioner Marty Cooke said he didn’t know when the hearing would be held. It could be as early as Monday, he said.
Commissioners pushed for the hearing after Warren had DSS board member Pat Sykes removed from a board meeting in December.
Later that month, Commissioners Chairman Bill Sue had Warren escorted out of a county meeting by sheriff’s deputies after Warren protested the removal hearing and called commissioners a “bunch of racists.”
Nobody is publicly commenting, but Gov. Perdue is pushing a project (affectionately called “RoadRunner”) for Brunswick County that will reportedly bring up to 1,100 jobs. If true, the public will be led to believe that this is a factory being moved FROM Japan back to the U.S. But again, there are many more questions.
Caterpillar already had facilities in both Wake and Lee counties. Caterpillar also got $426 million in state money that will be used to build facility in Forsyth County. The Lee facility has received numerous incentives to date and I’m not sure where the facility in Wake stands right now. Caterpillar stands to have the state and ancillary agencies at their beck and call for incentive money on this one. Having lost Continental Tire to SC (even though SC offered $14 LESS than NC) and that still stings the central planning economic government types.
In light of the fact that the state is ashamed of its business environment it is left to beg for jobs by giving away money. Hopefully we’ll find out how much money taxpayers will be asked to fork over. Lee Act, Rural Development grants, JDIG, Golden Leaf, and a myriad of other funds are waiting to be given away.
It’s still hush hush on the details, but all flowers and rainbows on job creation from government. And why isn’t the media talking about the lucrative incentives already received by Caterpillar instead of leading the public to believe that this in an entirely NEW endeavor for the state?
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Mayor Saffo announced yesterday that the city will be moving towards building a $40m stadium for an Atlanta Braves farm team. That means some community somewhere is getting ready to lose a team. It also means that council members, if they approve this, will have gone back on their word during the campaign that they would NOT support a taxpayer funded enterprise.
This was covered in depth at the Carolina Journal back in 2009 and the economy is no better now, so it makes this particular move a rather poorly timed one.
In fact, on Sept. 8, 2011 Mayor Saffo emphatically said, “NO” when asked if he supported a taxpayer funded stadium on the BigTalkerFM. Yesterday when I asked him if he stood by his original statement, he simply indicated he now supported a taxpayer funded stadium.
City council will hold their meeting next Tuesday night at Wilmington City Hall at 6:30. It will be interesting to see if any folks from the public will express their frustration with this endeavor. The city will own it so there will not be any property tax revenues. Mandalay (parent company to the Atlanta Braves) will run it and thus make money off the project.
We’re at the bottom of the first, it will be interesting to see how the next few innings go on this one.
Wilmington Business Journal coverage.
2 CommentsImpressive! Royal palms frame a gigantic symbol of America’s industrial strength in Florida. A dramatic and beautiful picture by photographer Mike Spencer captured the essence of mankind; our relationship with aesthetic earthly elements and natural resources that improve our lives—here art and functionality came together. A Wilmington StarNews report by Kevin Maurer and Mr. Spencer documented works of a great productive industry and how we benefit from them. (link)
Titan America represents the worthiness of creativity: producing valuable products and wealth from the earth. Who among us would dishonor the people who do these things? Sadly, some do exist.
This refreshingly informative and mostly positive news was tarnished by infusing antipathetic claims by a few spooked environmental activists. When contrasted with the important contributions of American natural resources industries to our economic well-being, these people are remote and irrelevant—their failed and flawed cause isn’t worthy of attention.
Cement has been produced in America for more than 60 years without harming people. Some timid and easily offended souls out there may not like temporary unsightly mining and unrefined mechanized production processes, but these affronts do not define “harmful” in the normal sense: damaging, dangerous, unhealthy, destructive etc. As far as I know, actual public harm has rarely, if ever, been found from practices at cement plants or mines.
Florida activists have attacked the Titan people with frivolous charges. In a lawsuit they claimed that federal and state government permitting processes were flawed. They lost. And they alleged benzene contamination of water from the cement plant. They couldn’t prove it. Yet, Titan plant managers (in Florida and Virginia) can demonstrate that “there are no safety concerns” from water unearthed and returned from the mining sites.
North Carolina Coastal Federation agitators and their regional affiliate groups have for three years tried to discredit Carolinas Cement, a Titan subsidiary, and interfere with plans to build a modern plant near Castle Hayne, N. C. They persist slandering the company, spreading malicious speculative propaganda and litigating to stall the state permitting process.
Reasonable people don’t accept arguments “based on speculation”— such as carelessly thrown at Carolinas Cement. There’s a vast disconnect between producers and utopians that deceitfully attack our American industries and destructively try to prevent the development and use of our natural resources—disparate and irreconcilable causes.
1 CommentSen. R.C. Soles (D-Columbus) retired in 2010, his contemporary in the NC House, Dewey Hill (D-Columbus) retires this year. An interesting legacy to their leadership ran in the Whiteville News Reporter, but nobody tied it to their leadership or lack therein. Pay attention to the desperate attempt to spin bad news in the lede:
A new issue brief released by the N.C. Justice Center, a non-profit think tank, tells most residents living in Columbus something they already know. Columbus County is one of the least wealthy counties in the state and the number of people living in poverty has long been a problem here.
Simply put, all they had to say was Columbus is one of the POOREST counties in the state and it’s persistent!
The Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina published a profile of Columbus County in fiscal 2009-10. That report identified more than 12,335 people living in poverty in Columbus County, or nearly 22 percent of the population. More than 2,000 of them are individuals 65 or older and nearly 4,300 children ages 17 years and younger.
A new issue brief released by the N.C. Justice Center says Columbus County is one of 10 counties in the state that was persistently poor every year from 1970 to 2000. Each year 20 percent or more of the population of the counties identified lived in poverty.
Gotta make RC and Dewey proud! Makes you wonder what RC accomplished during his 40 years in public office?
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Wilmington is now the ONLY city in the nation utilizing “white space” per a national experiment on the now unused bandwidths now unused when TV converted from analog to digital in 2008. With that, a rush to jump into this new wireless world known as “super wi-fi” will be an interesting test on monitoring by local government.
During the testing phase, cameras and wireless Internet access were installed at Hugh MacRae Park and other locations in the area. . . Cameras using the white space network also are installed at Airlie Gardens. . . . Wilmington Mayor Bill Saffo said the white space network enables the city’s police department to install surveillance cameras at a fraction of the cost of installing one using cables and other wires necessary to reach a signal. . . For now, county visitors and residents can only tap into Internet access over the white spaces in areas provided by the county.
Just something to think about with caution. This is not something in the private sector and is mainly being utilized by government for monitoring folks at this point in time. What will this mean to competitive Wi-Fi? How much content monitoring will take place? How much will you eventually be monitored by public light poles?
Though this sounds a bit conspiratorial, red light cameras are real, public monitoring polls are installed in areas downtown like the post office. It’s not far fetched at all.
And you’ll be able to look back and say it all started in Wilmington, NC!
No CommentsIt was noticeably subliminal: a Wilmington StarNews subhead about business and political people discussing their relationships at the recent Biz-Tech Conference & Expo here in River City. “Leaders at business conference say education incestments key to profits.” I know; it was a typo mistake. The word “incestments” probably was intended to be “investments.” However, I was struck with how this created word inadvertently identified the improper connection between government and business: incestuous. (link)
Former North Carolina Governor Jim Hunt told the luncheon group that “businesses should make education their business”—including funding, according to the StarNews article. Pharmaceutical company executive Fred Eshelman asked the wealthiest business people in the state a suppositional question: “I want a million dollars from every one of you for education.” Both he and Hunt implied that not enough public money is spent on education—with no apparent recognition of that falsity. (link)
However, they both cited results of poor quality education: failure of students to be taught history, civics, economics and math. Eshelman said he was “stunned by the lack of knowledge” of employees at his company. He and Hunt seemed to recognize the lack of quality in our education systems. But they don’t understand that more money will not fix it.
Quality of education begins at home. It is reinforced and expanded by teachers knowledgeable in subject matter; and schools with administrators who enforce discipline, ensure that traditional/fundamental curricula be taught and promote high expectations. No amount of money spent can substitute in schools lacking these basics.
Families’ dependent on government and government/union-controlled education has created many of the problems leading to an increasingly dysfunctional culture and education system.
Business people should stay out of “collaboration” with political institutions. In this case, they don’t know how to solve government- created problems. And they end up being used to support activist’s self-serving agenda. Dumping more money into these systems will only exacerbate the problems.
Of course, business people have a big stake in education. Poor results— ill-prepared employees—have negative impacts on employer’s missions to wisely and efficiently provide products and services. It would be appropriate for them to lobby our state representatives who have some power to improve education—not for more money, but to demand quality of results in this poorly performing system—for example, encouraging free market competition. (link)
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