"When I feed the hungry, they call me a saint. When I ask why people are hungry, they call me a communist" - Unknown
It's time to discuss some odd stuff that's been making headlines recently. I'm not usually ready to comment promptly on such things because it takes time to ponder them and come up with plausible explanations.
In January 2023, there was (in the US news media, at least), a brief explosion of anger over the US government's desire to eliminate natural-gas cook-tops. The justification for this proposed ban was concern over the health effect on indoor air quality.
Below is a trend of US life expectancy - source data in the image. You will note that the trendline flattened out in roughly 2010, and has fallen dramatically since 2019. For it to fall like this, a lot of younger people will have died. This plunge is not due to frail elderly people being taken by Covid.
Below is a chart of US average life expectancy with respect to several other nations with advanced healthcare, and you can see that Covid has hit the US significantly harder than everyone else. Source data in the image.
Having now thought about this cook-top issue for a bit, I have to conclude that the "indoor air quality" justification doesn't pass the "logic smell test" - for a couple of reasons:
- I'm confident that the government cares about nobody's health, or they would be working diligently to bring down healthcare costs. They would also ensure that all Americans (rich or poor) have access to decent quality care - like many developing countries have. They don't care. Money and control are the motives for nearly everything that the government does these days.
- One of the justifications stated that 15% of childhood asthma cases might be due to fumes from burning natural gas. It strikes me as reasonable to go after the other 85%, much of which seems to be related to exposure to insect particulates. Yet they didn't even bring insects/dust mites up - so the process of elimination indicates they are targeting residential natural gas usage.
I wasn't certain that this dispute was even real - whether in fact the government actually intended to eliminate gas cook-tops, or if this was manufactured outrage to get more clicks and views. A little research indicates that yes, the government really did/does intend to ban gas cook-tops. Bloomberg was the first major media to report on it, on January 9th. Should you follow the link, you will note in the sub-headline that childhood asthma is the reason these appliances are being targeted. The government will not release the research that they claim links gas appliances to childhood asthma. So again, it looks like childhood asthma is not what they are worried about. ...but won't somebody "think of the children!". When they trot out these hypothetical children, you are about to be hood-winked. Again.
After the story blew up, the US Consumer Product Safety Commission denied that there as a plan afoot to ban gas cook-tops. Forbes came to the government's rescue with an article smugly reassuring readers that the government was never planning to ban gas cook-tops, along with an explanation of "Gaslighting". This is hysterical, because Forbes is the one who gaslit their readers. The government actually *was* planning on banning gas cook-tops!
I loved this meme...
The government is not giving up just yet though. They have begun working the cook-top ban from a different angle - that of energy efficiency. The US Department of Energy has just now proposed new efficiency rules for natural gas cook-tops, as of February 1, 2023. This proposed "efficiency" rule change is taking place right after the previous reporting, outrage, denial, and gaslighting.
Here are my thoughts on the matter: There is clearly a push on to wean US homes of using natural gas. For some unknown reason, they decided to start with cook-tops using childhood asthma as a justification. For reasons listed previously, this justification not credible. They are now pursuing this same appliance from the perspective of energy efficiency. If they were really serious about reducing residential gas usage, they would target gas furnaces and gas water heaters. Those appliances use far more gas than cook-tops. In that respect, I'm perplexed why those aren't targeted instead.
Nobody seems to be factoring in the cost and carbon footprint of pulling in extra 220 volt wiring to power up electric cook-tops, nor worried about the added load to aging electric infrastructure. How odd!!! There are also entire new housing developments being built without natural gas infrastructure, so the movement away from residential gas is clearly making headway.
I have theories as to why this is taking place, and why it's happening right now. This push to using electricity kills two birds with one stone. US natural gas producers would very likely prefer to liquefy more natural gas and send it overseas, where it fetches 4-5 times the price it gets in domestic markets.
Any reduction in natural gas usage here means there is more available to sell overseas at greater profit! Too bad someone blew up the Nordstream pipelines bringing cheap Russian gas to Europe - a real shame about that source of gas being disrupted. Who could be behind that?
One other quick thought about natural gas in the US: Compared to electricity, it's much more difficult and time-consuming to shut off service to a customer or to a service area. A technician must go to the residence, then shut off and lock the individual's gas supply valve. A residence with an electrical Smart Meter can be shut off remotely at any time, and for any reason. It's possible that a Smart Meter could be shut off for having incorrect political opinions, or insufficient party loyalty reasons. Or maybe due to a poor social credit score.
Anyone whose home is fully electric, with no alternative means of heating/cooking is fragile. One should be acutely aware of how dependent they are on the goodwill of their government, their electric utility, and the weather. If you did not pay attention to what happened to the Canadian truckers being denied access to their bank accounts, you should have. Anything requiring utility power, banking, or the internet can be taken from you at a moment's notice - even in alleged democracy where peaceful protest is theoretically allowed. I can hardly wait for cash to be replaced with a digital currency that nobody asked for! Topic for another post...
There are elements within our power structures that seem bent on controlling and manipulating our behavior by controlling and restricting our ability to meet our human needs, described by Maslow: You work up from the bottom - the critical needs. The bottom three are the ones being demolished.
Time now for balloon hysteria.
On February 3, a train derailed in East Palestine, Ohio. This caused a massive release of toxic and carcinogenic vinyl chloride gas, in addition to causing a fire that produced phosgene and hydrogen chloride. The emergency response for this spill required a one-mile radius evacuation zone. People downwind are reporting animals becoming sick and dying. Downwind probably should have had a bigger evacuation radius. By the way, there is an app for determining the safe distance from a chemical spill. Useful if you live near the tracks or a major trucking route!
Below: A view of East Palestine, Ohio from above.
The place looks like Baghdad during operation Desert Storm, but reportedly Norfolk Southern - owner of the disaster - has offered to give the town of East Palestine $25,000. Given the degree of environmental damage, the danger, and the inconvenience, I'd say that's a bit weak for a company with a net income of $3,270,000,000 last year. Maybe they should have spent more of that on track and train maintenance.
And in other news, things began taking a much worse turn for our friends in Ukraine. Apparently they have been conscripting boys at gunpoint now.
This train and this war is bad stuff that might lead people to ask all sorts of pointed questions about the safety and maintenance of the tracks and trains, and (one would hope) about the wisdom of provoking WW3 with a nuclear-armed adversary.
Enter the distraction of scary balloon articles from the above major debacles.
Right about this time-frame, we began seeing a series of panicked articles about Chinese balloons appearing in the press. Following that, we had reports that they were being shot down by our pilots using high tech missiles in our most advanced fighter jets.
It's difficult to know whether the balloon thing is also even real or just highly exaggerated. Our sources of information are people who routinely lie several times before they've even had their morning coffee.
It seems that no balloon debris has been retrieved from any of the most recent three 'things' that the military has claimed to have recently shot down, so I'm not holding my breath for confirmation on any of this. It's an awkward and undignified form of sabre rattling, to be sure.
One of the more rational geopolitical takes I've seen on current events is this fellow. He probably won't be invited onto MSNBC or CNN anyime soon for an uninterrupted conversation. Make your own assessments. I'm trying to guess at explanations for these things that don't pass the logic smell test.
UPDATE 18 February 2023: It seems that the government has spent an unbelievable amount of time and money, and the media has gone out of its way to amplify hysteria, over what appear to be hobby balloons. The people in charge of western civilization are deranged :(
Who would win?
I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for retractions or apologies over all the hyperventilating over balloons.
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