My favorite feel-good story of the week: Pope Pete Buttigieg Uses an Armored Suburban To Bring a Bike Within a Short Distance of His Destinations.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg was mocked and ridiculed after a video showed security staffers unloading his bike from the back of an SUV so that he could “ride” to an April 1 Cabinet meeting.
Two SUVs then followed the millennial Cabinet secretary to his meeting as he pedaled off. Full video was posted online by local WFMZ-TV.
“Pete Buttigieg has a history of gimmicky stunts, just for show, like doing a desk job on a military base for a few weeks, then trying to pose as a combat veteran. Now this phony stunt.” added radio host Mark Simone.
This stupid stunt Policymaking should be guided by proved fact, not speculation. Most members of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change believe that current climate models do not accurately portray the atmosphere-ocean system. Measurements made by means of satellites show no global warming but a cooling of 0.13°C between 1979 and 1994.5 Furthermore, since the theory of global warming assumes maximum warming at the poles, why have average temperatures in the Arctic dropped by 0.88°C over the past 50 years?5
Biden has pledged to implement “green” transportation systems and energy infrastructure in an effort to reduce carbon emissions. This is probably the method they will use:
So it goes.
Paul Plante says
This reminds me of a RIGZONE story entitled “Biden Jobs Assurances Backfire with Oil and Mining Workers” by Bloomberg | Jennifer A Dlouhy and Ari Natter on February 16, 2021, as follows:
(Bloomberg) — The Biden administration has gotten off to a rough start trying to reassure coal miners and oil workers whose jobs are threatened by the president’s fight against climate change.
Vice President Kamala Harris drew derision on social media after she told a West Virginia television station that people could be put to work reclaiming abandoned “land mines.”
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Good old Kamala, always good for a laugh or two!
What country she is going to send those people to to reclaim land mines that are now abandoned, whether Viet Nam, or Cambodia, or maybe some other war zone, has not yet been determined, but you have to hand it to her, it is a good way for Joe and Kamala to get rid of all those “DREGS OF SOCIETY” who are probably and most likely white nationalist/white supremacist racists the country they are forming anew would be better off without.
Getting back to that story:
A day earlier, climate envoy John Kerry said during a White House briefing that displaced laborers face “better choices” making solar panels and installing wind turbines.
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And there is John, born with a silver spoon in his mouth who never worked a day in his life, demonstrating to the world that he is as good for laughs as is Kamala.
As to those “better choices,” first of all, if one is going to go to work making solar panels, it would stand to reason that either they would have to move to where solar panels are being actually made, or he solar panel manufacturies would have to be set up where these displaced laborers are located, which takes us back to that story, as follows:
Such comments have backfired with oil workers twisting pipe in Texas and miners harvesting coal in Appalachia.
“Sure, we’re going to make solar panels in these mountains,” Joyce Evans scoffed from her home in Pineville, Kentucky.
Evans, who ran her own coal yard until 2000 and still works at the site near the convergence of Tennessee, Virginia and Kentucky, says she’s skeptical of the promises from Washington and disturbed by the new administration’s early climate moves.
The frustration underscores the stakes for hundreds of thousands of workers whose jobs are imperiled by President Joe Biden’s fight against climate change and the economy’s embrace of renewable energy.
And it highlights the political challenge for Biden as he tries to enlist Americans in a battle for cleaner energy — including voters in swing states rich in fossil fuels.
Many of them, including West Virginia and Pennsylvania, were once reliably Democratic, but Republicans — led by former President Donald Trump four years ago — have successfully appealed to blue-collar workers there with promises to support their jobs and their fossil-driven economies.
“It just shows the arrogance of politicians,” said Mike Party, 65, the chief executive of Beryl Oil and Gas in Midland, Texas, whose 43-year career in the oil and gas industry started with a summer job.
“When they sit there and say you should just go find another career, how do you not take that personally?”
Biden casts his moves to combat climate change as an economic opportunity, with the promise to spur jobs installing solar panels, building wind turbines and weatherizing homes.
“We’re never going to forget the men and women who dug the coal and built the nation,” Biden vowed as he announced a slew of climate initiatives last month.
“We’re going to do right by them — make sure they have opportunities to keep building the nation and their own communities” while “getting paid well for it.”
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Which is Biden-esque BULL****, given that solar panel installers, according to my research, to wit:
“Solar Installer Salary: How Much Do Solar Installers Make?”
Author Leslie Cowie, May 21, 2020
A solar installer’s salary will vary slightly depending on which research you look at, but the overall consensus is that a solar installer will make $30,000 – $40,000 each year.
Numbers falling within this range are mentioned on at least 8 different salary-related websites.
This estimated solar installer salary range falls in line with Indeed.com’s research, which evaluated 1,837 employees, users, and past and present job advertisements on Indeed in the past 36 months.
Indeed.com found an average salary in the U.S. of $16.87/hour.
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That is just above the starting hourly wage at McDonald’s working the take-out window.
Getting back to that story:
A White House spokesman said that Biden’s climate plan would make transformative investments in infrastructure and tackle the climate crisis while creating millions of good union jobs.
The administration will take additional actions to fulfill these commitments in the weeks and months ahead, the spokesman said, asking not to be identified.
The president created a government working group dedicated to the issue and ordered it to come up with a plan for driving the economic revitalization of communities affected by the decline of fossil fuels.
The initiative dovetails with a campaign by environmentalists and Appalachian leaders for a just transition that combines policies, training programs and investments to ensure communities and workers aren’t left behind in the shift away from fossil fuels.
Brandon Dennison, chief executive of Coalfield Development, a group focused on revitalizing central Appalachia, said workers don’t want to be viewed as collateral damage or blamed for climate change.
“Most conversations about climate change have treated coal workers as an afterthought,” with insulting suggestions they can be retrained or just move, Dennison said.
“The reality is many job-training programs haven’t worked that well.”
“And, by and large, we don’t want to move and doing so would cost too much anyway.”
Dennison said both politicians and environmental advocates need to change the way they view — and talk about — affected fossil fuel workers, who don’t want to be treated as “a charity case.”
Kerry’s comments at the Jan. 27 White House briefing on climate unfairly suggest it’s easy to find a new job — or that oil workers would be willing to move far from their current homes to find them, said Jerry, who supervises the construction of offshore rigs, pipelines and components at a fabrication yard in southern Louisiana.
Jerry asked that his last name not be used, citing concerns his frank talk could harm his employer.
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To close, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics website article “Careers in Solar Power” by James Hamilton, an economist in the Office of Occupational Statistics and Employment Projections, BLS, available at (202) 691-7877 or hamilton.james@bls.gov., we have as follows for wagtes making solar panels, to wit:
Semiconductor processors $32,880
Computer-controlled machine tool operators, metal and plastic $31,470
Welders, cutters, solderers, and brazers $27,590
Glaziers $36,640
Coating, painting, and spraying machine setters, operators, and tenders $32,520
Electrical and electronics repairers, commercial and industrial equipment $47,480
Electrical and electronic equipment assemblers $27,500
Roger Neilson says
The political idiots and supporting media know-nothings are totally ignorant on the subject of climate change. Any geologist or paleontologist knows that climate change has been going on for billions of years without any help from mankind. The primary causes are changes in behavior of the sun’s radiation, the earth’s wobbling rotation on its axis and some blanketing of the sun by volcanic action or impacting meteorites.