#greenfail: Only 1 in10 find green jobs after extensive training

Russ Steele

The USA Today has the story:

House Republicans are expanding their probe into the Obama administration’s energy programs, investigating $500 million in green job training grants that placed just 10% of trainees in jobs, according to a government report.

The program’s goal was to train 124,893 people and put 79,854 in jobs. But 17 months later, 52,762 were trained and 8,035, or roughly 1 in 10, had jobs. Those numbers come from an audit by the Department of Labor‘s inspector general, which recommended that the administration end the program and return unspent money.

President Obama has made green jobs a cornerstone of his economic agenda. In his first 2012 campaign ad this month, he said clean energy industries created 2.7 million jobs and were “expanding rapidly.” 

If these jobs are expanding rapidly, why are only one in ten finding green jobs?

Mayor Kevin Johnson in his state of Sacramento address outlined ways to bring 1,500 new green jobs to the city by retrofitting schools with clean infrastructure.  Maybe he can put some of these folks to work. But,  what will they do when the green refurbishing of city schools is done?

 

Over e-mail transom – German Fear of Warming Plummets

Russ Steele

I had seen this item on another blog, but this version was sent by a regular reader of this blog. P. Gosselin writes from Germany: German Fear Of Warming Plummets…Yet-To-Be-Published Skeptic Book Climbs To Amazon.de No. 4!

According to the article only 31% of Germans are afraid of global warming, when 2006 it was double that number. Here is the money paragraphs from the article:

No more trust in the IPCC

Undeniably there’s a feeling that the stars are now aligned, the mood has swung, and key players are changing their minds. As FOCUS reports, even the most die-hard of warmists are converting, or at least softening their tones. Prof. Fritz Vahrenholt, a renewable energy expert, was once one of the fathers of the modern green movement in Germany and believed everything the IPCC preached – until 2 years ago. FOCUS writes:

“Fritz Vahrenholt, one of the fathers of the green movement, no longer trusts the forecasts of the IPCC.”

and FOCUS tells us why, quoting Vahrenholt:

“Doubt came two years ago when he was an expert reviewer of an IPCC report on renewable energy. ‘I discovered numerous errors and asked myself if the other IPCC reports on climate were similarly sloppy.”

In his book he explains how he dug into the IPCC climate report and was horrified by what he had found. Then add the 10 years of stagnant temperatures, failed predictions, Climategate e-mails, and discussions he had with dozens of other skeptical elite scientists. That was more than enough. FOCUS quotes:

“I couldn’t take it any more. I had to write this book.”

I hope that some this doubt makes it’s way to California, and our adamant warmers at CARB start questioning the facts in the IPCC report. There reports are being used by CARB as justification for CO2 emission reduction policies in California.

H/T to a regular reader of this blog.

Strong year for California’s job market – Maybe?

Russ Steele

The Sac Bee has this breathless story about CA jobs HERE.

Here’s some good news: California added jobs at a faster pace than all but six other states last year.

The number of employed Californians grew by 263,000, or 1.9 percent, during 2011, significantly higher than the 1.1 percent nationwide growth rate.

No state added more jobs than California. Only North Dakota, Utah, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Wyoming and Texas saw the number of jobs increase by a higher percentage. (See map below)

Those encouraging numbers do come with a caveat: California is digging itself out of a deeper hole than most other states. Its unemployment rate of 11.1 percent is still much higher than the nationwide rate of 8.5 percent.

And even if California continues to add jobs at the healthy pace set in 2011, it will not reach pre-recession employment levels until late 2014.

The big questions is were these new CA Jobs just more low paying service jobs, or were they higher paying jobs like those North Dakota and Texas.  In the same paper Dan Walters has some insight on the CA job market.

Dan Walters more measures view of the CA’s job market HERE.

California lost well over a million jobs during the recession, so it could easily take four more years to achieve pre-recession employment. And even if it does, the unemployment rate could remain relatively high because our population is still growing by about 350,000 persons a year, thus generating more potential workers.

Moreover, hundreds of thousands of Californians have either dropped out of the labor force or have been forced into low-paying and/or part-time jobs. Federal surveys indicate the state’s real rate of unemployment or underemployment is more like 20 percent.

It would, therefore, take many years of robust job growth to truly restore income-producing employment to pre-recession levels, and that would require countless billions of dollars in private, job-creating investment.

Here is my final thought. Does this chart mislead the reader? Note that the top of the scale is 1.8% What would have been the graphical impact if the scale had started at 2%. Note that all the other 4 states would be in the same position if the scale started at 2% and CA would not be in the top five.  Your call.

Interesting Post at Next Grand Minimum

Russ Steele

I have a post at the Next Grand Minimum on a great article by David Rose in the UK Mail On Sunday. He nicely sums up what a lot of us knew already: The thing we really need to fear right now is not global warming but global cooling.  Based on current evidence, it’s global cooling we’re going to get.

 

Moonbeam does it again – Cap and Trade to Fund High-Speed Rail.

The story is the Sac Bee Capitol Alert: Jerry Jerry Brown says cap-and-trade fees will fund high-speed rail

Gov. Jerry Brown said in an interview airing in Los Angeles today that California’s high-speed rail project will cost far less than the state’s current estimate of nearly $100 billion and that environmental fees paid by carbon producers will be a source of funding.

“It’s not going to be $100 billion,” the Democratic governor said on ABC 7′s Eyewitness Newsmakers program. “That’s way off.”

Brown’s remarks come as his administration prepares revisions to the California High-Speed Rail Authority‘s latest business plan. Brown is trying to push the project through an increasingly skeptical Legislature following a series of critical reports.

“Phase 1, I’m trying to redesign it in a way that in and of itself will be justified by the state investment,” Brown said. “We do have other sources of money: For example, cap-and-trade, which is this measure where you make people who produce greenhouse gasses pay certain fees – that will be a source of funding going forward for the high speed rail.”

Brown said, “It’s going to be a lot cheaper than people are saying.”

You can read the rest of the story HERE.  Now I have to ask you, how may government project do you know of in California that did not end up costing more that the original  estimate?  How many?  Really? BART was 150% over estimated cost to build, 475% over cost to operate and maintain and rider patronage was 50% less that predicted, according to Great Planning Disasters by, Peter Hall. (page121).  Reality bites.

As we found out in the military the real cost is not buying the system, it is the operating and maintenance cost that are the budget killers. This will be true of high-speed rail, as China found out, and as a result the have lowered the speed of the trains by 30%. It is no longer high-speed rail, but medium-speed rail.

I highly recommend our political leaders read Peter Hall’s Great Planning Disasters, including Governor Brown.

Penny’s Re-Do Maybe Bad for Nevada County’s Economy

Russ Steele

In the Saturday mail was a new “J C Penny’s”  catalog that was just JCP.  Ellen thought the cloths in the catalog were targeted to young families, rather than a more mature market that resides in Nevada County.

We had dinner with some friends Saturday night and the new J C Penny’s image and marketing scheme became part of our conversation.  It seems that J C Penny’s, now JCP, has adopted a new marketing strategy.  They have stopped mailing out discount coupons and have adopted a Facebook marketing strategy.  If you now want a JCP discount coupon you have to log on to Facebook and down load that coupon, no more in the mail coupons.

Here is the economic issue at I see it. We have a very large senior population in Nevada County, more folks over sixty than any other county in California, according to one report that I read. My concern is how many of the those over sixty folks are actually going to be logging into Facebook for coupons.   Here is a chart of Facebook demographics.

 Less that 5% of Facebook users are over 55.  If those statistics hold true in Nevada County, then fewer people will be shopping for bargains at JCP.  We have many tech savvy friends, in our over 60s age group, who use computers, laptops, iPads, smart-phones and Kindles, including some of the new color Kindles. None of these friends are major Facebook users, and most do not even have a Facebook account.

While changing Penny’s image, targeting younger audiences, may be good for Penny’s it may not be a good marketing strategy for a community with thousands of seniors. About 26% of Nevada County’s population is over 60 year of age. That is about 26,000 folks. If only half goes cloths shopping, that is about 13,000 buyers, and only 5% of those 13,000 may have Facebook accounts, or about 650 potential coupon carriers. Penny’s sure knows how to limit their market potential in Nevada County.

The question is,  will we even have a Penny’s in Grass Valley in two years?

A Burt Rutan Fan Disappointed He Signed WSJ Article Denying AGW

Russ Steele

Brian Angliss writes at Scholars and Rogues:

. . . I was disappointed to find that you had co-signed a Wall Street Journal commentary regarding human-caused climate disruption along with 15 other scientists and engineers. The commentary was replete with incorrect and misleading information. So much so, in fact, that I was surprised that you, as an engineer, would attach your name to it.

Anthony Watts has published Burt Rutan’s answer to Brian at Watts Up With That.  It is a very reasoned  and compelling answer that all of California’s policy makers should read:

Brian,

In my background of 46 years in aerospace flight testing and design I have seen many examples of data presentation fraud. That is what prompted my interest in seeing how the scientists have processed the climate data, presented it and promoted their theories to policy makers and the media.

What I found shocked me and prompted me to do further research. I researched data presentation fraud in climate science from 1999 to 2010.

I do not have time here to define the details; if interested in my research, a PPT or PDF can be downloaded at:
http://rps3.com/Pages/Burt_Rutan_on_Climate_Change.htm

The Green Model Has Turned Ugly

Russ Steele

Spain was and early adopter of green energy, wind and solar, and was held up as a model for California to follow by our former RINO Governor Arnold the Great Go Green Giant. The lynch pin in the Great Go Green Giant plan was AB-32, the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006. CARB is busy implementing AB-32, with low carbon fuel mandates, cleaner cars, cap and trade, and subsides for wind and solar power.

But, the model has turned ugly, with 23 percent of the Spain’s work force unemployed.  For every green job created with renewable energy subsides 2.5 non-green jobs were killed as energy costs soared.  Now Spain has suspended all subsidies for renewable energy power plants, according to a Bloomberg

Spain halted subsidies for renewable energy projects to help curb its budget deficit and rein in power-system borrowings backed by the state that reached 24 billion euros ($31 billion) at the end of 2011.

“What is today an energy problem could become a financial problem,” Industry Minister Jose Manuel Soria said in Madrid. The government passed a decree today stopping subsidies for new wind, solar, co-generation or waste incineration plants.

The system’s debts were racked up as revenue from state- controlled prices failed to cover the cost of delivering power. Costs have swollen in the past five years because of an increase in regulated payments for the power grid, support for Spanish coal mines and subsidies for renewable energy plants.

ooo

The Spanish action follows Germany’s announcement last week that it would phase out support for solar panels by 2017 and the U.K.’s legal battle to reduce its subsidies for the industry.

You can read the rest of the story HERE. My questions is,  if Spain was once the renewable energy model that California should follow, why are  California’s Governor and Legislature not following the model now that is has turned ugly and unproductive. Why do they think that California will turn out any different than Spain, who was once the worlds leader in renewable energy and now an unemployment basket case.

Forest Service used Discredited IPCC Document to Justify Climate Change Forest Programs

Russ Steele

The Forest Service has announced its Final Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) for land management planning on the National Forest System.  I had an opportunity to comment on this plan challenging the climate change assumptions and the use of IPCC Assessment reports to make policy decisions. You will even find my name in the list of consultants.

This is what the report has to say about the science of climate change.

Killing the CA Economy with AB-32

Russ Steele

The premiss for AB-32, The Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, is that human emission of CO2 are warming the planet and there is a potential for run-away warming.  The result has been a series of polices to reduce CO2, including this bit of lunacy spelled out in KQED Climate Watch:

California Holds Lead in Clean Car Derby Air Board adopts landmark rules to curb emissions

The California Air Resources Board has unanimously approved sweeping new rules designed to facilitate the transition from gasoline-powered to electric and hydrogen-powered cars. By 2025, automakers are now required to produce 1.4 million “zero-emission” vehicles for the California market, a number that would make clean cars 15 percent of  all new car and truck sales.

The rules also require automakers, by 2025, to halve greenhouse gas emissions emanating from vehicle tailpipes, compared to current levels. The federal Environmental Protection Agency is considering similar emissions rules, as well as a new fuel economy standard of 54.5 mpg by 2025.

ooo

The new rules announced today include the following:

Sacramento, Slowest Growing City in North America

Russ Steele

Brookings Institute’s Global Metro Monitor 2011 rated the recovery of the 200 largest metropolitan regions in the world. The rankings are based on a combination of the change in income and employment in each city between 2010 and 2011. According to the report, the fastest-growing cities are located outside North America and Western Europe, while all the slowest-growing ones are within those continents.

5. Sacramento, U.S.
> Change in employment (2010-2011): -1%
> Change in income (2010-2011): -0.8%
> Population: 2.18 million
> Income per capita: $42,283
> GDP: $92 billion

CA # 48 in 2012 State Business Tax Climate Index

Russ Steele

Mark Robyn has compiled the numbers in Tax Foundation Background Paper No. 62  The Tax Foundation presents the 2012 version of the State Business Tax Climate Index to enable business leaders, government policymakers, and taxpayers to gauge how their states’ tax systems compare.

The lesson is simple: a state that raises sufficient revenue without one of the major taxes will, all things being equal, have an advantage over those states that levy every tax in the state tax collector’s arsenal.

The 10 lowest ranked, or worst, states in this year’s Index are:

41. Iowa

42. Maryland

43. Wisconsin

44. North Carolina

45. Minnesota

46. Rhode Island

47. Vermont

48. California

49. New York

50. New Jersey

Download a full PDF of the study here, or download Excel tables here.

It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out why business are leaving the state for other more business friendly states, especially with the Governor looking to increase our tax burden even more.  Elections have consequences.

#greenfail: Another Green Subsidy Bankruptcy for the President.

Russ Steele

Mark Meckler has the story at Across the Fence.  Mark is becoming an active blogger and has some interesting posts.

Promoted directly by the President and by V.P. Biden, Ener1, which received a $118,000,000 subsidy, is now bankrupt.  This was another poster child for the President’s green energy initiative.  Now it’s another poster child for the failed policies of the Administration.  They’ve proved once again, the government isn’t very good at picking private sector winners and losers.  Though they did get $118,000,000 of our money.  So I guess to them, it’s a win!

The list of failed green companies who got Obama green subsides just keeps getting longer and longer.

Military going back in time to save money

Russ Steele

I am reading Area 51: An Uncensored History of America’s Top Secret Military Base after Ellen read me some paragraphs when she was reading this very interesting book.  Area 51 played a major role in the development of the U-2 and A-12 the CIA version of the SR-71. Both of these highly sophisticate aircraft were tested at Area 51 and eventually operational versions were station at Beale AFB. The SR-71 is gone, but the venerable U-2 is still flying.

After Gary Powers was shot down over Russian in a CIA U-2, there was a concerted effort by the CIA to develop drones to remove the potential loss of pilots to enemy fire.  There were many U-2 pilots that did not survive and there loss was not reported in the news.  However, go high and go fast won the day and the SR-71 was developed for the overfly mission.  They Air Force need alternatives to inflexible satellites and started developing unmanned reconnaissance aircraft.

With a global communication infrastructure the military as developed a number of drone aircraft to do the high altitude surveillance mission, taking the pilot out of the loop, and out of the enemy hands if the platform were to crash. One of those unmanned platforms is the Global Hawk which is stationed at Beale AFB. Maybe not for long, according to this article in The Union.

WASHINGTON — Officials say Pentagon budget cuts will end the Air Force’s long-range surveillance drone known as the Global Hawk — based at Beale Air Force Base — but keep the Navy’s version of the unmanned aircraft. 

The 18th Reconnaissance Squadron at Beale oversees the aircraft.

Defense analyst Loren Thompson says defense officials have decided to rely on the less expensive, high-altitude U-2 spy plane — also stationed at Beale — which has a shorter range, but has been used in Asia, particularly to keep an eye on North Korea.

The U-2 has a pilot, which can be shot down and captured like Powers or killed like all the pilots that never returned, and no one knows there names. If a Global Hawk goes down, the worst we have is the situation like that which happened with the RQ-170 in Iraq, when it the vehicle landed in enemy territory.

Why does Obama’s cost cutters want to go back to the U-2 which was developed in the early 1950s, it is cheaper to operate. It has 60 years of amortized costs. But, it requires a pilot that can be shot down and captured.  The article continues:

Thompson, who is with the Virginia-based Lexington Institute, says the Global Hawk, which can stay airborne for 24 hours, would be more valuable as the Pentagon shifts focus to the vast Pacific region.

Well, I guess that if the focus is on the Pacific, then the Navy can handle that mission. The impact locally, is that with the loss of Global Hawk, there will be fewer Air Force personnel at Beale AFB. Fewer people that can visit Nevada County on the weekend. The loss of Global Hawk could have some economic impact on the regions economy.

You can read the rest of the article HERE.  By the way, I highly recommend reading Area 51: An Uncensored History of America’s Top Secret Military Base.  It raises questions, if this is what went on the the 50s, 60s and 70s, what super secret activity is going on there tonight?

Nevada County Tourism Update

Russ Steele

I have posted an update to the County and Grass Valley Tourism Number at the navigation button above. Both of the sites over all rank continues to slip.  Grass Valley does not have enough visitors to have stats on Compete.  Here are the gonevadacounty.com Compete stats:

Let’s hope that this down turn for December, will reverse itself after the 1st of the Year. There was 327 fewer visitors in December. Given the Christmas Festivals that are held in Western Nevada County, I would have expected continued growth in the number of visitors.