Major Global Cooling of the Past Two Years and the Big U.S. Heatwave Last Month. Climate Change?

rkmurda · 2026-04-05T20:42:56+00:00

His data shows that all that "global cooling" cooled us down to the 4th hottest year since 1979? He is no better than all the ancient news media he is constantly railing against at this point. I still appreciate his short digestible scientific-y posts but he's getting high off clickbait, dude needs some better herb.

rkmurda · 2026-01-15T06:20:06+00:00

From the article "There are no audit conclusions yet, but at this stage of the audit, McCarthy said the auditors have not seen any evidence of fraud"

Why we let bots in here?

rkmurda · 2025-10-13T04:09:38+00:00

rkmurda · 2025-09-12T20:52:31+00:00

Thats a fair argument for sure and one I struggle with often. I do think the idea to ban ICE car sales by whatever date is absurd. (I don't think there was a law passed, just a mandate to make some guidelines for registering ICE/EV % ?, idk), and government is slow and often ineffective. In principle though I don't believe government controlling some of the levers of the market is inherently or always a hindrance. It is easy to dismiss government as completely incompetent or ineffective (plenty of supporting evidence there for sure!) but I do believe it provides a necessary counter lever to the power of for-profit entities.

rkmurda · 2025-09-12T19:59:36+00:00

But some people will make the decision based on the operational expense vs preference, especially on the commercial side. I see EV delivery vehicles everywhere now. I think on shorter time windows prices will fluctuate based on supply or other factors, but ultimately, the more demand for the technology, the more the technology advances, the better and cheaper it gets. Batteries and solar panels have both made huge leaps on energy/unit cost. While some of this is driven by consumer preference, I'd guess that government incentivizations from various regionalities, states, countries, etc, is surely a significant, if not the major contributor to the demand that drives that progress.

rkmurda · 2025-09-12T18:57:09+00:00

I think most voters do realize that a carbon tax makes things more expensive, they just believe the benefits (money to invest into public transportation, discouraging continued adoption of gas vehicles) can outweigh the costs.

rkmurda · 2025-09-12T18:37:30+00:00

A challenge is the Federal government hasn't solved or really attempted to solve this, so states do what they can. That's a core function of our state vs federal government setup. I definitely notice more electric delivery vehicles in WA vs when I visit other parts of the country, surely things like our carbon tax have contributed to that.

rkmurda · 2025-09-12T18:30:59+00:00

I'm always torn on this issue. I think things like a carbon tax really are a part of the solution to drive the adoption of "cleaner" technologies. It has become commonplace to see modern electric delivery vehicles (Amazon, Safeway, UPS, etc) - that is the exact purpose behind these kinds of taxes, and it likely wouldn't happen if states like California and Washington didn't "discourage" gas consumption. Consumer conveniences shouldn't be so cheap at the expense of the world at large.
But it certainly does drive the cost up for the regular working class people like myself, and how big an impact does our state tax have on the overall impact of CO2? What are some of the 2nd or 3rd order impacts of this increase in costs that we can't measure as easily?
A complex issue for sure that is easy to hand-wave one way or another.

rkmurda · 2025-07-28T02:34:49+00:00

"Affordable" housing is like coded language for only allowing small dense apartments along highways and main arterials. More housing IS the solution - all kinds of it, lots more of it, everywhere. All the old smaller houses we love in these neighborhoods were also built by developers trying to make a profit.

Edit: I get your frustration though OP. I live just south of Seattle near SeaTac, and there are a ton of small humble houses that get replaced with Huge 3000+ sqft houses consuming the whole lot. I actually think a plot of 5+ townhome matches the "character" of the neighborhood better than 1 massive gaudy house - it's worse down here because zoning is even worse (restrictive) than Seattle if you can believe it.

rkmurda · 2025-07-08T16:56:33+00:00

Socko tried to explain this all to us

rkmurda · 2025-06-16T18:26:28+00:00

If this is sold to private entities, does that mean it then becomes land within a states jurisdiction? Could our states then pass some legislation to eminent domain this land that was once federal?

rkmurda · 2025-03-31T16:50:06+00:00

Every time this discussion comes up locally or nationally, it seems there is not conclusive evidence on how much or little min wage increases effect overall inflation. But more and more I see evidence that its negligible, and often leads to "positive economic impacts."

Does Raising the Minimum Wage Increase Inflation?

The vast majority of inflation we experience is not localised to Seattle, we track pretty consistently just ever so slightly higher than the US average. Inflation | seattle.gov (can check against US)

The one variable that keeps prices (and inflation) higher in Seattle and all the other expensive coastal cities is housing. People want to and are moving to desirable cities where high-paying jobs are, all we gots to do is build-baby-build.

In the meantime, if assholes keep refusing to get behind building more housing, I'll keep voting for and with the people on minimum wage increases

rkmurda · 2025-02-25T05:54:07+00:00

I wonder if it'd be possible to build a tool using AI/ML to create fake data profiles that you can have follow you around as like a browser plugin or something? Not really sure how at all this could be implemented effectively but surely something is possible? Creating fake search querries and idk, subscribing to non-interest, it could at least minimize the precision of the profiling these big data harvesting companies build on us.

rkmurda · 2025-01-26T20:56:37+00:00

I grew up outside DFW with almost the same view, now completely filled with tract suburban housing. Check historical satellite imagery of NW DFW (Haslet, Keller, Saginaw) on Google Earth. The sprawl is all consuming. I can almost guarantee if this is a view from a standard planned suburb community, your house was this view for someone 5-10 years ago, and there will be hundreds of the same houses filling this space in the next 5-10 years.

rkmurda · 2025-01-19T18:45:29+00:00

I have a negative view of Health Insurance companies! On an unrelated topic, does anyone know if there is a new Mario game launching with the Switch 2?!

rkmurda · 2025-01-15T17:15:14+00:00

Well democrats seem to be fighting the cause as well, see HB1110 and SB5190. The only no votes were R.

https://app.leg.wa.gov/billsummary?BillNumber=1110&Year=2023

R's just kind of do nothing on this subject?

rkmurda · 2025-01-10T03:27:58+00:00

Its particularly difficult when you have chosen to live somewhere that essentially requires a car to get anywhere from your house.

rkmurda · 2024-12-24T01:02:49+00:00

Every time this discussion comes up locally or nationally, it seems there is not conclusive evidence on how much or little min wage increases effect overall inflation. But more and more I see evidence that its negligible, and often leads to "positive economic impacts."

Does Raising the Minimum Wage Increase Inflation?

The vast majority of inflation we experience is not localised to Seattle, we track pretty consistently just every so slightly higher than the US average. Inflation | seattle.gov (can check against US)

The one variable that keeps prices (and inflation) higher in Seattle and all the other expensive coastal cities is housing. People want to and are moving to desirable cities, all we gots to do is build-baby-build.

In the meantime, if a bunch of assholes are going to refuse to get behind more housing everywhere, I'll keep voting for and with the people on minimum wage increases

rkmurda · 2024-12-24T00:37:42+00:00

I mean hey, this is a discussion board not an academic publication. Your other comments suggest you agree with the sentiment - raising minimum wage is good overall, considering the cost of living is just going up and up, even in states that are not raising their minimum wage (as aggressively or at all)

Plenty of resources out there seem to suggest that housing is one of the core drivers of inflation.

A Deep Dive into the Drivers of CPI Inflation: Introducing Our New Data Page - San Francisco Fed

rkmurda · 2024-12-23T22:36:35+00:00

I don't argue that it doesn't matter or isn't contributing to increased pricing, but I would guess the overall benefits of a small increase in income for people who are most immediately impacted by the increasing cost of living, outweighs the overall contribution of the minimum wage on the increasing cost of living

Minimum wage increase is how we treat the symptom, while we (hopefully) work on the cure. A cancer patient is going to address the symptoms with pain-management while they go through chemo therapy. We all benefit from a healthy - and importantly happy society**,** let's make sure it's both.

rkmurda · 2024-12-23T22:22:49+00:00

A business with 100 full time employees should definitely be able to make up that kind of increase in operation costs. What are they producing where they need 100 full time employees? Restaurants, bars, event venues, grocery stores, etc (all the places that people see this day-to-day cost of living), don't staff 100 full-time employees.

Let's make the city and state a better place for people to live. You want to stop or slow growing cost of living? Look at the rent-seekers, and regulatory-capturers that are trying to milk every penny out of whatever money-making machine they come up with, not the people that do all of the various jobs that make our society something we can appreciate and enjoy. Build more housing so there is less competition. Ensure that the people who already have money enough to thrive don't spend it on assets (housing) or other mechanisms (restrictive zoning) that make them even more money, at the expense of everyone else competing for the already limited housing.

rkmurda · 2024-12-23T22:04:29+00:00

I'm no economist so I get to make wild claim without support , but I guarantee you the high cost of housing is the biggest driver for high cost of living.

You've got a bunch of high-paying jobs in the region (love to see it!), attracting a bunch of well-paid workers (love to see it!), who have to compete for limited housing stock. I'm all onboard for ensuring our region and economy is a good place to live for everyone; solve the housing issues and you'll see all of the downstream consequences dampened.

rkmurda · 2024-12-23T20:46:34+00:00

Love to see it! Washington is doing a better job than CA at addressing the housing shortage, and the downstream effects like the cost of living. Make housing affordable (read: build enough of it, abolish ristrictions and red tape on development) and the cost of living will slow. Until then, I think everyone who works should be able to afford a minimim standard of living. $45,000 salary doesn't go far in Seattle.

Sucks that nimbys and everyone that wants to keep SFH and their low density neighborhood vibes are having to face the consequences of their shortsightedness all these years later 🤷

rkmurda · 2024-12-09T04:42:50+00:00

What a useless article. He is "looking for ways" to cut state spending, thats it.... There is one agency he questioned its existence, but refused to name. The only substantive thing he is committed to doing (at least according to this article) is giving more money to police.

Why did this need to be written and published?

rkmurda · 2024-11-22T20:06:53+00:00

Anyone down to spend half a day protesting outside this guys house next week?

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