the infrastructure bill currently making its way through the Senate will have the largest carbon footprint of any domestic policy initiative since Eisenhower built the interstates…just start with the concrete and asphalt we’ll use for road building & repair..
concrete is made of various combinations of sand, gravel and cement…all the various types of cement have lime (CaO) as their basic material…that lime is produced by heating limestone (CaCO3) in a big kiln (often by burning coal) to produce lime and carbon dioxide (CaCO3 > CaO + CO2); hence, cement production itself emits 0.654 tons of CO2 per ton of cement produced, not including the CO2 emitted in generating the needed 1300 C degree temperatures…
meanwhile, the basic material for making asphalt is bitumen, also known as tar…bitumen is the thick goo that’s left over from oil refining…trouble is, oil from shale is so light (sometimes it’s almost like gasoline) there’s little bitumen left over from refining it, so most bitumen now has to be mined from somewhere…we’ve got a few deposits, like in Utah, Kentucky, & California, but for any quantity we’d have to import it from the tar sands of Canada or Venezuela..
then there’s bridges, which will need steel…like cement production, steel making has CO2 emissions from both the process (using coking coal) and the electricity needed to make it….CO2 emissions from steel manufacturing are almost double the amount of steel produced: 1.85 tons of CO2 emissions per ton of steel.
i could go on, but you get my drift…if i thought there was still hope, this infrastructure bill would be something that would gravely concern me..
We needed the wake up. Easy to ask the Arabs to use their gigantic supply of sand, silicon oxide to make the silicone solar panels for the coulombs to run electric earth-moving equipment that will landscape the roadbed for upgrade roads made of cobblestones. Over the years the cobblestones will wear down to a natural smoothness to allow high speed PHEV vehicles access. Bridges will be unnecessary when we use underground siphons to divert river-water flow. When cement CEO complains, we simply give him a shower with cold beer. Something he will never forget.
Europe’s economy exited a painful double-dip recession in the second quarter, rebounding faster than expected from the ravages of the pandemic as consumers spent pent-up savings and restaurants, factories and other businesses sprang to life after pandemic control restrictions eased.
Gross domestic product, the broadest measure of economic output, grew 2 percent in the second quarter of the year in the eurozone, up nearly 14 percent from a year ago and reversing a 0.3 percent contraction in the first three months of the year, Eurostat, Europe’s statistics agency, reported on Friday.
But the eurozone’s recovery, while striking for its speed, is far from complete: It continues to lag the United States, which reported data Thursday showing it had returned to its prepandemic level of output in the second quarter. Europe is not expected to hit that marker before the end of the year.
The European Union recently increased its forecast for growth this year to 4.8 percent, but the United States economy is expected to grow by 6.9 percent in 2021, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
Nonetheless, Europe’s recovery has gained speed as service and manufacturing sentiment and activity jumped among the 19 nations that share the euro currency, after governments worked to prevent new lockdowns in spring. …
The Senate will vote to continue advancing a $1 trillion infrastructure package in a rare Friday session, as Senate Democrats race to pass both that bipartisan bill and a party-line $3.5 trillion budget blueprint before leaving for the scheduled August recess.
Lawmakers and aides are still finalizing the text for the bipartisan infrastructure agreement after the Senate agreed on Wednesday to take up the legislation, but the Senate was expected to clear another procedural hurdle with the vote on Friday morning. The emerging deal is expected to provide $550 billion in new funding for the nation’s aging roads, bridges and highways, as well as broadband and resiliency projects.
Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, has warned that the chamber could stay in Washington through the weekend to continue work on the measure. After 17 Republicans voted with all 50 members of the Democratic caucus to take up the bill, negotiators are hopeful that even more Republicans will sign on once the text is released.
“Now is the time to go further, and build back even better than before,” Mr. Schumer said on Thursday. “And we Democrats, when we can in a bipartisan way, but on our own when our Republican colleagues are adamantly against us, we will move forward on both tracks.”
Senate Democrats are also readying a $3.5 trillion budget blueprint that is expected to unlock the fast-track reconciliation process and allow them to work on an expansive package to carry the remainder of President Biden’s $4 trillion economic agenda, including health care, paid leave and additional provisions to address the toll of climate change. …
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate advanced a roughly $1 trillion infrastructure plan on Friday with a bipartisan group of senators helping it clear one more hurdle and bracing to see if support can hold during the next few days of debate and efforts to amend it.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said that the chamber should be able to process the legislation quickly given the bipartisan support.
“We may need the weekend, we may vote on several amendments, but with the cooperation of our Republican colleagues I believe we can finish the bipartisan infrastructure bill in a matter of days,” Schumer said. …
The effort got off to a haphazard start on Friday. Shortly after the Senate began the procedural vote, it was stopped. Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., indicated Republicans would need to see the full text of the bill before agreeing to go forward.
Moments later, the vote resumed and the effort to proceed to consideration of the bill passed by a vote of 66-28.
Earlier this week, 17 GOP senators joined all Democrats in voting to start the debate, launching what will be a dayslong process to consider the bill. That support largely held Friday with Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky again voting yes to nudge the process along. …
But Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, predicted, “It’s going to be a grind.” …
… Cornyn said that he expects Schumer to allow all senators to have a chance to shape the bill and allow for amendments from members of both political parties.
“I’ve been disappointed that Senator Schumer has seen to fit to try to force us to vote on a bill that does not exist in its entirety, but I hope we can now pump the brakes a little bit and take the time and care to evaluate the benefits and the cost of this legislation,” Cornyn said.
Schumer planned to introduce the text of the bill later in the day with supporters hoping to complete action before leaving for the August recess. Sens. Rob Portman, R-Ohio and Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., released a statement saying they were close to finalizing the legislative text and hope to make it public later in the day.
“When legislative text is finalized that reflects the product of our group, we will make it public together consistent with the bipartisan way we’ve worked for the last four months,” the senators said. …
WASHINGTON (AP) — After much delay, senators unveiled a nearly $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure package Sunday night, wrapping up days of painstaking work on the inches-thick bill and launching what is certain to be a lengthy debate over President Joe Biden’s big priority.
The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act clocked in at some 2,700 pages, and senators could begin amending it soon. Despite the hurry-up-and-wait during a rare weekend session, the final product was not intended to stray from the broad outline senators had negotiated for weeks with the White House.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said a final vote could be held “in a matter of days.”
A key part of Biden’s agenda, the bipartisan bill is the first phase of the president’s infrastructure plan. It calls for $550 billion in new spending over five years above projected federal levels, what could be one of the more substantial expenditures on the nation’s roads, bridges, waterworks, broadband and the electric grid in years.
Senators and staff labored behind the scenes for days to write the massive bill. It was supposed to be ready Friday, but by Sunday even more glitches were caught and changes made. To prod the work, Schumer kept senators in session over the weekend, encouraging the authors to finish up work. …
Among the major new investments in the bipartisan package are $110 billion for roads and bridges, $39 billion for public transit and $66 billion for rail. There’s also $55 billion for water and wastewater infrastructure as well as billions for airports, ports, broadband internet and electric vehicle charging stations.
The spending is broadly popular among lawmakers, bringing long-delayed capital for big-ticket items that cites and states can rarely afford on their own.
Paying for the package has been a challenge after senators rejected ideas to raise revenue from a new gas tax or other streams. Instead, it is being financed from funding sources that might not pass muster with deficit hawks, including repurposing some $205 billion in untapped COVID-19 relief aid, as well as unemployment assistance that was turned back by some states and relying on projected future economic growth.
Bipartisan support from Republican and Democratic senators pushed the process along, and Schumer wanted the voting to be wrapped up before senators left for the August recess. …
A bipartisan group of senators released full legislative text for their roughly $1 trillion “hard” infrastructure bill late Sunday night, setting it up for debate on the floor this week. …
Solar farms, he announced on the House floor yesterday, make deer meat inedible. “I’ve been told if deer eat vegetation around these things the meat might not be fit for human consumption,” [Rep. Larry] Pittman (R-Cabarrus) said on the House floor yesterday, in opposition to House Bill 951.”
Coffee read this morning. High crop prices, like much what is going on in the greater economy might be transitory. The author keeps up the tone that high prices in the silage department usually only last a few months. We are seeing this with lumber. We should see this in corn as well. I would venture to even go out on a limb and posit that climate change might actually drive up prices infinitely. As drought sets in the great plains and Midwest, farmers are scrambling to find the next big solution of further drought tolerance. More here:
WASHINGTON — Congress is running a serious trust deficit.
While a bipartisan group of centrist senators was able to strike a rare accord on infrastructure, the continuing struggle to hash out and advance the legislation exposed a broader problem that has hindered lawmakers in recent years: a nagging suspicion that their colleagues were not acting in good faith.
Each side harbors deep doubts about the true motives of the other, making it increasingly difficult for lawmakers to take the leap and get behind big bills as they warily eye one another across the aisle.
On Friday, the infrastructure measure was briefly hung up again as Republicans suspected that Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, was trying to trick them into accepting a Democratic measure instead of the bipartisan deal. Mr. Schumer’s office said that he was making no such move, and that it would make no sense for him to backtrack on his promise to bring the compromise bill to the floor. The misunderstanding passed, but it was another indicator of the degree of mistrust on Capitol Hill.
Democrats are leery of Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader who has bedeviled and thwarted them for years. Progressive Democrats are suspicious that their more moderate colleagues will give too much ground in their zeal to notch a bipartisan achievement. And conservative Republicans worry that their own centrists will do the same, a concern stoked by Donald J. Trump’s attacks on the infrastructure bill as a Democratic Trojan horse devised to dupe the G.O.P. into a politically fatal move. …
What? The politicians are thinking that other politicians might be playing politics? The idea! The very idea is shocking.
For my part, I have long passed the point where even my self-skepticism can believe there is a scintilla of honesty in anything the R’s say. As for the D’s, they seem to have found a way to compromise to get some R support by turning the greenish infrastructure bill into a boondoggle for the ususal special interests..that is the special interests who pay for the elections of Rs as well as Ds.
What we really need to fight global warming is more highways and faster electric vehicles. Wouldn’t do to reduce “consumption.” We need more jobs with longer hours and cheaper plastic toys to distract ourselves from our empty lives.
According to the ILO, “Americans work 137 more hours per year than Japanese workers, 260 more hours per year than British workers, and 499 more hours per year than French workers.”
Using data by the U.S. BLS, the average productivity per American worker has increased 400% since 1950. One way to look at that is that it should only take one-quarter the work hours, or 11 hours per week, to afford the same standard of living as a worker in 1950 (or our standard of living should be 4 times higher). Is that the case? Obviously not. Someone is profiting, it’s just not the average American worker.
American Paid Vacation Time & Sick Time:
There is not a federal law requiring paid sick days in the United States.
In every country included except Canada and Japan (and the U.S., which averages 13 days/per year), workers get at least 20 paid vacation days. In France and Finland, they get 30 – an entire month off, paid, every year.
just to be clear, i meant that more jobs with longer hours is exactly the opposite of what we need. but to get there we need to get over our addiction to cheap plastic toys and big powerful cars.
How we can protect the planet in court
Amanpour
https://www.cnn.com/videos/world/2021/07/28/amanpour-james-thornton-climate-change.cnn
Meanwhile, we have a Supreme Court hellbent on taking the nation backward.
the infrastructure bill currently making its way through the Senate will have the largest carbon footprint of any domestic policy initiative since Eisenhower built the interstates…just start with the concrete and asphalt we’ll use for road building & repair..
concrete is made of various combinations of sand, gravel and cement…all the various types of cement have lime (CaO) as their basic material…that lime is produced by heating limestone (CaCO3) in a big kiln (often by burning coal) to produce lime and carbon dioxide (CaCO3 > CaO + CO2); hence, cement production itself emits 0.654 tons of CO2 per ton of cement produced, not including the CO2 emitted in generating the needed 1300 C degree temperatures…
meanwhile, the basic material for making asphalt is bitumen, also known as tar…bitumen is the thick goo that’s left over from oil refining…trouble is, oil from shale is so light (sometimes it’s almost like gasoline) there’s little bitumen left over from refining it, so most bitumen now has to be mined from somewhere…we’ve got a few deposits, like in Utah, Kentucky, & California, but for any quantity we’d have to import it from the tar sands of Canada or Venezuela..
then there’s bridges, which will need steel…like cement production, steel making has CO2 emissions from both the process (using coking coal) and the electricity needed to make it….CO2 emissions from steel manufacturing are almost double the amount of steel produced: 1.85 tons of CO2 emissions per ton of steel.
i could go on, but you get my drift…if i thought there was still hope, this infrastructure bill would be something that would gravely concern me..
All the wrong things. Amazing!
Thanks, rjs
We needed the wake up. Easy to ask the Arabs to use their gigantic supply of sand, silicon oxide to make the silicone solar panels for the coulombs to run electric earth-moving equipment that will landscape the roadbed for upgrade roads made of cobblestones. Over the years the cobblestones will wear down to a natural smoothness to allow high speed PHEV vehicles access. Bridges will be unnecessary when we use underground siphons to divert river-water flow. When cement CEO complains, we simply give him a shower with cold beer. Something he will never forget.
Europe recovers from double-dip recession but lags the United States
The Senate is expected to advance a $1 trillion infrastructure package in a rare Friday session
The Senate will vote to continue advancing a $1 trillion infrastructure package in a rare Friday session, as Senate Democrats race to pass both that bipartisan bill and a party-line $3.5 trillion budget blueprint before leaving for the scheduled August recess.
Lawmakers and aides are still finalizing the text for the bipartisan infrastructure agreement after the Senate agreed on Wednesday to take up the legislation, but the Senate was expected to clear another procedural hurdle with the vote on Friday morning. The emerging deal is expected to provide $550 billion in new funding for the nation’s aging roads, bridges and highways, as well as broadband and resiliency projects.
Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, has warned that the chamber could stay in Washington through the weekend to continue work on the measure. After 17 Republicans voted with all 50 members of the Democratic caucus to take up the bill, negotiators are hopeful that even more Republicans will sign on once the text is released.
“Now is the time to go further, and build back even better than before,” Mr. Schumer said on Thursday. “And we Democrats, when we can in a bipartisan way, but on our own when our Republican colleagues are adamantly against us, we will move forward on both tracks.”
Senate Democrats are also readying a $3.5 trillion budget blueprint that is expected to unlock the fast-track reconciliation process and allow them to work on an expansive package to carry the remainder of President Biden’s $4 trillion economic agenda, including health care, paid leave and additional provisions to address the toll of climate change. …
Senate advances nearly $1 trillion infrastructure plan
Senators produce $1 trillion infrastructure bill
Bipartisan Senate group releases $1 trillion infrastructure bill
“Stupid is as stupid does.”
“From the Progressive Pulse:
Solar farms, he announced on the House floor yesterday, make deer meat
inedible. “I’ve been told if deer eat vegetation around these things the meat might not be fit for human consumption,” [Rep. Larry] Pittman (R-Cabarrus) said on the House floor yesterday, in opposition to House Bill 951.”
https://www.esquire.com/new…
that rumor was prolly started by deer :<)
100%
Coffee read this morning. High crop prices, like much what is going on in the greater economy might be transitory. The author keeps up the tone that high prices in the silage department usually only last a few months. We are seeing this with lumber. We should see this in corn as well. I would venture to even go out on a limb and posit that climate change might actually drive up prices infinitely. As drought sets in the great plains and Midwest, farmers are scrambling to find the next big solution of further drought tolerance. More here:
https://www.agweb.com/markets/market-analysis/jerry-gulke-will-history-repeat-itself
Why Trust Is in Short Supply on Capitol Hill
What? The politicians are thinking that other politicians might be playing politics? The idea! The very idea is shocking.
For my part, I have long passed the point where even my self-skepticism can believe there is a scintilla of honesty in anything the R’s say. As for the D’s, they seem to have found a way to compromise to get some R support by turning the greenish infrastructure bill into a boondoggle for the ususal special interests..that is the special interests who pay for the elections of Rs as well as Ds.
What we really need to fight global warming is more highways and faster electric vehicles. Wouldn’t do to reduce “consumption.” We need more jobs with longer hours and cheaper plastic toys to distract ourselves from our empty lives.
“We need more jobs with longer hours.”
Holy shit.
“
American Average Work Hours:
American Paid Vacation Time & Sick Time:
EMichael
i was trying to be ironic.
just to be clear, i meant that more jobs with longer hours is exactly the opposite of what we need. but to get there we need to get over our addiction to cheap plastic toys and big powerful cars.