It’s the tenth anniversary next week of the 2009 Climategate email dump that exposed top climate scientists’ chicanery and subversion of science – and did so in their own words and out of their own mouths, or keyboards. I’ll list a few emails-of-infamy shortly, but first some background.

For the three years before Climategate, the climate crowd was ascendant with its pseudo-narrative of “settled science”. Al Gore’s error-riddled propaganda movie Inconvenient Truth of 2006 had swept the Western world and its readily-traduced schoolkids. In 2007 Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change shared the Nobel Peace Prize. In late 2008 Barack Obama won the White House, proclaiming in his modest way, “This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.”

The Climategate emails hit the blogosphere just a month before the Copenhagen summit was scheduled to lock Western countries into Kyoto Mark 2, a legally-binding commitment to renewables from 2012. Climategate destroyed warmists’ moral high ground and reinforced the natural reluctance of most governments to up-end their economies with emission controls. The Copenhagen circus fell apart, resolving merely to “take note” of the exhortations to action by Obama and like-minded leaders.

The mainstream media strove to ignore and bury the Climategate revelations. The climate establishment ran half a dozen inquiries with limited briefs and ludicrous lack of rigour, all of which purported to clear the climate scientists of wrong-doing.[1] But even today, ten years after, scientists faithful to their calling and disciplines can only shudder at what Climategate revealed. Those who subverted the scientific method were not fringe players but at the pinnacle. They were doing the archetypal studies “proving” catastrophic human-caused catastrophic warming (CAGW) and shaping the content and messaging in the six-yearly reports of the IPCC.

The hacked (or otherwise revealed) email archive spanning the prior decade was stored by the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit[2]. The CRU co-compiled the HadCRUT global temperature series, along with the UK Met Office’s Hadley Centre. This data set charting alleged global warming in fractions of a degree was a key input to the climate computer models forecasting doomladen heat for this century. (The model forecasts continue to exceed actual measured warming). Based on these dud modelled forecasts, the West is now spending $US1.5 trillion a year in quest of zero CO2 emissions.

Today, anyone questioning this colossal enterprise is told to “respect the science”. Based on the Climategate emails released in 2009, 2011 and 2013, I’d rather respect the Mafia, who at least don’t claim to be saving the planet. For example, today we’re told that warming of 2degC above pre-industrial level is some sort of a tipping point of doom. Phil Jones, Director of the Climatic Research Unit, emailed on September 6, 2007, that the supposed 2-degree limit was “plucked out of thin air”, a throwaway line in an early 1990s paper from the catastrophists at the Potsdam Climate Impacts Institute.

Now for the emails. We journos love a local angle, and here’s one – the CRU’s Ian “Harry” Harris worked for four years to de-bug and properly document a CRU data base “TS 2.1” of global stations recording monthly temperatures.

One input was from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, with its frequent adjustments that result in a greater warming trend (think Rutherglen and Darwin). Harry’s comments in a 200-page logging of notes:

What a bloody mess. Now looking at the dates… something bad has happened, hasn’t it. COBAR AIRPORT AWS [data from an Australian weather station] cannot start in 1962, it didn’t open until 1993! … getting seriously fed up with the state of the Australian data. So many new stations have been introduced, so many false references … so many changes that aren’t documented … I am very sorry to report that the rest of the databases seem to be in nearly as poor a state as Australia was…Aarrggghhh! There truly is no end in sight…!

What else did Harry Harris mention? Perhaps science-respecting Dr Ross Garnaut (Q&A on November 11) could get his head around this lot (emphasis added):

OH F**K THIS. It’s Sunday evening, I’ve worked all weekend, and just when I thought it was done I’m hitting yet another problem that’s based on the hopeless state of our databases … Bear in mind that there is no working synthetic method for cloud, because Mark New lost the coefficients file and never found it again (despite searching on tape archives at UEA) and never recreated it … This whole project is SUCH A MESS. No wonder I needed therapy!! … So, uhhhh what in tarnation is going on? Just how off-beam are these datasets?!! … Unbelievable — even here the conventions have not been followed. It’s botch after botch after botch …Where is the documentation to explain all this?! … It’s halfway through April and I’m still working on it. This surely is the worst project I’ve ever attempted. Eeeek … Oh bugger. What the HELL is going on?!.. Oh GOD if I could start this project again and actually argue the case for junking the inherited program suite!! .,. Am I the first person to attempt to get the CRU databases in working order?!! … So, we can have a proper result, but only by including a load of garbage…

Who added those two series together? When? Why? Untraceable, except anecdotally. It’s the same story for many other Russian stations, unfortunately — meaning that (probably) there was a full Russian update that did no data integrity checking at all. I just hope it’s restricted to Russia!! … What the hell is supposed to happen here? Oh yeah – there is no ‘supposed’, I can make it up. So I have ?? … [My attempted corrections] will allow bad databases to pass unnoticed, and good databases to become bad, but I really don’t think people care enough to fix ’em, and it’s the main reason the project is nearly a year late.”

That was then. How’s things today?

In 2015 Prime Minister Tony Abbott set in train an audit of Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology’s temperature adjustments that increased Australia’s apparent warming, but one of the first moves of his successor, Malcolm Turnbull, was to scuttle that audit. Of equal significance is that late last year, Melbourne scientist Dr John McLean published the first-ever audit of Britain’s HADCRUT4 temperature data set and commented,

It’s very careless and amateur. About the standard of a first-year university student … Governments have had 25 years to check the data on which they’ve been spending billions of dollars. And they haven’t done so once.

For example, he found that for two years the temperatures over land in the Southern Hemisphere were derived from just one site in Indonesia, and on two occasions the average December temperature at an airport on tropical St Kitts in the Caribbean was reported at zero degrees. The inaccuracies in the data record are so bad, McLean believes, that it is impossible to know how much global temperatures have really risen – probably about 0.4degC in 70 years, not the 0.6degC claimed.

Subverting peer review

Climategate showed how warmist scientists gamed the peer review process to ensure a monopoly for their views. When two papers contrary to their ‘consensus’ were published, CRU director Phil Jones and his circle pulled out all stops to get the editor sacked and prevent such papers being considered by the IPCC. Jones, 8 July 2004:

…I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin [Trenberth, leading climate scientist] and I will keep them out somehow, even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!

US colleague Dr Michael Mann (author of the influential-but-wrong Hockey Stick graph of the past 1000 years’ temperature), July 3, 2003:

It seems clear we have to go above [the sceptic author Chris de Freitas] … I think that the community should, as Mike H [warmist scientist] has previously suggested in this eventuality, terminate its involvement with this journal at all levels –reviewing, editing, and submitting, and leave it to wither way into oblivion and disrepute.
(De Freitas at the University of Auckland served as deputy dean of science, head of science and technology, and for four years as pro vice-chancellor. He also served as vice-president of the Meteorological Society of New Zealand)


Concerning another sceptic scientist, Steve McIntyre (who used his superior statistical skills to refute Mann’s work), Mann wrote, in August 2007,

I have been talking [with] folks in the States about finding an investigative journalist to investigate and expose [him].

Restricting and adjusting data

CRU director Jones destroyed emails subject to Freedom of Information requests and urged colleagues to do the same. Some of the emails could have exposed improper manipulation of IPCC processes. In 2004 Jones refused a sceptic’s request for his source data:

…We have 25 or so years invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try to find something wrong with it?

He had good reason to conceal his data. Perhaps here’s why:

# Jones, April 15, 2009: For much of the SH [Southern Hemisphere] between 40 and 60 [degrees] S[outh] the normals are mostly made up as there is very little ship data there.

# Jones, November 10, 2009: For the 1940-1960 period if the SSTs [sea surface temperatures] were adjusted they would look much better

# Scientist Dr Tom Wigley, then with the US Government, to Jones September 28, 2008, urging more adjusting: …If you look at the attached plot you will see that the land also shows the 1940s warming blip. So, if we could reduce the ocean blip by, say 0.15 deg C, then this would be significant for the global mean—but we’d still have to explain the land blip… It would be good to remove at least part of the 1940s blip, but we are still left with ‘why the blip’.

# From Jones’ CRU colleague Dr Tim Osborn, December 20, 2006: Also we have applied a completely artificial adjustment to the data after 1960, so they look closer to observed temperatures than the tree-ring data actually were…

# Jones in November 2007 mentioned research malpractice allegations against some climate people in the US and Europe…I reckon only a few in the climate field know the full extent of what is going on behind the scenes in climate science. The Nobel Peace prize will certainly help, but some skeptics are redoubling their efforts.

# Jones’s University of East Anglia colleague Anthony Footitt, June 25, 2009: I do hope all these emails are just staying within UEA because it really makes us – UEA as a whole – look like a bunch of amateurs



Hiding the decline

On November 16, 1999, Jones welcomed and had re-used professionally a “trick” in a Nature article involving secret switching from tree-ring proxy temperature data to actual data. This covered up that tree-rings ceased to suggest rising temperature after 1960. That would have invalidated Mann’s tree-ring-based temperature chronologies for earlier centuries.

Jones: I’ve just completed Mike’s [Mann] Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (i.e. from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s [Briffa] to hide the decline.

Scientist Tom Wigley points out flaws in Mann’s own research:

Mike, The Figure you sent is very deceptive … there have been a number of dishonest presentations of model results by individual authors and by IPCC.

UK climate researcher Douglas Maraun:

How should we deal with flaws inside the climate community? I think that ‘our’ reaction on the errors found in Mike Mann’s work were not especially honest.



The IPCC exposed

UK Met Office’s Peter Thorne, concerning work on the IPCC’s 2007 fourth report:

I also think the science is being manipulated to put a political spin on it which for all our sakes might not be too clever in the long run.

Jones admits the political bias in the IPCC’s all-important Summary for Policy Makers (SPM):

He says he’ll read the IPCC Chapters! He hadn’t as he said he thought they were politically biased. I assured him they were not. The SPM [Summary for Policy Makers] may be, but not the chapters.

IPCC coordinating lead author Jonathan Overpeck:

The trick may be to decide on the main message and use that to guide what’s included and what is left out [of IPCC reports].

Need it be said that leaving out inconvenient stuff is anathema to real, genuine, principled science?

Warmist Mike Hulme agrees that the debate around climate change is fundamentally about power and politics rather than the environment … There are not that many ‘facts’ about (the meaning of) climate change which science can unequivocally reveal.

From climate scientist Giorgi Filippo, who contributed to all five IPCC Assessment Reports:

I feel rather uncomfortable about using not only unpublished but also un- reviewed material as the backbone of our conclusions (or any conclusions)…I feel that at this point there are very little rules and almost anything goes

Email 5286 from scientist Hans von Storch:

“We should explain why we don’t think the information robust yet. Climate research has become a postnormal science, with the intrusion of political demands and significant influence by activists driven by ideological (well meant) concerns.”

Also from von Storch:

The concealment of dissent and uncertainty in favor of a politically good cause takes its toll on credibility, for the public is more intelligent than is usually assumed.

Scientist Richard Somerville, 2004:

We don’t understand cloud feedbacks. We don’t understand air-sea interactions. We don’t understand aerosol indirect effects. The list is long.

Warmist Kevin Trenberth:

We are nowhere close to knowing where energy is going or whether clouds are changing to make the planet brighter.

Michael Mann, 2006:

We certainly don’t know the GLOBAL mean temperature anomaly very well, and nobody has ever claimed we do.

Jones’ CRU was meant to provide part of the gold-standard science in the IPCC reports. Sadly, it lost or destroyed massive raw data from global temperature stations, admitting on its website in 2011, “We, therefore, do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added (i.e. quality controlled and homogenized) data.” [I’ve now been alerted that Jones only had and lost copies of the raw data; the originals remain at their sources].

Warmist Keith Briffa:

It seems we got the balance between realism and hype about right

In light of all the above admissions of lost data, mangled data, twisted data and the stated intentions of the Climategate correspondents to produce work that confirmed warmist preconceptions, there is a delicious irony to the lament of Phil Jones in 2008

Why can’t people just accept that the IPCC is right!!

Miscellaneous mayhem

# University of East Anglia’s Mike Hulme: I am increasingly unconvinced by the majority of climate impact studies – including some of those I am involved in.

# Michael Mann: It would be nice to try to ‘contain’ the putative ‘Medieval Warming Period’. His Hockey Stick did just that. The medieval warming remains an embarrassment to climate scientists, since it is natural rather than CO2-related.

# Milind Kandlikar, 2004: Tuning [of models] may be a way to fudge the physics.

In November 2007: UN secretary-general Ban Ki Moon, perhaps actually believing what he was saying on the strength of the guff being fed to him, suggested CO2 might cause sea levels to rise six meters in 10 years — that is, by 2017!

Needless to say, universities have showered climate guys with honors. IPCC author Ben Santer agreed with honors for Jones and Wigley: “Phil Jones is one of the true gentlemen of our field” and the pair “deserve medals as big as soup plates”, he wrote, October 8, 2009.

After Climategate

Climategate’s influence on the public debate was fleeting. But now groups like Tim Flannery’s Climate Council persuade many citizens that any weather drama or fire is proof of global warming.[3] A steady stream of younger scientists, fueled by propaganda from their earliest years in high school and locked onto their career rewards at “woke” universities for adhering to the warmist party line, is continuing the tradition of shoddy climate scholarship. Meanwhile, non-conformers like reef expert Peter Ridd get sacked.

Call me an optimist, but I see warming extremists alienating voters with a panoply of far-left “social justice” issues attached to their climate narrative — causes that make Greenpeace seem traditionalist.

The debate about the many interpretations of the science has become esoteric compared with close-to-home arguments about fossil-fuel power versus renewables. While Climategate exposed dud science, ten years later the hot topic is the exposure of unfeasible electricity makeovers.

Tony Thomas’s hilarious history, The West: An insider’s tale – A romping reporter in Perth’s innocent ’60s is available from Boffins Books, Perth, the Royal WA Historical Society (Nedlands) and online here



[1] “The inquiries were largely unable to deal with the issue of the issue of blocking publication of papers, or intimidating journals. But academics reading the emails could see quite clearly the tribalism at work, and in comparison to other fields, climatology comes off looking juvenile, corrupt and in the grip of a handful of self-appointed gatekeepers and bullies.”

[2] The still-unidentified Climategate “hacker” said his motive was to help divert useless trillions for renewables towards doing genuine good for the world’s poor.

[3] Warmist scientist Steve Schneider perceptively said: “A mega heat wave this summer is worth 3 orders of magnitude more in the PR wars – too bad we have to wait for random events since evidence doesn’t seem to cut it anymore with the MSM [mainstream media].”




By Tony Thomas, Quadrant Online
www.quadrant.org
www.Climatedepot.com

Two motorists recently won Fourth Amendment decisions. Both cases will likely be appealed, and will have major privacy rights implications for how and where we drive our vehicles. ALPRs in Florida Raul Mas Canosa was mad and decided he wasn’t going to take it anymore. The city where he lives, Coral Gables, Florida, tracked his car all over town because of its penchant for surveilling the movements of its citizens with automated license plate readers or ALPRs. He had not been arrested nor even suspected of a crime. “If I’ve done nothing wrong and have no criminal record, why is my city monitoring me?” Coral Gables, the self-appointed leader in Florida in the use of ALPRs, started its program in 2015 and now has 30 recorders around town including surveillance of an adjacent section of Interstate 95. In 2018, the electronic devices captured the data of 30 million individual license plates. Working with the New Civil Liberties Alliance (a public interest, pro bono law firm that specializes in cases curbing administrative control), Mas Canosa sued the city for violating his Fourth Amendment rights against search and seizure without probable cause. Coral Gable’s attorneys sought a dismissal but Mas Canosa won the first round! Miami-Dade County Circuit Court Judge Abby Cynamon agreed with Mas Canosa’s argument that Coral Gable’s use of ALPRs might indeed violate state privacy laws. The judge rejected the city’s attempt to have the anti-camera lawsuit thrown out on the grounds that motorists have no expectation of privacy and that Mas Canosa, in particular, was not harmed because he was not the subject of an investigation. Judge Cynamon wrote: “This court finds that there is a bona fide, actual, present and practical need for a declaration as to whether the collection of such information violates the plaintiff’s privacy rights.” She added, “There is nothing abstract, conjectural or ephemeral about the claim since the city has and continues to collect such information about the plaintiff’s vehicle.” Mas Canosa can now move forward with suing the city. He ultimately wants the data collected to be immediately discarded if there’s no probable cause. The city currently keeps the gathered license plate data for three years as prescribed under Florida law. ________ As highlighted in the NMA’s Driving Freedoms Fall 2019 Cover Story Are You Protected from the Little Black Box?, the Georgia Supreme Court ruled in mid-October 2019 that a driver’s black box (electronic data recorder, or EDR) stored information is worthy of privacy protection. The Justices ruled that police must first obtain a search warrant before downloading data from a vehicle’s EDR. The case involved Victor Lamont Mobley, who was involved in a traffic accident that killed two others in December 2014. Mobley hit a car as it pulled out of a private driveway in front of him. Even though there was no indication of a violation speeding, Henry County police downloaded his car’s EDR contents without Mobley’s permission. The data suggested that Mobley had been traveling 97 mph in his Dodge Charger at the time of the accident. Because of the warrantless download of the black box, he was charged with vehicular homicide and sentenced to seven years in prison. The Justices agreed with Mobley’s argument that the warrantless search of his EDR data violated his Fourth Amendment rights. Justice Keith Blackwell wrote in the ruling: “A personal motor vehicle is plainly among the ‘effects’ with which the Fourth Amendment—as it historically was understood—is concerned.” He added, “The retrieval of the data without a warrant at the scene of the collision was a search and seizure that implicates the Fourth Amendment, regardless of any reasonable expectations of privacy.” Judge Blackwell also said that since the black box permanently stores speed data whenever the airbags deploy, the early warrantless peek at the results was not necessary in determining the cause of the accident. The car was totaled and not at risk of being driven away. The day after the accident, an officer involved in the case actually obtained a warrant to download the data. The Justices affirmed that obtaining a warrant has to be done before a search. This ruling overturns a lower court decision on the case. It also affects a common practice by Henry County officers of downloading EDRs without getting a court order. The American Civil Liberties Union and its state chapter were involved in the case, arguing for Fourth Amendment protections for car owners whose vehicles are increasingly capturing information about their driving habits. NMA Member Thomas Kowalick, who has been championing the protection of black box data for over 20 years, also submitted evidence in the case. Because of the long-term implications to the privacy rights of motorists, the NMA will follow and continue reporting on both of these cases. If you have a link to an article about a motorists’ rights court case or anything motoring issue, please send the link to the National Office by email nma@motorists.org to be possibly featured in the Motorists.org website’s Driving News Feed and the email Driving News Daily.  Please subscribe to DND, if you have not already, to read the headlines of all the news and views of the day for the Active Driver.

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Meet the ‘Motor Maids’

Motor Maids of America worked to convey a different image and create a community of women riders.

Motor Maids Inc., was founded in 1941 by Linda Dugeau and Dot Robinson. It was the first all-women motorcycle club in North America. As described in a 1986 Los Angeles Times article, this club was founded to show that “women who ride motorcycles can be above reproach.”

Today, the Motor Maids count more than 1,300 members across the United States and Canada, as reported by their website.

READ THIS FEATURE ARTICLE IN THE CANTINA – CLICK HERE

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MADISON, Wis. (AP) – The state Assembly has signed off on a bill that would define autocycles in state law and establish registration fees for the vehicles.

Autocycles are three-wheeled vehicles that can seat one or two people.

The Republican-authored bill would define an autocycle as a vehicle with three wheels in contact with the ground, seating that doesn’t require straddling and a steering wheel. The bill would establish a $45 annual registration fee and allow anyone with a regular driver’s license to operate one.

The Assembly approved the bill unanimously Tuesday. The Senate passed the measure in October. The measure goes next to Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, who can sign it into law or veto it.

The governor’s spokeswoman, Melissa Baldauff, didn’t immediately respond to an email asking if Evers supports the bill.

by Sasha Lekach from https://mashable.com

The San Francisco chapter of the Iron Order Motorcycle Club doesn’t usually concern itself much with self-driving cars, but autonomous vehicle company Aurora recently spent the day driving around with the club’s bikers.

Aurora, the company co-founded by former Tesla Autopilot head Sterling Anderson, is developing an autonomous driving system it calls Aurora Driver. That system, like all self-driving programs, needs practice on the road, whether that’s in autonomous mode logging real-world miles on public roads, in a computer simulation, or being manually driven. Its perception system is taking in everything around it: pedestrians, bicycles, other cars, trucks, delivery vans, e-scooters, errant shopping carts, construction crews, and, yes, motorcycles. That data is used to predict and react to future scenarios on the road.

Motorcycle sightings aren’t rare, but to make sure the machines were more familiar and comfortable around this specific vehicle Aurora needed to devote a machine-learning day to this one vehicle type.

So the perception team gathered a group of six motorcyclists to simply drive around the Aurora vehicles. (Aurora isn’t developing the actual cars, but the tech that will work in a car to make it drive autonomously). The cars were in manual mode for the motorcycle testing since it just needed to collect the data. The motorcycle cycle club brought some volunteers and even some Aurora employees and one employee’s dad came out to ride the motorcycles.

Being a tech company, Motorcycle Learning Day (that’s what I’ve dubbed the special motorcycle event) wasn’t a free-for-all with revving and vrooming around. The data team wanted to collect specific information from a variety of scenarios that autonomous cars are likely to encounter in the real world.

First up was testing different “positions,” meaning motorcycles in the same lane as the car, in front of, behind, or next to the car. Then it was “approaches:” Oncoming motorcycles are different than motorcycles passing from behind. Motorcycles also ride in front of cars.

Motorcycles are quick and nimble, so the autonomous vehicle experienced different scenarios where the motorcycle approached in different ways (from behind, oncoming, in front) at different speeds. The cars also practiced stopping with a motorcycle in front, since that’s a different experience than with a sedan or other cars.

For the motorcycle aficionados with strong allegiances to certain brands, the best part was testing out on different types of motorcycles: an Indian Motorcycle, four Harley-Davidsons, a KTM sports dirt bike, and a Yamaha cruiser bike all rode around the autonomous cars. The best autonomous vehicles will know their Harleys from their Yamahas.

Motorcycle Learning Day wasn’t a one-and-done deal — the self-driving cars are never done learning, but this was like a mega-study session. Now the system has a robust data set about motorcycles and anything that looks and acts like a motorcycle on the road.

Good Day, lovely people!

I am excited to announce that we have launched our new music video “Let it Go” in partnership with Ingrooves Music Group. The video premiered through Pure Grain Audio for 24 hours and we had a great response! But now, it belongs to us entirely and we wanted to share it with you!

This video was filmed in Largo, Florida with Thomas Crane of Kill Devil Films. I came across his videos while watching another video from a band that we share a lot of stages with and decided he was the best man for the job. He did not disappoint. Several friends came together to find us a location (for free!) and things to smash (from Goodwill for under $20) and we built this masterpiece.

Let it Go is written about a grudge being held until it destroys you from the inside, but you just can’t seem to drop it. Writers were Caleb Sherman and Monique Staffile from the band HER and Kevin Bebout and myself. We recorded at Sound Emporium with Mills Logan.

We want to hear from you! Did you love it? Hate it? Wanna show us some love? Please make sure and comment on the YouTube video. That’s how we get bumped to the trending videos. Thank you so much for all you do for us. We love you all! Now, go watch this video!

Upcoming Shows

Saturday, November 16
Rockland Entertainment • Springfield, OH • 8:00pm

Wednesday, November 20
Bert’s Barracuda Harley Davidson • Clearwater, FL • 8:00pm

Friday, November 22
Hidden Treasure Raw Bar and Grill • Flagler Beach, FL • 8:00pm

 

A group of women dubbed the ‘Motor Maids of America’ sit astride their motorcycles. Photo by Douglas Grundy/Three Lions/Getty Images

Because of media portrayals in movies like The Wild One (1953) or TV shows like Sons of Anarchy, motorcycle clubs are tarred in the public psyche with a bad reputation. But the Motor Maids of America worked to convey a different image and create a community of women riders.

The club, now Motor Maids Inc., was founded in 1941 by Linda Dugeau and Dot Robinson. It was the first all-women motorcycle club in North America. As described in a 1986 Los Angeles Times article, this club was founded to show that “women who ride motorcycles can be above reproach.”

In the 1930s, Dugeau, who was then an enthusiastic rider in the Boston area, began a letter-campaign with other women riders mentioned in motorcycle magazines. She corresponded with Carol DuPont, who told her about Amelia Earhart’s Ninety-Nines club, an organization of female flyers. Inspired by the iconic pilot, Dugeau decided to mount an all-woman motorcycle club.

A group of women dubbed the ‘Motor Maids of America’ sit astride their motorcycles outside the shop they use as their headquarters. Photo by Douglas Grundy/Three Lions/Getty Images
A group of women dubbed the ‘Motor Maids of America’ sit astride their motorcycles outside the shop they use as their headquarters. Photo by Douglas Grundy/Three Lions/Getty Images

During the same period, Dot Robinson had become a successful racer. The Motorcycle Museum website states she became the first woman to win an American Motorcycle Association (AMA) competition with her victory in the Jack Pine race in 1940, which at that time was the motorcycle equivalent of the Daytona.

Dugeau met with Robinson in 1940 at the Laconia Motorcycle Week Rally in New Hampshire. The two embarked on a long cruise across the United states to gather the 51 female motorcycle riders whom Dugeau had previously corresponded with: they were the original Motor Maids. The Motor Maids decided to embrace their feminine identity and follow the example of Earhart’s Ninety-Nines pilots, to fight for equal perception of men and women motorcycle riders. Take a quick look at the iconic figure of Amelia Earhart below:

When the club started, Dugeau and Robinson had two rules for the Motor Maids: members must possess their own motorcycles, and conduct themselves like ladies at all times.

In the 1950s, Robinson started to wear pink outfits instead of the more traditional black leather outfits, coupled to the Motor Maids’ already famous white gloves. She felt films of the time like The Wild One negatively portrayed riders as wearing black leather and causing trouble, and made this pink and white outfit the club’s official uniform, according to the AMA website. Their distinctive outfit became a symbol of their identity.

Dot Robinson made sure to maintain her image at all times. “Hap”, a Honda dealer from Sarasota, Florida, said that he competed against her in a two-day race, as reported by the Motor Maids website. After Robinson won the race, all the men in the race went straight to the bar, while Robinson went to her room to get cleaned up.

“I’ll never forget the picture: Dot walking into the bar in a black sheath dress and a pillbox hat,” Hap said. Today, the Motor Maids’ uniform consists “of royal blue mock turtleneck shirt (tucked in)” and a “white cotton vest,” following a change in 2006. Aside from their classy distinctive uniforms, the Motor Maids have also been active citizens, with many of them having served in the American armed forces during the second world war as convoy escorts, motorcycle couriers, or dispatch riders.

Despite their efforts to convey a positive image, their first members sometimes faced outrage from their parents and friends. People were not ready to accept an all-female motorcycle club, Timeline explains.

In 1986, the LA Times wrote that the club faced a potential decline, with most of its 500 members having joined the club in the 40s and 50s. But as Timeline reported, the original fears and concerns of the members justified the role and the existence of the club. In other instances, the Motor Maids were in fact supported by their friends and relatives.

The LA Times told the story of Don Behnke, who showed support for his wife Donna, recording her rides on camera and wearing Motor Maids apparel. “I think this is one of the best clubs around,” Behnke said. “A bunch of clean-cut people.”

Today, the Motor Maids count more than 1,300 members across the United States and Canada, as reported by their website. They are attached to maintaining the same image that Linda Dugeau and Dot Robinson had in mind when they started the club.

Peter J. Ferrara, Detroit News

Oil workers are not the only people who will lose their jobs if we try to replace fossil fuels with so-called “green energy.” Coal miners, pipe layers, natural gas workers and people in related industries will also suffer. But it will go much deeper than that.

American blue-collar workers in manufacturing jobs, who have been enjoying a historic boom under President Trump, will likely lose their jobs due to higher energy prices and manufacturing costs. Manufacturing is energy intensive. That means low-cost, reliable energy is essential to manufacturing and blue-collar jobs.

Germany tried to replace fossil fuels with green energy primarily involving wind and solar power. As a result, electricity costs soared in Germany, for businesses and consumers. German households pay three times as much for each unit of electricity as U.S. households pay. German businesses pay among the highest costs in the world. Imagine your monthly electricity bill three times higher than what it currently is!

Denmark also suffered high electricity costs when the nation attempted to replace fossil fuels with green energy.

In America, California has higher electricity costs than the rest of the nation because of wind and solar mania. It is effectively another tax increase, draining money away from household budgets and decreasing living standards.

As Robert Bryce explains in his insightful book, “Power Hungry: The Myths of ‘Green’ Energy and the Real Fuels of the Future”: “We use hydrocarbons [fossil fuels] – coal, oil, and natural gas – not because we like them, but because they produce lots of heat energy, from small spaces, at prices we can afford, and in the quantities that we demand.” He adds, “The energy business is ruthlessly policed by the Four Imperatives: power density, energy density, cost and scale.”

Fossil fuels have high energy density, which means they produce large amounts of usable energy from comparatively small amounts of fuel, much more than can be found blowing in the wind or dancing on sunbeams. That is most fundamentally why green energy costs so much more than fossil fuels.

Moreover, the sun doesn’t always shine, and the wind doesn’t always blow. But the electric grid requires a consistent flow of electricity. That is why wind and solar energy require backup from fossil fuels. That required backup energy adds to the effective costs of wind and solar. It also means that “alternative energy” is not a real alternative to fossil fuels.

Under President Trump’s energy deregulation, America is now the world’s top producer of oil and natural gas. The United States also has the resources to be the world’s  No. 1 producer of coal.

Abundant, low-cost, reliable energy provides American manufacturing with a decisive cost advantage over Germany and the rest of Europe, and over Japan and other East Asian competitors.

Affordable energy brings real benefits that significantly improve people’s lives. More than 6 million jobs have been created during this boom, with unemployment among blacks, Hispanics, Asians and youth already the lowest ever measured in American history.

The blue-collar boom has also created $12 trillion in wealth for Americans since Trump’s election, primarily through the skyrocketing stock market that began on Election Day 2016. The expectation of this boom was a primary reason Trump won in 2016, as blue-collar workers, the original core of the Democratic Party, flipped Republican in Iowa, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Wisconsin.

Democrats are committing a historic political blunder running in 2020 on reversing one of the primary drivers of President Trump’s blue-collar boom. Banning fossil fuels under the Green New Deal is a recipe for economic and political disaster.

Peter J. Ferrara is a senior fellow at The Heartland Institute and at the National Tax Limitation Foundation. He is also the Dunn Liberty Fellow in Economics at Kings College in New York.

Hell, I live in near the Port of LA, the home of Semis running 24/7, auto-parts stores, junkyards, performance shops, body shops, repair shops, and motorcycle shops. That’s not to mention the ships, the diesel generators, power boats, you name it. It’s nuts. Don’t worry about the electricity costs, AOC socialist programs will pay your bills. I always try to test a program. Why can’t we take a green state and let them test all these efforts. Let them run wild with green initiatives. By the time their test would be completed, we would know the truth about Climate Change and whether their plan holds any water.–Bandit

The six cities are Nashville, San Antonio, Atlanta, Phoenix, Dallas and Columbus, as the media report claims.

Lyft has notified its employees about discontinuing its e-scooter business in six cities, claims a media report. Also, the company is claimed to be laying off at least 20 employees from the bike and scooter team, where around 400 people currently work.

The six cities are Nashville, San Antonio, Atlanta, Phoenix, Dallas and Columbus, as the media report claims.

The report further quotes a Lyft spokesperson saying, “We’re choosing to focus on the markets where we can have the biggest impact. We’re continuing to invest in growing our bike and scooter business, but will shift resources away from smaller markets and toward bigger opportunities.”

Addition to the 20 Lyft employees, a number of contractors responsible for scooter charging and their repositioning will also lose jobs. Previously, Lyft laid off around 50 people this year, claims the report.

Lyft is not the only company to pull out from the micro-mobility segment, as earlier this year, Uber too announced the discontinuation of Jump bikes and scooters from a number of select markets including San Diego, Providence and Atlanta.

Lyft currently operates its scooters in cities like Arlington, Austin, Denver, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis, Oakland, San Diego, San Jose, Santa Monica and Washington DC, informs the report further.

by Nicole Garcia Merida from https://moneyweek.com

The Honda Fireblade has been overhauled to deliver even more power and speed.

“It’s not the same bike with different colours, it’s not a facelift. The new Fireblade is a completely different beast,” says Cristian Predoi in DriveMag Riders. The CBR1000RR-R boasts an all-new, ultra short-stroke inline four-cylinder engine, which means the machine packs quite a punch, with a lot more speed and a lot more torque than its predecessor.

It looks like Honda really means business with the 2020 Blade, says Jordan Gibbons in Motorcycle News – it is “gunning for all-out superbike glory”. The engine delivers an astounding 215bhp, making it more powerful than almost all its competitors. (The only exception, the 988cc Ducati Panigale V4R, sneaks ahead with 217bhp.) And clever new technology and reworked engine details means you can “rev the engine like mad and achieve the big power figures they’ve clearly been chasing for track success”. It looks like Honda “got bored of being beaten by its rivals on road and track and pulled out all the stops to create a far sharper Blade”.

The new frame is designed to maximise feel for the rider. It is also far more aerodynamic, says Ben Purvis in Bennetts. “A trio of winglets hides behind the outer fairing panel on each side… The tank is shaped to let riders tuck in better, and the bellypan is more enclosed than any rival and runs right back to the rear wheel, where it’s shaped to deflect air and water away.” Honda has clearly not come to play with this version of the Fireblade. “When a Honda is named, every ‘R’ in its title means more performance.” The new model boasts an “R” more than its older sibling. Is it worthy? “Without a doubt.”