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$1,300+ per qtr for the one property I am not selling (I live in it). Going to give tenants notice that there is going to be a significant rent increase coming.

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So who is going to pay for this rehab?

From what I read earlier about the building, it is a wreck. So is it going to now sit vacant and deteriorate for years?

Bought a bunch from Novick Hardware on Central Ave in the Heights. $2.50 each, if you buy 8 or more.

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This was my second stop during my day of plant hunting. Good selection and relatively sane prices.

FYI for anyone looking to lock in a rate before kicking on your A/C this summer.

https://www.njenergyratings.com/ has a rate of $0.0123 kWh fixed for 3 months, which is a bit below what PSE&G is charging.

I haven't found a better rate yet.

If you have a commercial / house meter, take a look at your current rate. Commercial meters aren't as regulated and are subject to variable rate increases faster than residential meters.

For my house meter, the PSE&G rate is now 120% above my fixed rate (which expires soon).

Post here if you can find a natural gas rate under $0.50 per therm. I am seeing fixed rates well over $1 per therm. We are going back to the gas shortage prices back in the earl 00s!

My go to shop on JFK Blvd. is long gone and it looks like the place on Rt. 440 closed shop. Where do you buy plants these days. The big box stores are a bit pricey when it comes to something like a tomato plant.

Has JC school enrollment gone up or down since 2020?

News report:

Enrollment in New Jersey schools drops from 2020-2021 school year by 41,000


https://rumble.com/v109u8z-enrollment- ... school-year-by-41000.html

The report mentions suburban schools. Curious if the same trend is in the urban ones as well.

The only thing "fast" about Verizon's 5G upgrade around here is how quickly it drops calls..

In my and my wife's circle of contacts I know of over 10 deaths that happened generally within 2 weeks (most within 72 hours) of either the 2nd jab (Pfizer or Moderna) or the booster. The two most common causes was either "died in his/her sleep" or heart failure. Ages range from early 20s to early 70s. Most were in their 40s and 50s.

The last two were the husband of my wife's friend. Was double jabbed, then got COVID, recovered, then got the booster. Days later dropped dead from blood clots in the heart and the brain. Mid 40s, healthy, no prior or family history of cardiac issues.

My sister-in-law has heart and neurological damage. Her doctor finally admitted it is due to the vaccine (Pfizer). She can barely make it up a flight of stairs now and is undergoing all sorts of tests, including a D-Dimer, and is wearing a heart monitor. The chronic migraine headaches are no fun either for her. The kicker is because the clot shots are NOT FDA approved, she can't even apply for vaccine injury compensation. Her only recourse is the CIC, which is reserved for emergency use authorized treatments.

Those who apply for the CIC are not entitled to counsel. They have no right of appeal. There are no pain and suffering damages, substantial limits exist on actual economic damages, and a one-year (from the date of vaccination) statute of limitations applies by which a claim must be filed. The program has paid out less than 50 claims since it was formed. VAERS database recording for COVID vaccines over (as of 1/28/2022) 747,000 adverse reactions that includes 11,667 life-threatening events, 51,713 hospitalization, 10,527 deaths, and 12,235 permanent disabilities.

The lawsuits and political fallout over the coming decades is going to dwarf tobacco and asbestos combined.

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My latest water bill is a bit shocking due to the solid waste charge...

Models showing JC to be on the edge of an ice storm this Friday-Saturday, with heavier amounts north and west.

Note: Pink areas are ice:

Why wait until March? Why not drop the face mask farce now?

What I heard is that it was some guy threatening suicide. Why that required such a huge response? No idea..

Homeland security vehicles.. buildings caution taped off on Franklin Ave... Police road blocks..

any idea what is going on?

Updated Euro model. Northwest of us in particular looks like power line snapping amounts of freezing rain.

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I'll post the updated model runs this afternoon. The models right now show rain / sleet for us or a lot of freezing rain.

Last time we had freezing rain my bushes collapsed, blocking the sidewalk. That was a miserable mess to clean up.

Multiple models showing significant freezing rain, sleet, and snow coming at the end of this week. From the US model (which updated recently)

Freezing Rain:




Sleet:

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The issues are that the vehicles were unable to complete their routes due to battery life issues. In one case, the buses were equipped with diesel fired heaters as running the heat off battery drained it.

Stalls, stops and breakdowns: Problems plague push for electric buses



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You misread the data on the link you sent. "Renewables" are about 4% with about 1/4th coming from burning trash. EIA counts the bio portion of waste (paper, linen, food waste, sewage sludge) as part of the renewable pool.

Here is a breakout of the 2020 energy mix (data from EIA):




Here is the power mix over the past decade. You can see that solar hasn't risen much and wind is still basically a rounding error:





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Doing a thought experiment here: How much solar or wind would it take to replace natural gas, coal, and oil, based on 2020 EIA data?

For both solar and wind I am going to assume we have batteries available with infinite storage and a 100% efficiency. So there will be no need for 'buffering' (standby natural gas fired generators). I am also going to ignore the rest of the major issues with wind and solar such as: asynchronous generation (doesn't maintain frequency), lack of grid inertia, lack of reactive power, formation of destructive resonance, et.

Solar

The theoretical limit for silicon based solar PV panels is 32%. The best panels available hit 22%. In the real world, the panels operate at about 15% on average. I will assume 22% efficiency with no degradation over time or at high temperatures. NJ receives on average about 4.3 kWh/m2/day (0.935 kWh/ft2/day) in solar energy.

Using the above, you would need about 358 square miles of solar panels to replace fossil fuels.

Off-Shore Wind

The off-shore wind density per NYSERDA is 0.1 MW/acre. The capacity factor is 44% (per EIA). Turbines can't be packed densly or layered because the leading turbines will rob power from the aft turbines. So you are going to create a long line of these things.

How many? Well, the biggest ones deployed are rated at 6 MW. This means you will need over 600 turbines covering an area in excess of 128 square miles.

For illustration, here are the required areas put on a map. The big red circle is solar. The green off-shore is wind. The small red circle is the area required for a Generation 3+ nuclear plant (about 2,500 acres). The nuke has the additional advantage is that it avoids all the other issues with renewables listed earlier (i.e. grid inertia) and has no need for buffering or batteries.





Planning on running the world on wind and solar is magical thinking. It isn't going to happen. Trying to do so will only lead us to a life of energy poverty. See Europe as an unfolding example. Due to a persistent high pressure system (no wind) natural gas supplies were depleted to keep the lights on. Now there isn't enough gas in storage for winter and the forecast is for a colder than average winter.

The German government is posting PSAs on how to stay warm with clay pots and candles because they are facing rolling blackout (not enough gas to keep the light on). This is our future as well if we keep up with this "electrification" fantasy.

https://rmx.news/germany/heating-crisi ... blankets-and-tea-candles/

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Modern vehicles pollution (real pollutants like NOx, particulates, carbon monoxide, VOCs) are low as to not cause dangerous air quality issues. EVs are driven by the politics regarding CO2.

The whole driving force behind EVs is part of a bigger electrification goal:

The nation runs on "Carbon Free" wind and solar power by 2040 or 2050. There is a better chance of flapping your arms and flying to the moon than running the grid on intermittent solar and wind. We here in NJ had our electric bills raised by about 50% to pay for putting solar PV panels everywhere. Last I checked, solar accounts somewhere around 2% of all the power generated in the state. Natural gas is #1 followed by nuclear in the generation pool.

The only "Carbon Free" option for power generation is smashing atoms. You are going to need to build nukes.. a lot of them.

The Alternative:

Dimethyl Ether (DME)

DME is an isomer of ethanol and is a gas at atmospheric pressure. It is an excellent substitute for diesel fuel that offers the following advantages:

1. It is non-toxic (DME is used as a propellant in spray cans like deodorant).
2. If DME is spilled, it breaks down in less than 24 hours.
3. It is an oxygenated fuel and burns without soot. There is no need to use a filter on the truck exhaust.
4. It stores like propane (liquid under modest pressure) so there is no need to develop special technology to store it (this is a huge issue with hydrogen).

Downsides:

DME has a lower energy density than diesel. 1 gal of DME = 0.56 gal of diesel. However, this is not a deal killer. Volvo states a 600 mile cruising range on their trucks. The fill-ups are quick vs. hours of charge time for a battery.

DME powered vehicles exist

The vehicles are already commercially available. Volvo partnered with Delphi to develop the engines and are currently marketed in Europe. Volvo offers the vehicles through it subsidiary Mack Truck here in the USA. DME powered garbage trucks were successfully testes at the Fresh Kills landfill by the NY Dept. of Sanitation.

DME can be produced from the organic portions of the municipal waste stream. Organic portions is about 2/3rd of the waste stream by mass.

Rough back-of-the-napkin calcs:

JC has a population of about 293K which would produce about 585 tons of waste per day. That would translate into about 8 million gallons of DME per year. Jersey City could turn its own waste into fuel for its trucks with millions of gallons to spare.

Wasn't able to fix a typo in my previous post"

"The cost of upgrading will make electricity UNaffordable. "

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MJ = Mega-joules
1 MJ = 948 Btu
1kg = 2.2 lbs

Issue 1: Theoretical Energy Limits

The last big advance in battery storage was the introduction of the lithium-ion battery back in the '90s. Lead acid batteries can store about 0.1 MJ/kg. Li-ion batteries have hit 0.5 MJ/kg, which is a big improvements, but nowhere near what you get from fossil fuels. Diesel has about 45 MJ/kg, which means a Li-ion battery has less than 2% the energy density of diesel fuel. The theoretical-limit of Li-ion technology is about 3 MJ/kg. No technological advance is going beyond this point. There just aren't enough electrons available via oxidation beyond this point. So your limit on Li-ion is about 6% to 7% of diesel fuel.

This means you need a massive battery to get the similar performance and range. This is especially challenging in very hot and colder climates where battery performance drops dramatically. The batteries need to be heated and cooled to maintain performance. (which greatly increases the power drain). This problem is especially acute with trying to run large commercial equipment on a battery. Some examples:

Albuquerque’s $133-million electric bus system is going nowhere fast

Report: Philadelphia’s Proterra Fleet in Complete Shambles

Electric buses from Berliner BVG have a cold problem

Nikola and Republic Services scrap their electric garbage truck



Issue 2: Electric Infrastructure

The issues go beyond the long charge times, which may require having multiple trucks to do the work of what was done with one. Charging a number of large vehicles at a time means power draw in the megwatts level. Bottom line: The electric infrastructure (power lines, sub-stations, peaking power plants, etc.) doesn't exist to support electrification of transportation. The cost of upgrading will make electricity affordable. This is what is happening in Germany which needs to impose rationing of power, which includes vehicle charging stations.


Issue 3: Environmental

There is no way to run transportation on batteries without devastating environmental consequences.

It is easier to make new Li-ion batteries that recycle existing ones. Li-ion batteries typically end up in incinerators (Li-ion batteries are a major fire hazard in landfills). There is tech out there now that claims to recycle the lithium, but I have no idea if any of these processes are economically viable. As of now, electrification is driving a huge increase in the mining of lithium.

Beyond lithium you have a pressing need for cobalt, which is a transition metal used in Li-ion batteries. Cobalt is a much rarer / expensive metal and primarily comes from Africa.


Issue 4 - Safety

Li-ion batteries are bombs. The battery contains everything needed to burn on its own without an supply of oxygen. The fires are difficult to damn near impossible to put out. In Europe electric cars that catch fire are put in a tank of water for 72 hours before transporting to the dump. The reason is that the cars have re-caught fire while be towed to the junk yard. To make matters worse is that the fires are so intense they set the adjacent vehicles on fire as well. The chain reaction in a parking garage could take out a building.






The issues go beyond what I stated above. There is a commercially viable alternative, which I will put together a post on later.

This will end up being a very expensive mistake.

OSHA suspends vaccine injury report rules:

DOL and OSHA, as well as other federal agencies, are working diligently to encourage COVID-19 vaccinations. OSHA does not wish to have any appearance of discouraging workers from receiving COVID-19 vaccination, and also does not wish to disincentivize employers' vaccination efforts. As a result, OSHA will not enforce 29 CFR 1904's recording requirements to require any employers to record worker side effects from COVID-19 vaccination at least through May 2022. We will reevaluate the agency’s position at that time to determine the best course of action moving forward.

Already happened in Kentucky. This latest variant is a mutation on the spike protein, which is the single protein the jabs is supposed to get your body to form antibodies for.


One of these, a mutation termed E484K located in the spike protein of the virus, gives it an "increased resistance" to antibodies generated by the vaccine.

R.1 shares an additional mutation, the D614G, with all other variants that have overtaken the original alpha strain, which increases its infectiousness.


https://www.the-sun.com/news/3707195/n ... tations-virus-antibodies/


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The Lancet has published a paper from Sweden on the declining effectiveness of the vaccines. Parts in bold is where I added some info to make the summary easier to read. Full paper at link below.

Summary: -- --- -- ---- -- Interpretation: Vaccine effectiveness against symptomatic Covid-19 infection wanes progressively over time across all subgroups, but at different rate according to type of vaccine, and faster for men and older frail individuals. The effectiveness against severe illness seems to remain high through 9 months, although not for men, older frail individuals, and individuals with comorbidities. This strengthens the evidence-based rationale for administration of a third booster dose.

These are two good videos for people who (like me) have acquired immunity from a previous COVID infection:


Dr. John Campbell covers CDC, and Israeli government info comparing vaccinated effectiveness against reinfection (before the vaccines start to wane) vs. acquired immunity from previous case of COVID.

Most importantly, he covers the UK data on the increase in vaccine complications for people who get vaccinated after recovering from COVID. For Pfizer nearly 3x increase with 56% increase in the side effects requiring hospitalization.





Here is another good breakdown on the Israeli data on protecting from breakthrough infections of the Delta variant:

Vaccine (Pfizer) vs. Previous infection vs. Previous infection + vaccine.

Dr. John Campbell (a man who has been on topic of COVID since the beginning) covers the following topics:

Issues with getting aspiration done to prevent the vaccine from getting injected directly into the blood stream.

The declining effectiveness of the vaccines (CDC data):

Janssen (J&J)
March, 92%
August, 3%

Moderna
March, 91%
August, 64%

Pfizer
March, 95%
August, 50%

CDC plans to mix / match different boosters.

Personally.. I paid about $10k less per year. People downtown should be happy that they had everyone in the Heights, Greenville, Bergen-Lafayette subsidizing them for a decade or more that the re-evaluation got stalled.