MaxRedline

Cycle 25!

You probably thought, "Oh, it's a Portland blog. This is gonna be about the latest trend in Saving The Planet™ by bicycle." Wrong.

It's actually about the latest trend in Anthropogenic Global Warming - which, oddly, doesn't seem to be happening, so forget about booking that tropical vacation in Wales for now. As it happens, the Science isn't quite settled, for some reason. Inconveniently for AlGore and other leaders of the Religion, it appears that the planet hasn't been warming for 15 years.

Based on readings from more than 30,000 measuring stations, the data was issued last week without fanfare by the Met Office and the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit. It confirms that the rising trend in world temperatures ended in 1997.

Oddly, scientists seem to have concluded that the sun may play some role in regard to planetary climate. Indeed, many now warn that the sun is now heading towards a ‘grand minimum’ in its output, threatening cold summers, bitter winters and a shortening of the season available for growing food.

Although some claim that human-released carbon dioxide will prevent significant cooling, others dispute that view; noting that these individuals are relying upon the same computer models which thus far have proven erroneous. They argue that it's entirely possible that the River Thames will freeze again, as shown above.

‘World temperatures may end up a lot cooler than now for 50 years or more,’ said Henrik Svensmark, director of the Center for Sun-Climate Research at Denmark’s National Space Institute. ‘It will take a long battle to convince some climate scientists that the sun is important. It may well be that the sun is going to demonstrate this on its own, without the need for their help.’

In the next few years, it's entirely possible that a whole lot of "scientists" leading the AGW parade are going to find grant funding hard to come by. They may have to kiss their careers goodbye, but the EPA and other agencies are certain to find a new angle to enhance their control, which will undobtedly prove fruitful grounds for the next set of grant-dependent "scientists" to explore.

The Latest From Sustainable Susan

I swear this is a guy. Okay, maybe a trannie. But I'm not buying that Sustainable Suzy from Portland City Hall is a woman. On the other hand, I also don't buy "her" lies:

Just like when Portlanders first started curbside recycling, it takes time to create and establish new food scrap collection routines for your household. Residents in a year-long pilot program found that after a little practice, they were able to make the system work and reported high rates of satisfaction.

Well, there's a lie, right there: out of 2000 "surveys" they sent out to those folks who were stuffed into the "pilot program", only 300 were returned. And the "survey" - which they can't seem to locate right now - was slanted. You're not supposed to remember that there were three boxes that could be checked: "somewhat satisfied", "moderately satisfied", and "very satisfied". Gee - you don't suppose they were shooting for a "high satisfaction rate", do ya?

And they have some handy tips and tricks to share with you idiots:

• 
  Set your green roll cart out for pickup every single week — even if it’s not full. The food may not look like a lot in the big green Portland Composts! roll cart, but it really adds up when every Portlander participates.

• Consider saving some of the last fall leaves to line your cart throughout the winter. If you don’t have leftover yard debris, you can still keep the bottom of your cart clean by lining it with a few sheets of newspaper, a paper bag or a take-out pizza box.

• Lining your kitchen compost pail will also help keep your green cart clean. You can tie off approved compostable kitchen pail bags to keep your food scraps from touching the inside of your green roll cart. Check out the list of approved compostable pail liners here.

• Empty the contents of your kitchen compost pail, including the compostable liner, into your green Portland Composts! roll cart frequently.  The more often you empty your kitchen pail, the less time food scraps spend in your kitchen.

• When it is not freezing, give your green cart a rinse with non-toxic soap and water. Pour dirty water onto grass or gravel, not down the storm drain.  See how it’s done by watching our instructional videos. Try sprinkling a little baking soda in your clean cart to avoid odors.

Fellow Portlanders share tips about what to do when you have messy, stinky or wet food scraps

“I wrap messy food in newspaper and then place in the pail,” said Montavilla resident Megan Tiede. “The newspaper can be composted along with the food scraps. And even better – it’s free!”

“Rather than putting stinky food scraps, like meat and bones, into my kitchen compost pail, I add them to an old yogurt container I keep in my freezer,” recommends Rebecca Raymond, resident of the Overlook neighborhood. “Then I empty them directly into my green composting roll cart the night before my pickup day!”

“I drain as much liquid as possible from food before putting it in my kitchen compost pail,” suggests George Patterson, resident of the Humboldt neighborhood. “So if my kids have leftover cereal, I drain off the milk before adding it to the pail.”

How have you made food scrap composting successful in your household? Share your tips, ask questions and learn from other Portland residents on our Facebook page or contact us:

Golly! You mean it's possible to be unsuccessful at forced slop-bucketing? Say it isn't so, Suzy!

Tax dollars at work....

Portland is a leader
in imagining the 
future of cities.

That's scary!

Sloperation "Fast and Furious"

Of the many government officials involved in the "Operation Fast and Furious" gun- running scheme, only one has lost his job. On July 10, 2009, President Obama named Dennis Burke as his nominee for U.S. attorney for Arizona. He was confirmed by unanimous consent in the Senate on Sept. 15 of that year. Interestingly, over the course of the previous two decades, Burke was deeply involved in "gun control" legislation, working closely with a White House policy analyst named Rahm Emanuel to draft legislation banning semiautomatic rifles. Introduced by Burke's mentor, then-Senator Dennis DeConcini, a Democrat from Arizona, it was subsequently passed and signed into law by President Clinton in 1994.

Burke continued to work closely with Emmanuel until 1997, at which time he teamed up with Janet Napolitano, with whom he worked for the next decade.

One month after his appointment as U.S. Attorney/Arizona was confirmed, the clandestine scheme known as "Operation Fast and Furious" was initiated under the watchful eye of a long-time gun opponent. Although there is general agreement that Burke ultimately became the fall guy, taking the heat for others in the Department of Justice and the White House, perhaps nothing so deftly illustrates his enthusiastic complicity in the sordid operation as his own words - crafted and sent to colleagues as whistle-blowers within ATF unraveled the scheme: in response to Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, who informed DoJ of his abiding concerns regarding the operation, Burke denounced the assertions as "categorically false." And he went further, referring to congressional investigators as "stooges" who were beholden to right-wing gun-nuts.

In fact, Burke composed and sent numerous emails to top DoJ officials, bemoaning "bad publicity" and accusing Senator Grassley of lying. Eventually, even one of those Burke was apparently seeking to protect - his boss, Eric Holder - admitted that Senator Grassley's assertions were true. Clearly, Burke's days as US Attorney were numbered.

It seems unquestionable that he hoped to employ the operation as a means toward the end of gutting the Constitutional guarantee afforded by the 2nd Amendment; he may not have been "fast", but he was clearly "furious" over the unraveling of his plan. The deaths of a few hundred Mexican citizens and at least one U.S. Border Patrol agent appear to have been irrelevant to him. And all that's happened to him, thus far, is that he was forced to resign as a US Attorney. Nobody else - not Eric Holder, not Janet Napolitano, nor anyone in the White House has been called to account.

The investigations on two fronts are ongoing.

Related articles

• Justice Department changes inquiry responses to Congress after 'Fast and Furious' (foxnews.com)
• Michelle to Barack: "Get Rahm outta here!" (chicagoreader.com)
• Pleading the Fifth: Gunwalker Witness Refuses to Testify (pjmedia.com)

End Of Campaign?

Rick Santorum has cancelled events for the time being, as his three year-old daughter, who was born with Trisomy 18, was admitted to Children's Hospital of Philadelphia yesterday. Reportedly, he's staying with her at the hospital. Physical and mental problems are common in those who survive - half die within the first week of birth.

Keep them all in your thoughts.

Related articles

• Prayers for Bella Santorum (michellemalkin.com)

What A Riot

Image via Wikipedia

Some 5,000 anti-abortion protesters rallied in the streets yesterday; 300 arests were made, and officers earlier fired tear gas to disperse people throwing rocks and tearing down fencing at a convention center.

Of course, the arrests and tear-gassing had nothing to do with the assemblage of abortion opponents who gathered at the Texas state capitol - those enforcement actions occurred in Oakland, where Occuturds broke into City Hall and burned an American flag before heading over to the vacant Henry Kaiser Convention Center, where some started tearing down perimeter fencing and "destroying construction equipment" shortly before 3 p.m., police said.

Police said they issued a dispersal order and used smoke and tear gas after some protesters pelted them with bottles, rocks, burning flares and other objects.

Naturally, the Portland Occuturds couldn't stand all the attention going to Oakland, so they had to run around town, as well:

(Video supplied by Daylight Disinfectant) They blocked traffic on a downtown bridge until the Portland Police riot squad showed up.

In contrast, by all accounts, the gathering of thousands in Austin, Texas was calm and sedate, although one woman wore a sign on her back that took a harsher tack: "The American Auschwitz is Planned Parenthood, death camp for babies."

Asked about that, Sarah Wheat, co-CEO of Planned Parenthood in Austin, said, "We're very familiar with extremism." She added, "That marks just how extreme this agenda has become."

Related articles

• Oakland to assess damage after Occupy protests (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Occupy Oakland: Police arrest 300, officials decry 'illegal activity' (latimesblogs.latimes.com)

Rumors

Interestingly, that whole "Birther" issue may not have been as "out there" as it's been portrayed. 

Copies of President Obama's college transcripts from Occidental College indicate that Obama, under the name Barry Soetoro, received financial aid as a foreign student from Indonesia as an undergraduate. The transcript was released by Occidental College in compliance with a court order in a suit brought by the group in the Superior Court of California. The transcript shows that Obama (Soetoro) applied for financial aid and was awarded a fellowship for foreign students from the Fulbright Foundation Scholarship program.. To qualify, for the scholarship, a student must claim foreign citizenship..

In any case, there's the little matter of whether or not Barry satisfied legal requirements to appear on the ballot down South, and yet another little problem: United States Justice Foundation has released the results of their investigation of Obama’s campaign spending. This study estimates that Obama has spent upwards of $950,000 in campaign funds in the past year with eleven law firms in 12 states for legal resources to block disclosure of any of his personal records. 

Why would Barry do that? Didn't he promise "the most open and transparent administration in the history of the country"?

At least one thing's pretty transparent: he wants to be King.

 

Reasons To Favor A Portland Utility Commission

Image via Wikipedia

Urban Greenspaces Institute, Willamette Riverkeeper, Audubon Society of Portland and the Coalition for a Livable Future are all against it.

In virtually every case, when these turkeys oppose something, it's a good idea.

Last May, the Portland City Council approved using $6 million in storm water charges collected from utility ratepayers to help buy 146 forested acres in Southwest Portland. It's an example of utility spending that some question but that others applaud as good environmental stewardship.

Nobody bothered to ask ratepayers, and it has no relationship to the costs that they pay for ostensibly providing water and sewer services. It took 146 acres off the tax rolls, and Audubon and others bay in delight. Of course, The Zero doesn't bother to delve into stuff like that; it might force them to hire a reporter.

Audubon was at the forefront of efforts to halt a plan by USFWS and zoos to remove all remaining California condors from the wild and place them into an enhanced captive breeding program. They hired lawyers and fought the plan for years. Sanity prevailed; Audubon did not. Today, you'd think that Audubon fought on behalf of the condors (now successfully reproducing after being re-introduced into the wild) rather than arguing for their extinction.

If they don't like something, it's probably a good idea.

They Pick Your Food!

Image via Wikipedia

Hey, they can go home and pick their noses.

This whole "they're only here to do the jobs Americans won't do" thing just doesn't fly. Dubya was wrong, and that philosophy still is about as attractive as a Porta-Potty on a hot day in Juarez.

So is this: SEATTLE -- In Olympia, it's not all that often that immigrant advocacy groups and farmers are on the same side of a proposed bill. 

But the unlikely allies have teamed up this session to push a measure aimed at stopping more cities and counties from adopting a federal program that checks an individual's eligibility to work in the country. 

Known as E-Verify, the internet-based program has to date been adopted by 11 cities and counties in Washington state. 

Let's get something straight: they aren't "immigrant advocacy groups". They're "no borders, no health screening, no nothing" advocates for illegal aliens.

And the farmers that hire illegal aliens are criminals.

Is it really that hard to say?

It may not make much of an impact, but we're not buying anything from the Washington Growers League. Washington farmers who are members of that organization have just lost another family of customers.

Another Friday Night Document Dump

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

You'd think they'd have learned, over there in the government, that the Friday Night Document Dump (FNDD) doesn't work any more. Maybe they have learned, which would explain why they keep pushing for an Internet kill switch. But, there isn't one as yet - so the FNDD is an epic FAIL.

Barry's racist attorney general is once again behind this one, and it's a doozy! As if there were any question previously...it's now abundantly clear that Eric Holder lied to Congress in the course of testifying about "Operation Fast and Furious". 

This racist porker has consistently committed crime after crime while in office, and he needs to be sitting in a cell right now.

Golly, isn't it interesting that the MSM all run the same headlines? Why, the DoJ "turned over" documents. Really? Small wonder that the MSM is about as popular as a turd in a punch-bowl.

Related articles

• Justice Dept. turns over docs in Fast and Furious (sfgate.com)
• Justice Dept. turns over docs in Fast and Furious (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Justice Dept. Turns Over Docs in Fast and Furious (abcnews.go.com)

Tropical Vacations In Great Britain

Book now to avoid the rush! Ah, imagine basking amongst the shade of the swaying palm trees along the beaches of the River Thames. Such luxury can be yours in less than 40 years' time, according to a report by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

If it sounds too good to believe, that's because it is. Well, yes, quite. While British bureaucrats have entirely bought into the "man-made global warming" hysteria, with its attendant necessity for firm governmental control over all aspects of life amongst the citizenry, it appears that the Science is not, in fact, settled. Bit of a bother, that:

In September, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Ivar Giaever, a supporter of President Obama in the last election, publicly resigned from the American Physical Society (APS) with a letter that begins: "I did not renew [my membership] because I cannot live with the [APS policy] statement: 'The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring. If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth's physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.' In the APS it is OK to discuss whether the mass of the proton changes over time and how a multi-universe behaves, but the evidence of global warming is incontrovertible?"

In spite of a multidecade international campaign to enforce the message that increasing amounts of the "pollutant" carbon dioxide will destroy civilization, large numbers of scientists, many very prominent, share the opinions of Dr. Giaever. And the number of scientific "heretics" is growing with each passing year. The reason is a collection of stubborn scientific facts.

Perhaps the most inconvenient fact is the lack of global warming for well over 10 years now. This is known to the warming establishment, as one can see from the 2009 "Climategate" email of climate scientist Kevin Trenberth: "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't." 

Of course, long-time readers and commenters at MaxRedline have been aware of these troublesome issues for several years; as has been noted time and again, the underlying reasons in support of "anthropogenic global warming" are as old as civilization itself: power, and money. Scaring people to death carries significant benefits, as it pours taxpayer dollars into funding "studies"  - as long as the "results" are acceptable - and this enhances not only the bottom line for the "researchers", but also for their affiliated universities.

It also affords justification for the enhancement in size and scope of governmental bureaucracies such as the E.P.A. and its counterparts, which naturally require more taxpayer dollars in order to support their mission of behavior management.

And it's great for the CEOs of "green" businesses: they reap massive tax subsidies before going out of business (three such companies, backed by the Obama administration, filed for bankruptcy just this week. And who can forget the raging success stories of Solyndra, and the Chevy Volt?). And what's really great about it is the "trickle-down" effect: even little tinpot dictators like Portland "mayor" Sam Adams can feel comfortable in ordering citizens to conform to specific, approved patterns of behavior - such as using slop buckets.

If it can in some way be tied to Saving The Planet™, then it's all good. Even if it's stupid.

 

Related articles

• New Top Scientists' Statement: 'No Need to Panic About Global Warming' (truthsupport.wordpress.com)
• Climate change: No. of people willing to 'go green' and change the way they live falls 10% (dailymail.co.uk)