MaxRedline

Obamanation

The CBO notes that eight years of the Iraq confrontation cost less than Obama's "stimulus".

Obama was wrong on the surge, and is wrong on the economy.

He's now alienated many of the very people who put him into office.  This is not a two-term President, and at this point, it's unclear as to whether or not he'll even make it through one term.

So Much For Senator Atkinson

It's hard to believe that this guy was once sort of believable as a candidate for the Oregon governor's office.  Back then, he portrayed himself as a conservative.  Obviously, times have changed - and his true colors have emerged.

This politician clearly doesn't know much about science, but of course it doesn't pay to let a few facts get in the way of a good story.

Atkinson's thesis is that Nature should be left alone.  Everything humans do is bad.  In other words, he's parroting the standard Leftist canards.

In his latest piece, he attacks dredge miners:  I’ve seen what its members have done to some of the great rivers in the West. Dredge miners dump all the material they remove from a river bottom downstream, changing the entire structure and hydraulics of streams and their fish habitat.

In his view, rivers should never be subject to change.  Dredge miners change river structure, and therefore that is a very bad thing.  Of course, periodic flooding changes river structure as well, as any resident of Tillamook knows all to well.  Oddly, while dredging and flooding exert similar forces upon river structure and associated riparian areas, floods exert much more dramatic effects, and over far larger distances.

Yet the good Senator has never been a voice rising to the defense of residents in Tillamook, who have long been pushing to dredge flood materials away from the mouths of the several rivers feeding into their bay.  You see, flood action is okay.  Human activities which mimic the conditions on a significantly smaller scale are somehow evil, and must be fought.

If you believe in protecting Oregon’s rivers, you too should be outraged.

Atkinson follows the Leftist line of insisting upon "outrage" - pushing emotion ahead of scientific fact. "You should be outraged."  Oh, really?  And why, exactly?

We know that fish favor disturbed habitat for spawning; such areas are by far the most productive in any given stretch of river or stream.

Atkinson may be an avid fisherman, but he lacks any understanding of what it takes to produce successful fish runs.

Atkinson can fish with the best of them.  Anybody can fish.  Not anybody can catch.  (Cue Atkinson holding a salmon image).

 

Life Extension

"I feel sorry for people who don't drink. When they wake up in the morning, that's as good as they're going to feel all day."

The commenter who posted the above may have been quoting Churchill, but it's an interesting point nonetheless.  Because The Science Is In - and it's not good news for tee-totalers.  Moderate drinkers far exceed non-drinkers in lifespan, which isn't surprising in light of other studies involving moderate alcohol consumption.

The larger surprise is that heavy drinkers also outlive abstainers, though by a considerably smaller margin.

And Science marches on.

IPCC Gets A Bad Review

UNITED NATIONS — The scientists involved in producing the periodic United Nations reports on climate change need to be more open to alternative views and more transparent about their own possible conflicts of interest, an independent review panel said Monday.

Who'd ever have thought it?  At least the review wasn't the total whitewash that many had expected; it identified clear failures and fundamental flaws involving the methodology and the conduct of these folks.  Recommended changes include removing the top officials involved in producing the IPCC reports, which for an independent review panel for the U.N. is spectacularly unusual, and amounts to a tacit remonstration of the politics that have defined IPCC reports to date.

What's really surprising, though, is that the New York Times actually reported it.

Open Fly Speaks

The guy who can't keep his pants together has spoken:  our gun laws must be changed.  Apparently, he's confused his premature discharges with something else entirely.

"It's amazing to me the denial around the connection between inadequacy in our gun laws and gun crimes on the street. The legislature hasn't connected those dots," Adams said. "The absence of meaningful gun law changes must end. I'm intent on changing that."

Well, Sammy, let's start with a little education for you:

Believe it or not, gun crimes are committed by - get ready, this will be a huge blow - criminals.  Now, what does this mean, Sammy?

For one thing, it means that pedophiles like you and Neil Goldschmidt don't get to decide whether or not our Second Amendment rights are convenient for you.  As a matter of fact, the more inconvenient they are for you, the safer everybody else is.

One Word, Kid: Thorium.

We could then stop arguing about wind mills, deepwater drilling, IPCC hockey sticks, or strategic reliance on the Kremlin. History will move on fast.

"Once you start looking more closely, it blows your mind away. You can run civilisation on thorium for hundreds of thousands of years, and it’s essentially free. You don’t have to deal with uranium cartels," he said.

What?  Free fuel?  True.  The USA and Australia are reportedly thick with the stuff - and it can all be used as fuel.  Hazardous waste?  Not a problem; thorium consumes it and converts it to energy.  Why do you suppose that this technology isn't being aggressively pursued?

Some might blame conservatives, because "everyone knows" that they're lapdogs to the military-industrial complex - whatever that is.  Of course, conservatives aren't in charge.

But "progressives" control our government.  So why aren't they jumping on this?

Get real.  Low-cost energy = less control.  That's the exact opposite of what they're about.

Woodsman, Spare That Tree!

Well, on second thought, maybe you should cut it down and re-plant.  As has been often noted here, much to the chagrin of our local "science writer" and all-round expert: adherents to the Religion of Anthropogenic Global Warming Climate Change and who subscribe to the belief that anthropogenic carbon dioxide releases are about to kill the planet - yet who also oppose logging operations - are simply hypocrites.

Scientists suspect that the forests with the biggest trees store the most carbon, and the Northwest forests are probably among the largest carbon sinks in the world. However, they also say that while slower-growing older trees store more carbon, younger trees also absorb more carbon as they grow rapidly.

If you've followed the climate change arguments on this site, then you know that this has been mentioned here time and again.  Nice to see that at least some of the scientists have finally caught up.

But they're still missing the main point.  That sets up a debate about how forests should be managed, particularly whether older trees should be cut to make way for younger ones or whether they should be protected to store the carbon they contain.

No, you don't "protect" old trees as a means of storing carbon.

Doing so means that the stored carbon will be released either quickly, during the course of wildfire, or slowly, as the tree decays.  What you do, to maintain carbon sequesterization for as long as possible, is exactly the opposite: you cut the tree, mill it, and turn as much as possible into long-lived products.  Once the cut is made, you re-plant.

Flashback

How could President Bush ever have trusted a fool like General "Betray-Us"?  Isn't that what the Leftists called him?

 

Don't Bend Over In The Garden, Grandma

You know them 'taters got eyes.

Don't you love the scent of fresh-mown grass?  Smells like - AGONY!  Vegetarians can pack away their senses of smug superiority, the freaking murderers.

Jobs!

The five fastest-growing sectors in the USA job market have been identified in a recent report from the Economic Policy Institute, and the number one growth area:  "You want fries with that?"

Hey, you can bring in $17,222 a year!

Thank goodness this is the Summer Of Recovery™!