MaxRedline

Clean And Green, Barky's All Over it

The Green Mountain Energy Wind Farm

We've discussed the aerial Cuisinarts here many times before, but hey. Even the Associated Press is picking up on these "sustainable" power sources:

CONVERSE COUNTY, Wyo. (AP) -- Wind farms in this corner of Wyoming have killed more than four dozen golden eagles since 2009, one of the deadliest places in the country of its kind.

But so far, the companies operating industrial-sized turbines here and elsewhere that are killing eagles and other protected birds have yet to be fined or prosecuted - even though every death is a criminal violation.

Many times more bats, both insectivorous and pollinating, are killed by the sudden drop in air pressure, which causes their lungs to explode; eagles and other raptors, by contrast, are generally victims of blade-strikes.

"What it boils down to is this: If you electrocute an eagle, that is bad, but if you chop it to pieces, that is OK," said Tim Eicher, a former U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service enforcement agent based in Cody.

It's a double standard that some Republicans in Congress said Tuesday they would examine after an Associated Press investigation revealed that the Obama administration has shielded the wind power industry from liability and helped keep the scope of the deaths secret.

It sure hasn't been an especially good week for Barky, whose legacy is increasingly looking as though it'll be remembered as the most scandal-plagued administration in the history of the country. They go after power companies if an eagle is harmed by power lines, but "clean, green, sustainable" windmill companies get a total pass. Funny how that works. Double standards: it's the Chicago Way.

 

 

No Wonder Garbage Haulers Are Now Classified As "Green Jobs"

Green Jobs Not Jails (Photo credit: Brooke Anderson)

We all knew that the "green jobs" mythology relentlessly pursued by Barky and other Democratics was a colossal waste of money, but stats now out from the Barky administration's DOE are truly phenomenal:

For the over $26 billion spent since 2009, DOE Section 1703 and 1705 loan guarantees have created only 2,298 permanent jobs for a cost of over $11.45 million per job.

Back in 2008, Barky claimed he'd "create" five million jobs over ten years by "investing" (Democrat for "waste money") in "renewable energy". Evidently, it was one of those promises that looked great on a teleprompter.

It's worth noting that this number's just the tip of the proverbial iceberg; it doesn't include the millions of dollars that state and local Democratics have "invested" as well. Former Porkland mayor Sammy Adams and former Oregon governor Teddy Kulongoski handed over tens of millions of dollars to companies like SoloPower, SolarWorld, Vestas, Iberdola, and ReVolt - with little or nothing to show for it. Most, if not all of those companies are either belly-up or in the process of going belly-up. But it sure made for some great pressers and photo-ops. 

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Team Barky vs. "Deniers"

Cover via Amazon

Really, this is the best they've got?

Team Barky, now operating under the moniker "Organizing for Action", is attacking Republicans as Climate Change "Deniers"; thus inadvertently demonstrating that belief in "man-made global cooling warming climate change" is purely a manufactured religion. In this religion, skeptics are branded as apostates and in true Alinsky fashion, subjected to ridicule as a means of marginalizing them.

This is pure, unvarnished propaganda: When asked, they deny that "overwhelming" science on climate change is real. But, of course, they don't. What they refute are two claims:

1. "The science is settled."
2. "Human activities cause climate change."

As has been discussed here many times over the years, the science is not settled, although it has been politicized to an unhealthy degree. Even supporters of the religion are unable to account for the fact that the planet is not warming, despite their dire predictions and modeling.

Moreover, as the campaign's own video shows, Congressional Republicans do not deny that our climate changes; they note that there is little evidence indicative of human influence - and to claim otherwise, as the adherents of the religion do, simply illustrates their preoccupation with self-importance.

When Rep. Bill Cassidy notes that climate change could "be secular, just a shift on the axis", the religious campaign makes no effort to refute the statement - they simply ridicule it - even though it is well established that planetary axis shifts account not only for seasonal changes in "climate", but that minor perturbations can result in relatively long-term effects.

When Rep. Dana Rohrabacher of California notes that variations on the planet Mars mirror those here, the campaign makes no effort to refute the statement - because they can't; our sophisticated Mars rovers are entering their teen years now, and they have yet to capture an image of Martians joyriding around in CO2-spewing SUVs. Indeed, many scientists have come to suspect that solar activity may play a more significant role in planetary climate change than previously suspected (imagine that!).

The response from the campaign, again, is ridicule: MARS?

Well, yes. And reasonable people have discussed that here and on other sites many times over the years. But ridicule's the best the campaign can manage.

And when Virginia's Rep. Morgan Griffith notes that Vikings dominated much of the north for several hundred years during the last warming period (as noted here and elswhere previously, they established farms on Greenland that were subsequently consumed by advancing glacial activity), the response of the campaign is again: VIKINGS?!

Since they can't refute facts, they resort to mockery.

They close by claiming that "Denying" climate change is dangerous.

Again, they're all hat and no cattle.

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From "Deniers" To Mainstream

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Now They're Just Being Silly

Times are bad in the "Man-Made Global Warming®" community of trough-feeders, these days as even the media's beginning to catch on to the fact that - hey, the planet hasn't been warming during the past 16 years or so. If the media's noticing, can the politicians be far behind? Fortunately, yes; yes, they can. Or si se puede, for those of you in southern California. So the "scientists" are struggling mightily to come up with a reason why the damn planet isn't doing what their models say they should do.

It might be the oceans. Then again, it might be down to the fact that these "scientists" approach things bass-ackwards: in actual science, one makes observations, then forms an hypothessis which might explain the observations. That's not how these guys roll; they produce models, and then are astounded to find that observations don't conform to their models. Some, like Michael Mann, simply manipulate data to make it seem like things conform to the model (see: hockey stick, climategate), but that's only a short-term solution; you can only fool people for so long with that kind of idiocy.

But the approach works, to the extent that it's proven successful at gaming the system and securing millions in government grants. It ain't, however, science.

Just how much are they twisting and turning? They're just being silly, at this point, as the following demonstrates:

A rapid rise in global temperatures in the 1980s and 1990s - when clean air laws in developed nations cut pollution and made sunshine stronger at the earth's surface - made for a compelling argument that human emissions were to blame.

Got it? Developed nations cut air pollution, temperatures increased by a bit, and so stronger laws must be developed to cut even more pollution in order to Save The Planet™ from Man-Made Global Warming®. The venerable United Nations IPCC - which thus far hasn't got anything right - says so:

The IPCC will seek to explain the current pause in a report to be released in three parts from late 2013 as the main scientific roadmap for governments in shifting from fossil fuels towards renewable energies such as solar or wind power, the panel's chairman Rajendra Pachauri said.

So, since global warming stopped some 16 years ago, it's imperative that "scientists" put their heads together and come up with an explanation that will allow politicians appropriate cover in order for them to continue to (1) keep the grant gravy train rolling and (2) impose ever greater controls over the activities of the little people. After all, freedom is one of those things that must be sacrificed for the good of the collective.

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Green Government

English: President Barack Obama examines a solar panel with Solyndra CEO Chris Gronet (right) and Executive Vice President Ben Bierman, during a tour of Solyndra. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Over at Boned Jello, there's a most interesting graphic depicting the incestuous relationship between various former Democrat staffers and Cabinet members and so-called "green energy" companies. It explains the vast sums of taxpayer-guaranteed funds dumped into supposed "businesses" such as Solyndra, Iberdola, and others.

The stink is strong.

Jimmy Bails

Catherine of Aragon, Queen of England, with her pet monkey (Photo credit: lisby1)

Having finally become an embarassment to NASA, Jimmy Hansen is retiring from government "service". It's hard to see why the agency would want him out, given his invaluable insights into the emergent religion of "man-made global warming".

He has repeatedly called for trying the most vociferous climate-change deniers for “crimes against humanity.”

Not that the 72-year-old is a crackpot, or anything; he can't help it if people interpret his words as actually meaning what he says. It's not as though he's actually called for the execution of anyone who disagrees with his theology, even though death or life in prison is the usual result of anybody convicted of crimes against humanity. And it isn't as though he really went all Godwin on the folks who don't share his beliefs; he hasn't actually come out and claimed that "deniers" are Nazis, he just wants them tried, convicted, and either summarily executed or imprisoned until they're dead. Big differences, there, you see.

It's really got to tick him off that the people he refers to as "deniers" (or, in Islamospeak, "blasphemers") are now mainstream.

 

 

 

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About Dam Time

As has been discussed here on several occasions, Oregon's "Green Energy" law is just plain stupid - it ignores the fact that nearly 40% of the state's power is derived from hydro (unsurprising, as the state's been under Democrat control for over thirty years, so Democratics wrote the law and passed it). Nope, in Oregon, hydropower doesn't count as "green energy", but Democratics required power companies to derive 25% of the electricity they sell to come from wind, solar, or biomass. It's all to fight the boogeyman of Green Religion, of course.

Opponents want lawmakers to grant utilities an exemption for hydro power, and they’re posed to push a 2014 ballot initiative, called the “Affordable Renewable Energy Act,” before voters if they don’t get their way.

It's about dam time! The idiots running this state seem to think that sticking up aerial Cuisinarts all over the place, cutting down hundreds of endangered birds, bats, and other critters in order to produce "green energy" is just dandy. We need to point out that it's not.

In other news, Portland Democratics (who by sheer numbers dominate the state) voted some years ago to ban cougar hunting because they thought it was cruel. Now, instead of having hunters pay us to pursue cougar, we have to pay ODFW to hire hunters to pursue cougar. Naturally, and as predicted, the animals have proliferated in the years since the gentle Portland hipsters passed their ban:

Officers responded to a caller who reported seeing a large animal with a 2-foot-long curled tail behind a residence in the 3300 block of Southwest 10th Avenue, the Portland Police Bureau says. The caller and another person reported to police that they are hunters and are familiar with cougars. 

With luck, Forest Park will become a happy hunting ground , giving nature-loving hiking and biking urban hipsters an opportunity to experience nature up close.

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No Relief This Year

English: A natural gas well (produces gas only, no oil). Southeast Lost Hills. Photo by self, GFDL/equiv. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

But in five years, some Brits will be heating their homes with American natural gas - thanks to that horrible practice known as "fracking". Despite the doom and gloom promulgated by the professional alarmists and their Hollywood sympathizers, no adverse effects have been associated with the drilling technique, and as a result, they've been unable to stop it on private lands.

British company Centrica announced a deal with Cheniere Energy Partners on Monday to provide enough gas to heat almost 2 million homes starting in 2018.

This is a winner for both countries, and accomplished despite Barky's closure of drilling on most public lands. Likely, the Brit bureaucrats responsible for the current gas shortage in that country will lard on "global warming" taxes and fees, but at least a significant proportion of the population will have access to a reliable energy source.

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Chickens, Meet Roost

The U.K. has blanketed large swaths of their countryside in wind farms in recent years, though they supply but a fraction of energy needs; over two-thirds of electricity is generated by coal- and gas-fired power plants. In the midst of the coldest March in 50 years, their brain-trust this week will impose a "carbon tax" of nearly $46 per ton of CO2 emitted by the plants; a figure that will rise to nearly $150 per ton in 2030.

This will effectively shut down the plants, and adjustments have already begun:

As the snow of the coldest March since 1963 continues to fall, we learn that we have barely 48 hours’ worth of stored gas left to keep us warm, and that the head of our second-largest electricity company, SSE, has warned that our generating capacity has fallen so low that we can expect power cuts to begin at any time. 

Brits will get to pay more - much more - for less energy. Expect a run on parkas.

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Bosch And Siemens Bid Bye-Bye To Solar

The solar power industry has been hit by falling subsidies, weaker sales and increasingly stiff price competition, especially by Chinese manufacturers.

Interestingly, the largest Chinese solar manufacturer has entered bankruptcy. So all in all, "green, sustainable" solar can't work without massive subsidies - or even with them.

As a result, both Bosch and Siemens have announced that they're abandoning their solar programs. That's a huge hit: Bosch alone employs some 3,000 in their solar energy biz.

People keep pointing this out, and we keep being derided as "deniers". But at some point, even the loons will have to accede to facts.

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