MaxRedline

America's Promise

Whoever thought the silliness would come to this?  Yet it has.  Strangely underreported in American media, the story appears under the headline: U.S. to Capture Cow Farts to Save the Planet

In the future, America will harness cow farts to curb pollution and power the grid. What? It sounds like a joke, but it's actually a real promise. By 2020, dairy industry emissions will be reduced by 25%, largely by persuading dairy farmers to capture methane gas, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced at the Copenhagen climate change summit this week. 

Vilsack calls his agreement with the dairy industry a move that "will help us achieve the ambitious goal of drastically reducing greenhouse gas emissions while benefiting dairy farmers." He goes on to say that the harnessed emissions from one farm could power 200 homes.

Ambitious?  Folks, that "ambitious" plan would "capture" less than one-tenth of 1% of "emissions".  It's no wonder that the rest of the world is openly laughing at the USA, when the superpower has a president who bows to other leaders and who champions patently idiotic schemes to "Save The Planet".

In point of fact, the primary source of biologically generated methane on the planet comes not from cows, nor from horses, zebras, or deer:  it comes from termites - of which there are trillions covering most habitable areas of the planet.  While methane is a potent greenhouse gas - far more significant than, say, carbon dioxide - much of it is emitted by temites as they busily ingest and process cellulose.  If the Americans wish to limit the influence of methane, then, they should forget about cows.  Instead, they should come up with a way to capture the termites and fit each one with methane-collecting butt-plugs.  If such devices were produced with inflatable properties, then termites would float into the skies, where drones could be used to capture them and rapidly replace inflated butt-plugs with uninflated ones.

The collected inflated plugs could then be cycled through bio-digesters to produce electricity, while the termites themselves, newly outfitted, could simply be returned to the surface to begin the cycle anew.  What an elegant, "green", and "sustainable" solution!

Now, that would be truly worthy of an address before the Hopenchangen conference attendees.

Been Wondering When They'd Get Around To This

Well, here in the Pacific Northwest, we all know how incredibly important the Northern Spotted Owl is.  Entire economies were ravaged because they depended on timber, and the scientists told us that the owls needed old-growth in order to survive.  Therefore, no logging allowed.  Of course, after sufficient economic damage had been done, it turned out that the owls actually do remarkably well in secondary growth following logging operations.  That might be because prey animals are easier to locate in the thinner, secondary growth.  Scientists to loggers: "our bad, sorry about that".

But a greater danger was creeping up upon the poor endangered little owls:  other owls.  The problem here is that the barred owl, which hails from back east, has made its way out west.  Though they're roughly the same size as the Northern Spotted Owl, they're more aggressive, which means that they may be displacing the NSO.  Worse yet, they're interbreeding - producing what are known as Sparred owls.  That's just awful, and it simply can't be allowed.  It'll lead to speacies extinction and the rise of a mongrel race - sort of like hispanics interbreeding with asians, or whatever.

So the obvious answer, according to the scientists, is to start killing off barred owls in order to preserve the purity and sanctity of the NSO.

The spotted owl went from a seldom-seen denizen of old growth forests to the cover of Time magazine in the 1990s as environmentalists forced the federal government to cut back logging on Northwest national forests to protect its habitat.

Despite the cutbacks, spotted owls continue to decline, most steeply where there are high populations of more aggressive barred owls that are native to eastern North America.
 
Scientists believe barred owls migrated from eastern Canada across the Great Plains in the early 1900s, using forests that popped up as people controlled wildfires and planted trees around farms. They arrived in Washington in 1973, and their numbers have taken off in the past decade.

Crows and starlings migrated from the east as well.  Why is it that nobody seems too upset about these populations?  Could it be that because these species colonize urban areas, rather than forests, there's no big problem?

All invasives displace natives.  So what's really going on, here?  Why is the NSO so critically important?  After all, it can successfully interbreed with barred owls.  With crows and starlings, nothing like that happens.  The NSO was declared critically important before the barred owls ever arrived on-scene.

Basically, it appears that "scientists" found an excuse to halt logging.  They didn't like it, so they found a way to stop it by using the NSO as a pretext.  If they were out to preserve species, they'd be looking at ways to kill crows and starlings.  Funny, that never seems to make it onto the hit list.

Burning Down The House

In Stockholm, Sweden, thousands of rabbits are shot each year, and the furry little corpses are sent off to be burned as a source of heating fuel.  Naturally, this has "animal Rights" folks all hot and bothered.  Animal Rights Sweden spokeswoman Lise-Lott Alsenius questioned whether the practice was humane or ethical and suggested neutering the male rabbits as an alternative method of holding down the population.

Ever the source for practical solutions, the AR nuts actually seem to believe that capturing and neutering a few thousand bucks is do-able and worthwhile.  Fine.  When I was a kid, I had an answer for dumb ideas, which I still use to this day with great success.

"You do it first".

We've Got To Destroy The Hydro Dams! It's For The Fish!

Aw, rats.  This always happens.  Hysteria never stands the test of time.  BO's a smart guy; he recognizes that.  It's why he's been pushing to get his legislation passed on a fast-track.  Because time is the enemy of hysteria.

We have to act now to stop man-made global warming!

Time passes.  There is no evidence of any man-made global warming.  Well, then, it's time to change the meme:

We have to act now to stop Climate Change!

Any time somebody wants to rush something in, you know it's a scam.  They just want your wallet, and they want more control over your actions.  They want to rob you and deprive you of freedom.

And it's becoming clear that what many of us knew all along is now proving out: that whole "tear out the dams to Save The Salmon!" thing was bogus as well.  You had to know that something was fishy when agencies refused to class hydropower as "renewable".  Now the hyperbole has been revealed in no uncertain terms - by the fish themselves.

The damn salmon have had the unmitigated audacity to adapt to the hydro dams, and adults are returning in ever-increasing numbers.  In only 12 generations, the fish have shown robust adaptation to altered conditions.  That just sucks.  If they could just have held off for another two or three generations, the environmeddlists might have been able to persuade a sufficient number of gullible city kids to get behind blowing up the dams.

Stinkin' fish.  You just can't trust them.  They're almost as slippery as politicians and career environmeddlists.

We're Goin' To Rock Down To Electric Avenue

The Big 0 noted the other day that another push is underway to shut down Portland General Electric's Boardman coal-fired power plant in eastern Oregon.  PGE's under pressure to install half a billion dollars' worth of scrubbers and other technology to reduce the particulate haze that the plant - considered to be the "largest stationary source of pollution west of the Rockies" - produces.  Groups including NW Energy Coalition are pushing to simply close the plant - which provides nearly half of the region's electric power.

Erroneously classified as a "ratepayer advocacy group" by The Big 0, the Northwest Energy Coalition is actually a "clean, renewable" energy advocacy organization - which means that they actually work against ratepayers.  In the journalistic world of The Big 0, however, that's a minor point; not worth considering.  But here's something that is worth considering: prior to the closure of PGE's Trojan nuke plant, Oregon was a net exporter of electric energy.  That kept your rates low.  Following the closure, rates jumped up.

And NEC wants to cut off some 45% of the region's power, by closing Boardman.  Any guesses as to what that'd do to your rates?

Of course, it gets better: NEC and its affiliates also want to remove the hydro dams because they're somehow not "clean, renewable" energy sources.  While nuclear technology has been scaled down and become remarkably more efficient and safe, thanks to bed technology and improved fuel reprocessing techniques, they're agin' it.  They don't want nukes, don't want coal, don't want natural gas, don't want hydro.

Well...how are you going to plug in your electric car?  What's going to power their precious streetcars?  Solar?  Wind?  Not likely.  Environmeddlists actually oppose those, as well.

California's Mojave Desert may seem ideally suited for solar energy production, but concern over what several proposed projects might do to the aesthetics of the region and its tortoise population is setting up a potential clash between conservationists and companies seeking to develop renewable energy.

"It would destroy the entire Mojave Desert ecosystem," said David Myers, executive director of The Wildlands Conservancy.

And wind turbines?  It turns out that they are for unknown reasons fairly attractive to bats, and the spinning blades produce cavitation pockets, which cause the lungs of the animals to essentially explode - a phenomenon known as barotrauma.

So, let's see:  no nukes, no coal, no natural gas, no hydro, no solar, no wind.  Is it okay to rub a couple of sticks together? 

And So It Begins

Yesterday, in State of Connecticut et al. v. American Electric Power et al., the 2nd U.S. Court of Appeals decided that states and other plaintiffs have the right to sue electric utilities for creating a ”public nuisance” by emitting CO2 and, thus, contributing to global warming.

This development can be viewed in a couple of ways.  First and foremost, obviously, is the likely effect that such suits will have upon your wallet.  When such suits are permitted, the only effect for you, financially, will be negative.  As is the case with most environmeddlist lawsuits filed in recent years, the net result is more money yanked out of your wallet while little, if any, substantive positive results are obtained.

As noted just in the past few days, environmeddlists are going after manufacturers of multi-ply toilet paper, and the Oregon Department of Transportation has agreed to divert a couple of million dollars per year toward creation of mosquito habitat in order to head off yet another environmeddlist lawsuit threat.

In regard to the utilities, however, it's hard to summon up any degree of sympathy:  These utilities for years have lobbied for carbon cap-and-trade schemes. Instead of opposing climate alarmism, they have helped promote it.

Once again, you get to pay for their idiocy.

Environmeddlists Target Toilet Paper

And they wonder why they lack credibility.  They go after the dumbest stuff, and yes, the latest target is toilet paper.  Soft toilet paper is an environmental nightmare, according to these geniuses.  So we should either follow the You're-a-Peein's and use single-ply, post-consumer recycled paper (roughly akin to using an old Sears catalog in an outhouse) - or other, more "natural" sources.

Right.  Save The Corn-Cobs!

Meanwhile, The U.N. has declared that "climate change" is ramping up really fast, and they've published some material that they hope will have you reaching for that Sears catalog in a hurry.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, noted climatologist, Professor Mojib Latif, of Germany's Leibniz Institute, [notes] that the planet is in for a cooling period that could last from 10 to 20 years.

Global temperatures have held steady for several years, contrary to the expectations of statistical models. This month, a leading German user of these climate models predicted temperatures would fall for “one or two decades” to come.

Why the reprieve? The German, Mojib Latif, cited changing currents in the northern Atlantic Ocean. He even went a step further, saying the currents were also responsible for an unknown portion of the warming in the late 20th century.

...The German seriously undercut the idea that global warming will continue unabated as long as emissions of carbon dioxide rise, a cherished claim of climate alarmists. Nature, he acknowledged, can overwhelm or amplify whatever heating effect CO2 has. We’re still learning how.

Norman Borlaug

Thanks to the relentless efforts of western environmeddlists, it is unlikely that Borlaug's accomplishments could today be replicated.

Although that work saved a billion people from starvation and sparked what eventually came to be known as the "Green Revolution", he encountered steadily increasing bureaucratic resistance and heavily-propagandized interference from such stellar environmeddlists as Paul Ehrlich (author of "The Population Bomb").  Ehrlich had good reason to oppose Borlaug's efforts to feed the world, because the entire premise of his book was based upon a doomsday scenario in which the planet reached its carrying capacity and billions of people died of starvation.  All of a sudden, this clown shows up and starts producing varieties of wheat and other grains that are adapted to local conditions - and highly productive, as well.  The upstart!

Today, much of the political left still sees the Green Revolution as a failure, despite its obvious successes, because it promoted technological tweaks to address the deficiencies of nature, weakened socialist agrarian reform movements of the 1960s and 1970s by improving rural productivity, and permitted the survival of hundreds of millions — perhaps billions — of lives who just end up despoiling the environment.

This failure of the political left, particularly the environmental movement, to acknowledge the usefulness of innovative agricultural technologies led Borlaug to eventually reject the movement he once embraced.  He also became one of the biggest boosters of food biotechnology and one of the biggest critics of those who believe organic agriculture is the only sustainable option. On the 30th anniversary of his Nobel Prize, he said “I now say that the world has the technology — either available or well advanced in the research pipeline — to feed on a sustainable basis a population of 10 billion people. The more pertinent question today is whether farmers and ranchers will be permitted to use this new technology? While the affluent nations can certainly afford to adopt ultra low-risk positions, and pay more for food produced by the so-called ‘organic’ methods, the one billion chronically undernourished people of the low income, food-deficit nations cannot.”

I've long noted that environmeddlist fear-mongers such as AlGore and Ehrlich are simply greedy little bastards and nothing more.  They have theirs; they want to make sure that you don't get anything.  AlGore has a vested interest in his doomsday prophecies - he's set up companies to "trade" carbon credits.  He's already rich, but he wants to be richer.  That can only happen if he can sell fear to governments.

Ehrlich built a reputation and no small amount of pocket-change upon fear-mongering.  His theory that the planet had reached its carrying capacity was shattered when some upstart from Iowa developed agrarian techniques that proved him wrong.  Environmeddlists are all the same.  They all use the same playbook: scare people, profit.

Drill Here, Drill Now

Oh, how so many of the liberal persuasion hate those four words.

They want to "reduce our dependence upon foreign oil" by blocking every move to use the vast resources in our own country.  They want you, instead, to use wind power (unless the turbines sully the view from the Kennedy compound).  They want to tear out hydropower dams, because hydro isn't "renewable energy" all of a sudden.  They want you to use solar power - despite the fact that most of the rare earth ingredients that go into solar panels are imported from China (and that country has declared its intention to stop selling the minerals over the next couple of years).

Above all, they don't want you to use domestic oil and natural gas.  That's just too terrible to contemplate.

According to a new PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) study, the U.S. oil and natural gas industry already supports more than 9 million American jobs and contributes more than $1 trillion to the national economy, or 7.5 percent GDP.

Well, we simply can't have that.  Additional drilling would only cause those numbers to rise.  If that were allowed to occur, then we'd have to stop blaming Bush for our problems - because a lot of those problems would cease to exist.

"Greens" Declare War On American Indians

Enviros have long revered the American Indian: the Noble Savage who lives in harmony with the planet.  That, however, is the extent of their veneration.  As long as Indians can be exploited along the lines of that stereotype; used as a tool to guilt-trip non-Indians to support the Enviros' goals, everything's just great.

As long as the Indians know their place in the Great Scheme of Things, and don't get all uppity, it's all good.

But when Indians decide to engage in responsible use of natural resources that are abundant in their own nations, all bets are off - the Enviros are going to send in the lawyers and make every effort to thwart the Indians.  How dare them Injuns?

Such is the case today with America's largest tribe, Navajo Nation.  These savages live in a federally-recognized sovereign Nation that encompasses parts of New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah.  It doesn't have a lot of water, nor trees, nor paved roads - but it does have an abundance of coal.  And these stinking Navajos are planning to extract some of that coal, and burn it to produce power, which they plan to export onto the Southwestern grid.

Well, if you know anything at all about the American Greenie, then you know that burning coal is simply unacceptable.  And therefore, they have declared war - once again - upon the Navajo Nation.  The American Greenies view it not only as their right, but their duty, to take on a sovereign Nation in order to Save The Planet.

According to Navajo Nation President Joe Shirley, the $3 billion, 1,500-megawatt Desert Rock power plant would create more than 1,000 annual jobs during the four-year construction period, 400 permanent jobs, and generate more than $50 million annually in reservation revenues. This would be welcome relief -- the reservation is plagued by unemployment of almost 50 percent.

The damned Indians are revered by the American Greenies - as long as the Injuns know their place.  And that place involves living in abject poverty.  How dare they try to improve the lives of the tribal members?  It simply cannot be allowed.

Folks from the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council, sitting in their comfortable air-conditioned offices in Washington, D.C. and southern California, have come to the conclusion that the people of the Navajo Nation cannot be trusted to manage their own affairs.  They're ignorant savages, after all.