MaxRedline

So Much For Mann-Made Global Warming

Climate researcher Michael Mann said last week that if President Donald Trump is reelected, it’s “game over for the climate.” It’s the same alarmism we’ve been hearing for decades, all of it empty. But the alarmists won’t stop telling us we’re about to set the sky on fire. Even if NASA has said record cold might be on the way.

The sun, it seems, has been powering down. “We see a cooling trend,” Martin Mlynczak of NASA’s Langley Research Center said two years ago, a remark largely ignored but still relevant. “High above Earth’s surface, near the edge of space, our atmosphere is losing heat energy. If current trends continue, it could soon set a Space Age record for cold.”

For the record, global temperatures dropped from 2016 through late 2019. We don’t know about any unprecedented cooling in the last two years. But maybe the climatistas need to consider that solar activity affects our climate. The Little Ice Age, in which Europe and North America experienced brutally cold winters and mild summers, coincided with the Maunder (solar) Minimum of 1645 to 1720. They don’t want to deny science, do they?

This is unsurprising; of course the sun's activity impacts the climates of the surrounding planets in the solar system - only idiots would claim otherwise.

Nice Night For A Drive, Isn't It?

California seems irredeemable; unwilling or unable to learn from their mistakes. This all due to the crazy environmental laws that don't even allow for brush to be cleared. It's tinder for wildfires. No other state has such rules. Here in the Pacific Northwest, brush gets cleared. We still get the occasional fire, but nothing on the scale of California.

 

 

On A Roll?

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — As finding rolls of toilet paper becomes more like trying to find a diamond in the rough, it’s easy to blame the tissue shortage on hoarding or stocking up but wholesale suppliers say there is a lot more to it. “Aside from consumers trying to stock up, the government and first responders are definitely taking far more than they were before,” Hebert said.

Apparently, the US manufacturers relied on China and India for 10% of tissue supplies. I suspect that the environmeddlists won't be inclined to protest so much if we cut down more trees here to make toilet paper, because after all, it'd benefit them along with the rest of us.

 

More Portland BS

While Portland is a renowned climate action leader, the extreme weather events of the recent past in Oregon and around the world have made it clear that more action – and more intensive action – is required to ensure that we curb carbon emissions now.

 

Airborne Forever

U.S.—The climate crisis has been getting worse, despite liberal elites' best efforts to fly all over the country in their private jets lecturing everybody about it. There seemed to be no end in sight until a new tech startup, Hypocri-Fuel, introduced a private jet that runs on liberal hypocrisy.

"We just hook this bad boy up to Leo DiCaprio, Al Gore, Justin Trudeau, or any other of the thousands of progressive elites who refuse to change their lifestyles to match their beliefs, and presto -- plenty of fuel to go around," said the startup's CEO, Gus Perder. "One fuel-up can power a jet for over a year."

This development is long overdue. Unfortunately, the technology has not yet demonstrated commercial viability.

 

What Do You Do With A Few Thousand Dead Wind-Turbine Blades?

Well, at present, you cut up these components of "green energy" production and truck them off to landfills.

The huge things can't as yet be effectively recycled, though some work is being done on that front, but for now, it's off to the municipal dump for them. Out of sight, out of mind, as the saying goes.

 

Green Energy In Oregon

There's just one teensy problem: the power grid's maxed out.

Scott Zollinger was well on his way to building a new barn on his property in Marion County and putting enough solar panels on top of it to offset the cost of electricity for his family’s home. The design plans were drafted. The first payment was made on the solar panels. Zollinger had even applied and been approved for about $30,000 in state and federal tax credits on the $59,000 solar project.

Then he got a report from his utility, Portland General Electric, on the impact his project would have on the electric grid. The report was filled with technical terms, but it ultimately concluded that he couldn’t connect his 24.8 kilowatts of solar power to PGE’s system until significant upgrades had been made to the grid.

The report included a bill for the estimated cost of the upgrades: $539,038.

Jordan Sinn, general manager for Earthlight Technologies, often handles customer interactions for the company’s rooftop solar projects, many of which are in the Willamette Valley areas that now apparently have grid capacity issues. “This is becoming a common thing,” he said. “We’re in an awkward position where we don’t know until we submit quite a bit of paperwork with PGE to find this out. It’s been a bit of a black eye for the solar industry.”

Angela Crowley-Koch, executive director of the Oregon Solar Energy Industries Association, said grid capacity is a problem across the state — in both PacifiCorp and PGE territories.

All is not lost, however; Scott could still do it by going off-grid - although those lithium batteries that would be required to store his "green energy" are really expensive (and not exactly "green" themselves). And then too, he'd also have to purchase and install an inverter along with a few other essential components. So his $29,000 solar project (after credits) would more than double in cost. But at least he'd have his "green energy", so he could feel good about himself.

And we know how important that is.

 

Don't Spend It All In One Place...

Portland residents living in single-family homes and smallplexes (1-4 units) will see a reduction in garbage and recycling rates beginning Feb. 1, 2020. In December, Portland City Council decided that residential garbage and recycling collection will not be subject to the Clean Energy Surcharge, a charge intended for large retailers. The new garbage and recycling rates have been set to reimburse customers for the amount they have already paid toward the surcharge. Most customers have paid about $1.20 towards the surcharge since July 1, 2019. 

Everybody gets a free can of soda!

 

Australia: This Could All Have Been Avoided

Things are getting desperate down there:

Aircraft are being used to drop thousands of kilograms of carrots and sweet potato to hungry wildlife stranded amid the Australian bushfire crisis.

The New South Wales government commissioned the service titled ‘Operation Rock Wallaby’ which aims to feed the state’s colonies of brush-tailed rock wallabies and help the state’s population of marsupials survive.

They're burning through tons of cash in an effort to address a problem that they themselves have created.

Much as in California, the wildfires are a direct result of "feel-good" environmeddle policies, or as President Trump has correctly observed in the case of California's wildfires, "poor forest management".

The Australian state of New South Wales, where both Sydney and Canberra are located, declared a state of emergency this week, as worsening weather conditions could lead to even greater fire danger. But a 50,000-year-old solution could exist: Aboriginal burning practices.

 

Aboriginal people had a deep knowledge of the land, said historian Bill Gammage, an emeritus professor at Australian National University who studies Australian and Aboriginal history. They can feel the grass and know if it would burn well; they knew what types of fires to burn for what types of land, how long to burn, and how frequently.

 

"Even though people can see the Aborigines doing the fire control, and could see the benefits, they couldn't copy it," he said.

Now, the juxtaposition is clear.

 

"Where the Aboriginal people are in charge, they're not having big fires," Gammage said. "In the south, where white people are in charge, we are having the problems."

We have the same problem in the American West: a failure to learn effective forest management from the natives who successfully practiced it for centuries.

Green, Greed - What;s The Difference?

A neighbor down the street proudly placed solar panels on his house. He spent $4,000 after government subsidies and whatever deductions he may have taken from his income tax. He is confident that this move will save him tons of money on electricity and will safeguard the planet from global warming Armageddon by reducing his carbon footprint from fossil fuels. 

There is one fly in this perfect ointment—solar panels generate “tons of toxic waste” during the production process and during their disposal/replacement.

As mentioned here before, the output of solar panels decreases rapidly once installed, and they are effectively dead after 20 to 25 years. A number of companies offer "free" purchase and installation - but removal and disposal of non-functioning equipment is on you. Enjoy the smug feelings; they won't last long.