Can humanity bring pollution under control, before it's too late? Would you belive the answer is, "Yes, it's likely".

I hate arguing about "climate change". Because whether you belive we are causing it, or whether you believe it's a natural occurance (as pre industrial history supports), it doesn't change the facts that:

a.) Pollution is bad; it kills us. And...

b.) Even if climate change is a natural cycle doing it's thing, our pollution could make the changes even more severe. Does anyone want, or need that?

What I like about the following video is, that it looks at current trends, with an eye to the big picture. What it sees, is more optimistic than you might expect.

Now of course, if Russia or China drags us into WWIII... but that's another story. This story is, we need not die of pollution. Nice to hear some good news, for a change.

     

California dreaming... ending or begining?

Is one generation's California Dream, another generation's nightmare? This article makes a good case for it:

My Dark California Dream
Our­ parents had wide open spaces all around.
We still had nature within reach. Now what?

CALIFORNIA’S over, everything I love about this place is going to hell.

I knew there was something familiar about this thought from the moment it occurred to me in Yosemite National Park. My sister and I started going to those mountains 40 years ago with our parents, who taught us to see the Sierra Nevada as a never-changing sanctuary in a California increasingly overrun by suburban sprawl.

Once we had our own families, we indoctrinated our kids in the same joys: suffering under backpacks, drinking snowmelt from creeks, jumping into (and quickly back out of) icy lakes, and napping in wildflower meadows. Yosemite remains my personal paradise, but the impact of drought and climate change has become overwhelming — smoky air from fires, shriveled glaciers leaving creeks dry and meadows gray, no wildflowers.

The big new forest fire didn’t help, as we hiked back to our car in mid-August. We were never in danger, but smoke from that so-called Walker fire filled the sky and turned sunlight orange. At the surprisingly good restaurant attached to the Lee Vining Mobil station just outside the park, ashes fell like apocalyptic snowflakes onto our fish tacos. We watched a DC-10 air tanker carpet bomb flames a few miles off. We had intended to stay in a nearby motel, but Highway Patrol officers told us they planned to close the road, so we joined the line of vehicles escorted past red walls of fire.

We slept at a friend’s house on the western flank of the Sierra Nevada. The next morning, as we began our drive home to San Francisco, this sense of unraveling — of California coming apart at the seams — worsened by the mile. The air was more Beijing than Yosemite, and the Merced River, normally a white-water pleasure ground, was a muddy sequence of black pools below mountains covered with dead ponderosa pines, a tiny sample of the more than 12 million California trees killed by drought and the bark beetles that thrive in this now-warmer climate.

The San Joaquin Valley, still farther west, is depressing on good days, with its endemic poverty and badly polluted air and water. But driving in freeway traffic through endless housing developments on that particular weekend encouraged a fugue state of bleakness in me. Somewhere in that haze lay an industrial-agricultural plain where the unregulated pumping of groundwater has gone on for so long that corporate farms pull up moisture that rained down during the last glacial period — with two paradoxical and equally strange geological effects.

[...]

We were nearly home, inching through Sunday-afternoon traffic (rush hour is now everywhere and always), when I realized that I had become my parents. Put another way, it was finally my turn to suffer the sense of loss that made my mother weep over every strip mall obliterating every once-lovely farm during family road trips in our 1971 VW micro-bus. My father’s nostalgia was more for 1950s Los Angeles: Bing Crosby living down the street, the Four Freshmen on the radio, a T-shirt filled with oranges as he rode the bus from his family’s Westwood home through sleepy neighborhoods to a completely separate town called Santa Monica.

Confusing one’s own youth with the youth of the world is a common human affliction, but California has been changing so fast for so long that every new generation gets to experience both a fresh version of the California dream and, typically by late middle-age, its painful death.

[...]

“Eyes wide open, here,” says Terry Sawyer, co-owner of the nearby Hog Island Oyster Company, where the big issue is excess atmospheric carbon dioxide raising ocean acidity so fast that oyster larvae struggle to build shells. “The California dream of us being wet and making a living and enjoying ourselves may be threatened,” he says. “I have kids, and I want that dream intact for them, but it may not be the same dream. I may not be growing the same organism. I am hopeful, but I am extremely concerned.”

Everybody is — except, of course, those living the most obvious new California dream, the technology gold rush. Try telling successful 25-year-old entrepreneurs in San Francisco that California’s over and you’ll get blank stares as they contemplate stock options, condos going up all over the city, restaurants packed nightly and spectacular organic produce at farmers’ markets every day.

It’s not only 25-year-olds saying that. “You’re a naturalist, Duane, so of course you see it through that lens,” said Mr. Starr, later in our conversation. “But don’t lose sight of all the great new things happening, all over California. Marc Benioff just built one of the greatest pediatric hospitals on the planet a few miles from your house! And this whole tsunami of foreign investment pouring into California is really a ringing endorsement of the dream.”

I drive by Mr. Benioff’s hospital every day, and I know that Mr. Starr is right. I am also impressed, sincerely, by all these brilliant people making fortunes seemingly overnight. I recognize that prosperity is better than its absence, and I like the fact that Californians still help make the future look hopeful, by developing better solar panels and electric cars, sustainable agriculture and marine-protected areas that preserve fish populations and their habitats. I have also noticed the friendly crowds jostling my elbows at every surf break and on the shockingly long lines below Yosemite rock climbs. These people have as much fun as I ever did, loving the only version of California available to them. [...]

That's just it. Those of us who knew an older version of California, miss it as it disappears. New people come along, not knowing how things used to be, and they think it's fabulous just the way it is.

Perhaps this is true of life generally, not just California specifically. As we get older, we miss what was. California's transformation(s) have been many and rapid, which makes it dramatic. But I think it's happening everywhere, as the world becomes a smaller, more crowded place. And once you become old enough to have as significant amount of "past" behind you, you notice it more.

It was a good article, with lots more examples, read the whole thing for embedded links and more.

     

Why Bees are Dying: Neonicotinoids

What Is Killing America's Bees and What Does It Mean for Us?

[...] Doan never really considered the possibility that the fault might not be his own until scientists at Penn State who had been testing his bees told him of news coming out of France that pointed the finger at a relatively new class of insecticides called neonicotinoids, or neonics. The first commercially successful neonicotinoid compound was synthesized by agrochemical giant Bayer CropScience in 1985, but it wasn't until the early 2000s that they began to be used extensively. Compared to older, more toxic insecticides, neonics certainly seemed to be a win-win: Though neurotoxins, they mess with insect brains far more than those of mammals, and their application is a breeze. All a farmer need do is sow a seed coated in neonics and the water-soluble chemicals get drawn back up into the plant as it grows. Referred to as systemic insecticides, they spread through the plant, making it resistant to predators. Neonics don't require repeated applications in a hazmat suit. Rain can't wash them away — but then again, neither can your kitchen faucet (unless you're eating strictly organic, you're eating neonicotinoids all the time).

Doan knew his hives had tested positive for the neonicotinoid clothianidin, but the results had seemed dubious because clothianidin wasn't even registered for use in New York state. That's when he learned that neonic-coated seeds weren't subject to the same regulations as sprayed pesticides, meaning that seeds couldn't be treated in New York, but they could be purchased elsewhere and then planted there, with no one the wiser. Furthermore, studies demonstrated that bees exposed to sublethal amounts of these neonicotinoids showed a loss in cognitive functions, including their ability to navigate home.

To Doan, this seemed like a breakthrough — a perfect explanation for why his bees hadn't just been dying, but disappearing altogether. He testified at the Environmental Protection Agency. He testified in front of Congress. He was interviewed for a Time magazine article on neonics in 2013, the very same year a report by the European Food Safety Authority showed "high acute risks" to bees from neonics and the European Union issued a ban on the three that are most widely used. Meanwhile, the Saving America's Pollinators Act, a congressional bill introduced in 2013 by Reps. John Conyers and Earl Blumenauer that would have taken neonics off the market until their safety was more definitively proven, never made it out of committee. (The bill was reintroduced this spring, but its fate remains uncertain.)

Doan waited expectantly for the EPA to step in and address the situation: "When I first started learning about this, I'm like, 'Well, the EPA's there to protect us. We don't have to worry about this, because the EPA's here to help.'"But as the years passed and the use of neonics spread, it started to seem that maybe the EPA wasn't there to help beekeepers after all. To Doan, the mystery of colony collapse disorder deepened. He no longer wondered what was killing his bees; he wondered why steps weren't being taken to save them. [...]

The EPA is doing nothing, is anyone surprised? And agribusiness is looking for new ways of pollinating without bees, or producing a genetically altered bee. Just what we need, Frankin Bees to go with our Frankinfoods.

The bee's aren't affected by the toxin immediately, the effects only start to show up 3 months later. The bees become confused, their cognitive functioning is impaired, and they can't find their way home to the hive. They can't function, and the hive dies.

And since the insecticide is systemic to the plants, we are eating it as well. What are the long term side effects of that? If it does this to bees, what would long term exposure do to people?

Read the whole things for links, details and more.

     

Why I'm not an Environmentalist

I really enjoyed the part about the spotted owl, it was spot-on:



“If I wanted America to fail” video goes viral, but Twitter suspends group’s account

“Crucify them:” It’s the Obama Way

I'm a conservationist, and I agree with practical things like recycling, clean air and water standards, efficient energy use, development of renewable energy sources, etc. But that doesn't mean I believe every liar with a hidden agenda who claims to be "Green". Too many of them are "Watermelons"; green on the outside, red on the inside.
     

Fossil Fuels: They've only just begun

I posted earlier about Peak Oil/increased-demand theory , causing shortages. But the following article from Salon.com changes all of that. It maintains that solar and wind power are endangered, not fossil fuels, which are in fact poised to really start to kick in:

Everything you've heard about fossil fuels may be wrong
The future of energy is not what you think it is

[...] it appears that the prophets of an age of renewable energy following Peak Oil got things backwards. We may be living in the era of Peak Renewables, which will be followed by a very long Age of Fossil Fuels that has only just begun.

Thanks to shale oil and natural gas, and new technologies that not only make them more easily available world-wide, but make them a cleaner alternative to coal. Read the whole thing, it's very thorough. It explains it's premise in detail, and presents a very compelling case. Gosh and Golly. Whodathunkit?
     

Earth Day: absurd & alarmist predictions of 1970

The following post was from Neal Boortz on "Earth Day" last Thursday. It shows how ridiculous and alarmist some environmental "experts" can be:

OH ... AND IT'S EARTH DAY

Well Bravo Foxtrot Delta. Earth Day. Quick ... let me eat some granola and recycle a newspaper.

Well ... I really must do something to celebrate Earth Day ... so how about this. I'm going to share a little list with you that was lifted from the libertarian website Reason.com. These predictions were made on Earth Day 1970. That was my first full year of talk radio, and I'm sure we were talking up these points back then.

So ... read and enjoy.

Earth Day Predictions, 1970 "We have about five more years at the outside to do something." • Kenneth Watt, ecologist "Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind." • George Wald, Harvard Biologist "We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation." • Barry Commoner, Washington University biologist "Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction." • New York Times editorial, the day after the first Earth Day "Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make. The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years." • Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist "By...[1975] some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of the 1980s." • Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist "It is already too late to avoid mass starvation." • Denis Hayes, chief organizer for Earth Day "Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions....By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine." • Peter Gunter, professor, North Texas State University "Scientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence to support...the following predictions: In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution...by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half...." • Life Magazine, January 1970 "At the present rate of nitrogen buildup, it's only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable." • Kenneth Watt, Ecologist "Air pollution...is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone." • Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist "We are prospecting for the very last of our resources and using up the nonrenewable things many times faster than we are finding new ones." • Martin Litton, Sierra Club director "By the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate...that there won't be any more crude oil. You'll drive up to the pump and say, `Fill 'er up, buddy,' and he'll say, `I am very sorry, there isn't any.'" • Kenneth Watt, Ecologist "Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, believes that in 25 years, somewhere between 75 and 80 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct." • Sen. Gaylord Nelson "The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years. If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age." • Kenneth Watt, Ecologist

Offshore Drilling? When? 7 years? Never?

Don’t Hold Your Breath for More Offshore Drilling

[...] …There may be deal making and an element of diversion as well. First of all the deal making. As you heard, the President wants a climate control bill, cap and trade of some form, this year, so he throws out more nuclear power, yes, you can have more nuclear power and now some more offshore drilling. That will be the nature of a deal. A climate bill in return for more drilling and more nukes. That’s the deal element here. The diversion is this: as early as tomorrow, our people in D.C. are telling us that maybe we will see new co2 emissions rules from the EPA. That would be tough on business. So what you do is you announce an extra off shore drilling today, divert from the negative headlines tomorrow, capture the public’s headlines with extra drilling today. So you’ve got a bit of a diversion here, and you’ve also got some deal making going on. What you do have, you do have a switch here, you’ve got the possibility of a lot more offshore drilling, but it’s way down the road.

The interior department is going to hold several years, that’s a direct quote, several years of environmental studies on those eastern seaboard, outer continental shelf drilling, then they come in with a report after several years, then the environmentalists will challenge it in court and hold it up for more years to come. I’m not going to put a year estimate on it, but I mean, it is way down the road, towards the end of this decade, before, if you ever see a single drop of offshore oil come ashore. [...]

I'm not surprised. Diversion indeed.
     

Cap and Trade: following California's example?

Green nonsense
The 'cap and trade' bill would cost much and deliver little

[...] Waxman-Markey is, ostensibly, a "cap and trade" bill, which would impose substantial costs. One is the direct cost to business to purchase from the government "credits" to emit carbon dioxide, a cost which, presumably, would be passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices. Consumers would have to pay much more for electric power, in particular, since it's much cheaper to generate electricity from carbon-emitting fossil fuels than from wind and solar, the sources favored by the Obama administration.

The whole point of cap and trade -- which President Obama is careful not to make explicit -- is to make fossil fuels so expensive we will use less of them.

The president won't call this a tax. But his most prominent supporter in the business community, billionaire investor Warren Buffett, thinks it's one which will devastate an economy already in "shambles."

"It's a huge tax and there is no sense calling it anything else," Mr. Buffett said in a CNBC interview June 24.

We rely on fossil fuels for 85 percent of the energy we use to run our automobiles; to heat, light and cool our homes and offices; and to power our factories. The problem with wind and solar is not just that they are much more expensive than coal, oil or natural gas, but that they can't begin to replace the amount of energy we get from fossil fuels. [...]

California tried to "Go Green" when Gray Davis was Governor. I remember it well, because we lived in California then and owned a restaurant.

The state invested it's money in solar and wind projects, instead of building new power plants. The solar and wind projects were expensive, and failed to produce the needed energy. We ended up with high energy costs and "rolling blackouts". California had to scramble to build additional power plants, the ones they should have built in the first place, but now at great additional cost to the taxpayers. The rolling blackouts were so bad, that many businesses left the state, which also decreased the tax base.

Try running a business with "rolling blackouts". With skyrocketing energy costs, and soaring taxes too. We, like many business owners, couldn't do it. We had to start borrowing money just to stay open. That was the beginning of the end. We closed our restaurant, sold our assets and moved to Oregon.

Meanwhile in California, Gray Davis was removed from office in a recall election. But the state's economy was badly damaged, and has never fully recovered. Trying to "go green" using technology that can't as yet replace fossil fuels, was one of the big contributing factors that has put California into the severe financial distress it finds itself in today.

California has showed us where this path leads. And yet, now we, as a nation, are now going to follow same path, and expect different results?


Related Links:

Harsh Truth About California. And Our Nation?

Green Energy, Blackouts, California and France

Nuclear power now!
     

George Carlin: "Save the F*cking Planet"

This is one of the funniest things I've seen in a while. HT to Neal Boortz.

Just for fun, here's George Carlin's take on Earth Day. Do I need to tell you that there will be bad words in this video? Well, there, I just did.

Carlin jokes about the arrogance of enviro-wackos. Deliciously scathing.
     

Look at One Year in Just 40 Seconds

This is the display sample video for "Today's Featured Videos" on iGoogle:



Very cool! If you go to the video's Google page, there is another video in the right sidebar by the same author, called "One Year in Two Minutes".
     

Was 2008 the year that Global Warming was finally debunked as Unscientific Nonsense?

Ask one of those polar bears that have failed to drown like they should have.


Or better still, read this article by Christopher Booker from the Telegraph:

2008 was the year man-made global warming was disproved

[...] Easily one of the most important stories of 2008 has been all the evidence suggesting that this may be looked back on as the year when there was a turning point in the great worldwide panic over man-made global warming. Just when politicians in Europe and America have been adopting the most costly and damaging measures politicians have ever proposed, to combat this supposed menace, the tide has turned in three significant respects.

First, all over the world, temperatures have been dropping in a way wholly unpredicted by all those computer models which have been used as the main drivers of the scare. Last winter, as temperatures plummeted, many parts of the world had snowfalls on a scale not seen for decades. This winter, with the whole of Canada and half the US under snow, looks likely to be even worse. After several years flatlining, global temperatures have dropped sharply enough to cancel out much of their net rise in the 20th century.

Ever shriller and more frantic has become the insistence of the warmists, cheered on by their army of media groupies such as the BBC, that the last 10 years have been the "hottest in history" and that the North Pole would soon be ice-free – as the poles remain defiantly icebound and those polar bears fail to drown. All those hysterical predictions that we are seeing more droughts and hurricanes than ever before have infuriatingly failed to materialise.

Even the more cautious scientific acolytes of the official orthodoxy now admit that, thanks to "natural factors" such as ocean currents, temperatures have failed to rise as predicted (although they plaintively assure us that this cooling effect is merely "masking the underlying warming trend", and that the temperature rise will resume worse than ever by the middle of the next decade).

Secondly, 2008 was the year when any pretence that there was a "scientific consensus" in favour of man-made global warming collapsed. At long last, as in the Manhattan Declaration last March, hundreds of proper scientists, including many of the world's most eminent climate experts, have been rallying to pour scorn on that "consensus" which was only a politically engineered artefact, based on ever more blatantly manipulated data and computer models programmed to produce no more than convenient fictions.

Thirdly, as banks collapsed and the global economy plunged into its worst recession for decades, harsh reality at last began to break in on those self-deluding dreams which have for so long possessed almost every politician in the western world. As we saw in this month's Poznan conference, when 10,000 politicians, officials and "environmentalists" gathered to plan next year's "son of Kyoto" treaty in Copenhagen, panicking politicians are waking up to the fact that the world can no longer afford all those quixotic schemes for "combating climate change" with which they were so happy to indulge themselves in more comfortable times.

Suddenly it has become rather less appealing that we should divert trillions of dollars, pounds and euros into the fantasy that we could reduce emissions of carbon dioxide by 80 per cent. All those grandiose projects for "emissions trading", "carbon capture", building tens of thousands more useless wind turbines, switching vast areas of farmland from producing food to "biofuels", are being exposed as no more than enormously damaging and futile gestures, costing astronomic sums we no longer possess.

As 2009 dawns, it is time we in Britain faced up to the genuine crisis now fast approaching from the fact that – unless we get on very soon with building enough proper power stations to fill our looming "energy gap" - within a few years our lights will go out and what remains of our economy will judder to a halt. After years of infantile displacement activity, it is high time our politicians – along with those of the EU and President Obama's US – were brought back with a mighty jolt into contact with the real world. [...]

We can only hope. But fantasies don't always die easily. I expect that just like Holocaust deniers, the hard core of the Global Warming Chicken Littles will always be with us.

And of course, since global warming has failed to materialize, it's adherents now claim that, no matter what the weather does, it's all proof that their theory is true anyway:

"Global warming" is a pseudo-science like astrology

A theory that can't be disproved, because no matter what happens, it's true anyway? What's science got to do with it? Nothing that's demonstrably true.
     

Totally electric cars not viable any time soon

I'm all for "green" technology, but only when it actually works. At this point in time, the best "green" cars we can make won't be electric ones. Consider this:

Politically inconvenient truth about electric cars

[...] Mr Sarkozy’s own government commissioned months ago one of France’s leading energy experts – Jean Syrota, the former French energy industry regulator – to draw up a report to analyse all the options for building cleaner and more efficient mass-market cars by 2030. The 129-page report was completed in September to coincide with the Paris motor show. But the government has continued to sit on it and seems reluctant to ever publish it.

Yet all those who have managed to glimpse at the document agree that it makes interesting reading. It concludes that there is not much future in the much vaunted developed of all electric-powered cars. Instead, it suggests that the traditional combustion engine powered by petrol, diesel, ethanol or new biofuels still offers the most realistic prospect of developing cleaner vehicles. Carbon emissions and fuel consumption could be cut by 30-40 per cent simply by improving the performance and efficiency of traditional engines and limiting the top speed to about 170km/hr. Even that is well above the average top speed restriction in Europe, with the notable exception of Germany. New so-called “stop and start” mechanisms can produce further 10 per cent reductions that can rise to 25-30 per cent in cities. Enhancements in car electronics as well as the development of more energy efficient tyres, such as Michelin’s new “energy saver” technology, are also expected to help reduce consumption and pollution.

Overall, the Syrota report says that adapting and improving conventional engines could enhance their efficiency by an average of 50 per cent. It also argues that new-generation hybrid cars combining conventional engines with electric propulsion could provide an interesting future alternative.

By combining electric batteries with conventional fuel-driven engines, cars could run on clean electricity for short urban trips while switching over to fuel on motorways. This would resolve one of the biggest problems facing all electric cars – the need to install costly battery recharging infrastructures. The report warns that the overall cost of an all-electric car remains unviable at around double that of a conventional vehicle. Battery technology is still unsatisfactory, severely limiting performance both in terms of range and speed. The electricity supply for these batteries would continue to come from mostly fossil sources.

The misgivings over the future of the electric car may explain why the French government appears to have spiked the report. It probably considers it politically incorrect [...]

This pretty much fits in with many of the things I've read. Improving conventional gas combustion cars to be more efficient, and improving hybrid cars until batter technology improves. If we are going to think seriously about having "greener" cars, we have to be PRACTICAL, by supporting what works, not POLITICALLY CORRECT by insisting on promoting technologies into the mainstream that cannot perform yet.

That is one of the things I find worrisome about our own Congress and their Auto Industry Bailout plans. Congress seems hell bent on forcing the introduction of electric cars, before the technology is good enough. They can throw a lot of our tax money down the drain on political correctness, forcing the mass production of inefficient, overpriced electric cars that no one will buy. No one can waste money like government can.

The suggestions in the French report for improving gas combustion engines would do a lot to help reduce carbon emissions, but it's being repressed in favor of an untenable solution. You have to wonder if the real motive isn't to reduce carbon emissions, but to reduce personal freedom and capitalism by restricting transportation choices?

Environmentalism is increasingly being used as an excuse to promote other, hidden political agendas by the Left. We must be wary, and carefully separate authentic environmentalism from the political kind.


Related Links:

Congressional Motor's New Car of the Future

Ford Motor Company is profitable - in Brazil
     

Sarah Palin on Energy for America

Here is an interview with Sara Palin that was done August 1st 2008, by Larry Kudlow. She talks about America's energy needs and what Alaska can offer, and how and why she needed to fight the corruption in the state to achieve the natural gas pipeline to the lower 48.

My Interview with Alaska Governor Sarah Palin

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has exactly the high energy, political toughness, and conservative reform message that would boost Sen. John McCain’s presidential run if Big Mac were to put her on the ticket. In an interview last evening on CNBC, Palin was very clear on her drill, drill, drill message for Alaska and the rest of the U.S., along with her strong supply-side tax-cutting and free-market economic views. She did not shirk from questions about an investigation of her firing the state’s safety commissioner. She told us she has nothing to hide — let them bring it on.

Palin is dealing with Alaska’s culture of corruption by supporting all manner of reform and investigation. She basically dissed Ted Stevens, calling him a distraction. She then talked about cleansing the Republican party of all the pork-barrel corruption that cost it the congressional election of November 2006.

Palin’s response to all the vice-presidential talk is fascinating. It was a point of view I have never heard before and it underscored her independence. I have interviewed all the veep prospects, and I still have Gov. Palin at the top of my list.

I hope readers will enjoy this interview: [...]

(bold emphasis mine) I enjoyed it! And in case you missed it, this video is also excellent:



A practical energy policy we can believe in. Follow the "Energy VP" link below, where Pat has a link to the entire video.


Related Links:

Palin - the energy VP

Fred Thompson Sizes Sarah Up

The Four Stages of Conservative Female Abuse

Colorado teacher and mother of four: A Vote for Sarah Palin
     

China's enormous pollution problems

China has some of the most beautiful wilderness in the world:



This is a photo of the Jiuzhaigou valley in Sichuan province, central-western China. Stunningly beautiful. Often called "China's Yosemite".

Jiuzhaigou National Nature Reserve

Jiuzhaigou National Nature Reserve lies in Jiuzhaigou County, northwest of Sichuan Province in the southern part of Minshan Mountains, approximately 400 kilometers from Chengdu City. Established in 1978, the Reserve covers an area of 60,000 hectares with its name stemming from 9 Tibetan villages nearby. Luxuriant forests and snow peaks in Jiuzhaigou make it a spectacular gem of nature. Jiuzhaigou is a comprehensive nature reserve, its main protection targets are pandas, other rare wildlife and forest ecosystem. In 1992, it was listed in the World's Natural Heritage, and three years later, it was included in the International Man and Biosphere Reserve Network of UNESCO. [...]

That particular area may be protected, but the rest of China is experiencing severe problems from pollution. From Peter Navarro at Asia Times On-line:

China's pollution Olympics

Sometimes it's the little stories that tell us the most. Consider the news of a keel-crippling algal bloom covering a third of the Olympic sailing course in Qingdao, China. While a small army of workers, a large armada of boats, and a full battalion of dump trucks and bulldozers are desperately trying to clear up this embarrassing counterpoint to China's claim of a "green games", international competitors desperate for practice are forced to stew in dry dock.

In fact, this kind of event is far from atypical in the world's most polluted nation. Today, fully 70% of China's seven major rivers are severely polluted, 80% of its rivers fail to meet standards for fishing, and 90% of the country's cities suffer from some degree of water pollution. As a result, over 700 million Chinese drink fetid water of a quality well below World Health Organization standards. Meanwhile, liver and stomach cancers related to water pollution are among the leading causes of death in the countryside, while 21 cities along the Yellow River are characterized by the highest measurable levels of pollution.

As for this particular - and particularly extensive - algal bloom in Qingdao, it is being caused in large part by equally massive misuse of fertilizer. As the world's largest fertilizer user, China consumes more than 50 million tonnes annually. Far too often, untrained peasants apply far too much fertilizer to their meager plots in the false hopes of boosting yields. The result has been a new kind of "flooding" problem, that of excess fertilizer runoff flooding into rivers and streams. [...]

Bold emphasis mine. Read the whole thing for more details. Is it any wonder they ship us contaminated food? They are choking to death on their own air and water pollution. They are having their industrial revolution in the information age. Instead of hiding information, they need to use information to become informed about consequences, and clean up their act, literally. For their sake and ours.
     

Save the Earth, Eat Insects

It's no joke:

Liberals Want You To Eat Bugs

Eeew.

     

John McCain, Global Warming, Cleaner Air, Silver Lined Clouds and Sweet Lemonade

I've been ranting a lot lately about supporting our candidate, even when you can't agree with him on many issues. It's clearly difficult when you don't agree with your party's potential leader. I've compared it to making lemonade out of lemons. Perhaps it's my turn to make the lemonade.

Anyone who's read my blog knows what I think about the global warming hoax. Anyone who sees the news knows that John McCain is actively playing up to it.

Yes, it bothers me. Many times in my life, I've embraced the philosophy of finding silver linings in clouds, or making lemonade out of lemons. And yes, I've applied it to this. I'll start with the cloud first. Yes, I found the silver lining. For me it is thus:

Pat recently used the word "Watermelons" to describe many of the people who dominate the environmental movement; they are green on the outside, red on the inside. Their concern for the environment is only skin deep, it's really just a cover for their leftist anti-capitalist agenda. Their main purpose is to use environmentalism to attack capitalism, the same way many leftists support gay rights, radical feminists and black separatists; they care nothing for these causes, they are just supported by leftists to be used as a means to an end.

I consider myself "green" in the genuine sense; things like recycling and conserving energy and using resources efficiently, and conserving our environment by developing renewable resources are, to me, wonderful conservative ideas. Authentic environmentalism doesn't bother me, but the watermelons like Al Gore and company do.

When president Bush first mentioned global warming in his state of the union address, I was quite annoyed with him. I suspect he was simply trying to address an issue that has many Americans concerned, because he is supposed to be president of all the people, and as such it's necessary to stretch yourself at times to address issues that may not be your own, or at least not your priority.

I expect the same with John McCain, but he has walked through the door George Bush opened, and taken this issue to the next level. What good could come out of this? I can honestly think of a few things:

1.) If he treats the issue moderately, he will be appreciated by moderates who want to see something done, while simultaneously taking some of the wind out of the sails of the loonies and the radical left who are egging them on.

2.) Many of the solutions that are desired by global warmist believers also mesh nicely with concerns of many Republicans like myself. Developing alternative energy sources, including nuclear power, reducing dependency on oil, conserving energy, less waste of resources... if we can agree on these things, even if it's for different reasons, then why shouldn't we?

3.) We end up with cleaner air. Is this a bad thing? We all need to breath, and so will future generations. The pollution we release into the air can't be called back, it just keeps building up. It builds up gradually and we don't notice. Then one day, it's too late. Nuclear waste can be contained, and 80 percent of it can now be recycled. Other alternate energy sources don't pollute. Placing caps on emissions would provide incentive to support and speed their development.

Ok, that's the silver lining. But there are dangers inherent here. No matter what McCain does, the radical left will scream that it's not enough, and push for more, to try and damage our economy as much a possible. But by treating their concerns seriously and attempting to do something about it, he's also entering a tug-of-war contest, that will bring him close to the edge of the hoax abyss. If he can maintain his position and balance, fine. If he gets pulled over the edge, it could be disastrous.

So then comes the question: can we make lemonade out of this? I'm willing to try, but it depends on how far left he gets dragged. If he's pulled too far, the lemons will be so sour that I doubt any amount of sugar could fix it. I'm hoping he can build enough moderate support in this cause, to anchor him and keep him away from the cliff's edge, where the extremists want to go. If he can maintain the necessary balance, I will support him in this... but cautiously.

Can We Sue Al Gore and Carbon Credit Sellers?

Here is a scathing article by Eric Creed of Cityview magazine:

The Greatest Hoax Ever Perpetrated

[...] OK, I am a skeptic. When every lunatic liberal leftist on the face of the planet says we need to close down the carbon emissions of industry (carbon caps) and spend trillions of dollars trying to fix something that (1.) we don’t know if we caused it (the factual evidence says we didn’t), and (2.) if we did cause global warming, is it really in our power to fix (reverse) it, red flags go up. Many leading scientists firmly believe that more CO2 in the atmosphere is actually good for the planet. David Archibald, PhD, at the Biology Department of San Diego State University, is one of those leading scientists. In a lecture given at the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change, Dr. Archibald said that more CO2 in the atmosphere will give us a lusher environment and actually increase plant growth rates in addition to increasing the sustainability of crops in arid regions. [...]

This article is full of details about the fraudulent data that Al Gore and company have been peddling. At one point, it's suggested that Al Gore and people selling carbon credits should be sued for fraud. It would expose the financing behind the global warming hoax and allow testimony by reputable scientists who are informed with the complete data, not the faulty, incomplete and deliberately misleading computer models Al Gore has been using. Apparently this has been happening in Britain, and the real Inconvenient Truths have finally started to be debated honestly.

It's fine for people to be concerned about the environment, but debate and discussion about it has to be open and honest, and not ignore FACTS such as the sun's influence, and how the Earth's history is full of abrupt climate changes:

Study of Greenland Ice Finds Rapid Change in Past Climate

We have nothing to fear from the truth. Liars are a different matter.
     

Is Carbon Dioxide actually our Friend?

In praise of CO2
With less heat and less carbon dioxide, the planet could become less hospitable and less green

[...] Until the 1980s, ecologists had no way to systematically track growth in plant matter in every corner of the Earth -- the best they could do was analyze small plots of one-tenth of a hectare or less. The notion of continuously tracking global production to discover the true state of the globe's biota was not even considered.

Then, in the 1980s, ecologists realized that satellites could track production, and enlisted NASA to collect the data. For the first time, ecologists did not need to rely on rough estimates or anecdotal evidence of the health of the ecology: They could objectively measure the land's output and soon did -- on a daily basis and down to the last kilometre.

More from FP Oil Watch

The results surprised Steven Running of the University of Montana and Ramakrishna Nemani of NASA, scientists involved in analyzing the NASA data. They found that over a period of almost two decades, the Earth as a whole became more bountiful by a whopping 6.2%. About 25% of the Earth's vegetated landmass -- almost 110 million square kilometres -- enjoyed significant increases and only 7% showed significant declines. When the satellite data zooms in, it finds that each square metre of land, on average, now produces almost 500 grams of greenery per year.

Why the increase? Their 2004 study, and other more recent ones, point to the warming of the planet and the presence of CO2, a gas indispensable to plant life. CO2 is nature's fertilizer, bathing the biota with its life-giving nutrients. Plants take the carbon from CO2 to bulk themselves up -- carbon is the building block of life -- and release the oxygen, which along with the plants, then sustain animal life. As summarized in a report last month, released along with a petition signed by 32,000 U. S. scientists who vouched for the benefits of CO2: "Higher CO2 enables plants to grow faster and larger and to live in drier climates. Plants provide food for animals, which are thereby also enhanced. The extent and diversity of plant and animal life have both increased substantially during the past half-century."

Lush as the planet may now be, it is as nothing compared to earlier times, when levels of CO2 and Earth temperatures were far higher. [...]

The article goes on about the extensive benefits, including more abundant food. But if we are to believe radical leftists who claim that CO2 is a bad thing, what would it REALLY mean if we were seriously try to stop it? This next article tells us about the many sacred cows of the environmental movement that would be skewered by serious attempts to limit CO2:

Inconvenient Truths: Get Ready to Rethink What It Means to Be Green

[...]Winning the war on global warming requires slaughtering some of environmentalism's sacred cows. We can afford to ignore neither the carbon-free electricity supplied by nuclear energy nor the transformational potential of genetic engineering. We need to take advantage of the energy efficiencies offered by urban density. We must accept that the world's fastest-growing economies won't forgo a higher standard of living in the name of climate science — and that, on the way up, countries like India and China might actually help devise the solutions the planet so desperately needs. [...]

The article goes on to give 10 Green Heresies that environmentalists need to embrace if they are serious about stopping greenhouse gases. You may find them shocking, even if you aren't "green"!
     

Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs use Mercury; is it bad science, an environmental scam, or both?

These bulbs are becoming increasingly common. Yet they contain mercury, a toxic element that environmentalists warn us about continually. If you break one of these bulbs, how dangerous do you think it is? Is a $2,000 "toxic cleanup" really required? And if so, according to whose standards?

Steven Milloy, publisher of JunkScience.com and CSRWatch.com, has the following article in Canada's Financial Post. Some excerpts:

The CFL mercury nightmare

How much money does it take to screw in a compact fluorescent light bulb? About US$4.28 for the bulb and labour -- unless you break the bulb. Then you, like Brandy Bridges of Ellsworth, Maine, could be looking at a cost of about US$2,004.28, which doesn't include the costs of frayed nerves and risks to health.

Sound crazy? Perhaps no more than the stampede to ban the incandescent light bulb in favor of compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs). [...]

It goes on to tell the nightmare story of what happened when a Maine housewife broke one of the bulbs in her daughters bedroom, and ended up dealing with her state's Department of Environmental Protection.

These bulbs are being pushed on consumers, and are also advocated by environmentalists. Yet, how safe are they? If they are really that toxic, why aren't we being warned? Is there some hypocrisy at work here?

[...] It's quite odd that environmentalists have embraced the CFL, which cannot now and will not in the foreseeable future be made without mercury. Given that there are about five billion light bulb sockets in North American households, we're looking at the possibility of creating billions of hazardous waste sites such as the Bridges' bedroom.

Usually, environmentalists want hazardous materials out of, not in, our homes. These are the same people who go berserk at the thought of mercury being emitted from power plants and the presence of mercury in seafood. Environmentalists have whipped up so much fear of mercury among the public that many local governments have even launched mercury thermometer exchange programs.

As the activist group Environmental Defense urges us to buy CFLs, it defines mercury on a separate part of its Web site as a "highly toxic heavy metal that can cause brain damage and learning disabilities in fetuses and children" and as "one of the most poisonous forms of pollution."

Greenpeace also recommends CFLs while simultaneously bemoaning contamination caused by a mercury-thermometer factory in India. But where are mercury-containing CFLs made? Not in the United States, under strict environmental regulation. CFLs are made in India and China, where environmental standards are virtually non-existent.

And let's not forget about the regulatory nightmare in the U.S. known as the Superfund law, the EPA regulatory program best known for requiring expensive but often needless cleanup of toxic waste sites, along with endless litigation over such cleanups. [...]

It sounds like some folks want to have it both ways. Is there an Inconvenient Truth we're missing here? Wouldn't some GOOD science, and truthfulness and honesty be preferable?




The only warning on the packaging of the bulbs I have is to keep the bulbs away from radios, TVs, wireless phones and remote controls, as they may cause interference. It also says to keep them away from maritime safety equipment or other critical navigation or communication equipment operating between 0.45-35 MHz.

There is also a caution that it's not intended for use with emergency exit fixtures or lights, electronic timers, photocells or dimmers.

It also warns that the lamp may shatter and cause injury if broken, but it doesn't say anything about how you should clean it up if the bulb breaks. For disposal, it refers you to a website: www.lamprecycle.org. Since recycling is voluntary, I'm sure most of the bulbs just end up in the trash, getting crushed in land-fill dumps.

It makes me long for the good old days, when a light bulb was a light bulb.

I expect the DEP, with their $2,000 plan to clean up one CFL bulb, was doing what government bureaucrats are so good at doing; creating jobs for themselves. But it's still true that mercury is toxic. I find it ironic that environmentalist who are pushing to have mercury no longer used in thermometers, gleefully push CFL bulbs. How many thermometers do you throw away per year, compared to light bulbs?

But surely there is hardly any mercury in the bulb? Good question. The article continues:

[...] We'll eventually be disposing billions and billions of CFL mercury bombs. Much of the mercury from discarded and/or broken CFLs is bound to make its way into the environment and give rise to Superfund liability, which in the past has needlessly disrupted many lives, cost tens of billions of dollars and sent many businesses into bankruptcy.

As each CFL contains five milligrams of mercury, at the Maine "safety" standard of 300 nanograms per cubic meter, it would take 16,667 cubic meters of soil to "safely" contain all the mercury in a single CFL. While CFL vendors and environmentalists tout the energy cost savings of CFLs, they conveniently omit the personal and societal costs of CFL disposal. [...]

Milloy maintains that Environmentalists and vendors like Walmart are working together to push CFLs on us, without acknowledging the true long term consequences and costs. It would seem that "feel-goodism" trumps good science once again. And government bureaucrats get to create a problem and then offer themselves later as the solution to cleaning it up, insuring they will always have government jobs. How nice for them; how expensive for us. I recommend reading the whole article.