Tuesday - September 30, 2008

Now it’s methane that will kill us all

Methane melting out of seabeds: We’re All DOOMED

Arctic scientists discover new global warming threat as melting permafrost releases millions of tons of a gas 20 times more damaging than carbon dioxide

Oh noes!!!

The first evidence that millions of tons of a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide is being released into the atmosphere from beneath the Arctic seabed has been discovered by scientists.

The Independent has been passed details of preliminary findings suggesting that massive deposits of sub-sea methane are bubbling to the surface as the Arctic region becomes warmer and its ice retreats....
Underground stores of methane are important because scientists believe their sudden release has in the past been responsible for rapid increases in global temperatures, dramatic changes to the climate, and even the mass extinction of species. Scientists aboard a research ship that has sailed the entire length of Russia’s northern coast have discovered intense concentrations of methane – sometimes at up to 100 times background levels – over several areas covering thousands of square miles of the Siberian continental shelf.

In the past few days, the researchers have seen areas of sea foaming with gas bubbling up through “methane chimneys” rising from the sea floor. They believe that the sub-sea layer of permafrost, which has acted like a “lid” to prevent the gas from escaping, has melted away to allow methane to rise from underground deposits formed before the last ice age.

They have warned that this is likely to be linked with the rapid warming that the region has experienced in recent years.

Methane is about 20 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide and many scientists fear that its release could accelerate global warming in a giant positive feedback where more atmospheric methane causes higher temperatures, leading to further permafrost melting and the release of yet more methane.

“The conventional thought has been that the permafrost ‘lid’ on the sub-sea sediments on the Siberian shelf should cap and hold the massive reservoirs of shallow methane deposits in place. The growing evidence for release of methane in this inaccessible region may suggest that the permafrost lid is starting to get perforated and thus leak methane… The permafrost now has small holes. We have found elevated levels of methane above the water surface and even more in the water just below. It is obvious that the source is the seabed.”

The Arctic region as a whole has seen a 4C rise in average temperatures over recent decades and a dramatic decline in the area of the Arctic Ocean covered by summer sea ice. Many scientists fear that the loss of sea ice could accelerate the warming trend because open ocean soaks up more heat from the sun than the reflective surface of an ice-covered sea.

Hey, way ahead of you there buddy! The Japanese have already mostly figured out how to do it. But, surprise!, the eco-whackos are against it.

Japan is celebrating a groundbreaking science experiment in the Arctic permafrost that may eventually reshape the country’s fragile economy and Tokyo’s relationships with the outside world.

For an unprecedented six straight days, a state-backed drilling company has managed to extract industrial quantities of natural gas from underground sources of methane hydrate - a form of gas-rich ice once thought to exist only on the moons of Saturn.

In fact, the seabeds around the Japanese coast turn out to conceal massive deposits of the elusive sorbet-like compound in their depths, and a country that has long assumed it had virtually no fossil fuels could now be sitting on energy reserves containing 100 years’ fuel. Critically for Japan, which imports 99.7 per cent of the oil, gas and coal needed to run its vast economy, the lumps of energy-filled ice offer the tantalising promise of a little energy independence.

Environmentalists, though, are horrified by the idea of releasing huge quantities of methane from under the seabeds. Although methane is a cleaner-burning fossil fuel than coal or oil, the as yet untapped methane hydrates represent “captured” greenhouse gasses that some believe should remain locked under the sea. The mining of methane ice could also wreak havoc on marine ecosystems.

And they aren’t alone. There is methane hydrate under the seafloor all over the world. Off all the coasts. The US has loads of it. Zillions of tons of the crap. Why? Because it’s naturally produced! It’s the half decayed remains of billions of years worth of sea critters. All we have to do is figure out how to get it up, either in a frozen state, or thaw it out and suck it up and bottle it. And that’s exactly what the oil companies are working on right now.

Anchorage, Alaska - Scientists from the U.S. Energy Department are looking for ways to tap a new and unusual source of natural gas underneath the frozen ground near Prudhoe Bay. 
Gas hydrates—methane gas trapped in ice—were recently drilled by oil giant BP near its Milne Point well.

Have you ever seen ice burn? It will, when the ice contains methane gas, and that simple fact has scientists from around the globe looking to Prudhoe Bay and a new test well drilled by BP.

“You would probably say it looked like snow,” said Scott Digert. 

What to most may look like an especially hard-hitting snowball could be a source of energy for researchers at BP, including Digert, who is BP Alaska’s Milne Point Resource manager.

“It’s a gas molecule contained in an ice lattice, which provides quite a good storage for methane molecules inside a frozen zone,” said Digert. 

Methane gas trapped in ice. And it burns.  Scientists with the federal Energy Department paid $4.6 million to drill for the hot ice just below the surface of the Milne Point well, which is situated northwest of Prudhoe Bay. Methane will only stay in its solid or frozen state at extremely cold temperatures and under lots of pressure, both of which are abundant in Alaska’s frozen grounds.  Until recently, though, hydrates were seen as a drilling hazard.

“When you warm it up or you take the pressure off of it, it starts to thaw, basically. So you get free water and free gas, the methane, and so we try to control the release of that gas,” Digert said. 

Now, scientists from around the world are waiting for pieces of this strange ice to conduct their own tests and determine whether Alaska’s frozen grounds contain untapped, clean-burning energy. BP says it found two separate layers of gas containing ice at Milne Point, each about 25-feet thick.  Operators drilled it many times over to come up with about 400 feet of 3-inch diameter ice cores that will be sent via cryogenic packaging to labs around the world for further study. But if gas hydrates contain clean burning energy, why hasn’t any one done test drilling to find them on the North Slope before? Methane needs extremely cold temperatures and pressure to stay in its solid form. BP says it new this form of methane was under the tundra all along. On the surface, it is a flammable gas, and only recently have scientists determined how to safely bring the ice to surface without melting it first.

   Saturday - September 27, 2008

Now councils tell us what to eat.  (now I ask you. how could I ignore this one?) for real? yup.

Ain’t this stupid?  See where tree hugging left wing PC leads?
I don’t have time to make the MANY comments running through my head at the moment. Or the questions.

Like most ppl have the time for this stupidity.  Sure, many folks grow their own veggies and such. But this goes way beyond that and anyway, you’d need to involve the whole country to get anywhere.  Fat chance of that.

Have to go off line for some hours.  Just couldn’t save this for later.  Duh! 

Bin collections row: Now councils tell us what to eat
Householders are being told what to eat by councils in the latest controversial plan to cut down on domestic waste.

By Christopher Hope, Home Affairs Editor
Last Updated: 2:06PM BST 26 Sep 2008

Local authorities have devised a “council cook book” featuring such culinary delights as beans and egg on toast, lentil salad and home-made muesli, which can be made without buying anything in throwaway packaging.

It has been produced as part of Zero Waste Challenge Week, in which four councils in the West Country are challenging residents to go for a seven days without producing any rubbish.

But critics claim it is yet more evidence of a sustained assault on people’s rights to weekly bin collections, as well as being patronising.

Among the tips contained in leaflets produced by the councils are that people should make their own food, such as yogurt, and take resealable boxes to the butcher so meat does not have to be put in plastic bags.

Recipes contained in the leaflets are made up of ingredients which can all be bought either in paper bags, cardboard boxes, tins or jars, which can all be recycled.

Zero Waste Challenge Week, which has been devised by Bristol City Council, Bath and North East Somerset Council, South Gloucestershire Council and North Somerset Council, starts on Monday.

The councils want community groups, schools and residents to sign up to the challenge not to throw anything away in the dustbin by only using products that can be reused or recycled.

A leaflet says: “That way we’re left with nothing else to throw away in the bin.”

The leaflet adds: “We believe that if you make enough changes, it is possible to achieve a Zero Waste Week. However, the aim of the challenge is to see how close you can go.

“Circumstances are different for everyone and even if you don’t quite manage to achieve Zero Waste, you’ll find you can have a dramatic effect on the amount you throw away.”

The results will be used by the councils to advise on future recycling and rubbish collection strategies.

The councils say: “Completing and returning your record sheet will allow us to assess the success of the scheme and help us to find ways to tackle waste minimisation in the future.”

Crucially, commercial waste – such as rubbish thrown away at work – is not included in the project.

Last night the Conservatives criticised the plans.

Eric Pickles, the shadow local government secretary, said: “We are entering a brave new world of fortnightly rubbish collections that we all know is going to fuel a surge in fly-tipping and backyard burning.

“This is not a responsible or practical way of encouraging recycling but merely a cleverly disguised form of propaganda attempting to peddle the benefits of fortnightly rubbish collections for town halls. This is bureaucratic convenience, without any public benefit.

“Recycling rates are going up which begs the question why do we need this. We want people to be environmentally responsible but employing the heavy hand of the state is not the solution.”
Top Tips for Zero Waste Week

* Avoid food contained in packaging that cannot be recycled, like crisps

* Try making your own food, like yogurt

* Take your own plastic boxes to the local butcher or green grocer to cut back on packaging

* Plan ahead so that you are not caught out throwing something away.

* Buy bread wrapped in paper, rather than plastic packaging

http://tinyurl.com/3ut5qc

   Thursday - September 25, 2008

WIND TURBINES CAN BE A WASTE OF TIME AND MONEY.  (don’t say)

Kinda bringing BMEWSers up ta date case they didn’t already know.
Also wanted to get this posted fast before Drew put one on his house or Grumpy. All the regulars.  Now you’ve seen this you won’t rush out to buy.

However ... I do have an idiot cousin born on April 1st who is also a donk libtard that I don’t usually acknowledge and do not speak to.
She might have this.  Hey ... every family has one ya know.  How about, almost every family.

Wind turbines in suburban areas a ‘waste of time and money’
Wind turbines are a waste of time and money for any householder that lives in a built-up or suburban area, according to a leading consumer watchdog.

By Harry Wallop, Consumer Affairs Editor
Last Updated: 12:12AM BST 25 Sep 2008

The ultimate green lifestyle statement could, in fact, end up using up energy rather than creating it, said Which?, the consumer organisation, which has tested one over the last year.

Between December 2007 and June 2008 the turbine, on top of a roof in Milton Keynes, used up more electricity that it generated. That is due to an inverter that converts energy into a form that is usable by the mains – but it constantly uses power, even when the turbine is not turning.

Chirstopher Christoforou, principal researcher at Which?, said: “This house is not in the centre of town, it’s in a suburban area. We can’t recommend any domestic wind turbine if you live in a built-up environment of any sort. It really isn’t worth the money.”

The tester installed a Windsave WS1000 turbine – the most popular domestic turbine, which is sold at the B&Q chain – late last year. The machine costs £1,5000 but between December 2007 and June 2008 it actually used up 9.4 kilowatt hours of power – the equivalent of boiling a litre of water in a kettle 85 times.

This is the latest report to suggest that wind turbines – famously championed by David Cameron atop of his Notting Hill house – can never solve Britain’s lack of cheap energy.

Friends of the Earth have admitted that domestic wind turbines are too often a “glamourous statement” and that consumers should invest in other, more efficient forms of energy saving such as loft insulation.

Earlier this month a joint study by the Carbon Trust and Met Office said small-scale wind energy could in theory generate some 41.3 terawatt hours of electricity – 12 per cent of UK electricity consumption – each year.

But with current electricity prices and the cost of small wind turbines, only a fraction of that is deliverable. The study concluded that if one in ten households had turbines, they would produce just 0.4 per cent of total UK energy consumption a year.

Windsave, the manufacturers of the turbines, have rounded on Which?, claiming the organisation was “inept” and failed to listen to its advice that the tester’s house was not in an windy enough area.

The house in Milton Keynes has an average wind speed of 4.7 meters per second.

The company says the speed needs to average 5 meters per second before the turbine generates energy. The average across Britain is 5.8 meters per second.

David Gordon, the chief executive of the company, said: “They are out to castigate a pioneer in the industry.”

The company sent a disclaimer to the tester saying the site was not windy enough – but this was a full year after tester ordered the turbine, but had yet to install it because of planning problems.

Mr Christoforou said: “Our tester did sign the disclaimer, but let’s face it 4.7 meters per second is not far off 5 meters per second and yet we ended up using energy rather than generating it.”

Mr Gordon insisted that at 5 meters per second one of his turbines would generate enough energy for a consumer to make a return on their £1,500 machine in seven years.

http://tinyurl.com/5yc4ro

   Sunday - September 21, 2008

CARBON CREDIT SCAM and OUR WEEKLY LOOK AT ENVIRO-WACKOS & FIBS

Financial crisis: Lehman misses out on carbon credit scam

By Christopher Booker
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 21/09/2008

What is the connection between the bankrupt Lehman Brothers and the likelihood that in four years’ time our electricity bills will jump another 25 per cent (on top of the rises likely from soaring coal and gas prices)?

The answer is that, before its collapse, Lehman was pitching to become the leader in the vast trade created by the new worldwide regulatory system to “fight climate change” by curbing emissions of carbon dioxide.

The biggest money-spinners will be the schemes whereby industry will pay for permits to emit CO2 at so much a ton, either directly to governments or by buying them on an international market.

This market, soon to be worth trillions of pounds, was where Lehman hoped to be “the prime brokerage for emissions permits”, as it set out in two hefty reports on “The Business of Climate Change”.

Advised by some of the world’s leading global warming activists, such as Dr James Hansen and Al Gore (a close friend of the firm’s erstwhile managing director Theodore Roosevelt IV), Lehman bought their message wholesale. GIM, the company set up by Gore to sell “carbon offsets” in return for planting trees, was a prized Lehman client.

The particular market that Lehman hoped to dominate is centred on the buying and selling of carbon permits, through the EU’s Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) set up in 2005, the UN’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and the “cap and trade” system proposed for the US by both McCain and Obama.

This may still seem abstract but it will affect all our lives, because ultimately we will all be paying for it, through the colossal costs it will impose on industry, not least electricity.

The EU scheme already adds more than a billion pounds a year to our electricity bills. In four years’ time it will become much more obvious when, under phase two of the ETS, permits will be auctioned, at a projected initial figure of £35 per ton of CO2.

On the basis of current wholesale prices, the annual cost of electricity used in the UK alone is around £32 billion. Adding £35 for every ton of CO2 emitted in producing it will mean that our electricity supply companies will have to pay £8 billion for their permits, adding 25 per cent to the total cost. Under EU rules, this must be passed on to all of us in our bills.

The idea is that, to reduce carbon emissions by an eventual 60 per cent, the number of permits auctioned will reduce year by year, leaving an ever larger shortfall which firms will have to account for either by reducing emissions or by buying additional permits - not least from the developing world under the UN’s CDM.

Everything about this grandiose scheme betokens the economics of the madhouse.

The new costs it will impose are so colossal that whole industries, including aluminium, steel and Germany’s chemical companies, threaten to move their operations outside the EU unless they are given free allocations. It has not even been agreed who - whether national governments or the EU itself - will run the auctions or keep the hundreds of billions of euros a year the scheme will raise.

China, by virtue of having built giant dams to produce electricity, will be a net “carbon creditor”, able to sell permits to the EU worth billions more, despite continuing to build a new coal-fired power station every four days.

So will Russia, thanks to it having closed down so much of its polluting industry after the fall of Communism. There is not the slightest indication that the scheme itself will result in any lowering of global CO2 emissions.

What is certain is that it will pile astronomic costs onto everyone in the EU, inevitably impacting most severely on poorer householders that will face bills they cannot afford. The only other certainty - perhaps a consolation - is that those sharing in this bonanza will not include Lehman Brothers, now excluded from cashing in on what threatens to become the maddest scam the world has ever seen.

BBC series stitches up sceptics in counter-attack over climate change

As informed questioning of the global warming orthodoxy rises on all sides, the BBC’s three-part series Climate Wars, ending tonight, bears all the marks of a carefully planned counter-attack.

BBC science producers were apoplectic at the attention given last year to Martin Durkin’s Channel 4 documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle, featuring a galaxy of the world’s more sceptical climate scientists. This is their riposte.

Last week, against a range of far-flung locations from Greenland to California, the presenter, Dr Iain Stewart, tackled three of the main arguments of Durkin’s film.

In each case the technique was the same. After caricaturing the sceptics’ point, with soundbite clips that did not allow them to develop their scientific argument, he then asserted that they had somehow been discredited.

For example, doubts had been raised over the reliability of satellite temperature records which do not show the same degree of warming as surface readings. Dr Roy Spencer, who designed Nasa’s satellite system for measuring temperatures, was allowed to admit that a flaw had been found in the system.

But his interview ended before he could explain that, when the flaw was discovered in 1998, it was immediately corrected (although it made little difference to the results).

Likewise, there is a growing case for a correlation between global temperatures and solar activity. Dr Stewart accused Durkin’s programme of cutting off a graph which illustrated this at a point when the data failed to support the thesis. Then he did exactly the same himself, not extending his own graph to 2008 in a way that would reinforce the thesis.

Most hilarious of all, however, was a long sequence in which Stewart defended the notorious “hockey stick” graph, which purports to show that temperatures have recently shot up to their highest level on record.

The BBC had a huge blow-up of this “iconic” graph carted triumphantly round London, from Big Ben to Buckingham Palace, as if it were proof that the warming alarmists are right.

There was no hint that the “hockey stick” is among the most completely discredited artefacts in the history of science, not least thanks to the devastating critique by Steve McIntyre, which showed that the graph’s creators had an algorithm in their programme which could produce a hockey-stick shape whatever data were fed into it.

There was scarcely a frame of this clever exercise which did not distort or obscure some vital fact. Yet the “impartial” BBC is sending out this farrago of convenient untruths to schools, ensuring that the “march of the lie” continues.

http://tinyurl.com/4kcqkv

   Sunday - September 07, 2008

Children aged eight enlisted as council snoopers and report petty offences such as littering.

Yes I know my fellow Americans won’t understand and even then will not approve of this sort of thing.
But you simply don’t understand the joys and entitlements and thrill of the chase as these kids will no doubt be doing “their bit” to save the world from litter. And this little island will lead the way and bring India and China and wasteful Americans into the fold to save zeverld mine furher.  Oh wait, different movie. hahahaha!
I can’t help it. Gotta laff. It really is twistedly funny.  These folks are sooooooooooooooooooooooo serious about the globe getting warm and following eu dictates TO THE LETTER while the rest of europe ignores what isn’t convenient to them.  But the Brits bless em do as they’re told by their masters in Brussels and by their lefty labour govt.  And there’s a damn serious war going on here and it’s against waste and plastic bags and ppl not putting their trash bins the required distance from the kerb (that’s how it’s spelled here).  Markets trying to limit the plastic bags they hand out to their customers and everyone wanting to be seen as Gween.

Used to be during the cold war, being seen as a commie wasn’t too cool for anyone outside the unions and labour party.  Now it’s not cool to be seen as not green.

Maybe this isn’t so funny after all.  Oh btw .. they’re called “enviro-crimes.” Sets the blood boiling that does. EnviroCrime!

Children aged eight enlisted as council snoopers
Children as young as eight have been recruited by councils to “snoop” on their neighbours and report petty offences such as littering, the Daily Telegraph can disclose.

By Martin Beckford, Sarah Graham and Betsy Mead
Last Updated: 1:00PM BST 06 Sep 2008

The youngsters are among almost 5,000 residents who in some cases are being offered £500 rewards if they provide evidence of minor infractions.

One in six councils contacted by the Telegraph said they had signed up teams of “environment volunteers” who are being encouraged to photograph or video neighbours guilty of dog fouling, littering or “bin crimes”.

The “covert human intelligence sources”, as some local authorities describe them, are also being asked to pass on the names of neighbours they believe to be responsible, or take down their number-plates.

Ealing Council in West London said: “There are hundreds of Junior Streetwatchers, aged 8-10 years old, who are trained to identify and report enviro-crime issues such as graffiti and fly-tipping.”

Harlow Council in Essex said: “We currently have 25 Street Scene Champions who work with the council. They are all aged between 11 to 14. They are encouraged to report the aftermath of enviro-crimes such as vandalism to bus shelters, graffiti, abandoned vehicles, fly-tipping etc. They do this via telephone or email direct to the council.”

Other local authorities recruit adult volunteers through advertisements in local newspapers, with at least 4,841 people already patrolling the streets in their spare time.

Some are assigned James Bond-style code numbers, which they use instead of their real names when they ring a special informer’s hotline.

This escalation in Britain’s growing surveillance state follows an outcry about the way councils are using powers originally designed to combat terrorism and organised crime to spy on residents. In one case, a family was followed by council staff for almost three weeks after being wrongly accused of breaking rules on school catchment areas.

It also emerged last month that around 1,400 security guards, car park attendants and town hall staff have been given police-style powers including the right to issue on-the-spot fines for littering, cycling on the pavement and other offences.

Matthew Sinclair, of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, described the recruitment of children as “downright sinister”.

He said: “We are deeply troubled by these developments – they are straight out of the Stasi copybook. There is a combination of ever-stricter rules and ever more Draconian attempts to control people.

“Councils are using anti-terrorist legislation for the tiniest of things, like the people who put out their bins early, and the threats of fines and prosecutions combine to constitute fleecing the people the councils are meant to be serving.”

The increase in surveillance comes at a time when an estimated 169 councils have dropped weekly rubbish collections.

Some local authorities are refusing to collect bins which are placed too far from the kerb, while others are issuing £100 fines to people who fail to comply with recycling rules.

Critics have claimed that councils have stopped prosecuting people for flytipping in favour of pursuing easy targets such as fining people for dropping bits of food and cigarette butts.

In April, Hull council officials fined a young mother £75 for dropping a piece of sausage roll while trying to feed her four-year-old daughter. Sarah Davies, 20, refused to pay and the matter when to magistrates court where it was dismissed.

Doretta Cocks, founder of the Campaign for Weekly Waste Collection, said the use of children by councils was “shocking”.

She said: “What sort of world are we bringing them up in? I think it’s dreadful for neighbour to spy upon neighbour in that way.”

The Daily Telegraph contacted more than 240 councils across England and Wales to ask if they had recruited environmental volunteers.

Of those, 36 or just under one in six, said they had. They included Luton, with 600 volunteers, the highest of any council; Southwark, south London (400) Birmingham (370) Blaenau Gwent (300) and Congleton in Cheshire (300).

Among the “environmental crimes” which the snoopers are asked to report, which vary from council to council, are failure to recycle rubbish, vandalism, graffiti, dog fouling, fly-tipping and abandoned vehicles.

Some councils merely ask recruits to keep an eye out for problems, while others are sent out on patrols. Several of the councils which do not yet use volunteers said they were considering doing so in future.

Many of the town halls said they did not encourage their volunteers to confront offenders or collect evidence, for their own safety.

But Bromley Council in Kent offers up to £500 for information that leads to a conviction.

Crawley Borough Council in West Sussex said its 150 Streetcare Champions were asked to “report on individuals if known”. Bolton Council said its Green Inspectors must “note any relevant information such as registration numbers” if they see criminal activity.

Others, including Fareham in Hampshire and Waltham Forest in east London encourage their volunteers to take photographs of rubbish to help investigations.

Liz Henthorn, 66, a retired nurse who is one of 120 “Street Hawk” volunteers in Enfield, north London, openly describes herself as a “curtain twitcher” but insists she is not snooping on anyone.

She said: “If there is a problem with fly-tipping, general bad behaviour, graffiti etcetera then I ring the Street Hawk person and when I do it is cleared. Enfield has become a lot cleaner because of us curtain twitchers having a look around.

“If you can you report an individual but nobody is going to give their name and address. If you know where that person lives you can say you know who it is but other than that you don’t.”

A spokesman for the Local Government Association, which represents town halls across the country, insisted: “Environment volunteers are people who care passionately about their local area and want to protect it from vandals, graffitists and fly tippers.

“These residents are not snoopers. They will help councils cut crime and make places cleaner, greener and safer.”

Dominic Grieve, the shadow home secretary, said: “In any civilised society the community will engage with the police but it would be plain wrong for young children to be recruited and trained for reward. People want to see the police and other appropriate agencies on our streets catching and deterring offenders.”

Councillor Sue Emment, Ealing Council’s cabinet member for environment and street services, said: “Ealing Council works with participating schools so Junior Streetwatchers can learn how to help our local environment, take pride in their community and have a sense of civic responsibility.

“Organisations like the TaxPayers’ Alliance are fast becoming parodies of themselves and ought to find out about Council schemes before making comments. We feel it is sad that the valuable time these young people are spending on improving the community should be criticised in any way.”

A spokesman for Harlow Council said: “We need to encourage more people to care for their community. If we can encourage people at a young age to do this then they will grow up to respect the environment. Our Street Champions, which is an entirely voluntary scheme naturally, has the backing and support of parents for children to take part in the scheme. The scheme is highly regarded.

“The scheme isn’t just about them reporting environmental problems, they also take part in projects to help them learn new skills and in a wider context, about citizenship.”

http://tinyurl.com/6ptr25

   Sunday - August 31, 2008

The ‘consensus’ on climate change is a catastrophe in itself .

The ‘consensus’ on climate change is a catastrophe in itself
By Christopher Booker
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 31/08/2008

As the estimated cost of measures proposed by politicians to “combat global warming” soars ever higher – such as the International Energy Council’s $45 trillion – “fighting climate change” has become the single most expensive item on the world’s political agenda.

As Senators Obama and McCain vie with the leaders of the European Union to promise 50, 60, even 80 per cent cuts in “carbon emissions”, it is clear that to realise even half their imaginary targets would necessitate a dramatic change in how we all live, and a drastic reduction in living standards.

All this makes it rather important to know just why our politicians have come to believe that global warming is the most serious challenge confronting mankind, and just how reliable is the evidence for the theory on which their policies are based.

By far the most influential player in putting climate change at the top of the global agenda has been the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), set up in 1988, not least on the initiative of the Thatcher government. (This was why the first chairman of its scientific working group was Sir John Houghton, then the head of the UK’s Meteorological Office.)

Through a succession of reports and international conferences, it was the IPCC which led to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, soon to have an even more ambitious successor, to be agreed in Copenhagen next year.

The common view of the IPCC is that it consists of 2,500 of the world’s leading scientists who, after carefully weighing all the evidence, have arrived at a “consensus” that world temperatures are rising disastrously, and that the only plausible cause has been rising levels of CO2 and other man-made greenhouse gases.

In fact, as has become ever more apparent over the past 20 years –not least thanks to the evidence of a succession of scientists who have participated in the IPCC itself – the reality of this curious body could scarcely be more different.

It is not so much a scientific as a political organisation. Its brief has never been to look dispassionately at all the evidence for man-made global warming: it has always taken this as an accepted fact.

Indeed only a comparatively small part of its reports are concerned with the science of climate change at all. The greater part must start by accepting the official line, and are concerned only with assessing the impact of warming and what should be done about it.

In reality the IPCC’s agenda has always been tightly controlled by the small group of officials at its head. As one recent study has shown, of the 53 contributors to the key Chapter 9 of the latest report dealing with the basic science (most of them British and American, and 10 of them associated with the Hadley Centre, part of the UK Met Office), 37 belong to a closely related network of academics who are all active promoters of the official warming thesis.

It is on the projections of their computer models that all the IPCC’s predictions of future warming are based.

The final step in the process is that, before each report is published, a “Summary for Policymakers” is drafted by those at the top of the IPCC, to which governments can make input.

It is this which makes headlines in the media, and which all too frequently eliminates the more carefully qualified findings of contributors to the report itself.

The idea that the IPCC represents any kind of genuine scientific “consensus” is a complete fiction. A

gain and again there have been examples of how evidence has been manipulated to promote the official line, the most glaring instance being the notorious “hockey stick”.

Initially the advocates of global warming had one huge problem. Evidence from all over the world indicated that the earth was hotter 1,000 years ago than it is today.

This was so generally accepted that the first two IPCC reports included a graph, based on work by Sir John Houghton himself, showing that temperatures were higher in what is known as the Mediaeval Warming period than they were in the 1990s.

The trouble was that this blew a mighty hole in the thesis that warming was caused only by recent man-made CO2.

Then in 1999 an obscure young US physicist, Michael Mann, came up with a new graph like nothing seen before.

Instead of the familiar rises and falls in temperature over the past 1,000 years, the line ran virtually flat, only curving up dramatically at the end in a hockey-stick shape to show recent decades as easily the hottest on record.

This was just what the IPCC wanted, The Mediaeval Warming had simply been wiped from the record.

When its next report came along in 2001, Mann’s graph was given top billing, appearing right at the top of page one of the Summary for Policymakers and five more times in the report proper.

But then two Canadian computer analysts, Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick, got to work on how Mann had arrived at his graph.

When, with great difficulty, they eventually persuaded Mann to hand over his data, it turned out he had built into his programme an algorithm which would produce a hockey stick shape whatever data were fed into it.

Even numbers from the phonebook would come out looking like a hockey stick.

By the time of its latest report, last year, the IPCC had an even greater problem. Far from continuing to rise in line with rising CO2, as its computer models predicted they should, global temperatures since the abnormally hot year of 1998 had flattened out at a lower level and were even falling – a trend confirmed by Nasa’s satellite readings over the past 18 months.

So pronounced has this been that even scientists supporting the warmist thesis now concede that, due to changes in ocean currents, we can expect a decade or more of “cooling”, before the “underlying warming trend” reappears.

The point is that none of this was predicted by the computer models on which the IPCC relies.

Among the ever-growing mountain of informed criticism of the IPCC’s methods, a detailed study by an Australian analyst John McLean (to find it, Google “Prejudiced authors, prejudiced findings") shows just how incestuously linked are most of the core group of academics whose models underpin everything the IPCC wishes us to believe about global warming.

The significance of the past year is not just that the vaunted “consensus” on the forces driving our climate has been blown apart as never before, but that a new “counter-consensus” has been emerging among thousands of scientists across the world, given expression in last March’s Manhattan Declaration by the so-called Non-Governmental Panel on Climate Change.

This wholly repudiates the IPCC process, showing how its computer models are hopelessly biased, based on unreliable data and programmed to ignore many of the genuine drivers of climate change, from variations in solar activity to those cyclical shifts in ocean currents.

As it was put by Roger Cohen, a senior US physicist formerly involved with the IPCC process, who long accepted its orthodoxy: “I was appalled at how flimsy the case is. I was also appalled at the behaviour of many of those who helped produce the IPCC reports and by many of those who promote it.

“In particular I am referring to the arrogance, the activities aimed at shutting down debate; the outright fabrications; the mindless defence of bogus science; and the politicisation of the IPCC process and the science process itself.”

Yet it is at just this moment, when the IPCC’s house of cards is crumbling, that the politicians of the Western world are using it to propose steps that can only damage our way of life beyond recognition.

It really is time for that “counter-consensus” to be taken seriously.

http://tinyurl.com/5mpspl

   Monday - August 25, 2008

Prius Drivers: Big car drivers are ugly

Just in case you weren’t yet 648.2% percent certain that Greenies are also total Elitists ...

Every morning, as Lynn Schmidt walks out of her Long Island, N.Y., home, opens the door to her baby-blue Prius, waves to her grumbling neighbor and pulls out of the driveway, she has every reason to smile.  It’s not just the 45 miles per gallon her gasoline-electric hybrid vehicle is getting. And it’s not only that she can go three weeks without a fill-up.  It’s also because that through her choice of automobile, Lynn is doing what she considers her share of being ecologically reasonable.

“Everyone should be concerned about the level of emissions,” says Schmidt. “We all need to do our part and make changes for the better.”

She’s not alone. With skyrocketing oil prices, many owners of hybrid vehicles and practitioners of the “green” lifestyle are seeing their eco-friendly choices pay off.  But that’s led to some grumblings from late adopters — and charges that the greener-than-thou are guilty of “eco-snobbery.”

The other day, she pulled up next to another Prius — and the two drivers exchanged a knowing smile of eco-camaraderie.

“There can be some smugness on the part of the Prius owners because it’s distinctive,” says Michael Omotoso of the automotive-marketing-data giant J.D. Power and Associates. “It’s ‘Hey, look at me, I’m driving a hybrid!’”

Studies conducted by J.D. Power show that the typical hybrid purchaser is better educated and wealthier than the average car buyer. Furthering the exclusivity is the fact that available hybrids are hard to find.

And how much would you like to bet that at least 80% of the typical hybrid purchasers are lefties?

“I think that we Prius owners need a dating/whatever program, to hook us up with other Prius owners,” says one poster on Priuschat.com. He admits it’s half a joke, but says it “stems from my inability to look at people with gas-burning cars as attractive.”

It’s clear that hybrid buyers want to appear environmentally conscious, observes Aaron Bragman, a Detroit-based research analyst with the Global Insight economic-forecasting company.

“A big component [of hybrid ownership] is the social aspect,” he says, adding that if a consumer just wanted to save money on gas, he or she could buy a new subcompact for $11,000 instead of forking out a minimum of $22,000 for a hybrid.

Peiper sends me newspaper clippings from England. There are always car ads in there. I don’t know how putt-putt the little cars sold over there are, or even really how little they actually are, but the MPG numbers all the Pius owners are so high on actually suck. Quite a number of cars in the UK get 15 - 20 mpg better “extra urban” (ie highway) mileage than this thing does. They also have less of a “carbon footprint” too I think.

   Sunday - August 24, 2008

STAND BY FOR AMERICA’S LIGHTS TO GO OUT.  (NO, IT ISN’T AN ANTI-USA RANT)

This guy is really good. He writes every week on this subject.  He lectures about the falshood re. gorebal warming.

I’ve been light on the posting this wkend for which I always feel guilty.  Working on something and not even certain if I’ll end up blogging it. Although I think I might.

By Christopher Booker
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 24/08/2008

From The Sunday Telegraph

Correction: things are worse than I thought.
Last week I reported on the dangerous unreality overtaking US energy policy, as television commercials for both presidential candidates focus on the need to build more wind turbines. To highlight its absurdity I said that the 10,000 US turbines already built generate only 4.5 gigawatts (GW) of electricity, little more than one big coal-fired power station.

The reality, it turns out, is even worse.

The notional “capacity” of America’s turbines is 19GW, but their actual output, as shown by an Amherst University study, is less than 17 per cent of that - even less than that of a large coal-fired plant.

So the two men vying for the White House are centring their policy on an energy source that currently provides barely 1 per cent of America’s electricity. Some 50 per cent of it comes from coal.

Yet such is the power of the “green” lobby that of 151 new coal-fired power stations proposed last year, 59 were vetoed by state governments, while the rest face court challenges. Whether it is McCain or Obama, stand by for America’s lights to go out.

Now this part of the same column in Sunday Telegraph, shows ya just one tiny example of a country tossing away it’s sovereignty and how it impacts on England.  The EU declares and the UK says yes, oh yes. Screw me again! And they do.  Crude I guess but it sure does seem that way these days. Here,read it for yourself.

Lords produce waste paper on waste policy
By Christopher Booker
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 24/08/2008

There was a time when, if a Lords committee had been asked to investigate a massive policy failure, a scandal which continues to make daily headlines in the press, it might have made some effort to ask why things had gone so horrendously wrong.

But when 12 peers last week reported on the shambles engulfing the way that Britain disposes of its rubbish, the result was 127 pages of such anodyne verbiage that no one ploughing through it would have any idea that we have a national crisis on our hands.

In fact the headlines about the disintegration of Britain’s system of waste disposal - from householders being fined for putting rubbish in the wrong bin to the epidemic of flytipping - reflect only a small part of the disaster.

Even more outrageous is the fact that, wherever one looks at it, our waste handling system is in breakdown, so that, for instance, millions of tons of rubbish supposedly collected for recycling must be shipped out to China or the Third World because we no longer have any way to deal with it.

The reason why this has happened - and why it was ignored by those 12 dutiful little apparatchiks from the House of Lords - is that we have handed over direction of our waste policy to Brussels, which requires us to implement a strategy wholly inappropriate to our needs.

Until recently we still had a waste system as efficient as any in Europe. We had a fast-growing recycling industry, mainly reliant on private enterprise. But we also used much more of our rubbish than other countries for the ultimately beneficial purpose of reclaiming otherwise unproductive land by landfill.

What has thrown all this into chaos has been the imposition of a wholly different EU policy which seeks to eliminate landfilling (originally because some countries, such as Holland and Denmark were running out of land to fill). The EU puts recycling at the top of its priority list, followed by incineration. Only then can what remains be buried.

To conform with the Euro-model, we have therefore been required to discourage landfilling by closing down our rubbish tips and imposing ever higher “landfill taxes”, to build hugely expensive incinerators and to collect far more waste for “recycling” than we can actually recycle.

Instead of all this being admitted, it has become shrouded in propagandist humbug.

We are repeatedly told we are “running out of sites for landfill”, when every year we quarry out 110 million cubic metres of soil and rock, more than the refuse we produce. We are told that incineration is cheaper than landfill, when in fact it can cost as much as £190 a ton, as opposed to a maximum landfill cost of only £62.

To please the EU we claim to be collecting millions of tons of rubbish for recycling which is then either shipped abroad or just landfilled regardless.

We have created a shambles of a system which is failing in every way - so that we still face the prospect of massive fines from Brussels for failing to conform - while the once-friendly relations between binmen and the public are reduced to open war.

And what is the response of those noble lords? They babble on about the need for “waste prevention to be integrated into sustainable business models”. They “welcome the establishment of the Centre of Expertise for Sustainable Procurement”.

They suggest the Government should lower VAT rates to “promote the development of sustainable products”. They don’t even seem to know that VAT rates cannot be lowered without permission from our real government in Brussels - the one which set all this disaster in train in the first place.

http://tinyurl.com/5u25pb

   Sunday - August 17, 2008

US gets ready to blow its economy away .  Christopher Booker, reaction to his visit to USA.

Doesn’t need any comments from me. He already has it nailed.

By Christopher Booker
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 17/08/2008

Visiting America last week to talk to audiences across the country about “global warming”, I was struck by television commercials for the two presidential candidates.

Senators McCain and Obama were each shown in front of film of the same giant wind farm, to lay claim to virtually identical “green” credentials. Since America has already built five times as many wind turbines as Britain, covering thousands of square miles, I checked out how much electricity all those 10,000 turbines actually produce. The answer is around 4.5 gigawatts - not much more than a single large coal-fired power station.

After years when America was vilified for not taking “global warming’ seriously, it was a shock to find how “environmentalism” is now threatening to transform what is still the largest and richest economy in the world.

Both candidates favour a version of the proposed “cap and trade” scheme to slash US greenhouse gas emissions to 63 per cent below 2005 levels, at an estimated cost by 2030 of more than $600 billion a year - representing a cumulative loss to the US economy, within 22 years, of $4.8 trillion.

Although America is still dependent on coal for around half its electricity, with reserves estimated as likely to last 200 years, state after state is proposing to ban new coal-fired power stations.

Environmental groups, with powerful political support, are now lobbying equally fiercely against natural gas or any new nuclear power plants.

Most dramatic of all are the implications of a Supreme Court judgment in the case of Massachussets v the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) which ruled by a single vote that the EPA must treat any greenhouse gases as “pollution”, to be regulated under America’s Clean Air Act.

The EPA is thus mandated to impose drastic new limits on emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases from pretty well any source, not just industry and transport but schools, hospitals, even lawn mowers.

The implications are so immense for almost every sector of the US economy that government departments -commerce, agriculture, energy and others - have been queuing up to protest, arguing that the effects of such regulation would be so damaging that it should be regarded as unthinkable.

But politicians of both parties, led by the two men vying for the presidency, are so carried away in the rush to appear “green” that it seems there is no longer any national voice powerful enough to question the sanity of such measures.

All the fashionable talk is of how fossil-fuels must be replaced by massively subsidised sources of “renewable” energy, such as vast arrays of solar panels, even though a recent study showed that a kilowatt hour of solar-generated electricity costs between 25 and 30 cents, compared with 6 cents for power generated from coal and 9 cents for that produced by natural gas.

What is terrifying is the extent to which America’s leading politicians seem oblivious to the economic realities of what they are proposing. The readiness of Messrs McCain and Obama to posture in front of pictures of virtually useless wind turbines symbolises that attitude perfectly.

Here, in the EU we are only too sadly familiar with politicians floating off into cloudcuckooland over our future energy policy, with the virtual certainty that before many years this may leave us with a colossal shortfall in our electricity supplies.

But “the lights going out all over Europe” is one thing: if they go out in the richest economy in the world - while China cheerfully continues to build one new coal-fired power station a week - we may look back on the US presidential election of 2008 as a time when history really did reach a watershed; the moment when the nations of the West finally signed up to the most bizarre suicide note the world has ever seen

http://tinyurl.com/5j2q9p

   Thursday - August 07, 2008

A Semi-Solution

I got an email this morning from a friend ...

This sounds great at first. I hate junk mail. My guess is that 85% of what shows up in my mailbox is garbage. Without junk mail I’d get about 20 envelopes a month. That suits me just fine.  I really don’t need two catalogs a week from Lands End, Cabela’s, or MidwayUSA. Or the pool supply place I bought one thing from 8 years ago. Or the candy shop in California I ordered from once. It’s a real pain in the ass, just another one of life’s little hassles we have to deal with every single day.

The link takes you to the Forest Ethics page, where you see the petition. It reads

This itself is not a bad idea. The national Do Not Call thing pretty much killed telemarketing, and that’s a good thing. If such a bill becomes law it might cut down on junk mail by a huge amount. And sure, that’s a whole lot less paper being used and trees being felled because of it. But I think this is only a partial solution.

I think the entire problem begins and ends with the Post Office. Junk mail exists solely because of their Bulk Mail discount rate, and it’s a tremendous discount. You and I are paying 42¢ to mail a letter, but the junk mailers pay less than 11¢. In theory this is because they do a large part of the pre-sorting work themselves, and supposedly drop the mail off at the local POs. Well, if that’s the case, then I should be able to mail a local letter for the same 11¢. One letter by itself is as pre-sorted as it can be, and if it’s local it doesn’t need to be shipped anywhere. It can be delivered by the carriers working out of that building. So where is my discount? HA!!! And no, I don’t believe quantity discounts should apply here. The stamp buys you the service of hand delivery. It’s the same service for each piece, whether you mail one letter or ten million.

The Post Office is failing because of junk mail. It amounts to 70% of the number of letters processed, but brings in less than a third of the revenue. That’s why the price of stamps goes up just about every year. Get rid of the Bulk Rate discount and the PO would make a fortune. Or they could reduce the price of stamps down to a quarter. Not only would it save a huge bunch of trees, it would allow them to trim their staff by a large amount. Carrying around less than half as much mail would save loads of fuel, and would be kind to the aching backs of the few carriers who actually schlep a bag around by foot. And it might make for a happier work environment too, so we’d have fewer episodes of people “going postal”.

The US Government should not be in the advertising business. Equal Rights, Equal Treatment Under The Law ... one rate for everyone. 

   Monday - August 04, 2008

GLOBAL WARMING and GUESS WHO THE COPS ARE?

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b>Energy firm recruits children as ‘climate cops’

Last week’s Sunday Times carried a large advertisement for the German-owned energy company npower, inviting children to “save the planet this summer” by becoming “climate cops”. A picture showed a sleeping dad, with a notice on his head warning in a childish scrawl that he had been found guilty of “climate crime” by “falling asleep with the tv still on”.

For more “interactive games and fun downloads”, readers were invited to contact npower’s Climate Cops website. This explains in comicbook format how children can spy on their parents, relatives and neighbours to catch them out in seven “climate crimes”, such as leaving the TV on standby, putting hot food in a fridge or freezer (as is recommended by hygiene experts) or failing to use low-energy light bulbs.

Children could record these offences in a “climate crime case file”, while teachers are offered a full “learning resource” pack for use in schools, including a PowerPoint presentation and posters for classroom walls.

When my colleague Richard North asked the Advertising Standards Authority how they squared this with their rules prohibiting “marketing communications” which “undermine parental authority”, they replied (as he records on his EU Referendum blog) that they had “considered you (sic) objections but do not feel it have (sic) breached our Codes on the basis you suggest”.

My own advice to children tempted to become “climate cops” is that they might begin by looking at npower’s own record as operators of 13 fossil fuel power stations.

Its coal-fired Aberthaw power station in Wales, for instance, emits more CO2 in two months than is notionally saved in a year by all the 2,000 wind turbines now disfiguring Britain’s countryside. If merely going to sleep in front of the TV is a “climate crime”, why haven’t the directors of npower put themselves behind bars long ago?

Just a drop in the frozen ocean

Increasingly desperate to sustain their scare, as the evidence suggests otherwise, the global warmists have recently been focussing more and more on that vanishing Arctic ice.

The Independent recently cleared its front page to warn: “it seems unthinkable, but for the first time in history ice is on course to disappear entirely from the North Pole this year”. The latest horror story is the breaking up of two huge chunks of ice measuring “seven square miles”.

Oddly enough, however, the latest Just a drop in the frozen ocean satellite pictures (see the Watts Up With That website) show the North Pole still surrounded by six million square kilometres of ice, a million more than this time last year.

It is true that, back in May, the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre said it was “quite possible” that all Arctic sea ice might vanish this year. Now they are only predicting that the Arctic may be ice-free “by 2030”.

It’s really frustrating how that “end of the world” we were promised keeps on having to be postponed.

http://tinyurl.com/6g8ot7

scroll down a bit for stories on this link

   Wednesday - July 30, 2008

Moonbat Pelosi, Plantetary Savior

“I’m trying to save the planet!”


   



The Democrat leadership once again shows their priorities: you can go screw; caribou, sea lions, and lobsters are more important.

Congressional Republicans are stepping up attacks on Democrats who are blocking votes on oil drilling legislation, homing in on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who was quoted saying that she wants “to save the planet.”

Pelosi, in an interview published Tuesday in Politico.com, defended her efforts to stall spending bills, saying as speaker she decides which bills will make it to the House floor.

“I’m trying to save the planet. ... I will not have this debate trivialized by their excuse for their failed policy,” Pelosi said. “When you win the election, you win the majority, and what is the power of the speaker? To set the agenda, the power of recognition, and I am not giving the gavel away to anyone.”

Nancy is in charge, thank you. She has the power! But that also means she has the responsibility ... and this bunch hasn’t accomplished a damn thing in 2 solid years. And since Nancy is in charge and setting the agenda and deciding what gets recognized, therefore she is completely to blame. It’s a good thing we don’t have Sharia Law, because the right response is that of the Red Queen.

Ahead of a Republican press conference Tuesday focusing on stalled energy priorities, House Minority Leader John Boehner responded ...

“She’s got time to go out and promote her new book tour and her new book, but she doesn’t have time to schedule a vote on the floor of the House and let the American people have their will expressed?”

Boehner blamed Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama for preventing relief.

“For 25 years, Democrats have blocked more American-made oil and gas. That’s why we’re in the predicament we’re in,” said Boehner, R-Ohio. Voters want Congress “to vote on more American made oil and gas. We want to do that. She, Harry Reid, Barack Obama are standing in the way.”

House and Senate Democrats are using their control of Congress to avoid voting on opening up the Outer Continental Shelf and the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve to oil exploration, which they say is unnecessary because oil companies already have leases to millions of acres of federal land.

While this is slightly “truthy”, just because the oil companies have leases doesn’t actually mean they are permitted to put a drill bit into the ground. Nor does the existence of a lease mean that oil or gas has been located. On the other hand, we know where lots of oil and gas are, right offshore. Just ask the Chinese, who are busy drilling for it right off the coast of Florida.

“American families and businesses are struggling with skyrocketing gas prices at the pump, but President Bush and his Republican allies in Congress continue to stand in the way of real relief,” Pelosi said in the statement. “Instead, the Bush-Cheney policy, an energy plan crafted by two oilmen in the White House, revolves around the best interests of Big Oil – from protecting tax breaks to expanding domestic oil and gas drilling.”

Because, you know, I’m going to go take my shovel and dig an oil well out front here in the parking lot. Let’s blame big business for the gas price crisis, and make special taxes to gouge the oil companies because prices are high, and at the same time prevent them from harvesting new sources of the resources ... and then blame them even more when the lack of supply causes the demand to skyrocket. These people are morons. You can’t revoke the Law of Supply and Demand Nancy. And since every other nation on earth with a bit of coastline is out there drilling already as fast as they can, your “save the planet” is a bunch of crap. All it means is “screw the Americans”. That’s not an attitude I want represented in Washington.

Boehner suggested Obama is among Democrats who he says are influenced by a “radical group of environmentalists” pushing higher gas prices.

“If you listen to Barack Obama during the primaries, you know, he didn’t think $5 gas was all that bad. He was just upset it got there so quickly. And what you’ve got, you’ve got a bunch of radical environmentalists who think that we ought to have higher gasoline prices so Americans will drive less,” Boehner said.

Americans are already driving less. But there is a lower limit. Public transportation just isn’t a complete solution for the rural and suburban areas. Carpooling really only works for shift workers who all live in the same neighborhood. And while Detroit is turning to smaller more efficient vehicles again, an awful lot of people can’t afford to go out and buy a new one right now. So most of us have already done about as much as we can; the lower limit has nearly been reached.

With four legislative weeks left before the November elections, after which Congress is likely to punt big issues until the next administration takes office, little time is left to find a means to reduce oil costs, which is blamed for driving up inflation and slowing down the economy.

“They’re trying to run out the clock,” Boehner said.

No kidding. I’ve got a better idea: let’s run them out of office. Both parties, but especially the Dems.

Do Nothing Nancy: her new direction is Straight Down

PS - note how Nancy makes a fist in the above picture. Isn’t that an obscene gesture in Latin America?

   Wednesday - July 23, 2008

Greenies are annoying us because that’s what they do

If you are old enough, you might remember when soda and other things to drink came in glass bottles. Nice heavy duty ones. You drank the contents, cleaned them out, and brought them back to store. The store sent them back to the vendor or the local bottling plant, and they got filled again. That’s how recycling used to be. Then came the plastic bottle, which either went back to the deposit machine, or went into regular recycling. We were all told that this was an even better way of recycling, and used less energy than either recasting the glass bottles, or cleaning and sterilizing them. See, it was better to shred the plastic and remelt it to make lawn furniture then it was to spend all the money on moving, storing, and processing all that glass.

Well now the Greenies have changed their story. Now that everyone everywhere recycles the plastic. And the aluminum. And the newspaper. And the cardboard. And the steel ... Heck, “co-mingle” is a regular part of the lexicon these days.

There was a time when brands like Evian and Perrier conjured up images of purity and luxury. That was before bottlers everywhere got their feet wet, and drinking bottled water became a very easy and healthy way to stay hydrated and refreshed.

But now there is a growing backlash against bottled water.  Thanks to a growing green movement, phasing out water bottles — seen as the ultimate symbol of conspicuous consumption — has become the latest fad.

Sales of reusable eco-friendly bottles like Sigg or Voss Water have surged. Green-minded Web sites list locations of municipal water fill-up stations. And cities like Chicago have added an extra tax to bottled water to discourage its purchase.

Some critics of bottled water cite concerns over the environmental waste of discarded bottles; others point out that municipal water systems were delivering excellent water long before plastic became all the rage.
...
There’s no question that bottled water tastes good, and it’s good for you. The problem is that 8 out of 10 of those water bottles wind up in landfills instead of recycling bins, and it can take 700 years before they begin to decompose. And given how much water we drink, that’s a lot of bottles.

The key, says Lauria, is to recycle. ’’If you recycle, all guilt is erased, ‘’ he said. ‘’Recycling solves the problem. If it‘s recycled, it‘s ecologically safe.”

But Americans aren’t recycling enough, and that has become the rallying cry for groups who want to see bottles banned altogether.

Oh horseshit. Is there an office cafeteria that doesn’t have a recycling bin? Is there a neighborhood anywhere that doesn’t have the trucks come around once a week, or, failing that, is there a town that doesn’t have a recycling drop off center? Give me a friggin break. It’s everywhere. Everyone recycles, or at least has the opportunity to. Lots of towns even have the Garbage Police these days, with hefty fines if you get caught hiding the beer cans under the coffee grounds. But the greenies are pulling the old “8 out of 10” crap again, and the old “700 years” blither? Sorry, that requires a willing suspension of disbelief to accept. We’ve all gone green, or green enough. Shut the hell up, get back in your Prius and drive away annoyingly slow if there’s traffic behind you.

But concerns over the environment aren’t the only reason why there is a push to remove bottles. Some say bottled water erodes the demand for the municipal water supply.

Corporate Accountability International says bottled water is subject to less rigorous testing than city tap water, adding that the high cost of energy to make the bottles isn’t worth the cost of a product that may not be any better than local water.

It has launched a campaign called “Think Outside the Bottle’’ to promote, protect and ensure public funding for public water systems by getting people to choose tap water over bottled water. Supporters include actor Martin Sheen.

“I’m a big believer in bottled water,’’ said Don Robart, mayor of Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, who did not support the resolution against bottled water at the mayors’ meeting in June. ‘’From a health standpoint alone, I think we should be encouraging it.”

Robart says it’s a ’’bunch of baloney’’ that bottled water erodes support for tap water. He also notes how important it is to have bottled water on hand in case of emergency.

Hmm ... maybe this is just manufactured “bottled” news? Is that better or worse than real news? Gak.

Oh, and here is some Hollywood smut. Very cold showers at the beach this summer