Bring It On! National News

The bright people in Kentucky are all apparently suffering from voter apathy. That’s the only reason I can surmise that explains why a raving starkers buffoon like Jim Gooch got into the Kentucky House. Check this out:

“You can only hear that the sky is falling so many times,” said Kentucky Representative Jim Gooch, explaining why he only invited global warming skeptics with no scientific background to address state legislators on climate issues. Gooch, the Kentucky Democrats’ chief environmental strategist, is “a longtime ally of the coal industry.” His invitees were James Taylor, a fellow with the Heartland Institute, a think tank partially funded by ExxonMobil; and Lord Christopher Monckton, an adviser to former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher who once suggested that HIV / AIDS patients “be locked up for life.” During the Kentucky hearing, “Monckton quoted the Bible and quickly recited math formulas as he accused [Nobel laureates Al] Gore and IPCC scientists of lying to make warming seem worse than it is.” Taylor claimed that “most scientists don’t believe in global warming,” and that hotter weather would allow “our children” to “enjoy an Earth with far more plant and animal life.” After protests by legislators, Gooch allowed “two environmentalists in the audience talk about global warming … for about five minutes each.”

Shorter Gooch: “I can’t hear you! La la la la la la la la!!!”

Off the coast of New England is one of the greatest adventures that you could ever believe possible. Twenty or more miles off shore in the words of Scotty from Star Trek fame, “There be whales here.” I’ve only had the pleasure to have seen them once in my life and it was something to see that changes you for life. To see such a large creature up close and they are as much curious about us as we are of them was simply mind blowing. To see an animal bigger than a Greyhound bus that comes alongside the tourist boat and turns over so its eye can see all the folks on the boat simply takes your breath away. When the little whales act up and show off it makes you think that God is amazing to create such a wonderful thing. I watched as the little ones breached time and time again or faced head down and slapped their tail in the water at the surface so close that I got wet with the ocean water.

No disrespect to my friends in Japan but there is a game of cards here in America that we call Bull$hit. It’s a game where you have to catch your opponent in a lie and scream out that you know that they are bluffing. For Japan to claim that they need kill whales for the sake of scientific research is simply Bovine By Product. Pick up the cards Japan because you are busted!

Two of the worlds largest producers of man made chemicals that resemble substances found in nature are the United States and Japan. Same thing goes for medical research from products found in nature that are synthesized into pharmaceutical products. Any real scientist worth their weight in the journal producing high fives of the Japanese chemist world are not the reason this hunt for whales is going on.

Japan Hunts the Humpback. Now Comes the Backlash. By ANDREW C. REVKIN
Published: November 25, 2007Vessels from the groups Sea Shepherd and Greenpeace tail and harass the whaling fleet, while strong protests are lodged by environmental groups, many marine biologists, and officials from the United States, Australia and other countries. But this year those complaints have intensified, largely because Japan has added a new animal to its planned harvest of more than 1,400 whales from seven species — the humpback, Megaptera novaeangliae.Japan hopes to kill 50 of these endangered whales, which have long held a place in the public’s imagination with their other-worldly songs, habit of rocketing their 30-plus tons out of the sea and migrations of up to 10,000 miles a year. Melville once described the humpback as “the most gamesome and lighthearted of all the whales.”

Whaling nearly wiped it out, reducing the humpback’s numbers to perhaps a 1,000 by the mid-1960s. Today, estimates put the total at roughly 30,000. They are considered at high risk of extinction by the World Conservation Union.

“Humpbacks are some of the most wonderful and mysterious creatures in the ocean, with the longest vocalization produced by any animal, including humans, with their bouts of song that last up to 23 hours,” said David Rothenberg, a professor of philosophy and music at the New Jersey Institute of Technology and author of a forthcoming book on whale songs and science.

“We still do not know why they need to sing so extensively, and we ought to leave these whales alone for enough years to find out,” he said.

Once a top target of whalers because they swim close to shore, the humpback is now the centerpiece of another enterprise, whale watching, which by some measures is a billion-dollar-a-year business, making it larger in inflation-adjusted dollars than commercial whaling was even at its peak. - New York Times

If you think that just 50 Humpback Whales are going to be hunted then think again. This is one nations sanctioned open season hunting of an entire species including Humpback’s that will reap ten or twenty or one thousand times the “Scientific” (Bull $hit) research harvesting. There is no chemical product or scientific product that this hunt is undertaking other than the fact that some people in Japan and Asia are willing to forsake a species existence to simply eat whale meat.

This is an old link but if they are offering it to school kids for lunch what does that tell you about the “Research” (Bull $hit) behind the expansion of whale hunting Japan…

REUTERS
7:53 a.m. February 14, 2006

TOKYO – Whale meat is back on the menu in a growing number of Japanese elementary and junior high schools, Kyodo news service reported on Tuesday.

The board of education in Wakayama prefecture in western Japan, an area known as the birthplace of organised whaling in the country, is promoting the drive to put whale on school menus.

Advertisement The board provided some 1,657 kilograms of whale meat for more than 100 elementary and junior high schools in Kyoto, Osaka and Nara prefectures and Tokyo in January of this year alone, Kyodo said, citing local officials.

The amount for January was about double the amount for all of 2005.

‘We want (schoolchildren) to know Japan’s traditional dietary culture through whale meat which was popular in the past,’ it quoted a board of education official as saying.

Japan abandoned commercial whaling in 1986, in line with an international moratorium, but began catching whales again the following year for what it calls scientific research. - Reuters

I’m thinking that George, I’m busy with Iraq, to much on my plate, screw you Whale Watching Liberal nut jobs, does not think this is important. Whereas this just might come under diplomacy and the State Department you can pretty much chalk whale hunting up to persona non grata status. Diplomacy and Bush even with nations we consider a close friend is the ultimate in oxymoron definitions. Especially, since the whale oil market died off a hundred years ago!

If he is to busy then I think our nations Senators and Congressional Representatives should care. If you live in the Pacific Northwest then you should care about whale hunting. If you live in New England and the Atlantic coastline then you should care about whale hunting. If you live along the coast of California down into the south of Mexico then you should care about whale hunting.

All of the whales killed by the fleets from Japan at one time or another were off the shores of your neighborhood. These are animals that travel ten thousand miles in migratory patterns every single year. This is wrong on so many levels that it is not even funny. Whale watching is a billion dollar American industry and we like our worlds whales! Peaceful creatures with elevated intelligence should not be hunted or killed for any scientific research (Bull $hit) purposes.

Get involved and get with it to stop the hunt before it expands to open season by Japan for all whales. You can Google search Green Peace and offer what help you think you can.

No offense to my many Japanese readers but have your whaling industry buy a couple hundred thousand acres of land in Wyoming or North Dakota or Texas and start a damn cattle ranch. Leave all of the Whales alone!

Save the Whales!

Get angry, get mad, get involved and save the peaceful creatures that just happen to live in the ocean. Get your kids involved and write or email your representatives in Congress. In doing so you are saving an industry that has adapted over the centuries from hunting the graceful giant to praising them and earning a living by offering whale watching tours.

Papamoka

Originally posted at Papamoka Straight Talk…

(photo by borlandphoto.com)

And to think, when the Native Americans used to pray for rain, they were considered backwards savages who deserved little respect and even less regard. Yet here we are in the 21st century and we have the governor of Georgia seeking to solve that state’s drought problem’s with a day of prayer.

Seems to me that at this stage of the game, Georgians would be better served by enacting serious conservation regulations (if they haven’t already), engaging in cooperative water sharing agreements, pursuing reclamation efforts to address non-potable water needs, and exploring the feasibility of desalination plants along their coast. Instead, the head of the government chose public prayer. Apparently in Georgia, they think that God is the Culligan-man, eager to upend 5-gallon jugs on the faithful to spare them from drying up.

Give me a break…

It is clear to me that Georgia’s water troubles are two-pronged: one prong concerns the drought and the other concerns the poor leadership on this issue over the years. But what the Georgia water crisis should do is open the eyes of everyone, because the lack of potable water is destined to become one of the biggest areas of potential discord in the coming years.

When it comes to the issue of drought, many factors could be at play, but in the end they all come down to the same thing- a changing climate and environment. Decades of unremitting pollution of our air and waterways have coincided to create a dearth of potable water. In general, rainfall is lessening in many regions. Winter snowpacks are decreasing too, meaning reservoirs aren’t filling up as full as in the past. And that water that does enter the watershed has to filter through a chemical stew of pollutants callously thrown into the earth for decades. It’s no wonder that water resources are in trouble. Georgia isn’t the only state with water problems, but they are currently in the worst shape here in the states.

Could Georgia have alleviated its water troubles with a more invigorated and (dare I say) more scientifically based approach to the issue? Sure, if they’d started a couple of decades ago. But today, when the water reserves may run dry near the New Year, the answers to the Georgian drought may be too few and too late to stave off a serious emergency.

Take as an example the town or Orme, Tennessee. Orme residents, all 145 of them, now only have access to water 3 hours each day. When the mountain spring that supplies this small town dried up this year, it seems to have done so for good. Town leaders have clamped down on water usage by imposing water rationing. For this tiny town, the solution is coming in the form of a grant from the federal government, money that will be used to connect Orme to a larger system of water pipes from neighboring areas. For 145 people this may work, even as it creates more demand on the system it plans to tap into. For a city of 4.5 million, like Atlanta, there isn’t a big enough pipe to solve the problem.

Water resources, and the lack thereof, are going to be the cause of civil strife and political upheaval in the coming years. You think the price of oil is high? Wait until you see the price of water in the coming years. Difference is that people can live without oil, however uncomfortably. But without water, we dry up and die pretty quickly.

Consider this another consequence of our poor stewardship of our planet and its life-giving resources. Consider this another example of political failure at the hands of elected officials too intent on “more, more, more” and not focused on the big picture.

Take a good look at Georgia folks, and pay attention to what happens there if the water issue isn’t solved. Similar crises may be coming to an area near you in the not too distant future, especially if our policies towards the environment, land usage, and population development don’t change soon. The next resource war may not be over energy at all. It may well be over water.

With the never ending rise in the price of oil comes the never ending desire of Americans to find a better way. Some months ago I wrote a piece on the strangle hold that OPEC has on not just America but the world. In it I mentioned that the last stage coach was probably the best built carriage in the world but the combustion engine eventually put it out of its misery.

American’s can be a funny group of people. We are not well liked around the world for many reasons and one of them is our arrogance or intolerance of anyone saying “It can not be done!” Screw you, or some other creative twist of the English language is usually replied in return. Not in the board rooms of our nations corporations but in the barns, the sheds, the garages of Americans that know that IT can be done!

If you look at all of the papers today, oil is and will break $100 per barrel simply because it can if the market wants to see that number. Joe Six-Pack American aka a mongrel dog of European, Asia, Africa, South America and North America descent is chucking the bird at Wall Street and finding a better and cheaper way to not only run his Chevy but your Ford and Buick as well. What is that old saying about being an American is like baseball, apple pie and Chevrolet? We need to add anti OPEC garage scientist to the list.

Over at the New York Times they have this great piece on yet many possible new fuels for your car or truck, a must read …

The Energy Challenge
Fuel Without the Fossil

DENVER — Mitch Mandich proudly showed off his baby, a 150-foot contraption of tanks, valves, hoppers, augers and fans. It hissed. It gurgled. An incongruous smell wafted through the air, the scent of turpentine.

Mr. Mandich’s machine devours pine chips from Georgia and turns them into an energy-rich gas, a step toward making liquid fuels. His company, Range Fuels, is near the front of the pack in a technology race that could have an impact on the way America powers its automotive fleet, and help ameliorate global warming.

“Somebody’s going to hit a home run here,” Mr. Mandich said. “We want to be first.”
For years, scientists have known that the building blocks in plant matter — not just corn kernels, but also corn stalks, wood chips, straw and even some household garbage — constituted an immense potential resource that could, in theory, help fill the gasoline tanks of America’s cars and trucks. - New York Times

Leave it up to American’s to screw up a really great deal by the world oil producers. They can finally afford to buy Canada and those nasty pesky American’s pull the rug out from under their futures investments. Sponge Bob and the Krusty Crab have never faced such a more evil plot from Plankton. Foiled again but this is just the beginning of the plot.

I’m not big on conspiracy theories. God only knows there are enough whack jobs out there to tell you any theory for any event that happened in the world. I think that I would have to be a total moron to think that the billions of dollars in quarterly profits from big oil companies will try their very best to squash the back yard and garage inventors trying to find a better fuel. Common sense drives my thoughts on this because billions of quarterly profits are at stake. In the news over the next decade or so will be the reports that one start up company after another with a new alternative fuel will be bought up by xyz oil or energy company. With that sale will be the burial of the technology.

Trillions of dollars are at risk if any of these back yard chemist and geniuses make a go of it. Times come and times go and with the beginning of the end of oil as the only source for energy will come a new wave of American ingenuity that comes from an angle that Wall Street and OPEC thought was a waste of time. Is the 200 MPG carburetor a myth or something that was squashed. I put myself in the shoes of the CEO of XYZ Big Oil Corporation and if my product is at risk from a new fuel then I would do everything in my power or ability to take it off the market. That would be common sense. Tens of billions of dollars in quarterly profits can and will make that possible. You can not spend ten billion dollars in profit at the local corner store so what are they doing with all that money? That is the question that nobody is talking about which worries me.

Associated Press
updated 5:53 p.m. ET, Fri., Nov. 9, 2007

WASHINGTON - When gasoline prices first hit $3 a gallon in 2005, irate lawmakers quickly assembled top oil executives for a public grilling.

Pump prices are again above $3, yet the outcry from Congress is barely a whimper by comparison — even after this week’s warning from Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke that oil near $100 a barrel is a serious economic threat.

The change in tone since Nov. 9, 2005 — when Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., castigated oil executives for reaping multimillion-dollar bonuses while “working people struggle” — reflects an altered landscape in terms of energy economics and politics, analysts said. - MSNBC

One of the things that I love about America is that if you put a knife to her throat, thousands of creative minds will find a way to make your blade as dull as hot butter. Screw you OPEC and Wall Street! America has brainiacs that think past your bottom line. Fueling the Chevy is more important than raping your nation for a profit. The price of gas at the pump or the price for filling your heating oil tank is not supply and demand driven, it is greed and gluttony that is setting the price. Meanwhile, Washington is silent. I’m not surprised.

Papamoka

Origininally posted at Papamoka Straight Talk

This week is “Green Week” on NBC, a television network owned by General Electric, maker of all those fine, sparkly things that makes America the most materialistically enjoyable place to live in the world. On one hand, I have to commend NBC and GE for bringing to light the plight of global climate change and humanity’s role in shaping our changing environment. Several of their programs are adopting a “Green” theme during this weeks broadcasts, even including tips on how individuals can aid in fighting over-consumption and assist in recycling and conservation efforts. This attention being given to environmental issues by a national television network can only help raise awareness of the problems of global climate change and ecological destruction among the general public, and that is a good thing.

On the other hand, I can only shake my head in disbelief as I ponder the seeming hypocrisy of it all. Considering that the creation and delivery of television programming requires the efforts of tens of thousands of people and consumes a great amount of energy in the process, if NBC really wanted to show its audience how best to “Go Green” they’d have pulled the plug for a week and sponsored live, local events targeted towards environmental rejuvenation or other similar projects. They could have encouraged their audience to turn off the TV altogether, thus saving untold amounts of energy that would in turn decrease all sorts of atmospheric pollutants. Now that would have been a true example of “Going Green.”

But they didn’t choose the latter option, instead opting to promote “Green-think” during their programming. And guess what? They managed to get some sponsors to get with their program too. Which brings me around to the topic of this post and a concept I’ll call environmental ludicrousness.

During one of NBC’s reality programs last night, contestants had to vie for a spectacularly shiny prize- a brand new Ford Escape SUV. My first reaction to this major prize was, “Are you freaking kidding me? They’re giving away an SUV during “Green Week?”” But then I quickly remembered where I was. As the show host described the fabulous prize and began to expound on how this was a hybrid vehicle that got up to 34 miles per gallon it was all I could do to keep from falling on the floor in laughter. This brand new 2008 SUV is the American automobile industry’s answer to energy consumption? Christ, I drive a 1995 Mazda 626 with over 240,000 miles on it and it still gets around 30 miles per gallon. When I first bought it in 1998 (with 60,000 miles on it) I was getting closer to 38 miles per gallon on the freeway and at least 35 in the city! And my car isn’t anywhere near being hybrid.

And then it struck me like a two by four in the forehead. American’s don’t really want to do anything serious to solve the problems of the environment, problems we had a big, if not the biggest, hand in exacerbating. American’s only want to pretend we’re doing something. And in that vein…voila! The Hybrid SUV! Want to look worried about the environment without sacrificing your roomy vehicle and oversized cupholders? No problem- just jump in the Hybrid SUV! Only in America, I guess…

The fact that most SUV owners have about as much need for an oversized fuel guzzler as I have for my own personal Sherman tank is very much the point, but one that is missed completely in the land of the free and the home of the brave. After all, being American by definition means having whatever the hell you want regardless of the consequences. And when the consequences add up to melting icecaps that you’ll never see anyhow, it doesn’t seem like there are consequences at all, right? So why not buy the biggest, most fuel-inefficient vehicle you can to haul your solo self around the block for another 6-pack of Diet Coke? This is America!

Other countries have different domestic travel dynamics, and as such have incorporated into their national transportation systems many forms of competent public transportation options. Many countries are small in comparison with the United States, and as such have less ‘long-distance” travel internally. Many more countries are economically poor to the point that having personal transportation is considered a high luxury. In the United States, we have a lot of territory and good incomes, so we have highways and personal vehicles. And for decades, we’ve also had cheap gasoline to power our personal vehicles. These factors have helped make us an automobile nation, and even if we had a national desire to change that fact, our infrastructure is designed on the predicate that people travel to get anywhere. So in order to make adjustments in this environmentally challenged age of ours, we’ll have to make significant changes to our personal transportation models. And the Hybrid SUV just doesn’t cut it folks. It’s not even a good effort.

If appearances were all that mattered, America would reign as king forever. But hypocrisy has a way of catching up. Fuel prices are closing in on $100 per barrel of oil, and gasoline in America is starting to approach prices that have been known in Europe and Asia for decades. And yet American consumers are being told to trade in their old gas-guzzling SUV’s for what? A smaller, more fuel efficient vehicle like the Smart Car? Nonsense! Here’s a brand new SUV model for you- a Hybrid, no less- and it gets great mileage too!

Well, actually folks, it gets mileage comparable to that of foreign cars built a dozen years ago. But don’t think about that. If you’re too busy pondering the depths of the BS you’ve been happily fed forever, you might miss your exit to the gas station. And your new Hybrid SUV is getting pretty thirsty- again.

(cross posted at Common Sense)