Enviro Time Warp

The top graphic is of the Belmont oil field circa 1921 (click on image to enlarge). The wooden derricks date the photo as having been taken prior to 1925 when the addition of "runarounds" and crown "A" frames were included on wells drilled by the rotary method as opposed to the cable tool methods of the 19th and early 20th century. The field was approximately 4 miles west of the Los Angeles civic center. The enviros would have us believe that modern oil production results in scenes like this. The Belmont area has recovered sufficiently to be the battleground of two of the most violent latino street gangs in Los Angeles county.

The lower photo shows a recently completed energy well head in the Powder River Basin of Wyoming. The fencing is to prevent the local ruminants from damaging the sensative instrumentation and according to the enviro religion would inflict irreparable harm to the caribou (reindeer) population of the north slope of Alaska which has doubled since the development of the Prudhoe oil field in the 1970's.

The photo of the Belmont field evokes a certain nostalgia on the part of your humble scribbler as it much resembles the oil fields 20 miles to the south in Signal Hill and Long Beach which he grew up and worked in during a bygone era P.E. (pre environazi)
cross posted at: Eternity Road

The Horns of a Dilemma

Kalifornia has long prided itself on being in the vanguard of the movement to advance the "progressive" (leftist) agenda of saving the planet from the evils of industrialization and other predations engendered by human activity. The prohibition on the construction of nuclear power plants enacted some decades ago and the phasing out of existing power plants through onerous regulations has resulted in the dearth of available energy sources and the concomitant periodic shortages of that commodity. The resultant blackouts are invariably blamed on the evil, greedy and hapless businesses engaged in the supply sector.

Included in the big tent of leftist activist organizations to save the environment and promote "social justice" are the animal rights wackos as well as environmental groups such as the Sierra Club and Greenpeace. What is a leftist activist to do when such holy groups offer up mutually exclusive solutions for their touted "crises"?

In order to reduce the global warming crisis caused by the release of greenhouse gasses including methane emitted by the flatulence of meat producing animals such as bovines and sheep, we are urged by none other than Greenpeace to substitute the Australian marsupials known as kangaroos. This is in clear and flagrant violation of the four decades Kalifornia prohibition on the importation of any kangaroo-derived products.

It becomes increasingly unclear how a leftist wishing to bring western industrial civilization to an end can comply with the recipes cited for such policies without contravening other well meaning proscriptions. Perhaps the Islamists have the most effective method for the accomplishment of that objective; that being to slay all western infidels refusing to convert to the "religion of peace".

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ!!

cross posted at: Eternity Road

Enviro Alert!!!

Finally the environmentalists have discovered an issue that we can hang our hat on. The threat presented by the failure to regulate the dangerous chemical DHMO is finally being addressed in some areas of the U.S. It is surprising that the state of Georgia, a traditional "red [neck] state" is leading the way in this crusade. The dangers of DHMO are myriad and frightening. To name a few:

* Death due to accidental inhalation of DHMO, even in small quantities.
* Prolonged exposure to solid DHMO causes severe tissue damage.
* Excessive ingestion produces a number of unpleasant though not typically life-threatening side-effects.
* DHMO is a major component of acid rain.
* Gaseous DHMO can cause severe burns.
* Contributes to soil erosion.
* Leads to corrosion and oxidation of many metals.
* Contamination of electrical systems often causes short-circuits.
* Exposure decreases effectiveness of automobile brakes.
* Found in biopsies of pre-cancerous tumors and lesions.
* Given to vicious dogs involved in recent deadly attacks.
* Often associated with killer cyclones in the U.S. Midwest and elsewhere, and in hurricanes including deadly storms in Florida, New Orleans and other areas of the southeastern U.S.
* Thermal variations in DHMO are a suspected contributor to the El Nino weather effect.

What are the symptoms of accidental Dihydrogen Monoxide overdose?
You may not always recognize that you have been a victim of accidental DHMO overdose, so here are some signs and symptoms to look for. If you suspect Dihydrogen Monoxide overdose, or if you exhibit any of these symptoms, you should consult with your physician or medical practitioner. The data presented here is provided for informational purposes only, and should in no way be construed as medical advice of any sort.

Watch for these symptoms:

* Excessive sweating
* Excessive urination
* Bloated feeling
* Nausea
* Vomiting
* Electrolyte imbalance
* Hyponatremia (serum hypotonicity)
* Dangerously imbalanced levels of ECF and ICF in the blood
* Degeneration of sodium homeostasis

It is believed that the awareness of the dangers of DHMO have been surpressed by large corporate interests vested in its continued non regulation. One of these interests, Big Oil, doubtless wishes to have the issue ignored as the gaseous form of DHMO which is a byproduct of their ongoing operations is an even greater greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.
To learn more about the issues concerning DHMO and how you too can contribute to the resolution of this dangerous issue visit this website. Meanwhile advise your congressional representatives as well as your state legislators of your concern on this important issue

Consensus is Not Science

As a former sailor aboard a small sailing vessel for many years ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ has developed a habit of being attuned to the weather and the concomitant changes associated with approaching weather systems. The National Weather service has significantly contributed to public safety and convenience by its use of satellite and radar observations. These observations are fed into computers which generate predictive models which are somewhat reliable for short periods. The further out into the future the predictions cover, the less certain their validity. For example the NWS recently tracked a weather system traversing the U.S. and predicted the arrival of severe weather including rainfall and thunderstorms in northwest Georgia on a specific date 4 days in the future according to the computer models. As the system's progress was monitored the arrival time and rainfall amounts changed 24 times over the 4 days of computer generated predictions and the system in fact arrived a day and a half later than predicted and resulted in 50% less rain than anticipated. The point is that predictions ARE NOT SCIENCE and at best an educated guess. Would you bet the rent money on the next month's weather forecast? This is in fact what the global warmistas insist we do by accepting their predictions of catastrophic near future climate change.

Climate Change alarmists [warmistas] seek to overturn the view that the temperature of the planet earth will remain hospitable to human, animal and plant-life. Curiously, despite all that has been written about "Climate Change", I have yet to learn anything about testable predictions. Are there any on the horizon?

Global Warming theory is only controversial because its proponents insist on the reliability of their long range dire predictions of floods, desertification, etc, which, in turn, necessitate draconian changes in the national and world economies. Somehow, in the ensuing hubbub over the alarmist predictions, climate scientists have forgotten their primary duty to provide convincing experimental data to validate their theory.

It is incumbent on climate scientists to make predictions derived from their theories about phenomena that can be observed over the next few years. Indeed, it is their scientific duty as proponents of the theory to provide the experimental evidence, and not the responsibility of the skeptics to disprove it. Those are the established rules of science.

One can observe that it is difficult to experiment on the world; however similar daunting challenges have been overcome by resourceful and ingenious scientists throughout history.

In 1632 Galileo Galilei was accused of heresy for questioning the Aristotelian "consensus model" of the universe which held that the sun and all other heavenly bodies revolve around the earth. He was threatened by the Inquisition with torture for holding these views, despite the fact that he - and anyone who troubled to do so - could see through a telescope that moons orbit the planet Jupiter.

An old man, Galileo was forced to recant and confess his error; he thereby escaped being burnt at the stake and was instead sentenced to house-arrest for the rest of his life. Science and history have of course proven him right. Ever since, the notion of enforced "consensus" has been anathema to scientists. Until now.

At present the warmistas are insistent that failure to accept their view that catastrophe is imminent is heresy even though these prognostications rely on a process little more reliable than reading the entrails of a goat.

Liberty's Enemies

Recent history seems to give the lie to leftist assertions that capitalists are committed to a laissez faire economy and elimination of governmental regulatory burdens on business. If one researches the contributions of many large corporations and the grants of substantial sums from large "philanthropic" foundations it becomes readily apparent that in fact these entities are for the most part investing in government intervention in order to generate accretions to their bottom line. The recent emergence of businesses dedicated to environmental issues such as selling "carbon offsets" and manufacturing compact flourescent light bulbs are examples.

Fred Reed:
"Commerce watches government as a tick watches a cow. Getting money from the government is immensely profitable and in general easy, since the people who dispense it do not own it and so do not care what is done with it. Industry, understanding this perfectly, is always looking for something to sell to the government [or items/services that the government forces us to purchase such as so called "safety" items or insurance policies].
After 9/11, a huge market sprang up for the paraphernalia of security: metal detectors, x-ray gadgets for baggage, and such like. These things cost whole bunches. Airports after all have lots of gates. Here was a Comstock Lode for tech industry. Further, a new federal bureaucracy came into being, hiring large numbers of people, screeners and marshals and supervisory ’crats, who suddenly had a monetary interest in terrorism. When you get paid for solving a problem, the last thing you want to do is to solve it. Where would exterminators be without cockroaches?

The next time a leftist or environmentalist (redundancy alert) refers with disdain to Exxon Mobil's penurious grants to scientists who are skeptical of the catastrophic and anthropogenic effects on climate change, they should be reminded of the vast sums granted to scientists by government agencies and such as the Tides and Ford foundations as well as General Electric on condition that human causes be the designated villain.

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

Out of Their own Mouths

Now that Al Gore has an oscar in hand for his propaganda crockumentary "An Inconvenient Truth" and Hollywood has been officially been declared "green", it is appropriate to list some quotes from those ordained by the new religion to pronounce on its behalf.

The right to have children should be a marketable commodity, bought and traded by individuals but absolutely limited by the state. - Kenneth Boulding, originator of the "Spaceship Earth" concept (as quoted by William Tucker in Progress and Privilege, 1982)

We have wished, we ecofreaks, for a disaster or for a social change to come and bomb us into Stone Age, where we might live like Indians in our valley, with our localism, our appropriate technology, our gardens, our homemade religion -- guilt-free at last! -- Stewart Brand (writing in the Whole Earth Catalogue

Free Enterprise really means rich people get richer. They have the freedom to exploit and psychologically rape their fellow human beings in the process . . . Capitalism is destroying the earth. -- Helen Caldicott, Union of Concerned Scientists

We must make this an insecure and inhospitable place for capitalists and their projects . . . We must reclaim the roads and plowed land, halt dam construction, tear down existing dams, free shackled rivers and return to wilderness millions of tens of millions of acres of presently settled land. -- David Foreman, Earth First!

Everything we have developed over the last 100 years should be destroyed. -- Pentti Linkola

If you ask me, it'd be a little short of disastrous for us to discover a source of clean, cheap, abundant energy because of what we would do with it. We ought to be looking for energy sources that are adequate for our needs, but that won't give us the excesses of concentrated energy with which we could do mischief to the earth or to each other. -- Amory Lovins in The Mother Earth - Plowboy Interview, Nov/Dec 1977, p. 22

The only real good technology is no technology at all. Technology is taxation without representation, imposed by our elitist species (man) upon the rest of the natural world -- John Shuttleworth

What we've got to do in energy conservation is try to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, to have approached global warming as if it is real means energy conservation, so we will be doing the right thing anyway in terms of economic policy and environmental policy. -- Timothy Wirth, former U.S. Senator (D-Colorado)

Kill 'Em All And Let God Sort 'Em Out

I suspect that eradicating small pox was wrong. It played an important part in balancing ecosystems. -- John Davis, editor of Earth First! Journal

Human beings, as a species, have no more value than slugs. -- John Davis, editor of Earth First! Journal

The extinction of the human species may not only be inevitable but a good thing....This is not to say that the rise of human civilization is insignificant, but there is no way of showing that it will be much help to the world in the long run. -- Economist editorial

We advocate biodiversity for biodiversity’s sake. It may take our extinction to set things straight -- David Foreman, Earth First!

Phasing out the human race will solve every problem on earth, social and environmental. -- Dave Forman, Founder of Earth First!

If radical environmentalists were to invent a disease to bring human populations back to sanity, it would probably be something like AIDS -- Earth First! Newsletter

Human happiness, and certainly human fecundity, is not as important as a wild and healthy planets...Some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along. -- David Graber, biologist, National Park Service

The collective needs of non-human species must take precedence over the needs and desires of humans. -- Dr. Reed F. Noss, The Wildlands Project

If I were reincarnated, I would wish to be returned to Earth as a killer virus to lower human population levels. -- Prince Phillip, World Wildlife Fund

Cannibalism is a "radical but realistic solution to the problem of overpopulation." -- Lyall Watson, The Financial Times, 15 July 1995

Poverty For 'Those People'

We, in the green movement, aspire to a cultural model in which killing a forest will be considered more contemptible and more criminal than the sale of 6-year-old children to Asian brothels. -- Carl Amery

Every time you turn on an electric light, you are making another brainless baby -- Helen Caldicott, Union of Concerned Scientists

To feed a starving child is to exacerbate the world population problem -- Lamont Cole

If there is going to be electricity, I would like it to be decentralized, small, solar-powered -- Gar Smith -- editor of the Earth Island Institute's online magazine The Edge

The only hope for the world is to make sure there is not another United States: We can't let other countries have the same number of cars, the amount of industrialization, we have in the U.S. We have to stop these Third World countries right where they are. And it is important to the rest of the world to make sure that they don't suffer economically by virtue of our stopping them. -- Michael Oppenheimer, Environmental Defense Fund

Wrong Again

The continued rapid cooling of the earth since WWII is in accord with the increase in global air pollution associated with industrialization, mechanization, urbanization and exploding population. -- Reid Bryson, "Global Ecology; Readings towards a rational strategy for Man", (1971)

The battle to feed humanity is over. In the 1970s, the world will undergo famines. Hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. Population control is the only answer -- Paul Ehrlich - The Population Bomb (1968)

I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000 -- Paul Ehrlich in (1969)

In ten years all important animal life in the sea will be extinct. Large areas of coastline will have to be evacuated because of the stench of dead fish. -- Paul Ehrlich, Earth Day (1970)

Before 1985, mankind will enter a genuine age of scarcity . . . in which the accessible supplies of many key minerals will be facing depletion -- Paul Ehrlich in (1976)

This [cooling] trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century -- Peter Gwynne, Newsweek 1976

There are ominous signs that the earth's weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production - with serious political implications for just about every nation on earth. The drop in food production could begin quite soon... The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologist are hard-pressed to keep up with it. -- Newsweek, April 28, (1975)

This cooling has already killed hundreds of thousands of people. If it continues and no strong action is taken, it will cause world famine, world chaos and world war, and this could all come about before the year 2000. -- Lowell Ponte "The Cooling", 1976

If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder by the year 2000...This is about twice what it would take to put us in an ice age. -- Kenneth E.F. Watt on air pollution and global cooling, Earth Day (1970)

When confronted by skeptics, the warmistas invariably dismiss contrary opinions as invalid and only held by "kooks" and the "idiot" fringe. In other words, your views are due to your not having been ordained into the "consensus" of the new religion. I will leave it to you, gentle reader, to judge who are the "kooks".

Update: 030607 2120hrs EST

We have the release of the International Panel on Climate Change "report" (still referred to that way throughout the legacy media, despite the fact that the actual report isn't due out for several months yet).
The entire effort was obviously building up to the revelation of "What Must Be Done!!", to be delivered in tones of thunder to a world agonized to the breaking point. Instead it comes across as the standard piece of useless UN paper - of the type dealing with fisheries policy in the Maldives or primary schooling in Slovakia. What was the solution? Umm... what else, carbon taxes! Oh, and Al Gore paying himself "carbon offsets".

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

Suspicion Confirmed!

As if there was ever any doubt, the Global Warmistas have revealed their true agenda of using the allegation of anthropogenic climate change to increase government control over our lives through new regulations and taxes:

The ultimate control freak fantasy

And the global warming beat goes on.... From the Scotsman:

A RAFT of new green taxes on flights, cars and wasteful household appliances is being considered by ministers.

In a leaked letter to the Chancellor, David Miliband, the Environment Secretary, has proposed a package of environmental taxes meant to encourage people to use public transport, buy smaller cars and fly less. These include charges on petrol-guzzling cars, road pricing, a £5 levy on airline travel in Europe and £10 for longer-haul flights, and higher charges for dumping waste in landfills.

What a wonderful way to control and tax everything! All while convincing the populace it’s for their own good and that of the planet. The ultimate control freak fantasy. What genius! The Chinese must love this. Should leave more oil for them.

Dennis Sevakis 10 30 06

ht american thinker

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

Enviro/Green Religion

The evidence keeps mounting that the the Enviro/Green movement is more religion than science.

John A. Baden: "Is Ethanol a Pure Green Elixir?"

Those of us committed to Green causes often respond more strongly to symbolic values than to careful analysis. Recycling offers a clear example. The environmental value of recycling depends on time- and place-specific circumstances. It almost always makes both ecological and economic sense to recycle aluminum and other metals. Often this holds for paper, only occasionally for plastic and glass. Recycling plastic and glass often consumes more resources than it saves... [in California the taxpayers will take up the slack]

Here’s CU’s [Consumer Union's] evaluation of ethanol. First, the energy content of ethanol is low when compared with gasoline or diesel. While diesel contains around 140,000 Btu per gallon, and gasoline 115,000 Btu, denatured ethanol contains only 78,000 Btu per gallon. We can’t cheat physics. These numbers translate into low fuel mileage.

CU tested a new Chevy Tahoe. “In highway driving (on 85 percent ethanol), gas mileage decreased from 21 to 15 mpg; in city driving, it dropped from 9 to 7.” In marked contrast, we have two old diesel ranch trucks that weigh a ton more than the new Tahoe and each gets 20+ mpg on the highway at 65 mph.

We can grow the feed-stocks for ethanol -- but I’d feel a bit guilty for using it. And not only for the subsidies built into its production.

Let’s consider one among many egregious ethanol subsidies. Flexible fuel vehicles (FFVs) are designed to run on either gasoline or a blend of 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gas, E85. Automotive manufacturers receive generous fuel-economy credits for each FFV built -- even if it never runs on E85. This credit enables them to build more large SUVs that burn more gas than ethanol replaces. This is a perverse but predictable outcome of political forces.

The cellulosic ethanol touted by both Greens and President Bush may be a worse one for Third World ecosystems. What could be wrong with using carbohydrates to replace hydrocarbons? Here are some unintended consequences foretold by Peter Huber, an MIT engineering Ph.D.: “To improve on wood-burning fires, or grass-eating cows, perfect the cellulose-splitting enzyme. Then watch what 7 billion people will do to your forests and your grasslands.”

h/t: Dick McDonald