There is a lot at stake for former Vice President Al Gore with the Global Warming* issue. Without the threat of Global Warming, he is rather out of a job. Who would hire Al Gore to come speak about the threat of normal weather? Without Global Warming, who would ever buy a carbon credit from the corporation he is affiliated with? Without Global Warming, Al Gore just becomes another washed up Vice President who did not make it to the ultimate status prize of the presidency.

I can understand why Al Gore keeps insisting that Global Warming is a serious threat to the planet.  All of Al Gore's current prestige and status and livelihood are tied to this fabricated crisis.

President elect Barack Obama's buy-in is more difficult to understand, but buy-in he did. Obama meets Gore, urges urgent action on global warming:  (My emphasis throughout)

U.S. President-elect Barack Obama on Tuesday reiterated the need to address global warming as he discussed the problem with former Vice President Al Gore. Flanked by Gore and Vice President-elect Joe Biden, Obama told reporters in Chicago, ‘‘All three of us, I think, are in agreement that the time for delay is over, the time for denial is over.’’

‘‘We all believe what the scientists have been telling us for years now: that this is a matter of urgency and national security, and it has to be dealt within a serious way,’’ he said. ‘‘That’s what I intend my administration to do.’’

Obama met with Gore ‘‘to listen and learn from Vice President Al Gore on the extraordinary work that he has done around the issue of climate change,’’ for which the former vice president won a Nobel Peace Prize in 2007.

Obama is still bent on his environmentally friendly energy program, his green jobs plan--even though they won't solve our energy problems or help our economy.

When people realize what his energy plan will cost, both in Cap and Trade costs and increased utility costs, they might HOPE things will CHANGE back to cheaper un-green energy. From geophysicist David Deming:

"Let the politicians take note. People will not like what you have in mind. California is arguably the most liberal state. Yet last month they defeated, by nearly a 2-to-1 margin, a law that would have forced California utilities to obtain half their electric power from renewable sources. What the Obama administration proposes is much more radical. Their cap-and-trade proposal will dramatically increase the energy costs of the average consumer and likely drive our crippled economy into a severe depression.

Why a president, facing the economic crisis our country seems to be headed toward, would embrace such expensive, inefficient green energy and crippling cap and trade proposals is beyond me. It is beyond geophysicist Deming too, who stated in his commentary, Global warming freeze:

This is an absurd spectacle. Our advanced civilization is being systematically mismanaged by technologically illiterate lawyers responding to political pressures from irrational fanatics. Would someone please tell these people it is impossible to overturn the laws of thermodynamics?

We cannot improve our economy by artificially forcing people to use expensive, unreliable and inefficient energy sources.

As Deming concludes, "To the extent global warming was ever valid, it is now officially over." Now we just have to get the politicians to look at the facts, because I cannot afford to pay triple WE energies bill charges!

*The term Global Warming is morphing into the term Climate Change because world temperatures have not cooperated over the past 10 years. Many examples cited in Global warming freeze? point out that current data shows warming "is now officially over."

Please, comment content should relate to the subject of the post. Although I try to respond to many, do not interpret my lack of a response as agreement.

Links: 

 

Brookfield7, Fairly Conservative, Vicki Mckenna, Jay Weber, The Right View Wisconsin, Mark Levin, CNS News

 

Do you ever get the feeling that those who believe in Global Warming don't want to be confused by the facts?

I fully support a person's right to believe what they please. That doesn't mean their beliefs are correct, but they do have the right to believe what they want. We call that free will.

But when their beliefs start infringing on my rights, limit my choices, raise food and energy prices, and cripple our economy, then I draw the line. Yet that is exactly what is happening in our government and President Elect Obama is marching lock step to the global warming drummer.

If you were paying attention, October was a chilly month around the world. Yet the Global Warming devotees stated otherwise. The UK Telegraph gave a startling explanation in The world has never seen such freezing heat: (My emphasis)

A surreal scientific blunder last week raised a huge question mark about the temperature records that underpin the worldwide alarm over global warming. On Monday, Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), which is run by Al Gore's chief scientific ally, Dr James Hansen, and is one of four bodies responsible for monitoring global temperatures, announced that last month was the hottest October on record.

This was startling. Across the world there were reports of unseasonal snow and plummeting temperatures last month, from the American Great Plains to China, and from the Alps to New Zealand. China's official news agency reported that Tibet had suffered its "worst snowstorm ever". In the US, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration registered 63 local snowfall records and 115 lowest-ever temperatures for the month, and ranked it as only the 70th-warmest October in 114 years.

How do you explain that discrepancy? GISS says last October was "the hottest October on record", yet NOAA reported 63 record snowfalls and 115 lowest temps, and we observe much the same. Plus, aren't scientists supposed to observe and question? If the data says one thing, but world wide weather reports of early snows show something else, wouldn't that make you look closer at the data? Thankfully, some did.

... when expert readers of the two leading warming-skeptic blogs, Watts Up With That and Climate Audit, began detailed analysis of the GISS data they made an astonishing discovery. The reason for the freak figures was that scores of temperature records from Russia and elsewhere were not based on October readings at all. Figures from the previous month had simply been carried over and repeated two months running.

The error was so glaring that when it was reported on the two blogs - run by the US meteorologist Anthony Watts and Steve McIntyre, the Canadian computer analyst who won fame for his expert debunking of the notorious "hockey stick" graph - GISS began hastily revising its figures. This only made the confusion worse because, to compensate for the lowered temperatures in Russia, GISS claimed to have discovered a new "hotspot" in the Arctic - in a month when satellite images were showing Arctic sea-ice recovering so fast from its summer melt that three weeks ago it was 30 per cent more extensive than at the same time last year.

The GISS admitted that some data was "obtained from another body" and they didn't "have resources to exercise proper quality control" over that data!  Amazing. The GISS figures are used by the UN "to promote its case for global warming." They use GISS because "they consistently show higher temperatures than the others."

Yet last week's latest episode is far from the first time Dr Hansen's methodology has been called in question. In 2007 he was forced by Mr Watts and Mr McIntyre to revise his published figures for US surface temperatures, to show that the hottest decade of the 20th century was not the 1990s, as he had claimed, but the 1930s.

More and more data shows that brief period of warming in the 1990s has ended, yet Al Gore, the media, and some in government stubbornly hold to their religion of Global Warming.

[Is it] wise for the world's governments to embark on some of the most costly economic measures ever proposed, to remedy a problem which may actually not exist, is a question which should give us all pause for thought.

Candidate Obama said he would look at off shore drilling and clean coal. President Elect Obama retreats to his earlier positions of bankrupting our coal fired power plants through Cap and Trade and reinstating the moratorium on offshore oil drilling. These two measures will further cripple an ailing US economy. And why? Because of a stubborn belief in the bad science of Global Warming.

 

 
What would Cap and Trade mean to us? America's Climate Security act "Catastrophic for Wisconsin"  and Cap-and-Trade? Maybe it should be called Cap-and-Raid! 

Across the pond, they have the same problem, Climate Change Bill makes chilling reading:

Declining global temperatures continue to make a mockery of those computer model projections on which the whole global warming scare is based.

As I have asked before, has there ever in history been such a collective flight from reality?

Film-makers taking on our 'global warming hysteria':

A new Irish film claims that climate change guru Al Gore is an alarmist and that those who think they are saving the planet are only hurting the poor.

IF THE ADVANCE publicity is anything to go by, Not Evil Just Wrong will do for Al Gore what Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 did for George W Bush.

 

Please, comment content should relate to the subject of the post. Although I try to respond to many, do not interpret my lack of a response as agreement.

Links: 

 

Brookfield7, Fairly Conservative, Vicki Mckenna, Jay Weber, The Right View Wisconsin, Mark Levin, CNS News

 

A picture is worth a 1,000 words. Click this National Climatic Data Center/ NOAA link to see a map United States. It shows U.S. temperature averages from January through October of this year.

The cruel joke is, now that temperatures are colder again, energy prices* are higher because of environmental protection measures! 

Another cruel joke: "State $5 billion in the red -- Governor to go to Beverly Hills"** by Rep. Jim Ott:

On the same day Governor Doyle announced that Wisconsin has a budget deficit in excess of $5 billion, the largest in state history, and talked about spending cuts, tax hikes and job cuts, he announced that he is flying to California next week for a summit on Global Warming. The summit will be held at the Beverly Hills Hilton.
... 

“Wisconsinites are facing the worst fiscal crisis in the state’s history and Governor Doyle is flying to Beverly Hills, CA “…to develop creative, collective actions to advance the global climate agreement….”that hasn’t even been negotiated yet???” asked Representative Jim Ott.

Rep. Ott added this point,

“Furthermore how does firing up your state plane – you don’t exactly have a history of flying commercial - reduce your carbon foot print? The least you could do is fly Midwest Express, support a Wisconsin company, and use some of the airline miles you must have accumulated on your September global warming trip to Germany.” 

Remember that Representative Jim Ott is also a Meteorologist--he knows his weather statistics!

Colder temperatures? State $5 billion in the hole? No matter, Gov. Doyle has his priorities. Too bad they aren't mine.
 

*We can't drill for new oil or natural gas sources, we can't build coal fired electricity plants, we can't build nuclear power plants, and we are forced to use expensive solar and wind, all because of environmental extremists. 

**I heard this on Mark Belling's show today. 

Please, comment content should relate to the subject of the post. Although I try to respond to many, do not interpret my lack of a response as agreement.

Links: 

 

Brookfield7, Fairly Conservative, Vicki Mckenna, Jay Weber, The Right View Wisconsin, Mark Levin, CNS News

 

Have you noticed that this summer was cooler than usual? That fact, coupled with our recent cold and snowy winter, takes the subject of Global Warming off the front burner.

The last time the temperature didn't hit 90 degrees in Milwaukee during a summer* was in 2000, the weather service said. Before that, it was 1915.

But without even knowing what the daily highs were, could you tell our days and nights were cooler when compared to other summers? I could. Thanks to lower evening temperatures, we were able to avoid turning on our electricity guzzling air conditioner this summer.

As a gardener, I know this summer has been cooler. Tomatoes, which require warm evening temperatures, are ripening slowly. This spring my peach trees let me know we had a colder than usual winter by producing only 2 blossoms. Essentially all of the flowering buds were frozen out. I haven't had a bumper crop in years.

We may have had a stretch of warmer than usual temperatures in recent years. These fueled the Global Warming argument. Who could forget the summer of 1995? (We were remodeling. The whole east side of our house was open to the elements and mosquitoes. Couldn't run the air.) Remember that summer? We had a number of 100+ days! It was awful.

But the warming trend seems to have turned around, and I think it is taking the wind out of the Global Warming alarmists' sails.  

Did you notice how the Global Warming/Climate Change issue was no longer in the limelight at the Democrat convention? There was lots of talk about energy independence and getting off of foreign oil from the Democrats, but not much on reducing carbon footprints, or Global Warming specifically, that I heard.

Barack Obama did not mention Global Warming or even Climate Change in his speech. The closest Obama came to it was, (my emphasis)

And for the sake of our economy, our security, and the future of our planet, I will set a clear goal as President: in ten years, we will finally end our dependence on oil from the Middle East...

...As President, I will tap our natural gas reserves, invest in clean coal technology, and find ways to safely harness nuclear power**... ...And I'll invest 150 billion dollars over the next decade in affordable, renewable sources of energy - wind power and solar power and the next generation of biofuels; an investment that will lead to new industries and five million new jobs that pay well and can't ever be outsourced.

Al Gore referred to it as climate crisis in his convention speech. But Gore was not on the prime time coverage I viewed. He is still gung-ho on reducing dependence on big oil and coal, but even Gore did not refer to the term Global Warming--except in reference to McCain backing away from "mandatory caps on global warming pollution" legislation.

The Republicans are off to a slow start with their convention due to hurricane Gustav. Last night Joe Lieberman did mention global warming briefly:

If John McCain was just another go-along partisan politician, he never would have led the fight to fix our broken immigration system or to do something about global warming.

I will be listening tonight and tomorrow to the speeches--especially for specific mention or even a hint of Global Warming or Climate Change. I think the whole issue has cooled off in light of the large temperature drop this year and the majority of Americans wanting us to drill domestically. McCain's choosing Sarah Palin from an oil producing state leads me to believe we won't be hearing much about it.

 

*The article stated that for record keeping purposes, they count summer as being June, July, and August instead of the June 22 - Sept. 22 definition of summer. 

**Pretty ironic. The Democrats have been blocking these energy sources in Congress, but now that the American public is demanding domestic drilling, natural gas, clean coal, and nuclear is OK?

Links: 

Brookfield7, Fairly Conservative, Betterbrookfield, Mark Levin,   Vicki Mckenna

Most of us heard about Al Gore's JFK-like 10 year challenge last week for "America to run 'on 100% zero-carbon electricity in 10 years." Bret Stephens wrote about it and Al Gore in his Wall Street Journal piece, Al Gore's Doomsday Clock. He wrote, "though that's just the first step on his road to 'ending our reliance on carbon-based fuels.'  Serious people understand this is absurd. Maybe other people will start drawing the same conclusion about the man proposing it."

Do read the complete article. Bret Stephens presents many interesting statistics on where we have been and where we are going on our carbon-free electrical journey.

In Mr. Gore's prophecy, a transition to carbon-free electricity generation in a decade is "achievable, affordable and transformative." He believes that the goal can be achieved almost entirely through the use of "renewables" alone, meaning solar, geothermal, wind power and biofuels.

Um, Mr. Gore, last time I looked, biofuel was not zero-carbon. Plants themselves contain carbon in the form of simple sugars (that is what makes them a fuel), emit CO2 at night, and require carbon fueled tractors for cultivating the crop and later transporting crops to biofuel making factories and finally to gas stations.

Here, however, is an inconvenient fact (my emphasis throughout.) In 1995, the U.S. got about 2.2% of its net electricity generation from "renewable" sources, according to the Energy Information Administration. By 2000, the last full year of the Clinton administration, that percentage had dropped to 2.1%. By contrast, the combined share of coal, petroleum and natural gas rose to 70% from 68% during the same time frame.

Now the share of renewables is up slightly, to about 2.3% as of 2006 (the latest year for which the EIA provides figures). The EIA thinks the use of renewables (minus hydropower) could rise to 201 billion kilowatt hours per year in 2018 from the current 65 billion. But the EIA also projects total net generation in 2018 to be 4.4 trillion kilowatt hours per year. That would put the total share of renewables at just over four percent of our electricity needs.

Interestingly, Mr. Gore does not suggest carbon-free nuclear or hydro power,* which are not affected by cloudy or windless days:

Mr. Gore's case would also be helped if our experience of renewable sources were a positive one. It isn't. In his useful book "Gusher of Lies," Robert Bryce notes that "in July 2006, wind turbines in California produced power at only about 10% of their capacity; in Texas, one of the most promising states for wind energy, the windmills produced electricity at about 17% of their rated capacity." Like wind power, solar power also suffers from the problem of intermittency, which means that it has to be backed up by conventional sources in order to avoid disruptions. This is especially true of hot summers when the wind doesn't blow and cold winters when the sun doesn't shine.

And then there are biofuels, whose recent vogue, the World Bank believes, may have been responsible for up to 75% of the recent rise in world food prices. Save the planet; starve the poor.

Stephens concludes with this question, "A more interesting question is why Mr. Gore remains believable. Perhaps people think that facts ought not to count against a man whose task is to raise our sights..." and then he gives "The True Believer" author Eric Hoffer the last word, "It is startling to realize how much unbelief is necessary to make belief possible."

Don't get me wrong, I am all in favor of more environmentally favorable fuels and methods, as long as they make sense and cents! Fair Oaks Farm manure fueled electricity generators would be a good example of this. SC Johnson Co. (Johnson Wax) is also dabbling in methane from garbage fuel. But even these recycling methods are still carbon based.

Maybe some day, as technology improves, wind and solar might be able to more constantly supply the majority of our electricity. But for right now, we aren't there yet--not by a long shot.

 

Jay Weber spoke about this today in his 9 O'clock hour. 

*You would think hydro power would be favored by the environmentalists. Not true. While visiting the Grand Canyon 2 years ago, we heard of a movement afoot in the area to allow spring gushes. Seems the regular spring flooding of rushing water scoured the riverbed as opposed to the constant easy flow of a controlled river.

Links: 

Brookfield7, Fairly Conservative, Betterbrookfield, Mark Levin , Vicki Mckenna

One of the benefits of being a homeschool mom is that essentially I had a refresher course on grades 1-12. (English skills are still rough!) It's been 39 years since I graduated from high school, but even without homeschooling, one thing I never forgot were the basics of photosynthesis. Seems like some of the Global Warmingists could use a refresher course too.

I still remember the 16mm educational film entitled, "Our Mr. Sun." It was quite entertaining and featured a very young Eddie Albert and a scientist. Coincidentally, I was able to show that same movie to my son for our science class. One of the things they discussed was photosynthesis. Photosynthesis is still a mystery today, but we do know the basic ingredients needed for plants to create food from sunlight: H20 + CO2.

I drew this copy of the cartoon animation featured in Our Mr. Sun so my son and I could refer to it during science class.

The FOOD ENERGY STORAGE shelf features jars of GLUCOSE (sugar) and STARCH. Without photosynthesis filling the jars, life for us would be impossible.

All of the calories we consume come either from plants or animals that consume plant products.

The bi-product of photosynthesis is the "garbage" in the cartoon: O2 or Oxygen. 

The plant supplies the water through its vascular system. The CO2 enters the leaf through the STOMAS or openings in the underside. This is also how the O2 leaves the leaf. The glucose and starch is found in the leaves, stem, roots, and fruit of the plant. (The little green chef is a personification of the chloroplasts in the plant.)
There are many things I don't understand about the global warming argument, one being that CO2 is a pollutant. To me, CO2 is a necessary gas--especially if you are a plant! I don't seem to be alone in that idea. German scientists did some research on the impact of CO2 on plants. Higher CO2 levels may be good for plants: German Scientists :

The dangerous rise in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere may be troubling scientists and world leaders but it could prove to be a boon for plants, German researchers said Tuesday.

Increasing exposure to carbon dioxide appears to boost crop yields, Hans-Joachim Weigel of the Johann Heinrich von Thuenen Institute for rural areas, forestry and fisheries in the central city of Brunswick told AFP.

"Output increased by about 10 percent for barley, beets and wheat" when the plants were subjected to higher levels of carbon dioxide, Weigel said.

The Thuenen Institute, which has been monitoring the phenomenon in fields since 1999, trains CO2 jets on the plants so the gas reaches 550 parts per million in the air around them -- the level expected in the atmosphere by 2050...

He said the next step in the study would be to evaluate the effect of higher temperatures on plant growth -- which scientists cite as another consequence of higher CO2 emissions in the atmosphere.

Wouldn't that be interesting?

"This research is not intended as an argument for doing nothing to curb the rise of CO2 levels," he said. "It is to find out what the effects would be."

What a coincidence that plants breathe in CO2, exhale O2, produce the only source of food there is, and people do just the opposite? What a lucky bit of evolution! Of course, being a Creationist, I don't find that bit of symbiosis coincidental at all, but that will have to wait for another day.

We hear a lot about reducing our carbon footprint and purchasing carbon credits, but not so much about increasing trees (large CO2 users.) Since plants "consume"  CO2 from the atmosphere and return O2, wouldn't you think we would be urged to plant as many trees etc. as possible, instead of cutting them down to make way for ethanol crops?  

Hope you enjoyed Chef Photosynthesis. Did you see Our Mr. Sun when you were in school? 

 

Click here to sign the DRILL HERE. DRILL NOW. PAY LESS domestic drilling petition and see the latest links to related oil news (updated every day).

Drill Here is now over the 1.3 million mark. The goal is 3 million signatures by the Democratic and Republican Conventions. 

Links: 

Brookfield7, Fairly Conservative, Betterbrookfield, Mark Levin , Vicki Mckenna

 

Today is your last chance to weigh in on the Governor's Global Warming Task Force.

If you want to give the task force your 2 cents on ethanol, global warming, lifting alternative energy mandates or any other environmental issue the State of Wisconsin will be spending your money on and impacting your freedom to choose, email them now! (You can bet that all the corn farmers, ethanol manufacturers and those who lean Green will be flooding the task force with their point of view.)

The deadline for submitting comments on the Strawman Proposal has been extended to 4:00 p.m. on Thursday, June 19, 2008. Comments can be emailed to* DNRGLOBALWARMTFCOMMENTS@WISCONSIN.GOV

*The email address I had before did not work, this one should be correct. Sorry. 

Hat Tip, Vicki McKenna. She talked about this at 10:25. 

 

FYI:  Neighborhood Information Meeting tonight for Fire Station #3 move 

Links:

Brookfield7, Fairly Conservative, Betterbrookfield, Mark Levin , Vicki Mckenna

 

Just in case you missed this from the weekend news, the Sunday Journal reported in its Congress Following the Vote column,

GLOBAL WARMING FILIBUSTER  Voting 48-36, the Senate on Friday failed to reach 60 votes needed to end a Republican filibuster against an updated version of global warming bill. Democratic leaders then pulled the bill from the floor, perhaps for the remainder of the year. A yes vote was to advance the bill. McCain and Obama did not vote.

No surprise here, Feingold and Kohl voted YES to advance the bill. (So much for their sentiment that they will keep my thoughts in mind as the global warming debate moves forward.)

We are off the hook for right now. I would bet Senate offices were bombarded with negative calls and emails on cap-and-trade. I would also bet that this bill will return either in its entirety or in bits and pieces like the amnesty bills have returned. They are hoping for a time when we aren't paying attention! 

Past Post: Cap-and-Trade? Maybe it should be called Cap-and-RAID!

More reading:

George Will's Cap-And-Trade: A Devious Tax Plan

Good chart of key players and terms explained at end: Senate taking up key climate-change bill 

The Heritage Foundation's Morning Bell: Carbon Capping in Bizarro World 

Links:

Brookfield7, Fairly Conservative, Betterbrookfield, Mark Levin , Vicki Mckenna

 

 

Sunday we returned from a few days in Dearborn Michigan touring the Henry Ford Museum, Greenfield Village, and The Rouge Ford Factory. The Rouge Factory Tour was new to us. There was Bill Ford, the great grandson of Henry, up on the BIG screen telling us how Ford created this new Rouge factory to be friendly to the environment.

Much like our proposed Fountain Brook Crossing, The Rouge Ford Factory* has Gone Green. The roof is a garden roof, planted with sedum plants to absorb the rain water. They are increasing plantings wherever possible on the grounds; nets are strung up on the factory exterior for climbing vines.

Even their parking lots are water permeable. No more run-off. The paving material looks like asphalt but is a porous material that has sand and gravel below. The guide said that the water that runs through the pavement is filtered and very clean. It requires vacuuming twice a year to keep pores open and calcium chloride must be used instead of sodium chloride in winter.  The porous pavement is more expensive to install and maintain but lasts twice as long as conventional asphalt. Plus, no detention pond is needed...and it's good for the environment.

It seemed everything about The Rouge Factory was good for the environment or good for the employees. You could watch some of the assembly line in action. The workers were poetry in motion each doing their specific little jobs. While they are always under the time constraint of the moving line, it did not seem any were really hustling to keep up the pace. Some workers were on the cell phone, playing a hand held game, or even had newspapers there to catch a snippet of an article.

I asked a tour guide how much money these people made. She did not know specifically but said from what she read in the paper, it was around $20.00 per hour for new hires. Workers with more seniority were higher.

Another guide told us that Ford recently closed 2 other factories in other states, I believe, and now consolidated all of the work here at The Rouge. That sounded efficient. The Rouge's specialty was trucks**. Wonder where the other cars are made?

Monday's Investor's Business Daily answered part of that question: Movin' To Mexico!:  (My emphasis)

Ford's investment of $3 billion in two auto plants near Mexico City is the largest foreign company investment ever in Mexico. As oil prices soar and new climate-change rules are readied in Washington, Ford must shift from its reliance on trucks and SUVs to lighter, more energy-efficient vehicles.

This should be something that workers in Michigan and other Midwestern states with decades of automaking experience should excel at doing. Instead, Ford and other automakers are pushing more and more investment abroad — especially to Mexico.

The editorial cites reasons for an auto sales slump and the US losing jobs--mainly the UAW forcing higher wages and benefits--but increasing climate change rules and higher oil prices aren't helping the industry.

Like a coyote caught in a trap, U.S. automakers have been desperately gnawing off a leg to escape certain death. They're closing plants and slashing jobs in Michigan, Ohio and other U.S. union havens, in favor of non-union, foreign places. Like Mexico and China.

Meanwhile, foreign companies have no problem making cars here. They do it in the non-union South, where the UAW is weak.

So foreign companies can get around our high wages by being non-union, but even they and their products are subject to U.S. emission standards for factories and cars.

You would think that with our ailing auto industry our government would be doing all it could to help encourage instead of hinder. Yet Washington continues to hamper oil exploration and increase auto emission standards (i.e. new diesel emissions will be cleaner than intake air.) 

Add to automakers woes, both U.S. and foreign made here, the latest millstone around the neck: Cap-and-Trade, and I think we have the recipe for outsourcing more industry of all kinds.

Ford may have greened up its Dearborn plant and created an ideal work environment, but if more industry follows suit in exporting jobs to countries that don't care about workers or the environment, what good paying jobs will be left in America?

This was written before Tuesday's post Kohl, Feingold, and Doyle's reaction to GM closing Janesville plant

Related articles: Toyota workers in Kentucky plant made more than UAW members last year

More handwriting on the wall, GM closing Janesville assembly plant by 2010 

*The Rouge Factory was named for the Rouge River in Dearborn. The banks of the river were red clay, hence the name Rouge (French for red). 

**A guide told us this was the last year they would be making Mercury trucks. 

Links:

Brookfield7, Fairly Conservative, Betterbrookfield, Mark Levin , Vicki Mckenna

 

 

Last night I heard Senator Inhofe (R-Oklahoma) on the Mark Levin Show.  They were discussing S. 2191, the Senate "Lieberman/Warner Global Warming Bill and the disastrous effect this would have not on just the country as a whole, but the individual." (My emphasis throughout post.)

Wall Street Journal referred to Cap-and-Trade as Cap and Spend

As the Senate opens debate on its mammoth carbon regulation program this week, the phrase of the hour is "cap and trade." This sounds innocuous enough. But anyone who looks at the legislative details will quickly see that a better description is cap and spend. This is easily the largest income redistribution scheme since the income tax.

The Washington Post said, Just Call It "Cap-and-Tax" 

"...One of the bad ways [to control greenhouse gas] is cap-and-trade. Unfortunately, it's the darling of environmental groups and their political allies.

The chief political virtue of cap-and-trade -- a complex scheme to reduce greenhouse gases -- is its complexity. This allows its environmental supporters to shape public perceptions in essentially deceptive ways. Cap-and-trade would act as a tax, but it's not described as a tax. It would regulate economic activity, but it's promoted as a "free market" mechanism. Finally, it would trigger a tidal wave of influence-peddling, as lobbyists scrambled to exploit the system for different industries and localities. This would undermine whatever abstract advantages the system has.

...Call this "environmental pork," and it would just be a start. The program's potential to confer subsidies and preferential treatment would stimulate a lobbying frenzy. Think of today's farm programs -- and multiply by 10.

After listening to Senator Inhofe, I think we could also refer to it as Cap-and-Raid! If it passes, it will raid every worker in America's wallet!

Senator Inhofe said, Senator Barbara Boxer insists this is not a tax bill. But if you have looked into the bill itself and at the linked articles, it is difficult to understand how this could not be considered a tax bill.

Inhofe then quickly listed some points to ponder. He mentioned the Wall Street Journal referring to it as the most extensive reorganization since the 1930s. He called it worse than the Kyoto Treaty for the economy. Cap-and-Trade will need 45 more Big Government Bureaucracies to enforce the standards.

Using Boxer's figures, Inhofe pointed out that Cap-and-Trade would collect $6.7 Trillion dollars from industry (those costs will be passed onto us!). The maximum rebate to customers is $2.5 Trillion dollars. Do the math: That means $4.2 Trillion goes where?

That sounds like a tax to me!

He went on to remind us that the Democrats have killed every domestic drilling bill. The US relies on coal for 53% of all of its electricity production. Cap-and-Trade will tax coal fired electricity production. Consider that China "cranks out a new coal electric plant" every 3 days (?). (I think he said 3 days, which fits with this - certainly between India and China it would be true.)

Manufacturing jobs will go where there is (cheap) energy/power, Inhofe said. This is also what Congressman Sensenbrenner talked about at his Town Hall Meeting when he called Cap-and-Trade "Catastrophic for Wisconsin". I would add that manufacturing jobs will also go where environmental regulations are more lax.

Senator Inhofe suggested people take a look at Liberman-Warner Opposition Resource Center; Impacts of Costly Climate Bill Exposed  It is chock full of quotes, links and articles.

The Senate is debating this bill this week. While some say the bill will not pass, as you know, once the foot is in the door, the issue will not go away.  Considering all 3 Presidential candidates support the concept of Global Warming, I would just say, the bill probably won't pass...yet.

 

Our Senators' response to my emails: Not much hope of a NO vote here--unless they feel the heat from constituents.

This is important! Please contact them both: Senator Kohl (Phone: (414) 297-4451, (202) 224-5653) and Senator  Feingold (Office of Senator Russ Feingold | 202/224-5323) and let them know what you think about this bill.

 

More reading:

George Will's Cap-And-Trade: A Devious Tax Plan

Good chart of key players and terms explained at end: Senate taking up key climate-change bill 

The Heritage Foundation's Morning Bell: Carbon Capping in Bizarro World 

Links:

Brookfield7, Fairly Conservative, Betterbrookfield, Mark Levin , Vicki Mckenna

 

 

Marie Antoinette's "Let them eat cake" is quoted a lot these days in regard to ethanol and rising food prices. There are many interpretations as to what she meant by it--some debate whether she said it at all.

The most interesting explanation I ever heard came from a UWM theater department teacher. She said that "cake" was the term for a gasket made from dough strips used to seal oven doors. When the baking was finished, the very over-baked, virtually inedible dough gaskets were scraped off and discarded. The poor would dig these out of the garbage and attempt to eat them. In other words, the bakers used food for a purpose other than human or animal consumption, and the insensitive Marie said the starving could always eat the gaskets.

I think that explanation fits in rather well with today's food for fuel fiasco. But I am adding to the travesty of diverting food into ethanol production, the misuse and abuse of water used for producing biofuel. Hence my version of Marie's statement, Let them eat and drink ethanol!

People are waking up to the fact that ethanol is not the answer to energy independence. Even Former President Clinton, at a campaign stop for his wife in Pennsylvania, said, "Corn is the single most inefficient way to produce ethanol because it uses a lot of energy and because it drives up the price of food."

Some people are aware that food-to-fuel mandates have increased demand on water resources. Corn in particular requires irrigation in most areas. We noted this on our last few trips out west--hundreds of acres of corn fields all being irrigated. Water is becoming a rare resource in some areas. (If you live west of the sub-continental divide on Sunnyslope Road, you have probably been paying attention to water rights issues.)

But what most people don't realize is that ethanol production causes water pollution too--both in the growing of corn and in the production of ethanol itself--regardless of the plant source. 

Corn is a nitrogen needy plant and is very soil depleting. (Remember how the Native Americans taught the Pilgrims to put a fish in each hill of corn?) Well today's farmers rely heavily on nitrogen rich fertilizers. The Washington Post stated, "Increased agricultural production also means increased fertilizer use. The National Academy of Sciences reported last month that meeting the congressional food-to-fuel mandate by 2022 would lead to a 10 to 19 percent increase in the size of the Gulf of Mexico's "dead zone" -- an area so polluted by fertilizer runoff that no aquatic life can survive there."

Polluting farmland runoff is not the worst of it. Ethanol factories also exude an alarming amount of polluted water. I have heard it described as a glycerin type effluent that causes fish die off.

Water Use and Pollution Syrup, batches of bad ethanol, and sewage are dumped into streams, threatening fish and plants with chloride, copper and other wastes which deprive waters of oxygen when they decompose. A state inspector in Iowa reported that a creek next to the ethanol plant in Sioux Center was milky and smelled like sewage.

Water Supply Can't Meet Thirst For New Industry ...Nowhere is the growing clash between economic development and water conservation more evident than in the push to build ethanol plants that typically guzzle 3½ to 6 gallons of water for every gallon of fuel produced. Minnesota's 15 ethanol plants together consume about 2 billion gallons of water per year.

Drunk on Ethanol MTBE pollutes ground and surface water, but so does ethanol. With each gallon of ethanol you get 12 gallons of sewagelike effluent produced by the fermentation/distillation process.

So, let's see... biofuel production causes local and world wide food prices to rise, food shortages, water shortages due to irrigation, pollution from fertilizer runoff, and pollution to waterways from ethanol production. (Don't forget air pollution from burning ethanol.)

And most politicians are still chanting the ethanol mantra in order to save the planet from supposed CO2 pollution? (Explanation: The corn grower / ethanol lobby is very influential.) 

Let's hope these increasingly anti-ethanol articles and news stories about world food shortages and pollution will embarrass our Federal and State legislators into voting against or better yet repealing global warming and ethanol mandates. Otherwise, I am afraid we won't have much choice but to eat and drink ethanol! 

 

Riots, instability spread as food prices skyrocket

Ethanol's Failed Promise

Let Them Eat Cake

The World's Growing Food-Price Crisis

Hunger fuels food riots in Haiti 

Go, Jim and Jeff, Go! Repeal Those Ethanol Mandates (links to legislators included)

 

Links: Don't forget, Free Pass To Movie Preview of "The Enemy God" Saturday at 3pm

Brookfield7, Fairly Conservative, Betterbrookfield,  Vicki Mckenna

 

Congressman Sensenbrenner brought up Senate bill S. 2191, the Lieberman/Warner "America's Climate Security Act of 2007" at his Town Hall meeting Sunday. He described it as a "disaster for Wisconsin."

Information on S. 2191 from Congressman Sensenbrenner's website:

“S. 2191 proposes a nationwide cap-and-trade program for the emissions of greenhouse gases, like carbon dioxide, an important component of the manufacturing industry.  By setting a limit and capping carbon dioxide emissions by businesses, the Lieberman/Warner bill would thrust a highly regulatory regime on our nation’s economy, making electricity more expensive for businesses and consumers.  In Wisconsin, which relies heavily on the use of coal for electricity, this bill would have a catastrophic effect as we would be especially hard hit.

“This point is underscored in a study commissioned by the National Association of Manufacturers to assess the potential impacts of S. 2191 on Wisconsin’s economy…and the results are scary.

The Congressman discussed that study at the meeting and on Charlie Sykes show. The predictions were "scary."

“According to the study, electricity rates in Wisconsin could increase by as much as 163% in 2030 - nearly tripling today’s costs - and gas prices could increase by as much as 176% in 2030, again, almost tripling today’s cost of natural gas.

Not only will we be paying more for utilities, a figure of a 145% increase in gasoline prices was also given on Charlie Sykes show Monday, April 28, Ready for $10 a gallon gas?

Of course, these additional costs to businesses will be passed onto consumers. The Director of the Congressional Budget Office testified, "Under a cap-and-trade program, firms would not ultimately bear most of the costs of the allowances but instead would pass them along to their customers in the form of higher prices." 

So not only do we get to pay for higher energy costs for our own use, but we will pay more for every item and service produced in Wisconsin too.  

Who would ever want to live in Wisconsin or locate their business here if that is the case?

The National Association of Manufacturers report estimated that by 2030, 74,000 jobs would leave Wisconsin and a whopping 4 million jobs would leave our nation, because businesses naturally seek the cheapest and easiest place to manufacture their products.

What exactly is a cap-and-trade and why does it have such a negative impact on Wisconsin? 

Cap-and-trade is another term for Carbon Credit (or indulgences). Congress or bureaucrats set a cap or maximum on greenhouse gases that can be emitted by a company--be it a corporation or a utility company. Companies that do not comply with the standard must then have to purchase carbon offsets from companies that do comply. It is like a type of stock market that deals in these special credits.

According to Congressman Sensenbrenner, since Wisconsin gets 2/3 of its electrical power from coal fired plants, but Illinois obtains 60% of its electric power from clean nuclear power plants that emit 0 CO2, we will have to purchase these carbon offsets from Illinois just to keep producing our needed electricity! Illinois in effect gets their energy costs subsidized by Wisconsin residents. Wisconsin ends up paying 176% more for our electricity. OUCH! (At present, only 20% of Wisconsin electric comes from nuclear plants.)

Think no one in their right mind would agree to a system like this? Think again. Europe has been doing this for nearly 3 years now. Europe's greenhouse gases continue to rise as do their electricity rates. It has done nothing to lower emissions according to a publication from Sensenbrenner's office. I believe Australia just signed on to a system of carbon credits too.

Since businesses will just relocate to third world countries to manufacture their goods, these carbon credits will do nothing to lower CO2 emissions worldwide. The pollution will just move to the far east.

The increase in costs due to cap-and-trade fees are estimated at $1,300 a year / household for Wisconsinites.

Please contact Senators Kohl (Phone: (414) 297-4451, (202) 224-5653) and Feingold (Office of Senator Russ Feingold | 202/224-5323) and let them know what you think about this bill. 

Representative Zipperer informed the Town Hall meeting atendees that the Wisconsin Assembly recently passed legislation that lifted the moratorium on nuclear power plants last session. The Senate however did not. He said they would try again next time. 

Contact your state representative and senator about the moratorium.

State Representative Leah Vukmir, Republican, 14th District
Rep.Vukmir@legis.wisconsin.gov  608-266-9180

Representative Rich Zipperer, Republican, 98th District
Rep.Zipperer@legis.wisconsin.gov  608-266-5120

State Senator Jim Sullivan, Democrat, 5th District
Sen.Sullivan@legis.wisconsin.gov  608-266-2512,  866-817-6061

State Senator Theodore Kanavas, Republican, 33rd District
Sen.Kanavas@legis.wisconsin.gov  608-266-9174, 800-863-8883

Congressman Sensenbrenner's contact info:Email  Telephone: (262) 784-1111, (202) 225-5101  

Links: Upcoming events in Brookfield

4th Annual Weed Out, May 3rd, Mary Knoll Park

Brookfield7, Fairly Conservative, Betterbrookfield,  Vicki Mckenna

 

Sorry to ruin the fun, but an ice age cometh, and right on the heels of Earth Day! Seems there might be another nail in the coffin of Global Warming. This one comes from the lack of sunspots.

Why is that a problem? According to the editorial by Geophysicist Phil Chapman from the Australian:

...The sunspot number follows a cycle of somewhat variable length, averaging 11 years. The most recent minimum was in March last year. The new cycle, No.24, was supposed to start soon after that, with a gradual build-up in sunspot numbers.

It didn't happen. The first sunspot appeared in January this year and lasted only two days. A tiny spot appeared last Monday but vanished within 24 hours. Another little spot appeared this Monday. Pray that there will be many more, and soon.

The reason this matters is that there is a close correlation between variations in the sunspot cycle and Earth's climate. The previous time a cycle was delayed like this was in the Dalton Minimum, an especially cold period that lasted several decades from 1790.

Northern winters became ferocious: in particular, the rout of Napoleon's Grand Army during the retreat from Moscow in 1812 was at least partly due to the lack of sunspots.

That the rapid temperature decline in 2007 coincided with the failure of cycle No.24 to begin on schedule is not proof of a causal connection but it is cause for concern.

In another editorial along the same lines,  See Gore, See Spot, "former NASA astronaut [Chapman--also author of first piece] says the same solar phenomenon that doomed Napoleon's army may soon stop Al Gore's march to glory cold. Prepare for the big chill."

Of course it is too soon to know, but keeping an eye on the sunspot activity this year might be a better predictor of where you want to spend your winters when you retire than anything we have seen so far! Some scientists poo-poo the sun spot theory entirely. Only time will tell.

Links: 4th Annual Weed Out, May 3rd, Mary Knoll Park

Brookfield7, Fairly Conservative, Betterbrookfield,  Vicki Mckenna