Part 1

Many times for over a year I’ve decried the foolish headlong government plunge into ethanol. Basically anytime the government anoints a winner in the marketplace the government will be proven wrong for any number of reasons. One of the many predictable outcomes of increased governmental support for ethanol, higher food prices, has become a reality.

The Washington Post had a good column recently aptly titled “Ethanol’s Failed Promise” that outlined the many flaws with biofuels. I was particularly amused by the line, “Food-to-fuel mandates were created for the right reasons.” Ohhhh, the liberal’s lament. It’s always about good intentions with them, not sound, well reasoned policy. Any degree of government interference is justifiable if your heart is pure.

Seriously, who thought it was a good idea to use precious arable land for fuel production instead of food production while there are still people starving in the world?

Part 2

On a related topic, I recently wrote that John McCain’s proposal to eliminate the federal fuel tax for the summer revealed his lack of adherence to the global warming creed. Eliminating the tax would encourage more consumption of fuel, which is exactly the opposite of what a devout global warmitarian would want. Now the Wall Street Journal has come to the same conclusion. They state that proposals such as McCain’s make “a hash out of the climate-change policies that the candidate purports to favor.”

If such politicians were honestly concerned with the survival of our species their recourse would be simple and easy to make: artificially force up fuel prices. Tax it. Regulate it. Bludgeon it to death. Instead what we get are politicians who seem to be eager to just gain more power and control since their contradictory cocktail of policies belie their tenuous belief in the man-made global warming faith.

Update: More on McCain’s hypocrisy from Newsweek:

[A]ttorney and former GM exec Frank Dunne finds the climate-change hawk’s call for a gas-tax holiday “intellectually dishonest.”

[Tom Kloza, energy analyst with the Oil Price Information Service] goes a bit further, calling a gas-tax holiday “caca.” “It represents pandering. You’re not leveling with the American public,” says Kloza.

I’ll be headed to the beach this Summer: going to Fort Morgan for fun in the sun, Tacky Jacks 2 (by the Fort), Candlelight Tour of the Fort (with Ghost Stories), and the trails of BON SECOUR National Wildlife Refuge. So this news report got my attention:

The Alabama Department of Public Health issued a swimming advisory today for the waters of Bon Secour Bay at Mary Ann Nelson Park.

Two recent successive tests of water quality at the park were poor. The advisory warned that swimming in this area might lead to an increased risk of illness.

Monitoring will continue and the advisory will be lifted once bacteria values fall below the Environmental Protection Agency’s threshold of 104 enterococcus organisms per 100 milliliters for marine water, according to the statement.

The Health Department retested the site and it is clean. Here’s a link to the ADEM / ADPH Beach Monitoring website, which includes the test results at 25 sites in Baldwin and Mobile Counties (BTW all clean).

The ‘enterococcus’ bacteria (Poo) contamination reporting took the place of the old ‘fecal coliform’ (Poo), because it correlates better to human pathogens found in sewage.

I spoke with a really nice Environmental guy (Byron) from the Baldwin County Health Department (which administers the Beach Monitoring program). He said it was “hard to say” why the Poo levels exceeded the threshold, adding that it was “unusual” for that area. He said it might be that “a pelican dropped a load”, which could give an unexpected test result.

The Fairhope and Gulf Shores areas are on sewer systems, so the poo probably wasn’t human. Other than pelicans, it might be dog poo sewerage runoff or cow poo runoff from ranches. ADEM / ADPH is fixing to develop a system of “source tracking” that would further classify the poo, which could lead to improved remediation.

In order to make the poo threshold explainable to me and children, I asked the guy just what the enterococcus level might be in an unflushed toilet. He didn’t care to estimate, but he did say that a sewer spill (that “you couldn’t even smell”) he had dealt with had levels between 3,000 to 5,000 colonies per mL of water.

From the BBC:

Global temperatures this year will be lower than in 2007 due to the cooling effect of the La Nina current in the Pacific, UN meteorologists have said.

…

This would mean global temperatures have not risen since 1998, prompting some to question climate change theory.

Not surprisingly the “experts” claim their computer models still project the temperature rising within five years. I wonder if their computer models can tell me what the chance of rain is going to be here in three weeks.

2005: Is Global Warming Making Hurricanes Worse?

2008: Global warming reducing hurricanes in U.S., report says

Confused?  I am!

Ironically, the 2005 article cited “numerous” studies that found no link between an increase in the number of hurricanes and rising ocean temperatures.  BUT… A study published in the journal Nature concluded that hurricanes have become stronger and longer lasting in the last thirty years, which correlated to an increase in ocean temps.  Naturally, everyone got all hot and bothered.

Fast forward a scant two and a half years and the new report suggests that wind shears caused by high temperatures are causing a slight, but noticeable, decrease in the number of hurricanes that strike the U.S.

The conflicting conclusions underscore the need for caution and critical analysis of scientific findings before making drastic policy and legislative changes that could be unnecessary, inadequate, or (worse yet) counterproductive.

One aspect about the 2005 report troubles me a bit.  I’ll admit that I have not read the report, so I can only hope the authors addressed my concerns, but I know that most Warmitarians do not do so.  Essentially, I’m skeptical about the veracity of comparing storm damage or strength measurement data over long periods of time.  Over time populations along coastlines increase and previously undeveloped coastline is developed.  That alone will cause previously “harmless” storms to cause significant property damage and possibly loss of life.  Also, it seems that the financial composition of coast dwellers is trending in a more affluent direction.  That would indicate that property damage costs would increase for a given storm after accounting for inflation.

Also, measurement techniques are becoming more refined and have enabled us to better identify and characterize the strength of hurricanes than ever before.  Watching hurricane coverage is fascinating.  Meteorologists track the storms from the time they are far from shore in the Atlantic.  They frequently measure the intensity of the storms as they move into the Caribbean.  The categorical ebb and flow is unbelievable.  One day it may be a Cat 5, the next a Cat 3.  All that really matters is the strength when the storm makes land fall, but I wonder how many storms are recorded based on their maximum attained strength - a measurement that may be misleading looking backward since previously storms could not be tracked with the same tool set.

In any event, it should be fun to watch the faithful explain away the new report and proclaim “consensus” despite the obvious lack thereof.

OK, so the title is redundant…

From CNN:

Greenpeace said Monday it has disrupted the Japanese whale hunt off Antarctica by chasing the fleet’s whale processing factory ship out of the whaling zone.

The six-vessel fleet “scattered and ran” early Saturday when it realized the Greenpeace vessel Esperanza was “heading toward them at high speed,” Greenpeace expedition leader Karli Thomas told New Zealand’s National Radio.

The fleet’s three whale hunter vessels “can’t operate without the (factory ship) Nisshin Maru there to process the kill,” she added.

Personally, if you’re at sea and another boat charges toward your vessel with the intent of smashing into you then you should reserve the right to fire upon them.  Arm the whaling vessels and give them the opportunity to fend off the aggressive Greenpeace boats.

Gee, why do I not find this surprising? 

If you thought that the era of British bigwigs keeping Indians as personal servants came to an end with the fall of the Raj in 1947, then you must have had a rude awakening last week.

In a feature about carbon offsetting in The Times (London), it was revealed that the leader of the UK Conservative Party, David Cameron, offsets his carbon emissions by effectively keeping brown people in a state of bondage. Whenever he takes a flight to some foreign destination, Cameron donates to a carbon-offsetting company that encourages people in the developing world to ditch modern methods of farming in favour of using their more eco-friendly manpower to plough the land. So Cameron can fly around the world with a guilt-free conscience on the basis that, thousands of miles away, Indian villagers, bent over double, are working by hand rather than using machines that emit carbon.

Welcome to the era of eco-enslavement.

That is the modus operandi for government officials who want to impose a lifestyle on the masses so long as they don’t have to change theirs.

Here is yet another example of why global warming proponents have no credibility in my opinion.

Since the late 1960s, much of the North Atlantic Ocean has become less salty, in part due to increases in fresh water runoff induced by global warming, scientists say.

—Michael Schirber, LiveScience, 29 June 2005

The surface waters of the North Atlantic are getting saltier, suggests a new study of records spanning over 50 years. They found that during this time, the layer of water that makes up the top 400 metres has gradually become saltier. The seawater is probably becoming saltier due to global warming, Boyer says.

—Catherine Brahic, New Scientist, 23 August 2007

In case you haven’t noticed, any time there is any deviation form what is perceived to be normal the global warmitarians reflexively assume that their religion of choice is the explanation.  I don’t deny that man has a negative impact on the environment, but when scientists use global warming as a crutch to avoid determining actual causation it makes me dubious of what might be valid claims.

Wow, this is quite significant.  Apparently a blogger realized that some of the extreme temperature changes noticed around the turn of the millennium were the result of a Y2K error.  Supposedly NASA has admitted the error and has released revised numbers.

NASA has now silently released corrected figures, and the changes are truly astounding. The warmest year on record is now 1934. 1998 (long trumpeted by the media as record-breaking) moves to second place.  1921 takes third. In fact, 5 of the 10 warmest years on record now all occur before World War II.

The effect of the correction on global temperatures is minor (some 1-2% less warming than originally thought), but the effect on the US global warming propaganda machine could be huge.

I’ve long been skeptical of the long term predictions made by global warming alarmists, mainly because of my understanding of computer simulations and the growth in prediction error as a function of time due to many phenomena.  It’s not that I don’t believe that we are harming the environment, it’s just that some of the wild claims based on computer models border on technological malpractice.  My concerns were based on the belief that the scientists would at least get their damn codes correct.

This kind of incident really makes one curious about how rigorously these codes are being peer reviewed.  Part of their inherent problem is that the results can’t be proven since you have to wait and see if the weather matches the simulation.  So who knows what other little bugs might be buried within these complicated codes.  Keep this in mind before you get too excited over someone’s computer predictions about the global weather decades from now.

Not about the pot or the pills that Al the third didn’t have a prescription for, but what a waste of energy.

Al Gore’s son was arrested early Wednesday on suspicion of possessing marijuana and prescription drugs after deputies pulled him over for speeding, authorities said.

Al Gore III, 24, was driving a blue Toyota Prius about 100 mph on the San Diego Freeway when he was pulled over at about 2:15 a.m., Sheriff’s Department spokesman Jim Amormino said.

The deputies said they smelled marijuana and searched the car, Amormino said. They found less than an ounce of marijuana along with Xanax, Valium, Vicodin and Adderall, which is used for attention deficit disorder, he said.

“He does not have a prescription for any of those drugs,” Amormino said.

Air drag is proportional to velocity squared, which essentially means that your vehicle expends more energy for every mile per hour increase than was used to increase the previous mile per hour.  Despite his cutesy attempt to save the world by driving a Prius he was just burning more fossil fuels than necessary to get from point A to point B.  Maybe he can buy some carbon offsets to make up for his energy excesses.

I’ll just summarize this story in a sequential manner.

1. Woman buys a compact fluorescent light bulb for $4.28.
2. She breaks the bulb while installing it.
3. Afraid of potential contaminants, she calls Home Depot.  They direct her to call the Poison Control Hotline.
4. The Poison people send out the Maine Department of Environmental Protection.
5. They say the mercury level is in excess of six times the state’s “safe” level.  They tell her to call a clean up firm.
6. She spends $2004.28 on the clean up.

I can’t wait to put those things all over the house!  One legislator in California actually want to ban good ol’ Edison era bulbs and force consumers to buy CFL’s.