BlogNet News WisconsinA tip of the conservative ball cap to Watts Up With That?
You just can’t make this stuff up.
Scientists are now working to create a new “tootless” grass for bovine enjoyment which will help cut methane emissions from the bovine tailpipes. What next? A moratorium on baked beans at BBQs? Editing out that scene from Blazing Saddles so that school kids don’t get bad ideas that might harm the earth?
Unless Mayor Larry can convince his Democratic brethren either in Milwaukee/Wisconsin or Illinois, I don’t see Waukesha getting any Lake Michigan water.
The Great Lakes Compact requires the return of water to the lake. It will be expensive most likely. But logical, because that’s where the water came from. Makes sense to return it.
Now comes a story from Illinois that makes it seem as thought Illinois might not want wastewater going to the lake.
Illinois water officials are researching whether a provision of the Great Lakes water compact that could allow places such as Waukesha and Brookfield to receive Lake Michigan water would damage a lake recreation area that needs the Fox River to replenish it.
Under the compact, communities in Waukesha County receiving lake water would have to return treated wastewater to the lake instead of the Fox River.
That has Illinois water officials combing Waukesha Water Utility records to determine the possible effect on the river’s flow if Waukesha stopped sending its treated wastewater to the river.
If that happens, the Fox River would lose a contribution to its flow of at least 10 million to 11 million gallons a day, a wastewater treatment plant official said.
So Waukesha can’t send water down the Fox River because the Compact doesn’t allow it, and it’s possible Illinois would veto the city sending the water back to Lake Michigan.
Bricks shook loose and fell from buildings. Walls cracked. Books tumbled off shelves. A 5.2 magnitude earthquake centered near this southern Illinois town struck before dawn Friday, rocking skyscrapers in Chicago, 230 miles north of here, but doing little damage and seriously hurting no one.
Pretty good rock for the Midwest. I’ve been in stonger ones but I’m surprised I didn’t feel it.
“We thought it (the house) was falling on us, we really did,” said 85-year-old Anna Mae Williams, who was shaken awake at 4:37 a.m. in tiny West Salem, six miles from the epicenter. [emphasis mine]
That explains it. Four thirty-seven? I was dead to the world and not even a 5.2 will wake me up then.
Yes, another TIME magazine cover on ethanol.
But this time it’s a different tune.
Propelled by mounting anxieties over soaring oil costs and climate change, biofuels have become the vanguard of the green-tech revolution, the trendy way for politicians and corporations to show they’re serious about finding alternative sources of energy and in the process slowing global warming. The U.S. quintupled its production of ethanol–ethyl alcohol, a fuel distilled from plant matter–in the past decade, and Washington has just mandated another fivefold increase in renewable fuels over the next decade. Europe has similarly aggressive biofuel mandates and subsidies, and Brazil’s filling stations no longer even offer plain gasoline. Worldwide investment in biofuels rose from $5 billion in 1995 to $38 billion in 2005 and is expected to top $100 billion by 2010, thanks to investors like Richard Branson and George Soros, GE and BP, Ford and Shell, Cargill and the Carlyle Group. Renewable fuels has become one of those motherhood-and-apple-pie catchphrases, as unobjectionable as the troops or the middle class.
This is what happens when you let politicians determine what happens in the market. We see it over and over again and yet we somehow believe that this time it will be different.
The small print you can’t read in the cover shot above reads,
Politicians and Big Business are pushing biofuels as alternatives to oil. All they’re really doing is driving up food prices and making global warming worse–and you’re paying for it.
As always, isn’t it?
The subtitle to the article, which is hard to find online says,
Hyped as an eco-friendly fuel, ethanol increases global warming, destroys forests and inflates food prices. So why are we subsidizing it?
Why indeed?
Next, and in fact already happening, environmentalists will bemoan increased mercury levels from broken and trashed energy saving bulbs. Recently mandated by our government.
Sound familiar?
Buried at the bottom of JSOnline.com (was it that way in the paper also?)
While scientists have determined that humans probably are warming the world, it’s Earth’s microscopic inhabitants that may have even bigger climate clout.
It’s the increased breathing of these innumerable organisms as Earth warms that worries scientists.These bacteria live in the soil, which stores an enormous amount of carbon, according to Christopher Kucharik, an associate scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment.
“Globally, soils store twice as much carbon as the atmosphere does. It’s a pretty huge storage tank to be messing around with,” he said.
Interesting.
James Wigderson names his political idiot of the week.
I go to two posts of Jeff over at Five Points. On voter ID he gives some doable common sense ways to avoid disenfrancising voters and says, if these were put in place,
The only people it would disenfranchise are the lazy people who refuse to get their ass down to the DMV to get a state-issued ID.
I agree that what he suggests should be put in place before we even think about instituting voter ID.
Jeff also gives his thoughts on the Great Lakes Compact. Good points here also, for example,
I think that Michigan is going to be the state that is going to be a thorn in everyone’s side because they have nothing to lose. The entire state falls within the Great Lakes Basin so they need permission from nobody. Illinois is also a concern because they have an exemption in place that allows them a very large daily diversion via the Chicago River.
I’m looking forward to John Schoenknecht’s column’s in the Freeman. I, too, have his Spring’s book and history fascinates me.
I haven’t written much on it because, Lord knows, enough has been written already. Jim Rowen posts something every day, it seems. Mr. Rowen, himself, realizes this as he expressed in this comment to James Wigderson’s post.
Sorry this went on so long. Just send people to my blog for more than they will ever want to know about all this.
And there’s been more as the Compact legislation approached a vote in Wisconsin.
I’ve been influenced by points on both sides as, it seems, has Wigderson, who, in the above link, raised some points that I’ve thought about.
[For opponents,] if it doesn’t pass (as has been pointed out time and again) we go back to the old rule of any governor can divert any diversion for any reason.
I really, really, can’t see Waukesha “returning” water through the Root River.
I’m also concerned about the governor of one state (of, say, Michigan or Illinois) being able to veto, although this Milwaukee Journal Sentinel piece, if accurate would allay that concern somewhat.
Waukesha County Executive Daniel Vrakas, among others, wants to get it right. Some say that we can’t change it now. But wait, Senator Mary Lazich (or perhaps aide/blogger/radio personality Kevin Fischer) says 33 amendments were added to the bill that passed the Wisconsin Senate. What gives here?
Both Rowen and Wigderson linked to this article by Barbara Miner which took a look at water in the area and its history. A piece well worth reading.
Predictably in this often partisan process, Mayor Larry Nelson has been criticized by Waukesha County’s Republican legislators. They contend he had secret meetings with Democratic legislators without notifying them and colluded with them in getting it passed.
I have concerns about water and growth. As I wrote a couple of years back in the Journal Sentinel,
Seriously, though, water problems are important. Water is basic to life.
That’s why it’s curious that in all of the talk about new malls, hospitals and other construction going on, there’s little talk about how all of that will affect the water supply.
We hear a lot of talk from the politicians about conservation but very little on controlling growth. They ask lots of questions about tax issues, permits and what the developments will look like but not too much about the relationship to the water supply.
Nothing has changed in the last two years.
Those who read this blog know I’m not an environmentalist by any means. But water is a critical resource and until we know more what’s going on with drops in lake levels and the effects of diversion, I would favor ratifying this compact and having a process requests for diversion could go through.
It’s not perfect, but nothing often is.
Wisconsin should consider erecting wind turbines on the Great Lakes and reward utilities for cutting energy use instead of building power plants, according to a new report.
We can’t build oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico, but we can put wind turbines on the lake? I’m thinking this one’s not gonna fly.
Other ideas,
The interim report before the Governor’s Task Force on Global Warming asks the state to study the possibility of pumping carbon dioxide from power plants into the ground or sending the gas by pipeline to other states.
Maybe we could make a trade; if they take our carbon dioxide, we’ll give them some water.
Doyle formed the panel a year ago and asked it to come up with recommendations to reduce the state’s greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 80 percent by 2050.
According to the World Health Organization 100 million people died worldwide from tobacco use in the past century and another 1 billion are expected to die this century.
There are an estimated 5.4 million smoking-related deaths a year worldwide, and that number is expected to continue to rise dramatically if no actions are taken, said Dr. Douglas Bettcher, director of WHO’s Tobacco Free Initiative.
The report said nearly two-thirds of the world’s smokers live in 10 countries, with China accounting for 30 percent of them, India 10 percent and the rest divided among Indonesia, Russia, the United States, Japan, Brazil, Bangladesh, Germany and Turkey.
OK, one billion less people than there would be, 40 percent in China and India. Can this be all bad? A billion less people have got to improve the environment.
Oh, then there’s this,
Dutch researchers have confirmed what fat smokers have waited years to hear - that healthy people are actually a greater burden on the state, because they live longer and oblige the taxpayer to deal with the cost of “lingering diseases of old age like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s”.
That’s according to the Netherlands’ National Institute for Public Health and Environment, which found that while “a person of normal weight costs on average £210,000 ($417,000) over their lifetime”, a smoker clocks up just £165,000 ($326,000) and the obese run up an average £187,000 ($371,000) bill.
As the headline says, “Healthy? You’re a burden on the state.”
I get it. Coal-power plants are bad. Nuclear power is bad. Windmills are bad.
But one thing I don’t get. What do we generate electricity with?
Or are we all to become this guy?
An eWeek.com slide show for time change Sunday.
My satellite clocks have been going nuts all week. I didn’t even bother resetting the clock on my VCR/DVD. Why bother for a week?
Again, why was it delayed by a week? Did we “save” that much energy in one week?
Statistically significant evidence for energy savings during Daylight Savings Time has proved elusive, although a recent study shows 30 cents per family. That’s a penny per day for the recent one month extension, 3 weeks in March and this past week.
There may be benefits to safety, especially in pedestrian deaths; lower during DST higher during standard time.
But Congress likes to fiddle with time, as it did in 1918, 1919, 1942, 1945, 1966, 1974, 1986 and 2005.
Bus route 9 for Lake Michigan water?
As everyone who isn’t living under a radium-laced rock knows, several Waukesha County communities would like to get water from Lake Michigan. As long as those communities use water wisely and return that water to the Great Lakes’ natural basin, they should get it.
I’m thinking the environmentalists are already not liking where this is going.
But the search for water took another political hit last week, not from anyone in Milwaukee County but from Waukesha County supervisors who apparently can’t tell when their interests and those of Milwaukee County converge.
The Waukesha County Board’s Public Works Committee endorsed a plan to eliminate the No. 9 bus route, one of several commuter bus routes the county funds - in this case, one that brings workers to the county from Milwaukee. The committee also voted to increase the fee on another Milwaukee-Waukesha County route, the No. 10, which connects with Waukesha Transit buses at Brookfield Square mall. [Emphasis mine]
There’s the bus route part of the trade. So?
By themselves, the actions may not be significant - unless you happen to be a worker who uses the service - but in the larger scheme of things, they could cause some harm. Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett and others had pleaded for Waukesha County to spare the No. 9.
Which, as has been pointed out before, has 35 riders per day (3 per trip?). The companies involved who say this is vital have no interest in ponying up even a token amount.
Having rebuffed Barrett on this, how amenable do supervisors think the City of Milwaukee is going to be on other matters of regional cooperation, such as water?
Well, I don’t think it’s up to the City of Milwaukee. And the environmentalists will fight this hard no matter what the city says. Not that I necessarily believe them to be wrong here.
And although I’m sure the County Board would love to help Waukesha City (as well as the others) with its water problems (cough, cough), how much involvement does the county have in this?
So if we keep the bus route, we can get Lake Michigan water? Sounds like a deal to me.
Here are four carefully selected websites that offer easy to use “carbon calculators” to figure out what your carbon footprint is, along with “what you can do” solutions:
According to the first site I save 13,458 pounds of carbon dioxide per year.
According to the second site I use 8.4 tons of CO2 per year.
According to site three I use 6.4 tons per year.
According to site four I use 6967 pounds per month in my house.
(A tip of the conservative cap to Newsbusters via Real Debate Wisconsin)
I’m sorry. I just can’t resist.
Remember how the media trumpeted the loss of Arctic ice and the resultant blame on global warming, i.e., warming caused by man?
Well, maybe not. Please, note the “maybe.”
A new NASA-led study found a 23-percent loss in the extent of the Arctic’s thick, year-round sea ice cover during the past two winters. This drastic reduction of perennial winter sea ice is the primary cause of this summer’s fastest-ever sea ice retreat on record and subsequent smallest-ever extent of total Arctic coverage.
[Son ]Nghiem [of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory ] said the rapid decline in winter perennial ice the past two years was caused by unusual winds. “Unusual atmospheric conditions set up wind patterns that compressed the sea ice, loaded it into the Transpolar Drift Stream and then sped its flow out of the Arctic,” he said. When that sea ice reached lower latitudes, it rapidly melted in the warmer waters.
“The winds causing this trend in ice reduction were set up by an unusual pattern of atmospheric pressure that began at the beginning of this century,” Nghiem said. [Emphases are mine]
Unusual winds set up by an unusual pattern of atmospheric pressure. The reason for the “maybe” earlier. We don’t know why there is an unusual atmospheric pressure. Scientists may reverse all this tomorrow because that’s what scientists do anymore, which is why “common” people don’t trust them as much.
Because even in the earlier articles, we find this neatly tucked at the bottom,
Still, he and other scientists acknowledged that both poles were extraordinarily complicated systems of ice, water and land, and that the mix of human and natural influences was not easy to clarify.
Sea ice around Antarctica has seen unusual winter expansions recently, and this week is near a record high. [Yes, the emphases are mine.]
Bet you didn’t hear too much about that, did you?
But this gorge was formed in just three days. Click on picture to go to the Canyon Gorge web site.
A torrent of water from an overflowing lake sliced open the earth in 2002, exposing rock formations, fossils and even dinosaur footprints in just three days. Since then, the canyon has been accessible only to researchers to protect it from vandals, but on Saturday it opens to its first public tour.
The mile-and-a-half-long gorge, up to 80 feet deep, was dug out from what had been a nondescript valley covered in mesquite and oak trees. It sits behind a spillway built as a safety valve for Canyon Lake, a popular recreation spot in the Texas Hill Country between San Antonio and Austin.
Yes, it’s not the Grand Canyon, but I’m still amazed at how little time it takes for things can happen .
The sky is falling! We’re all doomed!
But he’s probably right. What do I know? After all, he’s worked for newspapers and has been a senior Mayoral staffer.
Me? I’m just a “goofy man with a blog toy,” a “self-described musing conservative.”
Hey, maybe the left will start a blog about me like they did about Jessica McBride.
Then I would know I’ve arrived.
UPDATE: Obviously, not everyone appreciates irony especially when it takes aim at a pet special interest.
Ah, well. It’s just nice to be noticed by one of the big boys. And I admit my sense of humor borders on the strange.
According to the National Weather Service in Sullivan, Milwaukee hit a record low for the date of 40 degrees at 5:57 a.m. today, a degree lower the previous record set in 1966.
Gotta love the irony.
The fact of the matter is, most of New Orleans should not be rebuilt, not where it was.
Funny how the party most environmentalists belong to is insisting the city be rebuilt on land that is not environmentally suited to housing.
But that doesn’t excuse the insurance companies from not paying up.
I’ve seen this at Hang Right Politics and at RealDebateWisconsin. referencing this report. I expect we’ll see a competing study debunking this shortly.
Of 528 total [scholarly published] papers on climate change, only 38 (7%) gave an explicit endorsement of the consensus. If one considers “implicit” endorsement (accepting the consensus without explicit statement), the figure rises to 45%. However, while only 32 papers (6%) reject the consensus outright, the largest category (48%) are neutral papers, refusing to either accept or reject the hypothesis. This is no “consensus.”
As I said, stay tuned for the rebuttal.
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