Morning Roundup
Let’s review:
It didn’t take long for the left’s anti-science bias use the natural disasters in Japan to push their agenda:
- The earthquake and tsunami are the result of, wait for it, yup…Global Warming.
- The watermelons are out beating the “No Nukes” drum.
Let’s review the facts of the matter, the nuclear power plant safety systems *survived the 8.9 magnitude earthquake*.
That is worth repeating. The nuclear power plant safety systems still functioned after a 8.9 magnitude earthquake.
It took an 8.9 magnitude earthquake, closely followed by a major tsunami to take them out.
Meanwhile, in California, dozens of people are killed by a natural gas explosion because the gas company can’t keep track of the type of pipe they have buried.
If you want to donate to a relief group that will help the Japanese people, check out Americares or the American Red Cross.
Don’t worry, our Dear Leader isn’t missing his regular 18 holes of golf because of the crisis in Japan.
Former democrat President Bill Clinton is channeling Sarah Palin now, and not how you would think. Mr. Clinton is speaking out against our Dear Leader‘s ban on off shore drilling.
James O’Keefe exposed racism at NPR, which most of the MSM is strangely (or not so strangely) quiet about.
Liberals and socialists are mean-spirited, but we knew that…
Monday Book Pick: Confessions of a Greenpeace Dropout: The Making of a Sensible Environmentalist
Confessions of a Greenpeace Dropout: The Making of a Sensible Environmentalist by Patrick Albert Moore
Speaking of Evniromentalists and watermelons, this week’s pick is by a founder of Greenpeace. This book is by someone who actually cares about the planet, who quit the organization he helped found after it was taken over by socialists using the environmental movement to push their political agenda. Here is the money quote from a recent article by Moore:
The collapse of world communism and the fall of the Berlin Wall during the 1980s added to the trend toward extremism. The Cold War was over and the peace movement was largely disbanded. The peace movement had been mainly Western-based and anti-American in its leanings. Many of its members moved into the environmental movement, bringing with them their neo-Marxist, far-left agendas. To a considerable extent the environmental movement was hijacked by political and social activists who learned to use green language to cloak agendas that had more to do with anti-capitalism and anti-globalization than with science or ecology. I remember visiting our Toronto office in 1985 and being surprised at how many of the new recruits were sporting army fatigues and red berets in support of the Sandinistas.
Oh ya, a watermelon is a politie term to describe those folks in the red berets, a thin skin of green, but red to the core.
HT to AoSH, who also has this bonus video by Michael Crichton
Monday Book Pick: Paradise Regained: The Regreening of Earth
Paradise Regained: The Regreening of Earth by Les Johnson, Gregory L. Matloff and C. Bangs.
A bit of hard science for you geeks and Greenies (real greenies, not watermelons), describing on how to use resources of the solar system for terrestrial benefit. Yup, going to space is good for Mother Gaia. Move your hard industry and power production to Earth orbit and mine the resources of the Solar System.
China is building over 200 hundred new nuclear power plants
Given the huge number of horrifically dirty coal plans the Communist Chinese government has built, this is a good step for the environment.
What we should be doing in the US. As Dr. Pournelle pointed out:
I have to say it again: cheap energy will cause a boom. The only cheap energy I know of is nuclear. Three Hundred Billion bucks in nuclear power will do wonders for the economy. We build 100 1000 MegaWatt nuclear power plants — they will cost no more than 2 billion each and my guess is that the average cost will be closer to 1 billion each (that is the first one costs about 20 billion and the 100th costs about 800 million). The rest of the money goes to prizes and X projects to convert electricity into mobility.
It’s the Green thing to do. Greenpeace founder Patrick Moore thinks so too:
I am not alone among seasoned environmental activists in changing my mind on this subject. British atmospheric scientist James Lovelock, father of the Gaia theory, believes that nuclear energy is the only way to avoid catastrophic climate change. Stewart Brand, founder of the “Whole Earth Catalog,” says the environmental movement must embrace nuclear energy to wean ourselves from fossil fuels. On occasion, such opinions have been met with excommunication from the anti-nuclear priesthood: The late British Bishop Hugh Montefiore, founder and director of Friends of the Earth, was forced to resign from the group’s board after he wrote a pro-nuclear article in a church newsletter. … Over the past 20 years, one of the simplest tools — the machete — has been used to kill more than a million people in Africa, far more than were killed in the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear bombings combined. What are car bombs made of? Diesel oil, fertilizer and cars. If we banned everything that can be used to kill people, we would never have harnessed fire. … the 103 nuclear plants operating in the United States effectively avoid the release of 700 million tons of CO2emissions annually — the equivalent of the exhaust from more than 100 million automobiles. Imagine if the ratio of coal to nuclear were reversed so that only 20 percent of our electricity was generated from coal and 60 percent from nuclear. This would go a long way toward cleaning the air and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Every responsible environmentalist should support a move in that direction.
Let’s review that last line again.
Every responsible environmentalist should support a move in that direction.
If you find a so-called “environmentalist” who is against Nuclear Power, they are either ignorant on the subject matter or a watermelon.
Happy Lenin’s Birthday!
Yup, “Earth Day” is on Lenin’s Birthday. Not a coincidence, given that the “founder” of Earth Day was much more a “Watermelon” than an actual environmentalist.
Watermelon: Thin layer of green of the outside, red to the core.
So, we are going to look back at some Lenin’s Birthday classics, including this clip from the late George Carlin.
Let us not forget this list of Earth Day Predictions from 1970
“Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.” — George Wald, Harvard Biologist
“Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make. The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.” — Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist
“By…[1975] some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of the 1980s.” — Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist
“It is already too late to avoid mass starvation,” — Denis Hayes, chief organizer for Earth Day
“Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions….By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.” — Peter Gunter, professor, North Texas State University
“Scientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence to support…the following predictions: In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution…by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half….” — Life Magazine, January 1970
“At the present rate of nitrogen buildup, it’s only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable.” — Kenneth Watt, Ecologist
“Air pollution…is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone.” — Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist
Ok, Ehrlich was sorta right on this, if you restrict his predictions to modern Communist China, where they are showing the typical communist/socialist contempt for the environment.
“By the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate…that there won’t be any more crude oil. You’ll drive up to the pump and say, `Fill ‘er up, buddy,’ and he’ll say, `I am very sorry, there isn’t any.’” — Kenneth Watt, Ecologist
Now we get to my personal favorite, although probably not Al Gore’s…
“The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years,” he declared. “If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.” — Kenneth Watt, Ecologist
Remember kids, there is way to get Clean Energy and plenty of it
A smart step toward American energy independence.
The Tennessee Valley Authority is bringing a new Nuclear Reactor on line, on schedule and on budget, in order to provide clean, “carbon free”, electricity in useful quanties, to their customers.
Of course, there are uneducated watermelon groups opposing this step toward clean, American engergy indepence, including the obviously confused “Southern Alliance for Clean Energy.”
I blame George Bush
Here is yet another thing we can blame George W. Bush, 43rd President of the United States of American for.
Air Quality Improved During Bush Administration.
Among the findings: Carbon monoxide decreased by 39 percent, ozone by 6 percent, and sulfur dioxide by 32 percent.
“Pick any category you want and pollution levels are generally lower than they were seven years ago,” said Steven Hayward, the policy analyst who authored the report, titled “Index of Leading Environmental Indicators,” for the conservative think tank.
“(Environmental groups) said air pollution was out of control, but this was always more about politics than it was fact,” Hayward said.
…
…in looking over the data on air quality from the Bush years, Hayward notes that levels of most air pollutants decreased at a faster rate than they did during the Clinton administration.
That’s right kids, the Watermelons were playing politics rather than focusing on the environment.
Obama blocks clean, safe & plentiful electrical power
Filed under: energy, Nuclear Power, Our Dear Leader, Politics
The American Thinker reports that our Dear Leader is planning on killing any new Nuclear Power Plants by cutting funding for storage of what should be reusable fuel.
This is a clear indication that our Dear Leader feels that pandering to the watermelon moonbats that make up his base is more important than rebuilding the American economy and energy independence. Personally, I’m not surprised.
Green Politics
The politics of environmentalism, and that of watermelons, is getting some press.
The president invited 36 House Democrats to the White House Tuesday morning to discuss a path forward on the bill in an effort to bridge divides that threaten to torpedo one of the touchstones of Obama’s young presidency.
All of these democrats have an eye on the calendar. BHO knows he needs to shove the worst of his socialist agenda down the throats of Americans while his party has the majority. So he wants to get as much done before the 2010 elections as possible.
Congressional democrats, especially those in the House are also looking at the 2010 elections. They are going to be up for reelection then, not Barry. If their districts get slammed economically for what the congressional Republicans are accurately calling “…a declaration of economic war on the midwest by liberals on Capitol Hill,” those Congressional democrats could loose their next election.
To make it worse, the White House is still backing ethanol, a clear sign they are in the pockets of the Corn lobby. Most Americans have figured out that using food crops to make fuel don’t make sense on economic or environmental reasons. If Team Lightbringer had the guts to cut corn based fuel from their plan, and focus on switchgrass or wood chips, they would have more creditability, but that would mean having to give up the corn lobby money.
Then you have the “environmentalists” fighting against clean energy sources.
Some environmentalists, who have successfully fought a wind farm on the border of Oregon and Washington, are trying to block a massive solar plant in the Mojave desert. And now an Oregon county is considering a ban on wind power in the foothills of the blue mountains.
Sound familiar? Remember it was liberal democrat Senators Kerry & Kennedy who blocked a wind farm because it would effect the view from their Mansions.
As much as most environmentalists down play “dissension in the ranks”, it’s there.
That is because there are groups with very different goals hiding the “green.”
There are actual Environmentalists who really do care about what is best for the planet and humanity, and then there are the watermelons, who show a thin green skin to world, but are Red to the core. Their goal is the promotion of a socialist agenda and as one of the founders of Greenpeace has pointed out, they have hijacked his movement in order to do so.
Then there are the ones that George Carlin correctly identified, they are just looking for a clean place to park their Volvo.
Update: Michelle Malkin has more data on how democrat Waxman is trying to bypass debate and shove our Dear Leader‘s Cap & Tax scheme through the House. She also has a list of democrat congressmen who are feeling the heat from outraged voters.
Earth Day Predictions from 1970
From I Hate the Media, here are actual quotes from the first celebration of Lenin’s Birthday back in 1970.
“Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.” — George Wald, Harvard Biologist
“Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make. The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.” — Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist
“By…[1975] some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of the 1980s.” — Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist
“It is already too late to avoid mass starvation,” — Denis Hayes, chief organizer for Earth Day
“Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions….By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.” — Peter Gunter, professor, North Texas State University
“Scientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence to support…the following predictions: In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution…by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half….” — Life Magazine, January 1970
“At the present rate of nitrogen buildup, it’s only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable.” — Kenneth Watt, Ecologist
“Air pollution…is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone.” — Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist
Ok, Ehrlich was sorta right on this, if you restrict his predictions to modern Communist China, where they are showing the typical communist/socialist contempt for the environment.
“By the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate…that there won’t be any more crude oil. You’ll drive up to the pump and say, `Fill ‘er up, buddy,’ and he’ll say, `I am very sorry, there isn’t any.’” — Kenneth Watt, Ecologist
Now we get to my personal favorite, although probably not Al Gore‘s…
“The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years,” he declared. “If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.” — Kenneth Watt, Ecologist
More on the subject over at Reason Magazine.
Remember kids, Environmentalism Good, Watermelons Bad!
FYI, Watermelon: Thin layer of Green on the outside, Red to the Core!
Update: Thanks for Link Love from Rain in the Doorway, Ed Driscoll, Moe Lane, Atomic Fungus and the Blogonomicon.
Update: I just had to add this link to a very snarky list of thing to do in order to celebrate Lenin’s Birthday!