Radioactive Communist Zombies

How Well do Wind and Solar Work? Nobody Knows!

(Hat tip: Instapundit)  As President Obama and the Democrats with their green allies push us into more and more "green" energy with massive taxpayer subsidies, no one seems to be asking how efficient are these technologies.  Which would be, in a rational world, the first thing asked.  The problem is, according (pdf file) to the Science and Environmental Policy Project, no one still knows even after Europe has invested billions in new renewable energy:

Someone experienced in analyzing potential investments in innovative industries may be surprised by the lack of hard data on the performance of solar and wind in generating electricity. Certainly, it is understandable that solar and wind companies may wish to keep certain trade secrets from the public, such as manufacturing design and techniques. But if the results are as solid as the promoters claim, than one would expect the promoters would give the hard data on performance. Yet these are being withheld on the claims that such data is proprietary – confidential.

So were can we look to see how well wind and solar work in supplying electricity.  How about the countries in Europe that have heavily invested in it.

Slowly, information is leaking from nations that have spent heavily on wind and solar, such as Germany. This information should give pause to those touting solar and wind, including politicians. England is pulling back from wind, Germany has announced drastic cut-backs on its subsidies to solar, and Spain has announced the elimination of subsidies for renewable power. These actions are not the result of success. The erratic nature of these sources is well established.

And further more:

According to reports, no coal plants have been de-commissioned in northern Europe rendering the claim of lower carbon dioxide emissions questionable.

Why?  Because electricity cannot be stored and so wind and solar when they don't work (i.e., the wind doesn't blow or the sun doesn't shine as it doesn't about 50% of the time)  you need to generate electricity by some method.  And that means you need backup generation.  And those plants must be kept fired up and idling when the electricity comes from renewables so when the renewables stop, they can immediately jump in and take up the load. Other wise there'd be brownouts and blackouts (which while some greens may be okay with that, must of us wouldn't be).

Oh, and pollution controls don't work as well when a fossil fuel plant is changing it's heat output, like from idling to full running.  So renewable energy could be causing more pollution.

I don't know why Obama can't look at the experience of Europe and learn from it.  But he can't even look at the experience of his stimulus plan that failed and learn from it.

Romney's Box

Today's the Florida primary and if the polls are accurate, Mitt Romney is going to win it which could pretty much seal the deal on him winning the nomination.  And if he's our nominee, I'll support him as best I can against Barack Obama.

But here's where I see Romney has a huge problem going up against Obama: Romneycare. Romney won't (probably upon advice of his handlers) disavow Romneycare, the health care system he signed into law in Massachusetts when he was governor there.  It became the model for Obamacare, right down to the (unconstitutional) individual mandate to buy health insurance.

Since Obamacare is Romneycare writ large, all Romeny can say (and has said) is you can do at the state level what you can't do at the federal level.  All Obama has to say to defeat Romney in a debate is "why?"  Why if it's okay or even good for the citizens of Massachusetts isn't it okay or good for the whole country.  And to that I've yet to hear Romney give a coherent answer.  Because he can't.  If it's wrong for the federal government to do it, it is wrong for a state government to do it.  (Yes, I know that's not true on all matters, i.e., states should setand enforce speed limits  but not the federal government).

One of the biggest problems Obama faces is the unpopularity of Obamacare.  And Romney won't be able to use that against him because all you need to say to Romney is "Why if it's okay for Massachusettes is it not okay for the U.S.?"

But apparently that's who we're going to have for a nominee unless Newt pulls out a miracle.  Which doesn't seem likely.  And with Romney as the nominee, we might have four more years of this president who will do everything he can to turn this country into the People's Republic of Amerika.

Federal Workers Are Overpaid Says CBO

Tax season is upon us (I'm still awaiting some 1099s) but as you're making out your tax forms and calculating what you owe, I'm sure you're glad to know your tax dollars are going to over-pay federal workers.

Federal workers are overpaid?  Yes, says the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).  You know, the CBO, the arbiter of all things bipartisan.  According to the CBO, if you have a high school degree you can make 36% more in wages and benefits working for Uncle Sugar.  And if you have a college education, you can make 18% more working for the government.  The only level where working for the federal government is not a good plan is if you have a doctorate or professional degree (a lot of those doctorates are probably working for universities making too much).

So why should those who's wages are paid through taxes make more than those who pay the taxes?  I don't know.  Seems something is wrong here.

Are We Headed For a Mini Ice Age?

Earlier I wrote about scientists saying don't panic over CO₂ and global warming.  Now some scientists are say, yes, panic, but about the coming mini ice age.  From the UK Mail, it appears the (probably natural) warming trend ended about 15 years ago:

Based on readings from more than 30,000 measuring stations, the data was issued last week without fanfare by the Met Office and the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit. It confirms that the rising trend in world temperatures ended in 1997.

And in fact, we may be entering a period of low sun activity that could cool things down a bit.

Meanwhile, leading climate scientists yesterday told The Mail on Sunday that, after emitting unusually high levels of energy throughout the 20th Century, the sun is now heading towards a ‘grand minimum’ in its output, threatening cold summers, bitter winters and a shortening of the season available for growing food.

The global warming climate change true believers will say CO₂ will override any cooling by the sun.  Not so say other scientists.

Although the sun’s output is likely to decrease until 2100, ‘This would only cause a reduction in global temperatures of 0.08C.’ Peter Stott, one of the authors, said: ‘Our findings suggest  a reduction of solar activity to levels not seen in hundreds of years would be insufficient to offset the dominant influence of greenhouse gases.’

These findings are fiercely disputed by other solar experts.

‘World temperatures may end up a lot cooler than now for 50 years or more,’ said Henrik Svensmark, director of the Center for Sun-Climate Research at Denmark’s National Space Institute. ‘It will take a long battle to convince some climate scientists that the sun is important. It may well be that the sun is going to demonstrate this on its own, without the need for their help.’

How cool could it get?

[I]t is also possible that the new solar energy slump could be as deep as the ‘Maunder minimum’ (after astronomer Edward Maunder), between 1645 and 1715 in the coldest part of the ‘Little Ice Age’ when, as well as the Thames frost fairs, the canals of Holland froze solid.

And the global warming crowd:

CO₂ levels have continued to rise without interruption and, in 2007, the Met Office claimed that global warming was about to ‘come roaring back’. It said that between 2004 and 2014 there would be an overall increase of 0.3C. In 2009, it predicted that at least three of the years 2009 to 2014 would break the previous temperature record set in 1998.

So far there is no sign of any of this happening. But yesterday a Met Office spokesman insisted its models were still valid.

‘The ten-year projection remains groundbreaking science. The period for the original projection is not over yet,’ he said.

Well, when it doesn't happen in the next three years, they'll come up with some new story.  Like China burned too much coal.

You know, when you have to bend your science to fit reality, maybe your science is flawed. But there's a lot of money riding on climate change and a lot of power.  Too many people are politically invested in it.  It will not go quiet into the night.  Would help if we didn't have a president who is a true believer (or using it as an excuse to exorcise more power over the economy).

Scientists: No Need to Panic over Global Warming

We've been told over and over again that the scientific consensus is in and we must take drastic action to stop global warming climate change. (Of course it was once the scientific consensus that the sun went around the Earth and that light waves traveled through a mysterious substance called "ether").

Now sixteen scientists have chosen to come off the reservation and say there's no need to panic, as they wrote today (sub possibly required) in the Wall Street Journal.

In September, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Ivar Giaever, a supporter of President Obama in the last election, publicly resigned from the American Physical Society (APS) with a letter that begins: "I did not renew [my membership] because I cannot live with the [APS policy] statement: 'The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring. If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth's physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.' In the APS it is OK to discuss whether the mass of the proton changes over time and how a multi-universe behaves, but the evidence of global warming is incontrovertible?"

That's because global warming is political, not scientific. But according to the sixteen signers of the article:

In spite of a multidecade international campaign to enforce the message that increasing amounts of the "pollutant" carbon dioxide will destroy civilization, large numbers of scientists, many very prominent, share the opinions of Dr. Giaever. And the number of scientific "heretics" is growing with each passing year. The reason is a collection of stubborn scientific facts.

Yes, you could call them "inconvenient truths"!

Perhaps the most inconvenient fact is the lack of global warming for well over 10 years now. This is known to the warming establishment, as one can see from the 2009 "Climategate" email of climate scientist Kevin Trenberth: "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't." But the warming is only missing if one believes computer models where so-called feedbacks involving water vapor and clouds greatly amplify the small effect of CO₂.

Which is why the "climate scientists" wanted to "hide the decline."

The fact is that CO₂ is not a pollutant. CO2 is a colorless and odorless gas, exhaled at high concentrations by each of us, and a key component of the biosphere's life cycle. Plants do so much better with more CO₂ that greenhouse operators often increase the CO₂ concentrations by factors of three or four to get better growth. This is no surprise since plants and animals evolved when CO₂ concentrations were about 10 times larger than they are today. Better plant varieties, chemical fertilizers and agricultural management contributed to the great increase in agricultural yields of the past century, but part of the increase almost certainly came from additional CO₂ in the atmosphere.

What, you mean there was 10 times the CO₂ in the atmosphere than there is today, before SUVs and coal-fired power plants?  Maybe it occured  . . . naturally?

The scientists go on to talk about how those who oppose the global we'-re all-going-to-die warming orthodoxy are ostracized and even can lose their jobs.

Global warming Climate change is not about saving the planet, it's about controlling the citizens and getting rich as Al Gore has done. Global warming enthusiasts are watermelons: green on the outside and red in the center.  They are socialists who lost the battle to control the world in 1989 so now need another excuse to run the economy.

This is not the way science is supposed to work, but we have seen it before—for example, in the frightening period when Trofim Lysenko hijacked biology in the Soviet Union. Soviet biologists who revealed that they believed in genes, which Lysenko maintained were a bourgeois fiction, were fired from their jobs. Many were sent to the gulag and some were condemned to death.

No, it's not.  But when you mix political power with science, it's what you get.

The Problem with Liberalism

Yes, I didn't blog yesterday, it was a very busy day and when it was over I was tired.  I did tweet the State of the Union and the excellent GOP response, however.

But today we're going to discuss the problem with liberalism.  I had an epiphany after writing this post about education.

This is how the left, from Marx to Obama, thinks: something is not perfect.  Capitalism is not perfect because there are poor people.  Our education system is not perfect because not everyone gets educated.  Health care is not perfect because some people don't have insurance.  The world is not perfect because there is pollution and the theart of war.  And so on and so forth. 

Now a conservative would say "Capitalism, like any human system, is not perfect, but it is the best way to generate wealth known to man and because of it we have the richest poor people ever so lets do what maximizes the good and minimizes the bad."  But to a liberal that's just not good enough.

So the liberal tries an experiment.  They come up with some clever idea (like Communism) that has never been tried before or has been tried and failed but the liberal has no sense of history so it's all new to him.  And they apply it to the real world.  And it fails.  So does the liberal say "hmmm, that didn't work, let's go back to the way things were."  No, they experiment more, they add layers of experimentation on top of previous layers to fix what failed.  So you get multi-layers of bureaucracy and regulation and government spending to keep trying to fix what is not and never will be perfect.

Like the banking situation.  Instead of fixing what caused the housing collapse (government-sponsored enterprises running amok and forcing banks to give bad loans) they first bail out the banks with government money then take on Dodd-Frank to make it perfect.  (And to protect those silly dumb consumers from mean old bankers.)

You'll notice the U.S. Constitution says "a more perfect union" not a "perfect union."  But to a liberal anything short of perfection needs their wisdom and guidance to perfect.  And when their wonderful new idea fails, they know it is because enough money wasn't spent or enough regulations weren't in place (or both).

And that's the problem with liberalism.

The Bullying of Free Speech

Hat Tip: Instapundit

You know, the left wants to silence dissent.  They use speech codes on college campuses and they accuse anyone who disagrees with them of racism, homophobia, hating women (misogyny), and now bullying. Yes, now having a politically incorrect opinion is now "bullying."  As OpenMarkets.org reports:

A school superintendant has labeled a column in a school newspaper that criticized homosexuality as “bullying.” (The Shawano High School newspaper decided to run dueling student opinion pieces on whether same-sex couples should be able to adopt children; the student article that was labeled as “bullying” answered the question “no.” The school district also publicly apologized for the column, and said that it is “taking steps to prevent items of this nature from happening in the future.”)

Yes, mustn't make gays feel bad. Which probably means it's open season on white, heterosexual Christian males.

The definition of what constitutes bullying is so broad, that even criticizing the President (as I have been known to do) could be labeled "cyberbullying."

But schools and anti-bullying activists have adopted incredibly overbroad definitions of bullying. The anti-bullying website NoBully.com, and schools like Fox Hill and Alvarado Elementary, define even “eye rolling” and other expressions of displeasure or hostility as bullying, even though doing so raises First Amendment problems.

And

Since “creating web sites” that “make fun of others” also is deemed “cyberbullying,” conservative websites that poke fun at the president are presumably guilty of cyberbullying under this strange definition. (Law professors such as UCLA’s Eugene Volokh have criticized bills by liberal lawmakers like Congresswoman Linda Sanchez (D-Calif.) that would ban some criticism of politicians as cyberbullying.)

The left always wants to shut up those who don't agree with them.  Labeling speech as "hate" or "bullying" is just another attempt to shut up the right.  There are lots of people who think homosexuality is morally wrong (I'm not one of them).  But expressing that opinion should be protected under the 1st Amendment, whether we agree or not.  People call the Tea Party racist all the time yet somehow that's not bullying, I guess.  Bullying is only to control the speech of those who disagree with liberals.

Which is Worse?

We have two men in the race to become the Republican nominee who have, shall we say, imperfect pasts.

First is Newt Gingrich who apparently asked his former wife for an "open marriage" and has admitted to adultery in the past.  As people said during the Lewinsky affair with Bill Clinton: if he lies to his wife how can the American people trust him?

But Newt has acknowledged past transgressions and says he's past that now and has changed.

Then there's Mitt Romney.  Romney was the governor of a very blue state.  He supported abortion, gun control, raised fees (including fees for gun owners), and put in place a government-run health care system that became the model for Obamacare.  But he says he's had a change of heart on abortion, was always a gun rights supporter, and thinks it's okay to do government-run health care (with an individual mandate) at the state level but not the federal level and would fight to repeal Obamacare.

Can we believe either man?  I'm sort of of the school that past behavior is indicative of future tendancies.  And which is worse?  Is it worse to be a serial adulturer, and then say you've changed, or to be a serial liberal and then say you've sort of changed?

The answer to that question that the South Carolinian voters have to decide will probably give the nomination to Mitt or make the nomination process go on longer.

That is one advantage of Santorum, he's as constant as the northern star.  Just not sure I'm crazy about what he's constant about.  Some have called him a "big government social conservative."

I first gave luke warm support to Cain.  Then I switched to Perry.  Now I'm stuck with Mitt, Newt, and Santorum.  I don't like any of them.  Will I vote for any of them over Obama?  Oh yes.  I am back in the "undecided and unhappy" column.  Is it too late to draft Jim DeMint?

Oh, I'm not going to say which is worse.  Because I don't know.

This is my assessment of both men's transgressions: Newt is not the best looking guy and is a little chubby.  But when you are in a position of power (I have read) attractive women throw themselves at you.  Newt did not have the personal fortitude to say "no" to such temptation (a lot of men wouldn't and don't, but only Republicans get caught).

And Mitt is a opportunistic politician who when running for governor of Massachusetts ran to the left to get elected and now that he is running for the GOP nomination is running to the right.  How he will be in office is anybody's guess.

The Up Side of Global Warming

As I was driving through a blizzard today here in central Washington State (and Seattle is having a bad snow day but any day it snows in Seattle is a snowcopolypse), I had thoughts about the upside of a warmer world thanks to global warming climate change. Jurisdictions spend billions of dollars on snow abatement and removal.  Businesses also spend huge sums clearing parking lots and sidewalks for their customers' and employees' safety.

Fewer car accidents.  The damage from winter-driving related accidents probably also runs into the billions of not trillions, from fender benders to fatalities.

People wouldn't have to waste precious resources on snow tires (I know, a lot don't now, anyway), tire chains, snow shovels, snow blowers, and snow plows for their pickups (That name again is Mr. Plow).  That probably runs in the trillions of dollars that could be saved.  And no one ever had a heart attack shoveling global warming off their sidewalk.

Children wouldn't miss school so test scores might go up.  Adults wouldn't miss work at a cost of probably trillions in lost productivity.  I bet those environmental economists never consider that in their cost-benefit calculations.

And I wouldn't have to drvy through a blizzard to get to my community meetings with the heater running full blast to keep the windshield ice-free!

So bring on global warming.  Sounds like there's a great up-side to it!

Green Cars for Folks with Lots of Green

What does over half a billion in taxpayer money get you?  Cars that only the very rich can afford.

Fisker is sitting on a $529 million government loan guarantee to make electric cars.  Great.  Never mind they are being built in Finland.  The Fisker Karma (which, like a Chevy Volt has a gasoline engine to extend its range but will only go "up to" 50 miles on electric only according the their website) costs $97,000.  Very few people can afford that.

Now we could think back 100 years when only the very rich could afford cars.  Then Henry Ford came along, used the assembly line, and lowered the price of cars to the point where most people could afford them.  Could the same thing happen with electrics?  Or, what is more important, will they pencil out and finally be cheaper than a gasoline or diesel-powered car.  (I know, in matter of all that is environmentally holy, money must flow like rainwater into the coffers of the goddess Gaia.)  I doubt it will happen soon.  And in any case, why is government money going to build a car very few can afford?  (Yes, I know the government money was not to build the Karma but to build the slightly more affordable Nina which will only cost $57,000 and be built in the U.S.)

So we're taxing Joe Sixpack so Leonardo DiCaprio can ease his environmental guilt.  I'd say that's a good use of money, wouldn't you?