Blatant Reality

According to this Telegraph article, it would seem that 2008 was the year the man-made global warming was finally disproved. Here are the three reasons the author gives for the deniers’ victory:

First, all over the world, temperatures have been dropping in a way wholly unpredicted by all those computer models which have been used as the main drivers of the scare. Last winter, as temperatures plummeted, many parts of the world had snowfalls on a scale not seen for decades. This winter, with the whole of Canada and half the US under snow, looks likely to be even worse. After several years flatlining, global temperatures have dropped sharply enough to cancel out much of their net rise in the 20th century.

 

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Secondly, 2008 was the year when any pretence that there was a “scientific consensus” in favour of man-made global warming collapsed. At long last, as in the Manhattan Declaration last March, hundreds of proper scientists, including many of the world’s most eminent climate experts, have been rallying to pour scorn on that “consensus” which was only a politically engineered artefact, based on ever more blatantly manipulated data and computer models programmed to produce no more than convenient fictions.

 

Thirdly, as banks collapsed and the global economy plunged into its worst recession for decades, harsh reality at last began to break in on those self-deluding dreams which have for so long possessed almost every politician in the western world. As we saw in this month’s Poznan conference, when 10,000 politicians, officials and “environmentalists” gathered to plan next year’s “son of Kyoto” treaty in Copenhagen, panicking politicians are waking up to the fact that the world can no longer afford all those quixotic schemes for “combating climate change” with which they were so happy to indulge themselves in more comfortable times.

Hat Tip Drudge

Merry Christms Everyone! Hope you have a blessed day with your families and be sure to remember to take some time and remember why we celebrate.

Currently, there are five different companies creating jet fuel from algae that can be used by either by the military or commercial planes. Actually, there are many more companies out there probably tackling this problem but there are five fairly new startup companies that are really taking the spot like. First, this is what they are trying to make:

A kerosene-based aviation fuel called Jet Propellant 8 made up more than 90 percent of the fuel used by the Department of Defense in 2006, at a cost of $6 billion, according to Cleantech Group. Take all of that fuel, and combine it with commercial airlines’ needs, volatile fuel prices, and urgent calls for energy independence, and you have a massive market all but begging for a cheaper, renewable alternative. A growing number of companies are now racing to supply it with algae.

Alright, instead of going in depth into what each company is doing, I’m just going to list their names. You can go to the article that I quoted above for more information.

The five companies are:

• Solazyme
• Inventure Chemical Technology
• Sapphire Energy
• Aquaflow Bionomic Corporation
• Algenol Biofuels

Now, I have written about almost all of these companies so if you want to look for some more information, either type their name into the search bar above or click here for a list of all algae articles.

So I just got back from seeing the movie “The Day the Earth Stood Still” and I was far from impressed. In fact, I was downright disappointed. I mean, I thought it would be a better choice than “Role Models” but now I feel that I might have been wrong.

Anyways, before I get into the main point of the article, let me explain the movie a bit to you. The whole premise of this flick is that aliens have come to earth to exterminate the human race in order to save the place from us. So apart from being a massively environmental propaganda piece, it also took the time to take jabs at the Iraq war and the US military in general (no pun intended). In fact, the only bright spot in the whole movie was the fact that Keanu Reeves got a role where his emotionless acting style was actually put to good use.

Alright, so before I explain the economic lessons we may be able to learn from this horrible movie, let me set up the scene. At about halfway through the movie, the alien (Keanu Reeves) ends up at a Nobel Prize winner’s house and they are discussing the impending doom of the human race. Reeves’ character mentions that his own race had to band together in order to save their planet when it was on the brink of destruction. To this, the Nobel Prize winner replies that the human race should have the same right to change and save their planet (not from the aliens, mind you, but from ourselves). If the aliens destroy the human race, they will never have the chance to excel and save themselves.

Obviously, I’m paraphrasing but the basic gist of this whole conversation is that the most innovation, change, and action take place when a civilization is on the brink of destruction (Pop Culture Reference: This is why people like Al Gore are saying we only have five years to fix things).

So what’s the economic lesson? Think about it this way. If we look at the recent mortgage crisis, and the economy as the whole, one could compare it to the earth in the movie: there’s been some bad decisions made that have been detrimental to its health so something needs to be done. Obviously, the stock market tumble and business bankruptcies are comparable to the tipping point the aliens mention in the movie: choices need to be made now that will affect how things play out in the end.

Now the next comparison is where I will probably get some people mad at me. I think that the US Federal Government is like the aliens in the movie. These aliens come to earth wanting to save it just like the federal government did with its bailouts. And just like the aliens want to destroy the human race in an effort to save the world, the government bailouts greatly damaged our country’s free market and principles.

So instead of letting the threat of impending financial disaster beget innovation and change that would ultimately be beneficial, the government, just like the aliens in the movie, wanted a quick fix to the problem. By bailing out the market, the government has removed any need for businesses to innovate and change in order to stay alive. Instead, all will be able to continue their old (failing) practices which will most likely lead to market stagnation (Case in point: Just watch and see how much the Big Three actually change).

Now does Neo… err…I mean Keanu Reeves’ character decide to save the human race or just the world? Well this isn’t a spoiler blog so I guess you will just have to suffer through the movie to find out. However, I will say that, in relationship with my elaborate comparison above, I did like his choice a lot better than the US government’s.

The European Union gave a Scottish led project roughly $7.5 million to study the feasibility of marine biomas being converted into fuel. This “marine biomas would, of course, include algae.
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More here

Well, in September my laptop’s internal WiFi card decided to only work once a blue moon and since then I have been using a USB wireless adapter. Yesterday, I decided to take advantage of my Best Buy Replacement/Repair warranty I bought for it and it has been shipped off for repairs. This all brings me to the main point of this post: I am sharing a computer so my post may not be that frequent for the next two weeks. Along with that, I have many other project I need to get done over this holiday season.

Therefore, the moral of this story is be sure to always get Best Buy’s extra warrenties and forgive my possible lack of posts.

Oh, and be sure to have a great holiday season.

Scientists in California are experimenting wth lowering the number of chlorophyll molecules in algae in order to make more room for hydrocarbons (molecules that make up oil). Right now, regular algae cells have about 600 chlorophyll molecules and researchers believe that that number can be genetically reduced to 130 molecules without any harm to the cell.
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Click here for more on their discovery

You remember the recent AP Story about how Barack Obama needed to do something about Global Warming because there was little time left? Well it seems that several scientists disagree with the article’s claims and one goes as far as calling the AP piece ‘propaganda.’

“The mean global temperature, at least as measured by satellite, is now the same as it was in the year 1980. In the last couple of years sea level has stopped rising. Hurricane and cyclone activity in the northern hemisphere is at a 24-year low and sea ice globally is also the same as it was in 1980.”

 

Deming said the article is further evidence of the media’s decision to talk about global warming as fact, despite what he says is a lack of evidence.

 

“Reporters, as I understand reporters, are supposed to report facts,”Deming said. “What he’s doing here is he’s writing a polemic and reporting it as fact, and that’s not right. It’s not reporting. It’s propaganda.

 

“This reads like a press release for an environmental advocacy group like Greenpeace. It’s not fair and balanced.” (Emphasis Added)

Obama is supposed to announce today that Carol Browner will be his choice of “Energy Czar”. As I stated a couple days ago, the position of energy czar is something that we should all be worried about if it is actually effective. Luckily for us, the Wall Street Journal is already predicting that this position of ‘energy czar’ will be doomed from the get-go.

“There’ve been so many czars over last 50 years, and they’ve all been failures,” said Paul Light, an expert on government at New York University. “Nobody takes them seriously anymore.” He pointed to officials placed in charge of homeland security and drug policy.

 

The problem is that “czars” are meant to be all-powerful people who can rise above the problems that plague the federal agencies, he said, but in the end, they can’t.

 

“We only create them because departments don’t work or don’t talk to each other,” Mr. Light said, adding that creation of a White House post doesn’t usually change that. “It’s a symbolic gesture of the priority assigned to an issue, and I emphasize the word symbolic. When in doubt, create a czar.”

Basically, ‘czars’ have been worthless in a historical context in United States.

Also, see Jonah Goldberg’s take on the tossing around of the word ‘czar.’

Bjorn Lomborg, author of books like “Cool It,” is once again attacking the greens for not taking into account the economic damage their policies may incur. My favorite part of his whole OP-ED is where he counters Obama’s “green jobs scheme” by stating that “billions of dollars in tax subsidies would create plenty of new jobs in almost any sector.” And, as we all know, subsidies come from taxes that you and I pay. Therefore, you the taxpayer is picking up the tab for all these expensive technologies.
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Click here for the whole Op-Ed