Nom de guerre: Rivrdog

McCain kisses AlGore's Ring

Portland, OR: McCain landed the "Straight Talk Express" in Portland at noon today, and immediately knelt down to kiss Pope AlGore's ring and suck up to the greenies. He probably lost the election today, losing far more conservatives than he gained lefty-greenies.

That cuts him from me, for one. He gets no support from this blog from here out.

For me to support or even vote for McCain and lie about it later, I would have to see him retract what he said today.

Let's look at what he said that turned my stomach so badly.

He came here to tout a Danish company that has located here to build parts for wind turbines, and to look "Presidential" in a state that suddenly has emerged from political obscurity to be a crossroads of election activity due to the closeness of the (D)onk race for the POTUS nomination. The company, Vestas, is currently building only the 40-yard long windmill blades, but will soon get into building the turbine masts as well.

A German company, Siemens, builds the gear reduction and alternators.

So, the CEO of Vestas, (D) Governor Ted Kulongoski and (RINO) Sen McCain are sharing the dais under a tent. McCain starts off RINO style, by lauding the (D) Guv to the skies, but it gets worse rapidly.

First off he makes the un-makeable link, calling Global Warming "Climate Change". This is ALGore's BIG Lie, since yes, there IS "Climate Change" going on, and there always will be, since the climate is never constant, it's ALWAYS either getting colder or warmer. It happens to be getting colder at the moment, but that didn't stop McCain. Climate Change is EITHER warming or cooling, but never just one or the other.

"Global Warming" doesn't sell anymore, what with the recognized-by-NOAA cool cycle in progress (although McCain lied about that too, saying NOAA's latest satellite technology confirmed global warming, when the opposite is true. The satellites, measuring at random, not at targeted locations like the hand measurements used to establish AlGore's "hockey stick", have confirmed cooling since 2000). So McCain calls it "climate change", but strangely enough, his "cure" for "climate change" is the same Ponzi-scheme carbon-credit trading that AlGore first foisted off on us as a global-warming cure after the Kyoto Protocol was refused as a treaty by the US Senate.

McCain went on to give a Mark One Model Zero AlGore speech on the horrors of Glow-Bull Warming.

He's toast, except for one glimmer of hope, but if we conservatives hang on to that shred of hope, we are fools. That would be if it's all just a mask for McCain, who knows he must have some crossover voting from the left to make it to the White House, and he has no intention of ever signing any laws concerning glow-bull warming.

Of course, if McCain will lie about Glow-Bull Warming, what else would he lie about?

When HRC or BHO lie in their campaign speeches, McCain's campaign HQ is all over them like stink on shit.

Will either HRC or BHO call him on THIS lie? Don't hold your breath.

McCain, embracing the words "climate change", which, by definition means warming AND cooling, whichever is prevalent, REFUSES to present any remedy against global cooling, which, in fact, is what is happening now. You won't see ANY remedies for global cooling presented, one, because they might not be necessary, this isn't the Middle Ages, and we know how to keep ourselves warm and grow food indoors now, and two, because such remedies offer no potential for the advance of socialism.

Now, some of you "support McCain or we are all gonna DIE" people are going to point out that McCain's carbon-trading schemes are NOT like alGore's, because they are "market-based" or some such other schlock. Horsepuckey. Bulltwaddle. There will be wealth re-distribution involved in carbon trading or it won't happen, end of story.

So, today, McCain declares himself to be a Socialist. A socialist who swears that he loves guns. Tell me, are there any other Socialists of that stripe anywhere else in the world?

I didn't think so.

Scam alert!

First it was "Carbon Credits", the Ponzi Scheme of all time, now it's "Vetroleum"

Read this article. Read it knowing it has been written to bamboozle the reader.

Let's take some principles of the old "snake oil" type of scam and see if we can find them here.

1. Find everything a new name to make an older process (in this case, making biodiesel) seem like a breakthrough. We start with the very catchy word "Vetroleum". No, that's not correct. we should start with the reference "biocrude". It doesn't exist. Crude oil is a specific substance, namely petroleum oil pumped right out of the ground. It is "crude" or un-refined. There is no such thing as "bio-crude". If you are going to make biodiesel, you start with raw materials called biomass. At some point in your very long (not "8-minute") reaction, the substance you are cooking down in the presence of reagents, at high pressure, takes on characteristics of a long-chain oil molecule. You may then refine that substance, once it is fractionated (distilled and the fractional compounds removed) in the process (which is not called a "time reaction", it's Catalytic Cracking) into other products (in this case, they seemed to have refined it down into a form of volatile fuel usable as gasoline, but that is a HUGE waste of time, refining equipment and energy, it should be left at the earlier state where it resembles diesel).

2. Get impressive-sounding groups to push your snake oil for you. In this case, they've gotten the "Central American Parliament" on their payroll. Read about the CAP here, it seems to be a club that talks about economics, mostly, and wants to be a super-government like the European Union, but isn't recognized as such. Then get a "Large Corporation" with an impressive name to package your product. Here we find US Sustainable Energy Corporation, whose stock is listed here. That's right, it's a Penny Stock, in this case trading for a little over two cents per share, and three-quarters of the impressive looking 1.3 billion shares are restricted (and may not exist). The capitalization of their UNRESTRICTED stock (Book Value) is less than $750,000.

3. Finally you locate in place known for it's involvement (in energy here), and enlist well-known local government leaders to help you push your product. Baytown-Sugarland in Chambers County, Texas isn't exactly on the cusp of energy production these days. I was down in that area a few weeks ago, in Dickinson, and there didn't appear to be much in the way of energy production going on. Some old oilfields are being drilled for gas now, but that's about the extent of it. My guess is that the Chambers County Commissioner cited in the article isn't exactly an oil baron, either.

Nope, this is a scam designed to line the pockets of a few folks who get in early, and all the rest of the suckers who get in at the end are going to get nada as investors. Maybe this refinery will produce a few barrels of biofuel, but you wouldn't want to have to pay their production costs, and somehow, those aren't even talked about in the article, are they?

The world is going to see many, many fast-buck operators in the biofuel arena in the coming years. This is just one of the earlier ones, that's all.

H/T to the EllTee for this one.

Cease cutting carbon dioxide emissions, or I will sue

Now that even the Socialist Brits have said that this is going to be a "cooling" year of "climate change" (what a stupid term, the climate is always changing, it never is in any sort of stasis or equilibrium), it occurs to me that all this panic-driven cutting of "carbon footprint" or whatever the Holy Church of Al Gore wants to re-invent carbon dioxide emissions control as THIS week, is counterproductive.

We are going to get colder as a result of the mistaken cutting of our warming atmospheric blanket of carbon dioxide, and the atmosphere is already cooling off, making the oceans cooler, etc.

Damage WILL occur because of this climate change, caused in some part by the reduction of the insulating and warming blanket (not my idea, it's Gore's) of carbon dioxide.

When damage occurs to ME, as it will today, I want to recover the cost of that damage from someone. Al Gore is as good as anyone to recover it from, since he is directly in the business of advocating the cutting of carbon dioxide, and has appointed himself Pope of the Church of Carbon Footprint Reduction.

Today's damage for me will be in the form of a trip of 90 miles to my marina, and back, to re-start my winter-protection heaters on my boat to keep it from freezing. Yes, a hard freeze may occur tonight (did occur nearby the marina last night). This hard freeze, BTW, is highly unusual, since the normal date-of-last-freeze is March 15th in these parts. In fact, our area is due for a modified Arctic Outbreak this weekend, with lows near freezing (below freezing in the hinterlands) and high temperatures in the mid-40's, unheard of for mid-April. Arctic Outbreaks are usually unheard of here after February 15th.

This cold spell (or mini-Ice Age, if you're a real pessimist like Dr. Oleg Sorokhtin) would have been milder if we hadn't done all this idiotic "carbon footprint reduction". How much milder? Well, I can answer that just as precisely as Al Gore can predict the horrible results of "Global Warming".

In the meanwhile, I'm saving receipts of expenditures for everything connected with reacting to the cold spell. I might just be able to get it back from Al Gore himself, in Small Claims Court.

The shoe (make that a hobnail boot if it's on MY foot, Mr. Gore) is on the other foot, now that we're likely in for a spell of global cooling.

We should be compensated.

Of course, idiot C-O-two rules affecting automobiles, etc should be immediately suspended, but that's another lawsuit for another time.

Sir Richard Branson, kiss my ass

Richard Branson may kiss my rosy red arse. This idiot idea isn’t going to save the planet. If the aircraft had actually been carrying a payload, then all this relative data might be useful to determine how much more CO2 is released with conventional fuels vs. the biofuel mix he used in his engines.

He carried no passengers, so the CO2 added during entire flight added un-necessary greenhouse gas to the atmosphere, by his own definitions of what causes "global warming", and he also just wasted a large chunk of his stockholders' capital, which he doesn't have the right to do in the capitalist society which he pretends to be a member of.

Branson’s engineers didn’t need to do this, either. All this information can be obtained in a laboratory setting, so actually fueling up the plane with the gook and flying it proves nothing that was or could have been proven already.

It has been adequately demonstrated that obtaining these biofuel materials from the third world has zero positive effect on the atmosphere, and in fact damages multiple ecosystems. First, the third-worlders use old technologies to produce the material the oils are made from, and those technologies are horribly polluting to the atmosphere and damaging to the ecosystems (think: burning rain forests to plant biofuel crops). Then, there is the not-inconsequential matter of the balkanization of those supplies, necessitating a huge, inefficient logistics system to get them to where the fuel can be blended. Finally, I have to see the figures of just how much lest CO2 this fuel mix is going to produce in a turbine engine not designed for it, and Branson is NOT forthcoming with that information.

Now that I have shot down Branson’s attempt, let’s consider also that it was all totally unnecessary. The planet is NOT dying of excess CO2, and in fact, is probably entering a cooling period during which we will be happy to have every kilogram of “greenhouse gas" that can be stuffed into the atmosphere, just to keep our asses from freezing solid over the next few centuries.

Branson is just another hypocrite, toying with “saving the planet” while his attempts to do so violate his own ecological principles, six ways to Sunday. Does this rich clown really think that anything he’s doing will actually have finite results? I’d like to see his measured predictions of the results of his own actions. That is the true measure of success, and he’s not offering it. He just offers us feel-good, but so do all others of his ilk. With the new and accumulating evidence out there that planetary warmth is driven primarily by insolation, or the amount of the sun’s energy striking the earth, and with the proven data that said insolation has been reduced of late, Branson and all the other global warming cultists are behind the times. The so-called “science” they sling at us like so much feces is exactly that, crap, and it has been proven to be crap. All political derivatives of this crap are also still crap.

If you want to make a conscious choice to live in a world of crap, you make that choice for yourself only, please.

Richard Branson, Meet Pope Algore. I'm sure the two of you can sell each other another cockamamie idea on saving the planet, but keep the ideas to yourselves, we have more important things to do, such as saving the planet from Islam.

Goracles to the core....

The leftoid AssPress doesn't even try to hide their politics these days.

They're reporting on the Bali Horsepuckey Conference, Global Warming and Beach Blanket Bingo Party Climate Change Conference in Bali. Consider:

"Those gathering on the resort island of Bali were charged with launching negotiations to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. What they decide in the next two years will help determine how much the world warms in the decades to come."

(Emphasis mine)

I guess I could accept that explanation, but ONLY if it means that if they decided to just STFU, as opposed to their penchant for generating heat with billions of words, the Earth would be a cooler place by some amount.

The explanation that AssPress WANTS us to read into that paragraph is that only us can save us from a fate worse than death (when the sky itself falls on us). With ever-increasing evidence that global warming is NOT occurring due to man's activities, it's unlikely that advanced nations of ANY political stripe are going to risk their economies and their position in the world's economic pecking order just to suck up to Pope AlGore.

I'll put Realpolitik up against Gaiapolitik any day, and give you odds that reality will win, because in the end, even the Socialists realize that they aren't going to oversee the tanking of their economies for this cause.

By 2012, when Kyoto sunsets, "Global Warming" will be sooo last decade.

Fair is Fair

One of the basic principles that most democratic nations follow is that of fairness. Most people realize that laws have to apply equally to have meaning and be given the correct impetus to actually work.

Here in the US of A, we have actually made that principle, "Equal Justice", a guiding light. Many, many laws have been struck down at all levels of government that have been proven unfair, or impinge more on one person or class of people than others. Many of the high and mighty have fallen when laws they supposed could never be enforced against their class actually were.

So, as the Bali Bullsh*t Brouhaha convenes, I am led to speculate that unless democratic principles mean nothing to the United Nations, they could use a dose of fairness there as they craft their proposals for taking over the world's economies with their carbon-emissions bulltwaddle.

I noted in another blog, which I can't seem to find now, that fairness has some support in the Second Amendment arena, as two  carry-permit states are considering laws that will force enterprises which want to be gun-free to accept liability for shootings that occur in their gun-free zones. When enacted, this application of fairness will probably kill off those gun-free zones, because the cost of insurance to cover the liability will be too high.

As I awoke this morning, and my mind kicked into gear, it suddenly occurred to me that a dose of liability acceptance is what Pope AlGore (Church of Gaia, Fraud Synod) needs to be confronted with, and his lackeys, the United Nations as well.

I have formed a proposal. Here it is.

We will let the bullshooters in Bali come up with their plan, which they will encode into a draft treaty. When they bring forth the treaty and ask us to sign it, we will agree to sign, on one condition: that the United Nations accept total pecuniary liability for any and all economic losses incurred by all nations under the treaty, if and when it finally becomes obvious that carbon emission reduction was not required. It wouldn't be required if, for example, we proved that man's emissions make no difference to the pace of natural climate change, if man is not capable of reversing or even affecting climate change or if "global warming" is not actually occurring. For a few more reasons, see this excellent post by the Conservative UAW Guy.

Additionally, I would propose that time be the arbiter here, and that no statute of limitations ever apply. I further propose that any "science" advanced in support of the United Nations treaty be subject to the same principle. If any person advances theories of science which are later proven to be incorrect, those theories must be couched in terms leaving no doubt that they are opinions only, and must not be construed as fact. If the scientist's theories do not carry this caveat, but instead masquerade as proven truth, then when proven wrong, those scientists agree to the draconian, but very fair, deletion of their credentials. That means that they may not refer to themselves by their doctorates, for example, and that they be considered unqualified to do work based upon their credits as scientists.

Now, the United Nations will never have the funds, nor will it ever be able to gather them, to make up for the dollars or euros lost in their climate change treaty scheme. I have a solution for that, as well.

Here in the USA, when a business loses a lawsuit in court, and can't pay the judgment, that business is forced into bankruptcy.

I propose that if the United Nation's climate change treaty causes huge economic damage, and it's forecast damage will be comparable to damage on a scale of that left by World War Two (the previous most economically-damaging, man-caused event), that the United Nations should go out of business. Permanently.

Fair is fair. We can't live without fairness, or so we are told every day by our progressive brethren. Well, brothers and sisters of the "fair Left", how about helping me spread this word, and how about standing up for real fairness for once?

New HVAC

It's all in. The new HVAC equipment. On time and on spec, the way a contract should be done. The equipment is all Lennox Signature Series, top of the Lennox line.

Top of the 12-foot stack in the garage is the photo-catalytic air purifier:

Below, the G61MPV high-efficiency (95% AFUE) natural gas furnace, with the very high-tech DC motor with AC commutator control (a "soft-start" motor):

To the side of the furnace is the Harmony III zone-control system. Trust me, this controller has more computing power than my first computer, an 8086:

The controller is the heart of the system. It controls the start of the furnace or airconditioner, where the cold or warm air goes (via powered dampers in the air plenum), either upstairs or downstairs or a blend of both, it takes information from the digital thermostats as input and as output controls the dampers, the selection of heating or cooling and the output of the blower motor, which is totally controllable in speed.

Under all of the stack is the airconditioner "A" coil  and evaporator coil, (the only non-Lennox part). On the outside, the XC21 condenser now takes up a significant part of the parking slot beside the house:

This project got more expensive because I decided to put in a tankless hot water heater also. It is a Rinnai 185,000 BTU natural gas model:

Of course, that left a large space where the old 50-gallon tank water heater used to be. That slot will be perfect for a second gun safe!

The mortgage is a bit larger now, but the energy savings pays over half the increase, and the performance of the new equipment is outstanding. For the first time since this house was built, I can have equal temperature on both floors. The top (bedroom) level used to get as much as 10 degrees warmer than the lower level in the summer, but those days are gone now with the split system (and bigger A/C). The airconditioner is 3 times as efficient as the old system, too.

Time to put this post online, because that new water heater is going to fill my 6-foot Jaccuzzi tub to the top! That would have been 2 1/2 tanks for the old water heater, so when I took a bath, it took almost two tanks to fill it half-way. Those days are gone! When I'm done, the gudwife has booked the next time slot for her soak, but I get firsties, since she's going to light scented candles which give me a headache.

If I wasn't on this damn diet, I'd sip a Metaxa while I was soaking, but it will have to be Crystal Light tonight, boo-hoo.

Turn-arounds

Plenty of turnarounds going down, creating enough turbulence to make even your doughty Rivrdog's head swim.

• The Hildebeeste now says we cannot just bail out of Iraq, cites the human cost of turning the country over to Al-Q, and sticks the shiv of "inexperienced, not ready for POTUS" right into Obama's ribs.
• (D)onk candidate Bill Richardson, having previously garnered an "A" rating from the NRA for supporting the R2KBA, now wants to "close the gun-show loophole", a Socialist gun-grabber code phrase for eliminating private sales and transfers between individuals. Everything I've said (mostly good) about Richardson is hereby withdrawn and he goes into the dumper as just another gun-grabbing leftard. Sic semper panderer.
• Global-Warming Goracles continue to take hits, the latest being the wider acceptance of figures showing that the solar heat supply, known here as "insolation" and in Europe as "irradiance", is dropping, and it won't take much of a drop to put us back into a cold period. Such a cold episode, which last occurred around 1950, but was frequent for a century before then, has far more potential for human disaster than global warming ever did. It may even turn out to be the case that humans have saved themselves from the most severe grade of cold period by insulating the planet with a greenhouse-gas blanket. The science is becoming clearer, and when we realize just what fools we almost made of ourselves by listening to the Goracles, we may just find the nerve to put real science back to the forefront instead of Michael Moore "science".

That will be enough to make it a two-Tums evening, I suspect.

Not good news...

...for Goracles and Gaia worshippers, this study shows the cost of going green in renewable energy, as measured in the land area necessary to put up the alternative-energy farms.

The next jab comes when the researcher comes to the conclusion that nuclear power MUST have a place at the table if the carbon footprint of our society is to be lowered.

When you combine this with the obvious engineering numbers from Ethanol, which simply doesn't pencil out due to it's relative inefficiency when compared to gasoline and diesel as a motor fuel, there isn't much news about greening up that is positive for the economy or the common man who contributes to it.

Sure, some will make billions off the Ethanol craze, but I predict that John Q Public won't continue to support this alternative fuel initiative in it's present form, because it offers only a higher-cost alternative to gasoline. The insiders know that the craze is just a new corporate welfare device for agribusiness, but as I mentioned here, it can have unintended consequences besides raising the cost of everything related to food.

The Ethanol boys are directly responsible for a coming disaster in meat pricing, especially beef, because the price of corn has doubled this year.

We're seeing a temporary depression in the price of beef products, but you'd better fill your freezer now, because that price sag is caused by the large ranchers dumping onto the market cattle which they can't afford to feed, to lower the size of their herds. When that lowering is complete, I expect that beef prices will spike at least 20% and maybe 30% above the normal levels, not the current depressed levels, so there will appear to be a 50% price rise by Christmas. Prime Rib will NOT be on many tables this coming holiday season, and next year's BBQ season will be a disaster.

This food pricing issue may even make it near the top as a political issue in next year's races. Both parties have some shame to hide, the (D)onks because they have crammed this global warming hysteria down enough throats to give momentum to questionable strategies such as  Ethanol, and the GOP has to take the heat because Bush stampeded the Ethanol giveaway through Congress. If it weren't for this package of tax breaks, protective tariffs and price supports, Ethanol would have had to stand in line for venture capital, but it's legal and financial position is so subsidized now that it is the King Fuel.

One more ha-ha on the Greenies and I'm done.

Ethanol lowers the miles-per-gallon fuel efficiency rating of any vehicle which it powers. That reduction is by 8-15%, in some cases, almost 20%. That's an engineering issue that words cannot gloss over. Just recently, Bush caved to the Greenies and ordered the CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) renewed and raised, as a mandatory standard forced on anyone selling vehicles here. With Ethanol, there is virtually no way except "hybridizing" to meet those goals, so what Bush and the Greenies just did was cram another economic disaster down the auto industry's throat. We had one of these in the 70's, when Detroit couldn't produce enough small cars and had to do stupid things to try to meet the CAFE (a Carter invention, wasn't it?), such as cramming lousy diesel engines in big cars, killing off all the muscle cars and giving us worthless shoeboxes like the Chevy Vega and Ford Pinto.

We're gonna go through that all again now, with low-power "hybrid" engines being stuffed into everything with four wheels. Muscle cars will again take the hit, as the Almighty CAFE has to be satisfied, so we will see the tragedy of four and six cylinder Mustangs again.

All of this fiscal and cultural agony is caused by the Greenies and their Gaia-worship. Some method has to be found to end their hegemony over the culture. Thoughts like tree, rope, Greenie come to mind, but until the economy is totally in the dumper, as in the Second Great Depression, such efficient means of ending our misery will probably NOT get put into practice.

The only Green that is beautiful is having some in my wallet at the end of the month. Thanks to the Goracles and the Gaia-worshippers, that is becoming more difficult.

They should know that I take their predation on my income seriously and personally.

The Goracles' final insult...

....is one sip over the line.

News out of Jalisco State, Mexico (home to the REAL Tequila) is that Mexican farmers are plowing up their Blue Agave (the plant from which root the nectar of Mexico, Tequila, is made) so as to plant CORN. It seems that with the current high price of corn (due to the Goracles convincing everyone that Ethanol is the Fuel of the Future), it does not pay to carefully tend the Blue Agave for the six years it takes the root to grow to it's proper consistency for use in making the liquor.

This will mean an eventual shortage of Tequila, and an almost-immediate price hike as sharp guys like your Rivrdog buy it up by the case to put it away against the coming shortage (for later resale, do you think your Rivrdog is a lush?).

I'm no commodities trader, but I'm willing to wager the price of a decent rifle that Tequila will double or triple in price in the next year, and there might be severe shortages until either the public finally realizes that Ethanol isn't economically feasible as the Fuel of the Future, and the market for it collapses along with the price of corn, or the drinking public learns to do without Tequila, which could happen, but will take a few years.

So, I'll buy about $500 worth of it now, betting that it will be worth $1,500 by the Xmas holidays of next year, when I will sell it and buy a REALLY nice rifle (or several ordinary ones, and/or a trunkload of ammo). If SHTF comes before I get it sold, and that SHTF is in the form of the Aztlan Uprising, one of the distinct possibilities, I'll use the Tequila for bait.....

Nope, this cuts it between the Rivrdog and the Goracles. Before, they were not much more than a daily annoyance. Now they are enemies.

All the Ethanol industry will ever succeed in doing is making commodities brokers rich, and the Tequila industry dead. They're on my list, too.

They say that when ethanol burns you, you never see the flame....