Category: Eco-Crap

Strangely Satisfying

Eco-Crap, Gummint

You know, if an Alpine mountain community lived in constant fear of avalanches, one could feel a certain sympathy if said avalanches caused severe damage to the place each year and some loss of life among its inhabitants.

I suspect, however, that one would feel somewhat less sympathetic if the community refused to deploy snowplows and rescue helicopters purely because of the emissions from those vehicles.  Indeed, one might even get unworthy feelings of smug satisfaction and even Schadenfreude  from the annual, tearful news reports of death and destruction.

How then, are we expected to feel when California gets plunged into darkness and suffers loss of property and life through the regular occurrence of wildfires?

Fire conditions statewide made California “a tinderbox,” said Jonathan Cox, a spokesman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. Of the state’s 58 counties, 43 were under red flag warnings for high fire danger Sunday.

And just so we know exactly why these conditions have reached the point to where they have:  despite the fact that hot Santa Ana winds create an annual risk of deadly wildfires, California continues to ban the clear-cutting and controlled burning of deadwood and -brush in wilderness areas as well as in areas close to suburban development because of supposed-ecological concerns.  That’s the “tinderbox” referred to above.

Moreover, it’s hard for the rest of us to feel pity for Californians when it’s clearly the fault of their own elected officials and legislature who continue to force their wrongheaded Gaia-worship on the Golden Shower State, with consequences that have become not only annual, but predictably horrible.  (And which some, equally-predictably, somehow manage to escape.)

I should feel guilty about my Schadenfreude, but I really don’t — just as I don’t feel sorry for Californians who complain about high taxes, iniquitous government interference in their lives, high real-estate prices and the whole dreadful litany of self-inflicted ills, all without exception imposed on them by, once again, their stupid, venal and self-serving elected politicians.

Let ’em burn.  Maybe at some point they may even be forced to try and get some change enacted through the ballot box, but I don’t see that happening anytime soon.

Update:  unusually, I seem to have understated California’s problems.

Wish I’d Done That

Eco-Crap, Weather

Found via Insty (thankee, Squire), is this incredible piece of investigative journalism done by someone who, I suspect, isn’t a journalist:

Horrifying: Media and Climate Hoaxers (But I Repeat Myself) Report That Literally Everywhere on Earth is Warming at Twice the Rate of the Rest of the Earth

You’d think an actual journalist (I know, more rare than a virgin at a Clinton cocktail party) would have noticed this, but as the headline suggests, most of the journo persuasion are riding the Doom Wagon (no relation) for all it’s worth.

Anyway, follow the link and read it all the way to the end, where Ace makes this conclusion:

One begins to suspect that climate “scientists” have made up a scheme of dozens of “adjustments” they have granted themselves to make to the actual data, enabling them to tweak any temperature down and any other temperature up.

As we say here in Texas:  ya thank?

Utter Stupidity

Eco-Crap, Gummint

From the Golden Shower State comes this latest foolishness:

Despite the fact that natural gas is the cleanest of the fossil fuels hands down (and now the cheapest), liberals continue to oppose it. The “keep it in the ground” folks scored another victory this week when the city of San Jose California voted to ban natural gas lines and appliances in all new construction projects going forward. This is allegedly part of the state-mandated goal of going 100% “carbon-free” by 2045. Of course, as with all things, the devil is in the details.

Here’s the math which these fools are ignoring;

So now, all of the appliances, including furnaces, stoves, water heaters and all the rest, will be electric. And the buildings will have electric outlets where people charge their vehicles. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that a considerable increase in the load on the electrical grid is coming. And where does California get their electricity? More than half of it comes from… wait for it… natural gas-fired plants.
To get rid of the natural gas plants when you’ve already banned coal plants, you’ve only got a few choices. Hydro is good, but California isn’t exactly brimming with water. (They get about 12% of their energy from hydro and they’re nearly maxed out.) Nuclear would be perfect, but they’re phasing that out too. (That’s another 9% they’re getting ready to lose.) That pretty much leaves them with solar and wind, which accounts for roughly 24% of their current power generation. Do you really think you can go from there to 100% in a decade or two?

And for the life of me, I could not come up with a better conclusion than the article’s:

It’s so brilliant on paper and yet so stupid at the bottom line.

Leftism in a nutshell, if you ask me.  And as a wise man said:

Fuck Off, Reg

Eco-Crap, Two-Minute Hate

I was going to write something about this topic, but Brendan O’Neill got there first, and did it perfectly.

Read the whole thing.

Update: Nobody seems to have noticed the “classical reference” in both the title and O’Neill’s enjoinder.  It’s taken from a Cheech & Chong sketch from the late 1970s (I think it’s the Big Bambu  album) which satirizes a British punk band.  And, of course, the “Reg” here is Elton John’s real first name.