Unintended Consequences

Most of you are probably unsurprised by this, but I have been fairly unexcited by the whole biofuels / E85 / gasohol furore.

Until recently, that is.

I was fully aware that food prices will be going up - significantly - because of the diversion of corn (maize) from food use to alcohol production. Now, I've never been opposed to producing alcohol from corn - in fact, I'm a bourbon fan, myself. Still, given that even were we to convert our whole corn output to alcohol, we would make at most a small dent in our petroleum imports, I remained unimpressed.
Then I realized that the food shortage will be selective. This looks like an organized, yet subtly disguised, attack on vegetarians (and especially vegans). After all, if we convert vegetable production to fuel production, shortages will fall disproportionately on the vegetarians.
Sure, we feed cattle with corn, but they are just as happy with other fodder (just ask our Canadian neighbours - after all, doesn't the Left think they do everything better in Canada?). And, as my new favourite young blonde country singer (whose name escapes me right now) asked: if God didn't want us to eat animals, why did He make them out of meat?

Why indeed?

Immigration "Reform"

Just in from Washington: we're going to make it easy for illegal immigrants to become citizens. This means we're officially thumbing our noses at folks who tried to follow the rules and apply for entry and citizenship in accordance with federal laws.
This seems beyond ludicrous on its face (at best). Still, being a glass is 7/12 full kind of guy, I am looking at this development in a decidedly optimistic way. I figure that now that we've started rewarding (rather than punishing) law-breakers, we should start lobbying for the income tax to be next in line.
What exciting days are ahead for our republic (or whatever we've become) as we contemplate just how to reward tax cheats. Makes me think about filing an amended return, asking for all my withholding back!

grr.

Slowly Choking to Death

That's right - I finally have an environmental threat of my own to flog, and I think it may even be real (imagine that, if you can).

You're probably aware that the EPA has managed to get CO2 classified as a pollutant which they can regulate. You're also probably aware that, while animals (in general) respire by taking in oxygen and releasing CO2, the opposite is true for plants (again in general).
"So what?" I'm sure many of you are asking. "So this," is my reply:
By reducing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, we'll be preventing plant respiration. By preventing plant respiration, we'll be reducing the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere, thus preventing animal respiration.
This is no slippery slope argument, this is a self-reinforcing endless loop of un(?)intended consequences. By slowing our production of CO2, we're not only dooming ourselves to suffocate, we're dooming plant life as well.

That's right, the EPA is killing the Rainforests! They must be stopped!

grr

The End of an Era

Perhaps not many of you will remember the glory days, back even before Steven West, but there are those of us who do remember. Yes, we remember and mourn the passing of Federal's Department Stores.
Why this now? Simple. I was driving down 8 Mile the other day (I think it was Wednesday) and saw a work crew dismantling that big blue sign (shaped like an "F" if you're headed West), the sign that signaled one's approach to I-75.
Another Detroit landmark is gone. So long, Federal's, so long, Steven West, wherever you may be.

Consensus?

Well, well, well.

Isn't it interesting that after all these years of Al Gore telling us that all scientists and all governments in the world agree that humans are causing catastrophic global warming, now we're being told that for the first time, there is a consensus among scientists and governments that humans are causing catastrophic global warming.


OK, so there's been a consensus for years, but now, for the first time, there's a consensus? So they were lying before? or are they lying now? or both?

I think it's obvious that the world is slightly warmer than it was a few decades ago. It's also obvious that it's been warming since long before we were responsible for any real addition to the "greenhouse gas" content of the atmosphere.
In fact, we've almost gotten back to the temperatures of the 1300s and 1400s (and everyone knows that the cars they drove back then were much dirtier than the ones we have now, so that's why it was so hot back then, right?).

If you care to examine some basic facts, you may well find out that the sun is cooling - check the sunspot levels and the neutrino emissions. So, if the amount of heat coming in is less than we've been getting, does it make sense for us to let more of it escape?
We're about to get hit with a quick (only a decade, perhaps) slide into another Ice Age. If we're going to preserve anything like our current civilization, we're going to need to put another log on the fire, as it were. If we want to keep the air clean (and I'm certainly all for that), we're still going to need power to keep us warm - I'm ready to get the nuclear power industry back on track.
Just think, if the French are brave enough to have a nuclear power industry, how can we be more cowardly?

Grr, as they say, grr.