More Wackiness From Environmentalists

(With a hat tip to Bigfoot of And Rightly So)

I think that we all recognize this image and the implicit satire therein:



Now comes this:


Do you know what it is? Continue reading below the fold.

The glacier embracing suit, of course:

This suit explores the avenue of “body” language and non-verbal communication. Intended for awkward introductory glacier encounters, it acts as an “ice breaker”, better enabling a person to lie prone on the surface of the glacier and give it a hug. Worn on the front of the body, the reflective padded material serves to mediate the difference in temperatures between the human body and the glacial ice....

Read about the adult summer camp where this suit was invented HERE, not an inexpensive camp to attend:

Individuals: $1600 (an $800 deposit is required after acceptance.)
Groups of 4 or more from the same organization: $1200 per person (use promotion code 200: name of organization).
ITP Alumni: $800 (use promotion code 100)

Complete payment is due by May 25 to keep your spot.

I'm at a loss for words except to say, You can't make this stuff up!

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Executive Order Power Grab

Please see my post today over at THE ASTUTE BLOGGERS. Then scroll down for some lighter reading here at Always On Watch.

[END OF THIS POST]

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Live The Good Life: Give Up Air Conditioning

Stan Cox tried to make the case for reducing our reliance upon air conditioning in a recent essay in the Washington Post:

...In a world without air conditioning, a warmer, more flexible, more relaxed workplace helps make summer a time to slow down again. Three-digit temperatures prompt siestas. Code-orange days mean offices are closed. Shorter summer business hours and month-long closings -- common in pre-air-conditioned America -- return.

[...]

Saying goodbye to A.C. means saying hello to the world....

This portion is particularly idyllic and, in my view, insanely implausible:

...During unseasonably warm spring and fall days, hearings are held under canopies on the Capitol lawn....

Read the entire puff piece HERE. The essay garnered 1321 comments!

Reactions to Mr. Cox's essay have varied. See these two letters to the editor. The first letter, written by Warren C. Robinson (one who has lived in the Washington, D.C. area for some eighty years), calls Mr. Cox's essay "hogwash." The second letter, written by Beth Baker, waxes poetic:

Stan Cox's July 11 Outlook commentary was music to my ears. For me, summer is a time of porch-sitting, hearing orioles sing through my open windows, fans blowing, enjoying a tall glass of iced tea or a gin and tonic, wearing a sundress, and generally reveling in a languor that I never feel in winter....

Read both letters, and decide for yourself which one is more in touch with reality.

Ultimately, as should not surprise us, Mr. Cox's recent essay in the Washington Post is a promotion of his book Uncomfortable Truths About Our Air-Conditioned World (and Finding New Ways to Get Through the Summer).

By the way, no word yet as to just who is the first volunteer to give up air conditioning in a Washington, D.C., heat wave and just sweat out muggy weather. I rather imagine that Obama wouldn't be the first to step up. Heh.

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Don't Drill For Domestic Oil! Instead, Protect Frogs!

From this posting by Reliapundit of THE ASTUTE BLOGGERS, citing this source:

1.6 million acres of California land designated as habitat for endangered frog

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Tuesday designated 1.6 million acres in California as critical habitat for the endangered red-legged frog, made famous by Mark Twain in his story "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County."

...The Fish and Wildlife Service estimated the 20-year economic impact of the habitat designation to be $159 million to $500 million, with about 90 percent of the impacts on new development. Another $48.4 million of the cost is projected crop loss.

Read Reliapundit's commentary on the above HERE.

As if California can take one more hit on its ailing economy.

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More Greenie Idiocy: Fees For Grocery Bags

Encouraging people to bring their own reusable canvas bags to the grocery store is one thing, forcing them to do so, another.


Now, I'm one of those people who recycle paper and plastic bags by finding other uses for them, mainly because doing so saves me from having to purchase the bigger plastic bags such as Hefty or Glad trash bags, too big for some household purposes here anyway. Those purposes include lining small wastebaskets and disposing of food leavings in a household with no under-sink garbage disposal. I even reuse the plastic sleeves in which the Washington Post arrives every day. Those sleeves make excellent gloves with which to clean out the cats' litter boxes. Scoop out the piles, turn the bag inside out and knot it. Voila! Useful and sanitary!

Here in the Virginia suburbs, such household management of paper and plastic bags is, thus far, completely VOLUNTARY.

As of January 1, 2009, however, the city of Washington, D.C., has begun charging a user fee for each paper and plastic grocery bag issued, even at liquor stores. Supposedly, this restriction on paper and plastic bags will help to clean up the Anacostia River:

The District's user fee on plastic and paper bags at stores that sell food and/or alcohol went into effect New Year's Day and is one of the toughest such measures in the country.

Lawmakers hope the tax will make the nation's capital more green-friendly and help the environment, with proceeds going to fund the cleanup of the Anacostia River. They estimate it will produce about $3.6 million in revenue in the first year, an amount that might decline as awareness grows and people get used to bringing reusable bags when they go shopping.

[...]

Discarded bags sometimes make their way into the District's storm-water drains and nearby waterways, including the polluted eight-mile stretch of the Anacostia River in Southeast Washington, where they become tangled in trees and roots.

As if the Anacostia area's residents and transients, a sizable portion of whom are involved in the illicit drug trade, are going to change their habits! The user fee on bags from the liquor store is particularly ludicrous and ineffective.

Meanwhile, back here in the Virginia suburbs, not long ago I made a special trip to Whole Foods to pick up a particular supplement carried only at that store. The clerk at the register gave me an excoriating look when I didn't produce or purchase a canvas bag in which to tote the single item I purchased. Indeed, she looked at me as if I were evil personified. So much for "The customer is always right." I admit it: I didn't feel the least ashamed or obligated to explain that I would be recycling the bag she grudgingly produced.

Trying to force people to care about the environment is a non-starter. But utopians, including sanctimonious environmentalists, never give up trying to make non-starters work.

Additional reading: As long as I'm on the topic of greenie idiocy, check out this recent story about the greenie-experimental urinals in Chicago's City Hall (hat tip to Weasel Zippers):

There's been a stench coming from the second floor of City Hall -- and it has nothing to do with the steady stream of Chicago aldermen convicted on corruption charges.

Waterless urinals installed to promote water conservation in the public men's room outside the City Council chambers have turned into a stinky mess. The odor got so bad that the "green" urinals are now being ripped out and replaced with the old-fashioned kind at a cost City Hall has refused to disclose.

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Your Weekend Funny

Just in case you missed this political cartoon when I posted it as an addendum to one of my blizzard essays:

Cartoon by Nate Beeler
Some reading below the fold.

From this post at Totus:

Here we go again, the administration is planning to establish a new government agency, one that will answer to the president, to report on what Gary Locke the secretary of commerce has already said, "that climate change is a real threat". We all know that the climate is changing, its been changing since the beginning of time, before man walked the earth, before the first microbes swam in the seas. This is just another effort on the part of government to control the message and try and get ahead of the firestorm causes by climategate. These global warming fanatics are grasping at straws in what will turn out to be a vain attempt to sway public opinion again. Those who believe in global warming will not go quietly into the night, moves such as this show their desperation and perhaps the dying quiver of their once popular movement.

The news story from Fox News is HERE.

Is RFK, Jr., advising the BHO administration? About a year ago, he predicted that Washington, D.C., might never see snow again. Pfffft!

Note to readers: Please read about the trial of Geert Wilders three posts down. This trial is of critical importance!

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Greenie Coercion

A recent edition of the Washington Post dropped a hint that the government would like nothing better than to force us to buy a new car in the name of the better good, both for the environment and for our own health.

From this article in the Washington Post:

Older Cars Fouling Region's Air Quality
Agency Study Links Recession, Pollution

The recession is contributing to higher levels of air pollution in the Washington area as new car sales plummet and older, dirtier vehicles remain on the road longer, according to a recent study by regional planners.

[...]

"If you trade in a 1995 Jeep Cherokee for a new one, that's a big difference in emissions," said Ronald F. Kirby, COG's transportation planning director. "We can't keep emissions going down unless we get newer vehicles in the fleet."

[...]

Kirby said he was particularly troubled that aging vehicles are predicted to cause increased emissions even as motorists are expected to cut their driving by 2.5 percent...The finding is at odds with a basic tenet of transportation planning, that tailpipe emissions drop when people drive less.

The article also indicates that the problem is a national one, albeit not yet widely recognized:

Rich Denbow, director of technical programs for the Association of Metropolitan Planning Organizations, said the COG study is the first in the country to document the connection between older vehicles and worsening air pollution. However, Denbow said, he expects other areas will find the same problem when they update their air quality forecasts.

"We're the first ones to see it, but I think it will be a national issue," said Denbow, whose organization is based in the District. "Our economy is better than a lot of others, so the [older vehicle] problem isn't as bad here as it will be in other areas."

We also read the following statement from Joan Rohlfs, chief of air quality planning for the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments, as she emphasizes how controlling emissions is a health mandate:

"Anything that contributes to pollution is not good for anyone's health"...

Perhaps most significantly, we read the following money quote from the aforementioned Kirby:

"How can you expect us to meet our targets for emissions when we have no control over the economy and the rate at which people buy new vehicles?"

In other words, "If we, your government overseers, are going to meet the federal requirements and get our federal subsidy, we must tell our citizens to shape up right now and head on over to the car dealer."

As one whose newest vehicle dates from year 2000, I can see what's coming sooner or later: I, and others like me, will be taxed or fined for driving older vehicles and thereby coerced into buying a newer vehicle.

Such coercion will, of course, have a negative effect on independent automotive-repair garages as car owners will be forced to obtain service at car dealers. The dealers, often the only facilities with the kind of equipment needed to effect certain repairs and types of maintenance, are fewer now, thanks to BHO's meddling in the automotive industry. I guess that it's fine and dandy to have to drive further, pay more, and wait longer for those repairs. After all, doing so is all for the greater good — never mind the good of my wallet or yours.

After all, we must save Mother Earth, even at the cost of enslavement and not being able to enjoy her bounty:

There are no slaves so willing as those who don chains and shackles of their own accord and in the name of the greater good.

Additional reading: THE ASTUTE BLOGGERS and Junk Science.

Oh, and just so you know, Anthony “Van” Jones, BHO's "Green Czar" is an admitted Communist with an arrest record:

...The East Bay Express, an Oakland area Black on line magazine reported Comrade Czar Jones...became a communist when he became enchanted with “these young radical people of color — I mean really radical, communists and anarchists. And it was, like, … I need to be a part of[them].”

[...]

Jones proudly says he spent the next ten years working with the people he met in jail in April, and “by August I was a Communist.”

His website “Green for all” carries this telling quote from Comrade Jones on his new position, “… we’re going to be in an economic slowdown for a couple of years. So to take three months, four months, six months to spend this money the right way-we’re not going to get a chance to spend a trillion dollars again! Ever. So let’s do it the right way!”

This is the kind of appointee BHO wants as a close adviser. Telling, very telling.

Of course, Greenie coercion isn't limited to your cars. Nosirree! From this posting at THE ASTUTE BLOGGERS, citing this essay:

...[T]he Waxman-Markley energy bill has a requirement that forces the entire United States to use a National Building Code based on the green building standards of California. Regardless of whether your house is in Miami, Florida or Bangor, Maine, you’ll have to adhere to the standards used in a state that has one of the most moderate climates in the U.S. The construction industry is really going to suffer.

The bill forces sellers to have an energy inspection prior to being able to sell their home. Windows, appliances and insulation will have to be inspected and approved by a government inspector and modifications would have to be made for compliance before you can close the sale.

Basically, you won’t be able to sell until you go through the expense of bringing your house up to the new code. This will cost a prohibitive amount in many cases.

So much for our right to property, be it the right to own our present automobile or to sell our homes. That right will be yielding to the right of Big Brother to snoop into every aspect of our lives.

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Paper Or Plastic?

Ever since plastic bags became available as the means to tote our groceries home, I've heard that we need to switch back to paper bags. Indeed, in 2007 San Francisco banned the use of plastic bags by chain stores for the carrying home of retail purchases (albeit with this controversy, as explained in a January 7, 2009 article debunking that particular bit of feel-good legislation in the San Francisco Weekly), and Whole Foods recently converted to using paper bags or reusable bags only.

But do such changes really save the environment?
------
Marc Fisher of the Washington Post recently made the following excellent points about the paper-or-plastic wars:

...Way too much brainpower has gone into efforts by scientists, advocates and policy wonks to figure out whether plastic or paper bags are more damaging to the air, water, soil, and our souls. Binary Man [as Marc Fisher sometimes refers to himself] has learned the ins and outs of factors such as eutrophication, which is the degree to which paper or plastic bags disturb the nutritional balance of the earth's soil as they each sit in landfills. (Paper loses that part of the battle; the process used to make the bags emits considerably more carbon than making a plastic bag.)

The plastics industry churns out studies seeking to show that plastic bags are better for the environment even if they are made from fossil fuels, because the bags are frequently reused. And it is true that neither paper nor plastic bags decompose to any useful degree in the landfills where most of our trash ends up....

By the end of the column, Mr. Fisher advocates that we bring our own bags to the store, even if doing so encroaches upon our desire for convenience.

Decades ago, probably during the Carter Administration, we here in the D.C. area heard that an impending shortage of grocery bags was looming. My grandmother, seamstress extraodinaire, cranked up her sewing machine and made the family a supply of denim bags to use at the grocery store. The shortage of grocery bags in our region didn't come to fruition. Those denim bags are in storage upstairs here, and I should dig them out, in case the Virginia Assembly decides to impose a proposed fee on both paper and plastic bags used in grocery stores and big-chain retailers; that kind of legislation has been under consideration this session.

I also note that, in the current flurry of legislation regarding paper-or-plastic, few environmentalists want to ban plastic garbage bags. That lack of initiative is understandable, of course, because of the unpleasant result in suburban neighborhoods:


Furthermore, most composting, particularly when the compost pile isn't regularly and properly tended, also leads to the following unintended, disgusting, and potentially dangerous consequence:


History has proven to us the toll on human life when rat population is left unchecked (click on image to enlarge):


I can't imagine that environmentalists will advocate a ban on plastic garbage bags. But one never knows! After all, at least one university professor has advocated using the Ebola Virus as a method of culling humanity and saving Planet Earth.

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Some Greenie Trouble At The Democratic National Convention

(With a hat-tip to Raven, who emailed me the following link)



Sometimes, the Sunday funnies can be found in the news section:

DENVER Throwing the "greenest national political convention to date" is easier said than done, as Democrats are learning the hard way.

Amid much fanfare, Democratic National Convention officials have for months promoted their commitment to an environmentally sustainable event.

They've hired a first-ever "director of greening," set an ambitious recycling goal of 85 percent, and banished plastic water bottles and plastic foam cups from the premises.

[...]

The biggest environmental disaster to befall the convention hit two weeks ago, when the Barack Obama campaign announced that the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee would make his acceptance speech at Invesco Field at Mile High stadium.

The decision to move to the stadium threw a Chernobyl-sized wrench into the sustainability plan. Switching the venue from the Pepsi Center, which seats fewer than 20,000, to Invesco, which holds 78,000, threatens to saddle the convention with the Shaquille O'Neal of carbon footprints.

According to the above-cited article, a blogger has done some numbers crunching:

The Invesco Field speech could, therefore, result in more pollution emissions than all four days and nights combined of the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn., according to the blogger's estimates.

"Who knew Obama's ego would be so costly ... to the environment?" concluded [blogger] RiNOsaurusRex in an article titled "Obama Speech is Environmental Disaster."

The article in the Washington Times continues:

Things are simpler in St. Paul, where organizers of the Republican National Convention are taking a more laissez-faire approach to the event's environmental sustainability.

Greenies, take note! Obama and his monumental ego are damaging the environment! Not to mention all his hot air pouring carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

(Crossposted to THE ASTUTE BLOGGERS)

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