Yo-Bama, Good Job - Sort of - Or Not

Unfortunately I was awake today in plenty of time to see the B-HO defending the pork-ulus bill one year later. While he searches for relevance in a world that no longer wants him and never really needed him I suppose I should say something nice about him. As with any nice thing you can say about Obama it will come with massive amounts of conditions. There are two items where I believe Hobama is on the right track but, like a government reliant 'community organizer', he is doing them for the wrong reasons and with the wrong money.

As oil becomes more volatile and scarce high-speed intercity rail will become more important and supposedly there are projects going on in 31 states thanks to the pork-ulus bill. Unfortunately this is something that should not be a government initiative. Amtrak proves that government running a business is a money pit. At this point in history if high-speed intercity rail was a profitable business someone in the private sector would be pursuing it already. You might argue that by the time we need it, it will already be too late and that is a distinct possibility but that is a risk you take in the free market economy. Besides this isn't about the government being prescient its largely because the B-HO and his thug-ocrats want us to be more 'European'. Well first, we aren't Europe and if you want to copy them then move there. Second high-speed intercity rail works in Europe because most European nations are little bigger than Washington state with populations approaching 100 million people. That difference is monumental when it comes to expensive mass transit.

The other thing Barry boy has taken up that I would like to acknowledge is his idea of building two new nuclear plants - the first in America in thirty years. But here come those silly qualifications. This same man closed the Yucca Mountain waste facility which demonstrates he isn't genuine about making nuclear power a relevant energy source for the future. Knowing that how can this be anything but a cynical political ploy? If that doesn't convince you Obama MUST know that his own EPA, his own enviro-wacko wing, and countless grassroots 'NIMBY' (not in my back yard) groups will rally to block a nuclear plant from one Portland to the other. In the end I doubt a single shovel of dirt will ever be turned for another American nuclear plant.

The Final Nail?
Phil Jones of the East Anglia University Climate Research Unit admitted to the BBC last week that the books on Human caused Global Warming were cooked; a revelation that could be the final nail in the coffin of the whole concept. Most of the dismissed skeptics knew that a long time ago but were shouted down by the Earth Cult that grew up around the concept of AGW. Jones also admitted that the Earth has been slightly cooling since 1995 adding three years to the estimates of non-biased climatologists. Furthermore he revealed that the science was never 'settled' practically damning Algore and that the now infamous 'hockey-stick' graph showing that global temperatures remained fairly even for millenia before spiking after the industrial revolution is a complete fraud. The Medieval warm period was indeed warmer than now. The 'Little Ice Age' that ran from the 14th-19th centuries really was colder and the 20th century saw us finally coming out of that. So, does all of that absolve us of responsibility for the earth? Certainly not. Just because AGW is dead doesn't mean we have license to destroy willy-nilly. The Chiahoga River catching fire in the 1970s was real. Acid rain was real. Boston Harbor's pollution was real. But these were localized conditions created from ignorance or deliberate abuse of natural resources. We have done a great deal toward removing these conditions. Filters in industrial stacks have all but eliminated acid rain, rivers and harbors have been cleaned up, mines clean up behind their activities. Global warming is real. But it is a complex cycle dependent on hundreds of variables including conditions on the sun; which we cannot control. The end of AGW will crush the enviro-cultists. Many of them will have to go through the five stages of grief before coming back to reality (some never will). But we all may be tearful over the death of human caused global warming as paleo-climatologists warn that we are overdue for an ice age. Frogurt anyone?