Home > Oh, Really?
Bring it on
If there’s a chance that we can fill our gasoline tanks with grass clippings and leaves, imagine the number of 16-year-old boys eager to mow lawns, clip hedges and rake leaves, all so they could gas up and cruise the Dogpatch Bypass.
It’s not just a gas thing, it’s a neighborhood neatness thing, too.
If we can grow grass for gas on oil shale, is that a double whammy?
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: Fuel crisis
If anyplace cries out for a billboard
it’s the Riverside Porkway.
As noted last week, the porkway is now open.
And, with apologies to J.R.R. Tolkien and his halflings, it’s eminently serviceable as a halfroad.
Were I living in Delta, I’d be thrilled with the easy access to Mesa Mall. Pear Park, Fruitvale, Clifton — not so much.
Now the municipal line is that, well, the project’s just not done. Indeed. See above.
And it may come to pass that the porkway will be part of a loop that surrounds the most densely populated parts of the city, but that’s decades off.
The worst part of the porkway, though, isn’t the road itself. It’s the territory.
One has to wonder exactly what moved the Grand Junction City Council to preserve for vacationers, newcomers and sight-seers an unimpeded view of a railroad yard and industrial dumping ground.
Is there something in the water here?
When Grand Junction is derided by the fine folk from the Front Range, they always call it “Malfunction Junction.”
Why reinforce the ugly stereotype?
Put up signs, lots of them. Why not let the movie houses, all of them, pitch their flicks? Why not allow the Museum of the West the opportunity to lead newcomers into the downtown shopping park?
Anything would be better than the view of rusting boxcars, decaying tankers and decrepit ironworks, no?
Or we could just rename it the Dogpatch Bypass.
At least there would be some truth in advertising.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment |
Seeing spots
of doubt and even heresy in the ranks of the American Physical Society, which, as the link shows, once called the evidence for man-caused global warming “incontrovertible.”
Now society members are observing that the International Panel on Climate Change is every bit as factually fastidious as, oh, the guy who send you e-mails from Kenya saying he has $22 million and just needs to park in your bank account for a tiny while and let you keep the interest.
“Numerous exaggerations and extensive errors” is the kind way that one member of the physical society described the international panel’s report. It’s worth noting that the panel’s report was full of hedges and qualifiers and by any description far less certain than the physical society’s previous, accusatory finding.
The climate-change panel also was less than transparent about its methods of measuring and tracing the causes of climate change, which one member of the society described as “deliberately concealing and obscuring.”
Yet the physical society has at least been honest in reconsidering its previous position.
Surely the climate-change panel will be every bit as accountable.
Once the sun rises in the west.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment |
North, to Alaska?
Perhaps it’s not global, yet, but some folks are warming to the idea of punching some holes into the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil. So, is this the mindset that sets back oil shale development, because a less expensive alternative has been found? Or does this kind of thinking spur greater interest in shale as part of a multi-pronged approach to solving energy problems?
Permalink | Comments (2) | Post your comment | Categories: Energy
About that peak …
Seems that there’s a lot of oil south of the border, waaay south of the border. There are, as George W. Bush has been rumored to say, lots, maybe even Brazilians of barrels of oil down there.
The thing is, of course, that we’re supposed to be high and dry, like an SUV with a ripped-out oil pan in the middle of the Nevada desert.
And yet, oil keeps leaking out of the ground.
So if peak-oil theories wither away, we’ll blame it on Rio?
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment |
Don’t pack those winter woolens quite yet
It was cold in May and not just in western Colorado. June’s not exactly looking like a barn-burner either, not that we couldn’t use a bit of global warming about now.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment |
Seems terror doesn’t pay (if it’s battled)
Appeasement types no doubt will cry that the idea of fighting terrorists merely encourages them to become terrorists, but this study suggests that if you rub out their members early and often, terrorist organizations kill fewer people. They also tend to fall into disrepute, thinning their numbers and worsening their prospects.
Of course, if killing them proves to be a frustration, talking to them seems likely to embolden them, and most likely also makes the choice clearer to potential recruits more clear: Join and kill or refuse and die.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: War on Terror
Note to backwater beatnik brigade
Here’s a little update on how your hated military in Iraq. Got any thoughts as to who set the bomb that took her leg and killed her brother?
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: War on Terror
Coyote ugly
Southern Californians are shocked to learn that coyotes are not merely curiosities you can see at the zoo.
In fact, the curiosities are actually the humans. That is, apparently, when they aren’t on the menu.
Even though coyotes are predatory, voracious and clever (Wile E. is merely a pale imitation of the real thing) there’s a mystique about the animal, and even about his prey, at least in these parts.
California coyotes might not feed on white-tailed p-dogs as they do here, but they do feed on something. Hint: It’s not made by Purina.
We like to think that we’re a permanent blight on nature’s landscape, a malign species whose shadow will forever darken the lands on which we tread.
Truth is, though, the coyote cares not a whit about us.
We’re just another lunch bouncing around on two legs, perhaps a bit more filling than most.
Much as we think of ourselves as the top of the food chain, when was the last time you had a nice bit of juicy coyote?
Wile E. knows who is predator and who is prey. And it’s the opposite of the arrogant human perspective.
We look at them and think, coyote ugly.
They look at us and think, “Coyote damn lucky.”
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: sprawl
April among coolest months
According to the National Climatic Data Center, April was a full degree Fahrenheit cooler than the 20th Century average. This wouldn’t be a big deal, except that about now, according to Al Gore, we should start to feel the Earth’s fever stating to boil over.
So what’s with the dropping temperature?
Especially when we had not decades but mere years, and perhaps not even that much, to prevent the planet’s death by fever.
This ought to buy us a few more days, right?
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: climate change, global warming
What the shale is going on here?
Estonia is exporting oil shale technology to, of all places, the Middle East. Strange, is it not, that King Abdullah II is more interested in shale than an ethanol plant? Did he miss a memo?
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: oil shale
But the war on terror is making new terrorists
That’s the faulty premise behind one surrender argument. Funny that Ayman al-Zawahiri doesn’t seem to see it that way.
He’s been droning on like this now for years but the best his buddies can do it trick the defenseless into becoming bombers.
The lefties say they believe him, but when push comes to shove, they don’t have their choice among hordes of willing martyrs. They have to trick the developmentally disabled into getting blown up.
Even the retarded are smarter than to get fooled by Uncle Ayman. Which makes them smarter than, well you fill in the rest …
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: War on Terror
People should know their place
And Doug Bruce’s is not in the Legislature.
Not that anyone is suggesting that the voters of Colorado Springs got it wrong. They haven’t weighed in on his appointment. Yet.
Bruce, though, should know better. He’s accomplished more as an outsider than as a member of an organization that actually would lower its standards enough to welcome him. Sorry Groucho.
Here’s what happened. Americans can’t quite get their bearings on illegal immigration, but there seems to be a consensus that immigration in general is good.
Legal immigration, it follows, is as good as it gets.
So along come Douglas Bruce to blast it.
Calling the target market “illiterate peasants,” Douglas parses his way to a point— if they were neither illiterate nor peasants, they’d likely not apply.
Most Americans can point to a background of illiterate peasants who somehow reached the United States to prosper in ways they could do nowhere else.
Rep. Kathleen Curry clearly was dazed. She knew she was insulted, but she didn’t know exactly why. So she opted for the reliable “How dare you?”
Geez, honey, he’s Douglas Bruce. You were expecting clearheaded analysis?
Bruce operates from emotion. By that standard, he’s in the wrong party, but that’s another issue.
In the business of legislation, everyone shares everyone else’s bed at some point or another. Bruce is the only member who always sleeps alone and it wasn’t as though that was an unforeseeable outcome.
Really, he needs to remember his place.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: Douglas Bruce
What all the fuss was about
Was this column. It set off this discussion. Feel free to chime in at either location on GJSentinel.com.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: War on Terror
The icy stare
Here’s a view of how the northern hemisphere is looking in these dog days of global warming. Remember that the seas are supposed to be rising, poles melting and deserts expanding in the hothouse atmosphere of the Earth. Seems like the Arctic is getting colder and icier in this look.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: climate change
Not so hot, it seems
Scientists, we’re told here, “aren’t quite understanding” what their robots are telling them about ocean temperatures.
That’s a euphemism for the fact that what the robots are saying is diametrically opposite to what they had expected.
In normal circumstances, this would be interesting, possibly of such weight as to warrant a raised eyebrow and a murmured “Fascinating.”
After all, the idea was that the robots would find a bubbling, Vulcan-like undersea world of Julia Child, full of pre-sauteed fish and red lobster in no need of boiling.
But no, the information that came back was “puzzling.”
It’s not puzzling. It’s contradictory and, worse, heresy.
There’s something touching about noting that robots, unfeeling machines that they are, telling us that the Earth isn’t heating according to the anti-gospel of Al Gore.
And that scientists are puzzled.
Maybe they should get out more on the Web. They could find snippets such as this.
It could be that the globe’s climate shifts are related to cyclical changes in the sun, an obvious area of inquiry that “puzzled” scientists can’t be bothered to study.
It could be that Shakespeare had it almost right: The fault, dear Al, lies not in our stars but in our star …”
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment |
Getting colder, colder
No., it’s not the child’s play of leading someone to a hidden object. It is the climate and yes, it’s changing, no doubt as a result of a cooling phase of the sun.
To be sure, the cooling trend is just a blip, but it’s a blip in the opposite direction of that which was expected by the computer modeling on which we have come to rely, not unlike throwing chicken bones to determine the better course of action.
Those chicken bones, er, computer models, say we are in a phase of human-caused global warming.
Same thing with chickens and computers - garbage in, garbage out.
It might have helped had the computers known that the Earth is still in an Ice Age from which we have seen a small respite.
For now, until the next solar twitch, we, and Al Gore, are getting colder, colder yet…
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: climate change
A bit closer to home …
Today’s column:
Newcomers, flatlanders and legislators often have difficulty distinguishing between the various parts of Colorado.
It’s actually easier than they might think.
On one side of the state, the big educational issue is how a district can stretch its limited number of employees over more than one school to meet as many needs as possible under a Spartan budget. On the other side of the state, the big fight is over whether schools should freely hand out condoms to students.
Leaving aside the issue of exactly what happens during study hall in the latter district, the big question is: Where do these districts sit in relation to one another?
Too easy? Or too hard?
Well then, here’s another question to ponder: Which district is slammed, battling growth problems related to one of the state’s biggest industries? Said industry, by the way, pumps millions of dollars into the Colorado economy.
Got the answers yet?
Well, the district that is battling with the staffing issues is the one in the heart of the energy boom, Garfield County Re-2.
Denver Public Schools is the one that’s fixated on sex.
Garfield County Re-2, the one on the west side of the Continental Divide, is doing what it can, given the mandates of a budget dictated from afar, more than 100 miles from the state Capitol.
The Garfield budget is dictated from afar because afar is where the votes are.
And those votes are cast by a band of legislators who like having their rich uncle working in Colorado, but would never admit to being related to the old geezer just because he has something of a cauliflower nose and emits the occasional whiff of B.O.
Oh, but the money. They really want the money.
So there really are two Colorados: one that pumps money into the state coffers to the point that local needs are neglected, and it sees nothing coming back; and then there’s the other side, the one that simply can’t get over the idea that being green means getting more of it.
Unless it’s thirsty, but that’s a different, though not unrelated, question.
At any rate, the Garfield district will split six positions among two schools, including the librarian, PE teacher, counselor, a health clerk and a few other positions.
Denver Public Schools is looking to dispense condoms from well-appointed health centers in its high schools.
Silly taxpayers might have thought that a district in energy country — where U.S. senators are fighting over how to dispense tens of millions of dollars from drawing natural gas out from beneath federal lands — would be the one rolling in money.
And isn’t this the same state that passed Referendum C to pump billions in new cash into state coffers for, among other things, schools?
Denver Public Schools isn’t to be entirely faulted. The district has agreed to experiment with two schools that will be more free than others in their hiring, staffing and scheduling practices.
Some day, that experiment might pay off on the west side of the Continental Divide.
For now though, while Garfield economizes, DPS is getting ready to condomize.
Permalink | |
Viva la revolucion!
Cubans, especially the young ones, seem to think that there might be more to the world than the Castro-controlled cocoon allows into their little island world.
Could it be that they’ll be a bit miffed when the veil finally is lifted?
Will they be a little resentful over the thousands, perhaps hundreds of lives wasted over more than half a century by El Jefe?
How much longer can idiotic explanations for the lack of travel — not enough airspace for all those planes — stand?
Permalink | |
What Che (and Castro) wrought
Here’s an intimate little look at the workers’ paradise south of Miami. Of course, the Cubans with whom he spoke were happy, but ignorance, it’s been frequently remarked, is bliss. One wonder what will happen when these people find they’ve been played for suckers.
Permalink | |
Kiss the heat good-bye
Talk about your winters of discontent.
Turns out that the winter that has less than a month yet to run is a defiant one, not willing to bow down to the conventional wisdom of global warming and perfectly happy to keep mankind shivering away and hoping for a spring that just won’t come home.
Weather ain’t climate, say the acolytes of the High Church of the Overheated Globe, so pay no attention to the fact that in Colorado’s banana belt — the Grand Valley — the bananas are growing fur, the better to fend off the snow and cold.
Now this isn’t the first time Colorado has been subjected to cold.
It was just last year that Denver residents were moaning, as only Denver residents can, about 61 straight days of snow cover.
Warming acolytes argue that it wasn’t a record — the record is 63 days of snow cover — and that weather isn’t climate. So, go pound snow.
Of course, weather was climate when Frenchmen were complaining that their ski slopes were shrinking. Powderhorn’s future as a ski resort was said to be as bleak as the chances of a Maori bobsled team.
Powderhorn somehow is still in business, though. Granted, no immediate word on the prospects of Rockies-bound bobsledders from the Indian Ocean.
Other reports, however, are trickling in from around the globe.
Snow fell in Baghdad and Jerusalem this winter. Draw your own conclusions about whether certain people are being advised to chill out.
Snow fell as well in Buenos Aires, as well as Johannesburg, South Africa.
Not even the Chinese were spared the cold. Some cities went weeks without power because power lines toppled and the weather made it too cold to repair them.
More recently, the U.S. National Climatic Data Center reported the average temperature in January was one-third of a degree Fahrenheit cooler than the 20th century average.
In fact, four major global-temperature tracking outfits, including that of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, all noted a precipitous drop in global temperatures.
Baby, it’s cold outside, and all the more so because the alarmists were telling us we were out of time. Humanity was going to be buried; we were going to be roasted in a planetary super sauna.
Humans like heat. What’s called the Medieval Climate Optimum coincided with a rapid increase in the human population and is connected to a flowering of accomplishment in the arts and sciences.
Earth’s chill is not the result of Al Gore staying home, polishing his Oscar.
The fact is the sun is entering a cooler phase, and as the only source of heat for the solar system, when the sun cools, everybody cools.
By some reckonings, the sun at the end of our 20th century was at its most active, and hottest, over the previous 8,000 years.
Some researchers have gone so far as to predict the return of the Ice Age.
Still, there’s nothing like a cold slap in the face to recognize the kind of demagoguery that’s so far characterized the so-called science of global warming.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: climate change
Latest comments
Idiot! Is the world still flat or has mankind just stupid? Why can’t we start thinking outside of the box???
Here a possible solution for the short term. Check it out and you decide if it makes sense.
www.pickensplan.com
... read the full comment by Leonard Patrick | Comment on North, to Alaska? Read North, to Alaska?
I have lived in Alaska for 4 years now and have heard all about the fight over ANWR. The people who are against it have never been there and the people who are for it see just another enviromental fight. The area where they want to drill is not going to
... read the full comment by wayne | Comment on North, to Alaska? Read North, to Alaska?
I guess you need to grasp anything that gives you comfort. The recent US winter temperatures are above average for the last century, but to Gary this is a “cooling trend.” Whatever.
Meanwhile, globally this last winter was the 16th warmest
... read the full comment by Ed | Comment on Getting colder, colder Read Getting colder, colder
Nice blog entry…however, Maoris are from New Zealand which is in the Pacific Ocean, not the Indian Ocean
... read the full comment by Tom | Comment on Kiss the heat good-bye Read Kiss the heat good-bye