Presidents of both parties have long extolled the virtues of renewable or green energy. But no president has embraced the concept, nor has spent so much taxpayer money on the idea with nothing to show for it but a string of bankrupt companies, as has Barack Hussein Obama. He has even made the idea a cornerstone of his political and environmental platforms. Yet despite dismal failure, his green energy vision remain undaunted, and he continues to spend taxpayer money and offer all manner of provably untrue or conveniently incomplete success stories.

For example, in his State of the Union speech, Obama said, “It was public research dollars, over the course of 30 years, that helped develop the technologies to extract all this natural gas out of shale rock – reminding us that government support is critical in helping businesses get new energy ideas off the ground.” That preposterous claim is completely untrue. Fracking has been used since 1947, and was originally developed by Stanolind Oil and Gas Corporation, and improved by a small-time, independent oil man named George Mitchell.

In the “great timing” department, Obama said, “In three years our partnership with the private sector has already positioned America to be the world’s leading manufacturer of high-tech batteries.” Two days later, Ener1, high-tech battery manufacturer and the recipient of a $118 million federal grant, filed for bankruptcy. But, the Obama administration advisers promise that battery costs will fall. Why do they think that? The National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences reported that lithium-ion batteries, like those most used in electric vehicles, is not an “emerging” technology, but is quite mature. Dramatic cost drops are most often associated with new technologies.

Obama’s green-energy program has yielded thousands of jobs. The Department of Energy (DOE) reported that $38.6 billion worth of federally backed loans to green-energy companies has created 3,545 new permanent jobs, with each job costing taxpayers $5 million. It would be much cheaper to have simply supported/subsidized these workers until they died. The wind, solar, biomass, and geothermal industries admit that they would cease to exist without mandated consumption orders and massive production subsidies.

Obama’s DOE predicts that consumption of renewable energy will go from 8.4% of total US energy consumption to 10.8% in 2035, with most of that growth coming from government consumption orders. When we total the billions of taxpayer dollars we’re spending on renewable or green energy, that’s not much of a technological revolution. Technological breakthroughs do occur, often without warning. But there is no reason to believe that President Obama is a better energy future forecaster than are market capitalists who stand to gain billions in profits by making good investments in future technologies So for all you green-energy environmentalists, it’s time to put up (especially your own money) or shut up. Speaking of putting up, environmentalists, why are Chevy Volt sales so dismal?

The recent bankruptcies of DOE green-energy loan recipients and the record of bad DOE bets over the past three years caution taxpayers against future crony paybacks, er, taxpayer-backed loans, er, “investments.” American voters should not confuse hope with certainty.

But that’s just my opinion.

Find more articles like this one at RWNO, my personal web site.

Fake but true:

IT APPEARED to provide incontrovertible proof that global warming was accelerating faster than even the most doom-laden scientists had predicted.

There was considerable alarm when the word’s most authoritative atlas printed a map which showed that Greenland was rapidly turning green.

However, experts from around the globe pointed out that the cataclysmic chart had no scientific support and was contradicted by all of the most recent satellite images.

Now the Scottish map-makers responsible for the disappearance of 115,830 square miles of polar ice have admitted publicly they were wrong.

As an act of contrition, The Times Comprehensive Atlas of the World cartographers have produced a new map which restores Greenland’s ice cover.

We’re sorry- that we got caught.

Jethro Lennox, senior publishing editor of the £150 tome, insisted lessons would be learned from the episode, which generated headlines around the globe.

The Glasgow-based map-maker said: “We’re very disappointed at the way it happened.

Nothing to see here, move on:

“But we are now looking to draw a line under the Greenland controversy and move on.”

It was a “blunder”

The latest atlas, which was published in September, showed a reduction in ice cover compared with the previous edition from four years ago.

Accompanying publicity material declared the change represented “concrete evidence” of the effects of global warming, stating: “For the first time the new edition has had to erase 15 per cent of Greenland’s permanent ice cover – turning an area the size of the UK and Ireland ‘green’ and ice-free.”

Publishers HarperCollins originally stood by the accuracy of the map but have since admitted to the mistake after the blunder was exposed by scientists.

No word on exactly how this “blunder” happened.

Without an official transcript, and still with the SOTU speech being new, I thought I’d provide an open forum thread for first impressions, and open a thread specifically devoted to the SOTU speech.

UPDATE: You can read the transcript provided by the WH here.

Just to lead off on my own first impressions, I’d say that the POTUS and his TOTUS didn’t disappoint with a soaring campaign speech with all the expected moments… and a few unexpected surprises. For those that are the O’faithful, it’s an out of the park home run.

Even I will admit it was a good speech. Then again, I have as much appreciation for well done fiction as the next person.

What caught my ear most of all was one particular promise of administration-bypassing-Congress actions by this POTUS. Because I have no official transcript, I will use the Hillbuzz Blog Live Transcript wording. This relates to the “clean energy” parts of the speech, and Obama’s unusual tie in to the Defense Department.

We can spur energy innovation with new incentives. We need to fight climate change with a clean energy standard and innovation.

I am directing my administration to allow the development of clean energy on public land to power three million homes. The Department of Defense will purchase Navy clean energy.

The easiest way to save money is to not waste it.

~~~

From UPDATED WH transcript, linked above:

We can also spur energy innovation with new incentives. The differences in this chamber may be too deep right now to pass a comprehensive plan to fight climate change. But there’s no reason why Congress shouldn’t at least set a clean energy standard that creates a market for innovation. So far, you haven’t acted. Well, tonight, I will. I’m directing my administration to allow the development of clean energy on enough public land to power 3 million homes. And I’m proud to announce that the Department of Defense, working with us, the world’s largest consumer of energy, will make one of the largest commitments to clean energy in history -– with the Navy purchasing enough capacity to power a quarter of a million homes a year. (Applause.)

Once I got my eyebrows back into place, and my jaw clamped back shut, I started pondering… exactly what can the administration do to “develop” public lands, bypassing Congress, for development of national public lands in order to power three million private residences, and what the heck does the Navy and Defense Department have to do with it?

I have only one possible initial explanation to offer… (not much time to research before providing a forum/debate outlet)… and this comes from a June 2011 working draft plan from the Department of Energy, addressing geothermal energy. According to the document:

Excerpt from the Introduction & Overview: The clean energy priorities set forth by the Congress and the Administration require an investment climate where public and private sector partners can come together to research, develop and deploy technologies to make geothermal energy a sustainable resource for generations to come. Furthermore, looking ahead, the expanding electrification of society and replacement of aging generation infrastructure also will require that all renewable energy options are given full consideration. It is in this context that the contributions of geothermal energy to electricity production may become critical to meeting this sizable challenge.

This collaborative document describes the roles and responsibilities of key Federal agencies in the development of geothermal technologies including the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE); the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), including the U.S. Forest Service; the U.S. Department of Interior (DOI), including the United States Geological Survey (USGS) and Bureau of Land Management (BLM); the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA); and the Department of Defense (DOD). It also highlights the activities of those agencies that as early adopters are deploying geothermal technologies for end-use applications. In identifying these Federal initiatives, it is the purpose of this document to provide an overview of relevant Federal policies and programs for the geothermal industry, financial community, policymakers, state and local government, other stakeholders and the American public.

From pg 17 of the 38 pg draft, they address the role of the DoD and Navy INRE geothermal development.

Department of Defense (DOD) – Geothermal Program Office (GPO)

The Department of Defense (DOD) participates in geothermal development activities, in particular as an end user. In 1978, DOD established the Geothermal Program Office (GPO) and designated the United States Navy as the lead agency responsible for geothermal exploration and development on military lands. The DOD GPO manages 32 million acres of land. < ?b>GPO has helped develop geothermal energy projects for the military as end user at a variety of locations in the Western United States including in California, Nevada, and Arizona. They include those in California at the Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake; the Naval Air Facility in El Centro; and the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center in Twentynine Palms; those in Nevada at the Naval Air Station in Fallon and the Hawthorne Army Depot in Hawthorne; and the one in Arizona site at the Chocolate Mountains Aerial Gunnery Range at the Marine Corps Air Station in Yuma. This section includes additional information on three of these projects, most notably the long-running and successful Coso Geothermal Field at China Lake, California.

Okay… I see that the Navy can develop public lands for geothermal as the end user of that development. But is Obama planning on using the US Navy to develop geothermal power for private residential use? And where does that authority come from?

Amy Harder at the National Journal also zero’ed in on the same phrase with her evening posting on the SOTU. She has interpreted it as the Navy making a clean energy purchase… enough to power three million homes.

With Congress gridlocked and clean-energy policy stifled by solar-panel maker Solyndra’s default on a federal loan, President Obama said on Tuesday evening in his State of the Union address that he is pressing forward with major initiatives in solar and wind energy that his administration can shepherd on its own.

“The differences in this chamber may be too deep right now to pass a comprehensive plan to fight climate change,” Obama said. “But there’s no reason why Congress shouldn’t at least set a clean energy standard that creates a market for innovation. So far, you haven’t acted. Well tonight, I will.”

Obama announced that the Navy will make the largest purchase of renewable energy purchase in history, enough to power a quarter of a million homes a year, and the Interior Department will lay the foundation to provide 3 million homes with renewable energy power from solar and wind projects on public lands by year’s end. The announcements are consistent with Obama’s “We Can’t Wait” initiatives that focus on actions the president can do under his own executive authority without congressional action.

I’m still snooping. Obvious the entertaining fiction that is Obama’s final (she says optimistically) SOTU speech is not fraught with details. But it is a direct reference to bypassing Congress, and using Executive Powers to push his agenda in any way possible.

So feel free to add your own thoughts, research and input to the evening here. And to point out some of the specific points of fiction you, personally, would like to highlight

Obama “the job destroyer” has come even closer to not only losing all the jobs that would come with the XL Pipeline but also losing all that oil:

Canada is now looking to Asian countries to market its abundance of oil, natural gas and minerals as plans to build the proposed Keystone XL pipeline have stalled with the U.S. administration.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper will travel to China next month to discuss selling Canada’s bounty to the rapidly growing nation.

The preferred initial plan was to build the $7 billion Keystone pipeline to deliver Alberta’s oilsands crude to refineries in Texas on the Gulf of Mexico.

Harper reasoned that the U.S. government would prefer to deal with a friendly neighbor to help meet its energy needs while creating thousands of jobs.

With widespread opposition by U.S. environmentalists, the Obama administration has delayed its decision on whether to approve the project proposed by energy giant TransCanada Pipelines.

The new plan would market to China and Asian countries through the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline that would transport Alberta’s oil and natural gas to British Columbia for shipment by tankers.

Just a few days ago Obama said he would reward businesses that bring jobs into the U.S. but he won’t allow this pipeline and all the jobs to happen. As The impending strike in Nigeria, which will cause oil prices to skyrocket, shows us….we need to be getting our own oil, and making deals with friends nearby for their oil.

But not this President:

A top oil industry official delivered a clear warning to President Obama Wednesday: approve the Keystone XL pipeline or face “huge political consequences.”

…“I think it would be a huge mistake on the part of the president of the United States to deny the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline,” Gerard said during the powerful oil industry trade association’s annual “State of American Energy” event Wednesday.

“Clearly, the Keystone XL pipeline is in the national interest. A determination to decide anything less than that I believe will have huge political consequences.”

I’m not holding out hope Obama will be smart for once, he hasn’t showed any inclination to be smart on any decision he has made.

President Barack Hussein Obama, on January 10, 2012, made a speech to Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) personnel praising their efforts. Obama said that EPA regulations are good for the economy and create jobs and that the agency “touches” the lives of every American every day. He actually said that! Obama told EPA employees, “We can make sure that we are doing right by our environment and, in fact, putting people back to work all across America.”

Really? Well, here are some (but certainly not all) EPA regulations and what the EPA is doing:

• Biofuels – the Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA) was enacted in 2007 with the goal of reducing America’s dependence on foreign oil. Fuel companies, by 2011, were to be blending in 6.6 million gallons of cellulosic biofuel into domestic gasoline and diesel. But there is one small problem with EISA: biofuel technology has not caught up to EPA requirements. Cellulosic biofuels only exist in small amounts as various research companies desperately try to come up with a way to produce the biofuel which doesn’t require massive government subsidies. But did that one little problem stop the EPA? To quote the late John Belushi, “Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.” With no economically viable supply of cellulosic biofuel to be had, the fuel companies were unable to comply with EISA requirements. The EPA is planing to impose fines on the fuel companies for failing to meet EISA guidelines.
• Energy Production – EPA administrator Lisa Jackson said, ” “We have no data right now that lead us to believe one way or the other that there needs to be specific federal regulation of the fracking process.”    [emphasis mine]   But did that little fact stop the EPA from pursuing its agenda? Noooooooooooooooooooooooo. While charging fracking drillers with contaminating groundwater, the EPA suppressed information about the fact that well water in Pavillion, WY, had been “contaminated” with polluting chemical never used in fracking. The EPA issued a draft report in early December, 2011, alleging that fracking may have been responsible for drinking-water pollution in Pavillion, WY, thus causing a “chilling” effect on the development on a source of domestic energy. This practice of issuing draft reports before scientific analysis has been completed is a violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, and a corporation is a citizen. Once a company’s reputation has been damaged as a result of false or incomplete reports receiving extensive national media coverage, that company and its investors have suffered irreparable harm.
• Mercury Elimination – While the EPA recently issued new regulations to reduce mercury emitted be electric power plants (that will increase electricity prices), it chooses to ignore three inconvenient facts:
  1. EPA studies indicate that power plants emit an estimated 41-48 tons of mercury per year. Yet volcanoes, subsea vents, geysers, and other sources emit 9,000-10,000 tons per year! US power plants account for less than 0.5 percent of all the mercury in the air Americans breathe. The EPA demands that utility companies spend billions every year retrofitting coal-fired power plants that produce half of all US electricity.
  2. The EPA based its “safe for humans” mercury criteria on a study of Faroe Islands inhabitants, whose diet is quite different from our own. They eat few fruits and vegetables, but do eat pilot whale meat and blubber that is laced with mercury. Their diet is very low in selenium, a natural defense against mercury.
  3. the EPA is actively downplaying mercury’s health risks when it comes from broken compact fluorescent lights (CFLs) inside homes. In a pamphlet extolling the virtues of CFLs, the EPA says it’s a “myth” that the mercury used in compact fluorescent lights is “dangerous in your home.”

To be “fair and balanced,” I have to cite the ONE regulation that Obama overruled: he directed the EPA to withdraw the proposed regulation to reduce concentrations of ground-level ozone.

So Obama praises the efforts of the EPA. Can we then safely assume that he favors EPA regulations and we will see more of them? After all, for the most part, the EPA has been his lap dog and does his bidding.

But that’s just my opinion.

Access to other articles like this one can be found at RWNO, my personal web site.

I don’t know what it’s like in other states, but here in California, we have over 750 new laws (last year saw 725) with an estimate of 40,000 new laws across the nation going into effect this year.

How many of these new laws are actually “necessary”? Will actually improve the human condition more than harm?

One of the more controversial pieces of legislation signed by Governor Brown is the California Dream Act:

Assemblyman Gil Cedillo (D-Los Angeles) said his legislation recognizes the value of young people who graduate from high school in California regardless of where they were born.

“It’s important for California and the future of our economy to take advantage of the investment we have made in these young men and women,” Cedillo said.

The second part signed back in October, it basically increases allowances already on the books, giving eligibility to apply for financial aid and merit-based scholarships to illegal immigrants attending public colleges and universities.

Supporters of the Dream Act also want illegal immigrants to be eligible for drivers licenses as well.

The illegal immigration debate aside….this also comes at a time when California is broke:

According to a legislative analysis, the bill would cost the state up to $40 million per year. Colleges and universities don’t track the immigration status of students, but higher education officials have said that there are about 3,600 students who are undocumented or who have other residency issues in the California State University system, and as many as 642 in the University of California system and 34,000 enrolled in community colleges.

LA Times:

Brown was also criticized for signing a law requiring public schools to include the contributions of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people in history lessons and instructional material, although new textbooks for lower grades are not planned for three years.

I have no issue with people’s sexual orientation. But why make a fuss over whether a historical person is gay or straight? Why must sexual identity be significance? What I deplore is that history books will conflate a historical figure’s contributions to society and make more out of him than is warranted, simply because he fulfills the need of special interest groups to feel validated through a misguided sense of equal representation.

Then there’s the ban on open-carry- one of those laws that I think are a waste of ink:

“Law-abiding citizens will start openly carrying unloaded long guns in public because their basic and fundamental civil right to self-defense, as enumerated in the 2nd Amendment, is clearly being infringed upon,” said Yih-Chau Chang, a spokesman for the firearms advocacy group Responsible Citizens of California.

Assemblyman Anthony Portantino (D-La Cañada Flintridge) said he introduced the measure in response to law enforcement officials who felt that public safety was jeopardized by gun owners wearing firearms on their hips at coffee shops and other public venues as they called attention to a right to bear arms.

Meanwhile, obtaining a concealed-carry permit remains difficult in the state of California.

There’s the high-speed rail system being built and touted:

as with many of his other green funding priorities (like Solyndra) this is another money pit. The San Jose Mercury News has more:

Though California’s high-speed train faces an intensifying backlash over its $99 billion price tag, political leaders from Washington to Sacramento justify the cost by touting another huge number: 1 million jobs the rail line is supposed to create.

But like so many of the promises made to voters who approved the bullet train, those job estimates appear too good to be true.

A review by this newspaper found the railroad would create only 20,000 to 60,000 jobs during an average year and employ only a few thousand people permanently if it’s built.

“They have a really hard sales pitch with the real numbers, so they’ve fudged the numbers,” said state Sen. Doug LaMalfa, a Chico-area Republican who is introducing legislation to send the rail line back to voters. “C’mon, a million people working on a 520-mile railroad? I practically laughed out loud when (I heard that).”

One million people — more than the combined workforce of San Jose and San Francisco — would have to cram shoulder-to-shoulder just to fit along the rail line between San Francisco and Anaheim.

The idea of a bullet train sounds great. But if this were anything but a boondoggle you’d have private firms lining up to build one. There’s just no way this is worth $100 billion dollars.

Will it eventually pay for itself? I dunno…maybe, if the car-loving California public actually uses it. But I am not optimistic that this is a wise gamble or smart investment of money California doesn’t have (Did I already mention California is broke?).

Food stamps:

eliminates the requirement that food stamp recipients be fingerprinted to prevent fraud. Another law calls for state agencies to promote more enrollment in the federal food stamp program.

Sexual orientation:

encourages state university systems to collect data on students’ sexual orientation and encourages the legislative analyst to use it to recommend improvements in the quality of life for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender students.

There’s the new law that expands no texting and hands-on talking on the phone to include any distractions:

According to the Los Angeles Times, text messaging and handheld cell phone use are not the only distracted driving behaviors that will be on law enforcement officers’ radar this weekend.They will also be keeping an eye out for people who are eating, putting on makeup, or reading magazines while operating a motor vehicle.

“Multi-tasking may be a fine way to get things done when your not driving, but combine driving with another activity that requires your attention and the need for you to take one hand off the steering wheel, and you’ve created a deadly situation that can destroy lives,” said Anaheim Personal Injury Attorney Howard.

Other activities that can prove distracting when driving:
• Watching a movie or downloaded television program on a portable electronic device
• Shaving
• Brushing your teeth
• Feeding a child
• Playing with a pet
• Reading a book
• Changing one’s clothes
• Adjusting an MP3 player, CD player, or the radio
• Inputting information into a navigation system

This just seems very broad. Anything you do while in the car, from conversing with someone riding shotgun to reading a street sign/billboard, watching a pretty skirt gliding down the sidewalk, to blowing your nose could all be interpreted as a driver being distracted. What will a CHP officer base his judgment on? How will this play out in court if contested?

Another new traffic law is use of booster seats for children:

IN THE BACK SEAT OF A VEHICLE until they are at least 8 YEARS OLD or 4′ 9″ in height.

What I’m unclear on is what if a kid turns 9 but is still under 4’9″? Does he stay in the booster seat? So then, shouldn’t any person, regardless of age, if he is under 4’9″, to be consistent with safety standard? Why is age then a criteria?

Any comments regarding new laws in your state?

From Investors

The EPA thinks it’s worth spending billions of dollars each year to reduce already minuscule amounts of mercury in the outside air. So why is it trying to shove mercury-laced fluorescent bulbs into everyone’s homes?

When the EPA announced its new air pollution rules this week — designed to reduce power plant emissions of mercury and other to gases — Administrator Lisa Jackson blogged that:

“Mercury is a neurotoxin that is particularly harmful to children, and emissions of mercury and other air toxics have been linked to damage to developing nervous systems, respiratory illnesses and other diseases.”

At $10 billion a year, complying with the new rules won’t come cheap, and that assumes the EPA’s low-ball estimate comes true. According to the coal industry, this is the most expensive rule the EPA’s ever imposed.

Fear not, since Jackson claims the “health and economic benefits” will be many times greater than the costs.

But here’s the curious thing: While whipping up fear about mercury in the outdoors, the EPA is actively downplaying mercury’s health risks when it comes out of fluorescent bulbs inside people’s homes.

In a pamphlet extolling the virtues of the looming federal ban on traditional incandescent light bulbs, the EPA says it’s a “myth” that the mercury used in compact fluorescent lights is “dangerous in your home.”

But if you break a mercury-containing CFL? What then?

Before Cleanup

Have people and pets leave the room.
Air out the room for 5-10 minutes by opening a window or door to the outdoor environment.
Shut off the central forced air heating/air-conditioning system, if you have one.
Collect materials needed to clean up broken bulb:
stiff paper or cardboard;
sticky tape;
damp paper towels or disposable wet wipes (for hard surfaces); and
a glass jar with a metal lid or a sealable plastic bag.

During Cleanup

DO NOT VACUUM. Vacuuming is not recommended unless broken glass remains after all other cleanup steps have been taken. Vacuuming could spread mercury-containing powder or mercury vapor.
Be thorough in collecting broken glass and visible powder.
Place cleanup materials in a sealable container.

After Cleanup

Promptly place all bulb debris and cleanup materials outdoors in a trash container or protected area until materials can be disposed of properly. Avoid leaving any bulb fragments or cleanup materials indoors.
If practical, continue to air out the room where the bulb was broken and leave the heating/air conditioning system shut off for several hours.

Here’s what happened when one concerned citizen took action following a CFL breakage:

According to an April 12 article in The Ellsworth American, Bridges had the misfortune of breaking a CFL during installation in her daughter’s bedroom: It dropped and shattered on the carpeted floor.

Aware that CFLs contain potentially hazardous substances, Bridges called her local Home Depot for advice. The store told her that the CFL contained mercury and that she should call the Poison Control hotline, which in turn directed her to the Maine Department of Environmental Protection.

The DEP sent a specialist to Bridges’ house to test for mercury contamination. The specialist found mercury levels in the bedroom in excess of six times the state’s “safe” level for mercury contamination of 300 billionths of a gram per cubic meter. The DEP specialist recommended that Bridges call an environmental cleanup firm, which reportedly gave her a “low-ball” estimate of US$2,000 to clean up the room. The room then was sealed off with plastic and Bridges began “gathering finances” to pay for the US$2,000 cleaning. Reportedly, her insurance company wouldn’t cover the cleanup costs because mercury is a pollutant.

Given that the replacement of incandescent bulbs with CFLs in the average U.S. household is touted as saving as much as US$180 annually in energy costs — and assuming that Bridges doesn’t break any more CFLs — it will take her more than 11 years to recoup the cleanup costs in the form of energy savings.

And when they burn out?

► Contact your local waste collection agency

Visit Earth911.com Exit EPA Disclaimer to find collection schedules in your area or drop-off locations if curbside collections are not available. Note that waste collection agencies:

– provide services that are usually free, though some may charge a small fee.
– sometimes collect household hazardous wastes only once or twice a year, so residents will have to hold on to their light bulbs until the collection takes place. Other collection agencies provide collection services throughout the year.
– may also collect paints, pesticides, cleaning supplies or batteries.
– usually accept waste only from residents, although some collection programs include small businesses as well.

So it’s going to cost you additional money to recycle your spent CFLs and/or you’re going to have to burn gas to deliver them to a recycler. Worse, you’re going to have burn the one thing you cannot ever get back- the time required to do this.

And if your local trash hauler doesn’t offer CFL recycling, p*ss them off!

1) Your local garbage service
Probably the best place to start is with whoever currently picks up your household trash or recyclables. If you pay for this service, you’ll almost certainly find a customer service number on your bill. Give them a call and ask if they offer CFL or mercury recycling. If not, politely suggest they do so. Here’s an opportunity to write a letter, attend a meeting or take some other activist role in highlighting the importance of proper CFL disposal. The appropriate follow-up will depend on whether your trash service is privately or publicly held.

Left out of this suggestion is that should the hauler be forced into such a program, the cost would be passed on in the form of increased fees. And the truth is that few are going to be bothered with this. Millions and millions of CFLs are going to be discarded into landfills, which will eventually contaminate the ground with significant amounts of mercury. And CFLs have far greater mass than incandescent bulbs.

What about the energy required for manufacture of CFLs?

The total energy input for the production of a CFL light bulb comes to 1.7kWh compared to 0.3kWh for a single incandescent light bulb.

That’s six times as much energy required to create a CFL over an incandescent bulb!

Most CFL’s are manufctured in China, and in their manufacture workers are poisoned:

Large numbers of Chinese workers have been poisoned by mercury, which forms part of the compact fluorescent light bulbs.

A surge in foreign demand, set off by an EU directive making these bulbs compulsory within three years, has also led to the reopening of mercury mines that have ruined the environment of a remote part of China.

Doctors, regulators, lawyers and courts in China are increasingly alert to the potential damage to public health of an industry that promotes itself as a friend of the Earth but depends on highly toxic mercury for its core product.

Making the bulbs requires workers to handle mercury in either solid or liquid form because a small amount of the metal is put into each bulb to start the chemical reaction that creates light.

Mercury pollution in China is already a significant problem.

Reducing Hg pollution has been a high priority in China’s environmental management and improvement program. During the past few years, China’s State Environmental Protection Administration has also strengthened its management of the production, use, import, export, and disposal of Hg. Hg mining has been restricted in many areas, such as Wanshan. In 1996, artisanal Au-mining activities were officially banned.

This “green” stuff ain’t all it’s cracked up to be. Six times as much energy is used in the manufacture of CFLs over incandescent bulbs, workers and landfills are poisoned and CFLs are toxic if broken.

But you can be comforted knowing that while mercury may be poisonous in the air, Lisa Jackson says it is safe once it is your home.

Merry Christmas!

As a country boy with six years of formal schooling, I am hardly the one to question the role of intellectuals in politics; however, after reading an article by Gary Gutting in the New York Times, I am reminded of a university professor who asked me to help him with a mule problem.

I love mules, but you must be careful with a mule, they can kick with lethal force if they feel they have been offended. Since most of my career with horses has been directed more toward sorting out human problems, rather than equine problems, I was a little apprehensive at the prospect of trying to help this professor and his mule. To be honest, professors tend to be among the least capable in matters dealing with animals and simple everyday problems. Problems that men of humble origins and trades can often solve with little or no deliberation, often baffle learned men, who tend to struggle with theory and morality rather than simple and obvious solutions.

In my youth, I helped several professors who wanted to be closer to the past and nature by owning and riding a horse. Fair enough, everyone needs an excuse for owning these expensive beasts, and seeking some elemental force of nature, makes as much sense as the rest of the excuses. However, mules often have a proclivity for exacting revenge on the human race for perceived injustices of a past life; therefore, I believe, mules are best handled by bona fide mule men, not university professors living in nineteenth century log houses, who want to get in touch with their roots (human not tree), but I heard a calling to help my fellow man and I saw an opportunity to make a few bucks.

I rode my Triumph motorcycle out through the country and enjoyed the colors of fall. I marveled at the beauty of the hardwood leaves after the frosts had killed them, and arrived at the professor’s farm with more than a little trepidation for what might lay ahead, hoping I wouldn’t end up like the colorful leaves.

The professor was glad to see me and dropped the standard pretensions of a tenured professor with condescension for all those who speak with country accents and wear cowboy boots. He seemed to be almost childlike in his excitement at my presence. He was proud of his farm, a former homestead, it was over 150 years old. Some poor homesteader had put his whole life into this 160 acres, a quarter section that at best, could barely yield forty bushels of topsoil an acre, it had never grown a decent crop and today it was a struggle to grow a garden, but it had once again, grown another crop of hard wood trees. But the professor owned it now, and it was a beautiful farm, despite not having crops or pasture.

He showed me, his log barn, his fine harness carriage, his buckboard, and his mule Emily. It was a match made in heaven; he loved the mule and the mule loved him. Emily was a mule that had never been abused by cruel hands and she was a model citizen. I had worried over problems that didn’t exist.

While the professor gushed over his mule and his farm, I began to wonder why I had been summoned to this farm. Everything seemed perfect, far better than most equine situations I am called to visit. The professor finally had to take a break in his speech to catch his wind and I asked why he needed me.

He apologized and said,”I need you to raise the front door of the barn.”

I was once known as a guy who could or at least try to do anything around a farm or ranch, but this seemed like ann odd request. It was an old square log barn and had large blocks of limestone located in strategic spots for a foundation. It was a good system, but not really designed to last a 150 years; the blocks had settled a little deeper every spring during the rains, and now the barn was a little lower than normal, but still high enough to function well. I tried to tell the professor the height of the lintel was well within the realm of reason, but he was agitated that I couldn’t grasp the seriousness of the problem.

He said I would need to see the problem myself, and put a halter with a lead shank on Emily and led her through the front door of the barn. I’ve only worked with thirty or forty mules, so I don’t really know if this is typical mule behavior, but when she walked through the door, she carried her ears straight up and rubbed them against the oak lintel of the door. As a horseman, I have been asked to deal with some bizarre problems, but this didn’t really seem to be a serious problem.

When I told the professor my feelings, he was incredulous, “Don’t you realize, she will wear the hair off her ears.” He showed me a vague strip of wear on the front of her ears. I wasn’t totally convinced that the perceived wear of the mule’s ears and the lintel were related, but some arguments aren’t really worth getting started.

I explained that the lintel over the door of the well made dove tailed barn was a special log, chosen for its strength, grain, and straightness. If I sawed into the log, we might be inviting trouble by compromising strength at a critical spot, that spot being the span over the door.

He was lost in deep thought over this information being added and causing complications to this unique predicament. I broke the silence by saying, “There is a much easier solution.”

With a look of incredulous exasperation, he twisted his lips to the side of his face, to hear my solution, “I can dig a trench about eight inches deep in the dirt beneath the door.”

He looked at me like I was an idiot and said, “It’s not her damn feet I’m worried about, it’s her ears.”

This professor considered himself an intellectual, and to him, I was but a mere tradesman of mortal lineage. True to the myopia of philosophy, his only concern was the ears of the mare, and he was determined to reach a conclusion by employing critical thinking: I was limited, by nature of an inferior intellect to solutions not based in theory and critical thinking, but to those related to real and practical solutions.

Mr Gutting is a professor of philosophy at Notre Dame; and is convinced of the superiority of critical thinking, but fails to mention the utter failure of the Obama Administration, an administration made up exclusively of critical thinkers from academia. Yet, after this stark demonstration of dismal failure by critical thinkers, we are supposed to be reassured by Mr Gutting’s self-serving arrogance, that seeks to legitimize a personal image of importance, after all, he writes for The Stone, “A forum for contemporary philosophers on issues both timely and timeless.”

With unabashed arrogance, Gary assures us of his intelligence, by informing us that he is among the most august of critical thinkers, “I’m an intellectual myself”; it’s just possible, that within this particular oxymoronic phrase, may be a clue to this deviant personality that is currently running amuck in government and in a permanent state of denial as to the charges of incompetence and corruption. Denial has become more than a river in Egypt, it is an endemic example of hubris among the not so bright intellectuals, currently in serving in the Obama Administration, who are teetering above the abyss of failure and humiliation.

From the nimble but dull fingers of Gutting and the pages of the NYT:

What is an intellectual? In general, someone seriously devoted to what used to be called the “life of the mind”: thinking pursued not instrumentally, for the sake of practical goals, but simply for the sake of knowing and understanding. Nowadays, universities are the most congenial spots for intellectuals, although even there corporatism and careerism are increasing threats.

It is such a joy, to read of someone describing himself as an intellectual, who writes with such finesse and precision. I am reminded of a cowardly man doing battle with a bed of rattle snakes while armed with a grub hoe. After reading this pregnant phrase of many vectors, “someone seriously devoted to what used to be called the” it’s obvious that intellectuals aren’t required or expected to write well. For reference, we know Hemingway was the master of the simple and concise sentence, and Melville was a genius with the complex double and triple entente; may we assume Gary Gutting is the champion of lost and bewildered adverbial phrases.

It would be easy enough to eviscerate Gary Gutting on the merits of his writing ability and embarrass him in front of his peers and anyone else who can read, but it is his message we seek. For if there is a protasis within this fart, stumble, fall style of writing, it evades the reader. For while his prose delights the ear of those who crave the mundane and boring, his adverbs assault our dignity in a relentless pursuit of relevance, but like the dog chasing its tail, his periphrasis becomes his catharsis. Relating to Aristotle, in Chapter VI of Poetics, “Tragedy through pity and fear effects a purgation of such emotions.”

Gary Gutting is primarily concerned with Newt or more precisely, fear of Newt. Newt is a bit of a problem for Leftists; oh fear not, they have excess baggage charges and they are ready to confront and dun him for back payments, but that is not the strategic issue. The prospect of an empty suit engaging Newt in debate is the terrifying issue. Oh dear, it brings to mind the great defeats of history, Stalingrad, Waterloo, The Little Big Horn. There is always the excitement of the contest beforehand, and the first few minutes when hope still springs eternal, before that same hope becomes a forlorn hope, but it is only a matter of time, before they are faced with the inevitable prospect of annihilation and utter defeat.

How best to neutralize the prospect of a witless pseudo-intellectual champion being embarrassed in the arena of ideas and indirectly casting aspersions toward all those who say with arrogance and condescension, “I’m an intellectual myself”; there is a simple solution, impress upon everyone, that intellectualism is a collective team effort of critical thought and that is how ignorance must be defeated. One man can’t be expected to lead a country; he needs a gaggle clueless intellectuals.

Unfortunately, Newt doesn’t need a team for a debate or a teleprompter, and pitting him against a fool who seems to be bewildered without his faithful teleprompter, will be like slaughtering lambs in an abattoir. A scene that doubtless will cause even the most cold blooded Socialist to admit the futility of resisting the epiplexis of a Newt/Hussein comedic tragedy.

Poor Gary, in an attempt to establish credibility as an intellectual and advance his vague aphorisms, he tries to use the obligatory and token reference to poor Plato, a man who understood the inherent weakness of adverbs and relied as little as possible on the ancients for guidance. We can assume that Gary not only understands the Cliff Notes version of Plato, but he is not afraid or reluctant to employ a deluge of adverbs.

In his “Republic,” Plato put forward the ideal of a state ruled by intellectuals who combined comprehensive theoretical knowledge with the practical capacity for applying it to concrete problems. In reality, no one has theoretical expertise in more than a few specialized subjects, and there is no strong correlation between having such knowledge and being able to use it to resolve complex social and political problems. Even more important, our theoretical knowledge is often highly limited, so that even the best available expert advice may be of little practical value. An experienced and informed non-expert may well have a better sense of these limits than experts strongly invested in their disciplines. This analysis supports the traditional American distrust of intellectuals: they are not in general highly suited for political office.

We now know that in a politically correct world, we need intellectuals to prescribe correct thinking and appreciation; otherwise, we might lose ourselves in original thought processes.

Intellectuals tell us things we need to know: how nature and society work, what happened in our past, how to analyze concepts, how to appreciate art and literature. They also keep us in conversation with the great minds of our past. This conversation may not, as some hope, tap into a source of enduring wisdom, but it at least provides a critical standpoint for assessing the limits of our current cultural assumptions.

Read his entire article if you must, but be prepared to ask yourself why tuition must continue to rise for your children and grandchildren, and will this dubious degree they seek at such expense, teach them to write with the clarity of Gary Gutting or will they be able to maintain the skills they acquired in high school.

But it does not support the anti-intellectualism that tolerates or even applauds candidates who disdain or are incapable of serious engagement with intellectuals. Good politicians need not be intellectuals, but they should have intellectual lives. Concretely, they should have an ability and interest in reading the sorts of articles that appear in, for example, Scientific American, The New York Review of Books, and the science, culture and op-ed sections of major national newspapers — as well as the books discussed in such articles.

It’s often said that what our leaders need is common sense, not fancy theories. But common-sense ideas that work in individuals’ everyday lives are often useless for dealing with complex problems of society as a whole. For example, it’s common sense that government payments to the unemployed will lead to more jobs because those receiving the payments will spend the money, thereby increasing demand, which will lead businesses to hire more workers. But it’s also common sense that if people are paid for not working, they will have less incentive to work, which will increase unemployment. The trick is to find the amount of unemployment benefits that will strike the most effective balance between stimulating demand and discouraging employment. This is where our leaders need to talk to economists.

Knowing how to talk to economists and other experts is an essential skill of good political leaders. This in turn requires a basic understanding of how experts in various fields think and what they might have to offer for resolving a given problem. Leaders need to be intelligent “consumers” of expert opinions.

According to Gary Gutting the intellectual philosopher, our leaders should now, not only be intelligent consumers of intellectual thought but must read the Leftist dogma of Scientific American, the New York Review of Books, and effete pseudo-intellectual rags like the New York Times, but they must also have the ability to listen to monotonous circumlocution and derive a pretense of meaning from gibberish. Intellectuals are now to be elevated to a higher standing, not only in the community, but more importantly in government and leadership. For now, they will advise and direct our leadership so they can make intelligent decisions and we are left with the story of Emily’s ears.

The real cause of global warming

The leak of more emails from East Anglia makes painfully clear why climate “scientists” desparately want to prevent dissemination of their internal communications.

More than 5,000 documents have been leaked online purporting to be the correspondence of climate scientists at the University of East Anglia who were previously accused of ‘massaging’ evidence of man-made climate change.

Following on from the original ‘climategate’ emails of 2009, the new package appears to show systematic suppression of evidence, and even publication of reports that scientists knew to to be based on flawed approaches.

And not only do the emails paint a picture of scientists manipulating data, government employees at the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) are also implicated.

One scientist made things pretty clear:

‘I also think the science is being manipulated to put a political spin on it which for all our sakes might not be too clever in the long run,’ wrote another.

And there’s this:

Clive Crook, a commentator for the Atlantic, who described the earlier inquiries into the Climategate emails as ‘ineffectual’ and ‘mealy mouthed’, reportedly said, ‘The closed-mindedness of these supposed men of science, their willingness to go to any lengths to defend a preconceived message, is surprising even to me.

‘The stink of intellectual corruption is overpowering.’

And the Mann “hockey stick” is trashed:

Take this from first principles.

A tree only grows on land. That excludes 70% of the earth covered by water. A tree does no grow on ice. A tree does not grow in a desert. A tree does not grow on grassland-savannahs. A tree does not grow in alpine areas. A tree does not grow in the tundra We are left with perhaps 15% of the planet upon which forests grow/grew. That does not make any studies from tree rings global, or even hemispheric.

The width and density of tree rings is dependent upon the following variables which cannot be reliably separated from each other. sunlight – if the sun varies, the ring will vary. But not at night of course.

cloudiness – more clouds, less sun, less ring.

pests/disease – a caterpillar or locust plague will reduce photosynthesis

access to sunlight – competition within a forest can disadvantage or advantage some trees.

moisture/rainfall – a key variable. Trees do not prosper in a droughteven if there’s a heat wave.

snow packing in spring around the base of the trees retards growth temperature – finally!

The tree ring is a composite of all these variables, not merely of temperature. Therefore on the 15% of the planet covered by trees, their rings do not and cannot accurately record temperature in isolation from the other environmental variables.

In my article on Greening Earth Society on the Hockey Stick, I point to other evidence which contradicts Mann’s theory. The Idso’s have produced more of that evidence, and a new article on Greening Earth has `unearthed’ even more.

Mann’s theory simply does not stack up. But that was not the key issue. Anyone can put up a dud theory from time to time. What is at issue is the uncritical zeal with which the industry siezed on the theory before its scientific value had been properly tested. In one go, they tossed aside dozens of studies which confirmed the existence of the MWE and LIA as global events, and all on the basis of tree rings – a proxy which has all the deficiencies I have stated above.

The worst thing I can say about any paper such as his is that it is `bad science’. Legal restraint prevents me going further. But in his case, only those restraints prevent me going *much* further.

Cheers
John Daly

via Doug

A complete review is here

AGW is a load of crap. It is clear that it is nothing more than politics and designed to be redistributionism in science drag.

“I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.”

“Oh what a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive”

Prologue: This is a story of two Stone Age chieftains, who migrated to America during the last Ice Age, approximately twenty thousand years ago: one came from the East and one came from the West, but before you begin to recite the teachings of Archaeology from twenty years ago, you might be surprised to know of startling new discoveries about the migration of man and the inconvenient facts surrounding the theories of Anthropomorphic Global Warming.

The Whale People, Their Homeland (Europe’s Western Coast, now submerged)

Yellow Hair was an anomaly; he was ancient, almost forty years old, but strongest among all the men of the Whale People. He was chief of the Whale People, and he ruled his tribe with rules etched in flint. Breaking the rules often meant death for the offender; for life was a tedious and constant struggle between survival and death, and death came all too often twenty-thousand years ago, during the height of the last great Ice Age in the area off the coast of Western France.

Much of the world’s water was locked up in ice sheets that a mile high covering much of Europe, Asia, and North America; in fact, the ice sheets covered one-third of the earth’s land masses and depleted the oceans of so much water, the ocean depths were a hundred meters less than they are now. There were coast lines connecting Europe with North America, and Asia with North America, they extended nearly a thousand miles from north to south on each corridor. It was a temperate area of grasslands and coniferous forests with limited precipitation, because of the amount of water frozen in the glaciers. There were thousands of creeks and rivers fed by springs and lakes that are now a hundred meters under water. It was a harsh ecosystem that supported the mastodon, a creature much larger than the elephant, as well as musk ox, giant sloths, saber toothed tigers, large bears, caribou, giant moose, elk, horses, and camels, all of whom migrated freely back and forth from Asia and Europe to North America.

No one knows why the giant glaciers appeared or why they receded, but the Ice Ages were real events in the story of the earth; the Ice Ages spanned tens of thousands of years and facilitated the dispersal of man all over the world.

The Whale People were a hardy bunch that had drawn their genetic pools from the blue and green eyed traders from the East, the tall, blonde haired, white skinned people from the land to the North, and the darker people of the South. It was a fairly short walk from North Africa to what would become Spain; the drought conditions of the world brought on by so much water being sequestered in ice forced many of the darker people of Africa to migrate north to be near the life giving water from glacial melt in summer and the springs that formed creeks and rivers on the Southern boundaries of the European Glacier and to the western shores of Spain and France.

The Whale People had originally occupied a coastal area that was next to the Southern ice shield of Europe approximately twenty-thousand years ago. Almost nothing could survive on these ever increasing glaciers that covered large portions of the continents, but there was a strip of new land exposed from the ocean depths, extending well beyond our present shorelines, because of so much of the earth’s water being frozen in the glaciers. This strip of land was warmed by the ocean, but it still remained a cold climate in summer, from the cooling effects of the great mass of ice on its borders. On this narrow strip of land, a micro-climate existed that had allowed animals, grasses, and a few hardy trees to proliferate in a wondrous abundance for tens of thousands of years, but the pressure by humans and the ever encroaching ice was reducing the availability of food sources and thus the livable space was under fierce competition by all species, but the competition among humans was the probably the fiercest.

Yellow Hair’s tribe had occupied the Southern coastal regions since the beginning of time or at least as far back as their oral history recorded their time here on earth. Yellow Hair wasn’t a singer who memorized the family lines and history of his tribe, but he knew his fathers had been chiefs far back in time. He had remembered his fathers and his personal history by assigning each of them, one of his fingers. He could go back in time by looking at a finger and tell you the name of that father, going back in time, nine generations.

The Ice People, The Migration (From Central Asia)

Tiger Paw loved to hunt and here in the land of the North Star, this land the North People call Beringia (the land bridge connecting Siberia to Alaska), the hunting was better than in the stories of the First Days.

It was told in the oral traditions of history, on the nights of the full moon, of how his people, the Ice People, had followed the herds over the Great Grasslands and forests to the West, just South of the great walls of ice. In the beginning, they were the first people, because the Father of the Ice had shown them great favor by providing them with flint for spears and the many animals to hunt. At first everyone was hungry during the winter, but the Father of the Ice liked the Ice People and gave them the beasts of the Steppes and the stone technology to kill the beasts, he also gave them fire and taught the women how to cook and how to brain tan furs and leather.

They learned that the brain of each animal, when allowed to break down to a gelatinous mass in a covered ceramic bowl, was sufficient to tan its own hide. They marveled at the skills of the ice Father and how he put all these mysteries of life within reach of those with the intelligence to figure out the answers. The Ice Father taught the women to love the hunters and to entertain them at night, so the tribe would be happy and always have new little ones.

Tiger Paw’s belief was essentially correct in the oral history of his tribe, but his concept of time wasn’t capable of comprehending the enormity of his tribe’s migration. His ancestors started moving east through the mountains and grasslands of Southern Russia and Northern Asia, several thousand years ago. Using the logic of 20,000 years ago, they figured the sun was always refueled in the East and traveled overhead to the West, only to get tired at the end of each day, needing to sleep through the night to be strong and hot the next morning, much like the hunter who hunts all day, breeds his woman at night, and then sleeps to be strong in the morning. They wanted to see this land where the sun is refreshed; there is surely much fuel to warm the sun, just beyond the horizon to the east. Sadly, the sun seemed to be weakening, because the great ice sheets were getting larger and eating more and more land. They were over a mile high and moving to the South at the rate of several man strides every day.

The idea of a great source of fuel to the East, was essentially the idea for migrating to the East. For over a thousand years, they followed the basic idea of moving east, always east. There were hostile tribes to contend with and periods of starvation coupled with disease, but they kept moving east.

Their culture and customs were ill suited for sedentary life. It was a simple matter of hygiene; a concept that was understood by sedentary tribes, for they knew that human waste was dangerous and should be deposited in a hole dug specifically for that purpose, they also understood the need to maintain clean drinking water.

It seems a simple concept, but migrating people rarely suffered from the ravages of cholera and dysentery, for they rarely made camp for longer than it took for a kill to be consumed or to spoil, except in the winter and the effects of disease were lessened during the extreme cold of winter.

Sedentary tribes, without cultural customs for contending with human waste, were condemned to die of disease if they stayed too long in one place. The problem was self-correcting in time, since tribes that lacked certain cultural conventions were weakened and often annihilated by other tribes who looked upon them as unclean or they simply died out from the ravages of disease.

During the migration of the Ice People, they had acquired many customs from the women they had traded for and the occasional lost hunter they had adopted. Even though Tiger Paw believed his tribe to be the only true people walking the earth, he understood advantages in acquiring new people with new technologies and customs.

The Whale People of Europe

Nine generations would place Yellow Hair’s father in the time when the great mother whale, Olalla of the big wild salt water, gave birth to man and all the creatures of the earth. In Yellow Hair’s mind, his distant relative was the first human to slide through Olalla’s birth canal and swim to shore; therefore, his birthright was one of leadership and a semi-divinity, for he was a direct descendant of Olalla. He couldn’t explain the bloodlines of other people or even those in his tribe and he forbid himself and others from asking frivolous questions that complicate the simple explanations of their life.

It was this natural birth of Yellow Hair’s relative that intrigued the Whale People and provided the common bond that held them together. The secrets of their existence and their connection with divinity was thought to exist through the navel of Yellow Hair, for that umbilical connection was directly related to Olalla the Whale Mother who had birthed the first relative of Yellow Hair, the very first human.

Unfortunately, it was the natural scheme of their life that was in jeopardy at this time; for the success of the Whale People made them the envy of many tribes. They had mastered the science of not only trapping great bounties of salmon in the rivers, but more importantly, they smoked and dried the salmon over smoldering fires to preserve them for months. This was a quantum leap in technology for the people of the world. News spread for over a thousand miles to the East along with the tasty morsels of the pink colored fish flesh.

Tribes with many huge warriors and advanced stone weapons ventured into the traditional lands of the Salmon People and brought many wondrous trade goods to trade for the smoked salmon of the Whale People. Trade was good for the Whale people, but some of these tribes decided to stay and there were now tribes camped in their winter hunting grounds and on their fishing grounds.

The winters were too cold to fish in the great salt water and the rivers and creeks were frozen. Rather than eat smoked salmon all winter, the Whale people had learned the different migration routes of the Caribou and devised traps to catch the Caribou in blind canyons for the winter. If there was enough feed for the Caribou, they would slaughter them as they needed meat; if the valley floor ran out of the lichens that the Caribou eat, they would slaughter them all at once and smoke the flesh like that of the salmon. In a gaunt world of starvation and hardship, the Whale People lived in a world of plenty.

They were happy to live under the leadership of Yellow Hair; not only was he divine, but he was a fair and intelligent leader, who could sense when and where the Caribou were migrating and when the Salmon started their runs or when there was a whale trapped in a small estuary by the tide. His people made boats with oak frames with greased leather for hulls that worked well if you kept the hide well greased with seal oil or whale blubber.

If his people observed the rules, they lived in harmony within the group: if they broke the law, Yellow Hair might cut their throat or trade them into slavery. He was feared, but loved as well. He was the nucleus that kept his tribe strong.

In these early days and up up until the present, there were several aspects of a society that needed to be worked into a particular culture for that society to exist and thrive. Survival, procreation, food, and leadership were all important elements that had to be defined culturally for a tribe to exist. If the rules or laws were broken, the society broke down.

Yellow Hair could control his own people; unfortunately, there were other tribes moving in and occupying their traditional Caribou hunting grounds. They observed the Caribou techniques of the Whale People and just repaired the log fences and gaits while waiting for the Caribou to pass through the mountain valleys.

This was no problem for Yellow Hair, he knew the mountain passes and could divert the Caribou with fire and by dressing his men in wolf and bear hides to drive the Caribou into different blind canyons. He would just build new gaits and fences at the entrances. These new people would have to live off the few Caribou that might be separated and the odd elk, horse, camel, or moose they could kill. If they were desperate or if they found a mastodon trapped in mud or lame, they could fight the mastodon to the death, for it was only possible to kill one at great risk to the hunters. He knew these new green and blue eyed people would often be facing starvation and that the Whale People almost always had plenty of Caribou and fish; therefore, they were at risk from these starving tribes.

These interlopers should have stayed in their own country, Yellow Hair reasoned. They were unfit for life between the ice and the salt sea. Their eyes were light colored and they suffered from the sun’s glare, their skin was too white in color and they couldn’t work naked in the glacier fed waters to catch the salmon. They didn’t engage in ritual washing and smoking their bodies in the traditional way. That alone prevented them from being hardy enough to survive the fierce cold and winds of these ancient lands. The blue and green eyed people were weak beyond measure, but they were large people and dangerous.

Yellow Hair knew he carried the seed of the first human, but it was this first human’s lusty ways and hunger for wild women of the forests that had produced all these uncultured barbarians. This ancient father had produced these excess humans of his own blood, and were now posing a threat to the very existence of the Whale People.

Yellow Hair had little sympathy for weakness, he had seen a weakness of character in the previous chief, his own father, and challenged the chief to personal combat for leadership of the tribe and to possess the young princess wife of his father. He killed his own father and claimed his father’s earthly goods and wives as his own. He was hardy enough, but that was back when men were men. (The weakest of the men was many times stronger than an NFL linebacker.) In those early days they hunted and killed the near humans for sport. There weren’t enough of them left now to worry over; besides, they can’t speak words, the men run like pregnant women, and they make the crudest tools and weapons. They are laughable, but in a wrestling match they are deadly, for they are strong like the mastodon. No, it is much safer to kill them with spears from a goodly distance. The near humans’s muscles are so large, they can only thrust a spear, if they try to throw a spear it is laughable.

He didn’t like to think about it, but these near humans, might be the result of his relative, the First Human, coupling with some creature of the forest. It was an ugly thought, but how else do you explain the presence of these near humans. He tried not to dwell on the negative aspects of the heritage of the First Human, but sometimes this irresponsible behavior of his family was embarrassing and impossible to ignore.

Yellow Hair had several wives and at least nine children, aged from twenty-four years to one winter. He enjoyed his kids; however, they were expected to meet the same requirements for life and work as everyone else, if the rules were relaxed for his family, he knew there would be resentment among his people.

Women who chose a mate from another tribe were expected to leave, but if a suitable mate was a loner and could prove himself as far as fishing, hunting, courage, and work, he could be accepted into the tribe. Yellow Hair would never allow slackers and free loaders a wooden soup bowl; charming a maiden of his tribe, did not warrant a free meal around the cook fire.

Everyone had to contribute with meaningful work or be banished or possibly executed by Yellow Hair. Life was a precious gift, but the nature of living next to the ice made it imperative that everyone worked to insure survival of the group. When the Salmon got lost and didn’t return to their rivers and creeks in sufficient numbers or the Caribou were called by Olalla to rest a year and not migrate, the old frail people were expected to walk alone into the night and not return, infanticide was also practiced to keep the numbers of the tribe down when food was scarce to help keep the nutritional requirements low. There were always hard decisions to be made, but the Whale People realized they must be ready to sacrifice just to survive next to the ice.

Killing a huge mastodon could mean survival through the winter, but unless they were mired in a bog hole or suffering from a severe lameness, it was far too dangerous to try and kill them and even when they were trapped, it often took hours to kill the monsters and many times his hunters were killed as well.

Sea lions were also dangerous to kill for they could travel much faster than a man can run. They were usually killed with a fusillade of spears when the animal was caught sunning himself beneath a ledge. The spears were made with sharp narrow points and heavier shafts, but the lighter javelin was also used, these weapons were designed to penetrate a tough hide and several layers of blubber; unless, the spear throws were lethal, the animal would run to the sea to escape and a valuable cache of spears and javelins would be lost with him. The sea lions were unafraid of humans and would run over a man who stood in his way as if he wasn’t there. The man would be crushed under several tons of sea lion, traveling faster than a horse.

The wild horses were trapped in blind canyons like the caribou, but they were more wary than the caribou and often sensed a trap and would turn just before being caught, to run over the men and sacrifice a few members of the herd to insure that the herd would survive.

Stealth and hunting discipline was primary in killing any of these animals, for even though man was a strong lethal killer, if an animal turned to fight and a man was caught without his weapon, humans always died. Yellow Hair explained to his elder sons, Sea Otter and Ivory Tusk, that Olalla, the whale mother that had birthed their first father, had given them superior brains to stand against the fierce animals of the grasslands and the ocean; otherwise they would have starved long ago. They accepted these truths without question; yet, there were many unanswered mysteries for the twenty year old lads.

The Ice People of Asia

Often the men had some hunting trick or knowledge of nature that helped them secure food: the women the hunters acquired for wives, always brought new knowledge of food preparation and garment making that made life better for the Ice People.

Several generations ago, the Ice People adopted a small band of tiny people with black silky hair (from the tribes that would form Japan, then a mountainous area connected to Asia and on the Eastern shore of a large lake). Their tribe had been wiped out by barbarians and they were starving. Chief Four Fingers, Tiger Paw’s grandfather, was intrigued by the women and thought if they had some meat on their bones they would be intriguing bed warmers.

The kindness shown by Four Fingers was rewarded not only by having attractive bed warmers, but these people were excellent fishermen, they also knew how to smoke fish and meats, but most importantly, they understood boatbuilding and using a mast with a short gaff rigged sail and rudder.

Although, the Ice People were on the coast, it is important to remember that so much water was frozen in the great ice sheets, that the ocean depth was reduced by over a hundred meters. The land bridge connecting Alaska and Siberia was over a thousand miles wide. Coastal areas often extended hundreds of miles farther into the sea than they do now. Thousands of rivers and creeks existed that are now on the sea floor. Beringia was a dry grassland that teemed with migrating herds traveling freely between Asia and North America.

Four Fingers had welcomed these fishermen into the tribe and did his best to insure the little people adopted the Ice Culture, but the technology that was gained by the little people was transforming their culture. He was primarily concerned with the combining the two DNA groups by spreading his seed around as much as possible, but the cultural and technological aspects of these ancient fishermen kept the Ice People from starving many times.

The original DNA pool of the Ice People had been slowly diluted for thousands of years as they traveled through Asia, along the borders of the ice; but rather than weakening the gene pool of the Ice People, they became stronger. Instead of a fair-haired tribe with green and blue eyes, they were primarily dark haired people with almond eyes. There would be an occasional child born with round blue eyes and fair hair, amid great laughter and jokes directed toward the mother and father, but the Ice People were a loving people and the throwback was always accepted as one of the true people.

The Ice People had managed to keep their own numbers close to one hundred hunters, not counting women and children. They lived well, but there were dangers from larger hostile tribes. Many tribes were driven into Beringia by starvation, but killing the great mastodon required advanced hunting skills and coordination among hunters; and yet, the skills for hunting horses, camels, muskox, caribou, and other animals of this huge grassland were advanced as well. Fishing required the skills and knowledge for building fish traps and a willingness to work naked in near freezing cold water. Boat building skills consisted of carefully burning and scraping a log with sharp instruments, until a boat shaped form appeared. Their sails were abbreviated, since the heavy keel technology would take thousands of years to be discovered; however, with paddles, these fairly fast, sleek canoe type vessels could be used for fishing and sealing and perhaps more importantly for continued migration to the land of fuel to the East.

The Ice People were hunting and fishing on the Northern edge of the glacier that extended into Southern British Columbia and north into the Yukon and Alaska. Although, it was an enormous glacier, in comparison to the glacier to the East, covering the rest of Canada and much of the US, it was a miniature glacier. Tiger Paw’s People knew there was a corridor of excellent winter hunting between the two glaciers, but they were also enjoying excellent fishing and sealing in the stormy salt sea, during the summer months.

Life was good for the Ice People, but with success in the struggle for life, comes those who want to steal that success.

The Whale People of Europe

Both of Yellow Hair’s sons had chosen good mates from outside the tribe. Yellow Hair had examined the potential mates closely for sickness or deformities and then deemed them sound women suitable for work and childbirth. He had paid a man’s weight in smoked salmon and several pairs of winter moccasins for the young girls, but each one had been an excellent purchase from the barbarian tribes of green and blue eyes, since they each produced a healthy son for the tribe. Thus his tribe would be guaranteed to survive with the superior intellect and knowledge that Yellow Hair was passing on to his sons. Yellow Hair was respected by his tribe for his infinite knowledge of nature, animals, survival, food preservation, weather, the seasons, and the land itself.

Mates were an important aspect of tribal life, adultery was not permitted without a formal declaration by a woman in front of the tribe at dinner. A man could have several wives if he could care for them, but if one of them stated her desire to be with another, there might be a fight to the death or the choice might go unchallenged for various reasons. Yellow Hair was a detached observer and official of these domestic disputes. Someone might die in a fight as a result of hard feelings and tempestuous desires, so the divorce option was not to be taken lightly. He thought it was a good system that helped keep his tribe strong and stable and especially, in helping to control these wild mating desires of both men and women.

Yellow Hair liked to keep about a hundred men in the tribe and twice that many women. The number of children fluctuated, because so many children died from the harsh life. It was obvious that Olalla wanted only the strongest of children to survive and she had to test them every winter. Everyone was expected to work in the cold glaciers streams to help catch the salmon and the boys were expected to join in the difficult and dangerous hunts. The work of women was much safer, but many of them died in childbirth, so in time, Olalla provided twice as many women as men. Yellow Hair also purchased wives for his men, when there always seemed to be a shortage of unmarried women.

He gave them a thorough physical exam before purchase. He demanded clear eyes, preferably of the earth colors and not the colors of plants and sky, broad hips for child birth, good sound teeth that met in a fairly uniform manner, well formed milk paps, and a well formed birth canal with no infection.

He had an unfortunate incident in the past, a woman was infected and gave birth to two blind children. Yellow Hair had been forced to kill the babies and after becoming suspicious, he examined the woman and discovered that she was infected. He killed her and drove her husband out of the village to prevent the spread of infection to other members of the tribe. He hesitated to only banish the man, who was a cousin of his, rather than kill him, for he knew the infection would probably continue through the populations of other tribes.

Yellow Hair had picked his eldest son, Ivory Tusk, to succeed him as chief. The lad was strong, had good eyes, and an uncanny way of understanding the animals and fish. He was a good strong son.

It all happened very quickly. A group of several tribes raided the fishing camp in the early morning before the sun chased away the thick fog. They intended to kill and rob the Whale People of their dried salmon. Many of the Whale men were overwhelmed and killed, the survivors were forced to retreat to their canoes. They lost over half the adults and most of the children in the initial minutes of the attack. They had few personal belongings with them, but they felt lucky to escape with their lives. They pushed the canoes into the surf as spears were landing around them. They managed to retrieve a few of the spears that were thrown, but they escaped with only a few stones for knives and a few spears.

Yellow Hair counted people, there were forty-five men and twenty-three women with just a few suckling children and adolescents that had survived the raid. They had suffered a terrible defeat. The raiders might be following them in the extra canoes, they kept paddling all day to the North. Ivory Tusk was wounded in the gut and in a few hours, he could no longer continue to paddle. Yellow Hair took the time to transfer him to his canoe.

He looked his brave, handsome son in the eye and felt tears for the first time, since he was a child. “Olalla is calling you home” he said, “You have the chance to see her in this world, before you cross over to the spirit world. Are you ready, to see the Whale Mother?”

Ivory Tusk nodded his head, yes, and looked to the blue sky of morning, while thongs secured his legs and arms to prevent him from swimming and prolonging his agony. He was proud to be a strong leader like his father and made sure to maintain his honor and dignity as the men prepared him for the depths.

His father said to him, “We will sing of you at the winter fires and I will see you in the Spirit World, my son,” as he slipped his son’s bound body into the great salt sea.

The Whale People all said their goodbyes as Ivory Tusk disappeared under the waves and still looking up at them, the Whale People then resumed paddling as the storm clouds began forming.

The Ice People of Asia

Tiger Paw knew there were food thefts taking place by some of the other tribes and some of them were making threatening signs at kill sites. Life was hard in Beringia, starvation was everywhere, the Ice People were well fed, their women had meat on their bones and produced children every year or two; they were successful, but the other tribes wanted this good life and the riches associated with success and eating well.

The Ice People had a simple life and a simple formula for success, but it required a keen observation of nature, the intelligence to apply the skills of hunting, and the willingness to work tirelessly to secure food; for everything was easier if you secured food. If you had excess food, like dried and smoked fish and meat, you could trade for tools, weapons, furs, and women.

Tribes who weren’t successful had to trade their women and girls for food to live; eventually, the young men of less successful tribes became despondent and angry. They looked at the wealth of Tiger Paw’s people and wondered why their tribe wasn’t rich with the bounty of the world. After all, the bounty was put on earth for everyone, all the tribes should have healthy women and dried fish; the Ice People were just acting like bears, they took their share and everyone else’s share as well.

Blue Duck, the only son of Chief One Eye, of the Muskeg people, was one of those consumed with envy and hatred. He and several of his companions watched as a small band of Ice People brought down one of the giant moose with several well placed spear throws. He was incredulous that women accompanied the men on the hunt. This fact alone made his heart burn with hatred and anger; these people had no respect for the ancient customs of his people and now they were going to enjoy the tasty internal morsels of this magnificent animal, an animal that rightfully belonged to Blue Duck and his people. He decided it was time for the Muskeg people to assert their authority over the greedy tribes of the world and take what is rightfully theirs.

The three men of the Ice People had the moose deboned and cut into roast sized pieces that were packed into six backpacks, while the women prepared a feast of the heart and liver cut into small chunks and stuffed into the stomach with blueberries, onions, and edible grasses that the moose had eaten on his own. The stomach was roasted over the coals until it swelled and pressure cooked the contents into a nutritious feast for the three couples.

Blue Duck gathered his hunters around him and devised a plan; they would sneak up on the camp and attack the group when they started to eat the wrongfully acquired feast. They would kill the men and try to capture the women; if the women fought too hard, they would kill them as well. They would then eat the feast and pack the meat back to their own camp. It was a momentous decision, the men were reluctant to resort to murder and theft, but their stomachs had been empty for a week and they had not known a woman for months.

Blue Duck had five men to attack three men and three women in a camp that was celebrating. It was almost dark by the time they had crawled close enough to hear the Ice People laughing and talking. They crawled to within several caribou strides, just after dark. The stomach had the entrance and exit sections tied in a knot and it was under extreme pressure from the steam and heat locked inside. One of the men split the top with his flint knife and the delicious aroma made the Ice people cheer and laugh, while the Muskeg men felt their senses sharpened by the scent of food; until, they were even more determined to commit murder and mayhem.

The Ice People let their meal cool for a few minutes, while they waited with their wooden spoons ready to dig into the stomach.

Blue Duck had his right index finger in the air to remind his men to wait for his signal, before beginning the attack.

Just as the Ice People closed around the stomach to eat, Blue Duck and his men attacked with a fierce savagery. The Ice men were each killed with multiple wounds from the spears. An older woman managed to jump on the back of one of the attackers and mortally wound him through the neck with a knife, before a spear entered her rib cage from the side and pierce both her lungs. A second woman was hit in the mouth with the butt end of a spear and fell backwards in an unconscious state. The men fell on the meal and had turns breeding the woman like a pack of ravenous wolves. It was an hour or two later, before Blue Duck noticed a woman was missing. He tried to get his men to leave, but once a leader encourages his men to break the cultural laws, the men begin to lose respect for that man’s leadership and authority; besides, their bellies were distended after eating like animals and they were exhausted after having their way repeatedly with the woman, who now appeared to be lifeless. They wanted to sleep and leave in the morning, and there was nothing Blue Duck could do to get them moving.

Blue Duck realized it was hopeless and drifted off to sleep. Just before morning, a well disciplined group of hunters, led by Bear Killer, son of Tiger Paw, descended on Blue Duck and his men and within seconds, three more of the Muskeg men were dead, Blue Duck and another were wounded, but still alive.

They brought the wounded men back to Tiger Paw’s camp and tied them to a tree. Tiger Paw raged inside, but he didn’t show emotion to his people or to these criminals. He used his serrated flint knife, with an edge as sharp as a surgeon’s scalpel, but far more durable, to cut the fur clothing from the two men, exposing their nakedness.

Blue Duck was screaming threats and insults, but his efforts were wasted, for the Ice People noticed the silhouette tattoo of a right hand on Blue Duck’s chest. It was a well known symbol of a chief’s hand, designating his choice for leadership; it was a black tattoo done with ashes.

This was big medicine for the Ice People; it could mean war, the Muskeg tribe was a large tribe with oversized people, who were often starving.

The Whale People of Europe

The Whale People followed the shore line and passed camps on shore with people who waved to them, but yellow Hair pushed on wanting to find a new hunting and fishing ground. The shoreline no longer allowed them to head north, they had been paddling west for several days when the storm clouds finally unleashed a fury on the Whale People. The waves were higher than the boats were long. Yellow Hair yelled to the other leaders to paddle to the peak of the waves at an angle and to paddle down at a high rate of speed to keep the waves from cresting and breaking over the top of them and burying them under a wall of water.

It was hopeless, the canoe captains couldn’t hear him over the noise of the storm; hopefully, his captains would follow his lead and survive the storm. He saw one of the canoes trapped in the trough, when a huge wave many times as high as a man buried them and drove them to the bottom of the salt water.

The storm raged for three days and at the end, the Whale People were so exhausted they collapsed in the hulls of their canoes and let the storm have its way with them. Yellow Hair awoke on the fourth morning and looked out to see only one other canoe floating near-by. The temperature was mild, nearly seventy degrees, Yellow Hair had never felt such a mild temperature, on the shore, there was a forest of huge trees he had never seen before. He thought he might be in the Spirit World. He called out to the other boat, three men, including his youngest son, sat up and waved. There was also a woman in that canoe with a suckling child. There were three men and an adolescent girl in his canoe. Yellow Hair made a motion with is hand towards shore and the two canoes landed on a sandy shore; although, they were a hundred and fifty miles from the present coast of Virginia, they were the first Europeans to reach the East Coast of North America.

That night at low tide, they walked far out on a sand bar to look for the tell-tale yellow flickering of campfires in the distance: for the first time in their lives, they realized they were utterly alone in the world, like the beginning of time and being born by Olalla, they were alone in the world.

The Ice People of Asia

Tiger Paw knew this was a crucial and defining moment in the leadership of his tribe. His son and his raiding party had been correct in their method of revenge on this Chief’s son and his raiding party and now Blue Duck was screaming for mercy. Tiger Paw yelled for a wooden gag to be placed in each of the captive’s mouths and tied behind their heads with a leather thong. He skinned the tattoo from the chest of Blue Duck and tied it with a thong to the neck of the other captive.

Tiger Paw then ordered his son to take half the tribe and circle the North end of the glacier and head south through the Yukon and into British Columbia. They were loaded and starting their migration within the hour. It was a big gamble; Tiger Paw had no idea whether the two glaciers maintained a corridor of land between them, he just had a fairly good hunch that there was a corridor of good hunting between the glaciers.

They had to leave this country or be annihilated by the Muskeg People. There were only enough canoes for half the tribe. He might be sending his son and half his tribe to their doom, but he knew the coast line couldn’t support people traveling by land; therefore, there was no choice, he had to send half his people inland. He told his son to follow the Western Glacier and he would meet him at the southern end of the ice, in the area that was to become Seattle; Tiger Paw would take half the tribe by boat and they will join up at the end of the ice.

He turned to Blue Duck and emasculated him, so that his father would know he would never reproduce in the spirit world and certainly not on this earth ever again. He waited until Blue Duck had accepted his fate and was no longer struggling, he then cut his throat and ordered the rest of his people into their canoes. He let Blue Duck’s warrior go with his hands tied behind him and the tattoo still tied to his neck.

Tiger Paw and the rest of the Ice people left Beringia forever.

Tiger Paw and his did meet each other in the Puget Sound area, but Tiger Paw had no idea it would take twelve years for his son to make the trip. Tiger Paw’s son had gray hair and Tiger Paw was now little more than an ancient old man, but for the survivors it was a great reunion and a chance for marriages and procreation.

Eventually, nearly five hundred years later, the descendants of Tiger Paw and Yellow Hair would meet in the area that was to become Omaha, Nebraska. The names of Tiger Paw and Yellow Hair had been forgotten, but traces of their DNA are still present in many Americans. The same qualities that drove these chiefs to succeed against all odds and care for their people were carried down through the eons and it is still in the blood of tens of millions of their descendants, now walking the earth in North America.

Epilogue: This story is of course fiction; however it is based in fact, since we now know that there were land bridges that connected Europe and Asia to North America. Cultural and technologic traits as well as DNA evidence record the presence of DNA tracings of ancient Europeans among our indigenous native people of North America. This is significant, because the DNA evidence illustrates, that in spite of superficial cultural differences and phenotypical variation, people are much more closely related than anyone’s wildest imagination ever dreamed.

It is the author’s dream, that as new DNA science is discovered, people will have a softening of preconceived ideas of racial differences and a greater harmony can be achieved through knowledge and science, rather than relying on ignorance and cultural division.

Although the events in this article are based on supposition by the author, a man who has experience living on a sharp divide between survival and death, at least more than most people, it is easy to combine human nature with a harsh environment and find these behaviors close to the surface, even with our superior cultural attitudes.

The envious wailings of the OWS people who bemoan their pitiful existence and hide their selfish pleadings behind the cloak of Marxism and a dubious desire for an end to corruption; yet, their cries for equality seem to be hypocritical at best as they perpetuate and promote a code of lawlessness. Yes, under the guise of fairness and equality, greed begets more greed and the veneers of advanced culture become laughable with their pretensions of enlightenment.

This article, the preface of a novel, is not meant to belittle prehistoric man, but rather to illustrate that our advancements are mainly technological and we who consider ourselves so highly evolved culturally, are not that far removed from seeking shelter in caves and tents made of hides.

These people are modern in the sense that a baby from their culture could be raised in a twenty-first century family and no one would know the difference, but switching adults would be nearly impossible because of the cultural differences.

The extent of the land bridge between Europe and North America will be argued for decades, but the new DNA evidence suggests that if it was not complete, the exposed land masses permitted human migration with short trips by boat.