Tag: global warming

via FoxNews.com

Wind farms in the Pacific Northwest -- built with government subsidies and maintained with tax credits for every megawatt produced -- are now getting paid to shut down as the federal agency charged with managing the region's electricity grid says there's an oversupply of renewable power at certain times of the year.

The problem arose during the late spring and early summer last year. Rapid snow melt filled the Columbia River Basin. The water rushed through the 31 dams run by the Portland, Ore.-based Bonneville Power Administration allowing for peak hydropower generation. At the very same time, the wind howled leading to maximum wind power production.

Demand could not keep up with supply, so BPA shut down the wind farms for nearly 200 hours over 38 days.

Read more (with video)

Fred Upton got the post he wanted in the House, as Chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.  Boehner gave him the job over massive objections from conservatives.  Perhaps if Upton cries, he will convince some of them that he's going to be a real stalwart.

JGillman of RightMichigan voices the concern that so many are thinking.  Now that Upton got the post over all the objections, will he do what needs doing?

Judging from some of  his responses to criticism, I'd say that's a definite no.

He posted an article on Right Michigan, saying, in part,

The American people are fed up and demand that we tackle government spending and the federal budget deficit immediately. The days of the administration printing more money as a solution to meet budget shortfalls are now over.

Danny Glover drew the befuddled stares of millions last week as he claimed global warming caused the Haiti earthquake. Similar claims were made by others about hurricanes Katrina and Rita, rising waters in the south Pacific, wildfires in California, historic blizzards in Europe, and glacial melt at Kilimanjaro.

The only disastrous thing to occur in the past few years that was not blamed on anthropogenic global warming (AGW) was the solid defeat of the thoroughly inept Senatorial candidate Martha Coakley by Republican Scott Brown in Massachusetts. That was, of course, George Bush's fault.

UN experts have themselves intimated that global warming has and will cause women in third world countries to enter the sex trade. It will kill the polar bear, increase hay fever, cause the earth to spin faster, generate child insomnia, and topple the gingerbread houses of Sweden.

If you have a problem, believe me, they can find a cause.

More thoughtful AGW theorists would like us to take a step back and ignore the hysteria. They would like us to disregard Danny Glover and that powerful blowhard Al Gore who himself lives in a castle with roughly the same carbon footprint as that of Liechtenstein.

No, they have more subtle tactics--ones designed to work on reasonable people like me.

These are just two that happen to be promoted by Gary Ridley of The Oscoda County Herald.

While I don't think that climate change believers in the government, business and scientific sectors have been completely forthright in stating the realities of global climate change, it is utterly ridiculous to believe that global climate change does not exist simply because it's cold outside.

It's January in Northern Michigan; of course it's cold outside!

The public has been steadily becoming more skeptical of the idea of global warming, not from arguments from leading skeptics, but from their experience with nature.

So, put another way, if most of the public were told that the climate experts were messing with the numbers to make sure that millions of important people across the globe won't lose money on their investment of green technology, most of the public would say, "figures."

That is what is happening.

From Henry Payne's Sketchbook at Detroit News dot com:

"Climate change is very real," she confessed as she embraced cap and trade's massive tax increase on Michigan industry - at the same time claiming, against all the evidence, that it would not lead to an increase in manufacturing costs or energy prices. "Global warming creates volatility. I feel it when I'm flying. The storms are more volatile. We are paying the price in more hurricanes and tornadoes."

Michigan, we voted for Levin, Granholm and Stabenow, this is what we get!

God help us!