About Me

Name: theoilpatchplug
Biography
Loading...

Create Your Own Blog Find Other Townhall Blogs

Comments

Take a Drown Polar Bear to Work Day

Posted by theoilpatchplug on Friday, November 16, 2007 10:02:17 AM

Theory On Thin Ice

 

Environment: Global warming alarmists have made a big deal out of North Pole ice melting and polar bears suffering due to climate change. Before they mouth off again, they should look at a new NASA study.

 

From 2002 to 2006, scientists and researchers from NASA and the University of Washington's Polar Science Center at the Applied Physics Laboratory observed a meaningful ongoing reversal in Arctic Ocean circulation. The cause is atmospheric circulation changes that vary in decade-long periods and the effect is, well, let the scientist who led the study explain it:

"Our study confirms many changes seen in upper Arctic Ocean circulation in the 1990s were mostly decadal in nature, rather than trends caused by global warming," said the University of Washington's James Morison.


But listening to the ecozealots and Al Gore acolytes, one would think the North Pole was melting because too many conservatives drive too many SUVs and don't have enough social responsibility to tame their wicked fossil-fuel burning ways.


This isn't the first time that real science has exposed hyperbole concerning melting ice at the North Pole. In August 2000, the New York Times ran an apocalyptic story that said the pole was free of ice for the first time in 50 million years.


"It was retracted three weeks later as a barrage of scientists protested that open water is common at or near the pole at the end of summer,"writes environmental scientist Pat Michaels.

"Further, it's common knowledge in the scientific community that there has been no net change in Arctic temperatures in the last 70 years."


Apparently unwilling to learn its lesson, the Times published a fretful story Oct. 2 about Arctic ice loss. Good for shipping across the pole, and fishing and oil exploration in the region. But not so good, the article said, for polar bears that could be in for a "particularly harsh jolt."

The alarmists like to scare the public with harrowing stories of bears drowning when they get trapped on melting ice and can't swim the long distances needed to reach safety. The specter of their extinction has been raised.


So how to explain the increase in the polar bear population from 5,000 in 1950 to 25,000 today, as documented by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service? The alarmists are noticeably quiet. Could it be that the facts don't fit with their campaign of exaggerations, half-truths and outright lies?

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Thursday, November 15, 2007 4:20 PM PT
Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (0) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive

Dr. Heidi and the Carbon Credit Factory

Posted by theoilpatchplug on Friday, November 09, 2007 6:01:44 PM


Dr. John Coleman , Founder of the Weather Channel talks to Glenn Beck

GLENN: I also have to spend a few minutes on this. The Weather Channel founder, the guy who founded the Weather Channel, he's a meteorologist. He's just not some businessman who went, hey, we can make money on the weather. He's the Weather Channel founder. He wrote, "Global warming is the greatest scam in history." I want to read this letter to you. His name is John Coleman. He said, "It is the greatest scam in history. I am amazed, appalled and highly offended by it. Global Warming; It is a SCAM. Some dastardly scientists with environmental and political motives manipulated long term scientific data to create an illusion of rapid global warming. Other scientists of the same environmental whacko type jumped into the circle to support and broaden the “research” to further enhance the totally slanted, bogus global warming claims. Their friends in government steered huge research grants their way to keep the movement going. Soon they claimed to be a consensus.


HYDRO-CARBON POWERED ECO-VEHICLE STICKER
Now you can protect your car by making it appear environmentally friendly with the Glenn Beck Hydro-Carbon Powered Eco-Vehicle bumper sticker. Look like a friend of the Earth while killing it at the same time!

Environmental extremists, notable politicians among them, then teamed up with movie, media and other liberal, environmentalist journalists to create this wild “scientific” scenario of the civilization threatening environmental consequences from Global Warming unless we adhere to their radical agenda. Now their ridiculous manipulated science has been accepted as fact and become a cornerstone issue for CNN, CBS, NBC, the Democratic Political Party, the Governor of California, school teachers and, in many cases, well informed but very gullible environmentally conscientious citizens. Only one reporter at ABC has been allowed to counter the Global Warming frenzy with one 15 minutes documentary segment.

I do not oppose environmentalism. I do not oppose the political positions of either party. However, Global Warming, i.e. Climate Change, is not about environmentalism or politics. It is not a religion. It is not something you “believe in.” It is science; the science of meteorology. This is my field of lifelong expertise. And I am telling you Global Warming is a nonevent, a manufactured crisis and a total scam. I say this knowing you probably won’t believe me, a mere TV weatherman, challenging a Nobel Prize, Academy Award and Emmy Award winning former Vice President of United States. So be it.

I have read dozens of scientific papers. I have talked with numerous scientists. I have studied. I have thought about it. I know I am correct. There is no run away climate change. The impact of humans on climate is not catastrophic. Our planet is not in peril. I am incensed by the incredible media glamour, the politically correct silliness and rude dismissal of counter arguments by the high priest of Global Warming.

As the temperature rises, polar ice cap melting, coastal flooding and super storm pattern all fail to occur as predicted everyone will come to realize we have been duped.

The sky is not falling. All natural cycles, drifts in climate are as much, if not more responsible for any climate changes underway. I strongly believe that the next 20 years are equally as likely to see a cooling trend as they are to see a warming trend."

That again is from John Coleman, the founder of the Weather Channel. But he's, I'm sure, in with big oil or he's an idiot or he's just naive or he is just trying to further someone else's agenda. Let's believe all the environmentalists. Yet there's no question that global warming -- that the globe has warmed in the last 100 years. The problem is the warmest date on record in the last 100 years was 1934. 1934 was the warmest year in America. 1934. If it's warming, shouldn't it have been warmer? They said it was 1998 but unfortunately that's not true. One of the gold standard from NASA for Al Gore got that one wrong, later had to correct it. Wouldn't it be getting warmer now? How's that possible? 

Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (0) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive

The Global Warming Daisey Chain

Posted by theoilpatchplug on Friday, November 09, 2007 11:44:17 AM
Their all in it together.

 Al Gore, G E ,NBC, Chevron, BP,Warren Buffet and the old folks at Enron. Global Warming is a money making deal. Its a scam put together to make the American Public feel better about giving these companies and tycoons more of your money.

We need to save the planet from these money grubbing control freaks!
Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (0) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive

The Cost of Power for the Democrats Maybe No Power for the Rest of Us

Posted by theoilpatchplug on Thursday, November 08, 2007 8:31:18 PM

An Energy Crisis Of Our Own Making

 

Energy Policy: As oil climbs toward an unprecedented $100 a barrel, we can only blame ourselves. By falsely demonizing oil in the debate over global warming, we assure an energy-impoverished future.

Do It Yourself Doom

It would be nice if we could lay this at the doorstep of just one party. Unfortunately, it's a bipartisan mess, created by politicians on both sides of the aisle who are being stampeded into action on climate change.


Take Rep. Bob Inglis, a Republican from South Carolina. He says he realized something needed to be done when his own children threatened to vote for his opponent if he didn't take on the warming issue. Based on this valuable input, Inglis has deduced that Republicans will "get hammered" if they don't do something.


Excuse us, but we'll all get "hammered" if they do.

As Weather Channel founder John Coleman said this week, global warming is "the greatest scam in history." Literally thousands of reputable climatologists agree with this.


Yet fear of warming is giving rise to all kinds of bad ideas that will cost hundreds of billions of dollars and deliver very questionable benefits. These ideas include "carbon" taxes on all of us and "windfall" profit taxes on oil companies, bans on drilling for new oil in Alaska and off our coasts, and expensive new mandates — such as higher fuel economy for cars — to reduce "carbon footprints."


If elected president, Sen. Hillary Clinton wants a $50 billion "strategic energy fund," paid for with oil company profits, to bankroll lots of pork-barrel projects that will waste money but produce no new energy. Not to be outdone, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's energy plan hits middle-class Americans with $15 billion in new taxes to boost renewable energy.

The assumption behind each of these ideas is that government will take money from you in the name of "curbing global warming" and fix the energy problem. It won't — it can't.

Instead, these not-so-nifty ideas will sock Americans with billions in costs while not creating any net new energy.


Want to bring prices down? The real problem behind soaring oil prices — a lack of supply — hasn't been addressed at all. Today we have what economists call a "demand shock." It's a result of the greatest global economic boom in history — a result of more poor people in more countries being pulled out of poverty than ever, thanks to fast-growing economies and free trade.


That means oil use is soaring — especially in places such as China and India. The U.S. used to have the world's oil largely for its own privileged use, taking a third of the world's supplies while producing a third of total economic output. Not anymore.

As the chart shows, our failure to replace our depleted domestic oil reserves has left us with a serious mismatch of supply and demand. We use more oil each year, but supply less of it ourselves.


That makes us vulnerable. We send hundreds of billions of dollars overseas each year to the Middle East, Africa and South America, helping fund terrorism and prop up some nasty regimes.

As Sterling Burnett, a senior fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis, notes, if we had started drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in 1995 — when President Clinton nixed the idea — we'd be pumping millions more barrels today. Ditto if we had more vigorously pursued our offshore reserves.


But would that matter? According to the American Petroleum Institute, we have at least 131 billion barrels of oil and more than 1,000 trillion cubic feet of natural gas that we can get at now, with current technology. It's just waiting for us to find and pump it. But Americans — cowed into submission by aggressive global warming propaganda — are afraid to do so.

This is where Congress could be of help. Right now, we have an oil-based economy. We can't escape it — we need more oil.


If lawmakers stopped dithering and acted, we could turn our energy future around — feeding our need for oil in the short term, while spinning out new technologies like hydrogen fuel cells, clean coal and modern nuclear power plants over the long term.

That, however, would take vision and courage — two traits that today's leaders in Washington conspicuously lack.

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Thursday, November 08, 2007 4:20 PM PT

Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (0) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive

Unlease the Energy Sector, Muzzle Global Warming Freaks

Posted by theoilpatchplug on Tuesday, November 06, 2007 9:26:21 AM

Our Profit, Their Loss

 

Energy: As U.S. oil companies suffer their steepest profit declines in five years, American consumers should be sadder than the tycoons in 10-gallon hats. Lower earnings mean less investment in our own sources of energy.

You could be walking in a very cold, cruel world in the very near future.

Nowadays, what exactly does the derogatory term "Big Oil," which so easily leaves the lips of liberal politicians, even mean anymore?


Maybe it means communism, because Beijing's PetroChina, which is 90% owned by the Chinese government, has just become the first company ever valued at a trillion dollars.

Its shares are four times as expensive as those of Exxon Mobil Corp., and Warren Buffett apparently octupled his money not long ago by betting on PetroChina.


Of the dozen or so biggest oil companies in the world, in fact, most are state-owned, and many of those governments are either hostile to the United States or could easily become so in not that long of a time.


Saudi Aramco always can be found at or near the top of the list, with the government-run oil behemoths of Islamofascist Iran and Hugo Chavez's Venezuela never too far behind.

"Black gold" should not be thought of as a kind of cartoonish buried treasure, baubles serving no purpose other than amusing the idle rich. Oil and gas are the world economy's most valuable commodities. Most Americans couldn't get to work, shop, send their kids to school, mow their lawn or be warm in the winter without them.


What our non-state-owned oil companies do with their profits is the furthest thing from idle. That's why it's bad news for all to see Exxon's quarterly profit down by over a billion dollars, or 10%, from a year ago. Chevron's profit was down by $1.3 billion, or 26%. Sunoco's profit was down 38%.


Funny to see Big Bad Oil take such a hit when the global price of crude is pushing $100 a barrel. The drop in profits is happening because of prices having gone down at the pump thanks to their allowing too much gasoline on the market, as well as because of refinery expenses.


Since the omnipotent oil firms are supposed to be so good at colluding with each other to gouge the consumer at the pump, how could they have let so much money slip out of their pockets?


What private oil companies do with their profits are things that governments cannot do, like invest the billions needed to discover and implement new technologies that find oil and gas in places that were unreachable only a few years ago.


Last year, for instance, a Chevron production test in the Gulf of Mexico, 270 miles southwest of New Orleans, set a world record with a crude flow rate of over 6,000 barrels a day. At more than 28,000 feet, it was the deepest successful well test in Gulf history. Such massive undertakings cost a fortune in capital expenditure.


One of Chevron's projects in South Korea entails two parallel drilling operations and an expanded high-pressure mud-pump system, to drill wells up to 40,000 feet in depth. Though designed to save time and money in deep-water well construction, it still will cost $650 million.

U.S. oil firms are using their profits for massive investment in finding new domestic sources of energy. Drilling in the U.S. for the third quarter of 2007 is twice the level of the 1990s, and the highest since 1985. More than 4,500 oil wells were completed in the third quarter of 2007, the highest third quarter drilling activity since 1985, with over 81 million feet drilled.

Yet we have had three decades without a new U.S. oil refinery being built — as if we were still living in the 1970s. Politicians mull punishing oil firms with new taxes.
 

Our national security and our economic security depend on being self-sufficient in energy. That means letting our energy firms do what they have proven they do best.

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Monday, November 05, 2007 4:20 PM PT
Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (0) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive

Deer Hunting Opens- Yall Need to See This

Posted by theoilpatchplug on Friday, November 02, 2007 11:59:15 PM
To Hunt In Texas You Need to Arrive in Style

 You Need to Have a Sense of Adventure


 All the Comforts of Home



 Be Discreet at All Times


 And Know How to Get the Job Done, with Little Stress.


Most of all you need an oil well or two, to pay for this stuff.


www.bigoilfields.com
Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (0) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive

UN If you Liked Oil for Food, You'll Love LOST

Posted by theoilpatchplug on Friday, November 02, 2007 9:14:08 PM

Cut Adrift In Water World

 

International Law: The Law of the Sea Treaty, the latest Bush administration surrender of U.S. sovereignty, has passed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee by a 17-4 vote. Prepare to be boarded by the United Nations.

Go to fullsize image

Once Britain ruled the waves, then the U.S. Navy. Now will it be judges from landlocked states such as Chad and Bolivia?

It will be, if LOST, as it is commonly known, receives a two-thirds majority required for ratification of a treaty on the Senate floor.

The administration supports the treaty that Ronald Reagan vetoed in 1982, arguing that it is not the same accord, but rather a version said to address Reagan's objections submitted by Bill Clinton in 1994.

We find that hardly an endorsement of a treaty also endorsed by the National Resources Defense Council, largely because of the environmental and economic restrictions it places on the U.S.

LOST would establish rules governing uses of the world's oceans, defined as waters more than 200 miles from land, placing them under the jurisdiction of a body called the International Seabed Authority.

The ISA would be empowered to selectively grant mineral, oil and fishing rights to countries and companies, collecting what amounts to a global tax for the privilege.

LOST would also establish rules of the road for the world's oceans. But the U.S. Navy already obeys standard international conventions and does not need a U.N. body to tell it how it how or where it can conduct operations to protect the U.S. Nor does it need the permission of a panel of judges in Hamburg, Germany.

The administration says the treaty exempts military activities. But it does not define a military activity. Would an American carrier task force off Iran violate the treaty? Is the use of active sonar to detect quiet enemy submarines be a violation if the Hamburg judges rule it harms marine life?

The administration also claims the support of the military, which likes the 12-mile limit on national claims of sovereignty. Yet international law already protects nonaggressive passage, as well as nonmilitary activities of naval vessels.

Certainly Reagan didn't need the U.N. in 1986, when Libya laid claim to the entire Gulf of Sidra. To demonstrate what the State Department termed "U.S. resolve to continue to operate in international waters and airspace." All that Reagan needed was the Sixth Fleet and a few F-14 Tomcats.

This isn't the first time the Bush administration has shown a preference for international law versus U.S. law and sovereignty.

Bush supported a decision by the International Court of Justice regarding Jose Medellin, a Mexican national on death row in Texas, ordering the U.S. to reopen the case on the grounds Medellin's rights had been violated under the 1963 Vienna Convention.

The treaty was co-authored by Elisabeth Mann Borgese, an admirer of Karl Marx, who ran the World Federation of Canada. She called the oceans the "common heritage of mankind" and in a January 1999 speech declared: "The world ocean has been, and is, so to speak, our great laboratory for the making of a new world order."

LOST would codify John Kerry's "global test" of the validity of U.S. activities. Communist China, a LOST signatory, contends the treaty bans our Proliferation Security Initiative, which lets us stop and search ships suspected of transporting WMD on behalf of or for use by terrorists.

Borgese argued LOST prohibited the free movement of U.S. nuclear submarines through international waters because the treaty stipulated that the oceans "shall be reserved for peaceful purposes."

When John Kerry declared in 2004 that U.S. actions be subjected to a "global test," President Bush rightly responded that our national security was too important to be left to bodies such as the United Nations Security Council.

Bush was right then, but not now. Our access to the seas should be guaranteed by the U.S. Navy and not a U.N. bureaucracy.


By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Friday, November 02, 2007 4:30 PM PT

Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (0) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive

They Have Want it Takes , to Take What You Get

Posted by theoilpatchplug on Friday, November 02, 2007 9:07:00 PM
Cartoons By Michael Ramirez
Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (0) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive

UFO's ,Global Warming and Gouls

Posted by theoilpatchplug on Wednesday, October 31, 2007 11:13:56 PM

Using Fires To Sell Global Warming

 

Climate Change: We don't know which is weirder — Dennis Kucinich's belief in UFOs or the House holding hearings on Harry Reid's claim that global warming caused California's wildfires. The "scientific link" doesn't exist.

We thought we had heard the ultimate absurdity when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid politicized a tragedy the other day by claiming, "One of the reasons we had the fires in California is global warming."


Then came the announcement that the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming was holding a hearing today (Thursday) "examining the scientific link between a changing climate and the frequency and intensity of wildfires."

The committee, chaired by warming zealot Ed Markey, D-Mass., was formed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, it says, "to increase the visibility and priority given to America's oil dependence and global warming challenges."


More accurately, it was formed to rake the Bush administration over the coals, so to speak, for its reluctance to embrace Kyoto.


The media has done its part to fan the flames of controversy.


On Oct. 20, CBS' "60 Minutes" began with a segment called "The Age of Mega-Fires," a piece clearly intended to fuel the blame-global-warming argument.

CNN's Anderson Cooper plugged the series "Planet in Peril" by saying, "Fire, drought, global warming, climate change, deforestation, it is all connected."


He forgot arson, the cause of at least two of the major California fires. That's man-made warming.


As Steven Milloy, adjunct scholar at the Competitive Industry and founder of junkscience.com, points out, the history of California wildfires proves no link to warming-induced drought.

First, he notes, during the period of 1900-2005, during which global temperatures rose about 1 degree Fahrenheit, precipitation has actually increased in areas above 30 degrees north latitude, which includes California, according to the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.


During that interval there have been moderate-to-severe drought conditions in Southern California during 34 of those years, or about one-third of the time. An analysis of those years, using data provided by the National Climatic Data Center, provides a very interesting pattern of drought.


Seven occurred from 1900 to 1940, the period when most of last century's warming occurred.

But 11 of those drought years occurred from 1941 to 1975, when temperatures were dropping so fast that major news magazines like Newsweek were actually warning of a new ice age.

From 1976 to 1990, when global temperatures rose back to their 1940 levels, there were 8 drought years.


Since then, there have been another seven years of moderate-to-severe drought. If there's a pattern there of warming-induced climate change, we fail to see it.

The Santa Ana winds that fanned the flames didn't come out of the exhaust pipe of anyone's SUV.


We would suggest that the extent of the tragedy has been enhanced by the anti-logging and anti-thinning agenda of the greenies — an agenda that encourages overgrowth and prohibits sensible forest management, including the removal of dead trees as well as underbrush that is said to be the habitat of endangered species who ironically become crispy critters.

The same naturally warm and dry conditions in which these fires occur are the same conditions that bring people to Southern California to build their homes in fire-prone areas in the first place.


If, as some point out, the fires in California these days seem "so much worse than in the past" it's for that very reason: The Golden State's population has soared in the past decade or so by nearly 10 million. Hundreds of thousands of new homes have been built in the state's brush-filled mountains, canyons and arroyos.


But when Democrats suggest it is our inattention to allegedly man-induced global warming that is the culprit, they're only generating more hot air that we don't need.

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Wednesday, October 31, 2007 4:20 PM PT

Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (0) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive

Oil $94, And We Can't Drill Here?

Posted by theoilpatchplug on Monday, October 29, 2007 10:50:11 PM




$94

It's time to think about warming your homes and running our factories.Quit trying to play God .Don't be foolish enough to think you can change the Earth and the Solar System by driving some underpowered car or paying Al Gore's company to plant a tree.

Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (0) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive

Drivin Nails in the Coffins of Credibility

Posted by theoilpatchplug on Monday, October 29, 2007 10:28:40 PM



Jimmy Carter

"Very little common sense was is uncommon virtue and could not find any valor to speak of "

Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (0) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive

Dying to Get into ALGORE Heaven

Posted by theoilpatchplug on Monday, October 29, 2007 9:12:27 PM
GREEN FUNERALS: Putting aside embalming and tombs
Some believe that services at home and simple caskets gradually
will change how society deals with death.

 

 

Klara Tammany's mother didn't want a typical American funeral.
No embalming, no metal casket, not even a funeral home.

When she died after a long illness a couple of years ago, family
members and friends washed and dressed her body and put it in
a homemade wooden casket, which was laid across two
sawhorses in the dining room of her condo in Brunswick.

Then, for two days, friends and family visited, brought cut
flowers, wrote messages on the casket's lid and said goodbye.

"We had this wake, and it was wonderful," Tammany said.

The home funeral is part of an emerging trend that some believe
will change the way Americans deal with death. Send-offs like
the one Tammany planned with her mother are called "green"
funerals because they avoid preservative chemicals and steel and
concrete tombs, all designed to keep a body from decomposing
naturally.

After the wake, Tammany's mother was cremated and her ashes
buried near the family's camp in Monmouth.

Another alternative that is just emerging in Maine is natural
burial in a green cemetery: wooded graveyards that ban
chemicals and caskets that won't easily decompose.

Two such cemeteries are now preparing to do natural burials in
Maine, in Limington and in Orrington. There are only about six
operating green cemeteries in the United States, but many more
are planned, according to those tracking the trend.

"I think it's a tidal wave that's coming," Tammany said. "The
cultural way of dying and taking care of the dead is changing."

Next weekend, green funerals will be the subject of the annual
meeting of the Funeral Consumers Alliance of Maine, a nonprofit
group that provides information about alternatives to modern
funerals.

Mark Harris, author of "Grave Matters: A Journey Through the
Modern Funeral Industry to a Natural Way of Burial," will be the
keynote speaker.

"I think it's going to change the funeral practices in our time.
The demographics are just too strong," Harris said during an
interview last week, referring to the baby boomers.

"This is the generation that brought us the first Earth Day ... that
brought organic food into the grocery store," he said. "I think
they'll bring the same environmental consciousness to bear to
the end-of-life issues as they approach them."

The idea of earth-friendly funerals is catching on as part of that
broader green movement. But there are other factors, too,
including distaste for the embalming process and modern
commercial funerals that can cost $10,000.

A green burial can cost $1,000 to $2,000, although there is no
market standard. Tammany's mother's funeral and cremation
cost about $350.

Some also have the desire to return to a simpler, personal way of
laying loved ones to rest.

"It's a lot more than just about the environment. It's a return to
tradition. It speaks to the idea of dust to dust," Harris said. "This
is the way we used to bury people, in the first hundred years of
our country's history."



FUNERAL DIRECTORS' OPINIONS

Around the country, Harris said, some funeral directors are
opening up to the trend. Many advocates expect funeral homes
and cemeteries to offer more "green" alternatives, such as
preservative-free burials.

But there also is resistance.

Peter Neal, a funeral director based in Guilford and spokesman
for the Maine Funeral Directors Association, said the trend
sounds good on the surface, but presents problems when you
dig into the details.

"The green concept is a wonderful concept. There are many
areas of our lives that we can" reduce environmental impacts,
Neal said. "But this one's a little bit more of a problem."

In Maine, for example, the ground can freeze in winter and make
it harder to dig graves. Funeral homes typically store bodies for
spring burials, something made easier with formaldehyde and
the embalming process.

And embalming, developed during the Civil War, also protects
against the spread of bacteria and disease, he said. "It's my
great hope it stays in the hands of professionals," he said.

Neal doesn't see a large movement toward green funerals and
burials. He oversees five funeral homes and has had one family
request a green burial. He turned that one down.

"It's a very small group that's talking about it. It's not for
everybody, just the logistics of it," he said, noting that the
earth-to-earth idea might not have wide appeal.

"You may or may not want your loved one's body to go back to
the earth as soon as possible. (Preservation) was very important
to the Egyptians, and it has some importance to people today,"
Neal said.

Green advocates agree that the trend is not for everyone, but
they shrug off the criticism from the funeral industry.

Burying in winter is less of a problem in a forested cemetery
than in an open field, they say. A green cemetery near Ithaca,
N.Y., has buried 21 people since opening last year, and did not
have a problem with frozen ground last winter, according to the
owner. The cemetery also has equipment to heat the ground, if
necessary.

Tammany said her mother's two-day wake proved to her that
there is little need for embalming, a process she called
disrespectful to the body.

Although a body might need to be kept cool with ice or dry ice
in the summer, Tammany said, her mother died in October, and
she kept a door cracked to keep the body from decomposing.

Embalming is not required by the state and is not necessary for
health reasons, said Dora Anne Mills, director of Maine's Center
for Disease Control. Chem-free burials are done in most of the
world and are not a health risk under normal circumstances, she
said.



GREEN BURIALS

Green burials are routinely done in this country as well, in the
Jewish community.

"Our people are always buried in wooden caskets. There's no
metal (and no embalming), so everything decomposes in its
natural state," said Darrell Cooper, administrator of Chevra
Kadisha, the Jewish funeral home in Portland.

"We've been practicing this for thousands of years, and now it's
coming into vogue."

Jews do not cremate bodies, although cremation is frequently
part of the green funeral trend.

The cremation option has gown rapidly in the United States, and
nearly 60 percent of Mainers now leave the world by the ashes-
to-ashes route.

Cremation is considered a greener alternative to modern burials,
especially with limited options in family or green cemeteries. But
it also has environmental impacts, including pollution from
crematories.

Maine crematories release about 20 pounds of mercury into the
air each year, for example. The mercury, a neurotoxin that can
get into the food chain, comes from amalgam dental fillings that
most people have.

For Klara Tammany and her mother, a home funeral with
cremation was the best alternative to a funeral home and the
embalming process.

Now that the alternatives are growing, Tammany likes the idea
of a green burial when her turn comes along.

"I came from the earth," she said. "Put me back in the earth and
I'll make something grow." 

By JOHN RICHARDSON, Staff Writer October 28, 2007
Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (0) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive

SinFuel...Fueling the Next Famine

Posted by theoilpatchplug on Monday, October 29, 2007 8:23:27 PM
Cartoons By Michael Ramirez
Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (0) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive

Global Warming is Still a Hoax

Posted by theoilpatchplug on Monday, October 29, 2007 2:03:51 PM
2007 Yearly Tropical Cyclone Activity to Date

Ryan N. Maue
Cross Post at Climate Audit (h/t) Steve McIntyre
Unless a dramatic and perhaps historical flurry of activity occurs in the next 9 weeks, 2007 will rank as a historically inactive TC year for the Northern Hemisphere as a whole. During the past 30 years, only 1977, 1981, and 1983 have had less activity to date (January-TODAY, Accumulated Cyclone Energy). However, the year is not over...

2007 lowest September activity on record since 1977

2006 and 2007 lowest October activity on record since 1976 and 1977

For the period of June 1 - TODAY, only 1977 has experienced LESS tropical cyclone activity than 2007.
There are currently two worldwide tropical cyclones: Tropical Storm Noel and Unnamed Arabian Sea TS...

On average to date (1970-2006), the Eastern Pacific season is 97% completed, Western Pacific 82%, North Atlantic 93% and overall Northern Hemisphere 87%.

Figure 1. can be permanently found at 2007 Tropical Activity Update (Climatology 1970-2006)

Historic Northern Hemisphere Inactivity During Summer and Early Fall

Figure 2. illustrates the number of tropical cyclone days since 1970 for the Northern Hemsiphere. It represents all storms of > 34 knots intensity during the calendar year (Jan-Dec). On average, an additional 40 tropical cyclone days are expected for the period of October 27 - December 31 (sigma of 16 days). The current departure from the long-term mean is 140 TC days. Approximately 70 tropical cyclone days occurred during the latter parts of 1984, 1992, and 1997.


Figure 2. Historical tropical cyclone days for the calendar year for the Northern Hemisphere including the Eastern Pacific, Northern Western Pacific, Northern Indian Ocean, Arabian Sea, and North Atlantic Ocean Basins. A storm must have at least 34 knot maximum sustained winds to be included. The red line marks the mean/median of a climatology constructed from 1970-2006 data. Data during the 1970s should be considered with caution. *** LARGER VERSION


Figure 3. Historical hurricane days for the calendar year for Northern Hemisphere (as in Fig 2) -- must be > 64 knots wind observations. For the remainder of the year, on average, 16 additional hurricane days have occurred. The most active years were 1984, 1990, 1992, and 1997 with > 30 additional H-days for Oct 27-Dec 31. The least active years typically see less than 10 H-days including 1999 and 2000 (8 H-days) and 1973 (0 H-days).

Accumulated Cyclone Energy Plots

NORTHERN HEMISPHERE JUNE 1 - NOV 30 ACE
NORTH ATLANTIC *** WEST PACIFIC *** EAST PACIFIC ***

Hurricane Ioke of 2006 accounted for 15% of overall Northern Hemisphere TC ACE
Currently, the North Atlantic Basin accounts for 20% of the overall Northern Hemisphere Activity

TC Climatology Trivia

Previous years with exceptionally weak ACE activity (to date: October 29, 00Z)
Link: Tab delimited file of % departure from 1970-2006 Mean to date.
Format of Tab file: EPAC, WPAC, NH, NATL

Sorted Historical Departures [% from 1970-2006 mean to date]:
***EPAC ***WPAC ***NH ***NATL
1983 saw a couple powerful typhoons in the Western Pacific in November. 1977 similarly had several late season typhoons. In the Eastern Pacific, 1983 was very active in October and November with 3 Major Hurricanes. Raymond had a particularly long track. The Atlantic season saw no October activity in 1983.

Link: ACE June 1 - November 30, 1970-2006 for each basin

Power Dissipation Index (Emanuel 2005)
PDI is simply the cubic version of ACE with considerably more weight to more intense storms.

2007 PDI Departure from Climatology (thru October 29, 00Z) **** Current PDI (climo PDI)

Northern Hemisphere = -26% **** 29739 (40288)
North Atlantic = -10% **** 6555 (7282) Effects of the Category 5's
Eastern Pacific = -64% **** 3875 (10704) Historic inactivity
Western Pacific = -21% **** 17200 (21783) To date, very anomalous

PDI Distribution Climatology (scaled)

Distribution (1944-2007) of PDI per storm: 1% [1.72] ** 3% [2.32] ** 5% [3.0] ** 10% [4.1] ** 25% [8.8] ** 50% [28.3]
75% [103] ** 90% [216] ** 95% [326] ** 98.5% [504] ** 99% [552] ** Max Ivan [859]

Text File of climatological PDI for each day (values are PDI)
Text File of the % to date of PDI [EPAC, WPAC, NORTHHEMI, NATL]

Other Notable World Tropical Cyclones and PDI
Hurricane / SuperTyphoon Ioke 2006 (927)
SuperTyphoon Chaba (WPAC) 2004 (752)
Hurricane Linda (EPAC) 1997 (363) Category 5, strongest on Record
SuperTyphoon Tip (WPAC) 1979 (695) Category 5, lowest ever recorded MSLP of 870 mb

Pre-1944 Notable Hurricanes and PDI
New England Hurricane 1938 (421)
Hurricane 13 of 1936: Landfall North Carolina (297)
Hurricanes 11, 12, 13, 18 of 1933: (198, 213, 236, 234)
Freeport Hurricane of 1932 (55) very rapid pre-landfall development
Cuba Hurricane of 1932 (429)
Bahamas Hurricane of 1932 (447) Category 5
Lake Okeechobee Hurricane of 1928 (537) Category 5
Great Miami Hurricane of 1926 (429) Category 4.9
Hurricane 4 of 1926 (680) Long Cape Verde 22 days duration
Hurricane 2 of 1922 (432) Bermuda
Florida Keys Hurricane of 1919 (447)
Galveston Hurricane of 1915 (325)
Hurricane 3 of 1915 (433) no landfall

2007 North Atlantic Season storm PDI
Andrea 2.3 (Subtropical)
Barry 3.4
Chantal 2.5
Dean 386
Erin 1.3 (weak weak weak)
Felix 215
Gabrielle 4.0
Humberto 8.2
Ingrid 2.8
Jerry 2.4
Karen 17.2
Lorenzo 6.7
Melissa 1.9
ACE (Bell et al. 2000) Climatology

Text File of climatological ACE for each day (values are ACE)
Text File of the % to date of ACE [EPAC, WPAC, NORTHHEMI, NATL]
Climatological North Atlantic ACE during calendar year

Northern Hemisphere Plot
Eastern Pacific Plot
Western Pacific Plot

Climatology based upon ACE (Bell et al. 2000) from 1970-2006 for each basin. ACE is not a perfect metric and does not account for storm size. Northern Hemisphere includes Northern Indian Ocean after 1976, which accounts for less than 3% of the yearly total. Data quality is a tremendous issue. The NHC declared extratropical observations were not included, which can account for up to 20% a year in additional ACE. The JTWC only started keeping track of EX phases in 2004, so there are literally 1,000 observations since the 1950s that are likely extratropical in the database (as phished out from the JMA database).
Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (0) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive

Words of the Profit, Notes to Damn Us

Posted by theoilpatchplug on Monday, October 29, 2007 9:08:29 AM

Notes to Damn Us

 

This prophetic verse was found, written on the back of an ancient copy of Time Magazine and believed to be written as a warning to the softheaded members of the human race of things to come.

 

And from the Cult of Gorey

Came an Incredible Story

Of Melting Ice

And shortages of Rice

From Hot Gases rising

As he grew heavy in sizing

All are an important sign

Al the Antichrist, is doing just fine

Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (0) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive
« Previous12…1718192021222324252627Next »