EPA and those who don't listen

The Environmental Protection Agency apparently has a regulation on the books that requires refiners to add cellulosic ethanol to the fuel they produce. But the refiners are not adding the chemical because they say the product doesn’t exist in commercial quantities. In other words it’s a laboratory creation and is too expensive to make in large quantities. EPA press releases say that they expected cellulosic ethanol to be available at the time the regulation went into effect, but that didn’t happen and the agency is refusing to reevaluate its position. It must be nice to require an unavailable product and then hold producers accountable when the product isn’t unavailable!

I did a short internet search and found that cellulosic ethanol is not made from corn, but instead uses grasses such as switch grass, hemp, assorted plant waste and/or wood chips to produce alcohol. These are all non food products and it certainly makes sense to convert them to a fuel additive but it seems to be an expensive process because the conversion requires sugar and these items don’t have a lot of convertible sugar within their cellular structure. There is a research outfit that has been trying since 2001 to develop an enzyme that will cheapen the process but to date they have been unsuccessful. Since they have been doing this under a contract with EPA it boggles the mind that EPA didn’t pay attention. An agency that doesn’t pay attention to the real world is not something we need to listen to in these times.

Silent Spring

My Lady wanted to paint the sun room and in order to get a good match with the existing paint we drove to a neighborhood paint store to buy a gallon of the right color paint. It was a sobering moment when we paid over $50 for a can of water, colorant and a bit of chemical designed to make the paint effective yet able to meet the standards inflicted by officialdom. We talked about the exorbitant price and after some discussion settled on the fact that 30 years ago the same paint sold for about $6 to $10 dollars a gallon.  Out side inflation (which would have brought the price to a $15 to $25 range) The reason for the steep increase in price is, to us obvious. It’s the cost of doing business while be hectored, lectured and regulated out of business by the Environmental Protection Administration.

The EPA and other environmental watchdog and big brother agencies such as the Consumer Product Safety Commission have been taken over by extreme environmentalists who profess to know better than we do and insist that we follow their prescription for a “better world”. While there are many industrial practices that have been improved by regulation in truth the programs and edicts of these people have probably killed more people in the past century than the environment ever thought of.

Fifty years ago a book by Rachel Carson was published, it came at a time the knowledgeable world was becoming aware of the complex interaction of the globe we inhabit and was starting to respond to that wisedom. “Silent Spring” has been given credit with empowering the environmental movement and its unfounded fear of any and all pesticides, especially DDT.

Paul Muller, the inventor of DDT received a Nobel Prize in 1948 in recognition of the role the pesticide played in saving hundreds of thousands of lives of troops fighting the Axis Powers in World War II. It killed the insects that spread Typhus and other diseases and it did so without any evidence supporting the unproven threat of cancer that Carson advanced through her book. When “Silent Spring” was published DDT was already famous for protecting human health along with a whole range of agricultural chemicals that protected crops against the depredation of insects, rodents and weeds. Some of the problems associated with pesticides had already been identified and science was working on ways to resolve those problems but as a result of political pressure from “progressives” in 1972 the United States banned the sale and use of DDT based solely on the claims of undue risk that Carson put forward in her book. Despite warnings from public health officials in the US, the World Health Organization and the Pan American Health Organization the ban went into effect and the result has been the death of literally millions of human lives.

Carson opened  “Silent Spring”, with a chapter titled “A Fable for Tomorrow”, she invented a town so poisoned by insecticide that no birds could live, nest or sing there, I remember reading the book when it first came out and I admit to being horrified by her description of a dying town. But her story is pure fiction. Subsequent studies have demonstrated that the die-off she described has never happened. Years of bird counts have not pointed to any mass die off of birds or any other life forms other than the pest the insecticide targets. In the US the first agricultural pesticides were initially regulated by Congress in 1910 and generations of scientists and farmers took care to avoid contaminating crops for obvious reasons.

Fifty years after the book’s publication we are experiencing a coast-to-coast plague of bedbugs that has occurred in the past decade and continues today. The problem could have been eliminated if DDT was still in use. The media, which has covered the “bedbug problem” extensively, has never mentioned this salient fact, or the fact that the EPA has just one pesticide registered for use against bedbugs and routinely refuses to allow licensed pest control professionals to use it.

Malaria, once on the brink of being eliminated, has made a dramatic resurgence since the ban of DDT.

These events, and others that could be mentioned are Rachel Carson’s true and lethal legacy.

“Silent Spring” is the base document for the programs that so much of the environmental movement advocates. Ranging from the United Nations to non-governmental-organizations like Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth, the World Wildlife Fund, and dozens of others their programs always seems to end up killing people in the name of saving the Earth.

Throughout history there have been a few books that doomed millions to death. “Das Capital” by Karl Marx kicked off the worst economic system of the modern era, claiming the lives of millions of Russians and Chinese, along with others in the process.

Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” mobilized Nazi Germany, led to World War Two in Europe, and was responsible for the deliberate killing of over 11 million Jews and Christians in its concentration camps, not counting the millions more in war dead.

I think it interesting that the Nazi leaders were ardent environmentalists, and wonder if we are not seeing a resurgence of their philosophy of wanting to  kill off all those who do not agree with the progressive vision for the future.

Oh the Horror!

Those of you who know me are aware that I occasionally enjoy a wee dram of single malt. After a difficult mediation, be it a couple fighting over the dog, someone complaining about a noisy neighbor or two businesses disputing a contract, I frequently relax over a glass of Scotch after enjoying one of Le Contours gourmet meals. It’s a fine way to end a day…a memorable meal, a peaty malt libation, a good book and My Lady in my life.

But the pleasant routine of days end has been threatened by the closure of one of Scotland’s distilleries by the threat of Legionnaires disease. The bacterium that causes this severe form of pneumonia was found in the cooling tower at the North British Distillery in Edinburgh and the plant has been shut down. To a dedicated drinker of Scotland’s finest export the news of the plant closure and the implication that other distilleries might be contaminated is akin to being told the end of the world is approaching.

The disease is usually transmitted by inhaling the bacteria and the practice of dedicated drinkers of Scotch to inhale the fragrance of the product before enjoying its taste makes enjoying what should be a pleasant end of day ritual a potentially dangerous practice.

Fortunately for me the output of this particular distillery is sold to other companies and is used for blending purposes. So if you enjoy such blends The Famous Grouse, J&B Rare, Johnnie Walker,  Black Label and Cutty Sark you might want to enjoy your drink without inhaling its bouquet for at least the near future, say 12 to 20 years!

As for me, I’m still enjoying my single malts, made by small distillers in a tightly controlled environment and worth every penny of the cost, but I might just sniff my glass gently rather than inhaling.

Applied Science

My companion for life, who blogs as Le Conteur has a poor history of living with mosquitoes. The histamine that they release when feeding is toxic to her and she has ended up in the hospital after being bitten. I don’t have that particular problem, but I do try to stay alert and protective of My Lady and often read up on research concerning the flying phlebotomist that causes her so much grief, and I find that one of the mysteries of science has been resolved: The latest challenge to be conquered is how can mosquitoes successfully fly through the rain when a raindrop weighs 50 times more than the 'skeeter?  Now I ask you, how many times have you tossed and turned during the night, unable to sleep while pondering this deep question?

Fear not however, a team of researchers at Georgia Tech have solved this overlooked problem.

They concluded the mosquito's low body mass and strong exoskeleton render it impervious to falling raindrops which makes it possible for mosquitoes to endure low impact forces from raindrops because the mass of mosquitoes causes raindrops to lose little momentum upon impact. What was observed was that the mosquito goes with the flow and rides the water drop for as long as 20 body lengths  before using its long legs and wings to establish aerodynamic drag that rotates the mosquito off the point of contact before the raindrop impacts the ground.

A lot of people might ask what the benefit of that bit of information is and why are we wasting money on frivolous research. But the survival of mosquitoes in rain wasn’t the subject of the research. The project description states that the study was undertaken to improve the design of micro-airborne vehicles, the drones that are being increasingly used by the military and law enforcement for surveillance and other operations.

While I don’t think highly of automated animalcule keeping tabs on me or My Lady I have to say that I am impressed by the capability of micro engineering to build small things and the depth of the research that makes these incredible devices possible.

Memorial Day 2012

A great man, 149 years ago said it better than I can.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

~ Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, November 19, 1863

H/T to Sondrakistan for the picture

Coal is not as dirty as politics

The American electrical grid is built and managed by separate companies that contract to supply power to a consortium of local power companies. Each year they hold a capacity auction in order to determine how much power the companies they contract with will require in the future and to set the price that the companies will pay for the electric needs they anticipate.

The transmission company that services the 13 Mid Atlantic states recently held an auction to determine the 2015 needs and prices, and the results are upsetting. For 2015 the market price will be $136 per megawatt. In 2012 the price has been $16 per megawatt…that’s an 850% increase in cost to the user.

The reason for such a startling increase over such a short period of time is defined by one word, Regulations. New regulations have been issued that are the result of Obama’s war on coal and other energy producers. The EPA has mandated that by 2015 all coal plants must install “Maximum Achievable Control Technology”, a vague term and an equally vague set of goals. This requirement, because of aging power plants that are difficult to upgrade will remove an estimated 14,000 megawatts of coal generated power from the national grid. In addition the administration has announced that will not issue permits for any future coal powered electrical plants.

The bottom line is that the cost of everything that uses or is produced using electrical power will in 3 years time be increased by a factor of 8.  Everything we buy or use will cost more and there will not be an increase in magnitude in your take home pay. In short this is much more than a “tax the rich” scheme, it’s a stick it to the masses program that will beggar our economy.

The local paper is bunk

With a tip of the hat to Mr. Ford and his comment about history "Newspapers are bunk"

This Sunday morning I bought, as I usually do, a copy of the local bird cage liner. A paper called the Kansas City Star. Since we moved here I’ve grown accustomed to having each page of the paper be at least two thirds ads and what news that the paper sees fit to print are either one inch snippets of words that never give you any information because there is not enough space in one column inch or the obituary section that usually runs about three and a half pages. Today’s front page was taken up with a puff piece concerning the travails of a county coroner after a tornado struck his town. The piece rambled on for some four pages all the time avoiding the simple fact that the coroner was doing the job he hired on to do and doing it with compassion and competency. Certainly newsworthy, but maybe worth about eight column inches in the Metro Secion (which the Star no longer prints)

With Europe dissolving into economic anarchy and the euro fast disappearing as a viable instrument there was not one mention of that fact in the paper and nothing was said that the G-8 leaders were all in DC trying to persuade our government to bail them out just as we did our financial institutions a couple of years ago. And of course no one mentions how well that exercise turned out for the average American. Chaos is here, looking us in the eye and the local media doesn’t even see it!

The editorial section usually complains about pot holes and students without school provided breakfasts and other than the opinion pieces  never discusses national events. They do have the obligatory conservative writer but they normally assure that his thoughts do not conflict with the paper’s biases. And that’s what passes for new and information in this region.

In a refreshing change of news and information we last week  spent a few days in Washington DC and took the opportunity to read their paper of record because, to our satisfied surprise the Washington Post still contains news and information. Each day we could read several sections of the paper, and each section contained pages of news that informed us of events in the nation and around the world. It was so refreshing that we are considering ordering the paper for delivery by mail. Despite the Post’s political slant it does print actual news and we are starved for news while living in the information desert of Kansas City.

At least by getting a real newspaper I'll be able to read, learn about and comment on real events in the world we occupy rather than on the price wars the ads seem to focus on.