Jim Gereghty at the Campaign Spot points out Obama’s flimsy New Math on tire pressure.  I agree with Jim in general, but I think there’s an easier way to make the point.  First, Obama’s connecting this with offshore oil drilling is ridiculous.  That’s like a doctor telling a man with a cold, if you lay down part of the day, you’d cough less and you won’t need so much cough syrup.  Okay, but why don’t I do both, would that be better?

In any event, Obama is claiming that properly inflating tires would have a significant impact on gas prices.  Let’s take Jim’s assumptions and see:

Assuming:

• The average commuter commutes 33 miles per day;
• The average car gets 24 mpg (unlikely, but okay);
• Improper tire pressure decreases efficiency by 2.5 mpg (average of 2-3 mpg);
• And 1 out of 3 commuters has improper tire pressure.

Take three random commuters: two travel 33 miles each at 24 mpg (1.375 gallons per day) and the other at 21.5 mpg (1.53 gallons).  The evil, unAmerican commuter is wasting .16 gallons per day.

To put into perspective, this means that uninflated tires increase domestic demand by .16 gallons for every 4.125 gallons.  (All three commuters with properly inflated tires would use (1.375 * 3 = ) 4.125 gallons.)   Put another way, this is an effect of less than 4% (.16 / 4.125).

Assuming you believe in the law of supply and demand, a 4% decrease in demand should correspond to at most a 4% decrease in price.  This ignores effects like stockpiling and the cost of the federal beauracracy needed to ensure compliance.  If the average price of gas is now roughly $4.00 per gallon, a 4% decrease would make it $3.84, saving $.16 per gallon.

To sum up, forcing every motorist to properly inflate their tires would save, at most, $.16 per gallon.

In contrast, the federal tax on gasoline is $.184 per gallon.  Wasn’t there a candidate who said that eliminating this tax was a “typical Washington gimmick” that wouldn’t amount to any real savings?

As a former NASA fellow, I know that every NASA employee is required to take an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States of America. As an attorney, I know that the very first amendment to the Constitution says “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech.” The Supreme Court has interpreted that freedom to preclude the courts and every government agency from imposing any prior restraints on speech. In fact, the high court has gone so far as to prohibit otherwise sensible restrictions on the grounds that they would “chill meritorious debate,” meaning that fear of running afoul of the rule might limit public debate over an important issue.

James Hansen doesn’t like debate. He knows that, if we have a fair and open discourse on Global Warming™, he will lose. That is why he is calling on Congress to prosecute oil executives. Yes, the “scientist” who, through thousands of media outlets, has had the unhinged gall to say the government is silencing him, wants that same government to silence the other side of the debate. I suppose if you can’t beat ‘em, prosecute ‘em.

With any luck the fat, bloated morons who “run” the government will ignore this patently illegal request. But nonetheless, NASA should finally fire him. He has clearly violated his oath, he is a distraction to the agency and is waging a propaganda war on tax payer money. He needs to be fired.

Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi (D-Ranged) is fond of quoting her own personal bible to underscore her belief in high gas prices, government mandated largesse and greener and greener policies, no matter the cost. In particular, Pelosi is fond of saying, “The Bible tells us in the Old Testament, ‘To minister to the needs of God’s creation is an act of worship. To ignore those needs is to dishonor the God who made us.’” The problem, of course, is that this verse appears nowhere in any known translation of the Holy Bible.

Speaker Pelosi has acknowledged that the verse is not easily found, as it appears only in her own apocryphal copy of the Bible, given to her personally by God (here taking multiple Earthly forms, including AFL-CIO President John Sweeney and Internet pioneer Al Gore). Among the lost Pelosi passages of the Holy Bible are:

• “Woe betide the man who, having money, giveth not to thine most progressive party.”
• The Greenest Commandment: “And one of the scribes came, and having heard them reasoning together, and perceiving that he had answered them well, asked him, Which is the first commandment of all? And Jesus answered him, “The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is Global Warming. And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy wallet, and with all thy tax revenue, and with all thy Hollywood special effects: this is the first commandment. And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt tax thy neighbor unlike thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these.”
• “And on the recess of the 10th Day, God cast out the evil spirits of the kingdom of Beegoil, the Chloroflorenes, the Carbonites, the Antiozonites and the Essyouveans. And God saw that the world contained no commerce, and it was good.”
• “Blessed are the elected officials, for thine is the kingdom of taxation and spendation.”
• “And He sayeth unto the congregation of nonbelievers, ‘I am doing a great work and I cannot come down. Why should the work stop while I leave it and come down to you and drinketh your Royal Crown and eateth thine waffles?’”
• “And God said unto Moses, ‘Let not my people’s carbonite footprint exceed that of thine cattle. For to do so would cause me to warmeth the Earth.”

DailyTech has a very interesting article about Global Cooling.  Be sure to rev up your SUV to combat the sun’s arrogant attempts to disprove Al Gore.  As this blog has pointed out many times, solar variability seems to be the real driving factor in climate change.  Nearly 400 years ago an unusually warm period, not unlike the past decade, immediately preceded the mini-ice age of the 1600’s.  Fortunately for me, my Durango has heated seats and four wheel drive for those July blizzards.

There are three critical differences between Al Gore’s Global Warming charade and Global Cooling.  First, Global Cooling is real and it poses a risk.  Slight increases in Global Temperature will make it easier to farm (though not on the coast), and mankind will be able to survive a little flooding, even to the extent Mr. Gore exaggerates.  Global Cooling would cause drastic shortages of food, shelter, clothing and water.  You can’t grow corn in frozen tundra or permafrost.

Second, if the Al Gore is to be believed, it will take 100 years to see irrefutable changes do to Global Warming.  (In other words, changes that could not be due to normal variability).  If the sun’s surface radiation dropped, say 10%, do you know how quickly we would feel the effects?  100 years?  50 years?  Ten years?  Try within minutes.  It takes 8 minutes for the sun’s rays to travel from the surface of the sun to our little planet.  Cut that off and we freeze like Pluto.  The sun is the only thing that keeps us warm and Earth habitable.  Without it’s constant rays, not only would it be pretty dark outside, we would slowly begin to freeze as the Earth’s temperature cooled like a pie out of the oven.

Finally, and this is crucial, the cause and the solution.  My suspicion has always been that, subconsciously or not, Al Gore and his unmerry band of men in UN suits have so quickly and unquestioningly endorsed Global Warming™ because of a deep ceded liberal guilt.  They believe they have found an environmental cause they can blame on the wealthiest nation in the world, and they’re all too happy to externalize that guilt.  The sun?  It’s a lot like the weather…there ain’t a damn thing you can do about it.

Stay warm out there.

A very interesting article in, of all places, the Canadian National Post, about how this winter has broken so many cold weather records, and recent rethinking of Global Warming™.

Of course, you have to take this with a grain of salt. I’m sure we’ll hear from Al Gore’s Denial Media Machine that the National Post, indeed, all of Canada, is beholden to Big Oil™.

Just once, I’d like to see someone on my side of the aisle lash out at one of these environmental wackos like Al Gore as being “a puppet for Big Green™.”

Just to let you all know I haven’t forgotten, here is more proof of Al Gore’s failing hypothesis.  Snow storms are burying Greece and Israel.   In fact, the entire Mideast is covered in a blanket of frigid weather.  Not really known for the blizzard, this region is typically a desert environment, but cold weather and snow fall has been cancelling schools, and even endangering people’s welfare.

Of course, Al and his demented pals will say this is a side effect of Global Warming™.  This is complete nonsense.  It’s akin to saying that your temperature is dropping because you have a fever.  It’s nonsense.  Global warming cannot cause cold weather!  There is no physical explanation for it.

So, how do you explain changes in global temperatures?   There was an interesting article in the IBD recently about Maunder Minimums.   It’s a dead-spot in the solar cycles (there are 10-15 solar cycles with periods from 11 year to thousands of years).  When they are all at their minimum, the sun (and therefore the Earth) cools drastically.  Solar scientists are worried we’re headed into one now.  Funny enough, they’re thought to be preceded by a lot of erratic solar activity, right before the drop off.  The last time there was a Maunder Minimum, by the way, was in the late 1600’s (otherwise known as the mini-Ice Age).

Bundle up out there, it’s going to get nippy.

In response to a suit filed by the State of California against the federal government over Global Warming™, the other 49 states have filed counterclaims against California.  The unprecedented counter-suit claims that California, among other things, has mandate nationwide fuel efficiency and emissions requirements through their asinine do-gooder laws, and that these asinine do-gooder laws have raised the price of gasoline and other forms of energy, nationwide.

The suit also alleges that the citizens of California, on balance, have lowered the national average IQ.  California denies all charges.

I am, improbably, on jury duty for the next few weeks, so the posts will be even fewer and further between.

I have had some time to update the Newsstand, however:

Didn’t Ask, Wasn’t Told
If it can work for the military, it can work for you!  This one is for the guy or girl that loves living in the dark:

To Serve Man Barbeque Apron
Made for the consummate Twighlight Zone Fan, this lovely barbeque apron is from our Kanamits collection.

 

Plant Food
The first in a long line of “Screw Al Gore” fashion statements.  This lovely faux-environmental design lets people know what Carbon Dioxide really is.

Caution: Government Incompetence At Work
Is your neighborhood or town filled with incomplete projects or tax-payer funded eyesores?  Do you ever wonder why, if polls are open from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m., government offices that are open from 9 to 4:10 are closed on election day?  Let them know how you feel with this lawn sign (also available in magnets and t-shirts for the more subtle protestor).

Wow, the Norwegians really know how to get to irrelevant in a hurry, don’t they?  Giving Al Gore a Nobel peace prize for his “work” in “climatology” is tantamount to giving the Boston Red Sox a Nobel prize in economics for “best groomed team in sports.”

Gore’s film, which a British court has ordered not to be shown to students without a disclaimer noting at least nine obvious inaccuracies, is apparently the basis for the Nobel award.  What do you expect from people who revere Jimmy Carter and Yassir Arafat.  If you’ve had the misfortune to see the film (I refuse to waste valuable time watching propaganda), please read the rebuttal by Lady Thatcher’s former science adviser, who finds no less than 35 inaccuracies in the short film.  (For the abridged version, see NewsBusters, here.)

Apparently, the NY Times’s Paul Krugman believes the ‘right-wing’ cannot have legitimate issues with the former vice president’s grasp of climatology.  (I say apparently, because, like I said, I try not to read propaganda).  If you want to read a text-book case of projection, try to find your way through the intellectual vomit of this column. 

The thrust of the bile is that conservatives cannot possibly have an argument against climate change (this is where you assume your conclusion as part of your argument), and therefore, we must all just be trying to “expunge the stain of illegitimacy from the Bush administration.”  Are we really stuck on that Paul?  Do you really think any of us, almost 8 years later, really believe Bush is not legitimately the President of the United States?  Only in your deranged little world of upper westside Manhattan does anyone still care about hanging chads.

NASA “scientist” and media darling James Hansen, outspoken critic of the Bush Administration (who signs his paycheck) Global Warming™ advocate and conspiracy theorist, has alleged that he, James Hansen, must be “a lackey for big oil.” 

Mr. Hansen made the claim after it was revealed that the earlier, younger, Mr. Hansen had assisted in a project that “found no need to worry about the carbon dioxide fuel-burning puts in the atmosphere,” and in fact concluded that global temperatures would decrease six degrees over the next 50 years.

The study, popularized by the Washington Post and other media outlets, came at a time when the Next Ice Age™ was the scare tactic used by lonely, needy scientists craving media attention and funding.  Mr. Hansen first dismissed the claims as “old news,” then said he “was young and needed the money.”  Today, however, in the face of mounting pressure by other Global Warm(onger)ing™ advocates, Mr. Hansen went straight to the GW Playbook™, a familiar old friend for Mr. Hansen, and denounced his former self as beholden to corporate interests.

Mr. Hansen had previously made news by claiming, in thousands of public speeches, interviews and editorials, that he had been silenced by the Bush administration.