Stupidity personified

Charles F. Schafer of Pella, IA isn't content to just not mow his lawn, he wants the rest of us to be a slob like him:

Global warming is a scientific reality. We can stop it by stopping something that we’re doing: mowing grass. The mowers burn fossil fuels, which emit gases, which get into our stratosphere and prevent heat from escaping from our atmosphere.

Short grass is boring to look at anyway.

With all the money and time we would save by not mowing we could plant shrubs and trees. They’re able to assuage our nature deprivation disorder, and they give off oxygen, which is an “anti-greenhouse gas.” Methane is another — and a very important — greenhouse gas. Cows are the main methane makers. It’s in their poop, which should be scooped up and not left out in the open to give off methane.

Better yet would be to stop eating cow meat. If we stop eating cows, farmers will stop raising them. Oh, I almost forgot. You’ve also got to quit consuming dairy products. Becoming a vegan would be very good for your health and the health of your favorite planet.

Charles just violated the old saw about how it's better to be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.

First of all, what is a scientific reality?  Reality is defined as including "everything that is and has been, whether or not it is observable or comprehensible."

So is global warming observable?  Well, if it's occurring, it's not directly observable.  That's pretty much the core of the debate between scientists with differing viewpoints (or as lefties call them, "scientists" versus "climate change deniers").

So, since global warming isn't directly observable, Charles' opening statement is an opinion, not fact.  By the way, according to many climate blogs (such as Grist), even if we stopped burning all fossil fuels tomorrow (in other words, took a step back into the Stone Age), the climate change is still going to happen.

Strike two, Charles, and we're still in the first paragraph.

Now, on to his attack on lawn mowers.  Charles doesn't seem to acknowledge that all mowers are not gas-powered.  Or powered at all, for that matter.

I have an electric mower.  If it gets charged by electricity derived from wind or solar, I'm not burning fossil fuels, am I?  I also have a manual reel mower, which is 100% human-powered.  The only fossil fuels burned with regards to that mower were in its manufacture!

Then Charles goes after cows.  Follow his thought processes to their logical conclusion, he wants us to stop raising cattle and dairy cows.  The well-intentioned tyrant deep down in Charles' psyche wants to make us all into vegans.

Scary thought:  Charles will probably vote in November.

Then come the comments:

Global warming is one of Rick's oft-commented topics.  Too bad he lacks perspective.  From No Tricks Zone, we learn that the ice melt Rick's so worried about accounts for 0.0006%!

Incidentally, sea ice coverage (which I'll point out is in two dimensions, because satellites can't determine thickness of the ice) has only been measured since 1970.  To put in relative terms, if Earth was 1 year old, we've been collecting data on sea ice for just about 288 milliseconds!

I especially like Whitten's comment about how Florida is at risk because much of the state is an elevation of 10 feet MSL.  News flash to Rick:  Florida used to be underwater.  From Volusia County Heritage:

Florida, the land, having been mostly under water since the Jurassic period, is relatively young by geological standards, rising out of the ocean within the last 25 million years. 

Additionally, Volusia County Heritage has a graphic showing where Florida's coastlines were in the past compared to now:





Hmm, that's interesting.  Florida has been steadily been reclaimed by the ocean over the past 12,000 years.  I forget, when did we first start driving SUVs?  Maybe 20 years ago?

Perspective is everything.

Wind, solar, and perpetuating convenient lies

So, one of the campaign issues of interest to Iowa is Mitt Romney's differing approach to wind energy subsidies, compared with President Obama.

No surprise, the businessman in Romney doesn't understand why we throw good taxpayer dollars after bad into an industry that doesn't seem to support itself.

Here's the uncomfortable truth:  Wind and solar are simply not cost-effective.  You won't see a lot of private companies and individuals rushing to be the first in line to throw money at something that shows no indications of becoming profitable any time soon.

But government doesn't have that problem, because they're always spending someone else's money, and right away the incentive to spend that money wisely is taken away.

Look at solar.  I recall one caller to a talk-radio program years ago that sang his praises of solar.  He'd put the panels on his house, and they'd paid for themselves in energy cost savings after about 10 years.  But, he cautioned, he didn't pay full cost on the panels.  He'd gotten a sizeable tax credit.  He told the talk-radio host he'd run the numbers on if he'd paid full cost:  It would've taken 20 years for him to recoup the money on his investment.  Guess what the life expectancy of the panels are?

If you said "20 years", you get a gold star.

Wind energy is no different.  For the amount of land each windmill takes up, you'd think they produce a fair amount of power.  Not so.  I've heard from sources of questionable veracity that wind energy accounts for 20% of the energy market.  In the windier, wide-open spaces outside of Des Moines, I could see that the windmills, collectively, produce that power in windy conditions.

But what about the cost?  Does wind energy provide a return on investment?

Not exactly.  About 50% of the total cost of energy production through wind is subsidized by taxpayer dollars (citation needed).

 On 17 August, the Des Moines Register carried this letter to the editor:

Yes, wind energy supports employment in Iowa. But there are hidden costs.
We all know about tax credits subsidizing wind energy. But there are costs included in all of our power bills. Wind energy is an unreliable source of power. But the utilities are required to purchase the electricity whenever it is available, whether they need it or not. Of course the predetermined price of wind-energy power exceeds the cost of energy generated by more conventional means.

We have been told by green energy groups that profitability is just around the corner. I am tired of waiting. When is the government going to cease picking winners and losers in the marketplace? If the wind-energy tax credits are abolished I suspect that wind power will be “gone with the wind.”

— Richard L. Powell, Grimes

Amen!  Every time,  I see or hear the ad criticizing Mitt Romney for his refusal to support subsidies for wind energy, I cringe.  The ad cites how the Republican governor and both the Democrat and Republican senators from Iowa support this spending of taxpayer dollars.

Uh, yeah, that's not a surprise.  But tell me how it makes it right, just because Iowa politicians support this particular earmark because it keeps their constituents happy.  I remember when Sen. Paul Wellstone (D-MN) supported continued funding of the Crusader artillery vehicle when Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld put the program on the chopping block, despite Wellstone being a dove his whole political career.  Wellstone, despite the belief that he was some sort of populist, was still a politician.  He acknowledged that a defense contractor in his home state employed a great many of his constituents.  Constituents whose jobs were threatened.

I've never understood this faith some people place in politicians.  When voting, a healthy dose of cynicism and a questioning of the politician's motivations is warranted.  I recall when then-candidate Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) was going to let his closest supporters know of his pick for running mate by text message at 3 a.m.  But the system failed, and many already knew it was to be Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE) by 1 a.m.  So the text messages weren't sent.  A Obama-supporting friend of mine complained about the text message business the next day.  I made the following cynical comment:

"Imagine that.  A politician saying one thing and doing another."

Her reaction was priceless:  It was like I'd clocked her on the side of the head with a 2x4.

And yet, my cynicism still doesn't prepare me for how uninformed some of the commenters to Mr. Powell's letter to the editor were.  Of course, somebody had to pull the oil-and-natural gas card, falsely stating that we should do away with oil and natural gas subsidies.

Agreed.  Except....(deep breath)...WE...DON'T...SUBSIDIZE...OIL...OR...NATURAL...GAS.

Where does this misleading talking point come from?  A very good blog explains it well. From Virginia Right!:

A subsidy is a government payment, usually for doing nothing. Like welfare or payments not to grow crops.

Oil companies simply get tax deductions like every other business. Not subsidies.

What these tax deductions do is encourage things like equipment, machinery and vehicles to be replaced faster than it might otherwise be done. When these items are fully depreciated, businesses are incentivised to to replace them rather than hold onto them for a few more years through tax deductions.

So what Obama wants to do is target the oil industry for higher taxes and fewer deductions, not eliminate of subsidies, because none exist.
And we all know the result. Lower profits due to taxes will be replaced at the pumps in higher prices.

And worse, oil companies will slow down purchases of machinery, tools, vehicles and other items. Which will make a pretty large impact on the rest of the economy – in a negative way.
The fact is, the more money oil companies make, the more money they pay in taxes.

 I recommend reading the whole article.  The author does a good job of disarming a favorite lefty talking point.

Better still, just ask the lefties to identify just one of the subsidies the oil and natural gas companies receive, sit back, and watch their heads spin. 

It's cheap entertainment, but it pays to be frugal in this economy.

Chick-Fil-A

Wednesday was National Chick-Fil-A Appreciation Day.

Lost in the din was the reason why it existed in the first place:  Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel disagreed with the personal views of Dan Cathy, president of Chick-Fil-A.  Rather, they disagreed with the CNN's interpretation of those views.

In his interview with the Baptist Press, Mr. Cathy made the following statement:

Some have opposed the company's support of the traditional family. "Well, guilty as charged," said Cathy when asked about the company's position.

"We are very much supportive of the family -- the biblical definition of the family unit. We are a family-owned business, a family-led business, and we are married to our first wives. We give God thanks for that.

"We operate as a family business ... our restaurants are typically led by families; some are single. We want to do anything we possibly can to strengthen families. We are very much committed to that," Cathy emphasized.

  Wow, controversial stuff, huh?

Here's how CNN interpreted it on their Belief blog (Emphasis on their agenda-based bias in bold):

The fact that Chick-fil-A is a company that espouses Christian values is no secret. The fact that its 1,600 fast-food chicken restaurants across the country are closed on Sundays has long been testament to that.
But the comments of company President Dan Cathy about gay marriage to Baptist Press on Monday have ignited a social media wildfire.

"Guilty as charged,", Cathy said when asked about his company's support of the traditional family unit as opposed to gay marriage.

"We are very much supportive of the family – the biblical definition of the family unit. We are a family-owned business, a family-led business, and we are married to our first wives. We give God thanks for that," Cathy is quoted as saying.

But he didn't say that!  A more thorough analysis of this is available at the following links:

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/deaconsbench/2012/07/cnn-lays-an-egg/
http://www.getreligion.org/2012/07/wheres-the-beef-what-the-chick-fil-a-boss-really-said/

As Dr. Goebbels might have said, never let the facts get in the way of a good story.  It's hard to not see this as journalistic malpractice, even if it did ultimately backfire:

More than 3,000 people lined up for Chick-fil-A at the food court at Jordan Creek Town Center on Wednesday, joining in a battle of words and demonstrations over same-sex relationships and the fast food restaurant’s president.

Iowans were not alone; hundreds of thousands of people around the country stood in line at Chick-fil-A locations Wednesday to show their support for the restaurant and for marriage only between one man and one woman.

I arrived at the Chick-Fil-A around 7:30 that night.  The lines were still long.

But the Des Moines Register, like most media outlets, doesn't frame the event correctly.  It wasn't about people supporting Chick-Fil-A because of Mr. Cathy's stance on same-sex marriage (which, as has been pointed out, he never touched on in the interview in question).  It had to do with this:

The mayor of Boston is vowing to block Chick-fil-A from opening a restaurant in the city after the company's president spoke out publicly against gay marriage.

Even though Mr. Cathy didn't even mention gay marriage in the interview, what Boston Mayor Menino vowed to do was unconstitutional.

But Menino wasn't alone:

Chick-fil-A, the national restaurant chain known for its chicken sandwiches and waffle fries, has become a litmus test for gay rights. This development erupted after its CEO Dan Cathy, known for his conservative religious views, said in a radio interview that his company backs "the biblical definition of the family unit," not same-sex marriage.

Outraged, Chicago Ald. Proco "Joe" Moreno, 1st, responded that he would not allow a Chick-fil-A to come to his gentrifying Northwest Side ward. Mayor Rahm Emanuel seemed to back him up with, "Chick-fil-A's values are not Chicago values." He soon was joined by other national politicians eager to dump Chick-fil-A into the fryer.

 Mayor Emanuel's comments about "Chicago values" have prompted many snickers across the blogosphere, as people pointed out how 11 people don't get murdered daily in Chick-Fil-A restaurants, or that Chick-Fil-A's management has some catching up to do if they want to attain the same level of corruption as Chicago's politicians.

Both Boston's and Chicago's newspapers have raked their politicians over the coals for their tone-deafness on First Amendment issues.

So when I went to Chick-Fil-A Wednesday evening, it wasn't because I agree or disagree with Mr. Cathy's stance on same-sex marriage (and it bears repeating one more time that he didn't say anything about it!).  It was a message.  To Mayor Emanuel.  To Alderman Moreno.  To Mayor Menino.  To all the bullies whom would dare try to use the power of government to interfere with someone's legitimate business.  Whom would use it to intimidate, possibly silence.  The message is this:

Knock it off!  You don't rule us. You serve us!

Every so often, we need to remind our elected representatives of their place.