konane's Blog

Favorite artist .... love this song!  Hope you enjoy.

Words from YouTube sidebar below video.

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From sidebar on YouTube

Lyrics:  Wild Child

Ever close your eyes
Ever stop and listen
Ever feel alive
And you've nothing missing
You don't need a reason
Let the day go on and on

Let the rain fall down
Everywhere around you
Give into it now
Let the day surround you
You don't need a reason
Let the rain go on and on

What a day, what a day to take to
What a way, what a way to make it through
What a day, what a day to take to a wild child

Only take the time
From the helter skelter
Every day you find
Everything's in kilter
You don't need a reason
Let the day go on and on

Every summer sun
Every winter evening
Every spring to come
Every autumn leaving
You don't need a reason
Let it all go on and on

What a day, what a day to take to
What a way, what a way to make it through
What a day, what a day to take to a wild child

What a day, what a day to take to
What a way, what a way to make it through
What a day, what a day to take to a wild child

Da-da da da da da, da da da da da da
da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da

What a day, what a day to take to
What a way, what a way to make it through
What a day, what a day to take to
Da-da-da
Da-da-da-da-da-da
What a way, what a way to make it through
Da-da-da
Da-da-da-da-da-da
Da-da-da
Da-da-da-da-da-da
What a way, what a way to make it through
What a day, what a day to take to a wild child
What a day, what a day to take to a wild child

Slated to begin debate on Cap & Trade today on a fast track to get it shoved through..

Passed the US House last week. 

Read my previous post about green police in the UK. 

There's a provision in Cap & Trade for our own green police ......... and remember the US House already passed it. 

All is left is ratification by the Senate ... Obama who favors it will sign it into law and we're hammered.

Remember $5 a gallon gasoline?

Triple or quadruple all utilities which is the intent of this bill.  This is an energy tax imposed at a time when we can least afford it.

Do nothing if you want your wallet vacuumed clean.

http://senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

http://www.senate.gov/      

"Environment Agency sets up green police

Jonathan Leake, Environment Editor
Source TimesOnline.co.uk

"The boys in green are coming as the Environment Agency sets up a squad to police companies generating excessive CO2 emissions.
The agency is creating a unit of about 50 auditors and inspectors, complete with warrant cards and the power to search company premises to enforce the Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC), which comes into effect next year.

Decked out in green jackets, the enforcers will be able to demand access to company property, view power meters, call up electricity and gas bills and examine carbon-trading records for an estimated 6,000 British businesses. Ed Mitchell, head of business performance and regulation at the Environment Agency, said the squad would help to bring emissions under control. “Climate change and CO2 are the world’s biggest issues right now. The Carbon Reduction Commitment is one of the ways in which Britain is responding.”

The formation of the green police overcomes a psychological hurdle in the battle against climate change. Ministers have long recognised the need to have new categories of taxes and criminal offences for CO2 emissions, but fear a repetition of the fuel tax protests in 2000 when lorry drivers blockaded refineries.

The central unit, based in Warrington, Cheshire, can call on the agency’s national network of hundreds of pollution inspectors, many of whom will soon be trained in CO2 monitoring.

It will also be able to demand energy bills from utilities without the companies under investigation knowing they are being watched.

Perhaps most worrying, for managers will be the publication of an annual league table ranking companies by performance in cutting emissions. The government hopes the potential shame of a lowly placing will drive organisations to greater energy efficiency.

Mitchell predicted the unit would audit about 1,200 businesses a year. The first stage would be a desk study of their energy bills and activities, followed by a visit when numbers do not add up. “The inspectors will carry warrant cards giving them powers of entry to collect evidence. We will also have access to company accounts with suppliers,” he said.

The CRC was designed to force medium-size and large companies to pay attention to energy efficiency. Under the scheme they will have to use their energy bills to calculate the carbon dioxide generated by their activities. For each tonne of CO2 emitted, companies will have to buy a carbon allowance, with the money being paid into a central pool. At the end of each reckoning period, they will get a payment from the fund.

The least energy efficient will get back less than they paid in, with the surplus going to those that have performed best. The gains and losses will be small at first but the system is designed to ratchet upwards, so business finds it increasingly expensive to ignore energy efficiency.

Initially the allowances will cost £12 per tonne but from 2013 they will be sold through auctionso the price is likely to rise. Eventually thousands of big private and public sector groups will feel compelled to spend serious money on energy efficiency — or face even bigger bills.

The government-funded Carbon Trust said a main aim would be to halt the rise in emissions from such companies. This was predicted at about 17% between 2005 and 2025.

The government has argued that the £5m-plus annual costs of administering the commitment will be met by a charge on the companies and that they will be dwarfed by the savings. John Sauven, director of Greenpeace, said: “We must be able to enforce these new rules. We saw how the absence of enforcement led to chaos with the new rules on energy efficiency in building standards.”

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/public_sector/article6639289.ece

Videos in this report.

"Democrats’ Cap-and-Trade Bill Creates ‘Retrofit’ Policy for Homes and Businesses

Wednesday, July 01, 2009
By Matt Cover

"(CNSNews.com) – The 1,400-page cap-and-trade legislation pushed through by House Democrats contains a new federal policy that residential, commercial, and government buildings be retrofitted to increase energy efficiency, leaving it up to the states to figure out exactly how to do that.
 
This means that homeowners, for example, could be required to retrofit their homes to meet federal “green” guidelines in order to sell their homes, if the cap-and-trade bill becomes law.
 
The bill, which now goes to the Senate, directs the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to develop and implement a national policy for residential and commercial buildings. The purpose of such a strategy – known as the Retrofit for Energy and Environmental Performance (REEP) – would be to “facilitate” the retrofitting of existing buildings nationwide.
 
“The Administrator shall develop and implement, in consultation with the Secretary of Energy, standards for a national energy and environmental building retrofit policy for single-family and multi-family residences,” the bill reads.
 
It continues: “The purpose of the REEP program is to facilitate the retrofitting of existing buildings across the United States.”
 
The bill leaves the definition of a retrofit and the details of the REEP program up to the EPA. However, states are responsible for ensuring that the government’s plans are carried out, whatever the final details may entail.
 
“States shall maintain responsibility for meeting the standards and requirements of the REEP program,” the bill says.
 
States may contract with private agencies to oversee the retrofitting and measuring of improved efficiency and environmental friendliness of houses and other buildings, making sure that private citizens have a variety of choices for retrofitting their homes.
 
“States and local government entities may administer a REEP program in a manner that authorizes public or regulated investor-owned utilities, building auditors and inspectors, contractors, nonprofit organizations, for-profit companies, and other entities to perform audits and retrofit services,” reads the bill.
 
It further says, “A State or local administrator of a REEP program shall seek to ensure that sufficient qualified entities are available to support retrofit activities so that building owners have a competitive choice among qualified auditors, raters, contractors, and providers of services related to retrofits.”
 
In fact, individual homeowners are even allowed to retrofit buildings themselves. The bill gives specific protection to individual owners’ rights to choose who inspects and retrofits their property.
 
“Nothing in this section is intended to deny the right of a building owner to choose the specific providers of retrofit services to engage for a retrofit project in that owner’s building.”
 
Even though Congress says the states are responsible for carrying out the retrofits, the EPA and the Department of Energy will establish the guidelines and rules for doing so.
 
“The Administrator, in consultation with the Secretary of Energy, shall establish goals, guidelines, practices, and standards for accomplishing the purpose stated in subsection (c) [the retrofits],” the bill says.
 
The program would involve a system of certified auditors, inspectors, and raters who inspect homes and businesses using devices such as infrared cameras (which measure how much heat a building is giving off) to measure their energy efficiency.
 
The results of these energy audits would then be used to determine what retrofits need to be performed. The audits would examine things like water usage, infrared photography, and pressurized testing to determine the efficiency of door and window seals, and indoor air quality.  
 
Those retrofits would be performed by licensed retrofit contractors using government-approved methods and resources including roofing materials that reflect solar energy.
 
“[B]uilding retrofits conducted pursuant to a REEP program utilize, especially in all air-conditioned buildings, roofing materials with high solar energy reflectance,” the legislation states.
 
After the retrofitting is complete, the government – state, local, or federal – will come back and re-inspect the house to determine how much energy has been saved and whether the retrofit is up to federal government standards.
 
“Determination of energy savings in a performance-based building retrofit program through — (A) for residential buildings, comparison of before and after retrofit scores,” the proposal states.
 
To help pay for the cost of these retrofits, states and localities may provide loans, utility rate rebates, tax rebates, or implement retrofit programs on their own. In fact, the government will even pay up to 50 percent of the cost of a retrofit through financial awards to individual home and building owners.
 
“PERCENTAGE.—Awards under clause (i) shall not exceed 50 percent of retrofit costs for each building,” reads the bill."

http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=50365

"Pouring cold water on global warming
Global cooling has arrived. Global warming is dead.

By Terri Jackson
Wednesday, 13 May 2009

Source Belfast Telegraph

"There is now irrefutable scientific evidence that far from global warming the earth has now entered a period of global cooling which will last at least for the next two decades.

Evidence for this comes from the NASA Microwave Sounding Unit and the Hadley Climate Research Unit while evidence that CO2 levels are continuing to increase comes from the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii.

Professor Don Easterbrook one of the principle speakers at the recent World Conference on climate change held in New York in March this year attended by 800 leading climatologists, has documented a consistent cycle of warm and cool periods each with a 27 year cycle. Indeed the warm period from 1976 to 1998 exactly fits the pattern of climate changes for the past several centuries long before there were any CO2 emissions. Greenland Ice core temperature measurements for the past 500 years show this 27 year cycle of alternating warm and cool periods. Recently the global temperature increased from 1918 to 1940, decreased from 1940 to 1976, increased again from 1976 to 1998 and has been decreasing ever since.

However throughout this time CO2 has been added to the atmosphere in increasing amounts. This point was brought out by at the New York conference by Vaclav Klaus the rotating President of the EU and President of the Czech Republic. If CO2 emissions cause temperature rises than why is it that every 27 years the earth climate switches to a cooling mode with decreasing temperature? Clearly there is another explanation that does not include humans. .

Nearly ten years into the 21 century it is clear that the UN IPCC computer models have gone badly astray. The IPCC models have predicted a one degree increase in global temperature by 2011 with further large temperature rises to 2100. Yet there has been no warming since 1998 with a one degree cooling this year being the largest global temperature change ever recorded. Nasa satellite imagery from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California has confirmed that the Pacific Ocean has switched from the warm mode it has been in since 1977 to its cool mode, similar to that of the 1945-1977 global cooling period.

The evidence that the earth is in a cooling mode rather than a warming mode is there for all to see. the RSS(Remote Sensing System) in Santa Rosa California has recorded a temperature fall of two to three degrees in the Arctic since 2005, while US Army buoys show an increase in Arctic ice thickness to 3.5 metres. North America has had two of its worst winters for sixty years with the temperature in Yellowstone Park falling to a staggering minus 60 degrees.

About 46” of snow fell in New York in two weeks! Last February Toronto had over 70 cms of snow, more than anything since 1950! Snow has fallen in parts of China and Asia for the first time in living memory while Britain had its worst January for twenty years. Alps have best snow conditions in a generation ran a newspaper headline last December. Strange indeed that the BBC , who likes us to believe it is impartial does not mention these freezing temperatures and Arctic conditions.

Some warming in the Antarctic has only been on a small 20 mile strip of the Antarctic Peninsula as a result of the 1977- 1998 warming period. This is insignificant compared to the overall size of the huge Antarctic continent.

Studies by the WeatherAction team(weatheraction.com) led by astrophysicist Piers Corbyn and also the measurements of sun spots by the Institute of Solar-Terrestrial physics in Irkutsk in Russia show that over the last 50 years solar activity has been at its highest for the past several thousand years.

The Russian physicists have analysed sun spot activity from 1882 to 2000 and have noted that the minimum of the cycle of solar activity will occur around 2021 to 2026 and that we will be facing not global warming but global cooling leading to a deep freeze around 2050.

The UN IPCC graphics have left out the medieval warming period (950-1300AD) and the Little Ice Age (1350- 1850). This alters the picture entirely and does not then portray the alternating warm cool warm cool cycle of recorded world temperatures. Also statements put out by the UN IPCC are unrepresentative of many of its members. I do not recall any votes being taken of the opinion of members.

At the New York climate change conference in March as well as Vaclav Klaus delegates also heard Dr Richard Linzen from MIT probably the leading climatologist in the world today, as well as Professor Syun-Ichi Akasofu, former director of the International Arctic Research Center, Dr Willie Soon of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for astrophysics and Professor Paul Reiter of the Pasteur Institute who all demolished the global alarmists case piece by piece.

In his speech the EU President Vaclav Klaus had these controversial words for the environmentalist lobby.

“Environmentalists-even mainstream environmentalists are less concerned about any crisis posed by global warming than they are eager to command human behaviour and restrict economic activity” He also said “their true plans and ambitions: to stop economic development and return mankind centuries back.

They are interested in their businesses and their profits made with the help of politicians”

He got a standing ovation from the assembled audience.

His assertion about the involvement of politicians is not surprising. This whole movement is in many parts a political movement with nearly all the recognised climatologists throughout the world dissenting from the man made global warming theory.

This can be seen on the US Senate Environment committee web site with over 700 leading climatologists from 24 different countries including Nobel Prize laureates all dissenting from the man made global warming theory. It has been well reported that at least one of the architects of Koyoto has strong links with the New Age Movement which is not a movement that would promote economic growth.

We have all recently noticed the escalating price of food. The reason for this is because American grain, the breadbasket of the world, is increasingly being turned into ethanol which has led to a three fold increase of maize prices worldwide. This has the potential to cause worldwide starvation!"

Terri Jackson is a Queens graduate physicist, climatologist and formerly founder of the Energy Group at the Institute of Physics, London."

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/environment/pouring-cold-water-on-global-warming-14299972.html

• 2. For their purpose, the IPCC ignored the fact that the Earth went through a cold period called "the Little Ice Age" from 1400 to 1800.

• 3. The Earth has been recovering from the Little Ice Age from 1800 to the present. A recovery from a cold period is warming. It is mostly this warming that is causing the present climate change and it is not man-made. If they admit the existence of the Little Ice Age, they cannot claim that the global average temperature unexpectedly increased from 1900.

• 3a. In addition to the steady recovery from the Little Ice Age, there are superposed oscillatory changes. The prominent one is called the multi-decadal oscillation.

• 3b. In fact, most of the temperature change from 1800 to 2008 can be explained by the combination of the recovery from the Little Ice Age and the multi-decadal oscillation. If the recovery from the Little Ice Age continues, the predicted temperature rise will be less than 1°C (2°F) by 2100, not 3~6°C.

• 4. Because the warming began as early as 1800, not after 1946 (when CO2 in the atmosphere began to increase rapidly), the Little Ice Age was a sort of unwanted and inconvenient fact for the IPCC. (In their voluminous IPCC report, the Little Ice Age was mentioned casually only once, referring to it as "the so-called Little Ice Age.")

• 5. There are a large number of observations that the Earth has been recovering from the Little Ice Age from 1800 on, not from 1946 when CO2 is the atmosphere began to increase rapidly. For example:
• Receding of glaciers in many part of the world
• Receding of sea ice in the Arctic Ocean
• Change in freezing/melting dates of northern rivers and lakes

• 6. There is no firm observational confirmation that CO2 is really responsible for the warming during the last century. It is simply and assumption or hypothesis that the IPCC has presented as a fact.

• 7. The IPCC claims that supercomputer studies confirm the hypothesis.

• 8. Supercomputers cannot confirm their hypothesis, since they can simply "tune" their computer programs so as to fit the observations.

• 9. Although the IPCC predicted that by the year 2100 the temperature will increase 3~6°C, the temperature has stopped increasing after 2000 and shows even a decreasing sign.

• 10. Thus, their prediction failed even during the first decade of the present century, in spite of the fact that CO2 is still increasing.

• 11. This means that their CO2 hypothesis and computer programs are shown to be incorrect, proving that the program was tuned.

• 12. Why? Because they ignored natural causes of climate change, such as the recovery from the Little Ice Age and the multi-decadal oscillation.

• 13. The stopping of the warming is caused by the fact that the multi-decadal oscillation, another natural cause, has overtaken the recovery from the Little Ice Age.

• 14. In fact, the same thing happened in 1940, and the temperature actually decreased from 1940 to 1975, in spite of the fact that CO2 began to increase rapidly in 1946.

• 15. It was said at that time that a new ice age was coming even by some of those who now advocate the CO2 hypothesis.

• 16. If the IPCC could include the physical processes involved in the recovery from the Little Ice Age and the multi-decadal oscillation, they could have predicted the stopping of the temperature increase.

• 17. However, they could not program processes for the recovery from the Little Ice Age and the multi-decadal oscillation, because the causes of the Little Ice Age, or the recovery from it, or the multi-decadal oscillation are not known yet. There are many unknown natural changes, including the Big Ice Ages.

• 18. Thus, the present state of climate change study is still insufficient to make accurate predictions of future temperature changes. Climate change studies should go back to basic science, avoiding interference from special interest groups, including the mass media.

• 19. Unfortunately, I must conclude that the IPCC manipulated science for its own purpose and brought the premature science of climate change to the international political stage, causing considerable confusion and advancing the completely unnecessary "cap and trade" argument.

• 20. What is happening now at many climate change conferences is simply an airing of the struggle between the poor countries trying to seize money from the rich countries, using the term "climate change" as an excuse.

• 21. We should stop convening useless international conferences by bureaucrats and pay much more attention to environmental destructions under global capitalism. There is no reason to alarm the general public with predictions of catastrophic disasters caused by the CO2 effect; and the mass media should stop reporting premature science results.

• 22. Basically, what is really needed are effective energy saving efforts by all countries.

Footnote: The hockey stick figure, which played the important role in the IPCC report of 2001, has not officially been withdrawn yet, although it has since been found to be erroneous.

Syun Akasofu is with the International Arctic Research Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks in Fairbanks, AK"

http://www.hawaiireporter.com/story.aspx?d9a076a1-bfd2-4b14-a96e-0b88975cbc52

"NASA Study Acknowledges Solar Cycle, Not Man, Responsible for Past Warming

Michael Andrews - June 4, 2009 9:37 AM

Past studies have shown that sunspot numbers correspond to warming or cooling trends. The twentieth century has featured heightened activity, indicating a warming trend.  (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Solar activity has shown a major spike in the twentieth century, corresponding to global warming. This cyclic variation was acknowledged by a recent NASA study, which reviewed a great deal of past climate data.  (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

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Report indicates solar cycle has been impacting Earth since the Industrial Revolution

 

Some researchers believe that the solar cycle influences global climate changes.  They attribute recent warming trends to cyclic variation.  Skeptics, though, argue that there's little hard evidence of a solar hand in recent climate changes.

Now, a new research report from a surprising source may help to lay this skepticism to rest.  A study from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland looking at climate data over the past century has concluded that solar variation has made a significant impact on the Earth's climate.  The report concludes that evidence for climate changes based on solar radiation can be traced back as far as the Industrial Revolution.

Past research has shown that the sun goes through eleven year cycles.  At the cycle's peak, solar activity occurring near sunspots is particularly intense, basking the Earth in solar heat.  According to Robert Cahalan, a climatologist at the Goddard Space Flight Center, "Right now, we are in between major ice ages, in a period that has been called the Holocene."

Thomas Woods, solar scientist at the University of Colorado in Boulder concludes, "The fluctuations in the solar cycle impacts Earth's global temperature by about 0.1 degree Celsius, slightly hotter during solar maximum and cooler during solar minimum.  The sun is currently at its minimum, and the next solar maximum is expected in 2012."

According to the study, during periods of solar quiet, 1,361 watts per square meter of solar energy reaches Earth's outermost atmosphere.  Periods of more intense activity brought 1.4 watts per square meter (0.1 percent) more energy.

While the NASA study acknowledged the sun's influence on warming and cooling patterns, it then went badly off the tracks.  Ignoring its own evidence, it returned to an argument that man had replaced the sun as the cause current warming patterns.  Like many studies, this conclusion was based less on hard data and more on questionable correlations and inaccurate modeling techniques.

The inconvertible fact, here is that even NASA's own study acknowledges that solar variation has caused climate change in the past.  And even the study's members, mostly ardent supports of AGW theory, acknowledge that the sun may play a significant role in future climate changes."

http://www.dailytech.com/NASA+Study+Acknowledges+Solar+Cycle+Not+Man+Responsible+for+Past+Warming/article15310.htm

"How a Loophole Benefits GE in Bank Rescue
Industrial Giant Becomes Top Recipient in Debt-Guarantee Program

By Jeff Gerth and Brady Dennis
ProPublica and Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, June 29, 2009

General Electric, the world's largest industrial company, has quietly become the biggest beneficiary of one of the government's key rescue programs for banks. ......."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/28/AR2009062802955_pf.html

Sidebar comment on YouTube        "Please visit http://nvic.org This is a very informative site not only on the H1N1 vaccine but many others. Barbara Loe Fisher, President National Vaccine Information Center. June 17, 2009"

Found the video via Zero Hedge, market manipulation an issue they've discussed extensively.

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"Taxpayer Funds Support Money Laundering?!

http://market-ticker.org/archives/1164-Taxpayer-Funds-Support-Money-Laundering!.html

She sounds like a person of great substance .... wish her and her children the very best.

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"In Political Storm, Governor’s Wife Is Hurt but Unbowed


http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/27/us/27jenny.html?_r=1&scp=3&sq=jenny%20sanford&st=cse