Monday, May 6, 2013

Free Coffee

What does the price of free coffee have to do with anything?  Please study the pictured sign and tell me what you see.  How does this relate to the price of tea in China?  Well, the point of all this non-sense is to highlight what many people don't see when they are presented with explanations for why we are being forced to accept nonsensical explanations for our current energy policies.  Once again my friend David has done an excellent job of doing just that.  Once you read his piece, go back to the picture and see if it makes more sense.

"Where's the global warming?

As I sit here this morning in supposedly sub-tropical Louisiana, it is
overcast, the temperature is 46 degrees, the wind chill is 40 degrees,
and it may well drop into the upper 30's tonight. According to an
article I saw recently, the US is having the second coldest Spring in
recorded history.

This fact, along with the knowledge that the average temperature has
been dropping now for 10 years, doesn't give a lot of credence to the
Global Warming "scientists", now does it?  Particularly when one adds in
the fact that the same guys were saying in the 1970's that we were
entering a new Ice Age.

I have never bought into the fact that climate change, whichever way it
may be changing, is caused by anything mankind is doing for several
reasons, primarily the fact that 1,000 years ago it was much, much
warmer throughout the entire world than even the global warming fanatics
are predicting for our future.  Normans at that time settled in
Greenland, note the name they gave the place, and farmed there for 300
years until the climate turned colder again. Greenland today is nothing
much more than an ice cap.

The warm weather at that time certainly wasn't caused by Viking SUV's
and Russian coal fired electrical plants, now was it?

Yet, contradictory to all evidence, this administration and a cabal of
fanatics continues to, shall we say, inconvenience us to prevent "global
warming".  Regulation after regulation are being initiated in order to
force us to "go green."  Gas prices have gone up from $1.80 a gallon
when Bush went out of office to what they are today. We continue to
import a great deal of our oil even though we have more oil here than
all of the Middle East, yet we are not allowed to drill for most of it.

The Obama administration claims that we have imported less oil in the
past couple of years and this is true, but it is due to only one thing,
that being the discovery of the massive oil fields in the Dakotas.  It
is all on private land and they have not yet come up with a way to stop
or reduce the production of the oil there. Nonetheless, it is not nearly
enough.  We could be completely energy independent within three years if
the administration would let the oil companies and independent drillers
bring our own oil out of the ground....but they won't. One of the first
things Obama did when he took office was to cancel a number of oil
leases Bush had granted. Why do you suppose he did that and why do you
suppose he continues to stifle drilling?

You are being forced to drive tiny little cars which greatly increase
your chances of being killed or severely injured in an accident. 
Utility bills are going up as coal plants are being closed and nuclear
power plant permits are being denied.  Meat prices have risen
significantly because corn normally used for feed is being diverted to
the ethanol industry, which of course is subsidized by the federal
government.  Without those billions in subsidies, your gas prices would
be much higher.  But how are the subsidies funded?  They are funded from
your tax dollars, that's how.

Ah yes, good old ethanol (pardon the incomplete sentence).  It destroys
small engines, is exceptionally hard on and reduces the life span of
your car engines, gives you worse gas mileage, and substantially cuts
your power, but have no fear, the government is going to fix it.  The
EPA wants to increase the percentage of ethanol in your gas from 10% to
15%.   What is the benefit?  Well, ethanol in your gas reduces the so
called "greenhouse gasses" by 1/19 of 1%.  Unfortunately, when one
considers the pollution caused by the manufacture of ethanol, the
reduction changes from a positive, if one could call it that, to a negative.

It is almost as if a certain political ideology is deliberately
attempting to strangle our economy and negatively affect our lifestyle. 
It's either that or they are all insane, which is a distinct
possibility.  Perhaps it is a combination of both.  I am unable to find,
when all of the negatives and positives are added up, a single thing
which is being done which actually benefits the economy or the welfare
of the whole of the people.

So why and how is all of this being done?  The only conclusion I can
reach is that it is being perpetrated by a group which craves total
power over the populace and is assisted by others who reside in a
permanent bubble of cognitive dissonance that does not allow them to
perceive reality.  Furthermore, it is facilitated by a large percentage
of the population which has no idea what is happening to them because
their focus of concentration is on their favorite sports teams and sit coms.

Well, enough for now.  I had originally intended to only comment on the
weather, but as usual, got a little carried away with my dialogue."

David

"People who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like."
       -- Abraham Lincoln