Tilting at Windmills

Not the picturesque windmills of yore, Don Quixote's tilt of choice, wind "turbine tiffs" in Chicago suburb Hanover Park. Trib:

The aesthetics of building such windmills, which are 10 to 20 times larger than the first ones installed in California in the 1980s, have sparked turbine tiffs in other residential areas. Several residents of Cape Cod, Mass., including the Kennedy family, have bristled at a proposed offshore wind farm in Nantucket Sound.

Auto worker union members demonstrate in Chicago against the Dem-proposed higher CAFE standards which would mandate more tinny little cars (death traps? remember the flaming Pinto) and cost jobs. Reportedly one sign said "Rahm, don't take away my Ram".

Another point on the Y2K Bug adjustment which poked holes in the US warming argument, as the revised numbers showed the 1930's Depression era temps scored highest---if our numbers are wrong, what about the rest of the world's? Michael Fumento, the American Spectator:

"Many of the stations in China, Indonesia, Brazil and elsewhere are in urban areas (such as Shanghai or Beijing)," observes McIntyre. This can produce hotter temperatures, yet some of the major trackers of the data from these countries, including the National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration, make no attempt to adjust for monitor placement errors. In any event, for some reason "the U.S. history has a rather minimal (warming) trend if any since the 1930s," while the ROW [rest of the world] has a very pronounced trend since the 1930s.

Thus if the U.S. model, by far the most accurate one, became the model, it would be a gut punch to those claiming we must take drastic, horrifically expensive measures right now to ameliorate warming.

Therefore, for the GISS to say this "only" affects the U.S. data is rather like a used car salesman insisting, "This automobile defect is trivial; it only affects steering and braking."

And Dennis Byrne in the Tribune dispelling the myths on BP. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) is being dishonest or dumb again, take your pick, amid more demagoguery:

For example, in ranting about the relatively small amount of ammonia allowed into the lake, the critics ignore the fact that ammonia is not a bioaccumulative chemical. It breaks down in the water. If it didn't, all the fish in the Great Lakes might have disappeared eons ago from swimming in their own urine.

Also conveniently missing from the debate is the context that could be provided by comparing BP with other industrial and city "dischargers." According to the EPA, BP's 4,925 pounds of suspended solids allowed a day compares with 16,630 at International Steel Group's East Chicago plant and 121,861 at its Burns Harbor facility. Ispat Industries' East Chicago plant is allowed 130,453 pounds, about 27 times BP's limit. Chicago, of course, is on another planet, permitted 243,000 pounds, almost 50 times BP's. Maybe Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, who is threatening to sue BP, ought to sue himself. Except, I suppose that Chicago's discharges don't count because they aren't into the lake; they're just gifted to the Illinois river system.

Note also might be taken of the fact that no ammonia limits are imposed on a bunch of papermakers and cities such as Milwaukee and Green Bay. Chicago's allowable ammonia discharge (from the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District) is 61,000 pounds, compared with BP's 1,584.

So cut the holier-than-thou political hot air in the Windy City, which drives up our cost of living and imperils our economic future. Private sector technological improvements are as usual leading the way to a better quality of life for us and our children.

Let's have less quixotic and costly tilting at windmills and more hard data and practical clean solutions we can live with, like developing nuclear power. Even some greenies agree.

UPDATE: Times Online:

It is expected to rank alongside wonder products from previous generations such as Bakelite in the 1930s, carbon fibre in the 1980s and silicone in the 1990s. Mercouri Kanatzidis, a chemistry professor at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, said: “It is an amazing material. It has the lowest density of any product known to man, yet at the same time it can do so much. I can see aerogel being used for everything from filtering polluted water to insulating against extreme temperatures and even for jewellery.”

Aerogel is nicknamed “frozen smoke” and is made by extracting water from a silica gel, then replacing it with gas such as carbon dioxide. The result is a substance that is capable of insulating against extreme temperatures and of absorbing pollutants such as crude oil.

Related post: Green Scheme in Wilmette