CALIFORNIA NOW GETTING "GREEN" CARPETS

Sounds a mouldy idea to me!

The 12 million square feet of dreary new carpet the state buys for its offices each year -- enough to cover 208 football fields or 47 miles of four-lane freeway -- is about to get a lot greener. Under a new government purchasing policy called the "California Gold Sustainable Carpet Standard," companies selling broadloom to the state will be required to ensure it contains at least 10 percent recycled fiber and fewer smelly and headache-inducing emissions, known as "volatile organic compounds."

Details of the new carpet standard, which goes into effect Sept. 1 and which is being watched closely by a dozen other states, are described in a management memo the state has sent all its department heads. A copy of the memo was obtained by The Bee. The standard requires that carpet vendors that want to do business with the state must also:

* Take back more worn carpets and ensure their fibers get recycled at specialized facilities, such as L.A. Fiber Co. of Los Angeles.

* Get certified by a third party as a maker of environmentally friendly and sustainable carpets, whether they are made with petrochemical or bio-based materials.

Carpet makers that are members of the Carpet & Rug Institute, a Georgia-based national trade group representing about 90 per cent of manufacturers, are aware of California's new standard and are gearing up to ensure their products and manufacturing processes will meet it, said Bill Branch, a spokesman for the Department of General Services. "California did go a little further on the carpet standard, as California is wont to do, adding a few little twists, but nothing that has got we people in the industry exercised," said Werner Braun, the institute's president. "The industry was out there doing this before California got involved, so it was happy that California has decided to standardize its carpet purchases."

California buys about $26 million worth of new carpet for its departments and agencies each year, Branch said. It replaces worn broadloom and outfits new government buildings and leased facilities, he added. Branch said the state removes and needs to dispose of 5.3 million square feet of worn carpet every year. A December 2004 study by the California Integrated Waste Management Board estimated that about 840,000 tons of worn carpets land in California landfills each year, representing about 2 percent of all state waste.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wanted to see worn carpets diverted from landfills to recyclers, adopting an executive order in 2004 to promote environmentally sustainable practices in state buildings, Branch said. Recyclers take old carpets and process them into new carpet underpads, furniture battings and cushions, reinforcing filler for concrete, fence posts, road underlayment, plastic lumber and automotive parts.

Asked whether the more stringent requirements will boost prices the state pays for its new carpets, Branch replied: "We have heard from some in the carpet industry that this should not affect carpet prices." California's new carpet policy is the result of ongoing efforts that began in October 2003. An interagency carpet working group has met 13 times since then to develop the carpet standard, a more stringent version of a draft national standard. State officials also held two public meetings in 2005 that were attended by many players in the national carpet and design industry, Branch said. The carpet effort is part of a larger state task force whose mission is to develop more environmentally friendly purchasing policies.

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Keeping Taxpayers in the Dark (Ithaca Solar Panels lose nearly a million bucks)

Once again proving that social engineering and taxpayer money shouldn't mix comes this news from Ithaca, New York: In 1999, the Tompkins County Board of Representatives voted to install solar power on the roof of the country library. (In cold, dark upstate NY.)

It will be paid for with $551,025 of County funds -- an addition to the library capital project -- and $455,514 in grants from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) and the U.S. Department of Energy.

So, how much power has their system generated since $1,006,539 was spent to install it? 460,124 kilowatt hours (kWh) since it was installed, in July of 2001. On the open market 460,124 kWh would cost a commercial user (assuming an astronomically high average price of $0.10 per kWh) about $46,000. Only in The City of Evil could spending over a million dollars to generate at most $9,358 worth of electricity per year make sense.

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We Don't Harm Nature, Nature Harms Us

I recently came across an advertisement with a big picture of a polar bear and a penguin off some paradise shore with a long, nice beach and palm trees in the background. The text said something like "are you afraid of what's happening to the environment? Us too, buy our products and it will all get better." I don't blame companies for trying to sell their products, but all this global warming talk makes me nervous. No, I'm not nervous because humankind is beating up the environment causing our own destruction. That, I am sure, is not really true. I am nervous because all this talk of nature, and this planet for that matter, means two things: first, that people are ignorant and gullible, and second, that technology-hating progress-wanna-stopper environmentalists will get even more influential.

That people are ignorant and gullible is perhaps no news, but that a lie can so firmly get rooted among people all over the world as this greenhouse effect thing is certainly terrifying. Everybody "knows" something very bad is going on and that it is the market's and the corporations' fault. The newspapers and TV and radio stations are packed with reports of yet another "natural disaster" and journalists never seem to miss the opportunity to make it seem more government is needed to fix it all. The global and domestic markets are way too free of government intervention, they say.

Of course all the ignorants out there eventually will believe this massive propaganda. People in general like to be fed with information rather than get off their butts and try to find it themselves (a single Google search would lead them to the unbiased facts on Marshall.org). It does not really matter what the united media and politics front claims when they do it so persistently and on a global scale; as we know, you just have to repeat one lie over and over again to make people believe it is true. It is the same whether corporations are said to cause a global meltdown of nature or saying the earth is flat and the center of the universe.

Sooner or later someone will, by mistake or not, find the truth and be brave and strong enough to claim everybody's wrong even though he or she will be persecuted. Like Copernicus and Galileo claimed everybody was wrong about the world and the universe. It is impossible to know who will be the one who finally makes the big crack in the wall of lies, but someone will. Sooner or later.

The problem comes with the thing that makes me nervous: the environmentalists. These people seem to have a Rousseauean "noble savage" ideal and want us all to live in the jungle like apes. At least, they are doing whatever they can to stop everything that is civilized and increase everything that is not. They seem to want to abolish technology, science, and everything about the economy, but they really, really want to increase the size of government and they would probably not hesitate to use it to force urban people into body labor at some distant farm or preserve somewhere.

When you combine the two, the gullible and truth-avoiding masses with the increasing influence of anti-civilizationists, you make me real nervous. It should be no surprise statists in general welcome the judgment day prophesies of the environmentalists. Even if they do not share the same end goal, they do have a common interest in increasing the size of government. And if lying is all it takes to realize that, then why the hell wait?

But I fail to realize how they could ever get this far, even though power seems to be an enormous incentive for people to actually do something. It is easy to understand that they can just continue to play their game now when the ball is already in play. But it takes a lot of skill to get it rolling in the first place. How do they do it? In spite of everything, all the facts show the exact opposite of what these people say. These guys are real pros. Based on data collected only for the last one hundred years (collection of climate data began in the early 20th century), out of earth's total estimated lifetime of five billion or so years, the environmentalists claim everything we know and hold dear is going down the drain. And they can do it pretty much unquestioned too. They must be doing something right or they have hired the world's very best communication experts to work 24/7 on creating this mass hysteria.

After all, the findings in the old ice buried deep down on the poles show the climate is always changing and that throughout history the temperature has been frequently bouncing up and down. There's a reason the Vikings called that big island northeast of Canada "Greenland" when they discovered it in the 9th century, don't you think? The truth, it seems, is that we have not screwed nature even though we are not always as loving and caring as we perhaps should be. We've been screwed by environmentalists.

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The Past is the Key to the Present: Greenhouse and Icehouse over Time

(Excerpts from an article by Professor Ian Plimer, School of Earth Sciences, The University of Melbourne)

For 80% of time, planet Earth has been a warm wet greenhouse planet. Polar icecaps are rare, plants have only be on Earth for 10% of time and 99.99% of all life that has ever existed is extinct. Global atmospheric CO2 and CH4 have been variable over time and have decreased over time whereas O2 has been in the atmosphere for 50% of time, has greatly fluctuated and has increased over time. There have been 5 major and numerous minor mass extinctions of complex life, extinction opens new environments for colonisation and, because former terrestrial animals have become extinct, we humans now have a habitat.

Sea levels have risen and fallen thousands of time by up to 400 metres, land levels constantly rise and fall and massive rapid climate changes derived from supernovae, solar flaring, sunspots, meteorites, comets, uplift of mountain ranges, pulling apart of oceans, stitching together of land masses, drifting continents, orbital changes, changes in the shape of Earth, ice armadas, changes in ocean currents and volcanoes. There is no evidence that life has changed climates. The major components of the atmosphere have been added by volcanicity and other components are added by life, principally from the organisms that have ruled and continue to rule the world (bacteria). The messages written in stone show that the lithosphere, biosphere, atmosphere and biosphere are constantly interacting on our dynamic evolving planet. There is no evidence to suggest that the future of planet Earth will be significantly different from its past. However, planet Earth is not a spaceship and the great environmental changes in the past have been related to rocky and icy visitors from space.....

The zenith of the last glaciation was 18,000 years ago. Sea level was 130 metres lower than today, temperature was 10-15øC lower than today and there were very strong cold winds. The northern hemisphere was covered by ice to 38 §N with more northern areas such as Scandinavia was covered by 3 km of ice. The loading of the polar areas with ice changed the shape of the planet, the planet's rotation changed and as a result ocean currents distributing heat across the Earth were changed. Humans lived very short lives around the edge of ice sheets. Australia was scoured by anti-cyclonic winds that deposited sand dunes and carried sea salt spray to be trapped in the inland basins. Tasmania and parts of the south eastern highlands of Australia were covered in ice and sea level was so low that Aboriginals walked to Tasmania from mainland Australia. Rainforest disappeared with the Amazon Basin consisting of grasslands and copses of trees.

The northern polar ice sheet started to melt 14,700 years ago. There were very rapid and major temperature fluctuations, sea level rose and fell and the total sea level rise over the last 14,700 years has been at least 130 metres. Land masses previously covered with ice started to rise. For example, Scandinavia is still rising and has risen more than 340 metres over the last 14,700 years. As a counterbalance, the Netherlands, south eastern England, Schleswig-Holstein and Denmark are sinking. The breaching of dams of melt waters filled the oceans with cold surface waters 12,000-11,000 and 8,500-8,000 years ago resulting in changed climates, an increase in sea level and changes to ocean currents. After these intensely cool periods, temperatures rose by 5-10øC in the space of a few decades. Sea level rise resulted in the breaching of the Mediterranean into the Black Sea Basin some 7,600 years ago and is probably the origin of the Sumarian, Babylonian and biblical stories of a great flood.

One of the consequences of a massive sea level rise over the last 14,700 years is that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet was no longer unpinned by the land. Two thirds of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet collapsed into the oceans and sea level rose 12 metres. The final third of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet has yet to collapse to produce a 6 metre sea level rise as part of the dynamic post-glacial climate on Earth. Climate changes induced by changes in ocean currents cooled North Africa, grasslands changed to a desert, humans migrated and the great Mesopotamian cities were established.

Sea levels were 1-3 metres higher in a greenhouse 6,000 years ago. There was 20% more rainfall. Cold dry periods, glacier expansion and crop failures between 5,800 and 4,900 years ago resulted in deforestation, flooding, silting of irrigation channels, salinisation and the collapse of the Sumerian city states. Long periods of El Nino-induced drought resulted in the abandonment of Middle Eastern, Indian and North American towns. In 1470 BC (?), Thira exploded and threw 30 cubic kilometers of dust into the atmosphere. The tsunami, ash blanket and destruction of Thira greatly weakened the dominant Minoans. This led to the rise of the Mycaeneans and Greeks. One volcano changed the course of western history.

Global cooling from 1,300 to 500 BC gave rise to the advance of glaciers, migration, invasion and famine. Global warming commenced again at 500 BC, there was an excess of food and great empires such as the Ashoka, Ch'hin and the Romans grew. Contemporary records and Roman clothing shows that conditions were some 5øC warmer than today.

In 535 AD Krakatoa exploded, as did Rabaul in 536 AD. The Earth passed through cometary dust in 536 AD. The dusty atmosphere reflected heat and darkness prevailed and, as a result, the climate cooled and there was famine and warfare. Changes in ocean currents resulted in the Medieval Warm Period from 900 to 1300 AD. The first to feel the change were the Vikings who were able to navigate the northern waters, colonized Newfoundland, colonized Greenland and established extensive trade routes as far south as the modern Gulf States. On Greenland, crops were grown and there were cattle. This would not be possible today. The warmer wetter climate of Europe produced excess crops and wealth which resulted in the building of castles, cathedrals and monastries. As with previous greenhouse events, there was great prosperity.

In 1280 AD, volcanic eruptions on Iceland and a change in ocean currents started the Little Ice Age which finished in 1920. The North Sea froze in 1303 and 1306-1307, there was massive famine in 1315 and the plague pandemic attacked the weakened population in 1347-1349. There was massive depopulation and it took Europe 250 years to reach the population of 1280 AD. During the Little Ice Age, there were warmer periods associated with sunspot activity. During minimum sunspot activity (1440-1460, 1687-1703 and 1808-1821), the intensely cold conditions were recorded by the Dutch masters and King Henry VIII was able to roast oxen on the frozen Thames. There were food shortages. Short cold periods occurred after the eruptions of Tambora (1815) and Krakatoa (1883) respectively. In fact, 1816 was known as the 'year without a summer'. This was the time when Turner painted stormy oceans and skies full of volcanic dust, Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein and Byron wrote Darkness.

The twentieth Century and early 21st Century AD are times of natural post-glacial rebound. Ice sheets, a rare phenomenon in the history of time, still exist. Sea level is relatively low, as are global temperatures and atmospheric CO2. Between 1920 and 1945, there was a period of warming (0.37øC) and another that commenced in 1976 (0.32øC). In 1976-1977, global temperatures in the lower atmosphere jumped 0.3øC, sea surface temperature in the equatorial Pacific jumped 0.6øC, sea surface temperature during upwelling increased 1.5 to 3øC but there was reduced upwelling, the heat content of the upper 300 metres of the world's oceans increased, there was increased wave activity in the North Sea and the length of the day changed. The stepwise increase in temperature in 1976-1977 shows that there was a major re-ordering of the ocean heat transport coinciding with an orbital change expressed as a change in the length of the day. Maybe global warming of the 20th Century is just a measure of the variability on a dynamic evolving planet?

To put such measurements into perspective over the history of time, changes in atmospheric temperature in the 20th Century can only be considered small and slow. A 24 year global coverage of satellite atmosphere temperatures shows only modest warming in the Northern Hemisphere and a slight cooling in the Southern Hemisphere. Temperature measurements from balloons agree with the satellite measurements for the period of overlap. Because greenhouse warming is a phenomenon of the atmosphere, significant changes should have been recorded. They have not.

Science is married to evidence and bathes in modest uncertainty. The nature of science is skepticism and science encourages argument and dissent. Scientific evidence is derived from reproducible observation, measurement, experiment and calculation. Evidence in geology is interdisciplinary, terrestrial and extra-terrestrial and shows the complex and fascinating intertwining of evolving natural processes on a dynamic planet. Scientists engage in healthy argument about the veracity of evidence. On the basis of evidence, an explanation called a scientific theory is constructed. A scientific theory is the best available explanation of evidence, it may change with new evidence and it must be coherent with the existing body of knowledge. Scientists also argue about scientific theory. Scientific theories are testable and once the scientific theory has been tested over time, it becomes accepted into the body of knowledge. The word belief is not used in science because belief is untestable. This process has not taken place with the construction of what is popularly called the greenhouse effect. Furthermore, science is unable to make judgments about what is good or bad. These are judgments with vary with time and are based on contemporary politics, religion, aesthetics and culture.

Underpinning the global warming and climate change mantra is the imputation that humans live on a non-dynamic planet. On all scales of observation and measurement, sea level and climate are not constant. Change is normal and is driven by a large number of natural forces. Change can be slow or very fast. However, we see political slogans such as Stop Climate Change or government publications such as Living with Climate Change demonstrating that both the community and government believe that climate variability and change are not normal. By using the past as the key to the present, we are facing the next inevitable glaciation yet the climate, economic, political and social models of today assess the impact of a very slight warming and do not evaluate the higher risk of yet another glaciation. Geology, archaeology and history show that during glaciation, famine, war, depopulation and extinction are the norm.

In 1831, Admiral Sir James Robert George Graham had the Union Jack hoisted on a volcanic land mass that suddenly appeared near Sicily. It was called Graham Bank and was claimed by England. It was also claimed by the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies who called it Isola Ferdinandea, the French (L'Isle Julia) and other powers who variously named it Nerita, Hotham, Scicca and Corrao. In the subsequent dispute over ownership, France and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies almost came to war and England and the Two Kingdoms of Sicily had a diplomatic row. During the intense diplomatic dispute, the island quietly slipped back underwater. In 1987, US warplanes thought the dark mass 8 metres below sea level was a Libyan submarine and attacked it with depth charges.

In February 2000 when the volcano again stirred, Domenico Macalusa, a surgeon, diver and the Honorary Inspector of Sicilian Cultural Relics, took action. He persuaded Charles and Camilla, the last two surviving relatives of the Bourbon Kings of the Two Sicilies to fund the bolting of a 150 kg marble plaque to the volcano at some 20 metres below sea level. The plaque pre-empted ownership if the volcano ever again rose above sea level. It was placed underwater in September 2001, by November 2002, person or persons unknown had smashed the plaque into 12 pieces. This rock is worth nothing, is of no use as a territorial possession and is of no scientific interest and yet the French and Bourbons nearly came to war 170 years ago and the English and Italians are still in dispute. Graham Banks serves to show that whatever political decisions we humans make, the land rises and falls, sea level rises and fall and climates change as they have done since the dawn of time.

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists

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