Risky Recycling

Hot Grater?

The old feeder has always believed that recycling begins at home. I throw away so little trash that my hauling service only stops by the feedlot every other week. Even then, he doesn't get much. The stuff I buy gets used, then used again, then saved for parts.

When recycling systems reach a certain scale, the purity and safety of 'new" products made from recycled goods becomes impossibly difficult to maintain. Was something you wear made from infectious hospital wastes? Did the plastic scraps used to make your chair come from containers that once held toxic chemicals? Who knows? Nobody is minding the store.

Buying goods made of recycled materials from foreign countries only increases the risk. It is bad enough to worry that your toothpaste might be sweetened with poisonous anti-freeze, or that your dog food is laced with melamine. Many third world countries are so poor that they won't refuse to recycle even highly radioactive metals. What do they make out of this melted down mess? The things you buy at WalMart and other stores whose shelves are stocked with Chinese and other third world products.

Here are some examples of radioactive products, including Ekco graters made in China. It isn't only China that does this. Read about how Tennessee, home of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, includes radioactive metals from decommissioned nuclear weapons plants in metal products. Some of it nearly ended up in popular recliners.

They have to get rid of these hot metals, plus tons of radioactive concrete waste, etc. somehow. We aren't supposed to worry that our La-Z-Boy recliners might be X-raying our butts. Why? Because here in America, our all-knowing government is keeping an eye on these things.
---
Don't trust anyone unless you know where they live and where their kids go to school.
---
Hat Tip: Free Republic.

Are you ready for that inventory?

The Green Inquisition

Nancy Pelosi, speaking to the ChiComs, who are already sold on totalitarianism, said that "Every aspect of our lives must be subject to inventory" to fight global warming. Every aspect? Inventory? Ed Morrissey notes on the Hot Air Blog:

Make no mistake about it. The climate-change activists want state control of energy production and use, which will allow the government control over every aspect of our lives. It’s the lifelong dream of utopian elitists.

Ed also has a video to help answer your questions about just who might conduct such an inventory.
---
As ptg says, "Why don't they just pass a Regulation of Everyday Life Bill and be done with it?"

US plants, trees to sue feds over CO2 rules

Corn in Court?

The global warming wackos may well have made enemies among the tree-hugger branch of the environmentalist movement. Faction has raised its ugly head to threaten wacko solidarity. It was bound to happen.

The tree-huggers are accelerating their push to win the right to vote and to file lawsuits for trees and other plants. At the same time, the Climate Change/Global warming movement is pressuring Congress to pass legislation severely restricting the production of carbon dioxide (CO2). The conflict: plant life depends on CO2 for its very existence. Increasing the level of CO2 in the atmosphere would cause plants to thrive. Decreasing it would arguably harm plant life.

Decreasing the atmospheric CO2 will certainly make Global Warming believers feel like they are "doing something" to stave off an imagined catastrophe for humans and animals, but at what cost to the plants? That will be the central issue in a federal class action lawsuit now being planned by plant advocates. Because they have yet to win full standing for plants to file suit on their own, chlorophilians are soliciting volunteer lawyers to serve as guardians ad litem for our green brothers and sisters.

It isn't clear whether the plant life advocates will be satisfied with blocking new CO2 limiting laws and regulations or if they will sue for even more. They may argue that increasing the nation's output of CO2 would be in the best interest of all plants. The lawsuit may ask the courts to order such a result, possibly by requiring the construction of more fossil fuel power generation facilities or easing emission standards for automobiles.
---
N.B.
In the USA, plants significantly outnumber humans; if they ever get the vote...

Aspiring Light Bulb King Dethroned

Totalitarian State Illuminator

The old feeder is probably the worst businessman ever. Anyone would be better off taking investment advice or entrepreneurial guidance from a Magic Eight Ball than from me. Heck, I ought to start using one myself instead of trying to use my head.

I have successfully stored away enough cheap incandescent 40 Watt light bulbs to last me until I croak or the electrical grid collapses, whichever comes first. I'm not going to be a victim of the eco-totalitarian oppressors, or so I figured. When the law makes it illegal to sell incandescent light bulbs in 2012, I will not be forced into using cold, poisonous compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs).

I find that the best sources are big home improvement stores. Every time I visit one, I get a cart full of good, old-fashioned room warming incandescent light bulbs. Some places have already quit selling them, like Sam's Club, but Lowe's, Menard's and Home Depot stores around here still stock them. I get the cheapest ones available, one brand seems to last as long as another for me. I have acquired a scandalous number of them, raising only a few eyebrows from cashiers.

Sounds pretty smart, no? Maybe not.

Here's what is is going to happen. Congress is going to hear from more and more folks that don't like the idea of paying several dollars to replace a 25 cent light bulb. Some of these folks will find out just how nasty the light from these buzzing, grotesquely twisted fluorescent bulbs make their surrounding appear. Some will even find out that the mercury in them can actually get out and into your kids. These folks will pester their representatives in Washington to kill this nasty, anti freedom of choice, totalitarian law before its provisions even go into effect. There is already a bill in the House: H.R. 5616, the Light Bulb Freedom of Choice Act.

Its a good thing I wasn't buying up bulbs with an eye toward cornering a future black market for outlaw light bulbs. I know at least one Nebraskan has set out to become the Outlaw Light Bulb King of Grand Island. One out in the third, whose comments you may have seen on many other blogs, said as much here in a comment. Nobody wants to end up like the cat that had warehouse full of hula-hoops when the fad died.

I can only hope that my room full of lightbulbs will serve as a hedge against inflation. With my luck in the realm of the coin, someone will find a way to make incandescent bulbs out of straw for less than a nickel apiece. Its what I deserve for betting against a good outcome.
---
Perhaps I may be able to take solace in the fact that if any would-be Light Bulb Kings get dethroned it will be the CFL profiteers, whose only interest in green is the dollar. Also, I'd like to see Al Gore pay the taxes and utility bills on his mansion with carbon credits in a world gone sane. Maybe if I wish real hard.
---
I found out about this legislation from World Net Daily: Lawmakers take up battle against light bulb ban. WND is off kilter on many things, but they got this right.
---
If the government can take away your choice on such matters as what kind of light bulbs you can use and you don't care, I have a suggestion for you. Call your representatives in Washington and ask them to draft and pass the Regulation of Everyday Life Bill as soon as possible. As Machiavelli advised the prince: bad news from the state is best delivered all at once, only good news should be drawn out. Gary Gilmore was more succinct: "Let's do it."

Wind Power: not just stupid, but a "Boone-doggle"

Crop duster dodges windmills and power lines

Michelle Malkin's syndicated column today, Pelosi and the Big Wind Boone-doggle explains why you have been hearing so much these days from T. Boone Pickens, the leveraged takeover artist, hedge-fund scammer and 117th richest man in America. For more links and comments, see Michelle's blog post on the same topic.

I guess Pickens has found Gaia in wind energy, or at least a mammon-worhipper's equivalent: tax breaks and subsidies for the true believers. Hang on to your wallets, folks. This big enviro-racket is going to cost the taxpayers a bundle and, in the long run, benefit nobody but cats like Pickens.

The old feeder is no fan of wind energy. I think they are inefficient, ugly and potentially dangerous. Now, opportunists like Mr. Pickens see a chance to clean up by tricking gullible "save the world at any cost" suckers. If the free market dictated if and where wind farms were built, there wouldn't be any. Now, thanks to unfettered democracy, these economic disasters could be ruining vistas near you, paid for with your hard-earned dollars.

Tower on road M-27 near Peterson, Iowa - last winter

I've blogged a couple of times about this particular tower in a NW Iowa wind farm that I drive through regularly. It was damaged sometime last year and still hasn't been repaired. Not even after I saw a huge crane working on it this spring:

Gigantic crane working on the same tower in late May

This work was commenced not long after the Plains Feeder post featuring the exploded windmill. I figured the operators might have it fixed by now, but all they seem to have done is take the generator box down off the tower. I wonder what it costs to move that big crane from cornfield to cornfield?

The same 'wind generator' as it appeared this month

Not only hasn't this wind turbine been repaired or replaced, but I estimate that one out of six of the windmills in this particular wind farm are non-functional. I have to estimate because the physical plant covers many square miles. The ones that aren't shattered are 'feathered' so that the wind can't turn them. The only efficiency these monstrosities exhibit is in separating taxpayers from their money.
---
Excellent description of a wind farm: "they look like a Calcutta slum skyline viewed from ground level." From Uncle W at the Heartland Notebook.
---
I saw the crop-duster while taking the last picture in this series. I have always admired the nerve these on-the-deck pilots display as they apply pesticides on the fields. As I watched this cat deftly avoiding the wind generators and their associated power poles, I wondered what his opinion of The Pickens Plan would be.

An Oil-Free America

Better park all of our airliners - they burn oil

I keep hearing about how America should aim to be an oil-free country. After all, the algore-science consensus pegs oil as one of the main causes of Global Warming, and we all know that it makes us sick. Besides, unless we are willing to drill for oil here at home, we are stuck for buying it from folks that hate us.

Barack Obama seems to think we can achieve energy independence and freedom from our oil addiction. So folks are discussing the pros and cons of becoming oil-free. But they aren't using their heads.

I heard Rush Limbaugh say this about becoming oil-free on the radio today: we will have to give up flying to become oil-free. None of the 'alternative energy' sources anyone has even dreamed of to date can produce the power to weight ratio required for heavier than air flight.

I guess flying for business and pleasure was just a fad we can't afford any more, along with eating meat, keeping warm and driving nice cars. These earth-destroying fripperies were fun while they lasted, but its time to get grim about our future.
---
If Barack gets elected president, we won't have anything left to defend, so we won't need the Army, Air Force or Navy doing any tank driving, jet flying or going to sea in their big ships either. They can defend America on foot or horseback, from sailboats and hot-air balloons.

These are changes we can believe in.

M4GW

Argentine researchers collect methane from cows

I found a link to this excellent video: Imagine There's No Global Warming in my e-mail today. The video is from Minnesotans For Global Warming (M4GW), a fine outfit of straight-shooting squareheads from the land of 1,000 lakes. These cats make GW denial fun. Check them out. They have a blog as part of their larger web presence.

I've lived in NW Iowa, which is as close to Minnesota as one can get without having to learn the language. The winters there were cold enough to make Al Gore wish for a long, global heat wave.
---
Also playing at Love Global Warming

Big Sur Burns - ANWR Safe

107 square miles of California's beautiful Big Sur burns up and the world doesn't come to an end. But developing (not burning) less than 4 square miles of the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve is intolerable. Go figure.

George Carlin on Saving the Planet

George Carlin 1937-2008

Video: uncommonly sensible talk on the subject of environmentalism from an uncommonly funny man.
---
Hat tip: Babalu Blog.

Bush's Iraq "War for Oil" fails: US forced to drill at home

Drill America: do it for the Caribou

Even George Bush now thinks the US policy of forbearance from drilling for oil in our own back yards should end. Seems that increasing the supply might just help ease the upward pressures on the price of oil. I saw only the Democrat reaction to the jawboning he gave the Congress today. Something about 'destroying America's most pristine land'. Read more about these developments at Gateway Pundit.

I can see why the Gulf Coast cats are nervous. I'm selfish about some things, especially when close to home, but I see no such NIMBY problem with drilling the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve.

How many Americans will ever even see this wretched piece of pristine nastiness. Its far away, hardly in anyone's back yard. To see it, you need to make a giant, expensive carbon footprint just getting there and back. Americans that can barely afford to drive to work stand no chance of visiting the ANWR even once in a lifetime. You would have to pay me to go there.

Only obsessed scientists working on grants hang out there now. Its deadly cold in winter, and mosquito-infested in summer. The sorry caribou there lose blood by the pint to the voracious insects, whose attacks drive them to distraction. In winter, the miserable beasts must eat lichens off the frozen rocks. Any change in their horrible existence would be an improvement.

Where's the harm? I'm for drilling the ANWR and anywhere else in the US where the inhabitants aren't selfish wussies or communist dupes bent on destroying America.
---
Sad thing is, Bush could have forced this issue long ago by ordering the drilling bans lifted by executive order. Instead, he puts the cart before the horse. I guess nobody is perfect.
---
Barack Obama, still on the Marxist plantation, feeds us the Big Lie: it isn't a long-term solution. What a slave the man is to leftist doctrine.

Stop the Lieberman-Warner Watermelon Bill

Green on the outside - Red on the inside

Call or e-mail your US Senators today. Let them know you don't want them to vote for what Michelle Malkin calls the Lieberman-Warner green boondoggle bill. It is coming up for debate this week in the Senate. It isn't just scientifically stupid, unconstitutionally oppressive and anti-American, it is also a nasty pork stew.

The Marxist Watermelon Front plans to sabotage our economy. Duping us into knee-jerk legislation like this is just another part of their war on the American constitutional form of government. Tell your Senators they aren't fooling you.

Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. Measuring, capping, and trading its output might sound green, but it would cripple our economy and restrict our freedoms. The Watermelons and their fellow travelers won't be satisfied until America is as miserable as every other Marxist nation. They hate America.
---
Addendum: What is the sensory opposite of red on the BYR color wheel? It is green. Commie propaganda is like that: wrong is right; day is night; red is green. The Big Lie. There is no end to Marxist perfidy.
---
On Second Thought: Marxist ecological genius Senator Barbara Boxer threatens war if this awful tax disguised as 'cap and trade' greenery fails to pass. Be afraid. She has always been right before.
---
Más: Mythical analysis of Lieberman-Warner by Ben Lieberman.

Wind Power Efficiency Update

Enormous crane in an Iowa farm field

This post is an update to Wind power: not just stupid, but dangerous, in which I noted the inefficiency of wind power generation plants. The post featured a shattered wind generator I saw in NW Iowa. The cats that maintain these evil eyesores must read the Plains Feeder, because as I drove past the same wind farm again this weekend, repairs were started on the broken monstrosity. I stopped and snapped these pictures.

Repairing a small portion of the generating plant

At least two semi trucks were required to haul this giant crane into the unfortunate cornfield. When part of a hydrocarbon or nuclear power plant needs repair, an economically compact physical plant makes these costly, polluting machinations unnecessary.

All this travel and expense to restore only a tiny fraction of the wind farm's generating capacity. If that isn't stupid, I don't know what is. What a sorry situation for electric rate-payers and yet another nasty trick on farmers.

From the very same intersection where the photos above were taken, I saw yet another broken wind turbine just over the rise. One of the generators next to it was feathered. Probably a bad gearbox or something else that would be quick and easy to fix if it wasn't up on a tower in the middle of a cornfield.

Broken (left) and out of service (right)

If you still don't think these grotesque affronts to the wind spirits are dangerous, watch this frightening video at Small Dead Animals. It shows a turbine as it flies apart. Some of the Iowa pinwheels are located so close to occupied farmsteads that I'm sure they can hear the eerie "whup whup whup" of the blades as they lie awake in bed worrying if the contraption is going to break apart and kill them.

Where is the "green"? In the pockets of the hucksters selling and servicing these pieces of junk.
---
Addendum: Click to watch eco-nuts actually enjoying their wind farm. How smart can you get?
---
After Some Reflection: One of the comments to the linked post at Small Dead Animals makes exceptional sense.

Until we can build giant batteries or capacitors to store the power, wind power will be nothing more than a curiosity feeding into a power grid. Maybe it could be used to supply electricity to crack water to make hydrogen gas? (Posted by: holdfast)

Face it, giant capacitors and batteries would be even worse than the windmills. I see dangerous voltages and poisonous chemicals. The hydrogen generation idea has merit. As long as the wind blows, hydrogen and oxygen will be produced. All we need to do is locate them on windy but otherwise worthless land currently owned and occupied by poor Americans with no political clout. The wind farms in Iowa were foisted off on gullible farm land owners. The problem with this approach is that suckers can come to their senses; farmers get ornery when you trick 'em. They have a bit of clout in Washington and some of them are rich.

Why not infest the the native reservations with these nasty machines? Red Indians are mostly poor and cloutless. Besides, it is traditional. If hydrogen-produced energy, either from 'fuel cells' or conventional combustion, lives up to the hype, American's Red Indians would again have something worth taking.

Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton should take note. When the Red Chinese buy up all the world's oil with our Wal-Mart sneaker money, and Americans stop buying gasoline, the US "Big Oil" industry won't be worth nationalizing. Colorful beads, blankets, and beer sound like "just compensation" to me.
---
Seriously, the government needs to get out of the energy business; leave it alone. But nobody sells plain vanilla Constitutional government any more.

Wind power: not just stupid, but dangerous

Bucolic Rural Iowa

Last week the old feeder drove through NW Iowa. My route used to offer pleasant scenery most of the way from the feedlot to my destination. I get off of I-29 at Onawa and take the county blacktops to Arnolds Park. For the last 10 years, a growing part of the drive has been through a wind farm. Its like driving through a hellish, whirling machine.

Almost everyone agrees that these monstrosities are hideous eyesores. Nobody with any sense of the rural aesthetic wants them anywhere near where they live. Even a citified eco-nut like Ted Kennedy won't have 'em. Now the scenic Iowa roads between Galva and Peterson are studded with the ugly contraptions as far as the eye can see. Perhaps portending worse to come.

Whenever I drive through this grotesque mistake, I note that a significant number of the windmills sit idle, their 'props' feathered. Parts and technical skills to repair wind generators are scarce. Unlike an ordinary hydrocarbon or nuclear power generation plant, the workplace is spread out over many square miles. How efficient! The plant workers have to drive all over several counties, hauling their tools and huge parts, just to get from one end of the 'power plant' to the other.

Average sized generator blade

Think of the fleets of pickup trucks spewing exhaust on the crops, the livestock and the farm families as they zoom up and down the special access roads in the fields to perform regular maintenance. These towers and roads take many acres of prime Iowa cropland out of production. Add the corn ethanol boondoggle and its no wonder food is getting pricey.

Did I mention that wind power isn't dependable? This means that a non-alternative power generation facility must be up and running at all times with enough output to take over from the wind instantly. Otherwise, serious outages will result, like this one in Texas. Where's the green advantage? In Al Gore's dreams, thats where.

Blade on the road - three trips per pinwheel

Wind generators have also been called the "Cuisinarts of the air" for the number of birds they kill. DadGum once opined that the blades turned too slowly to cause much damage to birds. Not so. The ends of the blades must travel a distance equal to pi times twice the length of one blade per revolution. Windmills like this can turn from 30 to 60 rpm. Do the math; a wind generator could cut you in half!
---
Now and then, I see a windmill with its blades broken. Last Saturday morning, I stopped and took a few pictures of one of them. The blades are gone and the main shaft is severely compromised. These breakups can be dangerous.

Blades missing

Where do you suppose the pieces ended up when this whirligig flew apart? Those are some mighty big slivers. The parts for wind generators are hard to get, difficult to transport, and require cranes to install. The repairs are impossible in bad weather. Many of these generators with less obvious problems like bad gear boxes or electrical trouble sit idle for months before they can be put back to work.

How long before this gets back on line?

If your fear of decapitation, your distaste for bird whacking and the nasty environmental hypocrisy of it's inefficiency aren't enough to put you off wind energy, consider this horror. Still want to see more of our rural beauty pocked with ugly giant pinwheels?
---
I forgot to mention that these generators can be sabotaged with a deer rifle.
---
Drill the ANWR. The caribou want us to do it.
---
Other Plains Feeder posts about this Iowa wind farm:
Wind Power Efficiency Update
Wind Power: not just stupid, but a "Boone-doggle"

Let them eat ethanol

Full stomach or blissful numbness - take your pick

Food shortages? Food riots? Food rationing at Sam's Club? Instead of whining to the United Nations and blaming capitalist greed, American farmers should demand that the world's hungry folks be given corn liquor ethanol.

We make plenty of it, and alcoholism is a popular alternative to eating government rationed food. Just ask the former Soviets.

Earth Day

Click for some perspective

Ho-hum.

Toying with the wind

Wind Toys

Windmills weren't always a trick on taxpayers. The old relic in the picture was more useful than the goofy wind generators standing behind it.

A comment from Small Dead Animals should make most people doubt the efficiency of wind power and battery power.

I had walked on at the wind's will,-
I sat now, for the wind was still.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti

How to use just one square of butt-wipe or less

Great Plains TP

Another Rovian Conspiracy: St Wendeler is disgusted with his fellow alumnus Sheryl Crow's hypocritical plan to Save The World By Wiping Your Bum Less. Thats right. Even Sheryl's enormous carbon footprint can be assuaged by the rest of use using only one square of toilet paper per sitting.

As a tightwad, I can sympathize. I don't want to put any Canuck forest product workers out of a job, but I offer here a couple of time tested methods to avoid using costly store-bought butt-wipe. The first I leaned from my grandfather.

"You take three red corn cobs and one white corn cob with you when you go to crap.", he said. (Grandpa went behind the shed.) I could figure out that he meant that I was to use old, dry cobs to clean my perianal region, but I had to ask about the one white cob. The answer: "Use the white one to see if you need another red one."

The other method, while using manufactured paper, adheres to Cheryl's one-square rule. I got it from a Scotsman. Take a single square of tissue and fold it in half diagonally, forming a right triangle. Next you fold the square again to achieve a long, pointy triangle. Tear off and keep the very tip of this triangle, then open it from the base to form a truncated cone. Insert your preferred finger into the cone and wipe. Use the tip of the cone to clean under your fingernail. Q.E.D.

If you see someone scratching their ass in public today, don't be too quick to judge. Maybe they are saving the world for you.
---
For a picture of a one square wipe gone very wrong, see A Good Question at Riehl World View.
Warning: frank visual content.
---
Ferdy the Conservative Cat has another way to take the One-Sit, One Square pledge cleanly: Just buy Sheryl Crow's new "One Sheet Fits All" toilet paper, coming to a store near you soon.