I had no idea these things existed

 

I've heard of machines that deploy barbed or razor wire, making it easy to set up fences, obstacles, etc.  However, I'd never heard of a machine that got rid of those fences, even decades after they'd been strung.

A wire winder mounted on a skid steer can roll up a half-mile of old fence in about two minutes, a task that would probably take a half-day to accomplish by hand, said John Graves, director of conservation and resource management for the Sheridan Community Land Trust.

“It’s pretty darn cool,” he told Cowboy State Daily. “To sit there in the cab of the skid steer and watch that wire come in, it’s great.”

The importance of removing old barbed wire and woven-wire fences can’t be overstated, said Steve Martin, Wyoming director of the North American Pronghorn Association.

Old fences can block pronghorn from reaching thousands of acres of habitat in the Red Desert and other places in Wyoming and Montana, Martin told Cowboy State Daily.

There are countless miles of fence that must be removed and replaced with wildlife-friendly fencing, he said.

. . .

“Unlike deer and elk, pronghorn will rarely, if ever, jump a fence. They want to crawl under it,” he said.

So woven-wire fences are particularly hard on pronghorn, he said, because there’s no way to get underneath them.

Researchers from the University of Wyoming concluded that fences trapped pronghorn in areas of the Red Desert during the harsh 2022-2023 winter, and many of them died.

Recent upgrades to wildlife-friendly fences in the Red Desert opened up about 10,000 acres to pronghorn, Martin said.

There's more at the link.  Here's a brief video clip of the wire winder at work.

That's pretty ingenious.  I wonder who came up with the idea?  It's just another addition to the huge variety of tools and equipment that can be hung onto or off of skid-steer machines.  I saw one around here that had more than a dozen different attachments arranged in a long row at one side of the yard.  The driver could simply drive up to a gap in the row, drop the attachment he'd been using into the open space, drive to the next gizmo he needed, connect it up, and away he went.  It can't have taken more than a minute or two per attachment.  That's productivity for you!

Peter

So much for meat and water!

 

I'm sure most of my readers have grown used to vegetarians vegans anti-meat activists trumpeting that it wastes far too much water to produce a pound, or a kilogram, of beef, compared to just eating vegetables and fruit.  Turns out they've been fudging the numbers, to put it mildly.

From Sama Hoole on X:

The crime they see: 15,415 litres of water to produce one kilogram of beef. Every campaign, every documentary, every leaflet through the door since about 2012.

The crime they do: not reading the paper.

The figure is real. It comes from Mekonnen and Hoekstra at the University of Twente, and it is careful, peer-reviewed work. What the campaigns strip out is that the same authors split that number into three parts, because the three parts are not the same thing at all.

Green water is rain. It falls on the grass. The cow eats the grass. For beef, green water is about 94 per cent of that headline.

Blue water is the stuff that matters. Rivers, lakes, aquifers. The stuff that gets pumped, metered, fought over in court, and does not come back.

So here is the blue water, in litres per kilogram, from the same authors, same method, same units.

• Pistachios: 7,602
• Almonds: 3,816
• Walnuts: 2,451
• Dates: 1,250
• Cashews: 921
• Beef: 550

Read that last line again, then go and look at what is in your granola.

The 15,415 counts rain that fell on a Welsh hillside as a cost, against an animal that was standing in it, on land where nothing else grows, in a country where rain is the one thing we have never once been short of.

The pistachio is drinking fourteen times more of the water that actually runs out.

I've no doubt the "greenies" will object that most of the rainwater runs off and feeds their vegetables, so it's by definition "greener" than beef anyway:  but that's splitting nutritional hairs, IMHO.  I'll continue to favor a carnivore diet, thank you very much!

Peter

When large-scale weather threatens large-scale consequences

 

I'm sure most of us have read news reports about the imminent return of the climate phenomenon known as El Nino, possibly in the form of a so-called "super" El Nino, far stronger than "normal" events of this kind.  There have been all sorts of alarmist forecasts about drought, flooding, and everything in between.  However, the big story may be the effect of this climate phenomenon on global commerce and industry, regardless of whether it's rainy or sunny.  TT Club, a "provider of mutual insurance and related risk management services to the international transport and logistics industry", examines the implications.

El Niño events are part of a naturally occurring climate cycle, but “super” events are characterised by exceptionally high sea surface temperature anomalies, which are far less frequent and significantly more disruptive. Current forecasts are suggesting that a very strong event is increasingly likely, with some indicating increases well above historical norms. The result is not a single point of failure, but rather a synchronised, multi-regional disruption that has potential to affect the interconnected global supply chain.

. . .

Perhaps the most concerning aspect of the current outlook is the convergence of climate and geopolitical risk factors. When overlaid with El Niño-induced climate shocks, the potential for cascading effects increases significantly.

For example: 

• Reduced fertiliser availability may exacerbate the impact of drought on crop yields
• Higher fuel costs may increase the cost of transporting goods
• Trade route disruptions may amplify delays caused by weather-related events
• This interconnected risk landscape highlights the need to view El Niño not as a standalone hazard, but as part of a broader system of interdependent risks.

. . .

The critical point for global businesses is that exposure is rarely limited to the location of the physical hazard. Organisations may face indirect impacts through suppliers, commodity markets, logistics networks, energy systems, insurance costs and customer demand.

Key global vulnerabilities include: 

• Food and commodity price inflation driven by crop losses or supply uncertainty
• Disruption to agricultural, industrial and consumer-goods supply chains
• Transport delays, port disruption and reduced reliability across maritime and inland logistics routes
• Energy market volatility linked to higher demand, reduced hydropower output and infrastructure stress
• Increased insurance, financing and working-capital pressures as businesses respond to greater uncertainty

For internationally exposed organisations, these second-order and third-order effects may prove just as significant as direct physical risks. The practical implication is that El Niño should be assessed not only by geography, but by dependency: where goods are sourced, how they are transported, which inputs are most constrained and where alternative capacity exists.

There's more at the link.

That's an often underestimated factor in many plans:  military, political, business, disaster, whatever.  A factor that is described in geographical terms - like El Nino, often termed the "southern oscillation" of weather patterns - can have effects far outside that geographical area.  I'm sure most US businesses on the East Coast aren't planning for any major disruption due to weather that might affect the West Coast of this country, but that's very short-sighted.  What about Europe, or Asia?  I'm sure many nations on those continents are dismissing El Nino as "someone else's problem", but if, as the article suggests, we define it by dependency on economic activity in the area where it occurs, that dependency reaches into every corner of global markets, both imports and exports.

Even on a small scale, in terms of personal planning for the next year or two, this bears thinking about.  For example:

• Is my employer (and hence my job) likely to be affected by El Nino, positively or negatively?  Could it determine whether or not I have a job at all this time next year?
• What about our household emergency planning?  Are we assuming that certain staple foods and basic necessities will always be both available and affordable, or might the advent of El Nino-related weather patterns affect that?
• Are we planning to travel anywhere over the next year or two?  Will airline flights be affected by El Nino?  Will they become more or less affordable?  What alternatives are there?

Just a few areas where we might all do well to consider what's going on in our atmosphere and our oceans at present.

Peter

This kinda blew my mind

 

This extraordinary report on the BBC has me goggling.

Whale graveyard dating back five million years discovered

An enormous whale graveyard around 1,200km (745 miles) long has been discovered in the south-eastern Indian Ocean.

The site, which is 7km (four miles) deep, has been found in the Diamantina fracture zone, a range on the sea floor of ridges and trenches.

But it is the age of the remains - some from 5.3 million years ago - that has prompted huge excitement in the scientific community.

The underwater necropolis, which was discovered by a team of researchers from China, Italy and New Zealand, is teeming with organisms and species that "may be new to science", according to journal Nature.

One of the study's authors Xiaotong Peng of the Chinese Academy of Sciences said: "Discovering a necropolis of this scale was completely unexpected.

"The size of distribution, the depth and the age range were far beyond anything we had imagined."

During 32 dives to the site, explorers collected samples from 485 whale-fossil sites and active whale falls, and found a treasure trove of remains, including one extinct whale's skeleton.

The beaked Pterocetus benguelae, which is 5.3 million years old, was discovered to be one of the fossilised skulls in the graves.

A five-metre long Antarctic minke whale's carcass was the largest discovery made.

A new species which the team has called Pterocetus diamantinae, after the site, was also uncovered.

Jellyfish, worms and crustaceans are among the community of creatures living off the huge spread of carcasses.

"Peng and colleagues' encounter with a vast fossil graveyard is a truly unique discovery," Stephen J Godfrey of the Calvert Marine Museum wrote in Nature.

There's more at the link.

There's also this video report on the discovery.

How on earth did so many whale carcasses end up in such a relatively small area?  Is it possible that some species of whale may deliberately go to that part of the sea to die, just as elephants were reputed to go to the "elephants' graveyard", a hidden valley where they lay down to die?  The elephant myth has long since been refuted, but I'm willing to bet some will raise it again in connection with the whales.

This is absolutely fascinating.  I daresay there are decades of research ahead in that area.

Peter

The ultimate put-down of the anti-meat scammers

 

Watts Up With That? links to this tweet.  Click the image below for a larger view on X.com.

That's a beautifully simple explanation - and every word of it is true.  You'll never hear vegetarian and vegan activists admit to that, though.  If they did, they'd expose their scam operation for what it is.  They rely on scaring people into taking them seriously - and this tweet demonstrates that they're anything but serious.  Their loud screams about the permanent climate damage caused by eating meat and breeding cows are nothing more than "sound and fury, signifying nothing".

Pass it on.  The more people who understand this, the better.

Peter

Bloody cheek!

 

If Greenpeace wanted to make at least half of America fighting mad, it's chosen a good way to go about it.

A North Dakota jury ordered Greenpeace in March to pay pipeline company Energy Transfer $667 million for the environmental group’s rogue campaign to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline. Now, Greenpeace is trying to get a Dutch court to nullify the jury award, which the trial judge reduced to $345 million in October. Energy Transfer is asking the North Dakota Supreme Court to block the activist group’s attempt to end-run the U.S. legal system. If Greenpeace’s efforts succeed, they would harm much more than the pipeline company. They’d open the door for activists to torpedo other American critical infrastructure projects under European law.

. . .

The suit claims that Energy Transfer’s litigation violated Greenpeace International’s rights under the European Union’s 2024 anti-Slapp law, an anagram for strategic litigation against public participation. The law seeks to protect journalists and nonprofit organizations from meritless lawsuits designed to silence or intimidate them.

Greenpeace’s case isn’t an ordinary appeal, in which a party asks a higher court to review a lower court’s application of the law. Rather, Greenpeace is asking a Dutch court to reassess the merits of the North Dakota case under Europe’s sweeping anti-Slapp directive. The case marks the first attempt to apply the law “extraterritorially” to stymie a lawsuit brought in a country outside the European Union.

If the European directive achieves this reach, it would extend the EU’s regulatory imperialism to the political and social spheres where Europe and America follow starkly different legal norms: In a nutshell, Europe’s speech rules are based on values, while America’s are based on rights.

. . .

Under the EU directive, courts can award damages to parties that have been subjected to “abusive court proceedings,” including those involving “an imbalance of power between the parties” or “excessive” claims.

Greenpeace claims in the Dutch lawsuit that the financial resources of Energy Transfer constitute an “obvious” imbalance of power and that the company’s demands for hundreds of millions of dollars in damages are “clearly excessive.” But the rule of law is based on whether the parties acted within their legal rights, not on whether they happen to run a successful business like Energy Transfer that is seriously affected by a shutdown in operations. If Greenpeace succeeds, expect other activist organizations to incorporate in Europe so they can wiggle out of liability by invoking the EU’s loosely drawn “abusive court proceeding” standard against U.S. companies.

There's more at the link.

I don't know whether the European Union envisaged its anti-SLAPP law being used in this way, to undercut and nullify the duly constituted courts and legal system of a nation that's not a member of the Union.  Nevertheless, it was worded loosely enough that Greenpeace sought to take advantage of it.

What happens if the Dutch court rules in Greenpeace's favor?  For a start, no US court will issue an order making the Dutch ruling binding under US law.  That right does not exist in terms of our constitution.  So, let's say the US court goes ahead with its proposed ruling, and orders Greenpeace to pay damages.  What if Greenpeace refuses, citing the Dutch court's ruling?  If the US government sues them in a US court to recover the money, they'll simply file another Dutch lawsuit in retaliation.  If the US does nothing, our laws will quite obviously no longer be adequate protection for our constitutionally enshrined property rights - and that will open the door to a Pandora's box of litigation, countersuit and wealthy lawyers.  What if the US tries to sue Greenpeace in a European court?  What if the latter rules that the US has no standing to do so, not being a member of the EU?

This is an appallingly complex can of worms.  What it might lead to is anybody's guess.  However, one thing I'm sure of:  from now on, if I come across anything Greenpeace wants, or motivates, or works towards, I'm going to oppose it.  I'll even donate to their opponents, whether or not I agree with their perspective.  Try to thwart our laws, would they, without so much as a "By your leave" to the American people?  To hell with them!

Delenda est Greenpeace!

Peter

A travel tip I wouldn't have considered

 

I've never thought that wrapping up my vehicle might be a worthwhile precaution before hiking a trail, but it turns out that in parts of this country, it's not a bad idea.

From the awe-inspiring views of the Grand Canyon to the geysers of Yellowstone, millions of people travel to national parks across the United States every year. The parks are home to countless animals, including one mountain-dwelling critter that can ruin a day in the great outdoors.

Marmots will pillage backpacks left unattended in search for a snack, and at Sequoia National Park's Mineral King trail, the rodents have been known to chew on tubes and wiring on the underside of vehicles.

To prevent damage in such a remote location, officials recommend hikers wrap their vehicles in a large tarp, which looks unusual, but deters marmots from chomping on a radiator hose or a brake line.

. . .

In the past, hikers used to surround their vehicles with chicken wire, but over time, the marmots learned how to evade the wire and reach the vehicles.

"On several occasions, marmots have not escaped the engine compartment quickly enough and unsuspecting drivers have given them rides to other parts of the parks; several have ridden as far as Southern California," the NPS explained.

There's more at the link.

I'm not familiar with US marmots, but I've had lots of encounters with the very similar species that South Africans familiarly refer to as dassies (actually a species of hyrax).  They're endemic on Table Mountain in Cape Town, and have "colonized" the area around the upper cable car station.  They unashamedly beg food from patrons at the restaurant there, so much so that they're typically so rotund and corpulent that they can't move in a hurry.  That provides the local eagles with a plentiful meat diet, but there are so many dassies waiting their turn at the tourist buffet that the numbers never seem to drop.

No need to tarp your vehicles there - for a start, they're 3,000 feet below, parked on the road leading past the lower cable car station, and besides, the dassies are so well fed by tourists that they'd turn up their noses at engine cables and wires.

Be that as it may, I suppose marmots, hyrax and similar critters have developed all over the world to fill a specific ecological niche.  We're simply supplementing their diet by parking nearby.  Does that mean that tarping one's car to keep them out is interfering with natural selection?

Peter

Ho hum... a million here, a million there. Who cares? It's only taxpayer money...

 

Elon Musk and D.O.G.E. are investigating current expenditures and recovering them wherever possible, but what about past expenditures that don't pass the smell test?  Here's one report that should make any taxpayer see red.

If the Biden administration’s green energy agenda were a bus, it would have no wheels, a dead battery, and a $160 million price tag. Enter Lion Electric, a Canadian electric school bus company that was handed nearly $160 million in taxpayer-funded subsidies—only to collapse into bankruptcy, leaving school districts across America high and dry​.

Now, watchdogs like EPA administrator Lee Zeldin are demanding answers, exposing yet another mismanaged, wasteful, and completely avoidable green energy failure.

As part of Biden’s $5 billion Clean School Bus program, Lion Electric was awarded $159 million to produce 435 electric buses. The administration touted it as a hallmark of its climate agenda, with Kamala Harris herself front and center, gushing over the initiative​.

Fast forward to today:

• Lion Electric has stopped manufacturing.
• It has laid off its workforce.
• It hasn’t delivered $95 million worth of promised buses to 55 school districts​.

. . .

Here’s the kicker: Lion Electric was in deep financial trouble long before Biden started funneling money into it.

Since 2020, the company has lost $301.6 million.

Its stock price has collapsed from $33.48 per share to just $0.08—a staggering 99.7% wipeout​.

It was hit with a class-action lawsuit after allegedly misleading investors with “grossly unrealistic financial projections”​.

And yet, the Biden administration kept the money flowing, rewarding a failing company because it fit the “green energy” narrative.

There's more at the link.

So . . . where's that $159 million?  Since no products were delivered in exchange for it, can the money be recovered from either the company, or its (presumably long-departed) executives?  Can their property be escheated or seized, and sold to recover some of the money?  What about the new factory the company built, which is now deserted and abandoned?  Can it be sold?

And what about the bureaucrats who approved that investment despite knowing - as they must surely have known - about the company's existing financial difficulties?  Malfeasance, perhaps?  That should be investigated with a fine-tooth comb.

As a taxpayer, I'm infuriated.  As an American, I'm disgusted that those who were supposed to lead and build up and support the country turn out to have done anything but that.

Peter

Greenpeace vs. US Navy nuclear submarine. Guess who won?

 

This video (about nine minutes long) is highly amusing, at least to most of us veterans.  It contains a fair amount of bad language (also familiar to veterans), but if you'll forgive that, I think you'll find it entertaining.  The submarine in question was the USS Flying Fish.

I think this encounter with Greenpeace offers an excellent example of what Massad Ayoob calls "a sudden and acute failure of the victim selection process" (by Greenpeace, of course).

Peter

Recycling... and also nauseating!

 

This is one news story I would never have expected to read.

In a gleaming laboratory in Edinburgh, robotic machines whirr and mix. The final product that they are creating will be a pine-smelling chemical that can be used as an ingredient in perfumes. But the starting point is very different: a brown, gloopy, fat mixture, recently fished out from below ground - fatbergs.

Fatbergs are the foul phenomenon found lurking in (and blocking up) sewers. The development of the technology used to perform this apparent alchemy is being described by some as a new industrial revolution.

. . .

Prof Stephen Wallace from the University of Edinburgh is among those turning the fatbergs into perfumes. "It's a crazy idea," he admits to me, "but it works."

Fatbergs are accumulated lumps of fat from cooking oils, toilet and other food waste that people put down their drains. Prof Wallace gets his from a company that specialises in fishing them out of sewers and turning them into biofuels. They arrive at the lab in a tube.

The first step is to sterilise the material in a steamer. Prof Wallace then adds the specially modified bacteria to the remnants of the fatberg. The bacteria have a short section of DNA inserted, to give the bacteria their particular properties.

The fatberg gradually disappears, as the bacteria eat it, producing the chemical with the pine-like smell - this can be used as an ingredient in perfumes.

There's more at the link, including more maggot-gagging pollutant products that are being "reprocessed" into something useful.

Would you apply a perfume to your body that had started out as a fatberg?  I find the very concept repulsive . . . but I guess it's not much different from drinking recycled, purified sewer water, as millions of us do in many cities every day.  In this day and age, we have so much waste to dispose of that it makes sense to recycle and reuse it, rather than create even more pollution by dumping it somewhere.

Nevertheless, the thought of a fatberg being used as a perfume ingredient is about as cringe-worthy as anything I've ever heard!

Peter

The cold, hard truth about the Los Angeles fires

 

Two of my favorite and most knowledgeable bloggers have weighed in on the fires currently ravaging parts of Los Angeles.  What they have to say is anything but comfortable . . . but it's true, and until that truth is addressed, the problem will simply recur.  Let's take them in alphabetical order.

Karl Denninger observes:

At the end of the day life is about balancing risks, rewards and costs.

. . .

The same is true out in Southern California.  Fires aren't new there and the Santa Ana winds are an annual phenomena that have occurred long before the California Gold Rush brought a large influx of humans.  No, humans are not making it worse but we are putting more and more "stuff" of ever-increasing value in the way that can be destroyed.  Couple high wind with dry conditions, given that part of the country is borderline desert, and you've got a high-risk environment with vegetation which reflects that and in some cases actually requires fire to propagate!  Add to that state government policies that do not clear brush (on purpose!) and in other areas do not conduct control burns during the part of the year when high winds do not occur and you've got the natural environment and its oscillations -- including much larger fires simply because there's more fuel available and you refused to reduce said fuel load despite having the opportunity to do so in advance.  Now add deliberate refusal to build out fire-suppression infrastructure (in this case California residents approved a bond issue many years ago to do exactly that but it wasn't done!) and you have all the ingredients for what is now occurring.  If you want to know why insurance companies left they asked for rates that reflected this deliberate neglect and foolish set of decisions by said government agencies and, when you get down to it, the people who live there and kept voting those government agents into office.  The firms had already taken large fire losses as a result and thus they had no evidence any of that would change.  The rate adjustments were refused and thus their only sane option was to withdraw offering coverage and leave.

. . .

The remaining question is whether those impacted will force those who had responsibility for said mitigations, in many cases explicitly funded with tax dollars yet they did not act in accordance with their responsibilities and either did nothing or spent the funds elsewhere, to be held personally responsible for any and all of their malfeasance.

There appears to be plenty of that to go around.

There's more at the link.

Larry Lambert, writing at Virtual Mirage, has this to say.

In the 1950s, the average timber harvest in California was around 6.0 billion board feet per year. That number has dropped to ~1.5 billion board feet per year. California’s forests cover a third of the state and are now choked with nearly 163 million dead trees. California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and other regulatory policies limit the ability of local government and fire management services to clear dead trees and vegetation. (This is a big deal and prevents much of the controlled burns desperately needed.)

Multiple bills, including AB 2330, AB 1951, and AB 2639, were rejected by the Democrat-controlled legislature or vetoed by the Governor that would have exempted wildfire prevention projects from CEQA and other permitting issues. Other legislation, including SB 1003, would have provided CEQA exemptions for utility undergrounding projects, as power lines that are not adequately cleared of debris present creating wildfire risks. These bills also failed to reach the Governor’s desk. California has prioritized “suppression-only” strategies and failed to remove accumulated vegetation, leading to denser forests with increased fuel loads – our forests have become tinderboxes, leading to devastating outcomes when a fire starts.

The bottom line is that many of the wildfires CA experienced could have been prevented or significantly mitigated with better management, policies, and funding.

Again, more at the link.

And yet, despite the undeniable truth of both bloggers' comments, we see and hear plaintive cries from those who've lost their homes to the fire, "Why didn't the government do something to stop it?  Why isn't the government doing something now to help us?"

My dear people, you voted that government into office, and you kept it there, with all its daft, ineffectual, touchy-feely, environmentally sensitive policies that doomed your neighborhoods to the death by fireball that they're currently enduring!  When push comes to shove, it's your fault that your government isn't doing anything, because you elected politicians, and they appointed bureaucrats, who don't know how to do anything and are incompetent to act!

Do you think that truth will seep through into the California-dreamin' consciousness?  Or is it too far gone to be able to distinguish reality from pie-in-the-sky happy dreams any more?

Peter

Something else for President Trump to hammer into the ground

 

It looks as if environmental groups are actively seeking to convert the court system in the United States into a rubber-stamp machine for their aims and objectives.  RealClear Wire reports:

Over 30 lawsuits, modeled after the tobacco cases of the 1990s, have been filed by state, county, and city attorneys against energy companies seeking damages for the alleged effects of greenhouse gas emissions. An important factor in these lawsuits is the role of third-party funding and nonprofit activists working behind the scenes to shape the litigation and influence the courts.

One such organization that has taken center stage is the Environmental Law Institute’s Climate Judiciary Project, which claims to educate judges on climate science and related legal issues. According to the ELI website, the project’s goal is to “provide neutral, objective information to the judiciary about the science of climate change as understood by experts.” Since 1990, the CJP says it has trained more than 3,000 judges across 28 countries.

But judges are supposed to be disinterested arbiters of the facts and the law – and critics point out that on climate issues, the CJP is anything but neutral. In a 12-page report, the American Energy Institute accuses the CJP of “teaching judges about debatable climate science” and compares it to “working over the referees before the game even starts.” AEI contends that the so-called “objective” materials used by the CJP are crafted by activists who either advise the plaintiffs in these cases or support their claims through legal briefs.

AEI also claims that the CJP has ties to many of the plaintiffs suing energy companies. The CJP denies these allegations, telling RealClearPolitics that it “does not participate in litigation, provide support for or coordinate with any parties in litigation, or advise judges on how they should rule in any case.”

Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Energy Alliance, also criticized the CJP’s efforts to influence judges before they rule on climate-related cases. She told RealClearPolitics that the connection between nonprofit groups, judges, and attorneys involved in these cases forms a “tangled web” of “foundation activist groups, law professors, and judges attempting to use lawsuits to enact climate change policy.”

“The Environmental Law Institute, through its Climate Judiciary Project, is trying to control the entire process – from who’s suing, what they’re suing for, to what judges think about it,” she continued.

There's more at the link.

This is a tried and tested method.  The EPA and other radicalized agencies of government have used it far too often, to implement legal and regulatory powers they could not get through Congress.  The process works something like this:

1.  The government agency makes a grant to one or more non-governmental organizations (NGO's) to do a particular thing.

2.  The NGO sues the government, claiming that it has to protect that thing (butterflies, or fish, or whatever).  Adding insult to injury, it uses the government grant money to do so.

3.  The (usually sympathetic) judge, sometimes "trained" in the subject through "courses" offered by an NGO, indicates that he's going to rule in the plaintiff's favor.

4.  A consent decree is agreed between NGO's and the government, and made an order of court by the judge, in effect forcing the government to do what the NGO wants (including budgeting whatever funds are needed to implement and monitor the consent decree).

5.  The government, and taxpayers, are now on the hook for that expense in perpetuity, unless the court order is modified or overturned.  At no time did lawmakers get the opportunity to debate the issue or pass laws about it:  they were completely sidestepped by the court process.

If environmental groups can't get their way democratically, they'll do it through lawfare, using the courts to force the rest of us to toe their line.  I think President Trump is going to have to crack down hard on this - but what about existing court orders?  Can they be overturned?  That's a head-scratcher.

Peter

German raccoon sausage???

 

I was intrigued to learn that first, Germany is being overrun with raccoons brought over there from America a century ago:  and second, that a local butcher (with official permission) is making a range of consumer meat products out of them.

A butcher in northeast Germany has come up with what he believes is an innovative solution to the country’s growing raccoon problem: turning them into sausages and other meat products.

Michael Reiss, a hunter who set up a butcher’s shop in Kade, about 90 kilometers (60 miles) west of Berlin, in 2022, told CNN Wednesday that he developed the idea after trying to think of a standout product to take to the Green Week international food fair.

He realized that raccoons who are killed as pests are simply thrown in the bin, and decided to ask local officials if they could instead be processed and turned into food.

After receiving the green light, Reiss started making his “raccoon balls,” meatballs made from raccoon meat, which he said turned out to be a hit at the fair and with customers at his shop, which is called Wildererhütte.

Soon Reiss was selling online, and he now makes a total of seven raccoon meat products, including salami.

. . .

After being introduced to Germany for use in fur farms in the 1920s, raccoons were first released into the wild in 1934, according to the Nature And Biodiversity Conservation Union (NABU).

Since then, the mammals, who are highly adaptable and can live in towns and cities as well as forests and grasslands, have bred swiftly.

There are now an estimated 2 million raccoons in Germany, reported German press agency DPA, citing researchers at the Goethe-Universität in Frankfurt.

The animals, who are originally from North America, typically weigh around 10 kilograms (22 pounds), but large males can reach 20 kilograms (44 pounds).

They now represent a danger to domestic biodiversity, especially the reptiles and amphibians that they eat, according to Germany’s Senckenberg Nature Research Society.

There's more at the link.

Considering that large parts of North America (including our cities) are overrun with trash pandas (a local nickname for raccoons), we might have a new export market here!  I daresay any number of locals equipped with air or rimfire rifles could stack up a bountiful harvest to send to Germany.  Perhaps we could add possums, skunks and sundry other wildlife of similar size?

On second thought . . . skunks . . . perhaps not!  On the other hand, if we exported them to Ukraine, would they be a suitable biological weapon to unleash against Russian invaders?

Peter

Heh

 

Courtesy of The Free Press's newsletter this morning, a cartoon by David Mamet (clickit to biggit):

So much for sustainability!  Now what about eatability?

Peter

So much for sinking islands...

 

Remember the kerfuffle raised by climate change activists over the past three or four decades, alleging that many island chains would soon be submerged beneath the waves due to rising sea levels?

Not so fast . . .

The Guardian was in fine form last June stating that rising oceans will extinguish more than land. “It will kill entire languages,” it added, noting the effect on Pacific islands such as Tuvalu. Those areas of the Earth that were most hospitable to people and languages are now becoming the “least hospitable”.

Silly emotional Guardianista guff of course, but happily it does not seem to apply to Tuvalu. A recent study found that the 101 islands of Tuvalu had grown in land mass by 2.9%. The scientists observed that despite rising sea levels, many shorelines in Tuvalu and neighbouring Pacific atolls have maintained relative stability, “without significant alteration”. A comprehensive re-examination of data on 30 Pacific and Indian Ocean atolls with 709 islands found that none of them had lost any land. Furthermore, the scientists added, there are data that indicate 47 reef islands expanded in size or remained stable over the last 50 years, “despite experiencing a rate of sea-level rise that exceeds the global average”.

The Maldives is also a poster scare for rising sea levels, with the attention-seeking activist Mark Lynas – he of the nonsense claim that 99.9% of scientists agree humans cause all or most climate change – organising an underwater Cabinet meeting of the local Government in 2009. As it happens, the Maldives is one of a number of areas that have seen recent increases in land mass. Other areas include the Indonesian Archipelago, islands along the Indochinese Peninsula coast, and islands in the Red and Mediterranean Seas. Notably, the  coastal waters of the Indochinese Peninsula had the most substantial gain, with an increase of 106.28 km2 over the 30-year period. Of the 13,000 islands examined, the researchers found that only around 12% had experienced a significant shoreline shift, with almost equal numbers experiencing either landward (loss) or seaward (gain) movement.

. . .

Sea level rise is not a “predominant” cause of the changing coasts, the scientists note.

There's more at the link.

I find it interesting that the climate change alarmists made claims such as "submerged islands!", then insisted that there was no time to waste, we had to act now, and we had to throw millions (if not billions) of dollars at the problem to "protect vulnerable populations", as well as damage our own economies by cutting back on anything and everything that might contribute to rising sea levels.  When research over several years (in some cases, decades) has now proved that their claims were wrong, they're conspicuous by their deafening silence.  All the money they gouged out of politically correct governments and "woke" corporations . . . what good did it do?  Where did it go?  Who benefited most from it?  No good asking those questions;  they won't answer them - but we all know where the money came from that's kept them employed and living comfortably - some would say high on the hog - all this time.

Almost the entire climate change industry is based on pseudo-scientific twaddle.  Go watch the video report at that link.  It's the truth.

Peter

Federal regulations, environmentalism, and cleaning

 

I've long been frustrated (as, I'm sure, have many of my readers) with the declining effectiveness of laundry detergent, dishwasher detergent, floor cleaners and other cleaning products.  They just don't seem to work as well these days as they used to.  The reason is pretty clear:  the EPA and other Federal agencies have been trying to legislate or regulate many effective cleaning materials out of existence in the name of "environmental protection" or "pollution control" or whatever is the reason du jour.  (That's not helped by new "efficiency" regulations that hobble the performance of new clothes and dish washers, even if they had the old full-strength detergents to use.)

I've tried to get around the problem wherever possible by "adding back" some of the missing ingredients to the cleaning products I use.  One of the most common "hacks" is to add a little TSP (trisodium phosphate) to laundry or dishwasher detergent.  Until recently I've bought a box of the stuff at home improvement stores (Home Depot, Lowes and the like) when needed, and it's lasted two or three years when used sparingly.  I find it particularly useful for mopping dirty floors and cleaning grimy, greasy paintwork.  I don't do that often, but when I do it makes the job much easier.  It makes cleaning a charcoal or gas grill much faster, too, and a lot less effort.

Unfortunately, when I went shopping for a box of TSP yesterday, I found that the major home improvement chains in a nearby city have all stopped carrying it.  Instead, they're selling what they call "TSP Substitute Phosphate-Free".  The packaging claims that it's as good as the real stuff, but many customer reviews online are pretty emphatic that it's not.  I daresay the EPA and/or other agencies "leaned on" those stores to stop carrying TSP.

Fortunately, there are still ways around that.  One can get TSP online from various suppliers in 1lb. or 4½lb. boxes, or even in 40lb. buckets.  Buying in bulk, like the latter option, is also quite a lot cheaper than the current substitutes.  I've just ordered enough to keep us going for the foreseeable future, plus a little extra in case the bureaucrats shut down even the online channels.  If you, like me, have been accustomed to using the stuff, or you want a powerful cleaner that just plain works, you might want to stock up on some yourself while the going's good.

Another bone of contention is pre-mixed or pre-diluted solutions of common cleaning products, whether spray bottles or aerosols or whatever.  I may be wrong, but the small consumer-ready bottles on the racks seem to be less effective than before.  I suspect the concentration of cleaning product has been reduced, and/or some of the chemicals used to make it have been replaced by environmentally friendlier alternatives.  That's great for the eco-weenies, but not so useful if you're trying to get something clean in a hurry.  I've therefore started to buy one-gallon bottles of concentrated cleaning detergents and products (e.g. Simple Green, Zep, bleach, vinegar, etc.) and mix my own solutions in my own spray bottles to higher concentrations than those sold commercially.  No more problems with weak-kneed solutions!

I hear that some people add TSP to their solutions of such cleaners.  I'm leery of that, because I don't know all the chemical reactions involved.  Instead, I'll have a spray bottle of TSP solution right alongside the bottle of cleaning detergent solution.  I'll apply first one, then the other, then use a mop or cloth to rub the combination into the surface I'm cleaning.  Works like a charm.

Finally, if the supply chain goes to hell in a handbasket and we can't get the cleaners we need in a timely manner, it's good to have extra in your emergency supplies to take care of that until supplies are restored.  (I wonder how many of them are made here, and how many come from China?  Even if the products are made here, where do their containers come from?)  Buying cleaners in bulk makes that easy.  One can put aside a year or two's worth of concentrated product in not very much space, and for a lot less money per unit than buying small consumer-size containers.  Add a few spray bottles to your preps to mix them, and you're all set.

Just a thought.

Peter

Our skin may actually cause ageing

 

The BBC reports:

The latest research suggests that our skin is not just a mirror for our lifestyles – reflecting the effects of years of smoking, drinking, sun and stress – and hinting at our inner health. No, in this new upside-down-world, the body's largest organ is an active participant in our physical wellbeing. This is a strange new reality where wrinkles, dry skin and sunspots cause ageing, instead of the other way around.

In 1958 ... [a] major project was quietly conceived. The Baltimore Longitudinal Study was to be a scientific investigation of ageing with a daring and rather unorthodox premise ... The research followed thousands of adult men (and later, women) for decades, to see how their health developed – and how this was affected by their genes and the environment.

Just two decades in, scientists had already made some intriguing breakthroughs, from the discovery that less emotionally stable men were more likely to be diagnosed with heart disease to the revelation that our problem-solving abilities decline only slightly with age.

But one of the most striking findings confirmed what people had long suspected: how youthful you look is an impressively accurate expression of your inner health. By 1982, those men who had been assessed as looking particularly old for their age at the beginning of the study, 20 years earlier, were more likely to be dead.  This is backed up by more recent research, which found that, of patients who were judged to look at least 10 years older than they should, 99% had health problems.

It turns out skin health can be used to predict a number of seemingly unconnected factors, from your bone density to your risk of developing neurodegenerative diseases or dying from cardiovascular disease. However, as the evidence has begun to add up, the story has taken a surprise twist.

. . .

As the largest organ in the body, the skin can have a profound impact. The chemicals released by diseased and dysfunctional skin soon enter the bloodstream, where they wash around, damaging other tissues. Amid the ensuing systemic inflammation, chemicals from the skin can reach and harm organs that seem entirely unrelated, including your heart and brain.

The result is accelerated ageing, and a higher risk of developing the majority of – or possibly even all – related disorders. So far, aged or diseased skin has been linked to the onset of cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes and cognitive impairment, as well as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease.

. . .

... there is direct evidence that [using sunscreen and moisturizing the skin] does reduce inflammation – and that it may help to prevent dementia ... adding moisture back is not particularly complicated, whatever cosmetics adverts seem to suggest. And in the field of ageing, this simple intervention is showing remarkable results.

There's more at the link.

I'm intrigued by this research because, like many others, I was exposed to particularly harsh conditions for my skin during my military service.  When you're deployed, nobody's going to provide sunscreen or moisturizer for your skin - at least, no military organization of which I've ever heard has done so.  You provide your own, or get sunburned and wizened like a dried-up prune.  (Yes, there are other similes.  No, I'm not going to mention them in a family-friendly blog like this!)

When I look at my catalog of health problems in later life (it's a depressing list), and read this article, I find that many of the illnesses and conditions it identifies are among my issues.  I wonder if there's a correlation between years of one's skin being baked and fried and rained on and frozen in the field, and health in later life?  It sounds as if there may be.  Might veterans be able to use this evidence to get more medical assistance for such issues as they get older?  How would one prove the connection?

Curiouser and curiouser, as Alice would say . . .

Peter

Traveling (very!) light

 

Remember "You'll own nothing and be happy"?  Well, it looks like that day may be drawing nearer, if at least some airlines and resorts have their way.  In an article titled "Are luggage-free trips the future?", the BBC observes:

To highlight how travelling sustainably first starts at home, here are some places that are challenging the long-established idea of packing before you leave – and offering shortcuts to a more streamlined holiday.

Japan 

In a daring move towards a more sustainable aviation industry, Japan Airlines recently launched a pilot programme giving overseas travellers the option to rent clothes for their stay in the country in advance – thus eliminating the need to lug and load. 

. . .

The Alps 

Around the world, skiers are trying to lower their carbon footprints. But while winter sports holidays have long been the domain of excess oversized baggage costs, there is an element of changing perceptions. A new idea is emerging in resorts across France, Switzerland and Austria: leave the gear at home and rent it at the resort.

. . .

Dubrovnik 

While Venice was the first destination bold enough to consider banning wheelie suitcases to better preserve the city's overcrowded streets in 2014, Dubrovnik has turned the argument into action – now recommending visitors leave their rolling luggage at home ... the city now recommends visitors not disturb the historic cobbled streets by carrying – not dragging – wheeled baggage around.

. . .

East Africa

Safari lodges in national parks across Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda offer a different proposition to most holidays ... while there is no ban on certain types of luggage, restrictions are commonly in place and there is an expectation for travellers to understand and respect the need to arrive light.

There's more at the link.

That's all very well for the well-heeled;  but what about the rest of us, who don't have spare cash to burn?  It's also great for the resorts, which can "rent out" clothing, sports gear and other goodies (at a significant extra profit to themselves), then wash and clean it and do the same thing over and over again.  I daresay they'll end up making a profit of at least ten times what they paid for the stuff, all at our expense.

(One can only hope that their laundry and cleaning services are up to the job.  Given how many hotels already have problems with bedbugs, how many more will find unwanted insect visitors in their rented clothing or sports gear?  Who's to say that the person who rented those clothes before me was as clean and hygiene-conscious as I am?)

I can't help wondering whether this isn't being pushed by those who stand to benefit most from it.  The resorts and sports lodges are obvious winners, but there's also the airlines, who won't have to devote as much hold space to carrying passengers' luggage - they can instead fill it with higher-profit air freight containers.  There's also the perspective of those who want to "save the earth" by (among other things) reducing leisure travel.  If it becomes a lot more expensive to travel, through having to rent what you need at your destination rather than carry it with you, won't that play right into their hands?  They won't have to legally restrict leisure travel;  the costs involved will do it for them.

This may be on a par with the "eat insects!" crowd:  yet another attempt to modify our behavior to fit in with the "green revolution".  Hard pass from me, thank you very much!

Peter

Tucker Carlson and Ice Cube: the studio interview

 

Yesterday I posted a "street" interview between Tucker Carlson and rapper Ice Cube.  Today, let's follow that with the next episode from Tucker:  a twenty-minute studio interview with Ice Cube, talking in greater depth about some of the subjects raised yesterday, and going into new areas.  Like yesterday's excerpt, this is (or should be) very interesting to many who've never been exposed to the inner-city environment that produced Ice Cube and many others.  I think it's very important for that reason.

Full marks to Tucker Carlson for stretching the boundaries for many of his fans;  and full marks to Ice Cube for doing the same, and for speaking out about current affairs and America's problems without fear or favor.

Peter

Tucker Carlson and Ice Cube talk about "the hood"

 

This is a very interesting and worthwhile discussion between Tucker Carlson (who needs no introduction) and rapper Ice Cube.  Highly recommended viewing to get an idea of what life is like in "the hood".

A very useful look at how many Americans live today.  Many of us aren't exposed to that way of life at all.  I saw its effects when serving as a prison chaplain, where many of the inmates to whom I ministered came from that background.  That's not to say that everyone in the hood is a criminal, of course;  it's just that many in that environment see no other way out but to turn to crime, which is tragic in itself.

Peter