A proposed ordinance amendment regulating lawn ornaments will wait for resident input.The rest of the story.
The Legislative Committee voted to table discussion on the amendment, which would limit the height of artwork, light posts and lawn ornaments to 30 percent of the house height - measured from the street yard to the peak - with a footprint no greater than 50 square feet.
Dr. Pimental has published some very controversial research, showing that using ethanol causes more petroleum to be imported, not less, due to the inefficiency of the corn-to-fuel process. I have steered away from Pimental's results, using Big Ethanol's published data instead. I still have found corn-based ethanol to be agriculturally unsustainable and an incredible waste of food for very little benefit.Still, Americans are seduced by the idea that there is some "alternative fuel" that will permit them to keep driving giant gas guzzlers while also cutting oil imports. I told Pimental about watching a 110-pound woman emerge from a four-ton SUV that pulled up next to me in a parking lot. He did some quick calculations in his head.
"The tank on that car would hold 30 gallons," he said. "It takes 22 pounds of corn to make one gallon of ethanol, so that's 660 pounds of corn to fill that tank just once."
That's 660 pounds of corn that won't make it into the food chain. Yet Congress grants exemptions to the fuel-economy rules for gas guzzlers set up to run on E-85, a fuel that is 85 percent ethanol. Since ethanol has less energy than gasoline per gallon, the fuel economy on these monsters can drop as low as 8 mpg. If you think we can end our dependence on foreign oil with vehicles that get 8 mpg, then you belong in a mental institution -- or in Congress
And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.Just another Sunday at the Trinity United Church of Wright.
No, not zombies, which as far as we can tell, are not affected by changes in climate, but polar bears. The plight - or not - of the polar bear due to global warming - or not - has tied a "not" around government; it cannot effectively move one way or another because many potent forces have gained enough authority to assert their authority to say they are right - or not - about issues that have far reaching implications - or not.
In 2006, scientists for the United States Geological Survey and the Canadian Wildlife Service, published a document through the USGS called Polar Bear Population Status in the Southern Beaufort Sea. In it, the authors found a marked decrease in the polar bear population in that area. One of its authors, Eric Regehr, went further:
Eric Regehr, a UW Ph.D. candidate in zoology and physiology and United States Geological Survey (USGS) employee, has spent the last two years analyzing polar bear data collected by the Canadian Wildlife Service in Canada's western Hudson Bay.
"These data provide evidence for a direct linkage between reduced sea ice coverage, presumably caused by climate change, and decreased polar bear survival in western Hudson Bay," Regehr says in the current edition of UWyo magazine.
That "presumably" is important, as issues of climate change are likely outside Regehr's domain. Regardless, the Bush administration has hesitated in adding polar bears to the the endangered species list and has hesitated further in explaining why to the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee:
The deadline for a decision on listing Alaska's polar bears as threatened under the Endangered Species Act was Jan. 9. Conservation groups petitioned to list polar bears as threatened more than three years ago because their habitat, sea ice, is shrinking from global warming, many scientists say.
Boxer said [Interior Secretery Dirk] Kempthorne and other administration officials were "ducking their responsibility to the American people" by delaying a decision on the bears — and then failing to appear at a hearing to explain why.
Note that Regehr's "presumably" is now taken as a given, supported by unnamed "many scientists." Guessing why Kempthorne did not appear might make a fun game but would be pure supposition - someone from Interior will weigh in sooner or later - but it provides an opening for other interested parties to have a say.
Senator John Barasso from Wyoming wrote this for The Hill's congressional blog:
Attempts to list the polar bear as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) during an Environment and Public Works Committee hearing is a hijacking of the Endangered Species Act for political purposes. It is not just about the polar bear.
Some claim that global warming is leading to the demise of polar bears. If the polar bear is listed as threatened, anything thought to contribute to global warming could be shut down — even in Wyoming.
We are all concerned about protecting the environment. If the polar bear is listed, the ESA will become a climate change law.
There's more but the central point seems to be that whether the polar bear is threatened or not, declaring it threatened will have unintended consequences: no longer will there be backyard barbeques because a polar bear cub is slipping off an ice ledge.
It's a fairly grotesque warping of the Endangered Species Act, since it is hard to imagine a court using polar bear protection to shut down carbon emitting entities; the economic consequences would be too severe.
Additionally, the EPA has not committed itself to allowing severe economic consequences to follow from efforts to contain emissions - see its refusal to grant California a waiver to allow the state to regulate auto emissions more stringently than the federal government for an example.
EPA may or may not become more activist one way or another - the upcoming elections will doubtless influence its future direction. But for now, Barasso seems stuck - able to accept that the polar bear fits the criteria of an endangered species, unable to act on it due to its implications for the nation's industries and economic well-being.
But all this could be put aside if one paid attention to CNN commentator Glenn Beck, who, talking with (or, on the evidence, at) Senator James Inhofe, said:
They eat people! For the love of Pete, they’re big, angry bears. They eat people. Not that I say we go out and kill all of them, but I mean, it doesn’t seem to be a problem here. Senator, I can’t take the — I can’t take the lies anymore.
So there it is. Interior should leave off the endangered species list any animal that eats people.
Ethanol production yields many valuable human and animal feed co-products. A bushel of corn used in the fuel ethanol process produces 1.6 pounds of corn oil, 10.9 pounds of high protein feed (distillers dried grains, or DDG), 2.6 pounds of corn meal, and 31.5 pounds of starch that can be converted to beverages or sweeteners, or used to produce 2.5 gallons of ethanol.
*Parenthetically: Those 28 gallons of ethanol in the E85 contain 1/3 less energy than the gasoline it replaces. Therefore, 42 gallons of ethanol must be produced to provide the same power as a full tank of gas. That equates to 840 pounds of corn, or enough to feed a person for a year and one half. But I won't go into that, things are bad enough without the distraction.
The grain it takes to fill an SUV tank with ethanol could feed a person for a year. Harvests are being plucked to fuel our cars instead of ourselves. What a brilliant idea.That statement wasn't from the blogger. It was from a TIME article the blogger was critiquing. Could that really be true? Lets find out.
Today the average age of the nation's nuclear workers is about 50. Many will be eligible to start retirement at 55. Within five years, about 35 percent of the specialists who have been running U.S. nuclear plants for the past quarter-century -- about 19,600 people -- are expected to begin a mass retirement.I am seeing this first hand at the Kewaunee plant's refueling outage. Of the 400 laborers brought onsite for the outage, 80% are first time nuclear workers. These workers get 72 hour work weeks, with many away from their homes for up to 2 months. Somehow the premium dollars make it worthwhile. Bring your union card, they will find work for you.
With the explosion in job opportunity, nuclear professionals are mobile again after years of stagnating in a low-turnover industry.
Death of UW student called homicide
Police find her body in home off campus
Madison police are investigating the homicide of a 21-year-old University of Wisconsin-Madison student found dead Wednesday afternoon in her off-campus apartment.Officers responding to a call to check on a resident in a duplex in the 500 block of W. Doty St. just after 1 p.m. found the body of Brittany Sue Zimmermann, said Joel DeSpain, a Police Department spokesman.
Zimmermann, a junior from Marshfield who was majoring in medical microbiology and immunology, lived at the rental unit and attended classes at UW, according to an e-mail from the university.
The cause of death has not been determined, but the Dane County coroner classified the death as a homicide, DeSpain said.
An autopsy was scheduled for today.
Police did not have a suspect in custody late Wednesday, DeSpain said.
There was no evidence Zimmermann was targeted, but police had not determined whether the killing was random, DeSpain said.
My 21-year-old University of Wisconsin-Madison student daughter has a 9mm surprise waiting for this bastard if he comes to her off-campus apartment. She will be carrying it when she is out at night, too.
Thanks to the other bastard, Governor Jim Doyle, it is a crime for her to protect her life.
