The Green Industry - A few things you probably already knew

This bit of brilliance is by Timothy P. Carney of the Washington Examiner. 
No, the industry of painting machines green isn't driven by a a desire to save the planet. 

Environmental policy is not driven by tree-hugging activists, earnest liberal bloggers, or ecologically minded citizens. Instead, it flows from the lobbyists and executives of well-connected multinational corporations and built-for-subsidy startups that see profit in the loan guarantees, handouts, mandates, and tax credits Congress creates in the name of saving the planet.
K Street is the epicenter of this green-industrial complex, and ground zero might be the firm founded by Democratic revolving-door earmark lobbyist Steve McBee.

McBee, a former top staffer for Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., and powerful House Appropriations Committee member Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Wash., reportedly wrote key provisions in the stimulus bill to open the spigot of green corporate welfare. Also, he has hired up the Capitol Hill staff at the center of big environmental legislative pushes like cap and trade.

Exploring corporate lobbyists' central role in Obama's "green energy" push provides us two important lessons. First, it reveals as hypocritical the Democratic attack that opponents of cap and trade and other green policies are simply shills for big business.

Second, it ought to heighten our skepticism that these "green" policies are really crafted with an eye to helping the environment -- they are more likely skewed toward the bottom line of lobbied-up Big Business.

McBee's clients include SolarCity and the Green Tech Action Fund as well as electric-car maker Better Place Inc., waste-to-power company Ze-gen, and solar-power developer BrightSource Energy. But the big guys -- Boeing, JP Morgan, and Google -- also hire McBee to lobby for green-energy subsidies.

Electric car company Tesla signed on with McBee days after Obama's election, and soon won a $465 million loan guarantee to aid in building a new all-electric car.

With McBee's former boss being a senior Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, McBee Strategic used to be an earmark factory. After Obama's election, though, McBee pivoted to green energy and saw revenues soar in 2009.

"I attribute it to the bets we've made on clean energy and energy," he told Roll Call.

Late last year McBee hired Kathleen Frangione, described by Politico as "Sen. John Kerry's top climate staffer." You see the play: advance green legislation, then lobby for the companies trying to make money off that legislation.

Hit the link up top to read the whole thing. 
The pictures of the Room Cleaner (a space heater with a feather duster taped to it) and the gasoline powered alarm clock, both of which were approved as "Energy Stars" by regulators, came from here. 

There is only one goddess Gaia, and Al Gore is her prophet

Here's Al Gore on Conan O'Brien trying to explain one of the perpetual motion machines that he will soon force upon the gullible:


Here's some of the transcript, compliments of the good folks at Hot Air:

Conan: Now, what about … you talk in the book about geothermal energy …
The Goracle Of Music City: Yeah, yeah.
Conan: ....and that is, as I understand it, using the heat that’s generated from the core of the earth …
The Goracle Of Music City: Yeah.
Conan: … to create energy, and it sounds to me like an evil plan by Lex Luthor to defeat Superman. Can you, can you tell me, is this a viable solution, geothermal energy?
The Goracle Of Music City: It definitely is, and it’s a relatively new one. People think about geothermal energy — when they think about it at all — in terms of the hot water bubbling up in some places, but two kilometers or so down in most places there are these incredibly hot rocks, ’cause the interior of the earth is extremely hot, several million degrees, and the crust of the earth is hot …

Several million degrees? Do some Googling. Maybe he was thinking of the Sun. It doesn't really matter. His heart is in the right place and he means well. Give him your money. Give him control over manufacturing, trucking, and your thermostat. Who you gonna believe, Al Gore, or a thermometer?

Eco-Hippies Mourning The Loss Of Some Trees

There are all sorts of things I've tucked away for a rainy day, or even worse, for a rainy day stuck in a hotel room in Thomson, Georgia.
Here's a YouTube video of a group of hippies ceremonially mourning the loss of some trees.


Some people might think they're over-reacting. But this is EXACTLY what it feels like when you realize you're going to be spending the weekend in Thomson, Georgia.

Australian Road Trains

You'll start seeing these soon. They got started during WWII, hauling fuel across the Australian outback. Since most of the Australian population lives within 10 miles of the beach, it doesn't make sense to restrict a rig to a sleeper cab with only one 53' trailer.

The typical Road Train setup is at least three 44' trailers. The max is six. Any rig pulling that many trailers probably has to go to a parking lot to turn around, and probably has a bigger carbon footprint than Al Gore's house. But it's cheaper than fuel and drivers for 6 rigs. Notice the heavy duty business on the nose of the tractor in this pic. It's the equivalent to the cow catcher on a locomotive.
Click here to see the entire article. I've copied a few of the Australian Road Train FAK's, complete with Aussie spelling and grammar, which is instantly recognizable since it's worse than mine. These guys have 14 hour shifts, half hour stops, no speed limit at all on cars, and a major kangaroo problem....

How many Kilometres do we drive a day?
We drive about one thousand kilometres a day this takes around fourteen hours, you have to keep in mind that we do not have many little towns to go though we drive hundreds of kilometres between towns and no big highways with lots of cars. I never worked out how many kilometres we drive a year but we do a lot.
How fast do we drive? There is a speed limit for all heavy
trucks of one hundred kilometres per hour, but most drivers do about one hundred a ten kilometres per hour. As we are in the middle of no were their are not many police to stop you, plus there is no speed limit on cars at all.
How many days do we work?

Most drivers work on a two weeks driving and one
week off at home. Each day we drive about fourteen hours with short half hour stops about every five hundred kilometres.
Where do drivers sleep? Most drivers sleep in the sleeper
cabs of the truckThese days a lot of trucking companies run what we call two up, that’s were each truck has two drivers one will drive wile the other driver sleeps in the sleeper cab of the truck.
What sort of problems do we have? The worse problem we
have driving in the Outback is hitting wild animal and livestock. If you look at a photo of our truck you will see the big bull bars on the front of the trucks. We hit lots of Kangaroos which can be as tall as a man some people think they are small, but they will do a lot of damage to a car or truck. There are more kangaroos now than there was a hundred years ago, because water is pumped up from under ground to water cattle so the kangaroos have bred like wild fire.

Prediction: You'll see something like this in the U.S. within 10 years. Sooner if fuel prices keep going up.

You heard it here first. Unless you read a LOT of logistics magazines.