Irony

Green activists rescued from the Atlantic Ocean by one of those evil – gasp – oil tankers the environmentalists so loathe.

An expedition team which set sail from Plymouth on a 5,000-mile carbon emission-free trip to Greenland have been rescued by an oil tanker.

Raoul Surcouf, Richard Spink and skipper Ben Stoddart sent a mayday because they feared for their safety amid winds of 68mph (109km/h).

All three are reportedly exhausted but safe on board the Overseas Yellowstone.

The rescued did thank, without any reservations, the captain and crew of the Overseas Yellowstone.  

It is, however, ironic as all heck, isn’t it?

These were, apparently, their plans for the trip. Adn, unfortunately, these are the actual conditions of the ice around Greenland as of today.

It looks like they got rescued soon enough to avoid a complete debacle. Or possible fatalities.

Benedict Arlen Gets His Wages

Judas got 30 pieces of silver. Benedict Arnold got a pension of £360.

Arlen Specter gets bupkis. His seniority is gone.

Now it appears that Harry Reid was unable to keep his promise to award Specter his seniority. According to CNN, a resolution today prevented Specter from retaining his seniority. This is a double blow for Specter. First, he can no longer argue to Pennsylvanians that his seniority is a benefit to the state. This makes problem one and two above harder to overcome, as he loses one of the major arguments for his candidacy. Second, Specter does not strike me as a man with a small ego, yet he has dropped from being the twelfth most senior senator to coming in right below Kirsten Gillibrand, who was in diapers when Specter was starting his political career. I would imagine that isn’t easy to take. To make matters worse, there isn’t much he can do about it; what can he do, switch parties back?

More from Memeorandum. Arlen’s fall:

Arlen Specter infuriated Senate Republicans when he bolted from their party last week. Now he’s alienated just about everybody in the Senate Democratic caucus, too.

Since declaring himself a Democrat last Tuesday, Specter has defied Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and the White House on virtually everything that’s come down the pike: the budget, mortgage reform, the Al Franken-Norm Coleman race, even President Barack Obama’s appointment of Dawn Johnsen to head the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel.

All while quibbling over whether he said he’d be a “loyal Democrat” – and insisting that he had an “entitlement” to transfer his Senate seniority from one side of the aisle to the other.

The blowback came Tuesday night: On a voice vote, the Senate voted to strip Specter of his 29 years of seniority, effectively transforming him in a blink-and-you-missed-it-moment from one of the most senior senators in the body to a lowly freshman on most committees.

“There were concerns about his actions,” said Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), chairwoman of the Senate Democratic Steering and Outreach Committee, which sets committee assignments.

Specter is not a loyal Democrat anymore than he was a loyal Republican. Specter’s only loyalty is to himself. Four fingers straight up of self interest.

That his self-centered move backfired so spectacularly in such a short time speaks volumes about his ability to calculate what, exactly, is in his best interest.

Republican or Democrat, my money is on Pennsylvania having a new Senator in 2010.

Green Smoke

MasterResource runs the numbers – and exposes the outright fraud of the Waxman-Markey climate change legislation. It simply does nothing but burden Americans with huge expenses for energy – the “climate Change” it will avert is noise on the system, not any real savings.

By the year 2050, the Waxman-Markey Climate Bill would result in a global temperature “savings” of about 0.05ºC regardless of the IPCC scenario used-this is equivalent to about 2 years’ worth of warming. By the year 2100, the emissions pathways become clearly distinguishable, and so to do the impacts of Waxman-Markey. Assuming the IPCC mid-range scenario (A1B) Waxman-Markey would result in a projected temperature rise of 2.847ºC, instead of 2.959ºC rise- a mere 0.112ºC temperature “savings.” Under the IPCC’s high-emissions scenario, instead of a projected rise of 4.414ºC, Waxman-Markey limits the rise to 4.219ºC-a “savings” of 0.195ºC. In either case, this works out to about 5 years’ worth of warming. In other words, a full implementation and adherence to the emissions restrictions provisions described by the Waxman-Markey Climate Bill would result only in setting back the projected rise in global temperatures by a few years-a scientifically meaningless prospect. (Note: I present the results to three significant digits, not that they are that precise when it comes to the real world, but just so that you can tell the results apart).

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

As regular readers know, I work in the energy field and have for many years. I know what kind of green smoke is being blown by the advocates of renewables. I know how much damage is being done in the name of “green” energy.

There are real solutions to energy, using time-proven methods available with today’s technology. It is called a closed cycle nuclear program.

It is not wind power that is available only 30% of the time. It is not solar energy which is generally available even less. It is most certainly not rapacious government programs designed to drive energy costs into the stratosphere. (And line government pockets and the pockets of “green” investors like Al Gore.)

America got where it is today primarily because of cheap energy that allowed it to develop even better technologies.  

A meaningless carbon reduction program with ridiculous “savings” in carbon emissions at brutally high cost to America is not the answer.