Good weather for skiing on October 9th

Former Vice President Al Gore will be flying into Madison on October 9th to lecture us all how our over-consumption and our excess carbon emissions will doom the planet like Krypton. Given the history of these events, we can expect anyone who disagrees with Gore's apocalyptic vision to be branded as the moral equivalent of NAZI death camp commandants. We can also expect Madison to be unseasonably cold that day.

My suggestion to the residents of Madison is prepare to dress warmly that day. You might even want to check your snowblowers the day before to make sure they're running properly. I find that using non-reformulated gas is essential for the first use of the snowblower each season.

The real reason Toyota is beating GM

Mickey Kaus pokes a hole in the theory that "green" is the future of Detroit. The cars that people want are reliable, not necessarily "green."

Today the Washington Post paraphrases Lutz on the importance of the Prius to Toyota:

Lutz sees several reasons for Toyota's ascendancy, none more important than becoming the darling of media analysts and environmentalists in the wake of its seminal hybrid, the Prius ...

In early 2006 -- "much too late," he acknowledges now -- a troubled Lutz saw that driving a Prius constituted nothing less than a values statement for many of its owners, a means to bask in the perception of their own enlightenment. Even more alarming, thought Lutz, was that some consumers not enamored of the Prius itself nonetheless saw its existence as proof of Toyota's wisdom. The Prius's presence alone was drawing people to Toyota lots, where the curious bought everything from bigger sedans to sport-utility vehicles and trucks with about the same gas mileage as their GM counterparts, groused Lutz. Part of what he called the "halo effect."

One sporadically selling hybrid, he realized, had greened an entire company and catapulted nearly every vehicle in its product line. It was a disturbing sea change for GM executives. ... Meanwhile, American automakers, including GM, suffered under the perception that they were stuck in yesteryear and saddled with cars of inferior quality. [E.A.]

Lutz can't possibly be enough of a moron to believe that the Prius and its "halo effect" are a primary reason for Toyota's ascendancy. Toyota has been ascendant for at least three decades, and GM declining, for a simple reason: Toyota built cars that worked ("bulletproof," as they say) at a time when GM built cars that didn't work. That's what was "drawing people to Toyota lots" a generation before the Prius was conceived. Even today, when GM suffers "under the perception that they [are] saddled with cars of inferior quality," you only have to look at the Consumer Reports reliability ratings to see that the reason GM is saddled with this perception is that the perception is accurate. (The Cadillac CTS that Lutz boasts about, for example, may be a great performer. But it's still so unreliable that Consumer Reports can't recommend it. The beautiful Pontiac Solstice, which Lutz championed, has a true crap record. The Prius, meanwhile, is spectacularly reliable.)

For those three decades of Japanese market surge, much of the talk of Detroit executives has been an attempt to dance around the central issue of reliability and 'build quality,' and the inability of Detroit to provide it. For most of Lutz's career, he played down the importance of Japanese reliability by talking up the "romance" of the Euro-style sports cars and American muscle cars he (rightly) liked. Now he plays down the importance of Japanese reliability by talking up the "halo effect" that a cutting-edge "green" car can create with bicoastal elites (whom he doesn't like) and the media.

Environmentalism has become the latest distraction and delusion for Detroit. Chrysler admits that small, fuel efficient FIAT models aren't going to sell in large numbers--but hey, they're going to have a "halo effect" that will "burnish" the entire Chrysler line! Chevrolet will only sell a few thousand Volts--but the bicoastal elite appeal of green will suck media-addled buyers into the "reinvented" GM.

No. Detroit cars will sell when they're bulletproof, not when they're green (or, in Lutz's new spin, when they're made by a company that also sells something "green"). But only one of the Big Three U.S. car manufacturers has made dramatic progress
catching up to Japan on the bulletproof front--and it's not Chrysler or GM. It's the one that hasn't gone broke. ... 2:32 P.M.

The War on Butts

Kevin Binversie at Lakeshore Laments reminds us why, especially in Wisconsin, environmentalists really chafe our asses.

Despite the news of some plants closing in Niagara and Kimberly, the paper industry is a vital part of region’s past and an important part of the economy.

Up in the area alone there are plants making Charmin, Northern, and who knows what else on a non-stop basis to fulfill the toiletry needs of America.

I made the mistake of buying a cheaper, recycled brand of toilet paper and my wife alomost divorced me. They'll pry the soft two-ply out of my wife's cold, dead fingers.

Siberian supervolcanic gas killed off 90% of life on Earth

250,000,000 years ago, a supervolcano in Siberia may have caused the extinction of 90% of life on Earth.

Researchers have known about the volcano -- the Siberian Traps, for years. And they've speculated that the volcanic rocks, which cover an area about the size of Alaska, played a role in runaway global warming that led to the end -- Permian mass extinction, the worst dying the planet has ever seen.

Now a team of researchers led by Henrik Svenson of the University of Oslo in Norway have performed a series of experiments, showing the volcano employed an arsenal of deadly weapons during its 200,000-year-long assault on the biosphere.

Kinda puts Ozone action days in perspective.

And the wind cried "oops, not here"

Wisconsin Club for Growth tries to make sense of the Democrats' energy plan. It sounds like a lot of hot air.

Democrats Breaking Wind

Suppose, for a moment, that you are the only person in America that can understand the Democrats’ energy plan. Let’s say you can explain how we can be less dependent on foreign oil by continuing to ban drilling for our own domestic oil.

Let’s say you honestly believe the answer to our energy crisis is inflating our tires. Perhaps you can explain how making energy more expensive by banning coal and nuclear power plants in Wisconsin is going to help consumers and the economy.

This week, the Wall Street Journal pointed out another energy contradiction you can use to amuse thinking people by trying to explain it. A television ad supporting Barack Obama implies he’s going to lessen our independence on foreign oil by cheerleading for wind energy. Yet, whenever efforts to build more windmills are offered, it’s the environmentalists that block implementation.

Environmentalists, who say they want clean energy, oppose windmills for two main reasons. First, they don’t approve of the aesthetic degradation caused by the large windmill blades. In other words, they don’t want to look at them. Second, they oppose the means by which the electricity would actually be transmitted to consumers; namely, more power lines.

In California, hundreds turned out at the end of July to protest a connection between the solar and geothermal fields of the Imperial Valley to Los Angeles and Orange County. The environmental class is likewise lobbying state commissioners to kill a 150-mile link between San Diego and solar panels because it would entail a 20-mile jaunt through Anza-Borrego state park. "It's kind of schizophrenic behavior," Arnold Schwarzenegger said recently. "They say that we want renewable energy, but we don't want you to put it anywhere."

And thus, the incoherent Democratic energy policy moves on – caught hopelessly between promising energy independence and actually implementing it.

Environmental protection racket

Environmentalist groups demonstrate that sometimes its not the principle, but the shakedown. From the Wisconsin Club for Growth newsletter:

Environmental Extortion

Last week, two environmental advocacy groups, Clean Wisconsin and the Sierra Club, dropped lawsuits they had filed against three gas and electric utilities when the companies agreed to $105 million in improvements to Lake Michigan. The environmental groups had filed lawsuits challenging the utilities’ water cooling system on a new coal-fired plant being built by WE energies, but decided to use the threat of more costly litigation to extort money for costly environmental upgrades instead.

Naturally, the utilities will pass the costs of these improvements on to their rate payers.

Thus, the mob-style extortion is complete – bully someone with a costly nuisance lawsuit, then make them pay up for an unrelated project, all the while sticking it to their customers. And as politicians and businesses continue to capitulate to the environmental movement, the cost of heating and cooling our homes and powering what’s left of Wisconsin’s manufacturing base will continue to increase.

Some people thought the Sopranos ended last year – but it appears their tactics are still alive and well in Wisconsin’s environmental community.

James Wigderson, defender of the fire pit

My latest contribution to FoxPolitics.net is up. For the record, I warned Jo Egelhoff ahead of time I might go on a fire pit rant. I actually make a wonderful larger point about society that everyone will agree with even as they succumb to their inner-tyrant. Don't believe me? Check the comments.

Annoying do-gooder busy-bodies.

Happy Birthday Paul Ehrlich

Today is Paul Ehrlich's 76th birthday, and like many people I'm glad that he, and the rest of us, lived to see this day just to prove him wrong. The author of The Population Bomb, Ehrlich famously predicted in December 1967, "In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now."

While famine did prove to be a problem, we experienced nowhere near the death totals predicted by Ehrlich. That's because the famines that were experienced were the result of politics, not overpopulation as he predicted. Fortunately we have been spared (for the most part) the horrific politics and population control desired by Ehrlich. Long may he live as a living monument to man's folly in predicting the end is near.

Recycling never goes away

Voila!

The French today chose to elect a pro-American candidate President. Congratulations to France and we pray for a successful term in office for Nicolas Sarkozy. With his election, France now becomes a more reliable ally in the War on Terror than Congress.

The other big news from France, Greenpeace has moved all it's yachts to neutral countries.

No I can go back to eating French Fries.

Find classic movies at Amazon.com