The Great Lakes Aquarium gets another 100Gs and there is notably little outrage. Well, Duluth's apathy factor seems to increase with every hair-brained decision by the Council to throw more money into bottomless pits.
The GLA has a dubious history of disclosure and transparency. They have been close lipped about certain facts and figures such as whose actual decision was it to refuse the $1 Million settlement offered during the lawsuit against the contractors? Will we ever get an answer to that question? If not, why not? Whose facility is this anyway?
The next thing we will see is the implementation of the taxing plan to build the next "public facility", the DECC expansion. Why are we sinking $70 Million into another facility when we are struggling to figure out how to pay for the last one and the one before that and the one before that? The DECC already receives over $1 Million every year in tax subsidies and now they want more to "invest" in a marginally larger hockey rink. The argument is and always has been, if we build it, they will come. That is, we will be able to attract bigger acts, bigger games, have more than one big event at the same time, etc.
Maybe we should take the $1 Million annual subsidy away and say, if you can make it on your own and make this facility a net contributor in tax dollars, you can have this sum to "invest" in what better be another net contributor. We have the GLA and it exists for what reason? What tangible benefit does it provide the community that we sink hundreds of thousands of tax dollars into it every year? How does it benefit the businesses that are collecting and paying the taxes that fund it? Does Grizzlies benefit from it? Does Moldeez benefit from it? They are paying for it among many others.
We are being held hostage to the notion that if we pay more, we get more. Nothing could be farther from the truth. If those businesses currently paying the tourism taxes were allowed to place that three hundred thousand dollars into a loan or grant fund, imagine the good they could achieve. Place that money into an interest bearing account and once a year, open it up for application for loans and grants available only to those businesses who currently collect and pay the tax.
Better yet, instead of increasing the current tax to pay for another misguided venture, require those now receiving the tax dollars to stand on their own. We would have more than enough to cover the new rink. Unfortunately, that flies in the face of socialism and Duluth is a socialist City. Take from the producers and give to the non-productive.
The DFL has never strayed from the policy of spend and tax, then spend more and tax more. The promises to eliminate or reduce taxes once the projects are done are nothing more than lies to get you, the taxpayer, dumbed-down long enough to get their pork then bury it behind the scenes forever. It's just more of the same. It's Only Money.
Showing posts with label junk science. Show all posts
Showing posts with label junk science. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
Thursday, February 15, 2007
Global What?
It seems the whole "Inconvenient Truth" crowd, up in arms and becoming more militant by the minute about the issue of Global Warming have a few sticky issues to deal with of late. Just look at the North American Continent. We are under a sustained deep freeze, the likes of which we haven't seen in my lifetime. States and regions rarely seeing freezing temperatures and snow are buried and crops grown in California and Florida have been hit hard by freezing weather. Areas that haven't seen snow in decades are seeing it, in many cases for the first time the inhabitants of the area have seen in their lives. Lake Superior, is iced over as far as the eye can see.
"Before and after" photos instill panic and the frenzy to convince all the glaciers are shrinking the oceans are inundating everything, everywhere, are deceptive in nature and are often deliberately taken during predictable fluctuations. The Earth is a dynamic planet but by cosmic standards, we are relatively static. Our climate has seen dramatic shifts in a cosmic blink of an eye that have resulted in mass extinction, destruction beyond our comprehension and devastation over vast areas and periods long before humans ever graced the planet. On the other hand, if you consider the range of climactic possibilities on a universal scale, our fluctuations are miniscule.
The reality of humans even being able to measure global climate change is dubious at best. Where and how are these measurements being taken? Well the answer will leave most of us doubting the ability to detect anything on a global scale. We know less about our own planet than we do outer space and surrounding planets. We have vast regions of the oceans that have never been explored, measured, mapped or quantified. The most obvious thing to even the casual observer with a speck of intelligence and knowledge is that the oceans have great affect on our day to day climate, yet they are only one part of the equation. Ocean currents are dynamic and the temperature and circulation of the water in the oceans has a greater affect than humans can even comprehend. The variables are so vast and unexplored it is truly foolhearty and arrogant to think we, mere humans, can begin to understand the complexity and dynamic nature of the global climate.
The Sun, 93 Million miles away goes through fluctuations that directly affect our climate...and we can control that influence how? The orbit of the Moon has a dramatic affect on our climate. The tectonic plates shift contstantly, changing the visible and inaccessible landscape constantly. Following the Earthquake that resulted in the devastating psunamis the Earth actually "wobbled" on it's axis. The long-term affects of that event on our climate may never be understood or quantified. The Earth's magnetic poles are shifting and that will have dramatic long term affects, not understood at all, on our climate. Foliage cover of the Earth changes dramatically with the seasons yet we have not even begun to quantify, on a global scale, the potential effects.
Jet streams shift, Ocean currents change, ocean temperatures shift with changes in cloud cover, current changes and moon cycles, volcanoes erupt, continents shift, forest fires burn, earthquakes occur, psunamis result, ice fields are dynamic and constantly shifting, polar ice caps have changed dramatically, ebb and flow, break and reform, meteor strikes can devastate the entire Earth, wind blows, convection sucks and so does the "science" or lack thereof, surrounding the entire "Global Warming" debate, since it started gaining momentum.
Lump together all other natural factors affecting our global climate and you understand that any politician claiming they will do something about Global Warming, is suffering from delusions of grandeur. I challenge any human to specify how humans would be able to effect change to our climate on a global scale when we have a difficult time figuring out how to keep homes and businesses warm and when we still have few ideas how the Earth has evolved since the Dinosaurs were wiped out, by a still unknown force.
To assert that humans can effect global climate change by an act of Congress or by Presidential decree is beyond ludicrous. There just seem to be far too many delusional politicians with too much time on their hands, promoting an agenda they think will influence a fickle, ignorant public into voting them into office so they can fix the planet. It's like the Duluth City Council attempting to change the course of the Iraq war; it's silly, disingenuous, inane, delusional and deceptive.
Take the bait like all the lemmings on the Global Warming, Man be damned, bandwagon and you, along with Al Gore and his minions will be eating crow by the truckload by the end of the decade. Use your noggin and your common sense and you will quickly dispel the utter myth of Man created Global Climate Change and if global climate change is occuring, that we are in any way, able to change the course of our climate.
Figure this one out and send me the solution: Cork the next major volcano eruption and all the cows asses and you will make a bigger impact on CO2 emissions than if you eliminate every man-made source on the planet. Delude no more and go in Peace!
"Before and after" photos instill panic and the frenzy to convince all the glaciers are shrinking the oceans are inundating everything, everywhere, are deceptive in nature and are often deliberately taken during predictable fluctuations. The Earth is a dynamic planet but by cosmic standards, we are relatively static. Our climate has seen dramatic shifts in a cosmic blink of an eye that have resulted in mass extinction, destruction beyond our comprehension and devastation over vast areas and periods long before humans ever graced the planet. On the other hand, if you consider the range of climactic possibilities on a universal scale, our fluctuations are miniscule.
The reality of humans even being able to measure global climate change is dubious at best. Where and how are these measurements being taken? Well the answer will leave most of us doubting the ability to detect anything on a global scale. We know less about our own planet than we do outer space and surrounding planets. We have vast regions of the oceans that have never been explored, measured, mapped or quantified. The most obvious thing to even the casual observer with a speck of intelligence and knowledge is that the oceans have great affect on our day to day climate, yet they are only one part of the equation. Ocean currents are dynamic and the temperature and circulation of the water in the oceans has a greater affect than humans can even comprehend. The variables are so vast and unexplored it is truly foolhearty and arrogant to think we, mere humans, can begin to understand the complexity and dynamic nature of the global climate.
The Sun, 93 Million miles away goes through fluctuations that directly affect our climate...and we can control that influence how? The orbit of the Moon has a dramatic affect on our climate. The tectonic plates shift contstantly, changing the visible and inaccessible landscape constantly. Following the Earthquake that resulted in the devastating psunamis the Earth actually "wobbled" on it's axis. The long-term affects of that event on our climate may never be understood or quantified. The Earth's magnetic poles are shifting and that will have dramatic long term affects, not understood at all, on our climate. Foliage cover of the Earth changes dramatically with the seasons yet we have not even begun to quantify, on a global scale, the potential effects.
Jet streams shift, Ocean currents change, ocean temperatures shift with changes in cloud cover, current changes and moon cycles, volcanoes erupt, continents shift, forest fires burn, earthquakes occur, psunamis result, ice fields are dynamic and constantly shifting, polar ice caps have changed dramatically, ebb and flow, break and reform, meteor strikes can devastate the entire Earth, wind blows, convection sucks and so does the "science" or lack thereof, surrounding the entire "Global Warming" debate, since it started gaining momentum.
Lump together all other natural factors affecting our global climate and you understand that any politician claiming they will do something about Global Warming, is suffering from delusions of grandeur. I challenge any human to specify how humans would be able to effect change to our climate on a global scale when we have a difficult time figuring out how to keep homes and businesses warm and when we still have few ideas how the Earth has evolved since the Dinosaurs were wiped out, by a still unknown force.
To assert that humans can effect global climate change by an act of Congress or by Presidential decree is beyond ludicrous. There just seem to be far too many delusional politicians with too much time on their hands, promoting an agenda they think will influence a fickle, ignorant public into voting them into office so they can fix the planet. It's like the Duluth City Council attempting to change the course of the Iraq war; it's silly, disingenuous, inane, delusional and deceptive.
Take the bait like all the lemmings on the Global Warming, Man be damned, bandwagon and you, along with Al Gore and his minions will be eating crow by the truckload by the end of the decade. Use your noggin and your common sense and you will quickly dispel the utter myth of Man created Global Climate Change and if global climate change is occuring, that we are in any way, able to change the course of our climate.
Figure this one out and send me the solution: Cork the next major volcano eruption and all the cows asses and you will make a bigger impact on CO2 emissions than if you eliminate every man-made source on the planet. Delude no more and go in Peace!
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