Citizen Power

I recorded this hearing, and it’s linked below, so more people can hear it. How many people go to C-SPAN and listen to the hearings there? I don’t know — I usually don’t unless I have to.

On Wednesday, January 28, Al Gore testified on climate change to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. (Gore was also there to support President Obama’s stimulus package, which was up for a vote at the time he was testifying.) John Kerry, Russ Feingold, and several others on the committee talked and questioned Al Gore. This is a must-listen committee hearing for anyone interested in how we are going to deal with climate change. They not only heard a presentation about how serious things are with our climate, but concrete ways to deal with it. In fact, in the last half hour (of part 2) Al Gore really discusses some solid plans and solutions, and puts forth what can be done.

It’s probably the most useful and politically practical thing I’ve heard on dealing with climate change so far, and it’s good to hear something so positive and optimistic about climate change solutions. I think Al Gore is one of the best people to communicate the facts and solutions, too.

But before the solutions, Gore covers some frightening facts. Here are two more graphics I was able to grab off the CSPAN screen (where I got the recording). The picture on the top of this post is the one he used to illustrate what a planet with all of its CO2 in the atmosphere becomes: The planet Venus, at 855 degrees, with all its carbon in the atmosphere (none in the soil or the oceans).

The graphic here on the left shows that hundreds of thousands of people will be displaced by rising sea level if climate change is not reversed. In the second picture, it shows how the sun’s rays, which would normally bounce off ice, are now absorbed by the ocean when the ice is missing. Gore loves slides shows and that’s part of what his presentation was.

The hearing was about 3 hours long and I split it into two parts, and they are downloadable below. This is the hearing in its entirety, minus a couple of minutes at the beginning where chairman Senator John Kerry was intoning his introductions and thank-you’s. But for all Kerry’s previous dronations, his speech this time is very interesting throughout, as is the whole hearing. I think it’s the only senate hearing I’ve listened to in its entirety and not been bored one minute.

Download/ Listen to Part 1 here.

Download/Listen to Part 2 here.

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“We as human beings have a tendency to confuse the unprecedented with the impossible.
The exceptions can kill you.”

Al Gore spoke today to the Senate committee on foreign relations. He had a more receptive audience than in the past, and he again called for swift action. This testimony was tied to the Obama administration stimulus package appeal, and Al Gore emphasized the need to pass it. If you care about climate change and taking the first steps in dealing with it, please call your Senators and get them to support the new stimulus package! This is not a bank bailout, this is a job creation bill that will be our first step in dealing with the problems of the near future, including climate change. There were some surprises at the hearing. Republican Senator Corker even agrees with a carbon tax versus a cap and trade system because he feels it is less of a “transfer of wealth” from taxpayers to business. And it is.

Below are Al Gore’s opening remarks as prepared. From listening to it, he deviated from these remarks somewhat and talked a lot more after them, which you can watch here. It’s about 3 hours long, which I am recording and will make available as a podcast by tomorrow, because it is very much worth hearing. Senator John Kerry said he is going to have the entire testimony printed and distributed among the senators, and I hope I can get a copy of that because it will include Gore’s new graphics. They are much more frightening than the graphics in his original slide show/movie. As Gore states, this is a planetary emergency. We have never dealt with anything like this before. Issues with climate change have moved along quite a bit since Gore’s move came out, but there is still a lot of work to do to convince the public of the enormity of this problem. For a good start, watch this congressional testimony, or listen to it when I provide the link to the podcast. This is not a regular issue where we have a lot of time to debate.

Statement to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee

The Hon. Al Gore

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

We are here today to talk about how we as Americans and how the United States of

America as part of the global community should address the dangerous and growing

threat of the climate crisis.

We have arrived at a moment of decision. Our home – Earth – is in grave danger. What is

at risk of being destroyed is not the planet itself, of course, but the conditions that have

made it hospitable for human beings.

Moreover, we must face up to this urgent and unprecedented threat to the existence of our

civilization at a time when our country must simultaneously solve two other worsening

crises. Our economy is in its deepest recession since the 1930s. And our national

security is endangered by a vicious terrorist network and the complex challenge of ending

the war in Iraq honorably while winning the military and political struggle in

Afghanistan.

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This has nothing to do with power or protesting but I can’t resist posting something that’s about justice. I’ve been hoping to see this SOB put on trial for years. Remember the Valerie Plame case? Rove was instrumental in destroying a covert CIA agent’s career, endangered America by doing so, and to top it all off she was working on intelligence on Iran’s nuclear weapons program. OK, Karl, time to talk.

Could this be the end of the road for Karl Rove? He may finally see his day in court and maybe even several hundred days in jail for obstructing justice and politicizing the hiring and firing of federal judges, besides the deliberate outing of a CIA agent.

Rove has been subpoenaed again by Congress, and this time, he won’t be getting away with not showing up. His original claim was “executive privilege” but can’t claim that any longer because our new president isn’t sharing any secrets with him.

Several stories have come out recently on Rove’s recent subpoena, and I even have his actual subpoena here (thanks to Talking Points Memo) Here is page one of the actual subpoena. Click for a larger version.

For page 2, see below.

Obama order could present problems for Rove
A little-noticed twist in an order issued by President Barack Obama the day after his inauguration may present problems for former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove and other Bush Administration officials that have been targeted for their alleged role in various scandals.

Rove was subpoenaed Monday afternoon by House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-MI). . . . .
. . . . Determination of executive privilege must now also be examined by President Obama’s lawyers. In fact, Rove’s lawyer made direct reference to Obama’s role in any future decision to enjoin Rove’s appearance on the congressional witness stand Monday night.

“It’s generally agreed that former presidents retain executive privilege as to matters occurring during their term,” Rove’s lawyer, Robert Luskin, told The Washington Post. “We’ll solicit the views of the new White House counsel and, if there is a disagreement, assume that the matter will be resolved among the courts, the president and the former president.”
Not so fast! See the story for more. I’m sure the Obama administration has ways and means to nail this slippery guy, at long last.

Read More here
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The following article that appeared in Solar Today magazine is a good analysis on the “debate” about whether climate change exists, whether it’s caused by humans and why people are so reluctant to believe facts and evidence. There is no real debate on this subject except to wonder about how bad things might get if we don’t “do something”. But the American mainstream media would like us to argue about it, so they continue to present both sides of the issue. That’s really not smart or necessary. When someone says the earth is flat, the media doesn’t need to put them on TV to talk about it. The earth is not flat, that is a fact, so there is no reason to include a flat-earth believer in a “debate”. That debate is over. The debate about climate change is also over, but the media has not yet realized that because the issue has been politicized.

As the article points out, mention the words “global warming”, (which is what conservatives usually call it), and you will get the intonations of conspiracy theory and doubt. Some conservatives believe that “liberals” are trying to spread a fake theory so that we can create jobs and clean up pollution, which would be terrible somehow, for conservatives. I don’t know why this science is politicized, and I don’t know why some conservatives are so reluctant to believe science, but I have encountered it online quite a bit and it’s maddening. I’ve even been told by quasi-”progressives” that global warming is not real. No, I’m not kidding. It’s really bizarre. It’s also maddening, because we have to act fast on climate change and we can’t do that if half the country thinks it’s a hoax. Or can we? Maybe we can go forward without some of the public’s support. Even so, our Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, will have to convince China and India and other countries to reduce their CO2 emissions very very fast. (This is one of her state goals as SoS).

This analysis wonders if we can’t just ignore the “doubters” and act anyway. That is more or less what President Obama is doing so far, to his credit. His administration is saying, let them doubt it, we don’t care, we are going to run our policy on science, not political conspiracy theories and badly informed conservatives. Here is the analysis which is in their (downloadable and free) online issue.

“The Debate is Over! (Or Is It?)

Unless people recognize that human greehouse gas emissions cause global warming, we cant’ fix it.
By Chuck Kutscher

Several years ago, magazines and newspapers began declaring that the climate change debate is over. But is it really? While most Americans now apparently believe tht our planet is warming, a surprising number of us believe it is a natural variation. Why is this? And does it matter?

When I talk to people about climate change, I come away with one consistent impression: Whether a person believes we are responsible for warming the planet is strongly correlated to a person’s political orientation. To say that climate change has been politicizes is an understatement. When it comes to the politicization of scientific issues, climate change should be in the Guinness World Records. It is said that al of us tend to get our information from sources that reinforce our points of view. And there is no denying that one end of the media spectrum touts the message that climate, like the weather, is simply going through a natural cycle.

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Some of the mainstream media is finally admitting the truth. In the U.S., you can’t turn on any “news” channel without seeing the effects of the multi-million-dollar ad campaign designed to convince Americans that coal is clean and oil and gas are necessary and wonderful. It’s really beyond sickening how they are pushing this propaganda on us. In a surprise move, it’s the New York Times that contradicts one part of the clean coal/wonderful energy myth. After this excerpt from the editorial, check out the question asked by ClimateProgress on whether or not we can convince China to stop using this horrible fuel source. Coal plants are still being approved around this country too, and in order to stop them from being constructed, everyone has to act in some way. A call to your representatives in Washington is a good first step.January 23, 2009

Collapse of the Clean Coal Myth

“A month of negative news for the Tennessee Valley Authority could lead to positive changes in national policy, including federal regulation of toxic coal wastes and new legal constraints on coal-fired power plants. More broadly, the authority’s recent travails may help persuade the public that coal is nowhere near as “clean” as a high-priced industry advertising campaign makes it out to be.

In December, hundreds of acres of Roane County in eastern Tennessee were buried under a billion gallons of toxic coal sludge after the collapse of one of the T.V.A.’s containment ponds. It was an accident waiting to happen and an alarm bell for Congress and federal regulators.

Senator Barbara Boxer of California noted that coal combustion in this country produces 130 million tons of coal ash every year — enough to fill a train of boxcars stretching from Washington, D.C., to Australia. Amazingly, the task of regulating the more than 600 landfills and impoundments holding this ash is left to the states, which are more often lax than not. Ms. Boxer will press the Obama administration to devise rules for the disposal of coal ash as well as design and construction standards for the impoundments.

Just as the T.V.A. was dealing with this mess, Lacy Thornburg, a federal district judge in North Carolina, ordered the giant utility to reduce emissions from four coal-fired power plants that had been sending pollution into North Carolina. The ruling validated an unusual legal strategy adopted by North Carolina’s attorney general, Roy Cooper, who sued the T.V.A. in 2006 on grounds that pollution from its power plants in Alabama, Tennessee and Kentucky constituted a “public nuisance” to the citizens of his state. Mr. Cooper chose this route because the Bush administration had systematically weakened regulations that had been used in the past to force power companies to clean up their emissions.”

We will see more and more lawsuits soon on the issue of coal and pollution. I suspect that someone at the New York Times is sending our new president a message. I doubt they would have bothered to run an editorial like this while Bush was still in office. There would have been no point.

Read More here

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“Green Tsunami” in Brazil: The High Price of Clean, Cheap Ethanol

Clemens Hoges, Der Spiegel:

“Brazil hopes to supply drivers worldwide with the fuel of the future — cheap ethanol derived from sugarcane. It is considered an effective antidote to climate change, but hundreds of thousands of Brazilian plantation workers harvest the cane at slave wages. In the middle of the night, the plantations around Aracoiaba in Brazil’s ethanol zone are on fire. The area looks like a war zone during the sugarcane harvest, as the burning fields light up the sky and the wind carries clouds of smoke across the countryside.”

Ethanol from sugarcane is not the fuel of the future and it’s not an antidote to anything. The use of sugarcane for fuel is especially terrible if it is being planted in areas where the rainforest has been cut down to make way for it. Sugarcane harvesting also leads to slave wages, something the Brazilian government denies. I think people and governments should boycott sugarcane ethanol from Brazil. Ethanol in general is going to keep us dependant on fossil fuels for a long time, because it encourages the burning of a fuel in a combustion engine, something we have to get away from. Given the severity of climate change, we should be moving towards electric cars and away from burning fuels for transportation.

For more information, see this story:

“Brazil sugarcane workers are soon to feel the corporate axe, Brazilian Sugar Cane Industry Association (UNICA) said 80% of the 500,000 jobs would be gone within three years and admitted that moving to a tractor-based system would cause pain and upheaval for its migrant workforce. Behind the move to phase out sugar cane cutters are tales of exploitation that have damaged the image of Brazilian biofuels in big importing countries such as Sweden and potentially in Britain, where the government has mandated that 2.5% of all petrol come from biofuels. The condition of sugar workers was rarely noticed when the commodity was exported for sugar but the position has changed now that Brazil is the world’s second-largest exporter of sugar-based ethanol to use as a biofuel in petrol. Sugar cane cutters who have been working Brazil’s land since 1525, when Portuguese colonialists first experimented with growing the crop, are to make way for mechanization. Manual labor is also blamed for poor environmental practices such as crop wastage and the burning of stubble.

Mechanized systems will be able to harvest more of the crop and allow Brazil to use by-products for powering electricity plants, argues UNICA. Critics have accused Brazil’s sugar cane industry of presiding over child labor, high accident rates and workers earning as little as $1.35 (67p) an hour. Employers insist that pay is three times that level. Brazilian ethanol output grew by nearly a quarter during 2007 to a record 22bn liters, with around 4bn being exported, and the government had great anticipation of marketing its exports as biofuels. This however is a move that could backfire as the corporate food for fuel preference will harm supply of basic food necessities to those who need it as the demand for bio fuel rises.”

Source: The Guardian

Wall-E was a great movie, one of the best I saw last year. I rented it because I liked the cover art! and I like animated movies that are very well done. Not knowing exactly what it was about, I was completely entranced with it and didn’t get up until it was over. Imagine a future of obese people who don’t exercise and eat all day who only get around on scooters — sounds frighteningly like the present day, in some ways. Imagine a planet covered in its own garbage. At least we aren’t quite there yet.

So I’m glad it’s been nominated for six Academy Awards today. It’s an futuristic, environmental warning movie with some politics thrown in, and yet it was a huge hit and did very well last year, and deservedly so.

“Wall-E, the little robot who saved Earth, is having a big day - six Oscar nominations have been bestowed upon the film for Best Animated Feature Film of the Year, Original Score, Original Song, Sound Editing, Sound Mixing, and Original Screenplay. These six nominations tie the film to Beauty and the Beast, long considered the best animated film of all time, and the only animated film to have ever been nominated for Best Picture. I wrote a review of Wall-E last June, and discussed its environmental ramifications.

Though “Wall-E” campaigned for a best picture and a best director nod, the film was passed over. “Clearly, and unfortunately, the Academy chose to follow tradition and ignore ‘WALL-E’ in the Best Picture and Best Director categories,” said the Pixar blog. The film will certainly win Best Animated Film (sorry, “Kung-Fu Panda” and “Bolt”), and is a top contender for score and song, where it is only up against “Slumdog Millionaire.”

By sheer volume of nominations, “Wall-E” will go down in the record books as one of the best-ever animated films. It was also the fifth-highest-grossing film in the U.S. in 2008, so its green message was spread far and wide, and was met with critical acclaim on hundreds of top-10 lists. If “Wall-E” wins big, it will have a place in movie history both for its beauty and its message.”

From USNEWS blog.

Now we need a movie or two like this every year until everyone in the public understands that environmental movies are not dull and boring or somehow associated with Al Gore! Environmental issues are associated with common sense, with humanity and with a concern for the future generations. As Wall-E shows in an amusing and sweet way, preserving the planet for the people to come is a human rights issue.

Does the sun seem brighter today? There has been a massive shift in American government. We are shifting from a government that assumes the worst of people, who suspects everyone and shrouds itself in layers of secrecy, to one that values sharing information, and indicates it will trust people. Imagine having a government that doesn’t feel everyone needs to be suspected of something! It feels like our long national depression has lifted, and Americans can finally stop being ashamed to be American. After the inauguration of Barack Obama, there is now a sense that things are possible again, that we have a chance to fix things.

There are a lot of good things about the new president, but one big one for me is that he respects science and will work to tackle  climate change seriously, not as a side issue.  President Bush said and did just enough to keep his critics from making too loud of a noise. Being an oil man, that was expected.  He had to keep his big donors happy. But Obama has no such ties to Big Oil and he will be shifting our energy focus off those damaging fossil fuels and on to renewable energies. He also respects other types of science including medical, so I expect he will sign stem cell research funding very soon.

I was not an early supporter of Obama and it took me quite a while to gradually get to that point, but now it seems like President Obama is the right person, in the right place, at the right time. The last eight years have been a rough ride. It’s been exhausting to try to keep track of all the crimes and misinformation and propaganda and everything else #43 did that was just wrong. The damage will live on, but at least the Bush administration criminals, warmongers and cowards can’t do any further damage to us. I hope they change the locks and passwords on everything in our executive branch just to make sure the SOBs who used to run things don’t come back. We can’t afford one more day of that.

None of us knows exactly what type of president Barack Obama will be, and his inaugural speech sounded rather tough to me, but it probably had to be the way it was. Even his flubbed oath of office probably had to be that way so that it too was remarkable. As for his politics, Obama campaigned as a moderate, not a progressive, and he has met with moderates and conservatives presumably to get their viewpoints and use them. But don’t assume that means he’ll be a conservative president. President Obama will be giving people orders, not taking them. He might have some hawks and conservatives in his cabinet, but he will only be considering their ideas, not automatically accepting them. Many people are worried he will carry on too much of the Bush administration’s policies, but where the law is concerned we can be sure he won’t. Where climate change and science are concerned, his administration will be very different.

Our country was drifting towards fascism and maybe it still is, but we now have a president who can stop it and has shown strong signs he intends to do just that. Unlike Bush, he actually knows better, knows the law, knows the Constitution, and seems to care. He also clearly respects the law, much more than George Bush or Dick Cheney ever apparently did.

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Tungsten is a powerful contaminant and toxin that is in a lot of regular things, like jewelry and lightbulbs. When used in bombs for war, it’s a nightmare material that produces terrible and strange wounds, and is both a danger to humans and to the environment. (See: ‘Tungsten bombs’ leave Israel’s victims with mystery wounds”)

Tungsten was used extensively in DIME bombs used by Israel, (allegedly) supplied by the United States, in their brutal attacks on Gaza recently. Hundreds of DIME bombs were used by Israel for weeks in the attacks.

Tungsten will be a serious environmental toxin for years to come in the Gaza strip, as a result. It may also stunt the growth of plants that grow there and negatively affect reproduction. Here is a recent article from Scientific American explaining the problems with tungsten.

“Scientists this week urged further research on tungsten, the metal used to make light bulb filaments, shotgun shells, electrical wires and even wedding bands, to rule out possible health risks to humans and the environment in the wake of studies showing that it may cause reproductive problems in earthworms and stunted growth in sunflowers.

In an article published this week in Chemical & Engineering News, researchers suggest that not enough is known to determine whether tungsten is safe, and that studies need to be conducted to assess how much is in drinking water and the soil – and whether it poses dangers for humans, animals and plants.

Experts say that tungsten is safe when used in its pure form in light bulb filaments, jewelry, and electrical devices. But researchers quoted in the article and interviewed by ScientificAmerican.com say that when tungsten gets into the soil (through, say, light bulbs in landfills), it reacts with substances such as oxygen, forming new chemicals such as polytungstates that may cause growth and reproduction problems in plants and animals. Studies show that sunflowers grown in soil spiked with tungsten powder grow shorter roots, stalks, and leaves and “start looking sickly,” says David Johnson, a toxicologist with the Environmental Laboratory of the U.S. Army Engineer Research & Development Center (ERDC) in Vicksburg, Miss.

He adds that it’s also “a pretty potent reproductive toxin” in earthworms, noting that worms exposed to even minute levels of tungsten (700 milligrams of tungsten per 1 kilogram of soil) become infertile. Johnson says that the effects of tungsten on earthworm reproduction are “comparable” to that of lead in humans, which has been linked to neurological problems in fetuses and children.

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When the door hits President Bush in the tush on the way out the door next week, he will have accomplished a nice long list of failures. It’s such a long list, it would be very hard to pick out the worst failures, lies, schemes and illegal manuevers, so I won’t. It’s no secret that I despise many if not most Washington D.C. Republicans due to their greed, love of war, hate for the environment, and complete dishonesty (and many are Neocons) but I reserve a special haven of disgust for our errant soon-to-be ex-president.

GW has lied, cheated, stolen, and terrorized not only people in Iraq but people right here in America. He has used false threats of terrorism to pass many egregious laws, such as the Military Commissions Act, which actually gave him a sort of legal power to pardon himself or war crimes. He must hate America, the way he has stirred up foreign nationalist hate towards the U.S., and increased terrorism around the world. And he lies to us, even in his “farewell” speech, where he claimed he has kept us safe. Nonsense! President Bush hasn’t kept us safe from terrorism any more than he has prevented super volcanos from erupting or giant asteroids from hitting the earth. Sometimes a man just gets lucky, and there is no one luckier than Bush. Georgie hasn’t saved us from a darn thing. In fact, quite the opposite — 9/11 happened on his watch!

So it was not surprising that besides the list of 935 lies that led us into the Iraq war, there also exists several other lists. I like to try to educate people about what the Republicans and Bush’s administration in particular have done to us as a country. Just look at the economy! Bush and his GOP party have made government bigger and more wasteful than at any time in history, and what do we have to show for it? A 10+% or more unemployment rate and businesses going bankrupt, right and left. Thousands of foreclosed homes and inflation, soon to be followed by deflation. Bush has nearly destroyed our economy and left us sinking in the deepest debt in history.

As a parting good-riddance tribute to Bush the Horrible, I’d like to just list one single solitary broken failure he has committed while president, out of the many hundred. Maybe I’ll cover the other ones later on, because it’s very very important that we never get another president like George Bush again, and part of making sure that never happens is telling people what he’s done. First of all, here are the 935 lies that he told us and Congress to get us into a war we didn’t need to be a part of: The War Card.

It’s very neatly categorized and straightforward. Second, here is the Broken Government site, also neatly and factually categorizing Bush’s many failures as president. And here is but one example: Remember Hurricane Katrina? Now there was a bad weather event. Bush was having birthday cake in Arizona with John McCain while people were drowning in New Orleans.

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We did it! We made it this far, 8 years after the biggest error our Supreme Court ever made — appointing George Bush the President of the U.S. And what a catastrophic error it has been! But most of us have survived. A million Iraqis, sadly, did not. Tens of thousands of Afghans, sadly did not. You know that old saying: “Fish and bad presidents start to stink after a few years”. In the case of Bush, he’s been reeking for at least five. It seems like it’s been decades. Here are some of the more humorous (most unintentionally humorous) moments of the Bush regime.

Just remember: it’s easy to laugh at his behavior and mangling of the English language, but never forget the terrible things he has done. Here is one brand new example: a secret FISA court ruled last fall that telecommunications companies are forced to provide emails and other personal communications data if someone is suspected of being a terrorist. Does the Decider make that call? This is absolutely amazing.

“Court Affirms Wiretapping Without Warrants
By JAMES RISEN and ERIC LICHTBLAU
Published: January 15, 2009

WASHINGTON — In a rare public ruling, a secret federal appeals court has said telecommunications companies must cooperate with the government to intercept international phone calls and e-mail of American citizens suspected of being spies or terrorists.

The ruling came in a case involving an unidentified company’s challenge to 2007 legislation that expanded the president’s legal power to conduct wiretapping without warrants for intelligence purposes.

But the ruling, handed down in August 2008 by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review and made public Thursday, did not directly address whether President Bush was within his constitutional powers in ordering domestic wiretapping without warrants, without first getting Congressional approval, after the terrorist attacks of 2001. “

I just hope that President Obama can undo even half the damage that Bush has done, in the next four years.

And this list from Rolling Stone and other lists will remind us for years of what we are missing.
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On Friday morning in Minnesota we set a temperature record of -36 degrees below zero (F). That is not including wind chill, that was the air temperature. I know to Alaskans and people of northern Canada, this is no big deal, but it was a big deal to a lot of Minnesotans because we have been spoiled. Because of global climate change, our winters over the past 10 years have gotten gradually warmer, so that as of the last two years we were enjoying temperatures in the 50s in December and February and melting snow in February too. By April it was really warming up. Not this year!

But January has always been the one cold month and we can’t seem to avoid it, so we usually still have one week of “Arctic” Air that sits over us for a few days. It’s usually called an “Alberta Clipper” or some variation of that. I don’t know why “Arctic Air” comes from Alberta, because Alberta technically is not in the Arctic, but in any case, I can assure you it is painfully cold. Air that cold actually hurts your lungs when you breath it. But some people love the cold, like the man in this video.

This is a man who lives not far from me who is sort of an eccentric scientist. He’s really a computer programmer who is quite creative.  He has geothermal heating setup of some type (I should call him and find out how he’s got this set up) and he has set up a robotic arm to spray water continually on his 35-foot high “ice sculpture” of a dragon. I don’t think it looks like a dragon in any way, but it’s his art work so who am I to judge? The video is from KARE11 News and from Minnesota Stories . I plan to drive down there next weekend and see this creature with my own eyes.

Not everyone here loves the cold.  We have had three cases of hypothermia deaths in Minnesota in the last week, mostly involving people who were in their cars, or trying to start their cars, or near their cars. One woman was on her way out to her car when she slipped and fell but she recovered after she’d nearly frozen to death. If Minnesotans and the rest of the world was smart, we’d be using that geothermal energy for heating our garages and providing electricity for our cars. Electric cars would start better than gas-combustion engines too.