XCR1250

Where at? Saw 1 in East Troy some years back, gone now.

Joe Biden's disaster of a presidency In the months preceding the November 2020 election, many friends and acquaintances told me the same thing: They would vote for anyone to get rid of Donald Trump as president. After over a year of Joe Biden’s presidency, a question naturally arises: Really? For some people, the answer is clearly “yes.” But everyone should read this quote from Princeton professor Robert George: “To get rid of Trump, some people felt that it was necessary to say things about Joe Biden that aren’t true — that he is competent, for example, compassionate, caring, even wise. For some to say it, they had to find a way to make themselves believe it. Now reality has come crashing in.” Here is that reality: The shambolic Afghanistan withdrawal humiliation/debacle was a turning point in his presidency, one that he cannot recover from. Russia’s Putin, China’s Xi and the hard men ruling Iran have taken their measure of him, and they are emboldened by his timidity, weakness and incompetence. Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates leaders refuse to take his phone calls and are expanding ties with China. Things will only get worse if President Biden inks another nuclear deal with Iran, which could be the dumbest deal of all time. Inflation on his watch has reached a 40-year high, at 8.6% year over year in April. (It was 1.4% when he was inaugurated). Worse, since real (inflation-adjusted) wages have declined over 4%, one study found that it costs the average family over $5,000 per year. Yes, some of the fault for this lies with the Federal Reserve and President Trump’s spending in 2020, but Biden’s spending blowout in 2021 surely is a big part of it. Only recently (no doubt thanks to terrible polls) has he had anything to say about the skyrocketing crime wave in Democrat-run cities. I believe all of this was entirely preventable and was caused by the following: enacting "Defund the Police" policies, based upon the patently absurd idea that police are a bigger threat to the citizenry than criminals; enacting bail “reform” policies that let career criminals out of jail while awaiting trial for serious crimes; and electing “let ‘em go” Democrat prosecutors who refuse to prosecute appropriately. He should have used his presidential “bully pulpit” on all of this, but he has been missing in action. When Mr. Biden was sworn into office, the USA had the best Southern border security in years, largely thanks to Mr. Trump’s "Remain in Mexico" policy. In one year of Mr. Biden’s open borders policies, here is the result: over 2 million illegal crossing arrests and an estimated 500,000 “got-aways.” Criminals and terrorists are part of the wave. And enough fentanyl has come into our country that there were 100,000 drug overdose deaths last year, with fentanyl now the main cause of death for people aged 18 to 45. This is immoral. Finally, Biden plans to end the Title 42 policy that allows border officials to summarily expel migrants on public health grounds. This has saved countless American lives. It is estimated that ending this policy will result in illegal crossings going from 7,000 per day to up to 18,000 per day. From my vantage point, this is likely happening in an effort to create future Democrats, i.e. continuous political power. When Mr. Biden was sworn into office, the USA was a net exporter of oil and natural gas. We were energy independent, and the average price of a gallon of gas was very reasonable. That average price is now up over 50% since his inauguration. Now, after bowing to the demands of the extreme elements of the environmental lobby, he is doing his best to put the fossil fuels industry out of business. It is pure fantasy to believe that this can be done without severely affecting our economy in a negative way. Meanwhile, to overcome our self-induced oil shortfall, he is pursuing Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and likely very soon Iran (of all places) as sources of additional oil for us. And this of course helps fuel Russia’s war machine. It could have been worse, but two Democrat U.S senators held the line on some even more radical proposals. Still, this is what radical, far-left progressive governance looks like, albeit incompetently administered. To paraphrase Dante: "Abandon hope, ye who follow him." Joe Biden is a failed president, the worst in my lifetime. Rest easy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter. Bob Roper, of Columbia, is a retired bank executive and an observer of local and national politics. This article originally appeared on Columbia Daily Tribune:

Just in the area that I mow there was 55 Sugar Maples, they have been dying off since I moved here 31 + years ago, 17 have been cut down and more dying. Haven't looked at the rest of my back property for a couple years but there are 100's of Maples back there.

Do masks supposedly protect the wearer or folks around the person wearing masks? I haven't seen anyone wearing a mask for months.

What do you do after you wake up? JK

Hot grips & thumb warmers work great.

California went big on rooftop solar. It created an environmental danger in the process Rachel Kisela Thu, July 14, 2022 at 7:00 AM Solar panels purchased for home use under incentive programs many years ago are nearing the end of their life cycle. Many are already winding up in landfills. (Jim Cooke / Los Angeles Times) California has been a pioneer in pushing for rooftop solar power, building up the largest solar market in the U.S. More than 20 years and 1.3 million rooftops later, the bill is coming due. Beginning in 2006, the state, focused on how to incentivize people to take up solar power, showered subsidies on homeowners who installed photovoltaic panels but had no comprehensive plan to dispose of them. Now, panels purchased under those programs are nearing the end of their typical 25-year life cycle. Many are already winding up in landfills, where components that contain toxic heavy metals such as selenium and cadmium can contaminate groundwater. “People just don't realize that there are toxic materials in those electronics, that it's fine if it's just sitting in a box in your house,” said Natalie Click, a doctoral candidate in materials science at the University of Arizona who studies the issue. “But once it gets crushed and put into the landfill, a lot of those toxic chemicals and materials are going to leak into your groundwater.” Sam Vanderhoof, a solar industry expert and chief executive of Recycle PV Solar, says that only 1 in 10 panels are actually recycled, according to estimates drawn from International Renewable Energy Agency data on decommissioned panels and from industry leaders. The looming challenge over how to handle truckloads of contaminated waste illustrates how cutting-edge environmental policy can create unforeseen hazards down the road. “The industry is supposed to be green,” Vanderhoof said. “But in reality, it’s all about the money.” California came early to solar power. Small governmental rebates did little to bring down the price of solar panels or to encourage their adoption until 2006, when the California Public Utilities Commission formed the California Solar Initiative. That granted $3.3 billion in subsidies for installing solar panels on rooftops. The measure exceeded its goals, bringing down the price of solar panels and boosting the share of the state’s electricity produced by the sun. Because of that and other measures, such as requirements that utilities buy a portion of their electricity from renewable sources, solar power now accounts for 15% of the state’s power. But as California barreled ahead on its renewable-energy program, focusing on rebates and — more recently — a proposed solar tax, questions about how to handle the toxic waste that would accrue years later were never fully addressed. Now, both regulators and panel manufacturers are realizing that they don’t have the capacity to handle what comes next. “This trash is probably going to arrive sooner than we expected and it is going to be a huge amount of waste,” said Serasu Duran, an assistant professor at the University of Calgary's Haskayne School of Business in Canada. “But while all the focus has been on building this renewable capacity, not much consideration has been put on the end of life of these technologies.” Duran co-wrote a recent article in the Harvard Business Review that noted the industry’s “capacity is woefully unprepared for the deluge of waste that is likely to come.” It’s not just a problem in California but also nationwide. About 140,000 panels are installed every day in the United States, and the solar industry is expected to quadruple in size between 2020 and 2030. Although 80% of a typical photovoltaic panel is made of recyclable materials, disassembling them and recovering the glass, silver and silicon is extremely difficult. “There's no doubt that there will be an increase in the solar panels entering the waste stream in the next decade or so,” said AJ Orben, vice president of We Recycle Solar, a Phoenix-based company that breaks down panels and extracts the valuable metals while disposing of toxic elements. “That's never been a question.” The vast majority of We Recycle Solar’s business comes from California, but the company has no facilities in the state. Instead, the panels are trucked to a site in Yuma, Ariz. That’s because California’s rigorous permitting system for toxic materials makes it exceedingly difficult to set up shop, Orben said. Recycling solar panels isn’t a simple process. Highly specialized equipment and workers are needed to separate the aluminum frame and junction box from the panel without shattering it into glass shards. Specialized furnaces are used to heat panels to recover silicon. In most states, panels are classified as hazardous materials, which require expensive restrictions on packaging, transport and storage. Orben said the economics of the process don’t make a compelling case for recycling. Only about $2 to $4 worth of materials are recovered from each panel. The majority of processing costs are tied to labor, and Orben said even recycling panels at scale would not be more economical. Most research on photovoltaic panels is focused on recovering solar-grade silicon to make recycling economically viable. That skews the economic incentives against recycling. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory estimated that it costs roughly $20 to $30 to recycle a panel versus $1 to $2 to send it to a landfill. Most experts assume that is where the majority of panels are ending up right now. But it’s anyone’s guess. Click said there is no uniform system “for tracking where all of these decommissioned panels are going.” The California Department of Toxic Substances collected its first data on panels recycled by universal waste handlers in 2021. For handlers that accepted more than 200 pounds or generated more than 10,000 pounds of panels, the DTSC counted 335 panels accepted for recycling, said Sanford Nax, a spokesman for the agency. The department expects the number of installed solar panels in the next decade to exceed hundreds of millions in California alone, and that recycling will become even more crucial as cheaper panels with shorter lifespans become more popular. A lack of consumer awareness about the toxicity of materials in the panels and how to dispose of them is part of the problem, experts said. “There's an informational gap, there's a technological gap, and there's a financial gap that we're working on,” said Amanda Bybee, co-founder of SolarRecycle.org, a website aimed at helping people understand how to recycle solar panels and how the process works. The website lists two locations in California that recycle panels, but Bybee notes that the website is based on user-submitted information and isn’t comprehensive. At least one of the California locations listed, Fabtech Enterprises, ships panels to confidential off-site recycling partners. Last year, new DTSC regulation came into effect that reclassified the panels, changing the way they can be collected and transported. Previously, all panels were required to be treated as hazardous waste upon removal, which restricted transportation and storage. Both business and residential consumers, or generators as they are called in the recycling industry, were supposed to transport the panels themselves to certified recycling or hazardous waste disposal facilities. With little tracking, it’s unclear how frequently that occurred. Solar panels are now classified as universal waste and can be collected at more than 400 universal waste handlers in California, where they are then assessed and transported to disposal, reuse or recycle facilities. Above, solar panels are installed on a roof. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times) More Now, panels are classified as universal waste and can be collected at more than 400 universal waste handlers in California, where they are then assessed and transported to disposal, reuse or recycle facilities. The new regulations were intended to make it easier for people to turn in their panels, but it does not directly address the next step — recycling. “What that [rule] does is really just changes how that material is handled, managed, stored, and transported,” said Orben of We Recycle Solar. “It doesn't change how that material is actually processed.” In 2016, the Solar Energy Industries Assn., a nonprofit trade association for the U.S. solar industry, started a recycling program for panels. Robert Nicholson, the manager of PV Recycling at the association, said it aims to help the industry group's recycling partners — five so far — “develop compliant, cost-effective recycling services for end-of-life modules.” “The majority of recyclers are already existing recyclers; they're primarily doing e-waste or they're doing glass,” said Evelyn Butler, the Solar Energy Industries Assn.'s vice president of technical services. “So we have had to work with them to kind of take that leap, to say: ‘We believe that the processes you're using can accommodate the technology.’” The association also works with regulators to draft legislation that decreases the number of panels heading to landfills. Government subsidies are one way to make solar panel recycling economically viable for the waste generators, who now bear much of the cost of recycling. In Europe, a recently enacted regulation called the European Union Waste of Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive places responsibility on producers for supporting their products through responsible end-of-life disposal. It requires all producers that manufacture panels for countries in the EU to finance end-of-life collection and recycling. Similar legislation has been attempted in several U.S. states, including Washington, where the Photovoltaic Module Stewardship and Takeback Program will require solar panel manufacturers to finance end-of-life recycling. The initiative was passed in 2017 and will begin implementation in 2025. It’s the only producer-responsibility law in the United States. It’s part of a larger strategy in the recycling industry called extended producer responsibility, in which the cost of recycling is built into the cost of a product at its initial purchase. Business entities in the product chain — rather than the general public — become responsible for end-of-life costs, including recycling costs. Jigar Shah, co-founder of Generate Capital, a fund that invests in sustainable infrastructure, said the problem can be addressed at the very start of the product chain — by manufacturers. Shah, who is now director of the Department of Energy's Loan Programs Office, said that policymakers need to require manufacturers to come up with a standard design that makes panels easier and cheaper to recycle. “It’s far more cost-effective for manufacturers to be forced to work together … where they try to greatly reduce the cost of all that collectively. That happens through policy,” he said. “It doesn’t happen through people opting in.” Although 80% of a typical photovoltaic panel is made of recyclable materials, disassembling a panel and recovering the glass, silver and silicon is extremely difficult. (Jim Cooke / Los Angeles Times) In April 2022, Santa Monica concluded a solar panel recycling pilot program in partnership with the California Product Stewardship Council, a public-private partnership. The stewardship council surveyed local residential solar owners and found that many, at a loss for what to do with end-of-life panels, called up installers for help. “We did find that the solar installers were the best contact for us to learn about how many decommissioned panels were in our region,” said Drew Johnstone, a sustainability analyst for Santa Monica. “Some contractors did end up just having to pile them in their warehouses, because there's no good solution for where to bring them.” Johnstone says the universal waste reclassification has made a big difference, cutting down on cost and paperwork needed for handling modules, and more handlers can accept the panels from generators. “It's going to be a really large issue in a number of years,” Johnstone said. “So it would behoove local governments, county, state, and it can go federal too, to have a plan in place for all these panels that will reach their end of life in 10 to 15 years.” Kisela is a special correspondent. For the record: 10:30 p.m. July 14, 2022: An earlier version of this article misattributed a statement by Evelyn Butler, vice president of technical services at the Solar Energy Industries Assn., to Jen Bristol, the group’s senior director of communications. It also misidentified the group as the Solar Energy Industry Assn. This article has also been updated to reflect the current professional affiliations of Sam Vanderhoof and Jigar Shah and to clarify that 25 years is the typical service life of photovoltaic panels but not a fixed limit. Additionally, in a discussion of transporting photovoltaic panels to recycling or hazardous waste disposal facilities, the word “cells” has been changed to “panels” for accuracy. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

Have never worn them working on anything, wear gloves snowmobiling only if very cold outside.

Yeah, I'm not sure, most were in the back yard, 2 or 3 in the front yard..had 5 taken down this Summer, at least 2 more way in back should come down too. Some had lots of damage from Pileated Wood Peckers and may have fallen on several of my buildings.

I've lost 17 Sugar Maples in my yard since 1991.

Many climate scientists are involved in trying to figure out what caused this climate shift. This should tell us more about how the climate responds to major controls like changes in the Earth's orbit around the sun, and the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Past climate changes can be recorded by studying tiny microfossils in layers of deep sea mud. Up until now, scientists found that the oceans appear to have warmed up during this big climatic shift. Their studies suggested that warming seemed to coincide with ice-sheets appearing in both Antarctica and the Arctic. This conflicting evidence, of warming seas while ice-sheets grew, doesn't fit in with computer simulations of the climate at the time; the computer models don't show ice to be present in the Arctic."

Antarctica hasn't always been covered with ice – the continent lay over the south pole without freezing over for almost 100 million years. Then, about 34 million years ago, a dramatic shift in climate happened at the boundary between the Eocene and Oligocene epochs.

I live 23 miles from Hayward Wi., went to Hayward yesterday to shop, was absolutely insane with cars and trucks everywhere hard to find anywhere to park and this whole county has less than 17,000 residents, the traffic is all out of county Tourists and Vacationers.

Cheapest I saw near me was in Radisson $4.55 2 days ago, was $2.93 2 years ago when we stopped there while SXS riding on The Tuscobia trail.

Name All the Stupid Decisions Leading to This 1,300-HP Vintage Car Crash A stuck throttle pedal, 1,300 horsepower, and weak brakes on a public road. What could go wrong? BYNICO DEMATTIAJUL 12, 2022 1:59 PM NEWS YouTube AutotopiaLA SHARE NICO DEMATTIAView Nico Demattia's Articles NicoDeMattia Russ Stover put 23 years and over $200,000 worth of work into his 1964 Mercury Comet. That involved custom body work, a lowered suspension, and lots of other one-off goodies. More importantly, a 632-cubic-inch, supercharged big-block Chevy engine that produces 1,300 horsepower. However, the last time he upgraded the brakes was 17 years ago. So when he took Shawn Davis, from the AutotopiaLA YouTube channel out for a cruise to snag some footage, things went about as well as you could have expected: they crashed into the back of an innocent minivan. At one point during their drive, Stover turned to Davis and said that the engine was idling a bit high, around 2,200 rpm. In a Honda Civic with 150 horsepower, idling at 2,200 rpm is probably pretty dangerous and it should probably be taken off the road. In a 1,300-horsepower monster, idling at 2,200 rpm is a big problem. They should have pulled over and shut it off on the spot—especially after the duo discussed the smell of burning brakes. Davis' suspicions were correct, as Stover said he'd been riding the brakes just to keep it at a reasonable pace while in traffic. It doesn’t take a degree in engineering to understand why riding nearly two-decade old, undersized brakes over several miles to constantly slow a 1,300 horsepower car is bad. Brake fluid, especially old brake fluid that’s been sitting in equally old brake lines, can boil. And when it does, you lose your brakes. This is what happened to Stover and Davis, as the Comet lost its brakes at around 45-50 mph. Worse of all, it happened as they approached other cars stopped at a red light. Just watching the video made me clench. After losing your brakes, the first instinct is usually to reach for the hand brake. Except Stover’s Mercury didn’t have one. Instead, he had to put it in neutral and try to find an outlet, without hitting anyone else. Except every lane was blocked. Eventually, they braced for impact and rear-ended a Honda Odyssey. The damage was pretty shocking. Despite the Mercury having four-point harnesses, both driver and passenger had opted to wear lap belts instead, which led to Davis hitting his face on the metal dashboard and Stover breaking his elbow. Unfortunately, the video doesn’t say what happened to the passengers of the Odyssey. Thankfully, it seems like everyone was mostly okay, with no life-threatening injuries. Both are reportedly healing up well and likely won’t suffer any long-term effects. However, let this crash be a lesson in prioritizing brakes and safety gear. When you have a car with Bugatti Veyron-levels of power, you cannot have old brakes and fluid. Also, put in a mechanical handbrake, even if it doesn’t look cool. The ability to yank a handbrake when things go wrong could be a lifesaver.

Was that auto or stick shift?

Leave it in gear and turn off the key, frick'in dummy.

You should have seen all the warnings back in the late 1950's and 1960's, we had to practice hiding under our desks when I was in Grade School. There were Nuclear Evacuation route signs everywhere leading folks out of the Cities into the Country, BTW I have 1 of those signs hanging in my garage.

Lawmaker suspended from TikTok defends twerking video 1 / 3 Twerking Senator TikTok Rhode Island state Sen. Tiara Mack, D-Providence, stands for a photograph, Wednesday, July 13, 2022, in Boston. (AP Photo/Philip Marcelo) ASSOCIATED PRESS PHILIP MARCELO Wed, July 13, 2022 at 5:06 PM In this article: Tiara Mack American politician BOSTON (AP) — A state senator in Rhode Island who was suspended from TikTok after posting a video in which she twerked while doing a handstand in a bikini says she has no regrets. Sen. Tiara Mack, a 28-year-old Providence Democrat, is Black and queer and dismissed any criticism of the 8-second clip as “misogyny, classism and racism” in a phone interview Wednesday. “My behavior on my Twitter, Instagram and TikTok are consistent with a young millennial who is in office and challenging norms,” Mack said. “I’m showing that leadership looks different and welcoming people into the many different facets of my life.” Her TikTok account was restored after being banned Tuesday. Spokespersons for the social media app did not respond for comment as to why Mack was suspended. The clip has amassed more than 220,000 views since she posted it over the July Fourth weekend. “My community stands in overwhelming support of me,” Mack said. “They know exactly what these attacks are and what these attacks can do, especially for a queer person of color.” She says the snippet — which ends with her cheerfully saying, “Vote Sen. Mack!” — was part of a series of clips shot with friends on Block Island, a popular beach getaway off Rhode Island. “It was a way to show that elected officials can be silly and have fun and enjoy a day off,” said Mack, who was elected in 2020. She believes the TikTok suspension was the result of an online campaign stemming from a bill she proposed this year that would require Rhode Island schools to provide sex education courses that “affirmatively recognize pleasure based sexual relations, different sexual orientations and be inclusive of same-sex relationships.” Last week, the Rhode Island Republican Party seized on the twerking video in a fundraising appeal. And Fox News personality Tucker Carlson devoted a segment to it in which he sarcastically suggested Democrats encourage Mack to run for president. Mack also has her supporters. “It’s public that I’m out here casually drinking, smoking weed, and spending as much time shirtless as the summer sun will allow and it’s not an issue because I have a penis," tweeted state Sen. Jonathon Acosta, a Democrat. In recent days, Mack has used her newfound attention and the hashtag #twerkingfor to call for ending evictions and closing the Black wealth gap.

Fauci admits that COVID-19 vaccines do not protect 'overly well' against infection Dr. Anthony Fauci discusses vaccines' effectiveness on 'Your World' White House chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci conceded that COVID-19 vaccines do not protect "overly well" against infection Tuesday on "Your World." DR. FAUCI: One of the things that's clear from the data [is] that even though vaccines - because of the high degree of transmissibility of this virus - don't protect overly well, as it were, against infection, they protect quite well against severe disease leading to hospitalization and death. And I believe that's the reason, Neil, why at my age, being vaccinated and boosted, even though it didn't protect me against infection, I feel confident that it made a major role in protecting me from progressing to severe disease. And that's very likely why I had a relatively mild course. So my message to people who seem confused because people who are vaccinated get infected - the answer is if you weren't vaccinated, the likelihood [is] you would have had [a] more severe course than you did have when you were vaccinated.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

I've done so many builds/rebuilds of those thru the years I lost count.

Musk will simply tell his Lawyers to handle his light work.

Texas Wind Power Is Failing Right When the State Needs It Most Brian Eckhouse and Brian K. Sullivan Mon, July 11, 2022 at 11:27 AM (Bloomberg) -- Wind power -- a key source of electricity in Texas -- is being sidelined just when the Lone Star State needs it most, with turbines generating less than a 10th of what they’re capable of. Most Read from Bloomberg Elon’s Out Trump Lashes Out at Elon Musk and ‘Rotten’ Twitter Deal Wall Street Sours on Stocks in Anemic Trading Day: Markets Wrap Putin’s New Weapon of Mass Disruption: Kazakh Oil Wuhan University Finds Cholera Case, Fueling Fears of Spread A scorching heat wave is pushing the Texas grid to the brink. Power demand is surging as people crank up air conditioners. But meanwhile, wind speeds have fallen to extremely low levels, and that means the state’s fleet of turbines is at just 8% of their potential output. Texas may be America’s oil and gas hub, but it’s also long been the country’s biggest wind-power state. The renewable energy source has become highly politicized: Some critics blamed frozen wind turbines for the Texas grid’s failure during a deadly winter storm last year, even though disruptions at plants powered by natural gas were the bigger culprit. Texas grid operators had accurately forecast that wind output would be low Monday, yet it points to a broader struggle facing the world as it transitions to cleaner energy sources. While countries across the globe are generating more electricity from intermittent wind and solar sources, large-scale, battery storage is still in its ascendancy. That leaves major grids more fragile and vulnerable to shock. Read more: Global Energy Crisis Shows Fragility of Clean-Power Era Depressed wind power during heat waves isn’t a new phenomenon. Powerful high-pressure systems that cause intense heat often squelch wind production -- just when more power is needed to meet higher electricity demand. The mass of air overhead stifles wind near the surface, until the mass moves elsewhere. Right now, one of those high-pressure systems is sitting directly over the Lone Star State. There is hope that wind power will be much more robust Tuesday, when the weather pattern is expected to shift toward New Mexico. “High pressure is sinking air, so right under the ridge -- like today in Texas -- air is sinking straight down to the ground,” said Matt Rogers, president of the Commodity Weather Group, a commercial forecaster that looks at energy and agriculture. Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek