Jack, you're supposed to be riding your bike to do your downtown speechifying. There are thousands of unused bicycle racks all over town and you'd have no problem finding a place to park.

I don't do the bike-to-downtown thing. I would have taken the bus if I didn't have to hustle off to a place with bad transit access right after my talk.

$14.25 is the better part of a cab ride from downtown to that bad-a(cce)ss place.

I've been working downtown since 1973, and with parking temporarily allowed on 5th and 6th, it's almost like it was 35 years ago. What is really weird is that (with construction temporarily suspended) traffic flow seems better than it has in years with 5th and 6th open to auto traffic.

Hello? The reason there is no parking downtown is because it is Christmas season and people are SHOPPING.

This is a good thing, folks, not a bad thing.

If you can't find downtown parking, try up by PGE where you can take a quick Max ride in. There is also almost always parking up by 11th-13th.

I was meeting a friend for lunch downtown Thursday and had exactly the same experience. The two lots over on Jefferson and the one by the Auditorium were also full.

I finally called his cell and told him that parking was going to be too much of a hassle. Ended up picking him up and driving over to the Lloyd Center for the lunch.

Downtown shopping? Think I'll pass ...

jack,
Expand those horizons. The smart parks and their brethren right downtown are WAY too expensive. You've gotta go out a few blocks and take a free 5-minute MAX ride to your destination.

At this time of year, PSU is into finals week and beyond. They have lots of pay lots and you can park relatively cheaply there, hop a bus and be in the heart of downtown quickly. If you don't have anything heavy to carry, it is a nice walk into the heart of downtown. The Hilton, for example, is about 7 minutes on foot from the PSU parking garages off Broadway and there are meters in both those lots. Not easy at other times of the school year but during December, parking is plentiful at PSU.

After all the bubbles, sidewalk widening, bus pull outs, trolley curves, transit streets, parking only for construction, cab and hotel parking only, government vehicle parking, bike lanes, loading zones, increased 15 minute parking only, and flex car parking only, downtown has lost close to 1/2 of its on-street parking compared to 15 years ago. It is a major reason that life-style commercial districts are doing well.

Then we have the proposed, new homeless restrooms taking up more on-street parking. It is the hate-vehicles mafia working overtime.

Hatred of vehicles? Darn tootin', depend on it, when gas guzzling is what burps the CO2 that kills us all. Your neighbors have a vested vital interest in you not driving Detroit's dinosaurs -- emphasis on vital.

Beyond the Point of No Return: It’s too late to stop climate change — so what do we do now?, by Ross Gelbspan, December 11, 2007 by Grist Magazine, Gristmill.Grist.ORG /story/2007/12/10/165845/92

,,, Add the escalating squeeze on our oil supplies, which could intensify our meanest instincts, and you have the ingredients for a long period of repression and conflict.

Ominously, this plays into ... the community of multinational corporations will seize on the coming catastrophes to elbow aside governments as agents of rescue and reconstruction — but only for communities that can afford to pay. ...

The only antidote to that kind of future is a revitalization of government — an elevation of public mission above private interest and an end to the free-market fundamentalism that has blinded much of the American public with its mindless belief in the divine power of markets. ...

... an acknowledgement of the reality of escalating climate change plays havoc with one’s sense of future. ... It deprives one of an inner sense of navigation. To live without at least an open-ended sense of future (even if it’s not an optimistic one) is to open one’s self to a morass of conflicting impulses — from the anticipated thrill of a reckless plunge into hedonism to a profoundly demoralizing sense of hopelessness and a feeling that a lifelong guiding sense of purpose has suddenly evaporated.

This slow-motion collapse of the planet leaves us with the bitterest kind of awakening. For parents of young children, it provokes the most intimate kind of despair. For people whose happiness derives from a fulfilling sense of achievement in their work, this realization feels like a sudden, violent mugging. For those who feel a debt to all those past generations who worked so hard to create this civilization we have enjoyed, it feels like the ultimate trashing of history and tradition. For anyone anywhere who truly absorbs this reality and all that it implies, this realization leads into the deepest center of grief.

There needs to be another kind of thinking that centers neither on the profoundly dishonest denial promoted by the coal and oil industries, nor the misleading optimism of the environmental movement, nor the fatalistic indifference of the majority of people who just don’t want to know. ...

Owning gas cars is an act of planetary Civil War, like owning slaves -- got any?

Well, thank God you didn't ride the MAX! You and your entire family probably would have been murdered the moment you stepped aboard!!

Tenskwatawa Owning gas cars is an act of planetary Civil War, like owning slaves -- got any?
NO ITS NOT!

The case for global warming has already fallen apart (you just haven’t read it in the paper yet):
1. Warming’s #1 headline poster, the “hockey stick” has been proven wrong by the National Academy of Sciences (I think it is probably an intentional fraud.) climateaudit.org/pdf/others/07142006_Wegman_Report.pdf (page 4)

2. Warming’s #2 headline poster, “1998 was the warmest year....” has been shown wrong by correcting data errors at NASA. 1998 is now considered tied with 1934, using the best historic data in the world, maintained by one of Al Gore’s advisors. See the USHCN at data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/US_USHCN.2005vs1999.txt. Look at the numbers - 1998 is tied with 1934 (after which the earth cooled, producing stories of the coming ice age - see New York Times May 21, 1975.). 1998 was only tied for warmest with a year 54 years earlier - hardly runaway warming in the USA.

3. Warming’s #3 headline poster, 1990s had most of the warmest years, is not true. The same revisions put warmest years spread throughout the century. Ten warmest years by decade: 1910s...2, 1920s...1, 1930s...2, 1950s...1, 1990s...2, 2000s...1 Please note that this is USA data and is considered the best in the world - the data for the rest of the world, which does show warming, is of much lower reliability.

4. There has been no warming trend since 1998. (Look at the data in the giss.nasa link above) Some solar scientists say we may be entering a global cooling phase, based on solar cycles

5. In terms of actual effect, CO2 is not the most important greenhouse gas, H2O is. (Admitted by creator of the hockey stick at realclimate.org/index.php?p=142)

6. CO2 has not been proven to actually cause warming. Antarctic ice core data shows temperature rising first, then CO2. (realclimate.org/index.php?p=13, be sure to note the twisted logic to try to pin the blame on CO2 after admitting CO2 did not start the warming at the end of ice ages)

7. Man emits only a tiny fraction of the total CO2.

8. Some Viking farms are still under Greenland Ice. (We are probably not as warm now as when the Vikings farmed Greenland.

Al Gore has made millions off of his global warming tours and his mutual fund that sells shares in “green” companies.

Then there is this near admission of a lying:
I believe it is appropriate to have an over-representation of factual presentations on how dangerous it is , as a predicate for opening up the audience to listen to what the solutions are... Al Gore in Grist, 09 May 2006, grist.org/news/maindish/2006/05/09/roberts/ bold added.

Thanks
JK
Light rail costs too much does too little

(props feet up, grabs some popcorn)

Ooooh, this is gonna be entertaining...

You think downtown parking is a problem? Get real.

I was in the Stepford zone of Clackmas County this afternoon. I'm looking for a gas kitchen stove so I decided to go to the Sears at Clackamas Town Center.

I turned into the parking lot and saw lime-green vested people directing traffic. It was then that I looked at the broad expanse of the parking lot and saw a very slow stream of vehicles in every lane of the lot. Without even attempting to park, it took me 20 minutes to get out of the lot.

Cabbie (props feet up, grabs some popcorn)
Ooooh, this is gonna be entertaining...
JK: Sorry to disappoint you but I am all wrapped up in editing a new video that just destroys the catastrophic warming scare. (To be clear the, planet is warming up after the “little ice” age of a few hundred years ago, but its nothing unusual.)

BTW here are some links for the non-panic case:
icecap.us junkscience.com co2science.org climateaudit.org surfacestations.org scienceandpublicpolicy.org climate-skeptic.com

surfacestations.org is particularly telling as it shows that our best temperature measuring stations are actually pretty crappy.

Thanks
JK

. As a personal note, I hoped to hear from cabbie on-thread.

Gallant: It's a Hobson's Choice deciding where to start addressing Deltas. They were born in infantile lodgings and never left the building. Begin at a time before the dawn, when the false premise came that you could own land. You cannot own land, or water, or air, or humankind, or spirit. But all of us share in you appreciating the majesty as long as it's sincere, truthful, unthreatened, unimposed, reciprocal, respectful, and other players to be named later.

Who childishly believed they could own land worsened in that sickness and believed they could own underground, and bargain in Hades. They despoiled the soil and burned the oil. Which choked the air. Which poisoned the water. Which violated humankind. Which vexed the spirit.

Now the oil is going gone. The People only can survive beyond without the sickened stunted infants going with us. They can address the Gordian knot come to meet them.

Goofus: LALALALAIcan'thearThePeopleLALALALA waa-waa-waa LALAtantrumLALAtantrum. LALALA.

---
Who fails at future, and sinks beneath the rolling crests and troughs Time waves, shall be the ones The People wouldn't couldn't shouldn't care to help or save.

---

Seer: No election comes. You and I are marked to die in two thousand eight, by this Administration and Congress who think they own the place and our power. So this is the last Christmas. Whatcha gonna do about it? Know this first truth: Hades' Helpers double-cross everyone who stands beside them offering a back to stab.

I just found this very comprehensive list of published material against the catastrophic warming hysteria. They say:

This is a resource against the "Man-Made" Global Warming Hysteria:

"There is a clear attempt to establish truth not by scientific methods but by perpetual repetition."
- Richard S. Lindzen, Ph.D. Professor of Meteorology, MIT

See: z4.invisionfree.com/Popular_Technology/index.php?showtopic=2050

(Let the flood of ad hominems begin!!!)

Thanks
JK

You think downtown parking is a problem? Get real.

Indeed. Not only did I feel I could have auctioned off my parking spot by Macy's at Washington Square today for big bucks...on the ride back to Portland, 217 traffic was almost at a standstill heading to the Mall.

$14.25 is the better part of a cab ride from downtown to that bad-a(cce)ss place.

I would have to get home, too. I'm sure the whole thing would be $40 or more. Sorry, I have a car, I'm going to drive it. Portland Correct needs to get over it.

So far this season I have avoided a mall using the internet to shop, and even though I am nostalgic the toy procurement ritual we used to follow (procure a sitter, a nice dinner out, Toys-R-Us during the late night hours they used to run until midnight when traffic and parking were available and Toys -R-Us wasn't filled with plastic lead painted junk from China, home by midnight, snifters of brandy by the fire, wrapping presents until the wee hours usually the Saturday night before Christmas) Granted the little children are men and women now so the Toys-R-Us list has been replaced with a check for the most part as there are no grandchildren yet on the scene, and our relatives have thankfully decided we all have enough clutter and stuff so we don't need to exchange gifts anymore, just a meal, celebration, and good will toward men.

I have a car, I'm going to drive it.

Hey, mine was just a comment on the cost of parking downtown. I hope you'll remember to get Uncle Sam and Uncle Ted to kick in their share of the cost of yours.