I have been predicting the death of the global warming theory since late in the last decade when it became obvious that the Earth had entered into a cooling cycle. By 2009 the leak of thousands of emails between the “scientists” whose computer models the claims were based upon revealed they were in a state of panic regarding this obvious phenomenon.

Employed by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Global Warming (IPCC), those “scientists” have since been protected by the universities who benefited greatly from the huge grants of public funding they received. The issue of whether such men should be prosecuted for deceiving the entire world remains to be decided.

The lead player, Dr. James Hansen, still on the payroll of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, is the man who told Congress in 1988 that global warming threatened mankind and the Earth. He has since switched to lying about coal and oil, two of the fossil fuels on which the economies of all nations depend, claiming they are deadly pollutants that must be abandoned in favor of “clean energy”, wind and solar.

Former Vice President Al Gore, the most public face of “global warming”, has become a public joke. Recall, however, that he received a Nobel Prize and an Oscar in additions to the millions earned from the sale of “carbon credits” to offset “greenhouse gases.” Some exchanges devoted to these credits have closed their doors. The proposed Cap-and-Trade legislation based on them lingers in Congress.

One need not be a climate scientist or meteorologist to conclude that humans have nothing to do with the climate or the weather. Watching huge hurricanes wreak havoc, along with other weather-related events should be enough for anyone to conclude that humans do not “cause” such things.

Occam’s Razor is the ancient principle that the simplest explanation is the most likely the correct one, but billions in public funding, taxpayer’s dollars, have been diverted to the “research” that corrupt scientists have used to justify the global warming fraud.

MIT Professor, Dr. Richard Lindzen, an internationally recognized authority on atmospheric science, said, “Future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early 21st century’s developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally averaged temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree, and, on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer projections combined into implausible chains of inference, proceeded to contemplate a roll-back of the industrial age.”

We owe a huge debt of gratitude to those courageous scientists that stood their ground against the global warming fraud. Recently the Heartland Institute, in concert with the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, and the Science and Environmental Policy Project, published “Climate Change Reconsidered: 2011 Interim Report.” It is 430 pages co-authored by Dr. Craig D. Idso, Dr. Robert M. Carter, and Dr. S. Fred Singer, all of whom have been among the scientists repeatedly slandered as “global warming deniers” and “skeptics” for their efforts to educate the public.

The report, in careful documented, scientific language identifies the way the warmist’s computer models over-estimated the amount of warming, ignored the fact that increased carbon dioxide benefits plant growth, that there is less melting in the Arctic, Antarctic and on mountain tops than claimed, and that there is no sign of acceleration of sea-level rise in recent decades.

A recent Rasmussen survey indicates that upwards of 60% of Americans have concluded that humans have nothing to do with “global warming” or any other aspect of the climate. This is extraordinary when one considers how the mainstream media, the curriculums in the nation’s schools, and the unceasing efforts of major environmental organizations have tried to impose the global warming claims on the public.

In a similar fashion, “The Other Climate Theory” by Anne Jolis, an editorial page writer for The Wall Street Journal Europe, describes how a project of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) has put what may well be the final nail in the global warming coffin. The work of physicists using particle beam technology, CERN confirmed that the Sun’s cosmic rays enhanced cloud formation. The IPCC’s 2007 report had peremptorily dismissed this possibility, but then the IPCC’s reports have been the basis for the global warming fraud, asserting a “consensus” among scientists that never existed.

Thus the scientific method of describing a phenomenon, formulating a hypothesis to explain it, and performing tests to confirm or reject a hypothesis, has once again demonstrated that “global warming” is just so much hot air.

This is not stopped the Environmental Protection Agency from doing everything in its power to destroy the energy sector of the nation based in part on the global warming fraud.

Universities across America have entire departments and units devoted to keeping the global warming fraud alive. The mainstream press is heavily invested in it. Schools continue to frighten children with its claims. All this and other efforts will fail because science—real science—does not support it.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

 

WesternFront America

Beware of anti-energy policies claiming to prevent climate change

By Willie Soon and Barun Mitra

Energy sustainability is not about resource availability and pollution. Capitalism and human ingenuity have already addressed “sustainability” in these regards, if the statistics are to be believed.

The real sustainability challenge and threat concerns government intervention in the name of “sustainability,” because it is political and bureaucratic intervention that reduces the availability, reliability and affordability of energy. The real sustainability challenge is also about overcoming the forces of nature, via with ever stronger energy infrastructure around the world. That is a job for capitalism, not central planning.

Consider these worldwide examples….

Japan is grappling with a triple tragedy: earthquake, tsunami and possible nuclear radiation. This has brought rolling blackouts, as authorities strive to meet electricity demands with reduced supplies and crippled transmission lines.

However, power cuts and inadequate power are routine in developing countries like India. For them, going without electricity for hours or even days is the norm, not the exception.

But now, the UK’s power grid CEO is warning Brits that their days of reliable electricity are numbered. Because of climate change and renewable energy policies, families, schools, offices, shops, hospitals and factories will just have to “get used to” consuming electricity “when it’s available,” not necessarily when they want it or need it.

UN IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri justifies this absurd situation by sermonizing, “Unless we live in harmony with nature, unless we are able to reduce our dependency on fossil fuels and adopt renewable energy sources, and until we change our lifestyles, the world will increasingly become unfit for human habitation.”

Thus, people in poor countries who never had access to reliable electricity may be denied it even longer, while people in rich countries could soon face new electricity shortages.

Citizens of the world’s poor and emerging economies: Beware of claims that the greatest threat we face is from manmade climate change. They are wrong. The real threat is from energy starvation policies implemented in the name of preventing climate change.

Everywhere one looks, people are enjoying modern technologies, improving their lives, realizing their dreams. Other people want the same opportunities for themselves and their children – and they should have them. Every citizen of the world should someday enjoy access to similar levels of energy that people in developed countries enjoy today.

The technologies, trade and transportation networks, the legal, property rights, economic and banking systems have all been developed. If countries and communities take advantage of them, a better future will require only one more thing: energy.

Energy is the Master Resource, the key to everything else. Only our Ultimate Resource – our creative intellect – is more important. People who have abundant, reliable, affordable energy – and the freedom to use it – can turn dreams and ideas into reality.

Those who must rely on human and animal muscle, or open fires, remain poor. Certainly, wind turbines and solar panels are far better than primitive energy. They can bless remote villages with electricity. But they are nothing compared to reliable electricity from hydrocarbon, hydroelectric and nuclear power.

However, policies based on false claims that we can control Earth’s climate restrict access to energy and increase its cost. They perpetuate poverty, and prevent people from building better homes, having comfortable lighting and heating, using computers and modern conveniences, preserving food and medicines, and even surviving natural disasters and adapting to climate change.

Using computer models, thousands of scientists say human carbon dioxide emissions are responsible for recent warming. But thousands of other scientists say the sun and other natural forces still control our complex, unpredictable climate.

Earth’s climate has changed repeatedly throughout history. Its temperature rose slightly during the last century, as our planet recovered from the Little Ice Age, but not in a straight line. It went up 1900-1940, then cooled until 1975, warmed again until 1995, and has been steady since then – all while global CO2 levels were rising. Flood, drought, hurricane and other weather patterns also change periodically.

Earth’s climate is influenced by far more factors: solar, planetary, atmospheric, oceanic and terrestrial. Climate models are useless, even harmful, for setting energy policy.

But even if carbon dioxide does affect climate, China, India and Brazil are building power plants and automobiles at a record pace. Their people are rapidly climbing out of poverty, using coal, oil, natural gas and hydroelectric power to achieve their dreams.

Leaders of these countries are not going to tell their still-poor people that they cannot enjoy the benefits that plentiful, affordable, dependable energy can provide.

Europe, Canada, Australia and the United States became modern economic powerhouses by using fossil fuels. They gave people wondrous technologies, improved their health and living standards, and doubled their life expectancies – using hydroelectric and hydrocarbon power.

Some people in rich countries talk about ending their fossil fuel use. But they have not done so – and cannot afford to. They talk about switching to wind and solar power. But they can no longer afford massive renewable energy subsidies that destroy two jobs in other sectors of their economy for every “green” job they create.

People in rich countries will not give up their modern living standards, electricity, automobiles, airplanes, hospitals, factories and food. Mr. Pachauri certainly will not. Why, should people in poor countries give up their dreams?

During the Cancun climate summit, rich nations said they would give poor countries $100-billion annually in “climate change reparation and adaptation” money. But these are empty promises, made by nations that can no longer afford such unsustainable spending.

Poor countries that expect this money will end up fighting over table scraps – and whatever funds do flow will end up in the overseas bank accounts of ruling elites. The poor will see little or none of it.

For awhile longer, rich countries will continue supporting global warming research and conferences. Researchers, bureaucrats and politicians will continue issuing dire warnings of imminent catastrophes, while they enjoy the benefits of modern energy, traveling on airplanes, attending talk fests at fancy hotels in exotic locations – all powered by coal and petroleum.

They may continue telling the world’s poor how important and admirable it is that we keep living traditional, sustainable, environment-friendly lifestyles; getting by on small amounts of intermittent, unreliable, expensive electricity from wind turbines and solar panels; and giving up our dreams of a better, healthier, more prosperous life.

Ultimately, the climate change debate is really over just two things.

Whether we, the world’s poor, must give up our hopes and dreams. And whether we will determine our own futures – or the decisions will be made for us, by politicians who use climate change to justify restricting our access to reliable, affordable energy.

Which should we fear most? Climate change that some say might happen 50 or 100 years from now? Or an energy-deprived life of continued poverty, misery, disease, and forgotten hopes and dreams?

Our future is in our hands.

Willie Soon, a native of Malaysia, is an astrophysicist and climate scientist. Barun Mitra is director of the Liberty Institute of New Delhi, India.

 

WesternFront America

It seems almost beyond reason that a single U.S. agency could so hate America that it was prepared to ignore the Constitution, distort a Supreme Court decision, and impose its will on the nation in the name of totally discredited science.

That, however, is what the Environmental Protection Agency is seeking to do while Americans are distracted by the Christmas celebrations.

The agency’s objective is to regulate so-called greenhouse gases (GHG) on January 2, 2011. More specifically, it would regulate emissions from power plants and other large emitters, but in reality it would end the role of coal as the provider of 50% of the electricity Americans require.

It is essential to understand that the primary GHG is carbon dioxide (CO2) and it was this gas, naturally produced by the Earth and vital to all vegetation and life on Earth, that was falsely identified as the “cause” of “global warming.” Humans individually exhale some six pounds of CO2 every day.

First, there was no “global warming”; only the normal and natural warming that had been in effect since around 1850 when a 500-year “little ice age” ended in the northern hemisphere.

Second, the Earth is now in a normal and natural cooling cycle, though with the added concern that it is also at the end of an 11,500 year interglacial cycle between the last major ice age and the next.

Third, the data put forth by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has been almost entirely discredited, based as it was on rigged research by corrupted university centers and governmental agencies. Some people need to go to jail, but it is unlikely because the fraud was so vast in its extent.

On November 22nd, The Wall Street Journal published a lengthy editorial, “The EPA Permitorium” noting that “The scale of the EPA’s current assault is unprecedented, yet it has received almost no public scrutiny. Since Mr. Obama took office, the agency has proposed or finalized 29 major regulations and 172 major policy rules.”

It can be said that, in terms of its original mission, cleaning the nation’s air and water, that the EPA succeeded, but like any government agency, the EPA has also sought to constantly expand its powers and has, from its beginning, also seen as part of its mission the restriction of virtually all chemicals—invariably called toxic—with a particular emphasis on pesticides that protect human health and property.

Too much exposure to any chemical is inherently toxic. The proper use of any chemical is beneficial.
The reason there is a nationwide infestation of bed bugs after a half century or more in which this insect had been virtually eliminated is that the EPA has restricted the use of almost every pesticide that might exterminate bed bugs. Now multiply that against EPA restrictions on a host of chemicals vital to the manufacture of thousands of products.

The effort of the EPA to regulate CO2 and other GHG gases has no basis in science and none in law.

The Clean Air Act does not authorize it.

Moreover, by its own admission, restricting GHGs would only reduce global temperatures—if that were even possible—by 15 ten-thousandths of a degree Celsius in the next century.

The EPA has also proposed new rules calling for a reduction in the national ambient air-quality standard for ground-level ozone, a precursor of smog, from 75 parts per billion to between 60 and 70 parts per billion, a cut of up to 20%.

To most people that means nothing, but the reality is that hundreds of U.S. cities and counties don’t meet the current standard and compliance would destroy what is left of an ailing U.S. economy. If you think unemployment is bad now, it would increase as so-called “emitters” of GHG either undertook costly measures to reduce their emissions or just closed their doors.

Along with those who tried to impose a Cap-and-Trade Act on the nation in order to limit so-called GHGs and profit from it by creating a bogus exchange for the sale of “carbon credits”, the EPA is seeking to exercise a totalitarian control over every aspect of the provision and use of energy in America and it is all based on lies.

Congress can put an end to this nightmare by overturning the EPA’s “Endangerment Rule” and with it the GHG regulations. A new Congress can and should defund as much of the EPA as possible.

The use of fossil fuels—coal, oil, and natural gas—accounts for 85% of America’s energy sources. The EPA proposes to limit or end their use. As such it is an enemy of the people and Congress must act to stop this insane agency before it destroys the nation.

Alan Caruba blogs daily at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com. An author, business and science writer, he is the founder of The National Anxiety Center.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

 

WesternFront America

Going beyond alarmist climate disinformation, to actively perpetuate poverty, disease, death.

Last week’s elections resoundingly affirm that America’s top priorities are economic growth, job creation and less Washington control of our lives. The elections are likely the final nail in the cap-and-tax coffin.

However, even before close contests could be decided, President Obama announced that he will be “looking for other means” besides cap-and-tax to address the “problem” of carbon emissions and what the White House now calls “global climate disruption.” His top priorities include using the “lame duck” session and administrative actions to implement his “climate control” and renewable energy agenda:

* Environmental Protection Agency regulation of hydrocarbon energy, based on the assertion that carbon dioxide “endangers human health and welfare,”

* Federal Energy Regulatory Commission rules that will force all consumers to subsidize new transmission lines from wind and solar projects;

* millions of dollars in last-minute grants to scientists, companies and activist groups that support the Administration’s agenda; and

* supporting state and regional legislative, tax and regulatory actions to restrict hydrocarbon use and mandate “renewable energy standards” and “greenhouse gas” reductions.

These actions underscore the need to reexamine the supposed science behind “dangerous global warming” and “sustainable renewable energy” claims. If the science is bad, the policies will be awful.

Thankfully, most Republicans remain opposed to any actions that would make energy less reliable and affordable. More importantly, next year’s likely House committee chairs have served notice that they will carefully examine EPA’s alleged scientific evidence for its job-killing “endangerment” decision – and investigate the data manipulation and other irregularities in climate change research conducted under the auspices of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and various government and university labs.

The world is finally catching on to the junk science and is no longer willing to give up dreams of electrified homes, shops and offices, jobs, and improved health and nutrition. Many incoming senators and congressmen openly challenged climate chaos claims and voiced deep concern that cap-and-tax and its bastard offspring would further traumatize our economy (for no environmental gain).

These are ominous developments for individuals, institutions and companies that derive their legitimacy, prestige, influence and financing from the “climate chaos” hypothesis. Thus segments of the American Geophysical Union oligarchy are running a campaign to get alarmist members to confront and attack “catastrophic warming” skeptics. Two prominent Penn State University alarmists also went on the warpath, in recent newspaper columns that reveal their growing anxiety and desperation.

Aware that he could be compelled to testify under oath (and pain of perjury) regarding emails, research methods, and efforts to stigmatize and marginalize scientists who disagree with him, Dr. Michael Mann devised a clever diversion. Certain politicians, he told Washington Post readers, are trying “to mislead and distract the public.” Penn State, he claimed, “exonerated” him of any wrongdoing. Investigators simply want to “assault” climate research.

“Burying our heads in the sand [about carbon dioxide] would leave future generations at the mercy of potentially dangerous” climate change, he continued. A “good-faith debate is essential” and “welcome,” he self-righteously declared, but challenges to his views are “anti-science.” Questioning the alleged CO2-global warming link is akin to questioning “the link between smoking cigarettes and lung cancer.”

It’s amazing how many false or misleading assertions he was able to jam into such a short column.

No one questions “the reality of climate change,” as Mann alleges. Earth’s climate changes constantly and has throughout the eons. We “skeptics” simply point out that no one has yet proffered convincing, replicable evidence that human CO2 emissions have replaced the complex natural forces that drove past storm, flood and drought cycles, ice ages, Little Ice Ages and Dust Bowls. Assertions, computer models, doctored temperature data, pal-reviewed papers, and pseudo-consensus IPCC reports are not evidence. Catastrophic manmade climate change is not the same as catastrophic Mann-made climate change.

(How does he explain stable 1995-2010 global temperatures, in the face of rising carbon dioxide levels?)

Penn State’s in-house “investigation” and “exoneration” was a whitewash, as was its East Anglia counterpart. No adverse witnesses were allowed to testify, not one skeptic was permitted to ask a question. How different a congressional inquiry will be! No wonder Mann is hyperventilating.

As to debating the dangerous manmade global warming (aka “global climate disruption”) issue, the world is still waiting for Messrs. Mann, Hansen, Gore, Schmidt, Jones or Trenberth to display the cojones to debate anyone. All have dodged every debate opportunity, and Gore refused even to testify before a friendly House committee if Lord Christopher Monckton was allowed to speak or even be in the room.

Helping to circle the wagons and protect the university’s multi-million-dollar annual climate funding stream, PSU “environmental ethics” professor Donald Brown waded in with rants via London’s Guardian and his personal blogspot. Skeptics must publish in “peer-reviewed scientific journals” (which systematically exclude their papers), he demanded – or shut up.

The fossil fuel industry, Brown continued (citing the unimpeachable New York Times), “lavishly financed … anti-global warming studies … and websites.” One presumes he means the $23 million ExxonMobil allegedly gave non-alarmists over the decade before it succumbed to eco-activist pressure and cut off the funding. That “lavish” funding is not to be confused, one supposes, with the “trivial” billions per year that alarmists and renewable energy aficionados receive. (Imagine the “consensus” those sums could buy.)

Then Dr. Brown played his trump card. “Disinformation” about Earth-on-the-brink climate science, he intoned, is “morally reprehensible” – “if not criminally irresponsible.” Or even a “crime against humanity,” because “climate-change impacts are potentially catastrophic for many of the poorest people around the world.” Climate change could cause floods, droughts, and disease, he suggested, or even prevent indigenous people from using “sleds in cold places.”

Sorry, Doctor. On your virtual-reality planet, your litany of horrors could maybe happen if CO2 continues to rise. But we live here on the real Earth, where a CO2-climate link is still speculative, at best, and where real horrors already kill millions of real people: lung infections, 1.4 million … intestinal diseases, 700,000 … malaria a million more mothers, fathers and children – year after year.

They are dying because they don’t have access to the hydrocarbon energy you want to consign to the ash heap of history. That hydrocarbon energy could purify water; replace open fires to heat homes and cook food; fuel cars, trucks and buses that carry people, food and consumer products; and generate electricity to power homes, hospitals, schools, factories, offices and shops – to create jobs, hope, opportunity, prosperity, and infinitely better health than people in those impoverished nations have ever known.

So Dr. Brown, if you’re going to talk about crimes against humanity, please don’t engage in the climate equivalent of North Korea criticizing US voting machines. The real crime against humanity is elitist professors, politicians, pressure groups, UN panels and policies guarding against speculative and fabricated risks – and preventing the world’s poor from gaining access to modern technologies that could improve and save their lives, and enable them to adapt to climate change, whether regional or global, natural or manmade.

Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow and Congress of Racial Equality, and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power – Black death.

 

WesternFront America

AKA: “Throwing Everything At The Wall To See What Sticks”

One of the things at which the liberal-socialists are really bad is “re-educating the public.”

See, they actually believe that you and I are knuckle-dragging, saliva dripping idiots. They actually believe that something, (Not GOD!) put them on this earth to save our sorry behinds from ourselves. No, I’m not kidding. I am convinced they B E L I E V E!

Come on, folks, how else can one explain the completely stupid things they come up with. I mean, only a person so stuck on themselves they can’t see past the end of their nose would ever, in this world or the next, continue to try to sell a hoax to a public that already sees through the scheme and understands the reason behind their liberal-socialist con game is their determination to implement GLOBAL GOVERNANCE or, as we used to refer to it, a One-World Government.

They thought that had us peons sold on Global Warming. Actually, they never did. Only the suck-ups to the liberal-socialists and their agenda ever supported the global warming hoax in public. Well, big business did, as well, but that was to cover their rear ends with the government and not because they actually believed it.

The Greenies were dumb-founded when they learned that we knuckle-draggers had just enough light left in our bulb to use the internet to determine that the polar bear population was on the increase and was no where near declining — not to mention our discovery that that cute, fuzzy, stuffed-toy look disguises a GRIZZLY BEAR IN A WHITE COAT!!! Hey, those polar bears are MEAN SUCKERS! To them, you and I are LUNCH!

And so, the socialist greenies realized long after everyone else out here in the boonies did, that the term “global warming” was a laugh line – a joke — a bad joke, at that! So, in their infinite wisdom, they decided it was time for a NEW term. They came up with an all-encompassing term: “Climate Change.”

Again, we dummies out here in the hinterlands were, as usual, one or two steps ahead of them. We understood that the new term ‘Climate Change,” a less that “bright” move on their part, was intended to ENLARGE the “threat” to simply overwhelm us and we’d finally shut up and slink away with our collective tails between our legs.

Didn’t happen that way. Nope. It simply did not happen, as the elite leftist intellectuals just KNEW it would.

So, for the past few years they have been searching in the “round about” for another term to apply to the worldwide hoax originally known as “Global Warming.” Last week they rolled out the shiny new piece of propaganda. Now the term is: (Are you ready for this?) “Global Climate Disruption.” (SOURCE) Yep! That’s it! Just sorta rolls of the tongue — doesn’t it? … OR NOT!

Now they have gone from bad to worse to just plain pathetic.

The thing that puzzles me is the apparent oblivion in which those people live. They apparently have no idea that we “poor souls” outside their academic enclaves and liberal-socialist compounds can see through them as thought they were one-way mirrors. We see them – but they don’t see us. They cannot comprehend that we, long ago, developed the skill to predict what they and their leftist brain trusts were going to do long, long, before that actually tried it.

They take themselves so seriously they cannot grasp reality. The reality of the green movement is – it is a belly grabbing, roll on the floor, laugh out loud, tear-inducing J O K E! They should be red-faced with shame, but they are not — simply because they are so busy trying to impress each other with their “smarts” they are oblivious to the public’s disdain for their asinine edicts concerning the destruction of the earth by a gas we humans breathe out every single time we take a breath!

They are propagandist of the most incompetent kind. There was a time when we referred to them as fear mongers. But that was back before political correctness became the norm.

Even though we laugh at their silly antics it is imperative to understand that they have a single goal in mind. That goal is to finally establish a single worldwide socialist, Marxist, communist government.

The Obama Regime is jam packed with these people. Many of them are educated beyond their ability and unable to exist outside of the government or off a university campus. They are, in fact, quite pitiful and quite worthy of our pity. They seem totally unaware that their world is about to be shattered when the roof falls in on them under the weight of the American people’s anger.

We are tired of being played for fools and we are about to make our anger known at the polls in November.

J. D. Longstreet blogs daily at INSIGHT on Freedom at: http://www.csadispatch.blogspot.com/

E-Mail: longstreet1862@gmail.com

 

WesternFront America

It’s been a rough few weeks for the “eco-progressive” fringe.

Static jet streams induced near-record high temperatures in parts of the United States and Russia, but extreme cold pummeled Seattle, England and much of the Southern Hemisphere. Perhaps Al Gore, Michael Mann and Rajendra Pachauri can turn this hodgepodge into “catastrophic climate change,” but most folks understand it as Mother Nature and weather.

Polls and news accounts find more Americans, Europeans and other people becoming weary and skeptical of “manmade global warming disaster” claims, convinced that natural forces are the primary cause of recurrent climate change, and unwilling to accept soaring energy prices and reduced living standards in the name of stabilizing Earth’s unpredictable climate.

Few Americans place any value on EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson’s meaningless statement – that “climate change is happening and humans are contributing to it” – to justify the draconian regimes the agency is trying to impose. The issue is whether our emissions of plant-fertilizing carbon dioxide is causing catastrophic climate change, and there is no credible evidence of that.

The House-passed energy and climate bill remains moribund in the Senate. EPA is trying to regulate carbon dioxide in the absence of congressional action – based on its assertion that automotive, power plant and factory CO2 emissions “endanger human health and welfare.” However, Texas refuses to knuckle under, other states may likewise balk, and the next Congress could overturn the “endangerment” finding and bar EPA from rewriting the Clean Air Act and implementing its job-killing rules.

“Avatar” director James Cameron double-dared global warming disaster skeptics to debate him – then morphed into a chicken and cackled off when they accepted his increasingly ludicrous debate terms, calling his critics “swine” as he headed for the hills.

Having read too many Gore, Pachauri, Quinn and other Deep Ecology treatises, LunaBomber James Lee held Discovery Channel employees hostage and denounced the TV station for its support of “parasitic human infants,” before being shot by police. His website and actions underscore how demented some Earth Liberation and global warming fanatics have become.

As their economies have deteriorated, Germany, Italy, Spain and other countries have pulled the plug on unsustainable wind and solar subsidies, eliminating thousands of “green” jobs and putting hundreds of “clean energy” companies on the verge of bankruptcy.

Glen Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally on the National Mall drew 300,000 people. Meanwhile, “CarnivOil” events in Wisconsin drew more yawns than people, as desperate Big Environment groups struggled to regain their momentum, by ranting about global warming, the Gulf oil spill, and “evil” oil companies.

Americans increasingly understand that even sending US carbon dioxide emissions back to 1870 levels, as congressional climate bills would do, will not reduce global atmospheric CO2 levels, because emissions from China, India and other nations will rapidly offset our painful reductions. Those countries have made it clear that they will not sacrifice improved living standards for assertions that we can stabilize global temperatures by keeping atmospheric CO2 levels below 0.035-0.045% (350-450 ppm).

As China’s former representative for climate negotiations recently said: “Developing nations … are not willing to combat climate change if the price is continued poverty.” The Chinese government has made “no concessions on the country’s right to develop.” Many problems can be solved only through development. “There are 600 million people in India without electricity. The country has to develop and meet that need. And if that increases emissions, I say, So what? The people have a right to a better life.”

Harvard University investigated and sanctioned Professor Marc Hauser for grossly exaggerating his primate research results. Yet, his actions pale by comparison to what Phil Jones, Michael Mann and other Climategate researchers engaged in. Hauser’s grants were a drop in the bucket compared to the climate cabal’s. And he was not advocating massive, expensive, punitive changes in our lives, liberties, and energy and economic systems. Will other institutions match Harvard’s demand for integrity?

The independent InterAcademy Council investigated the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and issued a tough report that may help bring some integrity, transparency, accountability and sanity to what thus far has been mostly politics and activism masquerading as science. The IPCC, says the IAC, needs to replace data manipulation, suppression and bias with honest science; end conflicts of interest; incorporate contrary data and opinions; and back up headline-grabbing disaster claims with actual evidence (not just computer modesls or World Wildlife Fund press releases).

In other words, it must stop trying to prove manmade carbon dioxide is the sole or primary factor in climate change – and seek evidence-based answers to what drives climate change, what we might expect in the future, and how humans can better adapt to warmer, colder, wetter or drier futures.

The IAC and Hauser precedents should serve as a warning to climate colluders and manipulators. They are also increasing pressure on IPCC Chairman Pachauri to abdicate his throne, and be replaced by a respected climate expert who can bring a degree of integrity to this politicized organization.

HOWEVER, a belligerent Pachauri has told the Times of India he has “shed any inhibitions or feelings of cowardice. I believe this is now my opportunity to go out and do what I think is right. In the second term I may be a little more uncomfortable for people than I was in the first.”

Senator Harry Reid says he may still try to pass even a minimalist renewable energy bill in the Senate, and then use it to ram through an economy-disrupting climate bill during a lame duck session, if even by a single vote. That would make the United States the only country to enact draconian climate and energy rules in the midst of a recession – sending millions of jobs overseas, where energy prices and regulatory regimes are more hospitable and governments believe people have a right to better lives.

Aided by George Soros, leftist foundations and our own tax dollars (via EPA and other government agencies), radical greens are spending millions to lobby Congress. The Washington Post is giving free media to what it calls “some of the country’s most respected environmental groups” – helping them spin absurd street theater like CarnivOil into “educational” programs about saving Planet Earth (with vile oil executives bribing boxing referees and knocking out crab-costumed activists).

Teamster, teacher, auto and service employee unions are paying their own employees minimal wages and benefits, and sacking them for trying to unionize, columnist Deroy Murdock chronicles – while preparing to pump $50 million and legions of campaigners into ruling class Democrat reelection campaigns.

Meanwhile, Congress and EPA are pouring tens of millions of taxpayer dollars into Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiatives, to help RGGI director Jonathan Schrag persuade states to implement increasingly restrictive fossil fuel, emission and renewable energy mandates, regardless of what Congress does – and pay for his new $2.2-million loft in Manhattan.

The price of liberty is eternal vigilance. Today, on energy security issues, we unfortunately have less to worry about from external enemies, than from our own elitist politicians, bureaucrats and pressure groups.

In this critical election season, let us hope enough voters step up to defend our liberties, jobs, civil rights and children’s future.

_________

Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow and Congress of Racial Equality, and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power – Black death.

 

WesternFront America

New study documents harmful effects of “cap-and-trade” and “endangerment” schemes

Environmental justice demands that the United States address global warming, the gravest threat facing minority Americans, insist the EPA, Congressional Black Caucus and White House. Are they serious?

The alleged threat pales next to unwed teen motherhood, school dropouts, murder and other crime. But even assuming human carbon dioxide emissions will cause average global temperatures to rise a few degrees more than they have already since the Little Ice Age ended, it is absurd to suggest that any such warming would harm minorities more than policies imposed in the name of preventing climate change.

Human activities have not replaced the complex natural forces that drove climate change throughout Earth’s history. But even if man-made greenhouse gases do contribute to planetary warming, slashing US emissions to zero would bring no benefit, because steadily rising emissions from China, India, Brazil and other rapidly growing economies would almost instantly replace whatever gases we cease emitting.

Most important, fossil fuels power the economic engine that ensures justice and opportunity in America today. Policies that make energy less reliable and affordable reduce business revenues and profits, shrink investment and innovation, imperil economic recovery, and hobble job creation, civil rights, and the pursuit of happiness and the American dream.

Whether they take the form of cap-and-trade, carbon taxes, restrictions on drilling and coal mining, or EPA rules under its claim that carbon dioxide “endangers” human health and welfare, anti-energy policies frustrate the natural desire of poor and minority Americans to improve their lives.

As to coping with higher temperatures, restrictive energy policies send electricity prices skyrocketing, making it harder for low-income households to afford air conditioning, and putting lives at risk. They send poor families back to pre-AC misery of bygone eras, like the 1896 heat wave that killed 1,300 people in New York City’s sweltering tenements. In wintertime, they make heating less affordable, again putting lives at risk.

I recently documented the connection between energy policies and civil rights. My “Justice through Affordable Energy for Wisconsin” report focuses on the Dairy State, where I grew up. However, its lessons apply to every state, especially the 26 that get 48-98% of their electricity from coal or have a strong manufacturing base. (The full report can be found at www.CFACT.org)

Energy is the foundation for America’s jobs, living standards, and everything we make, grow, eat, wear, transport and do. Climate change bills, energy taxes and renewable energy mandates deliberately restrict supplies of reliable, affordable hydrocarbon energy – sending shockwaves through the economy.

Fossil fuels generate three-fourths of Wisconsin’s electricity, keeping costs low and enabling its $45-billion-a-year manufacturing sector to compete in a tough global marketplace. Hydrocarbons sustain thousands of jobs in agriculture, tourism and other sectors of the state’s economy. They ensure that hospitals and clinics can offer high-tech diagnostic, surgical and treatment services.

They enable school districts, families, churches, shops and government offices to operate in the black. Soaring fuel and electricity prices would force schools to spend millions more for buses, heating and lighting. That would mean higher taxes – or reduced music, sports, language and special education programs. Poor and minority neighborhoods would be impacted worst.

Small and minority businesses are often young and undercapitalized. Increasing their operating costs, while decreasing the disposable income of their customers, puts them on the verge of bankruptcy.

“A single worker in our Rhinelander fabrication plant can do the work of ten who do not have access to cranes, welding machines, plasma burners and all other machinery that allows us to cut, bend and fabricate steel up to six inches thick, and make all kinds of heavy equipment,” says Oldenburg Group executive vice president Tim Nerenz. But the machinery and facilities are energy-intensive. If energy costs rise, the company would have to cut wages and benefits or lay off workers, as contract prices are fixed and overseas competition is fierce.

Indoor pools and other facilities make tourism a year-round industry, sustaining local economies during frigid Wisconsin winters, making resorts like the Chula Vista Resort in Wisconsin Dells popular jumping-off points for cross country skiing, snowmobiling and dining. Rising energy costs would reduce family vacations, hammer bottom lines, force layoffs, and cause foreclosures throughout these communities.

In every case, it is blue-collar workers, low and moderate income families, minorities and the elderly that are affected most severely.

Nor are these impacts likely to be offset by “green” jobs. As Spain, Germany and other countries have discovered, wind and solar power require constant infusions of money from increasingly strapped taxpayers and energy consumers. When the economy sours, the subsidies disappear, and so do the jobs.

Wind and solar electricity is expensive, intermittent and unreliable – necessitating expensive gas-powered backup generators, and further damaging family and business budgets. Plus, most of the jobs will be in China and India, where low energy and labor costs, and access to rare earths and other raw materials that America refuses to mine, supply wind turbine and solar panel factories that easily under-price US firms.

The entire cap-tax-and-trade, renewable energy and green-jobs edifice is a house of cards, propped up by claims that humans are affecting the Earth’s climate. As EPA and EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson repeatedly assert, “Climate change is already happening, and human activity is a contributor.”

However, that is not the issue. The issue is whether our use of fossil fuels is now the dominant factor in global warming and cooling, and whether future manmade climate change will be catastrophic. There is no replicable or credible evidence to support that proposition.

Headline-grabbing disaster scenarios forecast for 50 or 100 years in the future are the product of speculation, assumptions, unreliable computer models, and articles by climate activists falsely presented as peer-reviewed scientific papers in IPCC reports, news stories and political speeches. As my Wisconsin study explains, they are not supported by actual data and observations regarding historic and current global temperatures, ice caps, glaciers, sea levels, rainforests or cyclical weather patterns.

Energy taxes and subsidies, renewable energy mandates, soaring prices for everything we need – and severe impacts on families, businesses, jobs, opportunities, living standards and basic civil rights – might be justified if we did indeed face a manmade climate disaster. But even then we should carefully examine the costs and benefits of any proposed actions.

We should determine whether slashing fossil fuel use will stabilize our planet’s ever-turbulent climate, and whether our limited resources might be better spent on adapting to future changes, natural and manmade, just as our ancestors did.

If global warming science is inaccurate, dishonest, slanted or fraudulent, there is even less justification.

We cannot have justice without opportunity, or opportunity without energy. We cannot have justice by sharing scarcity, poverty and skyrocketing energy prices more equally – especially on the basis of erroneous, speculative or manipulated climate science.

We must therefore be forever vigilant, to ensure that Congress does not slip cap-tax-and-trade proposals through during a post-election lame-duck session – and EPA does not shackle our economy and civil rights progress with its job-killing “endangerment” rules.

Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) and Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power – Black death.

 

WesternFront America

Yet another investigation makes Tom Sawyer proud – and promotes alarmist climate legislation.

Pennsylvania State University recently released a report summarizing its final “investigation” into whether one of its employees had committed scientific misconduct. The report exonerated Dr. Michael Mann of all charges, although he did receive a tap on the wrist – for sharing unpublished manuscripts with third parties without first getting the authors’ permission!

The result was hardly unexpected. Most experts who question climate disaster claims had assumed Penn State would produce a whitewash.  PSU stood to lose significantly in reputation and dollars if it found that Dr. Mann had cheated on research and engaged in other conduct unbecoming of a university professor.  What was surprising is the reason it gave for its “not guilty” finding.

Dr. Mann could not possibly be guilty, the report averred, because his “level of success in proposing research and obtaining funding” was possible only because he had “met or exceeded the highest standards of his profession.” Indeed, his research was consistently “judged to be outstanding by his peers.”

Mann’s innocence was further proven, said Penn State, by the awards and recognition he has received. For example, his “hockey stick” temperature graph for the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change played a significant role in the IPCC receiving the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. Had his “conduct been outside the range of accepted practices, it would have been impossible for him to receive so many awards and recognitions,” the report argued.

Such a circular tautology would earn an “F” in introductory college reasoning courses. It is eerily similar to views taken by starry-eyed investors and SEC officials before they realized Bernie had Madoff with billions in client money. The Penn State report is akin to what Mrs. Madoff might issue following her “investigation” of his conduct, “investment” strategies, “standards,” accolades and awards.

Dr. Mann and many of his “peers” were implicated in the Climategate scandals, obstruction of legitimate FOIA requests via deletion of emails, manipulation of global warming temperature data and research, and the politicized funding system that kept them and their institutions awash in government/taxpayer dollars. They conferred awards and recognition on each other, excluded skeptical scientists from “peer reviews” of one another’s papers, and conspired to blackball editors who permitted the publication of professional papers by Sallie Baliunas, Willie Soon, Patrick Michaels, Richard Lindzen, Roy Spencer and other climate experts whose work challenged the Mann-made global warming disaster thesis.

In so doing, Mann and his colleagues promoted laws, treaties and regulatory schemes that imposed higher prices and greater government/activist control over energy use, economic growth, and virtually everything modern societies eat, drive, make, ship and do. They, their institutions, and a host of politicians, bureaucrats, bankers and corporate executives thus had a direct stake in the science, politics and “renewable energy future” supported by billions of dollars in annual research grants – and in ensuring that no investigation upset this convenient golden apple cart.

It is these “accepted practices” and “highest standards of the profession” that are being protected here. It is for this reason that the “investigation” was conducted solely by Penn State – which permitted no contradictory evidence, no adverse witnesses, and no cross-examination of Dr. Mann or anyone knowledgeable about his research, funding and alleged misconduct.

Penn State’s Tom Sawyeresque report says far more than the university could possibly have intended about the “highest standards” prevailing today in climate research arena, and the way universities circle the wagons, protect their “rainmakers” and continue taking our money, while throwing “manmade climate disaster” skeptics under the bus or shipping them off to academic Siberia.

One could accurately (and sadly) say there is nothing new under the sun.

A 1988 NOVA program on PBS investigated the causes and extent of cheating in academia. “Do Scientists Cheat?” interviewed several scientists who discussed how easy and tempting it was to lie and falsify research. Indeed, observed JAMA senior Editor Bruce Dan, while peer review “is a wonderful process for throwing out garbage, I can’t see that [it] can detect fraud, except in a few lucky chances.”

The show focused on two high-profile cases – John Darsee and Robert A. Slutsky, convicted perpetrators of scientific misconduct. Both researchers were well-funded, had numerous publications, won prestigious awards, and were on the fast-track to academic stardom. Both were brought down when other scientists suspected fraud in their work. Investigators concluded that most of their papers were either questionable or demonstrably fraudulent. Many of their co-authors were implicated and their reputations tarnished.

Ironically, one of the NOVA interviewees was Professor Rustum Roy, head of the Materials Research Lab at – Penn State University. He said cheating often occurs because researchers are under intense pressure to publish, win awards, and raise more money each year just to keep their labs going, employ research assistants and provide their academic institutions with 40-50% of each grant for “overhead.” Hard cheating, Roy explained, occurred when a scientist concludes he can get away with compromising or cutting corners a little bit, so why not take it a step further?

Thus, those who have big research fiefdoms, are prolific publishers and win many awards have the most to gain by misconduct. They are also most likely to get away with it, partly because of their reputation –and partly because academia has too many incentives to look the other way and avoid taking actions that could bring disrepute on the university and cut off the financial gravy train.

This translates into a high degree of moral apathy toward scientific misconduct, the PBS program argued.  Academics are much less outraged than one might expect, even when confronted by obvious fraud. This, of course, undermines the integrity of science, and the ethics of its practitioners.

Perhaps more importantly, the program demonstrated that whistleblowers who exposed fraud were more likely to be the target of investigations than the alleged perpetrators. This sends a chilling message to anyone who might raise academic misconduct questions, and further insulates guilty parties.

The NOVA program also included excerpts from a House Committee on Oversight and Investigations hearing on academic misconduct. “Unfortunately, few universities, when confronted with the task of investigating misconduct, have conducted as thorough or candid a self-appraisal” as they should have, Rep. John D. Dingell (D-MI) noted.

In fact, universities that conduct investigations of their own scientists were like the “fox actively investigating the chicken coop. The university gets first crack at the data and witnesses, and gets to frame the issues…. There is a natural tendency to limit the damage.”

The program ends with the question: “Does the scientific community really want to expose misconduct?”

Unfortunately, the answer seems to be, No. Worse, over the last 20 years, the problem has only gotten worse, while the stakes have become infinitely higher.

Vastly larger sums of money are involved: $9 billion in 2009 for climate change and renewable energy research alone. Phony studies of melting Himalayan glaciers, disappearing Amazon rainforests, etc etc etc continue to garner attention and praise in IPCC reports, news stories and congressional statements.

The bogus science is used to justify energy and environmental policies, laws, treaties, court decisions and subsidies that will enrich some, bankrupt others, control our lives, and send millions of jobs overseas. Meanwhile, the investigation by Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli is heatedly denounced by the very academics and institutions that refuse to conduct honest investigations of their own.

And you thought Mark Twain, Lewis Carroll and Jonathon Swift had good material to work with!?!

Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.cfact.org) and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power – Black death.

 

WesternFront America

“Low carbon fuel standards” mean higher costs, few environmental benefits and less liberty.

Within days, Majority Leader Harry Reid intends to bring sweeping energy and climate legislation to the Senate floor. He won’t call it cap-and-trade or cap-tax-and-trade, and certainly not a carbon tax.

“Those words are not in my vocabulary,” he says. “We’re going to work on pollution.”

Senator Reid’s twenty-pound bill will be laden with lofty language about “clean energy,” energy conservation, “green jobs,” reducing “dangerous” power plant emissions,  ending our “addiction” to oil, creating a renewable economy, and saving the planet from “imminent climate disaster.”

Environmental euphemisms aside, however, the legislation is really about imposing national “low carbon fuel standards” (LCFS) and forcing dramatic reductions in the use of oil, natural gas and especially coal. It would expand on existing laws, regulations and decrees, like the Environmental Protection Agency’s ruling that carbon dioxide somehow “endangers human health and welfare,” EPA’s June 30 invalidation of flexible air quality permits for Texas refineries, Interior Secretary Salazar’s offshore drilling moratorium, multiple state and federal renewable energy standards and mandates, and various state and regional “greenhouse gas initiatives” that restrict emissions from power plants and industrial facilities.

The EPA, Energy Information Administration, White House and Mr. Reid insist that America can easily limit hydrocarbon use and switch to “eco-friendly” wind, solar and biofuel energy – at low cost and minimal harm to families, businesses and jobs. However, their self-serving, other-planet claims are flatly contradicted by a host of studies by reputable analysts with a solid history of integrity and accuracy.

The most recent is a June 17 report by Charles River Associates, examining the “Economic and Energy Impacts Resulting from a National Low Carbon Fuel Standard.” Prepared for the Consumer Energy Alliance, the study looked only at transportation fuels. (Including coal for electricity generation and other uses would dramatically increase its cost estimates.) Nevertheless, the study found that national standards implemented in 2015 would:

* Increase average gasoline and diesel prices by up to 80% in five years, and 170% within ten years – sending regular gasoline prices soaring to nearly $5 per gallon by 2020 and $7.50 per gallon by 2025 (assuming other international price pressures remain unchanged);

* Spur sharp cost increases for petrochemicals in plastics, pharmaceuticals and other vital products;

* Reduce employment and consumer demand significantly, by increasing the cost of transporting people, equipment, supplies, raw materials, food and finished products – for work, school, healthcare, business, manufacturing, vacation and other purposes;

* Cut business investment by $200-320 billion annually, compared to the no-LCFS baseline;

* Slash gross domestic product by $410-750 billion annually by 2025;

* Cost 2.3 million to 4.5 million American jobs, including up to 1.5 million in manufacturing and 3.0 million in the service sector; and

* Force household purchasing power downward by $1,400 to $2,400 for a family of four by 2025 – impacting minority, elderly and other low and fixed income families worst of all.

None of this should be surprising. As President Obama himself has said, the very purpose of energy and climate policies like LCFS is to ensure that prices “necessarily skyrocket.” It is to force people to use less fuel, compel companies to change power generation and use practices, drive coal companies and utilities out of business, and force the development of new fuels and technologies that may or may not work.

All on the premise that we waste energy and are causing a planetary meltdown. Climate change is real, and has been since the dawn of time. But there is no consensus and no evidence that carbon dioxide is the primary factor in global warming and cooling, or that humans are causing a climate disaster. Assertions, assumptions and computer models are not evidence, and cannot justify what Harry Reid is pushing.

Restricting, taxing, regulating and penalizing the hydrocarbon fuels that provide 85% of America’s energy would severely hobble our free enterprise system and impact jobs, families, living standards, and basic rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Doubling the price of electricity in our industrial heartland – where coal provides 50-95% of all electrical power – would kill millions of jobs, and send millions of families into fuel poverty.

Renewable energy is intermittent, unreliable, land and raw materials intensive, and unsustainable without government mandates and constant infusions of “other people’s money” in the form of subsidies. Navy Secretary Ray Mabus might be ecstatic that an F/A-18 fighter jet recently flew on biofuel av-gas. But brewing $65-per-gallon fuel from camelina is hardly sustainable, even for the Defense Department.

As to the great utopian vision of “green jobs,” Spain’s subsidy-driven wind turbine industry cost the country 2.2 jobs for every eco-job it created, according to studies by Dr. Gabriel Calzada. And when the global recession hit, the subsidies dried up, the turbine-making jobs disappeared, and hundreds of wind and solar companies were driven to the precipice of bankruptcy.

Wind turbines, solar panels and electric cars require “rare earth” metals. America’s probable deposits are locked up in wilderness areas, which leaves China as the world’s predominant producer. So the bulk of the green manufacturing jobs will be in China – while we will get the temp jobs hauling, assembling and installing components made in the Middle Kingdom and shipped to the United States.

Thus, China, India and Brazil will continue to surge forward on plentiful coal and metals, cheap labor, affordable electricity, a can-do attitude, laxer environmental standards, and a rational refusal to accept legally binding carbon dioxide reductions. Thus, even if the USA went cold turkey, and completely shut down all greenhouse-gas-spewing factories, homes and cars, these developing country emissions would overwhelm our sacrifices within a few months, and atmospheric CO2 levels would continue to rise.

And for what? Cars and power plants are already 90% cleaner than their 1970s era predecessors. Climate change is moderate and primarily natural. Mr. Reid’s formula is all pain, for no environmental gain.

Even bright high school students understand this. US senators certainly ought to. But Harry Reid is hoping 60 do not. That’s the magic number he needs to regulate not just one-sixth of our economy (the healthcare sector), but 100% – because nothing happens without abundant, reliable, affordable energy. And enacting any form of fuel rationing legislation will put Congress and bureaucrats firmly in charge of our lives, liberties, hopes, dreams and rights.

Either Mr. Reid’s cadre doesn’t understand these basic facts – or they are so blinded by power, ambition, ideology and desire to control that they willfully ignore them.

Climate change truly is a huge moral issue. What the Political-Activist-Industrial Complex is doing in the name of preventing climate change and creating a green economy is un-American and immoral. Applied to poor countries, to restrict their access to abundant, reliable energy, it becomes lethal and inhumane. It can no longer be tolerated.

Be alert. Speak out. And beware of energy and climate dictators and charlatans, and any lame duck session that may come after citizens vote to replace many of the control freaks on Capitol Hill.

Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power – Black death.

 

WesternFront America

The greatest threat to species is not modern technology — but environmentalists.

Climate chaos is fading as a “central organizing principle for mankind.” However, the United Nations and radical greens have launched a new eco-scare.

The real threat to the planet, they now assert, is the impact of modern energy technologies and civilization on BIODIVERSITY. They intend to counter this new threat by controlling not just land and energy use, but all human activity.

To accept these claims, one would need to believe in the IPCC – and a UN system that will suddenly ensure honesty, transparency, and accountability for misfeasance, misrepresentation, and adverse impacts on people and wildlife. One would also have to ignore this critical fact.

The real threats to the world’s species are environmentalism, misguided environmental policies, and anti-technology zealotry.

The Soviet Union’s demise helped usher in manmade catastrophic global warming as the new “central organizing principle of civilization.” Now, global warming is giving way to a growing recognition that: climate change is primarily natural, cyclical and moderate; China, India and other countries will not sacrifice CO2-generating economic growth to prevent speculative climate crises; and carbon taxes strangle competitiveness, destroy jobs and send families into fuel poverty.

Thus, while not recanting predictions of disastrous climate change, environmental activists and the United Nations are already launching a new campaign. The real threat to the planet, they now assert, is the impact of modern energy technologies and civilization on biodiversity. The case for saving species, they insist, is even “more powerful” than the need to address climate change.

They seek to preserve biodiversity by controlling people’s energy use, economic activities and population – through new regulations and taxes under the auspices of the United Nations and global treaties. These efforts, they claim, will generate benefits “worth $4-5 trillion per year” (based on questionable studies and computer models that underscore the intrinsic value of species and biodiversity).

To accept these claims, one would have to ignore the sordid history of Climategate and the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – and believe a larger, more powerful United Nations will somehow ensure honesty, transparency, and accountability for misfeasance, misrepresentation, intimidation, and adverse impacts on people and economic growth. One would also have to ignore a growing body of evidence that:

The greatest threats to the world’s species are misguided environmental and anti-technology policies.

Among the policies adversely impacting biodiversity are the following.

* Intense opposition to coal, gas, nuclear and hydroelectric plants for generating the electricity that two billion people worldwide so desperately need. Not only does this force people to rely on open fires for heating and cooking – perpetuating poverty, lung disease and premature death. It also destroys mountain gorilla and other wildlife habitats, as people cut trees for fires and charcoal.

China and India are self-financing hundreds of power projects, to avoid conditions placed by wealthy countries on World Bank and other international loans. But poor countries must still rely on such loans – and thus must run gauntlets laid down by regulators and environmental activists who oppose critically needed power plants and the economic growth and middle class living standards the plants generate.

* Steadfast promotion of expensive, unreliable wind and solar power. Wind turbines slice up birds and collapse bat lungs. Turbines and solar arrays would have to cover millions of acres to provide power for cities. They require ultra-long transmission lines and backup gas generators, and consume millions of tons of concrete, steel, copper, fiberglass, polymers and rare earth (lanthanide) minerals – all of which have to extracted from the Earth and processed into finished products, burning fossil fuels and generating mining wastes and air and water pollution.

Con Ed had to generate some 13,500 megawatts to meet New York City’s air conditioning and other electricity needs during the recent July heat wave. The 600-turbine Roscoe wind farm blankets 100,000 Texas acres to generate 780 MW at full capacity. That means NYC would need a wind farm 1.6 times the size of Connecticut (5 million acres or 2 million hectares), if the turbines are running at an average 30% of capacity.  But during the heat wave, there’s barely a breeze.

Now multiply that habitat demand times the world’s biggest cities, and calculate the biodiversity impact. No wonder the wind industry wants exemptions from endangered species rules and environmental impact studies that hyper-regulate fossil fuel and nuclear companies. No wonder Senator Diane Feinstein has introduced legislation to prohibit solar panel installations in the super-sunny Mojave Desert.

* Equally passionate advocacy for biofuels, especially ethanol. Every 7 billion gallons of corn-based ethanol requires crops grown on an area the size of Indiana (23 million acres) – and Congress now wants the USA to produce 20 billion gallons of EtOH annually by 2020. In addition to expropriating vast crop land and wildlife habitat, ethanol production requires billions of gallons of water, millions of tons of fertilizer and insecticides, and enormous quantities of natural gas and diesel fuel to power tractors, tanker trucks and conversion plants – to distill a fuel that gets 20% fewer mpg than gasoline.

And yet, President Obama told a Ghanaian audience in July 2009 that malnourished Africa should forego even gas-fired electricity generators in favor of wind, solar and biofuel power. The continent and its arid, nutrient-depleted soils already cannot feed their populations adequately, and the President wants them to divert cropland and wildlife habitats to biofuels. Meanwhile, environmental activists continue to …

* Oppose biotechnology, genetically engineered crops and even hybrid seeds. These specialized crops survive better during droughts, increase farm family incomes, improve nutrition, and reduce the need for insecticides. They offer the best hope for growing more biofuel crops on less acreage.

The New York Times says we can ill afford “not to make the best use of genetic engineering.” If we “allow propaganda to trump science, then the potential for global agriculture to be productive, diverse and sustainable will go unfulfilled.” The late Dr. Norman Borlaug warned that forcing the world to rely on organic and traditional farming to feed even current populations would require plowing under nearly every remaining acre of forest and grassland habitat. That’s without factoring in biofuels.

And yet, environmentalists and EU bureaucrats threaten African nations with punitive boycotts if they plant biotech crops. Radical greens want Third World farmers to rely on “traditional” seeds and agricultural methods, and oppose the use of seeds that have been “touched by corporations.”

* Environmentalists also oppose timber cutting and even tree thinning and mechanized fire suppression on vast acreage of US national forests. Too often the result is fiery conflagrations that incinerate trees, wildlife, soil and streams, causing extensive erosion and long-term habitat loss.

* Topping it off, the Environmental Protection Agency’s recent endangerment decision, low-carbon fuel standards, and power plant emission rules will force even greater expansion of wind, solar and biofuel use, further impacting habitats and biodiversity.

It is bad enough that “biodiversity stabilization” is a reprise of past government-environmentalist eco-scares. Like its predecessors, the new program offers horrifying predictions of a dying planet – backed by little more than dubious theories, assumptions, assertions and statistics, fed into fancy computer models that generate ominous scenarios and graphics. It also proposes the same tired “solutions” – more taxes, regulations, and government control over lives, energy development and economic growth.

The far greater problem is that the UN, EPA, “mainstream media” and political establishment are ignoring the real threats to habitats, species and biodiversity: the anti-energy, anti-technology, anti-people agenda of radical green ideology.

We now have an opportunity to make Earth a better place for people and the natural world. We need to reject this agenda, demand sound science and solid evidence that a treat exists, and recognize that modern technology actually offers the best hope for protecting the diversity of species.

______________

Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power – Black death.

 

WesternFront America