Let’s restore common sense to our public policy debates on energy and climate

By Paul Driessen

We are constantly bombarded with information – much of it inaccurate, misleading, even deliberately so.

We are frequently told we must reduce carbon emissions, support “carbon disclosure” and invest in “carbon trusts” – to prevent catastrophic global warming, global climate change or global climate “disruption.” News stories, advocacy and lobbying activities, and corporate “ethics” promotions frequently use “carbon” and “carbon dioxide” almost interchangeably; some occasionally talk about “dangerous carbon monoxide emissions.”

Torn by misplaced hydrocarbon guilt, wanting to do right ecologically, and often scientifically challenged, people are naturally confused. Because so much is at stake – for our energy supplies and prices, jobs, economies, living standards, budget deficits and environment – clearing up that confusion is a high priority.

“Carbon” (chemical symbol C) is what we burn to get energy to power modern society. Carbon is the molecular building block for wood, charcoal and coal, and hydrocarbons (HC) like oil and natural gas. Cars and power plants do not emit carbon, except in the form of soot. Thus, talk of “carbon disclosure” or “reducing our carbon emissions” is misleading, unless one is confessing how much charcoal was used at a picnic, or apologizing for not having pollution controls on a wood-burning stove.

“Carbon monoxide” (CO) is an odorless, deadly gas. A natural product of combustion, it increases when ventilation is poor, oxygen levels are low and burning is inefficient. It’s why we shouldn’t use charcoal grills indoors or operate cars in garages, unless we’re suicidal.

“Carbon dioxide” (CO2) is another natural byproduct of combustion, from power plants, factories, vehicles, homes, hospitals and other users of wood, coal, petroleum and biofuels. This is what many environmental activists, politicians and scientists blame for recent and future climate change.

(The other major byproduct is water vapor or steam – plus pollutants that reflect impurities in the fuel and are removed via scrubbers and other technologies, or reduced by controlling the temperature, airflow and efficiency of combustion processes: sulfur and nitrogen oxides, particulates, mercury and so on.)

Literally thousands of scientists vigorously disagree with the hypothesis that CO2 is responsible for climate change. It plays only a minor role, they argue, in a complex, chaotic climate system that is driven by numerous natural forces, cycles, and positive and negative feedback loops. They also note that CO2 increases have followed, not preceded, temperature rises, throughout Earth’s history.

CO2 constitutes a mere 0.0380% of our atmosphere. That’s 380 parts per million (380 ppm), which sounds much more threatening, especially when used in juxtaposition with the pre-Industrial Revolution figure of 280 ppm. But even that 100 ppm increase represents only 0.0100% of Earth’s atmosphere – equivalent to one penny out of $100.

380 is far below historical CO2 levels. During the Jurassic and Early Carboniferous periods, geologists calculate, our atmosphere contained 1,500-2,500 ppm carbon dioxide. However, even at today’s comparatively CO2-impoverished levels, this trace gas is vital to the health of our planet.

As every grade schooler learns, CO2 enables photosynthesis and plant growth: carbon dioxide and water in, oxygen and plant growth out, through complex chemical reactions. Without CO2, there would be no plants and no oxygen; life as we know it would cease. Carbon dioxide is truly the “gas of life” – and no attempt by Al Gore, James Hansen or EPA to brand it as a dangerous pollutant can change that.

The 100 ppm rise in CO2 levels came courtesy of two things. As oceans warmed after the Little Ice Age ended 160 years ago, they released some of their carbon dioxide storehouses. (As with beer and soda water, seawater is able to retain less CO2 as it warms.) The rest came from hydrocarbon fuels burned during the Industrial Revolution and modern era, and from billions more impoverished people still burning wood and animal dung in open fires.

Though vilified by radical greens and climate alarmists, hydrocarbon energy and the Industrial Revolution have hugely benefitted mankind. They doubled average life expectances in industrialized nations and increased prosperity, overall health and living standards, in proportion to the ability of poor communities to acquire electricity and modern technologies. Thus, telling poor countries to limit hydrocarbon use, and focus instead on wind and solar power, sharply limits their ability to modernize, create jobs, and improve health, living conditions and life spans.

And all that extra CO2 from electrical generation and other economic activities? As Drs. Craig and Sherwood Idso explain on their CO2science.org website and in their fascinating book, The Many Benefits of Atmospheric CO2 Enrichment, the extra carbon dioxide has blessed people and planet in at least 55 ways.

For example, increased atmospheric carbon dioxide increases the photosynthesis rates for plants. It enables plants to extract more moisture from the air and soil, thereby expanding root systems that stabilize soil, reduce erosion and help plants survive better during droughts.

Higher CO2 levels also reduce the need for plants to keep their stomata (pores in leaves) open to absorb carbon dioxide – and in the process release moisture from the plant – further increasing drought resistance. Because stomata don’t need to be open as much, plants also reduce their absorption of harmful pollutants that can damage their tissue. As with the air in greenhouses, rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations improves nitrogen fixation by soil bacteria, increasing the availability of this important chemical.

CO2-enriched air also increases plants’ ability to manufacture Vitamin C, antioxidants, and health-promoting substances in medicinal plants – while likewise improving plants’ immune systems and ability to withstand a wide variety of common plant diseases.

Many climatologists and astrophysicists believe recent sun spot, Pacific Ocean and global temperature trends suggest that our planet may have entered a cool phase that could last for 25 years. If that is the case, the additional carbon dioxide being emitted by China, India and other developing countries could bring a major additional benefit: helping to protect wildlife habitats, enhance oceanic biota and preserve crop yields under sub-optimal climatic conditions.

Attempts to coerce expanded wind and solar installations will require that we devote still more land, raw materials and taxpayer subsidies to these expensive, unreliable energy supplies. And trying to capture and store carbon dioxide from power plants and factories will require trillions of dollars and vast supplies of energy, to take this plant-fertilizing gas out of the atmosphere and inject it under high pressure deep into the earth – and keep it from escaping, to kill animals and people.

To get 1000 megawatts of net electricity from a power plant designed for CO2-capture-and-storage would require building (at minimum) a 1300-MW plant, burning at least one-third more fuel than a conventional plant does, using over one-third of the 1300 MW to power the CCS equipment – and paying much higher electricity prices. The impact on factories, shops, jobs, household budgets and fuel supplies would be significant.

Legislators and regulators need to focus on controlling unhealthy amounts of real pollutants (based on valid medical and environmental science) – and keep their pesky hands off our CO2!

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

By Willie Soon, Robert Carter and David Legates

Bjorn Lomborg, author of The Skeptical Environmentalist and Cool It, is right about the need to focus on critical health and economic priorities. But he is wrong about human carbon dioxide emissions causing what is now being called “global climate disruption.”

By demonizing the gas of life, in league with Al Gore and Bill Gates, Lomborg commits several serious scientific errors. As independent scientists, with broad training in mathematics, physics, chemistry, geology and geography, we know CO2 is not a pollutant, and the notion of “carbon-free” or “zero-carbon” energy is inherently harmful and anti-scientific.

If nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen, helium or any other non-toxic gas is pumped into a chamber containing air and a growing plant, the response is barely measurable. By contrast, if more CO2 is added, the plant and its root system benefit enormously, displaying enhanced growth and more efficient use of available water and nutrients.

Far from having detrimental effects, carbon dioxide has decidedly beneficial impacts on plants, aquatic and terrestrial alike, and a new study connects enhanced plant productivity to greater bird species diversity in China. How, therefore, can anyone conclude that human carbon dioxide is a pollutant that must be eradicated?

These facts erect a formidable barrier for “zero-carbon” advocates. By insisting that no human CO2 should be emitted, they are promoting continued suboptimal growth of food plant species in the face of impending global food shortages – and poorer functioning and less diversity in the global ecosystem.
Zero-carbon activists respond to these facts by asserting that human CO2 emissions cause “dangerous global warming.” They are wrong about this, too.

If rising atmospheric CO2 levels drive global temperatures upward, as they insist, why is Earth not suffering from the dangerous “fever” that Al Gore predicted? Instead, after mild warming at the end of the twentieth century, global temperatures have leveled off for the past decade, amid steadily rising carbon dioxide levels.

Lomborg’s claim that we need to “cure” so-called “unchecked climate change” is thus fallacious and contradicted by reality. Reducing human CO2 emissions will likely have no measurable cooling effect on planetary temperatures.

His insistence that we prioritize expenditures is spot-on when applied to genuine environmental and societal problems. However, it is irrelevant when the problems are mythical – or devised to advance ideological agendas. Moreover, even if human impacts on the global climate can actually be measured at some future date, humans currently lack the scientific and engineering understanding and capability to deliberately “manage” Earth’s constantly changing climate for the better.

Most certain of all, atmospheric carbon dioxide is not the “climate control knob” that anti-hydrocarbon alarmists assert, and it is irresponsible for Lomborg to claim his socio-political agenda will provide a low-cost solution for the global warming “problem.”

The scientific reality is that even the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has been unable to demonstrate a cause-and-effect scientific connection between rising human CO2 emissions and dangerous warming. To support global limits on CO2 emissions, in the absence of real-world data showing clear cause and effect, is scientific and policy incompetence on the highest order.
Imagine a drug company seeking FDA approval for a new drug, based on an analysis that says simply: “Our supercomputers say the drug is safe and effective. We have no clinical data to support this, but can think of no reason actual results would contradict what our computers predict. Moreover, failure to license the drug will be disastrous for patients suffering from the targeted disease.” Failing to demand actual dose-and-response studies, before licensing the drug, would be gross negligence on FDA’s part.

Between 2007 and 2009, US carbon dioxide emissions dropped approximately 10 percent, to their lowest level since 1995, largely because of reduced energy consumption during the recession. Similar CO2 emission reductions occurred in Britain, Germany, France and Japan.

Have their climates gotten better or less dangerous? Are they now a better place, for having a lower intensity carbon energy diet? Have global temperatures been statistically unchanged since 1995 because, or in spite of, Chinese and Indian carbon dioxide emissions increasing far more than the aforementioned countries reduced theirs?

These are practical, not rhetorical questions. As far as we can see, the only direct effect of decreasing CO2 levels via expensive renewable energy programs has been to cost more American and European jobs than would otherwise have been the case during the global economic recession.

The central issue is not whether rising CO2 levels will cause a warmer planet. The fundamental concern is whether globally warmer temperatures are factually worse (or better) for human societies – and more (or less) damaging to the environment – than colder temperatures (like those experienced during the ice ages and Little Ice Age).

Bjorn Lomborg, Al Gore and Bill Gates need to consider the likelihood that, driven by changes in solar activity and ocean circulation, Earth will cool significantly over coming decades. Damaging the global economy with ineffectual carbon dioxide controls, in a futile quest to “stop global warming,” looks stupid now.

Viewed later, with hindsight, it will be judged outrageously irresponsible.

Willie Soon studies sun-climate connections at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Professor Bob Carter is an emeritus fellow of the Institute of Public Affairs and chief science advisor to the International Climate Science Coalition. David Legates is a hydroclimatologist at the University of Delaware and serves as the State Climatologist of Delaware.

 

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

On August 12, the Environmental Protection Agency sent out a press release, “EPA Proposes Rules on Clean Air Act Permitting for Greenhouse Gas Emissions”.

It is a frontal attack on the U.S. economy that is currently in the throes of a decline that has not been seen since the Great Depression.

If the EPA succeeds in this Big Lie, the provision of affordable energy in America will cease.

“The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is proposing two rules to ensure that businesses planning to build new, large facilities or make major expansions to existing ones will be able to obtain Clean Air Act permits that address their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.”

The Clean Air Act does not cover carbon dioxide (CO2) which the EPA deems the primary GHG. This is because poses no threat to the environment and, indeed, is a vital and essential element of the environment insofar as all vegetation from a blade of grass to a giant Sequoia tree is dependent on it for growth.

Moreover, the proposed regulation of CO2 is based on the global warming fraud that says that it is responsible for a significant warming of the planet. There is not a scintilla of proof of this and, indeed, the Earth is presently in one of its natural cycles of cooling, not warming.

Thus, there is no scientific justification for the regulation of carbon dioxide no matter how many times the EPA says there is.

The EPA release says “projects that will increase CHG emissions substantially will require an air permit.”

If American industry, particularly the targeted “power plants and oil refineries”, are required to get GHG permits, it will put yet another huge sector of the nation’s economy under the thumb of the most insidious exponents of the global warming fraud, enemies of any economic growth.

“The Tailoring Rule covers large industrial facilities like power plants and oil refineries that are responsible for 70 percent of the GHGs from stationary sources,” says the EPA news release.

What it doesn’t say is that this power to regulate that does not exist in the present Clean Air Act.

It will cause electricity costs to skyrocket along with gasoline and all other oil derivatives. It will utterly wreck the U.S. economy that is already in dire straits.

If an invading nation had imposed these kinds of restrictions on Americans, we would be in the streets with guns and any other means to fight them.

There is NO global warming. Carbon dioxide plays NO role in this non-event.

This is regulation by deception, by lies, by the arrogance of environmentalists who view the human race as a cancer on the planet.

And, naturally, they have waited until Congress has gone on recess to “propose” this attack on the nation.

Take action! Contact your Representatives and Senators. Drown the White House in protests.

The EPA must be stopped!

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

 

WesternFront America

The new Kerry-Lieberman climate bill mandates a 17% reduction in US carbon dioxide emissions by 2020. It first targets power plants that provide reliable, affordable electricity for American homes, schools, hospitals, offices and factories. Six years later, it further hobbles the manufacturing sector itself.

Like the House-passed climate bill, Kerry-Lieberman also requires an 80% reduction in CO₂ emissions by 2050. Once population growth and transportation, communication and electrification technologies are taken into account, this translates into requiring US emission levels last seen around 1870!

House Speaker Pelosi says “every aspect of our lives must be subjected to an inventory,” to ensure that America achieves these emission mandates. This means replacing what is left of our free-market economy with an intrusive Green Nanny State, compelling us to switch to unreliable wind and solar power, and imposing skyrocketing energy costs on every company and citizen.

Meanwhile, the Environmental Protection Agency is implementing its own draconian energy restrictions, in case Congress does not enact punitive legislation.

It’s time to ask these politicians some fundamental questions.

1) Even slashing carbon dioxide emissions to 80% below 2005 levels would reduce projected global average temperatures in 2050 by barely 0.2 degrees F, according to a study that used the UN’s own climate models. That’s because China, India and other developing countries are building new coal-fired power plants every week, even as the United States and Europe shackle their economies and send more jobs overseas. How do you justify such destructive, punitive, meaningless legislation?

2) Reflecting agreement with thousands of scientists, most Americans now say climate change is natural, not manmade. Fully 75% are unwilling to spend more than $100 per year in higher energy bills to “stabilize” Earth’s unpredictable climate. What provision of the Constitution, your oath of office or your duty to the overall health and welfare of this nation permits you to ignore the will of the people, the mounting evidence that “climate disasters” are the product of computer models, manipulated data and falsified UN reports, and the job-killing impacts of the laws and regulations you seek to impose?

3) If carbon dioxide is causing “runaway global warming,” why have average global temperatures not risen since 1995, and why have they been COOLING for the past five years – even as atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have continued to rise to levels unprecedented in the modern era?

4) What properties does manmade carbon dioxide have that enable it to replace the complex natural forces that clearly caused the Ice Ages, Medieval Warm Period, Little Ice Age, Dust Bowl, ice-free Arctic seas in 1822 and 1922, Alaska’s 100 degree F temperature record in 1915, and all the other climate and weather changes and anomalies, blessings and disasters that our planet has experienced during its long geologic and recorded history?

5) What physical or chemical properties does manmade carbon dioxide have that would enable it to overturn the laws of thermodynamics – and cause temperatures in Antarctica to rise 85 degrees F, from an average of minus 50 F to plus 35 F year-round (or 48 degrees C, from -46 C to +2 C), to melt that continent’s vast ice masses, raise sea levels 20 feet or more, and flood coastal cities?

6) Precisely what chemical, physical and thermodynamic processes would drastic carbon dioxide reductions alter, and how? Precisely what weather and climate improvements would those reductions achieve? Precisely how will CO₂ reductions stabilize planetary temperature, climate and weather systems that have been turbulent, unpredictable and anything but stable throughout Earth’s history?

7) Is there ANY direct physical observation or evidence that would falsify your climate crisis thesis, and cause you to admit human greenhouse gas emissions are not causing a planetary climate disaster? Or do you think everything that happens confirms your climate disaster hypothesis: warmer or colder, wetter or drier, more snow and ice or less, more hurricanes and tornadoes or cyclical periods with few such storms?
Replacing hydrocarbons with unreliable, subsidized “green” energy will require millions of acres of land for wind turbines, solar panels and transmission lines – plus hundreds of millions of tons of steel, copper, concrete, fiberglass and rare earth minerals for all those facilities.

Do you support delaying wind, solar and transmission projects for years, to protect the rights and property of local communities and private landowners? Or do you favor regulatory edicts and eminent domain actions, so that government can seize people’s property and expedite construction of these projects?

Do you support opening US public lands for renewed exploration and development, so that we can produce these raw materials and create American jobs? Or do you intend to keep US lands off limits, and force us to depend on imports for renewable energy, too?

Do you support relaxing environmental study, endangered species and other laws, to fast-track approval of these projects, despite their obvious impacts on wildlife and habitats? Or do you want them subjected to the same rules that have stymied thousands of other energy projects, so that renewable energy projects cannot be built, either – and we have massive blackouts?

9) Over 1.5 billion people in Africa, Asia and Latin America still do not have electricity, for even a light bulb or tiny refrigerator. Millions die every year from diseases that would be largely eradicated with electricity for refrigeration, sanitation, modern hospitals, and industries that generate greater health and prosperity. How can you justify using taxpayer money to finance UN and environmental activist programs that claim global warming is the biggest threat they face, and they need to get by on wind and solar power, and give up their dreams of better lives, because YOU are worried about global warming? Doesn’t that violate their most basic human rights to improved living standards, and even life itself?

10) If you’re so sure about your data and conclusions – and intend to use climate disaster claims to justify sending our energy costs skyrocketing, killing millions of factory jobs, controlling our lives, and totally overhauling our energy, economic and social structure – why do you refuse to allow fair, open and balanced congressional hearings and debates on climate science and economics? Why do you refuse to debate skeptical experts in a public forum, or even answer questions that challenge your alarmist thinking? Why do you refuse to require that scientists who get taxpayer money for their research must share and discuss climate data, computer codes, methodologies and analyses?

11) How much money and campaign help have you gotten from companies and activist groups that benefit from renewable energy mandates and subsidies, carbon offset and trading schemes, coal mining and oil leasing bans, and other provisions of climate and energy legislation?

12) What if you vote for these job-killing, anti-growth, anti-poor, anti-human-rights “climate disaster prevention” laws – and it turns our you are WRONG on the science or economics? What will you do? Give up your congressional seat, home, pension and worldly wealth – and pledge yourself and your children to an austere life of service to the people you have harmed? Or just say, “Oh I’m so sorry,” and then pass more intrusive, oppressive laws, before retiring to collect a nice government pension – while millions freeze jobless in the dark?

13) If you can’t or won’t answer these questions, then why do you think you have a right to tell anyone on this planet that we have a “climate crisis,” and dictate how they must live their lives – especially when you’ve done so little to slash your own taxpayer-funded air travel, staff, and home and office energy use?

Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green Power – Black Death. He has studied climate change for over 15 years.

 

WesternFront America

Among the legacies of Richard M. Nixon, famed for the Watergate scandal that forced his resignation, it should be noted that he created the Environmental Protection Agency. There was no vote in Congress. He did it with an executive order. Today the EPA has an annual budget of $9 billion and some 18,000 employees.

Not satisfied with the authorized powers given it to ensure clean air and water, the EPA has never ceased to seek expanded powers, culminating soon with a battle over whether it can regulate carbon dioxide (CO2) as a “pollutant.” Labeled a “greenhouse gas”, in the eyes of the EPA it is an “endangerment” to the health of humanity in general and Americans in particular.

CO2 is as vital to all life on planet Earth in the same way as oxygen. It is what plants consume in order to grow, much as oxygen is essential for life among living creatures that, in turn, are dependent on vegetation, crops, for their sustenance. It’s a neat little cycle that has existed since life emerged on Earth.

If the EPA gains the power to regulate CO2, it will have the power to regulate the activities of every individual and the entire economy of the nation. Traditional sources of energy, with the exception of nuclear and hydroelectric power, involve the emission of CO2. A modern society cannot function without CO2 emissions, but they have nothing to do with global warming because there is NO global warming.

CO2 represents a mere 386 parts per million of the Earth’s atmosphere. Humans are responsible for 3% of its generation; Mother Nature produces the other 97%. And the EPA wants to regulate ALL of it!

Actual science is of no importance to the EPA. If the EPA really cared about human life, it would not have a long history of banning beneficial chemicals such as DDT and other pesticides that protect humans against a laundry list of transmittable diseases like malaria, dengue fever, yellow fever, et cetera.

The EPA is actually seeking to limit the amount of deicing fluid used to protect commercial and other aircraft on the grounds that it might get into nearby streams and rivers. Never mind the lives of the passengers and crews on planes that would be brought down as the result of such ice. This defies common sense.

In truth, the EPA threatens the economy and our lives in so many ways it is difficult to know where to point first. To my mind, the way it infiltrates the nation’s education system to fill the minds of children with visions of a planet threatened with “warming” or that every species is “endangered” or that all the waters and air are “polluted” is criminal.

The EPA is currently accepting grant applications “to help manage the National Environmental Education Training Program over the next ten years.” Costing $10 million, it “will provide teachers and other education professionals with resources and support to enable them to teach about environmental issues more effectively.” The EPA was not created to go into our nation’s schools in this manner. This is propaganda. This is indoctrination.

Let us grant that, when it stuck to its original purpose, it did make the air cleaner and some of the nation’s waters. Now, however, the EPA is a massive machine designed to destroy the nation’s economy and impede growth and development in every way possible.

The primary tool for this are lies concerning any element of the environment it wants to control and, as a result, retard the economy. As but one example, there are the new “smog” standards the EPA recently announced. It has reduced them to a level of 60 to 70 parts per billion in the air. It released a list of counties it says are in violation of the new limits.

The cost of achieving the lower standard is estimated from $19 billion to $90 billion. If you took one tennis ball from an olympic-sized pool filled with them, you would achieve the same result. It’s not merely absurd; it is yet another attack on every single business and industry operating in those counties.

The same idiocy applies to setting mileage rules or requiring that ethanol be added to gasoline. To achieve the mileage rules, the weight of automobiles must be reduced. People inside those thinner, lighter cars will die from an accident at a rate in excess of larger vehicles. As for ethanol, it requires more energy to produce than it saves. It drives up the cost of all the food we consume. It also reduces the mileage from every gallon of gasoline while emitting more CO2!

The EPA is currently at war with the coal industry, responsible for providing the source of 50% of all the electricity generated in the United States of America. A recent “endangerment” finding against all surface coal mining in the Appalachian States of Virginia, Kentucky, and West Virginia is based on the protection of the Mayfly population, an insect that typically lives for one day!

The list of EPA abuses of common sense and known science could fill a shelf of books in much the same way its ever-expanding regulations do, but the worst of it is yet to come if the Cap-and-Trade Act is passed.

Despite the fact that CO2 has nothing to do with the non-existent “global warming” and therefore does not need to be regulated for any reason, the enactment of the bill will literally prevent a homeowner from selling their home without permission from an EPA administrator. The cost of buying or selling a home will soar.

The Environmental Protection Agency needs to be reduced in size and authority to its original intent. Better still, eliminate it entirely. It is a monster.

Alan Caruba writes a daily post 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

Lisa Jackson, Obama’s EPA director, has just announced the agency’s new auto regulations of gas mileage based on global warming. In addition, the agency asserts the right to regulate carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions under the Clean Air Act.

There is absolutely no scientific justification for this and, indeed, many observers believe the EPA lacks the legal authority regarding its stance on CO2.

There is NO need to limit greenhouse gas emissions because there is NO “global warming.”

Greenhouse gases are purported to be the primary cause of this fraud. The EPA, like a dozen other U.S. agencies, has been pushing the global warming fraud for decades. One more lie, even a whopper about CO2, is of little concern to the EPA at this point.

Beyond the issue of scientific fraud, there are the scientific facts that demonstrate that CO2 plays a minuscule role, if any, as regards the Earth’s climate. Carbon dioxide is less than one percent of the Earth’s atmosphere (386 parts per million).

There is, in fact, no greenhouse effect. The most active element of the atmosphere is the 95% of water vapor that forms a protective layer around the Earth.

The science involved is fairly simple. Clouds have a warming effect because, in order for water vapor to condense back into water droplets, the water molecules must first re-emit the energy they absorbed to become vapor. That latent heat causes the local environment to feel warmer. It is this constant interchange that determines whether wherever you’re at right now is warmer or cooler.

The public is rarely, if ever, told that meteorologists have NO idea why clouds act as they do. All they can do is track cloud activity via satellite images, but they can only accurately predict the weather at best for three to four days ahead. This is why, when you watch a televised weather forecast, they mostly just point to cloud systems.

The Earth’s oceans contain fifty times the CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere. The Earth’s biomass, oceans, near-surface rocks and soils contain 100,000 times the carbon in the atmosphere.

To declare CO2 toxic, the EPA is saying that all that natural CO2, plus the six pounds of carbon dioxide that every human exhale every day is a “pollutant.”

How can carbon dioxide be a pollutant when all life on Earth is dependent upon it?

CO2 is to vegetation what oxygen is to human and other animal life. Without CO2, all vegetation dies and then all animal life dies for lack of the nutrients provided by food crops.

The EPA will blame the generation of CO2 on energy use, but 97% of the Earth’s CO2 is produced by Nature!

Only about 3% of all the CO2 in the atmosphere is produced by humans via industrial and transport activity. This estimate, in fact, comes from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change! The IPCC’s other alleged climate data is subject to serious challenge, but this is not. It falls into the category of common knowledge among climate scientists.

Environmentalists are insanely opposed to all energy use with the exception of bicycles, canoes, and walking. They particularly hate automobiles, but these are the same people, along with the EPA, that have insisted on the inclusion of ethanol, otherwise known as moonshine, in every gallon of gasoline. The immediate result is less mileage per gallon and the production of more CO2!

None of these facts is a secret yet, since 1989, the U.S. government has spent $79 billion in taxpayer’s money on “climate change” research. To suggest that the government, using the data generated, has any “control” over the climate is absurd.

The result of all that government funded research has been a public that has been subjected to the massive fraud called global warming. Weather data provided by NASA and NOAA, for example, has had to have been withdrawn due to errors.

Not only has the scientific community learned that the IPCC data was manipulated and that efforts were made to suppress data refuting global warming, but the Earth has irrefutably been in a cooling cycle for over a decade at this point.

The EPA regulatory control of auto mileage and CO2 emissions is a complete fraud and a contemptible lie. In doing so it has become a gangster agency that has abandoned any credibility.

Finally, the Cap-and-Trade Act awaiting a vote in the Senate is based on the global warming fraud and, if enacted, would impose massive taxation on all energy use. It must be stopped. The EPA latest move must be stopped.

The fate of the nation’s economy literally depends on this.

Alan Caruba blogs daily at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com. An author, business and science writer, he is the founder of The National Anxiety Center, a clearinghouse for information about “scare campaigns” designed to influence public opinion and policy.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

 

WesternFront America

Just when you thought “global warming” has been put to rest by the revelations of how the computer models supporting the hoax had been deliberately falsified to “hide the decline” in the Earth’s temperature, along comes the next Big Lie, focused again on carbon dioxide (CO2).

Wednesday, January 13, has been designated “Wear Blue for Oceans Day” by some coalition calling itself Clean Ocean Action. I don’t even care whose funding this scam, but Friends of the Earth is proudly announcing it is part of it.

They are still smarting over the December debacle in Copenhagen despite being “one of the main groups organizing a December 12 march that attracted more than 100,000 participants…” The FOE neglected to mention they all stood out in a snow storm to make their voices heard on the way the Earth was warming.

Perhaps sensing that people might begin to wonder where all the global warming had gone since a global cooling cycle began in 1998, these perpetrators of the fraud turned their attention to the fact that the same CO2 that was supposed to “cause” global warming was nonetheless building in the atmosphere and that means in the oceans as well.

At far back as February 2009, these scare mongers organized an international symposium, the second one actually, on “The Ocean in a High-CO2 World.” It brought together “150 marine scientists from 26 countries” who allegedly are “calling for immediate action by policy-makers to sharply reduce CO2 emissions so as to avoid widespread and severe damage to marine ecosystems from ocean acidification.”

An article in Science Daily reported that “The scientists note that ocean acidification is already detectable and is accelerating.”

What these scientists are more interested in detecting is where the next wasted billions in government and foundation grants can be found.

The oceans of the world comprise some 70% of the Earth’s surface. They are like the lungs of the Earth, absorbing and releasing carbon dioxide. They have been doing this for billions of years and a rise in the amount of CO2 is essentially meaningless.

“It is well established among researchers that the uptake of increased amounts of carbon dioxide will make ocean water more acidic as the gas dissolves to create carbonic acid,” said the Science Daily article and, to scare you just a bit more, “Ocean chemistry is changing 100 times more rapidly than in the 650,000 years that preceded the modern industrial era…”

The global warming fraud was based on the assertion that, as the Earth encountered greater industrialization, the increased use of oil, natural gas, and coal as sources of energy, the CO2 released was “causing” the Earth to warm exponentially.

The only problem with that “theory” is that it was (1) based on phony computer models and other false interpretations of data, and (2) the latest, perfectly natural climate cycle, is causing havoc around the world by dumping mountains of snow everywhere along with breaking cold temperature records faster than new readings can be taken.

For the scientifically inclined, check out http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/07/noaa-ocean-temperatures-june-2009-warmest-on-record.php

Why is it important to know that global ocean temperatures are the warmest since records began in 1880? Because the colder the water, the more carbon dioxide it retains. Warmer oceans would generate less, not more acidification.

© Alan Caruba

—————————————————–

A comment left by Clive Graham Smale at Mr. Caruba’s site.

Another New Scare – Ocean Acidification – another load of baloney and fraud.

I feel I must, in support, add to Alan’s post with this comment.

Sun 01st Feb, 2009 – A headline on the BBC World website, for this week ran: “Acid rain ‘needs urgent action’” based upon : ‘The world’s marine ecosystems risk being severely damaged by ocean acidification unless there are dramatic cuts in CO2 emissions, warn scientists’.

So, let’s check the facts: Currently, the oceans (Pacific predomintly) have a ph of 8.1, which is alkaline; it requires a ph value of below 7.0 to be classed as acidic.

”Between 1751 – 1994 surface ocean ph is estimated to have decreased from approximately ph 8.179 to 8.104”, continues the BBC.
But, at that rate it will take another 3,500 years to be even slightly acidic!

Another point to ponder is how on earth did they measure ocean ph to four decimal places in 1751? The idea of ph wasn’t designated until 1909!

The BBC article then asserts: “The researches warn that ocean acidification, which they refer to as ‘the other CO2 problem’, could make most regions of the ocean inhospitable to coral reefs by 2050 if atmospheric CO2 levels continue to increase”.

So let’s check some more facts: Corals became common in the oceans during the Ordivician Era (505 – 438 Million Years ago, within the Paleozoic Era ……….

(Palaeozoic, major interval of geologic time that began about 540 million years ago with an extraordinary diversification of marine animals and ended about 245 million years ago with the greatest extinction event in Earth history. The major divisions of the Paleozoic Era, from oldest to youngest, are the Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian, Carboniferous, and Permian periods.)

………when atmospheric CO2 levels were about ten times (10X) those of today. Perhaps corals are not assumed to be as tough as they used to be.

In 1954 the US detonated the world’s largest nuclear hydrogen bomb at Bikini Athol in the South Pacific. Equivalent to 30 Billion pounds of TNT it vapourised three islands and raised the water temperature to 55,000 degF – to an invisible, hyper-heated, hyper-pressurised gas. Now, 54 years of rising CO2 later the corals are thriving, as is life within, at Bikini Athol. Another drop of ph 0.075 will likely have less impact on the corals than a thermonuclear blast ! The corals flourished when earth’s temperature was 10degC higher than present.

To many theorists predicting how rising CO2 levels will destroy the planet yet the geological record shows that for hundreds of millions of years life flourished and abounded with much higher CO2 levels than today coupled with much higher global temperatures.

These people are determined to destroy our civilization. To their shame we know exactly what they are doing.

These people are destroying the credibility of true science – maybe that is their quest in order to bring the world into a new Middle ages mindset?

Bring in the facts and it is game, set and match – END OF SCARE.

 

WesternFront America

In 1898, an article by the great French novelist, Emile Zola was published in L’Aurore. It was addressed to the President of France. Zola accused the military of having wrongly convicted Capt. Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish artillery officer, of treason, incarcerating him for years on Devil’s Island. The title of the article was “J’Accuse!” Zola’s courage has been an inspiration for writers ever since.

It is in this spirit that I issue my own version of “I Accuse.”

I accuse the United Nations environmental program in general and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in particular of creating a huge hoax, “global warming”, in order to reduce energy use and to create a phony market for so-called “carbon credits,” based on the lie that carbon dioxide plays a role in the alleged warming process.

The Earth is not warming. It is cooling. Meteorologists, climatologists, and solar physicists agree that it has been cooling for at least a decade and predict the cooling will continue for several decades to come.

I accuse the President of the United States and politicians from both political parties for engaging in this deception for their own purposes, while ignoring the peril to the nation’s economy and future. Billions have been and continue to be misallocated to bogus “solutions” such as solar and wind power, the mandate for an ethanol mixture with gasoline, and the construction of a vast regulatory and grant-making apparatus based on the global warming hoax.

I accuse the Obama administration and those members of Congress of seeking to impose a “Cap-and-Trade” bill based entirely on the hoax. It would tax all energy use in America, thus increasing the cost of energy while further reducing the personal income and savings of all Americans. It would codify a bogus market for carbon credits.

I accuse all of the scientists who sought to justify global warming by deliberately publishing falsely documented studies or studies that purported to justify the hoax by attributing natural phenomena to global warming. I accuse them of engaging in such practices to advance their careers and for accepting government largess to further the hoax.

I accuse the academic community for permitting their publications and research programs to be corrupted by the global warming hoax and for lending the prestige of their institutions to its advancement.

I accuse those elements of the nation’s and the world’s media for advancing the global warming hoax in the face of increasing evidence that it is not occurring. It cannot occur at a time when solar activity is decreasing, thus reducing the radiation responsible for much of the Earth’s warming.

I accuse those media that continue to advance the global warming hoax via print and electronic broadcasting. I accuse all print and electronic journalists of failing their responsibility to investigate the bogus science put forth and for deliberately disparaging those scientists and others who disputed it, calling them “deniers.”

I accuse the U.S. Department of Education for the corruption of the nation’s school curriculums, using them to spread the hoax and indoctrinate thousands of students passing through the system with the belief that global warming exists. I accuse every publisher of school texts that advances this hoax.

I accuse former Vice President Gore of advancing the greatest hoax of the modern era and those who joined with him, awarded him honors, and sought to enrich themselves by doing so.

I accuse all the “environmental” organizations such as the Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth, and all others that have spent millions to advance the hoax to advance their collective and individual agendas.

I accuse the Environmental Protection Agency of falsely asserting that carbon dioxide is a “pollutant” that must be regulated when it is essential to all life on the planet. It is vital for all plant life and plays no role in climate change except to react to it.

I accuse the EPA, Department of Energy, and Department of the Interior, in collusion with many “Green” organizations, of thwarting the construction of coal-fired and nuclear plants to generate the energy necessary to the growth and expansion of the nation’s economy, general welfare, and security.

Lastly, I applaud those many courageous scientists from various disciplines and all others who have stepped forth to denounce the global warming theory with the presentation of legitimate science. The entire world is in their debt.

© Alan Caruba

Alan Caruba

 

WesternFront America