Inconvenient questions will not be tolerated in Durban or other climate crisis conferences

By Kelvin Kemm

British Viscount Christopher Monckton of Brenchley parachuted with me into Durban, South Africa, to challenge UN climate crisis claims, attracting numerous journalists and onlookers. A 20-foot banner across our press conference table gave the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow further opportunities to present realistic perspectives on the science and economics of climate change.

CFACT played by the rules, obtained the necessary permits beforehand, and ensured that its message was heard throughout the seventeenth annual climate conference (COP-17). Greenpeace, on the other hand, got no permits before staging an Occupy Durban protest in the hallway outside the plenary session – and got kicked out of the conference.

Shortly thereafter, however, Lord Monckton and another CFACT representative were summarily (though temporarily) ejected from the Durban conference, for preposterous reasons that dramatize how thin-skinned and arrogant the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has become.

As a South African and delegate at the COP-17 conference, I witnessed more amazing and absurd exhibitions than one would find at a Believe It Or Not circus sideshow. Along with thousands of government delegates, scientists and journalists, we witnessed music and dance groups, Women for Climate Justice, the Alliance for Climate Protection, APEs (Artists Protect the Earth) and others pleading for “planetary salvation.”

It took a truly nimble mind, and abiding sense of humor, to appreciate their often competing messages. One large official poster proclaimed “More climate change means less water,” while the one next to it said “More climate change means more floods.”

A socialist group sloganeered “One planet living is the new aspiration.” I could only conclude that they were neo-Malthusians worried sick about speculative climate chaos and resource depletion – and promoting a roll-back of energy use and living standards, so that people can share “more equitably” in sustained poverty and misery, enforced by UN edicts.

Yet another group insisted that the world should “Stop talking and start planting.” However, this group and countless others oppose profits and private enterprises. They apparently haven’t yet realized that large paper and timber companies plant the most trees and create the largest new-growth forests, which breathe in the most carbon dioxide and breathe out the most oxygen.

These and similar organizations also demanded that profit-making companies give more money to environmentalist NGOs – which might temporarily make the companies less reprehensible and more eco-friendly. Of course, if the activists succeed in further obstructing the companies, they will plant fewer trees, remove less CO2, create fewer jobs and have less money to give to NGOs.

This parallel universe aspect of the Durban extravaganza was troublesome enough. Another aspect of the conference was much more sinister and worrisome. Which brings us back to Lord Monckton, a renowned debater and expert in IPCC and climate science, economics and politics.

One day he and I were meandering through the halls, as advisors to CFACT and its official delegation to the conference. We were accompanied by CFACT project organiser Josh Nadal, who was using his video camera to film anything he liked, to make a video of “what we did at COP-17.”

As we rounded a corner, we saw someone we didn’t know being interviewed for the in-house television information system that transmitted programs throughout the official venue. We were astounded by how biased and inaccurate his comments were. When atmospheric carbon dioxide levels rose, temperature also rose, he insisted – very simple. Of course, that is simply not true.

His interview over, he stepped off the dais and headed our way. I asked him whether he would agree that global temperatures had actually gone down during the early 1970s, even as CO2 levels continued to rise. He refused to acknowledge this universally accepted fact. I then mentioned the Medieval Warm Period of a thousand years ago. In response, he asserted that the MWP was merely a localized event of no consequence. Also simply not true.

At that point Monckton asked him to acknowledge that the science was nowhere nearly as clear cut as he had proclaimed. The official refused to do so, asserted “I have work to do,” and walked off.

Josh had been filming the entire exchange, but now an aide put a hand over the camera lens. When I remarked that just walking off was bad manners, the aide said “You are not worth debating.” I replied, “All he had to do was answer two simple questions.” I was amazed when the aide responded, “He is the Secretary General of the World Meteorological Organisation. He does not have to answer your questions.” The aide then walked off just as rudely as his boss had.

These unelected technocrats and bureaucrats want to decide the science and ordain the energy and economic policies that will determine our future livelihoods and living standards. And yet they are of the opinion that they can talk scientific nonsense and ignore anyone’s inconvenient questions. We had not known that he was Michel Jarraud, Secretary General of the WMO. But that is irrelevant. We were polite, and he should have been, as well. But it gets worse.

Two hours later, Lord Monckton and Josh were informed that they had violated ad hoc rules and were banned from further participation in the conference: Josh for filming without permission, Monckton for “unprofessional” conduct. Somehow I was spared. The next day, following negotiations between CFACT and UN officials, the two were reinstated.

A couple of days later, a TV interviewer asked IPCC Vice Chair Jean-Pascal van Ypersele whether there was now enough information to decide the next steps COP-17 should take. van Ypersele answered, “The body of knowledge was there already in the first [IPCC] report twenty years ago and was actually good enough to start the action which inspired the convention on climate change.”

The interviewer then asked if the science was well enough understood. “Not only is there enough science” the Vice Chair replied, “but that science has been there, available and explained by the IPCC, already from the first report.”

In other words, in the view of the IPCC, climate change science was settled even before the term “climate change” was coined – and all “research” and “findings,” reports and conferences since then have been window dressing – inconsequential. Even new evidence about cosmic ray effects on cloud cover, and thus on the amount of the sun’s heat reaching the earth, is irrelevant in the view of the IPCC and other UN agencies, and thus may be intentionally ignored.

The imperious attitudes and intolerance of dissenting opinions displayed by these officials further underscores the wholly unscientific and politicized nature of the IPCC process. Even in the face of Climategate 2009 and 2010, The Delinquent Teenager, Marc Morano’s A-Z Climate Reality Check and other revelations, the UN and IPCC fully intend to impose their views and agendas.

At this point, in the view of the IPCC, the only thing left is for first world countries to pay up and shut up – and poor countries to develop in the way and to the extent allowed by the United Nations.

Dr. Kelvin Kemm holds a PhD in nuclear physics, is currently CEO of Stratek and lives in Pretoria, South Africa. He also serves as a scientific advisor to the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org)

 

WesternFront America

Climate fraud proves insanity of extending Kyoto, renewable subsidies and economic mayhem

 In a repeat of Copenhagen, on the eve of the Durban climate change gabfest, someone released another horde of emails from alarmist climate researchers, including Dr. Michael Mann, whose infamous “hockey stick” was headlined in the 2001 IPCC report to justify the Kyoto agreement and demands that nations slash fossil fuel use and economic growth.

 Meanwhile, back on Dr. Mann’s campus, Pennsylvania State University was confronting the sordid Jerry Sandusky affair. Sports Illustrated summarized the Augean Stables task in an article titled “Missteps at every turn: Efforts to clean up Penn State reveal how deep the institutional problems lie.”

 As SI noted, a key judge in the case, Pennsylvania’s governor, Penn State’s new athletic director and even the attorney appointed to head up a “full and complete” internal investigation all have deep and longstanding ties to the university and/or its big-money football team. Noting these and other “blatant conflicts of interest,” the magazine quoted new PSU president Rodney Erickson as saying, “Penn State is committed to transparency to the fullest extent possible” [emphasis added] – in view of relevant financial, personal and other considerations, and special exemptions that Penn State enjoys from disclosure laws.

 SI ended the article by asking, “Is Penn State cleaning house? Or simply rearranging the furniture?”

 The same question applies to Dr. Mann. In the wake of Climategate 2009, Penn State hurriedly exonerated him and his department of any wrongdoing, as did NOAA and the National Science Foundation. The blatant whitewashes reflect the desperation of organizations intent on preserving their money train and perpetuating the Hollywood façade of manmade catastrophic climate change.

 All three organizations are at the forefront of fraudulent climate alarmism and its agenda of “radically transforming” the energy and economic foundations of modern nations. As IPCC Chairman Rajendra Pachauri has said, climate change is “just a part of” the effort “to bring about major structural changes” in “unsustainable” economic growth, development and lifestyles.

 The agenda involves slashing carbon dioxide levels to 80% below 1990 levels. That would carry the United States back to emission levels last seen during the American Civil War – devastating the economy.

 Together these institutions receive billions of dollars in annual government grants that foster one line of thinking on “global climate disruption” – another term concocted to spin weather and climate events as unprecedented disasters resulting from hydrocarbon energy use. Delegates from all three institutions get to attend annual climate confabs at exotic 5-star resorts, to promote “the cause” of ending mankind’s “addiction” to fossil fuels and establishing “global governance” under UN auspices.

 For all these institutions, full-blown independent investigations – with adverse witnesses, cross-examination, and access to data and records denied to previous investigators – could result in lost income, prestige, and power over public policy decisions. Honest, replicable, truly peer-reviewed, robustly debated science into the causes, effects and extent of climate change would do likewise.

 For Penn State, global warming represents a significant cash cow. As meteorologist Art Horn has noted, the university received a whopping $470,000,000 in federal grants and contracts between 2010 and 2011. Neither Mann nor Penn State is saying how much went to climate research. But since the US government spent over $106 billion on climate research money between 2003 and 2010, PSU undoubtedly received a hefty portion for promoting the official alarmist viewpoint.

 No wonder they refused to turn over raw data and computer codes to other scientists, IPCC reviewers and even investigators – claiming these were private property, even though taxpayers paid for them and the results generated are being used to justify endless energy, job and economy-killing public policies.

 At the tip of the policy iceberg are EPA’s (postponed) CO2 “endangerment” regulations, its boiler and refinery rules, its reams of restrictions on coal-fired power plants, the agency’s opposition to hydraulic shale fracturing and the Keystone XL pipeline, and its new automobile mileage rules, which will raise the cost of cars, reduce crash-worthiness and result in thousands of additional deaths in accidents. Mann’s deceptive models and hockey sticks are also being used to justify a $100-billion-a-year “climate change reparation and mitigation” fund for poor nations, to be financed directly by FRCs (formerly rich countries) or via “climate taxes” imposed on international air travel and imported and exported products.

 Also benefitting from the corrupt Climate Armageddon research machine are crony capitalists and climate profiteers too numerous to count: the renewable energy and carbon trading firms that depend on climate scares to maintain renewable energy, “green job,” carbon trading, and similar mandates and schemes.

 As Competitive Enterprise Institute analyst Bill Frezza has observed, the US Department of Energy invested $529 million in taxpayer-subsidized loan guarantees to build North America’s largest lithium ion automotive battery plant … to supply a Finnish electric car manufacturer backed by Al Gore’s venture capital fund … to ship 40 (!) cars to the USA to date … so that they can be purchased by “environment-motivated” millionaires like Leonardo DeCaprio, who receive $7,500 tax credits for buying the cars.

 Add in billions for wind turbines and solar panels … billions to persuade the poorest nations on Planet Earth to endure “sustainable” lifestyles, rather than modernize through reliable, affordable and, yes, hydrocarbon energy … and billions for IPCC and other UN bureaucrats, who insist that drought and flood, cold and heat, storm and sea level events are no longer due to natural forces, but to mankind’s use of fossil fuels – and we’re talking serious money.

 Global warming alarmism could ultimately cause the global economy trillions of dollars.

 Meanwhile, what about average workers and families? They get none of these perks, sinecures, subsidies and handouts. Instead, they get to pay taxes to support the bureaucrats, pseudo scientists and activists. They get to pay soaring energy bills that subsidize wind, solar and climate schemes, while driving families into fuel poverty. They get to lose their jobs, as companies faced with skyrocketing energy bills lay people off, close their doors or ship jobs off to overseas factories that have cheap energy and cheap labor, because China, India, et cetera do not and will not operate under Kyoto-style restrictions.

 What about families in destitute African countries, where 90% of the people still don’t have electricity – because radical environmentalists, IPCC and World Bank operatives, and Obama Administration bureaucrats collude to delay or prevent the construction of coal and even gas-fired power plants?

 It’s remotely possible that we face a genuine manmade climate crisis. It’s highly likely that mankind will continue to confront natural climate changes that compel adaptation through ingenuity and technology.

 However, Climategate 1 and 2, The Delinquent Teenager and other exposés make it clear that the climate crisis cabal deliberately altered data, misrepresented and withheld crucial information, squelched inquiry and debate, and presented a one-sided narrative, so as to protect their revenues and reputations, and drive an anti-hydrocarbon agenda. Until truly convincing evidence is presented, vetted and fully debated – that fossil fuels are causing catastrophic warming and climate disruption – Kyoto and its proposed successors should be terminated, and the frenzied rush to kill fossil fuels and embrace renewables should be ended.

 Penn State needs to conduct a real investigation, by honest independent analysts who have no ties to the university or the climate crisis consortium. Its trustees took bold, decisive action on the Sandusky scandal. They need to do the same thing with Professor Mann, his department and colleagues.

 Far too much is at stake – for the university, United States and world at large – to permit Penn State (or the IPCC and White House) to merely rearrange the furniture.

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

 Related articles

• Open letter to Dr. Erickson, President of Penn State University (wattsupwiththat.com)

 

WesternFront America

CFACT is there – challenging climate chaos claims, and protecting our economy and liberty

By Craig Rucker

CFACT – the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow – is at COP17 in Durban, South Africa, as the main negotiating team that is representing those like you who challenge the UN’s claims of man-made global warming cataclysms … and the ruinously expensive (and wholly ineffective) solutions being forced upon the free world’s economies at this conference.

I want to share with you a first-hand account of what Barack Obama and other heads of state are doing in your name at this moment in Africa. America’s and the world’s fragile economic recovery, and our future economic and civil freedoms, are on the table – and being negotiated away.

This shocking threat is real.

The new Climategate emails show clearly any unbiased observer that climate science has been ruinously corrupted by Al Gore, the UN and the massive global warming industry that they have created to enrich themselves. CFACT is leading the way in bringing these emails to the world’s attention.

After reading this email, make sure to visit CFACT’s http://ClimateDepot.com website and read the most comprehensive Climategate accounts available.

We’re here now with what the UK Guardian described today as “the formidable team” of Lord Christopher Monckton, Climate Depot’s Marc Morano, Kelvin Kemm (a leading South African nuclear scientist, whom many will remember from his work on pebble bed reactors), Nobel Prize nominee Leon Louw of South Africa’s Free Market Foundation, and CFACT’s expert staff.

Earlier today, CFACT’s skydiving team parachuted past COP17 onto Amanzimtoti beach. The skydivers trailed smoke and banners proclaiming “Climategate 2.0, Science Not Settled” and “No New Treaty.” Multiple media outlets showed up to record the event, including the AP, BBC and South Africa’s national news network. It was a huge success!

We are face-to-face in Durban with the negotiators. We have learned that, while many have discounted this conference, knowing that a full climate treaty is difficult to achieve, especially with a U.S. Senate that will not vote to ratify – Obama and his fellow climate travelers are trying to do an end run around the Senate … and planning to stick America with the bill.

They are creating side agreements that give them much of what they want from a treaty. These side agreements will not come home for a vote in the Senate, or other national legislatures. Democracy is being blind-sided.

How about a new tax on every foreign currency transaction in the world? This is only one small example of what the radical greens are planning, in collusion with world governments in Durban. This is how they plan to fund a $100 billion “Green Climate Fund” – and then expand it to $400 billion.

That’s right. Every time you travel abroad, you’ll have to pay a climate tax. More importantly, every time we import goods, every time we export America’s superb products (thereby creating jobs), we will do so under a climate tax that skims revenues and profits off the top. Europeans seem particularly open this to this monstrosity. Reckless spending has badly tarnished the Euro. But transactions within the Eurozone won’t have to pay this new tax. Guess who will have to pay?

CFACT is here. In South Africa. Keeping you briefed on these developments. We are speaking truth to power. To put it mildly, they don’t love us here. For us, that is a badge of honor … and proof of our effectiveness. Today CFACT is setting up a “climate classroom” in our official UN display space. We will use this display to call attention to Marc Morano’s comprehensive new report, which details the failures of climate science from A-Z.

We’ll keep you posted. More importantly, we won’t permit the UN climatecrats, the climate research grant seekers, the radical climate campaigners and those eager to redistribute what you have worked for –
to the whole UN menagerie of third world despots and corporations who want to keep cashing in on climate pseudo-science, propaganda and fraud.

We are your eyes, ears and voice in these crucial negotiations.

However, we cannot do it alone.

As the talks advance, tension mounts and nerves begin to fray. Being able to count on you, having you with us, sustains us and permits us to carry on the fight. We know you understand this and hope you know how much we appreciate all of you who stand beside, and behind us.

We have planned so much for the short time we have left to influence these talks.

Barack Obama, Al Gore, their UN pals and the climate kleptocracy cannot be permitted to operate unobserved. They must be confronted and forced to listen.

We need your help and we need it today. Please donate whatever you can to support CFACT’s efforts to educate Durban attendees and protect your liberty, economy and living standards.

Please go to the CFACT website

http://www.cfact.org/cfact-give.asp?utm_source=CFACT+Updates&utm_campaign=1fa14ff355-UN_laying_groundwork_for_climate_tax_12_6_2011&utm_medium=email

and make a donation today.

I am proud of the team that I am honored to lead. I am proud to join with you in these efforts.

Thank you,
Craig Rucker
Executive Director
CFACT
P.S. The entire global warming industry is in Durban, South Africa. They are smug. They expect to leave here with money for themselves … and less freedom for you. Stopping them is a Herculean task. We are making headway here. We will challenge them again and again. With your help. In the end. We will win.

 

WesternFront America

By Robert W. Felix

Look at this weekend’s Halloween snowstorm. Headlines across the U.S.A. called it “historic.” Historic because it dumped record snowfall on at least 20 cities from Maryland to Maine. Historic because it was the most snow – and the earliest – in many areas since the end of the Civil War.

And we’re not talking mere tenths-of-an-inch here. This snowfall shattered the old records, it obliterated them.

The 14.6 inches of snow that fell in Worcester, Mass., almost doubled its previous single-day October record of 7.5 inches set in 1979, while Hartford’s 12.3 inches crushed the previous single-day October record of 1.7 inches, seven times more than its earlier record.

But with 32 inches (81 cm) of snow, Peru, Massachusetts, won the prize. Two-and-a-half feet! Waist deep! Before Halloween!

This is how ice ages begin.

Not by huge glaciers slowly grinding out of the north, not by temperatures plunging to Siberian levels, but by more and more snow.

Unfortunately, we’re getting that snow.

According to Rutgers University Global Snow Lab, three of the four snowiest winters in the Northern Hemisphere have occurred in the last four years.

Three of the four snowiest Northern Hemisphere winters have occurred since 2008. http://climate.rutgers.edu/snowcover/chart_seasonal.php?ui_set=nhland&ui_season=1

Look at last winter.

Last year’s blizzard-filled winter and unusually cold, wet spring left record snowpack at more than 90 measuring sites across the western United States.

By Memorial Day, epic snowpack had been reported in Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Oregon, Washington and California.

On California’s Mammoth Mountain, the snowpack measured an incredible 728 percent of normal.

At Oregon’s Mt. Bachelor Ski Resort, snow totals reached 650 inches, far eclipsing the previous record of 606 inches.

In Washington, Crystal Mountain broke its all-time snowfall record for the second time in only 11 years.

And the snow kept coming. In early June, Utah’s Snowbird ski resort reported snowpack at 525 percent of normal.

“There are places on the mountain that will probably retain snow all summer long,” said Emily Moench, Sunbird’s communications manager.

Read that again. “There are places on the mountain that will probably retain snow all summer long”!

This is how ice ages begin!

And lest we forget, just a few months ago the Missouri River suffered its second 500-year flood in 15 years. Why? Because of heavy rains and melting record snowpack.

But the news gets even worse.

Glaciers are growing in the United States.

Even though last winter’s historic snowpack has not yet melted, new snow is already piling up in the Rocky Mountains.

In Montana’s Glacier National Park, in Colorado’s Front Range, in Wyoming’s Grand Tetons, the glaciers and snowfields are actually gaining volume.

When Bob Comey, director of the Bridger-Teton National Forest Avalanche Center, compared photographs of Wyoming mountain peaks, he found “significantly” more ice in the Teton Range compared with two years ago.

“I’ve never seen a season with a gain like we’ve seen this summer,” said Comey.

And when scientist Nel Caine checked on Arikaree Glacier 20 miles west of Boulder, Colorado, he measured between 2 and 3 feet of snow from last winter and spring still remaining in late September.

Meanwhile, scientists have measured a “very modest” increase on Sperry Glacier in Montana’s Glacier National Park.

Mind you, these are not the only glaciers growing in the United States. Glaciers are also growing in California, Alaska and Washington state.

This is how ice ages begin.

And our leaders keep screaming about global warming.

Robert W. Felix is the author of “Not By Fire, But By Ice” and the editor of www.iceagenow.info, a website devoted to the topic.

 

WesternFront America

Lewis Carroll died too soon. Just imagine the fun he’d have with the cliquish clan of climate catastrophe researchers who seek to control science, debate and public policy on global warming and energy – and then get outraged when someone challenges their findings, methodologies or integrity.

On October 1, Dr. Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University and “hockey stick” fame published an angry riposte in Colorado’s obscure Vail Daily Voices (circulation 15,000), expressing his umbrage over an article that had appeared in the free coffee shop newspaper a day earlier.

“An individual named Martin Hertzberg did a grave disservice to your readers by making false and defamatory statements about me and my climate scientist colleagues in his recent commentary in your paper,” Mann began. (Hertzberg is a research scientist and former US Navy meteorologist.) The thin-skinned Penn State scientist then ranted:

“These are just lies, regurgitation of dishonest smears that have been manufactured by fossil fuel industry-funded climate change deniers, and those who do their bidding by lying to the public about the science.” [emphasis added]

Meanwhile, NASA scientist Dr. James Hansen, recipient of huge monetary awards for strident climate disaster claims, wants oil and coal company CEOs prosecuted for “crimes against humanity.”

So Mann and Hansen are honest scientists, trying to do their jobs. But Hertzberg and anyone else who questions the “imminent manmade climate change catastrophe” thesis are dishonest crooks, liars, Holocaust deniers, hired guns for fossil fuel interests, criminals threatening all humanity.

Hertzberg’s views were defamatory, but Mann’s and Hansen’s accusations are mild, rational and truthful.

(Readers can find Mann’s letters and lively discussions about them and Hansen on Dr. Anthony Watts’ WattsUpWithThat.com climate change website. Hertzberg’s letter appeared, mysteriously disappeared, then reappeared in the Vail Voices online archives as the controversy raged and ebbed.)

The bizarre saga gets even stranger when viewed alongside Dr. Mann’s kneejerk lawsuit against Dr. Tim Ball, a Canadian scientist, historical climatologist and retired professor who has frequently voiced his skepticism about claims that hydrocarbon use and carbon dioxide emissions are the primary cause of climate change and present an imminent risk of widespread planetary cataclysms. Dr. Ball has analyzed Canadian and global climate history, and does not regard computer models as much more than virtual reality scenarios that should never be the basis for real-world public policy.

Dr. Ball had poked fun at Dr. Mann, playing word games that suggest the computer guy should not be at Penn State, but in a similarly named state institution. Unfortunately, Mann is not easily amused, as Dr. Ball should have known from the PSU professor’s testy reaction to the “Hide the decline” animation and other spoofs that various AGW “deniers” posted online.

Mann insisted that Dr. Ball’s little joke was libelous and took him to court. Mann’s legal principal seems to be that libel is fine only when he and Hansen practice the craft, albeit with far less good humor than others display. More importantly, Dr. Ball does not live or work in the United States.

US libel cases are governed by the First Amendment, “public figure” rules and other safeguards that ensure open, robust debate, and make it difficult and expensive to sue people over slights, affronts, insults, disagreements and jokes.

Canada, unfortunately, has more limited free speech protections. So Dr. Mike sued Dr. Tim in Canada, assuming victory would be rapid and sweet. Surprise! Dr. Ball decided to slug it out.

In Canada, the principal defenses against libel claims are that the alleged defamation constitutes “fair comment” or was in fact “the truth.” Ball chose the latter defense.

Doing so means the penalty for losing could be higher than under “fair comment” rules. But arguing that his statement was based on truth allows Dr. Ball to seek “discovery” of evidence that Dr. Mann’s actions reflect a use of public funds to alter or falsify scientific data, present highly speculative results as solid facts, or otherwise engage in something that a reasonable person would conclude constitutes dishonest activity or criminal culpability, undertaken moreover through the use of taxpayer funds.

Proving that will not be easy, especially since Mann has steadfastly refused to provide such potential evidence to anyone, including Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli. That evidence might include Climategate emails; computer codes and data used, misused or used selectively to generate global warming spikes in historical graphs; and questionable research or proposals used to secure additional government grants, misinform citizens or lawmakers, or promote costly or harmful public policies.

The US government alone spent an estimated $79 billion on climate, renewable energy and related research between 1989 and 2009 – and many billions more since then. Obviously, there is a lot at stake for scientists, universities, government agencies and other institutions engaged in trying to demonstrate a link between human greenhouse gas emissions and climate, weather, agricultural, sea level and other “disasters.” The reputations and credibility of researchers and their institutions are likewise at stake.

Keeping people alarmed, insisting that numerous disasters will soon result from carbon dioxide emissions and a few degrees of planetary warming – and silencing anyone who questions climate chaos claims – are essential if this money train is to be kept on the tracks.

Dr. Mann is likely aided by Penn State lawyers, largely paid for with climate research taxpayer dollars the university wants to safeguard, by preventing criticism or scientific disclosure and transparency.

A judge and jury will decide the Mann vs. Ball case, after carefully weighing all the evidence on whether Dr. Ball’s allegations and insinuations were factual, accurate and truthful.

Dr. Mann’s research was conducted primarily with public money. It is being presented as valid, peer-reviewed science. It is also being used to champion and justify major policy recommendations at state, national and international levels. And those recommendations call for carbon taxes and other penalties for using hydrocarbon energy; the replacement of affordable, dependable fossil fuel energy with expensive, unreliable wind and solar facilities; a roll-back of living standards in rich developed nations; and limited or minimal energy and economic development in poor countries.

Therefore, as I have argued previously, the public has a right to demand that Mann & Comrades show their work, not merely their answers and policy demands. Thus far, serious questions about Mann’s research remain unanswered. The public also has a right to require that Mann, Penn State & Company provide their source material, not just their results – along with anything else that may be relevant to gauging the validity, accuracy and honesty of the work and its conclusions and policy recommendations.

We the People have a further right, duty and obligation to protect free speech, robust debate, the integrity of the scientific method, our personal freedoms, and our access to the reliable, affordable energy that makes our jobs and living standards possible. One way you can do this is by supporting Dr. Tim Ball’s legal defense fund. Just click here or go to http://DrTimBall.com/

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

When you murder someone the case is never closed. The same holds when you murder the truth. No matter how long it takes, truth is defended despite all the calumnies heaped on those who stand firm against the lies and the propaganda intended to persuade those who have been deceived.

Ultimately, truth is its own defense. There never was a shred of truth in the claim that humans were causing the Earth’s climate to heat up by using so-called “fossil fuels” and engaging in manufacturing and other activities. There was no dramatic “global warming” in the 1980s until the present.

The Earth’s climate has warmed very slightly since the end of the Little Ice Age, dated to around 1850. Five hundred years of extremely cold weather had gripped the northern hemisphere starting around 1300. The much heralded “climate change” is, unlike the weather, measured in terms of centuries, not days, weeks or years. It is used by politicians that do not know what they are talking about. It is also used by charlatans, but I repeat myself.

Under the direction of the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) a massive fraud was engineered. The object was to turn carbon dioxide (CO2), a common though minor atmospheric gas, into a commodity that could be traded in exchanges around the world that would issue “carbon credits” to utilities, industrial facilities, and others who would be required to pay for permission to produce energy and products. It was an audacious scheme.

It began with the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, otherwise known as the Kyoto Protocol. It set binding targets for the reduction of CO2 by 37 industrialized nations and the European community and was adopted on December 11, 1997 and entered into force on February 16, 2005. The U.S. never signed the Protocols. They were rejected by a unanimous vote in the Senate.

It was a complete lie without any basis in science. C02 plays no role in climate change and reducing whatever amount industry and other human activities might produce would be meaningless.

Surely the people behind the scheme knew this. The IPCC charged a small clique of climate scientists to come up with “proof” that global warming was happening. In England they were located at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit and, in America, they were led by Dr. Michael Mann working first at the University of Virginia and later at Penn State University.

Dr. Michael Mann’s “Hockey Stick” Graph

Mann’s research, assisted by co-authors Bradley and Hughes, was published in 1998. “Northern Hemisphere Temperatures During the Past Millennium: Inferences, Uncertainties, and Limitations” became famous for a graph dubbed the “hockey stick”. Its sudden upward curve, intended to demonstrate a dramatic increase was based on tree ring reconstruction of climate over a thousand years.

To say it attracted attention is an understatement. It and other studies produced by the IPCC clique became the cornerstone of the “global warming” hoax. The problem for Dr. Mann was that Steve McIntyre, a Canadian mathematician in Toronto, along with Ross McKitrick of the University of Guelph concluded it was bogus science and published a paper in 2004 criticizing it.

In science, when a theory or hypothesis is put forward, the data supporting it is as well. Years went by before McIntyre could get access to it. The tree ring data had been provided by Keith Briffa of the Hadley UK Climate Research Unit. Neither Dr. Mann, nor Briffa made it available, but McIntyre was able to secure it from another source. When he plotted all the tree ring data, not just the parts cherry-picked by Mann, the “hockey stick” disappeared.

In November 2009, thousands of leaked emails between Dr. Mann and other “warmists”—scientists responsible for the global warming hoax, revealed nothing less than a massive fraud.

Flash forward to a freedom of information (FOI) request by Chris Horner on behalf of American Tradition Institute’s Environmental Law Center. Despite stonewalling for years, Dr. Mann’s former employer, the University of Virginia complied in May 2011, agreeing to release Dr. Mann’s computer files containing the data he had kept hidden for more than a decade.

Serendipitously, a similar FOI issued to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has revealed the level of financial gain received by another key player in the global warming hoax, Dr. James Hansen, a longtime NASA employee and the man credited with generating the hoax with testimony before a congressional committee in 1988. He has been the director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies since 1981.

It turns out that in 2010 alone he received “between 236,000 and $1,232.500 in outside income”! When you add in all the awards and speech fees Dr. Hansen has received over the years it is a tidy sum while he exploited his taxpayer-funded position. The agency had resisted disclosing this information for years, but as a federal employee Dr. Hansen waives privacy interests as a condition of employment.

A former government employee, Vice President Al Gore, became the face and voice of the hoax, earning millions in the process.

What has the global warming cost Americans? Joanne Nova of the Science and Public Policy Institute has estimated that the U.S. government spent more than $32.5 billion on climate studies between 1989 and 2009, nor does that include about $79 billion more spent for related climate change technology research, foreign aid, and tax breaks for “green energy” (solar and wind).

For deception on that scale, one might think they will be punished at some point, but it will likely be years more before those responsible for the global warming fraud will stand before the bar of justice, if ever.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

 

WesternFront America

Climate alarm campaigners make pitiful case that manmade climate change threatens coffee.

It’s a common tactic among groups promoting climate alarmism and anti-hydrocarbon policies. As evidence mounts that manmade catastrophic climate change is not imminent, extreme weather events cannot be linked to human activities, and developing nations will not reduce their use of fossil fuels, radical groups have increasingly targeted companies with campaigns based on supposed ethical principles.

A recent target is the J. M. Smucker Company, maker of jams, syrups, and Dunkin’ Donuts, Folgers, Kava and Millstone coffees. Calvert Investment Management and Trillium Asset Management bought enough shares to entitle them to introduce agenda-driving resolutions at shareholder meetings.

The activists’ August 2011 resolution demanded that Smucker explain how climate change will affect temperature and rainfall patterns, the supply and price of coffee, and thus investors. Seventy percent of Smucker voters rejected the resolution, but the activists parlayed the vote into several press releases designed to harass and eventually intimidate the company into complying with their climate change mantra, as well as “sustainability,” “fair trade” and “certification” demands.

Each demand advances similar goals: coerce companies to pressure politicians to adopt the activists’ agenda; silence corporate support for opposing viewpoints; and increase the activists’ revenue stream, by “persuading” the company to pay them hefty fees for “official certifications” that corporate practices and purchases adhere to the activists’ politicized standards on various “ethical” matters.

Climate change. Calvert and Trillium correctly observe that temperature, rainfall and other climate variability affects changes in coffee yields around the world. Ditto for all crops, one might add.

However, for them to assert that climate changes result primarily from human carbon dioxide emissions is a matter of ideological belief, not scientific fact. Climate changes; it always has and always will – on regional and sometimes global scales. Greenhouse gases exert a warming effect; but how much, especially in the context of countless planetary, solar and other forces, is a matter of intense debate.

Calvert and Trillium can certainly find support for their views among IPCC and Climate Research Unit stalwarts. However, other scientists, books and reports present a far less alarmist, far more nature-driven theory of climate change.

The absence of warming since 1998, despite steadily rising CO2 levels, calls into question the entire manmade global warming/climate change/climate disruption hypothesis – especially the assertion that any changes will be catastrophic and can be prevented by slashing the use of carbon fuels that power the vast majority of what people make, ship, eat and do. Climate models begin by assuming that carbon dioxide drives climate change, input rising atmospheric CO2 projections, and (voila) output a warming planet.

Smucker and its coffee growers should certainly prepare for any adverse impacts on coffee production, including heat waves, cold snaps, downpours, droughts, insects and diseases. Traditional breeding and biotechnology can create new strains that better survive these threats, while sound business management practices can help minimize numerous problems. Smucker is already taking steps like these.

Adopting the Calvert-Trillium agenda would undermine efforts to sustain and improve coffee production and the growers’ and company’s flexibility and profitability. The activists’ prescription would reduce energy supplies and increase energy, fertilizer, processing and shipping prices – while also killing jobs, decreasing customers’ living standards, and making them less able to afford quality coffee.

The Calvert-Trillium thesis also contradicts the recent Securities and Exchange Commission “interpretive guidance,” which says companies should disclose not only potential risks and physical impacts from climate change, but also risks and impacts on business from legislation, regulation and international accords enacted to restrict fossil fuel use, in a quest to control Earth’s ever-changing climate.

* Physical impacts of climate change: Even if carbon dioxide has a greater effect on climate than many scientists think, coffee growers and regions would actually benefit from higher atmospheric CO2 levels. More CO2 stimulates plant growth and increases survival rates under drought and other adverse conditions. Moreover, many asserted manmade climate risks are wildly speculative, generated by computers or based on questionable to fraudulent research (as IPCC and Climategate documents have revealed).

* Impacts of legislation, regulation and international accords: Rules that restrict hydrocarbon use reduce energy reliability and affordability, which hurts growers, processors, sellers and consumers alike.

* Indirect impacts on business trends: Many activist claims about damage to businesses are based on the same speculative risks noted above. Well managed companies will carefully separate fact from fiction.

Volume certified sustainable. “Sustainability” is a politicized, malleable and ultimately meaningless concept, developed to promote activist agendas. It assumes manmade climate chaos is real. It claims hydrocarbon resource depletion is imminent, which recent shale gas and conventional discoveries show is hardly the case. It never explains how long resources must last to be “sustainable” (ten years? 50? 100? 1000?) or factors in economic and technological changes that revise depletion calculations upward.

In the case of agriculture, “sustainability” advocates often oppose biotechnology, chemical fertilizers, insecticides and mechanized farming – and favor land and labor-intensive organic and subsistence practices, animal manure and naturally occurring (but often toxic) chemicals. These standards may meet ideological tests, but they don’t necessarily meet scientific, practical or best business practice criteria.

Fair trade. Ethical, socially responsible companies should always be fair to suppliers, customers, employees and everyone else they deal with. “Willing buyer, willing seller” relationships should be based on honesty, transparency and a mutual desire to sustain long-term, mutually beneficial relationships.

However, “fair trade” is really another politicized, malleable, agenda-driven concept. It often demands higher prices for growers, but neglects other important considerations. It can result in coffee that is overpriced in times of high unemployment and economic hardship, when many consumers are looking for affordable beverages on limited budgets – which can ultimately mean less income for growers.

Certifications. Both sustainability and fair trade certifications mean companies pay activists to put a political stamp of approval on targeted merchandize. The process may generate activist and news media accolades for participating companies, while failing to address the issues raised here. However, it certainly enriches activist groups, enabling them to launch pressure campaigns against other companies.

Calvert, Trillium and other “corporate ethics” and “climate disaster” campaigners are closely allied with and/or support organizations that oppose: hydroelectric, coal, gas and nuclear power generation in coffee-growing and other poor countries where the vast majority of citizens have little or no access to electricity; insecticide use to control malaria and other deadly diseases; biotechnology and other modern agricultural methods to improve human nutrition and replace crops devastated by insects or plant viruses; and progress in general. They are modern-day Luddites, justifying their actions on false ecological grounds.

But still the campaigners say J. M. Smucker should buy coffee “certified” by activists as being green, sustainable and climate-sensitive. Company shareholders should ask: Just because other companies have been conned or pressured into doing so, should Smucker be snookered into following their lead?

Perhaps Smucker Company could test market a little “fair trade” or “sustainable” coffee. It certainly should promote wise use of chemicals, sound business practices, fairness and honesty with all business partners, careful attention to changing climate and rainfall patterns, responsible stewardship of lands, resources and energy, and access by poor families to electricity and other modern technologies.

That would brand the J. M. Smucker Company as a truly ethical and responsible corporation.

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

 

WesternFront America

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

New research from one of the world’s most prestigious scientific organizations indicates that cosmic rays and the sun — not manmade carbon emissions — are the major factors influencing global climate.

“The science is now all-but-settled on global warming, convincing new evidence demonstrates, but Al Gore, the IPCC (International Panel on Climate Change) and other global warming doomsayers won’t be celebrating,” writes Lawrence Solomon, executive director of Energy Probe, in Canada’s Financial Post.

“The new findings point to cosmic rays and the sun — not human activities — as the dominant controller of climate on Earth.”

The findings, published in the journal Nature, come from CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, one of the world’s largest centers for scientific research involving 60 countries and 8,000 scientists at more than 600 universities and national laboratories, according to Solomon.

CERN — the organization that invented the World Wide Web — built a stainless steel chamber that precisely re-created the Earth’s atmosphere.

“In this chamber, 63 CERN scientists from 17 European and American institutes have done what global warming doomsayers said could never be done — demonstrate that cosmic rays promote the formation of molecules that in Earth’s atmosphere can grow and seed clouds.” And the cloudier it is, the cooler it will be, Solomon notes.

“Because the sun’s magnetic field controls how many cosmic rays reach Earth’s atmosphere (the stronger the sun’s magnetic field, the more it shields Earth from incoming cosmic rays from space), the sun determines the temperature on Earth.”

So when the sun’s magnetic field is strongest, fewer cosmic rays impact the Earth, which in turn leads to decreased cloud formation and warmer temperatures.

The link between cosmic rays and global warming was first proposed by two Danish scientists in 1996, and was immediately denounced by the IPCC.

But CERN scientist Jasper Kirkby, a British experimental physicist, accepted the Danes’ theory. He told the scientific press in 1998 that it “will probably be able to account for somewhere between half and the whole of the increase in the Earth’s temperature that we have seen in the last century.”

It took Kirkby nearly 10 years to convince the CERN bureaucracy to proceed with his plan to create the chamber that replicates the Earth’s atmosphere and has produced the recent results.

But CERN “remains too afraid of offending its government masters to admit its success,” observes Solomon, author of “The Deniers: The World-Renowned Scientists Who Stood Up Against Global Warming Hysteria, Political Persecution, and Fraud.”

CERN told Kirkby and his team to downplay the results by stating “that cosmic radiation is only one of many parameters.”

Solomon concludes: “CERN, and the Danes, have in all likelihood found the path to the Holy Grail of climate science. But the religion of climate science won’t yet permit a celebration of the find.”

 

WesternFront America

Their “research” would be hilarious if it didn’t cost taxpayers and consumers so dearly.

Put these guys on Comedy Central. Put ‘em in an asylum … a mandatory restitution program … jail perhaps … or a witness protection program, if they turn state’s evidence on other perpetrators. But keep them away from our money – and our energy, economic, healthcare and education policies.

Climate prostitutes, parasites and charlatans have been devouring billions in US taxpayer dollars, year after year, plus billions more in corporate shareholder cash, activist foundation funds and state government grants. The laws, mandates, subsidies and regulations they advance have cost taxpayers and consumers still more billions for “alternative” energy and other schemes that send prices skyrocketing, kill jobs, and reduce health and living standards.

It’s time to end this destructive saga and, while we’re at it, pink-slip the politicians and bureaucrats who pour billions of hard-earned tax dollars into perpetual climate “research,” “education” and “environmental” programs. They’re actively complicit or have completely failed to perform proper due diligence.

Global cooling has morphed into global warming, climate change, global climate disruption, climate “weirding” and extreme weather events – always manmade, always imminently catastrophic, always requiring eternal research and wrenching societal transformation, to “save the planet.”

The endless absurdity oozing out of the climate change cesspool would be hilarious if it weren’t so costly.

“Global warming: Is weight loss a solution?” the “peer-reviewed” International Journal of Obesity breathlessly wondered a few weeks ago. Most definitely. Fat people breathe more and thus emit more carbon dioxide. If the world’s 1.5 billion obese and overweight adults all lost 22 pounds apiece and kept if off for a year, the reduction in CO2 would equal 0.2% of global emissions from burning fossil fuels and manufacturing cement. (Translation: “health professionals” deserve more climate research loot.)

If you need more proof that “obesity and climate change are linked,” simply consider how awful life is now in Mexico, the same authors argued in an article for their Climate and Health Council. One in four Mexicans is now obese. “The planet is getting hotter, its people are getting fatter, and the use of fossil fuel energy is the cause of both. Large increases in motor vehicle traffic have decimated levels of physical activity. This, combined with increased availability of energy-dense food, has propelled the body mass index in the entire [Mexican] population upward.”

“Moving to a low-carbon economy could be the next great public health advance,” the CHC “experts” suggested. But even eating less meat won’t be enough, nor reducing dependence on dairy products, nor even vegetarianism, pal reviewers intoned. “We have to be vegans,” get rid of cars – and reduce human populations, perhaps with “China’s one-child policy (entailing elements of compulsion)” as the model.

Didn’t we try that low-carb, low-carbon stuff for most of human history? Aren’t they still trying it in Sub-Saharan Africa? Do we want dictatorial one-child policies in an era of “choice” and aging pensioners?

Some aren’t sure this meatless diet craze is crazy. They claim the link between climate change and raising animals for meat is borne out by Earth history. According to a Texas paleontologist, dung and flatulence from herds of hadrosaurs, the Cretaceous equivalent to modern cattle, could have contributed to Arctic warming 70 million years ago. Other scientists say the hypothesis is a load of coprolite.

Nearly 2,000 animal species “are fleeing global warming by heading north much faster than they were less than a decade ago,” asserts new “research” just published in the once-credible journal Science. The opportunistic species are moving at the breakneck speed of “about a mile a year,” intrepid climate-chaos promoter Seth Borenstein anxiously noted in his AP wire story.

The situation could quickly reverse if reduced solar activity and the past two years’ frigid Northern Hemisphere winters become the new norm. But neither Science nor the AP mentioned that or explained how the current migrations differ from what’s been happening since the last Pleistocene glaciers retreated and the Little Ice Age ended.

Instead, we’ve been repeatedly treated to amusingly convoluted back-peddling from earlier pronouncements that ski resorts will be a thing of the past and “children just aren’t going to remember what snow is.” Now we’re told that global warming can worsen winters and increase snowfalls. In fact, as one Greenpeace activist explained, “Global warming can mean colder. It can mean wetter. It can mean drier. That’s what we’re talking about.”

Actually, what we’re talking about is Earth’s constantly changing weather and climate caused – not by hydrocarbon use – but by complex, chaotic, unpredictable atmospheric, oceanic, solar, planetary and other forces whose interactions and effects scientists are only beginning to understand. To respond adequately to them, we need building, heating, air conditioning and other technology to adapt to, cope with, and protect our lives and property against those forces – and the prosperity to afford that technology.

Unfortunately, policies, laws and regulations driven by climate “research” and horror stories are making it increasingly difficult to address those needs. Rather than developing our nation’s own vast natural resource and human resources, America is wasting billions on politically correct technologies and companies, like Evergreen Solar, which got $486 million in taxpayer subsidies before going belly-up this month. As Al Gore likes to say, that is unsustainable.

Meanwhile, a steady stream of headline-grabbing “studies” continues to power the climate scare and renewable energy gravy train. Retired professor John Brignell’s website presents hundreds of absurd research claims, from the Alps melting and Amazon being destroyed, to “Italy robbed of pasta,” to the “world going up in flames” over resource scarcity and zebra mussels taking over the Thames River – all because of global warming. The website is not up-to-date, but here’s one recent gem he could add.

A new taxpayer-funded NASA/Penn State “scientific” study warns that “ecosystem-valuing universalist” (really “green”) aliens might realize that we have been altering “the chemical composition of Earth’s atmosphere,” conclude that we have “ecological destructive tendencies,” and “wipe humanity out in order to preserve the Earth system as a whole.” (And you thought James Hansen and Michael Mann were the only loons collecting big bucks at these institutions of “vital research” and “higher education.”)

This interminable pessimism undoubtedly prompted climate activist Danny Bloom to marry his longtime companion and love of his life: Mother Earth – in a charming ceremony officiated by an online justice of the peace. Perhaps he can consummate his marriage, using one of “the first-ever eco-friendly luxury condoms,” which were developed by two French aristocrats and introduced in the USA just in time for Valentine’s Day 2011. Unlike other condom manufacturers, the Original Condom Company is “extremely eco aware and makes every effort to cover their carbon footprint.”

These attention-getting stunts may not save the planet. But responsible citizens may be able to save the republic, by helping Congress, the White House and their “debt committee” to find a few places where tens of billions are being wasted on excess bureaucrats, bogus research, useless reports and destructive policies.

President Reagan once observed that, if politics is the second oldest profession, it bears a striking resemblance to the first. A corollary might be that, even if the perpetrators are wearing eco-friendly luxury condoms, most citizens don’t like getting screwed by elected officials and unelected bureaucrats.

With Congress home for more fact-finding meetings with constituents, citizens have a perfect opportunity to send a powerful message. Let’s make the most of it.

__________

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