Archive for the ‘Global Warming’ Category
Washington, D.C. – At least $8.6 billion of President Obama’s proposed $1.2 trillion stimulus plan is meant to fund dubious special interest policy initiatives of environmental activists and should immediately be jettisoned, says Deneen Borelli, full-time Fellow with the Project 21 national black leadership network.
"It's outrageous that taxpayer money is slated to be used to fund the agenda of environmental special interest groups. These special interest groups are using global warming alarmism to fund dubious projects while discouraging the use of fossil fuels," says Borelli. "If liberal lawmakers really cared about stimulating the economy, they would remove rules and regulations that block the development of more fossil fuels. This would provide good-paying jobs and lower energy costs for Americans. Instead, they appear only interested in using their combined force of money, power and influence to fleece taxpayers of their money and their freedom."
Among the green earmarks in the bill legislation cited by Borelli:
By Christopher Adamo
Since leaving office, former Vice-President Al Gore has gained enormous stature within certain circles on the world scene, acquiring it per the standard liberal formula. Taking up his “Earth in the Balance” cause, he produced the feature length movie “An Inconvenient Truth,” which is replete with fantastic prophesies of doom for the planet unless America immediately regresses to third-world squalor.
An insipid and unsubstantiated piece of propaganda, Gore’s movie would never have resonated beyond the boundaries of a few egg headed film fests, were it not for the concerted efforts of virtually every liberal and socialist special interest known to mankind. Coming to his aid, they collectively proclaimed “An Inconvenient Truth” to be at once the scientific equivalent of Einstein’s theory of relativity, packaged in cinematic genius that eclipses Ben Hur.
In the typical modus operandi of liberalism, an avalanche of recognition and awards were conferred upon Gore and his movie, from the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize to an Oscar for “Best Documentary” to effusive accolades from every aspiring tinsel town movie critic. The film, along with all of his efforts to foment a global warming panic, have since been predictably declared as universal truth, a judgment based not on the availability of evidence, but on the profusion of like-minded liberal ideologues who are willing to accept and advance his hysterical claims.
Not surprising was the immediate branding of any who are dubious of Gore’s outlandish assertions as “heretics.” The liberal agenda, whether in relation to planetary catastrophe or the latest effort to confiscate and redistribute the private property of citizens, cannot tolerate honest examination. Thus, any effort to demand scientific evidence to support Gore’s frenzied allegations will result in immediate charges of being a “global warming denier,” an obvious attempt to link the honest skeptic to those anti-Semites who claim the Nazi holocaust never happened.
By Thomas E. Brewton
Jan Burr raises the important point that governments should give attention, not only to current effects of global warming, but also to the near certainty of a severe cooling period within the coming decade.
In his comment regarding Global Warming: A Moderate Voice, Mr. Burr notes that global cooling will cause as much, or more, suffering than warming, because crops will fail in many parts of the world.
The need for prudence and for looking far down the road, rather than concentrating upon short-term public opinion expectations, is an old story.
When two full years had passed, Pharaoh had a dream: He was standing by the Nile, when out of the river there came up seven cows, sleek and fat, and they grazed among the reeds. After them, seven other cows, ugly and gaunt, came up out of the Nile and stood beside those on the riverbank. And the cows that were ugly and gaunt ate up the seven sleek, fat cows. Then Pharaoh woke up. (Genesis 41:1-4)
By Alan Caruba
In late April, AccuWeather.com, led by Joe Bastardi, its chief meteorologist, issued a news release that was, to be kind, pure mush. The early warning forecast for 2008’s June to November hurricane season said that conditions like La Nina and a “continued warm water cycle in the Atlantic Basin” held forth the “chance for U.S. landfalling storms.”
The operative word here is “chance” when predicting hurricanes because it is largely a question of gaming odds on how many. What no self-respecting meteorologist, whether in private forecasting or working for the U.S. government’s weather service, wants you to know is that their highly sophisticated computer weather models quite simply cannot factor in a whole range of factors, not the least of which is clouds. Yes, clouds.
As I am fond of telling people, the best definition of the weather is “chaos” which is to say, beyond maybe four days, accurately predicting it is nearly impossible. This is not to denigrate the work of meteorologists and the scholarship of climatologists who study long-term trends and cycles. Bless them, bless them all!
Men have been trying to predict the weather since ancient shamans studied the entrails of chickens. The weather is one of the great determinant factors in all aspects of life on Earth and it is in a constant state of change.
A fine example is the last ten thousand years or so of temperate, even moderate, weather the planet has enjoyed. It gave rise to civilizations based on agriculture, allowing some to grow food while others engaged in conquest on foot, on horseback or sailing to places they then claimed for themselves. Nasty bunch those human beings. What we call history some might uncharitably call organized thievery, but farmers still want to know if it will rain next week.
Knowing about hurricanes takes on importance these days because most of the nation’s population lives within fifty miles of either coast. Since hurricanes are an East Coast and Gulf of Mexico event, the West Coast has to content itself with earthquakes (entirely unpredictable), wildfires, and other unpleasantries.
The High Cost of Climate Lies
By Alan Caruba
An energy-rationing bill has been introduced to address “global warming.” The “Climate Security Act” would impose caps on how much carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions can be allowed and would institute an elaborate program to “trade” allowances among the industries and business affected.
Americans better hope that some members of Congress will ask if there truly is a threat of global warming and why a similar program in Europe has proven to be a resounding failure.
If you really wanted to undermine the nation’s economy, you could not devise a better way. It is the Kyoto Climate Change Protocol on steroids.
Little noted during all the headlines concerning Al Gore’s Nobel Peace Prize was the fact that it was shared with the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Among skeptical scientists I know, the emails were flying. Several had served as part of the vast array of scientists whose opinions on the various IPCC draft reports were requested and then ignored.
A lot of these expert reviewers are among the 2,000 scientists that the IPCC and Al Gore are always citing as being part of the “consensus” on global warming. The problem for both is that many really, really, really disagree that any planet-threatening global warming is occurring.
One of them is Dr. Vincent Gray, a New Zealand-based climate scientist who has been a part of the reviewing process since the IPCC came into being. He is one of those scientists who will not and cannot be shut up despite the din of the IPCC propaganda.
Briefly, Dr. Gray has a Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from Cambridge University, England, and his long career has included stints in France, Canada, China, and New Zealand. He has published more than a hundred scientific papers on energy and materials, plus a dozen in climate science.
By Alan Caruba
Recently I emailed a gentleman who is highly regarded, nationally and internationally, as one of the top strategic, military and economic long-range thinkers of our times. He is the author of several bestselling books about the way globalization is impacting the lives of the Earth’s population.
In addition to having read his books and magazine articles, I occasionally visit his blog to read what he is thinking about currently. I noticed that he was casually referencing “global warming” in a post, so I emailed to let him know that there is no scientific proof or basis for the endless global warming claims. I cited all the usual data that disputes it and I provided the URLs of several websites that could provide him with even more.
His response was quite revealing. “It doesn’t matter one way or the other. All the same fixes are required for sheer pollution reasons on a global scale given population increase and consumption increase. You’re arguing the past.” He would later post that, so far as the data debunking global warming, he was “beyond caring.”
As I interpret this, no matter how utterly false the justifications are for the global warming hoax given by Al Gore, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and others, leading to efforts to replace, slow or deter the use of energy sources such as coal, natural gas and oil, this particular influential intellectual was beyond caring because the world’s population was responsible for pollution and consuming too much of everything.
By Thomas E. Brewton
Go to your room, sonny boy, and stay there!
Much counter-evidence to the man-made global warming hypothesis has come to light.
- Forget global warming: Welcome to the new Ice Age
- Temperature Monitors Report Widespread Global Cooling
- Measuring the Phoenix Urban Heat Island
- Global warming skeptics buoyed by record cold
- UA prof challenges one of central beliefs about global warming
- Ocean circulation in a warming climate
- Chilling Effect
- Global Warming: Experts’ Opinions versus Scientific Forecasts
- Kilimanjaro’s ice set to linger
- The Sun Also Sets
- Read the sunspots
- The real costs of climate change
Since the Renaissance, considerable human energy and ingenuity in the Western world has been applied to improving and increasing food production and the results of manual labor. Aiding the resulting elevation of living standards was the rise of mathematics and the physical sciences. People came increasingly to understand the workings of the physical world and the God-given laws of science governing nature.
In the 19th century, however, scientific progress became infused with nonsensical political theory, the atheistic and materialistic socialism of the French Revolution. From this came the idea of progress toward conquest of nature. It was not sufficient merely to understand the processes of nature. Man had to become godlike and to control the forces of nature.
As C. S. Lewis warned us in The Abolition of Man,
At the moment, then, of Man’s victory over Nature, we find the whole human race subjected to some individual man, and those individuals subjected to that in themselves which is purely ‘natural’ – to their irrational impulses. Nature untrammelled by values, rules the Conditioners and, through them, all humanity. Man’s conquest of Nature turns out, in the moment of its consummation, to be Nature’s conquest of man.
Our current-day obsession with the hypothesis of global warming as a man-made phenomenon, rather than a normal cycle of God’s nature, is one result.
Its impetus is to transfer all individual freedom to a single, universal control board whose chairman presumably would be Al Gore. The Kyoto Protocol, don’t forget, was a product of the UN and collectivist bodies like the EU.
Individuals are no longer to be free to make decisions about how to heat their homes, what automobiles to drive, even what foods to eat. Liberal-progressive-socialist councils will tell us what we are required to want and how we are required to conduct our daily lives.
Gore, the man who would be God, is unsatisfied with continuing an open scientific investigation of natural phenomena. He has, once and for all time, selected his hypothesis and strives mightily to achieve the earthly power to impose its sanctions upon us all.
Thomas E. Brewton is a staff writer for the New Media Alliance, Inc. The New Media Alliance is a non-profit (501c3) national coalition of writers, journalists and grass-roots media outlets.
His weblog is THE VIEW FROM 1776
Email comments to viewfrom1776@thomasbrewton.com
New Media Alliance Television (www.nmatv.com)
New Media Alliance Blogs (www.thenma.org/blogs)
www.therealitycheck.org
By Alan Caruba
In early March, President Bush, addressing an International Renewable Energy Conference, was widely quoted saying that the United States has to “get off oil.” Earlier he had said that America was “addicted” to oil. These are such huge lies one wonders why he is telling them, unless perhaps he has quietly been investing in ethanol production.
For the record, “renewable” energy refers to solar and wind energy for electricity, and biofuels for transportation. None of these options can ever be expected to provide the electric energy America uses, nor will biofuels ever replace oil for transportation.
In one of the most brilliant analysis of America’s dependency on oil, “Gusher of Lies”, by Robert Bryce, the author spells out the realities of a world in which, not just the United States, but all nations are going to be importing oil for as long as crude can be pumped from places around the world that include the Middle East, Russia, Africa, South America, and the deep ocean waters.
The problem is not a lack of known reserves of oil. The problem is the way the lack of knowledge by the consuming public is being exploited.
Yes, the price of a barrel of oil has reached and surpassed $107, but that price is subject to a myriad of factors that have nothing to do with scarcity. As OPEC president, Chakib Khelil, told reporters recently, “There is sufficient supply. There’s plenty of oil there.” He’s telling the truth. One factor is the falling value of the U.S. dollar. Oil that is priced in Euros has not risen nearly as much.
“Energy independence,” says Bryce, “is hogwash. From nearly any standpoint—economic, military, political, or environmental—energy independence makes no sense. Worse yet, the inane obsession with the idea of energy independence is preventing the U.S. from having an honest and effective discussion about the energy challenges it now faces.”
Nowhere is this more obvious in the campaigns of the Democrat and Republican candidates. John McCain, the GOP nominee, is committed to the global warming hoax that is based on the lie that the use of all forms of energy is contributing “greenhouse gas” emissions at such a rate the Earth is warming dramatically. It isn’t. There isn’t a scintilla of scientific data to demonstrate this. It has warmed about one degree Fahrenheit—naturally—since the end of the mini-ice age in 1850.
By Alan Caruba
I can understand why people believe that global warming is real and that all the things Greens say are true. One cannot read a newspaper or magazine, turn on the television or radio, without getting the Green message.
Since switching their message in the 1970s that an Ice Age was coming to the complete fiction of a massive, dramatic global warming due to greenhouse gases, the Greens have been able to influence policy at the international and national level. They have been utterly relentless, a modern version of the Mongols on horseback who swept out of the East to conquer everything before them until the reached the gates of Europe. These days the Greens have long since conquered Europe.
One thing alone stands against the Greens. The SCIENCE does not support them. Their sense of moral superiority, their contempt for all things modern, their resistance to all forms of energy except the weakest—wind and solar, and at the very heart of the Greens’ message is a contempt and hatred for the human race.
Humans have come to dominate life on Earth because we know how to adapt to the planet. We know how to use its minerals, the riches of its plant life, the domestication of its animals, and its reserves of energy in the form of coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear fission, to fuel the creation of great cities, farms and ranches, and everything that passes for modern civilization.
Long ago humans conquered the continents of the Earth and its great oceans to spread everywhere. Humans now fly between continents in hours. Everywhere on the face of the Earth humans now communicate with one another via the Internet.
By Alan Caruba
The provision of electrical power nationwide has become the chosen battleground for environmental groups laboring night and day to insure there will not be enough of it to meet our needs.
The U.S. Department of Energy predicts that overall energy demand will grow by 45% between now and 2030.
The effort to insure Americans will not have enough electricity is deadly serious. Take, for example, the exultant news release (Jan 17) from the Rainforest Action Network, “Proposed Coal Plants Losing Steam” celebrating “59 coal plants cancelled or shelved in 2007.”
Since coal-fired utilities provide over 50 percent of the electricity generated in America, the need for additional plants would seem obvious. A May 2007 Business Week article about coal noted that, “Today, making electricity from coal can cost half as much as using cleaner-burning natural gas.” Half as much at the plant translates to half as much in the monthly energy bill to homeowners and others.
The Greens, however, using the utterly bogus “global warming” hoax and asserting the false notion that carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions will transform the climate of the earth, are successfully denying Americans electrical power.
There is no global warming and CO2 constitutes about 0.038% if the earth’s atmosphere. In past eras there was a lot more CO2 and the result was the lush vegetation that kept a lot of dinosaurs munching away for several million years.