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Unbearable Arrogance

By Alan Caruba

As the months pass by in the Obama administration, some traits are beginning to emerge that inform us in a general way what we’re up against.

To the astonishment of many, it is an administration filled with Marxists. The “Green Jobs” czar Van Jones was exposed as one and resigned. Now it has been revealed that yet another, Mark Lloyd, designated as the “Diversity” czar, holds the Venezuelan dictator, Hugo Chavez, in high esteem, calling his power grab “an incredible revolution.”

Even before these two, it was learned that Carol Browner, the “Environmental” czar, was a highly regarded member of the Commission for a Sustainable World Society, which is part of the Socialist International.

As various members of the Obama administration expressed their views on events and issues, we discover that they hold most Americans in low esteem. David Axelrod, the communications advisor to President Obama, dismissed an estimated 1.8 million Americans who participated in the September 12 protest march saying, “They’re wrong.”

There hasn’t been a comparable event in years, but “They’re wrong.”

Given the polls that all say that the nation’s economy is the number one issue that needs to be fixed, the White House has embarked on two major pieces of legislation guaranteed to wreck it still more. Healthcare “reform” should have the same priority as fixing the nation’s infrastructures of roads, bridges and ports, but instead there has been a non-stop effort to initiate a government takeover one sixth of the nation’s economy. Some people might call that Marxist.

Likewise, the hideous “Cap-and-Trade” bill, a huge tax on the generation and use of all energy has been the other administration priority. If you wanted to reduce America to third-world nation status, just increase the cost of energy while, at the same time, opposing any offshore exploration and extraction of oil and natural gas, and making it nearly impossible to build any coal-fired plants that currently provide just over fifty percent of all electricity.

This brings me to Dr. Steven Chu, the Secretary of Energy, the subject of a September 21 Wall Street Journal article that reported “Dr. Chu said he didn’t think average folks had the know-how or will to change their behavior enough to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”

There is no reason, zero reason, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. There is no global warming and, even if there was, carbon dioxide, (CO2) the primary gas over which controls would be imposed, has nothing to do with climate change. Instead, hundreds of years after a warming, it shows up in the atmosphere in somewhat enhanced amounts. And even that is a good thing because CO2 is essential to all life on Earth as plant food.

“The American public…just like your teenage kids, aren’t acting in a way that they should,” opined Dr. Chu. “The American public has to really understand in their core how important this issue is.”

I daresay the American public are not like teenagers, nor should they be regarded or treated as such, but therein lies the unbearable arrogance of the Obama administration.

The notion that the President of the United States has to be on all five (save Fox) Sunday morning talk shows says that his handlers believe viewers must be overwhelmed with a torrent of lies to accept the administration’s position on healthcare reform. When one anchor noted that an element of the reform package was a hidden tax—an excise tax—that simple truth was brushed aside.

The President’s speech at the United Nations repeated every lie about “climate change” we have been hearing since the 1980s and that repetition is so unpersuasive that “global warming” ranks last among the priorities that Americans have these days. It’s no longer Obama’s “Audacity of Hope”, it is the audacity of his lies that confront all Americans.

The Earth has been cooling since 1998. It is making the global warming liars desperate to get whatever national and international action taken before it becomes even more evident. The fact that the President would address it as justification for any action his administration might take reveals the depths of deception that exist within it.

The kind of arrogance and outright deception Americans are witnessing is increasingly distressing and generating a lot of anger. It’s not going to go away. Hugo Chavez may have fans inside the Obama administration, but beyond the gates of the White House he is known for what he is, a dictator.

To borrow a phrase from a Hollywood film, fasten your safety belts, it’s going to be a bumpy ride.

Caruba blogs daily at factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com

Why we can all stop worrying about 'Global Warming' for a bit

By James Delingpole, Telegraph

Three months to go until the UN climate summit in Copenhagen. Three months in which we will be repeatedly assured by climate fear promoters such as Al Gore, George Monbiot, Ed Miliband and the risible Ban Ki-moon that this really is absolutely, definitely, totally and irrevocably the very last chance the world’s leaders will have to save the planet from ManBearPig. (Just like they said at Rio and Poznan and all the other “let’s see who can rack up the biggest carbon footprint” global shindigs that eco-campaigners insist on staging, the better to stoke up their self-flagellatory eco-guilt). But, for the global warming deniers among us at least, the panic’s off. Nothing scary or dangerous is going to happen as a result of the Copenhagen summit. It will be a talking shop, abundant with airy platitudes and earnest pieties, but signifying less than ****er all as far as economy-damaging Kyoto-style legislation goes. There will be a political statement of intent. But no binding “agreement”. Here are few reasons why: 1. A bit like one of those mutant pandas I mentioned yesterday, the science has turned viciously against the warmists. Not that it wasn’t against them before. But they have their work seriously cut out if they’re ever going to recover from the speech given at the UN world climate conference in Geneva last week by Professor Mojib Latif of Germany’s Leibniz institute. National Post columnist Lorne Gunter explains: “Latif is one of the leading climate modellers in the world. He is the recipient of several international climate-study prizes and a lead author for the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). He has contributed significantly to the IPCC’s last two five-year reports that have stated unequivocally that man-made greenhouse emissions are causing the planet to warm dangerously.” Yet in Geneva, Latif was forced to admit that all those An-Inconvenient-Truth-style fantasy projections showing global temperatures rising inexorably with C02 levels were wrong. The world is getting cooler, not warming. It will continue to cool, Latif reckons, till 2020 or possibly 2030. By how much he doesn’t know: “The jury is still out.” Which begs the rather obvious question: if the IPCC’s doomsday computer models didn’t predict this cooling phase, how can we be sufficiently confident in their other assertions to start basing major economic and social policy decisions on them? 2. The Chinese. Spin it how they will, President Hu Jintao’s two-minute speech to the UN yesterday was a massive blow to the Warmists. In classic “Tell the foolish gwailo what they want to hear, then carry on doing exactly what we want” Chinese diplomatic style, Hu Jintao promised “determined action”, while refusing to commit his country to any binding targets. The Chinese are not stupid. Their priority number one (and two, and three) is economic growth, not assuaging green lobbyists. 3. People just don’t care about “climate change” that much. Environmental purity is a rich person’s luxury and with the recession most people have other priorities. In the latest Bloomberg poll in the US, for example, just 2 per cent of respondents considered “climate change” the most important issue facing the country. 4. Almost everyone knows deep down that the green lobby’s CO2 targets are pie in the sky. Says Stephen Hayward of the American Competitive Institute in WSJ Online “Carbon dioxide is the result of complete fuel combustion. Apart from still-unproven technologies, there’s no way to remove it from the process. The only way to reduce emissions is to burn less fuel, which means less energy output. “So, to meet the target the climate campaigners have set, the U.S., Europe and Japan will have to replace virtually their entire fossil-fuel energy infrastructure. For the U.S., the 80% target means reducing fossil-fuel greenhouse-gas emissions to a level the nation last experienced in 1910. On a per-capita basis, we’d have to go back to the level of about 1875.” 5. If anyone’s going to push these crazy measures through it’s President Obama. But, as Terence Corcoran sensibly points out, after the rough ride he’s had with his healthcare proposals, Obama is unlikely to want to outrage the US taxpayer still further. “Mr. Obama, already fighting charges his medicare reform will boost taxes on the average American family by $3,000, isn’t likely to simultaneously mount an aggressive push for carbon control legislation that will add another $4,000 a year in taxes.” 6. Right, consider this my serious climate change piece for the week. Now, I can go back to trading childish insults. Phew!Source

Newsweek, Murdoch, and the Politics of Wordplay

By Thomas Richard In the current issue of Newsweek dated Sept. 28, 2009, it kicks off it’s greenest companies in America—in an apparent attempt to apply green guilt to those who don’t make the top 100—with a quote by Rupert Murdoch.

I have to admit that until recently I was somewhat wary of the warming debate. But I believe it is now our responsibility to take the lead on this issue.

I was curious about the quote, and did a little Googling. Turns out the quote is anything but recent. It is from 3 years ago, November 2006 to be precise. And in typical Newsweek fashion, they left out the quote date, circumstances, and the rest of what he had to say on the subject:

How much of it is warming due to human error is open to debate.

For regular readers of Newsweek (we know you are out there!), this is part and parcel in its attempts to misdirect the public. Many fence-sitters and AGW believers in 2006 are now skeptics. Is Murdoch a believer, lukewarmer, or skeptic? I don’t know. And apparently Newsweek doesn’t either. One thing is telling: Murdoch’s News Corp. came in at 270 out of 500 companies ranked.Source

Copenhagen Conference headed for disaster

By The Cobourg Skeptic
In the 3 months before the December Copenhagen Climate Change Conference, there are three things that will determine what will happen there: 1) Will the U.S. implement Cap & Trade? It looks likely that any action will at least be after the Conference – the U.S. bill is currently stalled in the senate. And given the reaction to the Health bill, it seems unlikely that the Climate Change bill will ever get passed. If it doesn’t, other countries will be reluctant to damage their economy and let the U.S. over-run them (economically).

2) Will anyone listen to the growing number of skeptical scientists? Even though it’s not scientifically significant, actual cooling in the next month or so could easily make a difference to attitudes. And skeptics are not giving up – a parallel alternative conference will be staged in Copenhagen which should get at least some press time. As the organizers put it – if you don’t agree with the main-stream you get no funding. More here

3) As one of the biggest emitters of CO2 and the country with the biggest population, will China join the crowd and “sign-on”? This looks increasingly unlikely. According to an article in the Energy Tribune which quotes Chinese sources, Chinese scientists have found ”no solid scientific evidence to strictly correlate global temperature rise and CO2 concentrations”. Further they say “some geologists believe that global temperature is related to solar activities and glacial periods. At least human activity is not the only factor to cause the global temperature increase. Up to now not a single scientist has figured out the weight ratio of each factor on global temperature change.” If there are to be any quotas, China makes a case for a cumulative limit so that they can get to the same level of development that the western countries currently enjoy. Since statements like these must be approved by the Chinese Government, it is extremely unlikely that China will make any commitment at the Copenhagen conference that puts them at an economic disadvantage. And why should they? A doubtful science coupled with an expectation that new economies should make up for historical emitters does not make a good case for them to sign-on. And although they are less clear on their intentions, India is also unlikely to sign-on. They (and African countries) seem intent on pushing for multi-billion dollar aid from “rich countries” for green projects or compensation for expected effects. Looks like the Copenhagen conference is heading for a disaster – although the press and politicians will no doubt call it a success.Source

FLASHBACK: Honk If You Support World Car-Free Day

By Jody Clarke, CEI

Washington, D.C., September 21, 2004—Anti-automobile activists around the world will celebrate “World Car-Free Day” this Wednesday, envisioning a world where cars have been forcibly replaced by pedestrians, bicyclists, and mass transit. For all of their rhetoric, however, the anti-car enthusiasts are generally vague on how their utopia will accommodate the handicapped, the elderly, parents with kids, or anyone who lives outside of a central city.

“Since so many anti-car activists are young and healthy, it’s no surprise they forget what a car-free world would actually be like,” said Sam Kazman, General Counsel at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. “For many people, a car isn’t a luxury – it’s the only way to get to work, transport their kids, or pick up groceries.”

The dramatic revolution in mobility made possible by the personal automobile has faced hostility from central planners for decades. In the words of philosopher Loren Lomasky, “People who drive cars upset the patterns spun from the policy intellectual’s brain.” (Lomasky study “Autonomy and Automobility” available online at http://www.cei.org/gencon/025,01437.cfm)

People who choose not to own cars are of course free to do so, but Car-Free Day ought to be conducted in a manner that makes its implications clear. For a realistic day of car-free living, try it:

  • When it’s raining
  • When you’re carrying several bags of groceries
  • When you’re carrying a baby, with a toddler alongside you
  • On crutches
  • After midnight
  • Without using a car or cab to get to the train or bus station, especially in the suburbs.
  • Any combination of the above.

Source via Tom Nelson

The Handbook spreads to Turkey

By Joanne Nova
Turkey, where the local climate is normal and where nothing unusual happened in the time since the green bandwagon hit the road, signed on to Kyoto and will most likely sign on to the Copenhagen compromise, Kyoto II. So there is a need to spread the word about that the science the media won’t mention, hence The Skeptics Handbook A 2007 survey showed that even in Turkey some 70% of people are familiarized with the theory that carbon affects the climate, which shows the remarkable reach of UN propaganda1. The UN may not have any evidence, but they have widespread influence. The Politburo would be impressed. The Turkish translation of The Skeptics Handbook Like most politicians, the Turkish representatives wouldn’t mind another excuse to tax everything that moves while being hailed as heroes (I ‘ll save you. Let me spend your money!). And with potential EU membership acting like a carrot with gold plating, there are reasons for Turkey to accept agreements it may not otherwise have chosen to. It’s a country caught in a patchwork of third world unmechanized farming and modern megopolis development. Pop music has arrived in a big way; mass produced electronics goods are finding markets; and satellite and cable TV is common, but at the same time, people still chant five times a day — only now the most fanatical can do it with Bang and Olufsen megaphones. This is “modern” third world style. Adaptive Bass Linearisation meets the Koran. The state may provide free hospital care, but you need to bring your own nurse. Seriously, family members may have to provide non-medical nursing. Sewers are still uncovered and storm drains are inadequate. Infant mortality is surprisingly serious. Babies born in places like Nicaragua or the Palestinian Territories have much better chances of survival. This is not a country where “going solar” is a top priority. People are dying from real preventable causes, and man-made climate change is not one of them. Most people live in rural villages, and are dependent on coal and wood in winter, and gas for their cars, so the chances of “alternate energy sources” being affordable are seriously close to zero. Turkey’s economy (like many others) hangs by a thread. It’s hard to imagine how they could seriously cut their emissions without crippling their economy. Current tax rates are at a level that almost every business struggles to meet. Income levels are much lower than the west, to the point where even children are breadwinners. Meanwhile unemployment is officially “above 13%”, and probably in reality, above 25%2. Those numbers have a special meaning in a land where there are no unemployment benefits. Hiking up food costs with an unnecessary carbon impost is dangerous for people already on a subsistence diet. Energy-wise, Turkey has big gas reserves near the north coast of the Marmara and a well developed gas infrastructure, though not, it seems, a terribly well developed electricity network, as blackouts are still regular. There is plenty of work to do to get fossil fuel powered electricity running reliably before the country rushes into unproven and more risky alternatives. Rather than establishing Research Centers in Atmospheric Chemistry, the Kurds in the east are more interested in establishing schools and hospitals, and, of course, their own government. This is a country that needs to spend money on health, on basic services, on education — not on inefficient energy sources, auditing carbon credits, or a new layer of bureaucrats. The word from a cyber friend who lives there is that there aren’t many skeptics, but nor are there many AGW fans either. As I suspected, Turks view this mostly as a western creation and a western problem. Once again, marvel at the worldwide grassroots network of volunteers. Email all your Turkish friends. Click on the image above to see The Turkish Skeptics Handbook. Thanks to Zulloch Ltd for the translation. They are a professional translation service in Istanbul, so this was an easy effortless process for me. I just had to give permission and the cogs turned… And just in case you ever need to arrange a Turkish translation: Zulloch Tercume (Translation and Print Services) Ltd, Istanbul.
Phone: (0212) 641 1840 – 41
Fax: (0212) 641 1839 The full printable top quality 17Mb version can be downloaded too. (For all your friends in Turkey with four color printing presses.) Finally! – I’ve got a translation in a language that Brian Valentine can’t read.

Scientists pull an about face on global warming

By Lorne Gunter, Calgary Herald
Imagine if Pope Benedict gave a speech saying the Catholic Church has had it wrong all these centuries; there is no reason priests shouldn’t marry. That might generate the odd headline, no?Or if Don Cherry claimed suddenly to like European hockey players who wear visors and float around the ice, never bodychecking opponents.Or Jack Layton insisted that unions are ruining the economy by distorting wages and protecting unproductive workers.Or Stephen Harper began arguing that it makes good economic sense for Ottawa to own a car company. (Oh, wait, that one happened.) But at least, the Tories-buy-GM aberration made all the papers and newscasts.When a leading proponent for one point of view suddenly starts batting for the other side, it’s usually newsworthy.So why was a speech last week by Prof. Mojib Latif of Germany’s Leibniz Institute not given more prominence?Latif is one of the leading climate modellers in the world. He is the recipient of several international climate-study prizes and a lead author for the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). He has contributed significantly to the IPCC’s last two five-year reports that have stated unequivocally that man-made greenhouse emissions are causing the planet to warm dangerously.Yet last week in Geneva, at the UN’s World Climate Conference–an annual gathering of the so-called “scientific consensus” on man-made climate change –Latif conceded the Earth has not warmed for nearly a decade and that we are likely entering “one or even two decades during which temperatures cool.”The global warming theory has been based all along on the idea that the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans would absorb much of the greenhouse warming caused by a rise in man-made carbon dioxide, then they would let off that heat and warm the atmosphere and the land.But as Latif pointed out, the Atlantic, and particularly the North Atlantic, has been cooling instead. And it looks set to continue a cooling phase for 10 to 20 more years.”How much?” he wondered before the assembled delegates. “The jury is still out.”But it is increasingly clear that global warming is on hiatus for the time being. And that is not what the UN, the alarmist scientists or environmentalists predicted. For the past dozen years, since the Kyoto accords were signed in 1997, it has been beaten into our heads with the force and repetition of the rowing drum on a slave galley that the Earth is warming and will continue to warm rapidly through this century until we reach deadly temperatures around 2100.While they deny it now, the facts to the contrary are staring them in the face: None of the alarmist drummers ever predicted anything like a 30-year pause in their apocalyptic scenario.Latif says he expects warming to resume in 2020 or 2030.In the past year, two other groups of scientists–one in Germany, the second in the United States–have come to the same conclusion: Warming is on hold, likely because of a cooling of the Earth’s upper oceans, but it will resume.But how is that knowable? How can Latif and the others state with certainty that after this long and unforeseen cooling, dangerous man-made heating will resume? They failed to observe the current cooling for years after it had begun, how then can their predictions for the resumption of dangerous warming be trusted?My point is they cannot. It’s true the supercomputer models Latif and other modellers rely on for their dire predictions are becoming more accurate. But getting the future correct is far trickier. Chances are some unforeseen future changes will throw the current predictions out of whack long before the forecast resumption of warming.Lorne Gunter is a columnist with the Edmonton Journal and National Post.Source

Greens Push Planned Planethood To Fight Global Warming

By The Chilling Effect
This is where the environmental movement gets ghoulish, and it’s important not to gloss over. A study in the British journal Lancet ties human population to the world’s climate — leading simple-minded, singularly focused Green activists to believe that reducing human population will be good for the planet. In this case, the recommendation is to give birth control to people in developing countries. Even assuming the best intentions, it is little more than Eugenics 2.0 — picking on a disadvantaged population group and reducing their future for the benefit of those at the top of the social chain. AP reports:

“There is now an emerging debate and interest about the links between population dynamics, sexual and reproductive health and rights, and climate change,” the commentary says.

Whoa, wait a minute. There’s an “emerging debate”? If so, it’s being driven by one small, twisted sliver. There’s the environmentalists who want to set a two-child limit. And the ghastly woman who had an abortion to fight global warming. Clearly the far-Green view of humanity as an evil plague upon the world has met another key aspect of its social views, and it’s deeply troubling news for the rest of us.Source

Global warming propaganda infiltrates schools

By Paul Chesser

Scientists see no temperature increase (on average) in the oceans or on the surface of the Earth over the last decade. That hasn’t stopped an activist group from infiltrating high schools with the panicky message that we are on the verge of a “planetary emergency” due to global warming. These alarmists are the recently formed Alliance for Climate Education, an Oakland, Calif., nonprofit created by wealthy wind energy entrepreneur Michael Haas. The organization has targeted five metropolitan areas and now is opening a Washington office. Haas, who donated $24,600 to President Obama’s campaign and victory funds last year, stands to reap millions of dollars in government subsidies that climate change-driven energy policies would bring. Meanwhile the teenagers targeted by ACE are treated to hip presentations with slick animation to propagate the idea that they and everyone in their spheres of influence must modify their behaviors so as to stop global warming. This is achieved by cutbacks in their energy use, which ACE believes produces too many greenhouse gases (from fossil fuel combustion like coal and oil) that warm the planet. The mostly undiscerning kids love it. ACE, which lobbies school boards and administrators to get invited to give presentations, delivers its propaganda to hundreds of students at a time in assemblies. Getting out of class to watch an amusing talk highlighted by flatulent animated cows (to emphasize their methane emissions, another greenhouse gas) is good for plenty of laughs and scores big with the teens. But ACE’s talks are infected with falsehoods, like telling the students they’ve “lived through the 10 hottest years on record” (1934 was the hottest) and that greenhouse gas emissions are cranking up the global thermostat “way too high”. Talk about one-sided hyperbole to shape impressionable minds. Meanwhile, scientific studies like those that reveal we may be entering a prolonged cooling period, due to an inactive sun, are left out of climate discussion. ACE has also targeted the San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles, Houston and Boston areas, and aims to reach 140,000 students by the end of this year. Its goal is simple: Get students active in the name of dubious (at best) global warming alarmism, demonize fossil fuels and push solutions such as alternative energy — like wind. Unfortunately, many teachers and administrators are all too willing to let this biased bunch extract students from classes and force-feed them its pap. Parents should be aware that their kids might be the targets of this political recruitment effort during valuable class time. Paul Chesser is a special correspondent for The Heartland Institute.Source via Washington Examiner