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Heartland is keeping the lights on

By Peter Foster, Financial Post

I’m heading to New York tomorrow (at my own expense) for a conference organized by the Heartland Institute and billed as “The world’s largest-ever gathering of global warming skeptics.” The conference is being held at the Marriott Marquis in Times Square, where I’ve had the pleasure of staying before. I’m splashing out an extra US$60 a night for a room overlooking the square, whose spectacular electronic billboards represent one of the great symbols of our joyous, multi-coloured, larger-than-life, technologically-stunning consumer society.Times Square also last year witnessed the success of those who wish to dim the lights on such despised materialism. Coca Cola agreed to flip the switch on its thirty-ton “electro kinetic sculpture” during Earth Hour, that exercise in social and corporate pressure, organized by the World Wildlife Fund, during which people wander around in the dark for the sake of the planet.The theme of the Heartland conference — “Global warming: Was it ever really a crisis?” — seems deliberately designed to cause the kind of people who so successfully strong armed Coca Cola to froth at the mouth.

This second such annual event will feature dozens of presentations by a class of people claimed not to exist by environmental extremists: top scientists and other researchers who question the conclusions of the United Nations’ highly-politicized Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The IPCC claims that the climate may already be in crisis (as opposed to Al Gore, who claims that it definitely is), and that humans are the main culprits due to industrial society’s emissions of carbon dioxide. The Heartland conference will present papers suggesting that such views are at best simplistic and at worst downright wrong. It will also feature bold voices who stress the political nature of the climate change bandwagon, and its success in closing down debate as it threatens already foundering global prosperity. These include Vaclav Kraus, president of the Czech Republic and of the European Union.At the recent World Economic Forum in Davos, Mr. Kraus declared that “Environmentalism and the global warming alarm-ism is challenging our freedom. I’m afraid that the current crisis will be misused for radically constraining the functioning of the markets and market economy all around the world.” Other presenters include our own Lawrence Solomon, author of The Deniers, which comprehensively explodes notions that climate science is “settled.”The Heartland Institute stresses that “No corporate dollars or sponsorships earmarked for the event were solicited or accepted.” That proviso is necessary to forestall braying NGOs and members of the policy establishment who claim that skeptics are in the pay of Big Oil or Big Coal.Self-interested alarmists also hurl a bigger, and even more objectionable, slur: that skepticism is rooted in psychological derangement.Intriguingly, that claim is the subject of another conference taking place today at the University of the West of England in Bristol. The university claims it is the first national conference to specifically explore “climate change denial,” the alleged mental disorder that stops people from sharing the ghastly visions of those who believe in climate apocalypse. This clinical label will be applied to us consumerist sinners unless we accept much bigger, more intrusive and more expensive government of the type laid out in Ontario’s Green Energy Act, whose multiple shortcomings have been outlined this week on this page.

Apart from bringing together eco-psychologists (who knew the division of academic labour had gone to such bizarre lengths!), psychotherapists and that universal threat, “social researchers,” the Bristol conference will unashamedly feature “climate change activists,” who are “uniquely qualified to assess the human dimensions of this human-made problem.”One of the conference organizers, professor Paul Hoggett, promises that “We will examine denial from a variety of different perspectives — as the product of addiction to consumption, as the outcome of diffusion of responsibility and the idea that someone else will sort it out and as the consequence of living in a perverse culture which encourages collusion, complacency, irresponsibility.”Why, oh why, can we not be more like Cuba!According to one of the conference’s keynote speakers, George Marshall, director of something called Climate Outreach and Information Network, “The knowledge of the problem is remarkably well established yet we clearly refuse to recognize the implications of that knowledge.” (You can see Mr. Marshall on YouTube comparing failure to get angry about climate change with complicity in South American military juntas, Nazism and apartheid). As the range of top academic climatologists presenting at Heartland over the next three days suggests, the problem is “remarkably well established” only by those who demonize opponents and embrace eco-shariah.Throughout history, opponents of religion, be it medieval Christianity, current Islamism, or recently defunct Communism, have been dubbed as in need of psychological treatment because they cannot see what is “obvious” to believers. Climate change has become the new global state religion, which is why the corporate appeasers at Coca Cola will be turning off their signs again later this month for the next Earth Hour.I’ll be thinking about that every time I look out of my window over the next couple of days, grateful that there are intellectual lights still shining inside the building, and at least some voices speaking up for intellectual freedom and scientific objectivity.

AGW Petition Update: 406 More Scientists Sign Their Names To Deny Global Warming Claims

By Justin C, ilovecarbondioxide.com
The fight is heating up, while the Earth is still cooling down. Are you scared yet, Al Gore?

The addition of 406 new scientist signatories now brings the total up to 31,478 scientists and 9,029 PhDs who completely refute alarmist claims and agree that increased CO2 is beneficial to our planet. Furthermore, this is just one of many such petitions and declarations all stating the same thing, signed by thousands of scientists around the world.

Where is your so-called “consensus”, Mr. Gore? Surely you don’t mean to say that the 52 highly-paid UN IPCC scientists politicians who draft your scary media reports and the handful of other biased scientists on government and green industry payrolls are your “consensus”.

Funny, I thought I heard you and Obama say “the debate is over” at least a few hundred times combined. That has become a typical response whenever you’re faced with scientific backlash and facts you cannot argue. Which seems to be almost every day now.

Read the statement and summary of peer-reviewed research HERE.

The High Cost of Climate Lies

By Alan Caruba
The global warming hoax didn’t happen over night. It is generally dated from an appearance before Congress by Dr. James E. Hansen in 1988 predicting a dramatic rise in the Earth’s temperature based on the increase of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere. At that time, Dr. Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, warned that steps had to be taken quickly to reduce CO2 emissions.

Ever since then, Hansen has been active in his effort to convince everyone that he’s right and condemning anyone an opposing point of view. “The science is settled” has been the mantra of men like Hansen and, of course, the bilious Albert Gore of “An Inconvenient Truth” fame.

The background music has been supplied by the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that has merrily falsified alleged scientific data to advance the hoax while the U.N. Kyoto Protocol imposed limits on CO2 emissions. Most of the nations that signed it have largely ignored it, discovering that it harms their economies. The United States avoided signing, but Americans have now elected a president who is utterly devoted to this “solution” to a problem that does not exist.

In “Climate of Extremes: Global Warming Science They Don’t Want You to Know”, co-authors, Patrick J. Michaels and Robert C. Balling, Jr., the former a professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia and the latter a professor of the climatology program in the School of Geographical Sciences at Arizona State University, lay out just how the actual science has been deliberately distorted and politicized.

Two factors have been at work. One is money. Much of the funding for climate research comes from the U.S. government. To get that funding, the science has to fit the political agenda of whatever administration was in power. The second factor is media coverage of the issue. Journalism thrives on bad news and, after gleefully reporting a coming ice age in the 1970s they embraced an apocalyptic global warming and the vocal environmental movement in the 1980s.

Despite the fact that the Earth, based on weather satellite data, is now ten years into a distinct cooling cycle, the mainstream media continues to embrace global warming as real, along with the cries to end the use of coal for the generation of electricity. Coal, one of the most abundant and inexpensive sources of energy in America, accounts for just over fifty percent of all the electricity Americans use daily.

“Climate of Extremes” points out that “As virtually all global warming science is a publicly funded enterprise, political dynamics must in part be involved. At the simplest level, global warming is just one of many scientific issues competing for funding. AIDS and cancer, for example, are competitors.”

There is an additional factor that cannot be ignored. “The reward structure in academia–promotion, tenure, and salary–is based on the quality and quantity of peer-reviewed research. The requisite level and number of publications for tenure is virtually impossible to achieve without substantial public funding.” In short, environmental extremism was very good for the careers of those who kept attributing everything from allegedly endangered polar bears to the shrinking snow cover on Mount Kilimanjaro to global warming while warning against it.

While Al Gore grew rich and famous working the global warming hoax, it seemed like everyone, including prestigious organizations like the American Association for the Advancement of Science wanted to get in on the act. On June 15, 2004 they put together a panel of U.S. climate scientists to discuss global warming, but the panel was totally composed of its advocates and no dissenters. By that time, however, a Gallup poll revealed that a plurality of Americans had concluded that the news reports were exaggerations.

By then, even prestigious journals such as Science and Nature had totally disgraced themselves by publishing allegedly peer-reviewed articles about global warming. National Geographic continues to publish comparable nonsense.

Thanks to the ardent efforts of countless environmental organizations, global warming had been totally integrated into the thinking of those inside the Beltway so that millions of taxpayer dollars, then and now as part of the stimulus package have been spent to prove what the actual science demonstrates is bogus.

Indeed, on March 8-10, the second annual International Conference on Climate Change will take place in New York, bringing together several hundred climatologists, meteorologists, economists, and others to further dismember the hoax.

Meanwhile, the true cost of the global warming hoax lives on in idiotic government mandates for blending ethanol with gasoline or demands for “alternative energy” (wind and solar) unsuited to providing anywhere near the billions of megawatts the U.S. requires to function. If a “cap and trade” proposal regarding greenhouse gas emissions passes Congress, an invisible, baseless tax on energy will be imposed on all Americans.

We have all been lied to by a shameless confederation of scientists, their professional publications, their formal organizations, and politicians seeking to use this big scare to advance their careers and agendas. The problem for all of them is that the real science does not support global warming and never did. Real scientists, branded dissenters, skeptics, and deniers, held true to the principles of science, knowing that it would eventually end this vast and terrible hoax.

Global Warming Protest Frozen Out by Massive Snowfall

By Joseph Abrams, Fox News
It was snowing irony in Washington on Monday when global warming activists descended on the District like a storm — but got beaten to the punch by a blast of wintry weather that incapacitated the city.

Global warming activists stormed Washington Monday for what was billed as the nation’s largest act of civil disobedience to fight climate change — only to see the nation’s capital virtually shut down by a major winter storm.Schools and businesses were shuttered, lawmakers cancelled numerous appearances and the city came to a virtual standstill as Washington was blasted with its heaviest snowfall of the winter. It spelled about six inches of trouble for global warming activists who had hoped to swarm the Capitol by the thousands in an effort to force the government to close the Capitol Power Plant, which heats and cools a number of government buildings, including the Supreme Court and the Capitol.The snowy scene, with temperatures in the mid-20s, was reminiscent of a day in January 2004, when Al Gore made a major address on global warming in New York — on one of the coldest days in the city’s history.Protest organizers said about 2,500 people braved the blizzard to oppose greenhouse gas emissions, but the shroud of snow wasn’t the only wet blanket in the nation’s capital Monday.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who called on the architect of the Capitol to stop burning coal at the power plant last week, cancelled her appearance at the rally because her flight to Washington was cancelled.Michelle Obama canned a public “Read Across America” event and HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan canceled a meeting with the Democratic Caucus because the members of Congress couldn’t get to D.C. An honor cordon at the Pentagon for Afghanistan’s defense minister also had to be called off.Some protesters couldn’t make it as dozens of flights in the area were delayed or called off, and some couldn’t face the dangerous roads or blustery weather, leaving hundreds safe, if sorry, back at home. One protester named Kat had planned to get arrested and be bailed out Monday but decided to stay put and donate her money to a good cause instead.”I don’t want to travel in the snow today. However, I am donating my bail money to fight mountaintop removal,” she wrote to the Climate Action Web site.Even marchers in gloves and parkas were wringing their hands to stay warm, and some protest leaders were having trouble providing updates on blog sites like Twitter.”I admit, it’s hard to tweet with cold hands!” wrote the author of the Capitol Climate Action Web site, who said the activists were “staying warm with a chant: ‘Clean coal is a dirty lie.'”The plant has been seized as a symbol of the government’s energy excess, and the 99-year-old facility accounts for a third of the legislative branch’s greenhouse gas emissions.Protesters gathered earlier Monday in the Spirit of Justice Park near the Capitol and marched a few blocks to the power plant, where D.C. police set up a careful cordon.In a press release supporting the protest, Greenpeace wrote that “coal is the country’s biggest source of global warming pollution” and that “burning coal cuts short at least 24,000 lives in the U.S. annually.”On a blustery, frigid day, it might be worth noting the government’s own stark numbers: pneumonia kills twice as many each year.

Scientist tells Climate Change Committee: CO2 emissions have NO effect on climate

By Justin Credible

BREAKING NEWS in the land of climate reality, once again. Below is an excerpt from a report submitted by our contributor Hans Schreuder to the NI Climate Change Committee on February 17, 2009.

This document is valuable information for anyone interested in learning the undeniable CO2 truth and uncovering the hoax known as human-caused climate change. Hans is a retired Analytical Chemist and the founder of www.ilovemycarbondioxide.com, a site which shares a very similar name and very similar views to this one. For a wealth of educational information please visit his site, and check back often as it is updated frequently with breaking news. Now, in an effort to get the word out to even more people we are combining forces and sharing resources.

EXCERPT FROM COVER LETTER:

“Despite much rhetoric and research over the past two decades, there is still not a single piece of actual evidence that the now-maligned carbon dioxide molecule causes global warming (or “climate change”).

To over 40,000 fellow scientists from around the world and to myself this is no surprise, for no such evidence can ever be found.”

EXCERPT FROM SYNOPTIC SUMMARY:

“Climate change is far beyond the realm of humans to control and nothing humans do will change the climate from its natural and cyclical behaviour, which right now appears to be heading towards a lengthy period of colder winters and shorter growing seasons.

Carbon dioxide does not have any influence over the climate. Despite billions of dollars spent on research, not one single piece of actual observational evidence has ever been presented to categorically indicate that it does. This is because no such evidence exists.”

CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL GROUNDBREAKING REPORT

Biofuels and Hybrids: Two Green Dreams, Actually Terrible For The Environment

By Justin Credible
It seems there is no end in sight to the ever growing list of blunders promoted by well-funded Big Environment these days, ranging from yesteryears fraudulent Silent Spring propaganda banning DDT and causing millions of unnecessary deaths, promoting mistaken claims that the ice caps are shrinking, the recent oxygen depletion scare, and the past misguided promotion of green toxic CFL lightbulbs which led to their eventual mandated legislation in some countries. Of course, the biggest hoax, anthropogenic global warming, is still touted as a fact even though it’s merely a political myth and is the main driver of all these smaller sub-hoaxes. Yet, the man-made climate change propaganda campaign steams on, powered by Gorezilla and Obamania, although there is still a complete lack of scientific evidence to support the greenies absurd CO2-is-evil theory, plus an ever growing backlash of worldwide scientists who refute these alarmist claims and are aware of the fact the planet has been cooling for over a decade now and extreme weather is decreasing.

One of the latest agendas endorsed and promoted by the enviro-religious everywhere is the “alternate vehicle power” campaigns, most notably biofuel and hybrid-electric cars. Too bad the greens got these two causes all backwards too.

Let’s begin with biofuel. As reported in the Ottawa Citizen here in Canada, Prime Minister Stephen Harper recently announced a $1.5-billion, nine-year plan to make Canada a leader in biofuel production, regardless of the widespread concern about the so-called “green” energy boom, which is having a serious environmental impact around the globe as forests are leveled and farm land is set aside to grow biofuel crops. Once again, the third world will especially suffer under this system, much like all the other morally irresponsible policies designed to fight off an imaginary man-made climate change.

“In all cases, forestation of an equivalent area of land would sequester two to nine times more carbon over a 30-year period than the emissions avoided by the use of the biofuel,” says a report published in the journal Science by Renton Righelato of the World Land Trust and Dominick Spracklen of the University of Leeds. To put it simply, “the emissions cost of liquid biofuels exceeds that of fossil fuels.”

They note energy crops require an enormous amount of land: to replace just 10 per cent of gasoline and diesel fuel would require an estimated 43 per cent of crop land in the U.S. and 38 per cent of crop land in Europe. And clearing grasslands and forests to grow energy crops releases carbon stored in existing vegetation and soil and creates large up-front emissions that the report says would “outweigh the avoided emissions.”

Indeed, the global alarmists say they want to reduce CO2 emissions because they mistakingly believe CO2 causes global warming AKA climate change and have not yet come to accept that CO2 is actually a harmless trace gas and an invaluable plant food which sustains all life on Earth and has nothing to do with pollution or “climate change”. But just for fun, let’s put that annoying fact aside and play the green game and pretend that reducing CO2 is actually a good thing. Well, damnit, biodiesel does indeed emit less than one-quarter the carbon of regular diesel once it’s burned, however when production commences and the destruction of ecosystems in the developing countries where most biofuel crops are grown is factored in, many biofuels actually emit more carbon than does petroleum, as was also widely reported last year.

Furthermore, oil palms don’t absorb as much CO2 as the rainforest or peatlands they replace, palm oil can generate as much as 10 times more carbon than petroleum, according to the advocacy group Food First.

So, biofuels produce more CO2 than regular fuels. And they push starvation levels up! Oh snap! Now, while most respected scientists around the world understand that the Earth is currently CO2 impoverished and creating more of it is actually a GOOD THING, I’m sure many environmentalists are going to quietly back away from promoting their biofuel fantasy once they wake up to reality, if that ever happens.

But wait, says Bradley Doucet, there’s more!

“We are, by all accounts, in the midst of a global food crisis. “A wave of food-price inflation is moving through the world, leaving riots and shaken governments in its wake,” says an article in the April 19 edition of The Economist. In the last year, the price of corn has risen 50%, wheat 75%, and rice nearly 200% (see “The New Face of Hunger“). The president of the World Bank figures that 100 million people are in danger of being forced into poverty by the soaring cost of food. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon met with key development agencies in Switzerland at the end of April to discuss what to do about the problem.

The current crisis is not one of supply – there have been no massive, widespread harvest failures – but rather of demand. One might well imagine that as millions become richer in places like China and India, they are exerting upward pressure on food prices by eating more. In fact, though this is happening, it is happening only gradually. The high price of oil is also having an overall inflationary effect, as is the U.S. Federal Reserve’s loosening of the money supply in reaction to the subprime lending fiasco. But the real culprit behind the recent rapid upswing in food prices, according to The Economist, is “the sudden, voracious appetites of western biofuels programmes, which convert cereals into fuel.”

Diverting crops like corn to ethanol refineries increases the demand for corn, which raises the price of corn. This in turn causes some farmers to shift fields to corn production, and some consumers to substitute away from corn, both of which raise the prices of other staples. Jean Ziegler, an independent food expert at the UN, told the recent Swiss conference:

“biofuels, as they are produced at present, constitute ‘a crime against a large part of humanity.'”

He was not alone in singling out biofuels. Also at the conference, Céline Charvériat, Oxfam International’s deputy advocacy director, said that biofuels are “a major cause of increasing prices” and called on rich countries to end their biofuels mandates.

But if consumers in rich countries want biofuels, then that’s what they want, and markets will just have to adjust, right? Except that it’s not consumers who are choosing to use biofuels in a free market – it’s governments that are pushing biofuels on consumers with market-distorting mandates and subsidies. According to an article by Robert Bryce published in Slate in 2005, subsidizing ethanol “has cost American taxpayers billions of dollars during the last three decades, with little to show for it. It also shovels yet more federal cash on the single most subsidized crop in America, corn. Between 1995 and 2003, federal corn subsidies totaled $37.3 billion.” Things have only gone from bad to worse since then, as mandates and subsidies for ethanol have been ratcheted up dramatically.

Take away those subsidies, and even with the current high price of oil, nobody but the most fervent environmentalist is buying ethanol. Subsidies by their very nature take money from taxpayers and spend it on things the taxpayers would not have spent it on – either that, or they do nothing at all and are completely pointless. If ethanol is a way to address the imaginary global warming, replace dwindling oil supplies (even though there is no oil shortage whatsoever), or achieve energy independence, then people either value these goals highly enough to pay the difference at the pump or they don’t. Forcing those who don’t to act against their values through tax-funded subsidies is like burning money.

The truth is quite sad. Biofuels such as ethanol have become the trendy way for politicians and corporations to show they’re serious about finding alternative sources of energy and in the process slowing their manufactured ‘global warming crisis’. It’s a win-win for governments and alarmists alike. But all is clearly not as it seems. Biofuels, it turns out, are bad for people, bad for prosperity, and bad for the planet.

Come on people, wake up. Clear-cutting forests for biofuels is not only foolhardy, it’s downright disgusting. And, it effectively produces more of those “evil” CO2 emissions that the warmists claim it reduces. Strike one!

HYBRID VEHICLES

Oh heavens, where do I begin?! Unless you’ve been living under a rock and have brainlessly bought into the force-fed propaganda via the enviro cults and their green orthodoxy (cough), you would already know that hybrids (which run on combined electric and either gas or diesel) are incredibly detrimental to the environment to produce and ultimately create more CO2 than vehicles powered by just good ol’ internal combustion engines. What’s that you say? You weren’t aware of all this? Read on my friends.

Firstly, the additional materials used in the manufacture of hybrid cars, particularly the nickel used in the batteries, is actually enormously bad for the environment. Plus, it takes more combined energy to produce a Toyota Prius than to produce a Hummer. FACT, not fiction!

A little hybrid lesson: The Prius is powered by not just one, but two engines. Both a standard 76 horsepower, 1.5-liter gas engine found in most cars today and a battery- powered engine that deals out 67 horsepower and a whooping 295ft/lbs of torque, below 2000 revolutions per minute. The Toyota “Synergy Drive” system, as they call it, propels the car from a dead stop to up to 30mph. This is where the largest percent of gasoline is consumed. As any physics professor can tell you, it takes more energy to get an object moving than to keep it moving.

The battery is recharged through the braking system, as well as when the gasoline engine takes over anywhere north of 30mph. Aside from the batteries, it seems like a great energy efficient and environmentally sound car, right? Wrong. As Chris Demorro reported on The Recorder:

“You would be right if you went by the old government EPA estimates, which netted the Prius an incredible 60 miles per gallon in the city and 51 miles per gallon on the highway. Unfortunately for Toyota, the government realized how unrealistic their EPA tests were, which consisted of highway speeds limited to 55mph and acceleration of only 3.3 mph per second. The new tests which affect all 2008 models give a much more realistic rating with highway speeds of 80mph and acceleration of 8mph per second. This has dropped the Prius EPA rating down by 25 percent to an average of 45mpg. This now puts the Toyota within spitting distance of cars like the Chevy Aveo, which costs less then half what the Prius costs.”

Okay, with that being said, let’s go back to point one: building a Toyota Prius causes more environmental damage than a Hummer. As already noted, the Prius is partly driven by a battery which contains nickel. The nickel is mined and smelted at a plant in Sudbury, Ontario. This plant has caused so much environmental damage to the surrounding environment that NASA has used the “dead zone” around the plant to test their moon rovers. The area around the plant is devoid of any life for miles!

As if I needed to make the point stronger, I will anyways. Did you know that a Hummer is on the road for an average of three times longer than a Prius? Exactly how is it environmentally responsible to have to buy three cars in the same time frame as one would have served? And before someone starts raving about how they save money on gas, just wait until it’s time to replace those multi-thousand-dollar toxic batteries every few years. You would’ve saved far more cash by sticking with gas!

HUMMER vs PRIUS: Download the Pacific Institute’s seven page re-analysis of “Dust to Dust”

What about 100% electric cars? Umm yeah….gotta plug those thirsty batteries in every night, and where’s that power coming from? That’s right: mostly coal. If hundreds of millions of electric vehicles needed to be recharged every day, the CO2 emissions feared so much would skyrocket. Oh, and good luck with those fairyland solar panels and bird-killing windmills being able to support that kind of demand.

It also doesn’t take a rocket scientist to point out that hundreds of pounds of giant batteries are necessary to briefly move an entire vehicle with passengers and subsequently the weight of said batteries, whilst a couple drops of gasoline will do the same thing. So, which one is really more efficient? I’m not saying the internal combustion engine can’t be improved — in fact it can be made much more efficient if necessary. Yes, big oil is probably against higher efficiency. Yes, big oil is gouging us at the pumps. No, the alternatives are not better. They are far worse.

Biofuels and hybrids? Just two more strikes against the hysteria-driven and increasingly illogical “green” movement.

'Stimulating' Scientists Into 'Proving' Global Warming

The new bill will spend billions to adjust data to “prove” the fallacy that humans are responsible for global warming

By Frank J. Tipler, Professor of Mathematical Physics at Tulane University.

The trillion-dollar plus porkapalooza Wreak-America Bill just passed by Congress will throw a huge amount of money into scientific research. This will be a good thing for certain scientists, but a very, very bad thing for science.

Young scientists do most of the great science. Einstein was 26 when he published his relativity theory. In 1980, when I got my first government research grant at the age of 33, some 22 percent of National Institute of Health (NIH) grants were given to scientists under the age of 35. In 2005, only three percent of NIH grants went to those under 35, while the percentage given to those over 45 increased from 22 to 77.

Increasingly, government grants are used to defend dogma, not discover new truth: 28 percent of the scientists supported by NIH admitted recently to cooking data to support establishment theory, and 66 percent admitted to cutting corners to achieve the same end. I myself no longer trust the data claims appearing in the leading science journals.

The United States and the European nations have spent billions of dollars to build the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) outside Geneva, Switzerland. The new bill will spend more. The Standard Model of particle physics predicts that the central particle of the Standard Model, the Higgs Boson, must have a mass-energy of around 220 GeV, an energy well within the range of the LHC. But the particle physics establishment does not want the Higgs Boson to exist, because if it does, then particle physics would be complete, and the particle physicists would be out of a job. Gary Taubes, in his book Nobel Dreams, has documented that the same people now in control of the LHC tried years ago to cook the data to refute the Standard Model. Can they be trusted now?

The new Wreak-America Bill will throw billions of dollars more into global warming research, a field in which data cooking has become an open scandal. Once again, the data is being adjusted to confirm the establishment theory: humans are responsible for global warming. In actual fact, satellite observations show that the Earth is now cooling, and has been cooling for about 10 years. This confirms the anti-establishment theory that the Earth warmed prior to the late 1990s due to the then-increasing number of sunspots, and is now cooling due to the now decreasing number of sunspots. The Wreak-America bill contains funds to “adjust” those pesky satellite observations, so that the data will confirm what powerful politicians wish to be true.

Universities have essentially been nationalized, like the banks. For years, government research grants have been pork grants: between 30 and 50 percent of all grant money is for “overhead,” which is spent at the discretion of university administrators. Surprise, surprise: administrators always decide that more administrators are needed, and administrator salaries increase. Over the last 50 years – the period of increasing government grant money – the administrator-student ratio at universities has increased more than 100 percent, while the faculty-student ratio has stayed the same or decreased. Today, a science professor cannot get tenure unless he has a government grant. A scientist’s teaching skills, her contributions to scientific knowledge, are irrelevant.

The hallmark of a nationalized industry is degraded production, and we can already see this happening in physics. In his book The Trouble with Physics, the physicist Lee Smolin divided up the past two centuries into 25-year intervals, and listed the great breakthroughs in physics that occurred in each. Rather, in all intervals but one: the past 25 years, within which there have been no physics breakthroughs.

Nationalization of medical research has slowed the advance of medicine. The U.S. cancer death rate is actually higher today than it was decades ago, before Nixon launched his War on Cancer. NIH cancer researchers are given grants to “make progress toward curing cancer,” not curing cancer. If someone found a cure for cancer, there would be no more grants for making progress toward a cure for cancer. Gary Taubes, in his most recent book Good Calories, Bad Calories, has shown how the American obesity epidemic is a consequence of government control of nutrition research, which has lead to poorer nutrition standards and guidelines than we had in the 1950s.

The great classical liberal economist Milton Friedman pointed out that, “Einstein didn’t construct his theory on order from a bureaucrat.” If this Wreak-America Bill becomes law, the only theories created will be those created on order from a bureaucrat. And the theories will be wrong. Scientific truth cannot be established by government degree.

SOURCE

Will the Global Warming protest in Washington, D.C. be canceled because of snow?

By Bobby Deskins, Meteorologist, 10 Connect
Showers, thunderstorms and even snow showers are falling across parts of the southeast. Showers and storms with gusty winds moved through central Florida today, while thunderstorms produced tornado warnings in southern Georgia during the early morning hours on Sunday. Meanwhile, colder air is filling in and changing the rain to snow in parts of Alabama and Georgia including Atlanta.

All of this is part of a developing storm system that will intensify later tonight as it approaches the North and South Carolina coasts. As the storm brings heavy rains and strong winds to the southeast coastline, colder air in the central Carolinas and the Mid – Atlantic States will change the rain to snow and begin piling it up later tonight. One area that appears to be in store for a significant snowfall is Washington, D.C. where a massive global warming protest is planned for Monday. It is being billed as one of the largest ever global warming protests in the U.S. Mother nature will not make it easy as Winter Storm Warnings are posted for the area and snow accumulations could reach as high as 6-8″ with locally higher amounts south and east of the nations capitol.

The storm system will slowly wind down in the Washington, D.C. area midday Monday, but blustery winds and very cold temperatures will make traveling, or protesting for that matter, rather difficult.Source

Obama’s Climate Rip-off

By Steve Milloy, Canada Free Press

President Obama wants to pay you to support global warming regulation. What he isn’t saying, however, is that his enticement won’t come close to covering what the regulations will cost you.

In his 10-year budget released this week, the President proposed a so-called cap-and-trade scheme to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Under the proposal, 100 percent of the permits to emit greenhouse gases would be auctioned to coal and natural gas-burning electric utilities, industrial plants and other emitters-to-be-designated. The proceeds from the auctions would then distributed to individual Americans “to help the transition to a clean energy economy,” according to his budget proposal.

But what does this proposal mean for the average person in terms of actual dollars and cents?

Maybe the economics of Obama’s cap-and-trade rip-off don’t bother you, but the fact that the rip-off will accomplish nothing should give you pause.

It’s difficult to work out the precise financial impacts, but you can get an idea by doing some back-of-the-envelop calculations with some of the facts and figures that have recently been bandied about. Based on past global warming legislation, like the Lieberman-Warner bill that failed in the Senate last June, a cap-and-trade plan would probably cover about 80 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions — about 5.8 billion tons based on a total of 7.3 billion tons emitted during 2007. Assuming that permits are auctioned at a price of $12 per ton — a safety valve price included in past climate bills — the Obama plan would raise about $70 billion in its first year. Given that President Obama has proposed to spend about $15 billion per year of the auction proceeds on “clean energy” projects, about $55 billion would be leftover for distribution to individuals– in other words, every American with a Social Security number. Dividing the $55 billion among more than 300 million Americans, then, works out to about $180 per person and $720 per family of four per year. It’s not like winning the lottery, but it’s better than nothing — or is it? The liberal think tank Center on Budget Priorities and Policy estimated this week that reducing greenhouse gas emissions would cost the poorest families in America $750 per year as higher energy prices ripple through the economy affecting all goods and services. So if the poorest families, who use far less energy than the rest of America, are in a financial hole under the president’s plan, one can easily imagine how the rest of us will end up. Consider the potential consequences on just your electric bill. The proposed Lieberman-Warner bill would have auctioned only 25 percent of the permits — not 100 percent as President Obama is proposing. The remaining 75 percent of the credits would have been distributed for free to electric utilities and other designated greenhouse gas emitters. But even under that scheme, Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers told The New York Times last summer that electricity rates would rise by 40 percent in the first year to cover his utility’s $2 billion outlay for credits. So a 100 percent auction could increase electricity bills for Duke’s 4 million customers by 160 percent — meaning a $100 monthly electric bill becomes, perhaps, a $260 monthly bill. Based on these calculations, a family of four that pays more than $40 per month for electricity — that is, every family — is a net loser under President Obama’s plan. And those are the potential increases for just your electric bill. Not included are other likely price hikes for goods and services — gasoline, food, travel, etc. — that will necessarily be passed along to consumers. As you can readily see, your share of President Obama’s auction proceeds don’t come close to breaking even on greenhouse gas regulation. Maybe you’re thinking that these extra costs are worth it as they will be dwarfed by the environmental benefits of tackling the much-dreaded global warming. Think again. There will be no detectable or tangible benefits from reduced greenhouse gas emissions. First, carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas targeted by regulation is invisible, colorless and odorless. Since it exists in the atmosphere at levels measured in the parts per million, unless you’re a plant that needs CO2 to live, you’re not going to notice it. Next, there is no evidence that human emissions of carbon dioxide are causing detectable changes, much less any harm, to the climate. Check out my YouTube video on this issue: This means, of course, that there is no evidence that reducing carbon dioxide emissions will have any detectable changes on climate. Even assuming for the sake of argument that man made carbon dioxide emissions were changing climate, Obama’s cap-and-trade bill will still have no detectable impact. First, EPA projects that a maximum clamp down on future U.S. emissions would reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide levels by about 5 percent or less — a trivial change no matter what you believe about carbon dioxide. Moreover, China and India have vowed not to harm their economies because of global warming — so their emissions can be expected to soar as they develop and more than make-up for our reductions. Maybe the economics of Obama’s cap-and-trade rip-off don’t bother you, but the fact that the rip-off will accomplish nothing should give you pause. Source