Tag: Alan Caruba

By Alan Caruba

It has been nearly three decades since I first wrote that “global warming” was a hoax and I have had to repeat myself countless times since then. Along the way I met many of the so-called “deniers” and dissenters. I had correspondence with others. We all knew that Al Gore was lying. We all know that President Obama is lying,

And yet the lies continue. The most amazing aspect of the hoax is that, despite a decade of global cooling, the mainstream media, print and electronic, relentlessly continue to write about “greenhouse gases” as if they have anything to do with the Earth’s climate.

The primary greenhouse gas in the Earth’s atmosphere is 95% WATER VAPOR. The primary source of warming and cooling on Earth is the SUN.

The claim that carbon dioxide (CO2) has anything to do with the climate, other than to react to changes in it hundreds of years after they occur, is totally discredited, but I still read magazines like Business Week or The Economist, Time and Newsweek, as well as newspapers, whose reporters and editors demonstrate an astonishing ignorance—a willful ignorance—by continuing to publish global warming lies saying that CO2 emissions must be reduced..

Even the advocates of global warming began to speak and write about “climate change” several years ago in order to avoid the obvious fact that the Earth began cooling in 1998.

Climate change!

As if the Earth’s 4.5 billion year history is not one long record of climate change!

As if there would be any life on Earth without carbon dioxide, the plant food of all vegetation that in turn sustains animal life.

Led by Joseph Bast, The Heartland Institute, a non-profit, free market think tank has been at the forefront of the battle for truth for many years. In 2008 and 2009, the Institute brought together the finest minds from the world of meteorology and climatology in conferences that were a marathon of scientific symposia that laid waste to the bogus claims of global warming.

I attended both conferences and had an opportunity to meet some of the “deniers”. In the beginning there were a handful such as Dr. Richard S. Lindzen, the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology, Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He does not suffer fools easily.

Others who joined the struggle against an avalanche of lies about “global warming” included Drs. Patrick J. Michaels, Robert Balling, Tim Ball, and S. Fred Singer, an atmospheric physicist at George Mason University and founder of the Science and Environmental Policy Project, a think tank on climate and environmental issues.

There were other academics that included Dr’s Willie Soon, Joseph D’Aleo, Vincent Gray, and William Gray, all meteorologists and climatologists of international repute, as well as Howard Hayden, an Emeritus Professor of Physics.

In time, a handful of skilled science writers translated the data for the public. They include Christopher C. Horner, Marc Morano, Steven Milloy, Jay Lehr, and Paul Driessen. Dennis T. Avery, a senior fellow of the Hudson Institute, wrote articles that gained favor with the mainstream media and did much to undermine the global warming lies.

Think tanks such as The Heartland Institute, the Hudson Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and the Business & Media Institute all deserve praise for taking leading roles in disputing and debunking the global warming hoax.

Editor’s note: There are others unnamed for purposes of length, but who are no less deserving of honor.

The propaganda war to smear these men continues to this day. A favorite tactic to discredit them was to post “biographies” on Wikipedia suggesting they were all in the pay of corporations and could not be trusted.

The work of these think tanks and individuals is hardly over. The horrid “Cap-and-Trade bill, its name changed in the Senate to deceive everyone into believing it’s about the foolishness of so-called “clean energy”, is a nightmare of taxation on energy use and a vast transference of billions to near useless “renewables” (solar and wind).

At the same time, access and use of America’s vast energy reserves of coal, natural gas, and oil continues to be denied by a Congress and administration that is hell bent on destroying the nation’s economy.

The “deniers” are being vindicated by Mother Nature. The truths they have been telling are showing up this year in America and around the world in early snowfalls, icy road conditions, and blizzards to come that will bring entire cities to a standstill. Spring and summer may be a little late in 2010.

In time, the “deniers” will be honored for their service to humanity, for their courage, and for hopefully saving this nation and others from the torrent of deceit coming out of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and every environmental organization in America and worldwide.

Alan Caruba is the founder of The National Anxiety Center, a clearinghouse for information about “scare campaigns” designed to influence public opinion and policy. He blogs daily at factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com.

By Alan Caruba

As the greatest hoax of the modern era, “global warming”, bites the dust around the world, it behooves us all to contemplate why environmentalists—Greens—would attempt to hoodwink the world’s population into believing they could do anything to “control” the planet’s climate.

One singular fact stands out in all Green propaganda and permeates all the legislation and other programs they sponsor. It is a contempt and disdain for the Earth’s human population. The leaders of the movement hate humanity. Obsessed with population growth, anything that can reduce it—disease, poverty, famine, or lack of energy is pursued as part of the Green agenda.

The Green movement grew out of an earlier, more salutary one, conservation. We can surely thank Americans such as John Muir and others who sought to preserve tracts of wilderness such as Yellowstone and the nation’s forested areas from the rampant depredations of the 1800s and early 1900s. The nation owes a debt of gratitude to President Theodore Roosevelt for the initial creation of national parks and forests.

As the nation industrialized, rivers suffered pollution and the air was polluted by factories that befouled both. In 1970 President Richard M. Nixon signed into being the Environmental Protection Agency which, empowered by the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, can be credited to early success.

However, like all government agencies, the EPA has steadily sought to expand its powers and, aided by other environmentally related agencies such as the Fish and Wildlife Service and the Corps of Engineers, it has relentless pursued ever larger control over all the land and waters of the nation, and by extension over everyone’s life.

They pose a threat to the constitutionally protected right to private property, vital to the nation’s economy and a keystone of capitalism.

The growth of literally hundreds of “environmental” organizations has led to an endless barrage of scare campaigns, often without any basis in science, and used to undermine the industrial, agricultural, and transportation sectors of the nation’s economy.

On a global scale, the United Nations Environmental Program and its Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have pursued an agenda devoid of scientific merit or justification.

Greens lie and they lie all the time

The lies about Alar came close to wrecking apple growers. The lies about the spotted owl species laid waste to the northwest’s timber industry. New claims about alleged dangers from plastic bottles are based on lies.

The lie that carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, has anything to do with “warming” has driven the totally deceitful “global warming” hoax and is used to create a market for worthless “carbon credits” that ultimately increase the cost of energy and everything else.

The introduction of the Endangered Species Act is one long history of near constant failure in pursuit of a foolish goal, advocating for obscure species while thwarting all manner of projects useful to the human species. It has been used to impoverish farmers in Oregon and California.

The truth is that the Earth is actually cooling, not warming. Carbon Dioxide is not a “pollutant.” The North and South Poles are not melting. Sea levels worldwide are not rising any more than they have for millennia. Polar bears are thriving. Solar and wind energy is a bust, providing barely 1% of all electricity used daily nationwide.

The truth is that pesticides protect people against insect and rodent-borne diseases and property damage. Saving “endangered species” ignores the fact that 95% of all the species that previously existed are now extinct.

The truth is that nothing humans do has any affect on the climate that is dependent on solar and ocean cycles.

The Greens are now famous for their campaigns against products from toilet paper to plastic bags, bottles, and everything else made from plastic, a petroleum derivative. Anyone who buys “environmentally” approved products is being charged a premium for their own gullibility. Every supermarket and store in America has comparable, safe products at far lower costs.

Americans are constantly harangued to adopt Green lifestyles. Generations of young Americans have suffered the child abuse of being told that the Earth is doomed despite its 4.5 billion year existence.

Corporations that advertise and promote their “Green” credentials pander to environmental hoaxes in order to avoid criticism and generate an “environmentally friendly” public image.

The real environmental message speaks to a hatred of humanity and the many technological, medical, agricultural, and other achievements that have enhanced, improved, and saved the lives of millions.

If you hate energy, join an environmental organization.

If you hate science, join an environmental organization.

If you hate jobs in America, join an environmental organization.

If you hate industrial and agricultural development and progress, join an environmental organization.

And if you hate humanity, join an environmental organization.

Alan Caruba is the founder of The National Anxiety Center, a clearinghouse for information about “scare campaigns” designed to influence public opinion and policy. He blogs daily at factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com.

By Alan Caruba

No single government agency has grown so big and so fast as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and no single agency threatens constitutionally guaranteed property rights and nationwide economic growth than the EPA.

It is the Blob that ate America.

Signed into law by Richard M. Nixon in 1970, the EPA has so consistently twisted the truth about the environment that its announcements must be dissected like a cadaver to find any verifiable facts.

This agency of the government is so brazen that it is currently trying to bully Congress, the seat of government, into passing the horrid Cap-and-Trade bill so that it might then regulate stationary sources that emit more than 25,000 tons of greenhouse gases per year.

In its endless quest for more and more power over all aspects our lives, the EPA wants to rewrite the 1970 Clean Air Act to include so-called greenhouse gases. That is why its Senate sponsors have obligingly renamed it a “Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act.”

It is based entirely on the global warming hoax.

The EPA has been the spear point for the global warming hoax, the creation of many worldwide and domestic environmental groups that continue to lie, saying it is caused by humans. There is, however, NO global warming. The Earth has been into a cooling cycle for the past decade. The current cooling is predicted to last for decades to come.

The platform for the global warming hoax has been provided by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The EPA is justifying its latest power grab claiming that the regulation of greenhouse gases will avoid a global warming that is NOT happening.

The EPA has such a disdain for real science that it wants to declare greenhouse gases, primarily carbon dioxide (CO2), as “pollutants” when in fact CO2 has nothing to do with either warming or cooling.

The simple truth is that water vapor constitutes 95% of all so-called greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and CO2 represents an infinitesimal 3.616%. Man-made CO2 whether generated by industry or just a backyard barbeque is an even more miniscule 0.117%. CO2 molecules in the atmosphere are so diffuse as to render this gas unable to cause any climate change.

The EPA proposal reflects the effort of environmental organizations such as Friends of the Earth and the Sierra Club to thwart the construction of any new plants to generate electricity. This is especially true of coal-fired plants that currently provide half of all the electricity used daily. Costly technology to capture and clean emissions is already in place wherever coal or other fuels are utilized.

All industrial activity is the ultimate target. What the nation’s industrial and manufacturing sector really generates are jobs, profits, stock dividends, and tax revenue.

The climate/energy bill has no basis in scientific fact. Despite a Supreme Court decision, CO2 can in no way be defined as a “pollutant.” CO2 is vital to all vegetation from backyard gardens to wheat fields to forests. Humans and other mammals exhale it. Vegetation absorbs and uses it. More CO2 would, in fact, mean more robust harvests and greater forest growth worldwide.

Simply put, the Clean Air Act was never intended to include greenhouse gases and that is the EPA’s dilemma as it seeks to do what it clearly was never intended to do.

The very idea that humans have any control over the climate is so absurd as to render the forthcoming UN climate conference little more than a gathering of liars and idiots.

The only good news is that Obama’s environmental czar, Carol Browner, now says that the cap-and-trade or pollution control act will not likely come to a vote until December. Then or ever, it would strangle economic growth in America at the same time such growth is taking place in the world’s emerging powers such as China and India.

While the rest of the world is encouraging industry to provide the jobs and revenue needed for their population, the United States President and Congress would hand the Greenhouse Gun to an EPA eager to pull the trigger on our own growth.

Alan Caruba writes a daily post at factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com. A business and science writer, he is the founder of The National Anxiety Center.

By Alan Caruba

Here’s a look at the introduction of a draft bill co-sponsored by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), co-sponsored by John Kerry (D-MA). It is the Senate alternative to the horrid “Cap-and-Trade” bill authored by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA). Call it “Cap-and-Switch.”

IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES A BILL
To create clean energy jobs, achieve energy independence, reduce global warming pollution, and transition to a clean energy economy.

All those who believe Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Jolly Green Giant are real should stop reading now.

Let’s look at the objectives of the Senate version of a huge tax on all energy use by every American. As I will note later, the bulk of the cost will fall on low-and-middle income households.

“To create clean energy jobs.” This is pure bunk. Such jobs would be primarily in the production of solar and wind energy. Other such jobs involve biofuels such as ethanol. Combined, solar and wind represent barely one percent of all the electricity generated daily in the nation. If solar and wind were profitable, you can be sure that American entrepreneurs would have long ago become more active, but if it were not for taxpayer dollars subsidizing solar and wind, neither would likely exist.

The only thing ethanol has done has been to raise the cost of the corn from which it is made and reduce the mileage of every gallon of gasoline to which it is added.

Testifying, Sept. 30 before the House Committee on Small Business, Manning Feraci, vice president of federal affairs for the National Biodiesel Board was seeking a continuation of the industry tax incentive. He said “the industry is in the midst of an economic crisis. Plants are having difficulty accessing operating capital. Volatility in commodity markets and reduced demand for biodiesel in both domestic and global markets are making it difficult for producer to sell fuel.” Nobody wants it!

There will be few “clean energy jobs” as compared to the employment that coal, oil and natural gas industries currently provide and could expand upon if the government wasn’t trying to put them out of business.

“Achieve energy independence.” Are you stupid? Boxer, Kerry, Waxman and Markey think you are. So does the President and many members of Congress.

How does America achieve “energy independence” when it will not allow the oil in Alaska’s ANWR to be extracted? When 85% of the nation’s offshore continental shelf, home to estimated billions of barrels of oil and trillions of cubic feet of natural gas, is off-limits to any exploration and drilling? When the President wants to eliminate the current subsidies that encourage oil companies to invest billions to find new reserves? When there is a full-scale attack on America’s coal industry even though coal provides half of all the electricity we use?

Just how does America “achieve energy independence” under such circumstances? How, indeed, do we heat or cool our homes, run our businesses, or even turn on the lights if Congress is opposed to the acquisition and use of our known and estimate energy reserves? Pretty soon, for reasons that defy understanding, Americans will not even be able to purchase an incandescent light bulb in the nation where it was invented!

“Reduce global warming pollution.” First of all, there is NO global warming. Why would Congress pass a law intended to deal with something that is a complete hoax? And what is global warming pollution? Is it the second most essential gas to all life on Earth, carbon dioxide (CO2)? If so, this law is scientifically absurd and baseless. CO2 never had anything to do with the warming that occurred after the end of the last little ice age, around 1850.

No matter what the Supreme Court and others have ruled, if CO2 is a “pollutant”, than we should all be in jail because that’s what we and other mammals exhale. It also occurs when energy sources such as coal and oil are used to keep factories producing, along with hospitals, schools, airports, seaports, and the Capitol of the United States functioning.

“Transition to a clean energy economy.” Oh sure, just as soon as we cover hundreds of thousands of acres of America with solar mirrors and wind turbines, we can make that transition. We have an economy that is dependent on coal, oil and natural gas. We have abundant natural reserves. What we don’t have is a President and Congress with the intelligence to understand that China is building a new coal-fired plant every week to meet its energy needs, that India has an aggressive nuclear energy program going for its economy, and this single piece of legislation will destroy any hope that the American economy can recover and grow strong again.

According to a study of the Waxman-Markey bill by Andrew Chamberlain, it will be the shareholders, not ratepayers, that will be the primary beneficiaries of cap-and-trade’s absurd creation of a market for the purchase and sale of “carbon credits.” It will be based on how much CO2 a utility, industrial, or any other entity is producing. The credits will literally permit them to keep on “polluting” even though that means “global warming” would, in theory, just get worse. Even though there is NO global warming. Make sense to you?

Chamberlain succinctly says, “These new findings should send a clear message to the American people (that) cap-and-trade helps the powerful and hurts the rest of us. And as Congress’ corporate allies receive the bulk of the benefits Waxman-Markey has to offer, our environment, along with our struggling economy, will suffer for years to come.”

“Congress needs to get out of the business of picking winners and losers and allow the market to determine which energy and electricity sources should power our economy.”

I leave you with a short list of just some of the U.S. corporations seeking to benefit from this hideous piece of legislation. Twelve of them sent an open letter to the U.S. Senate urging swift action on the climate change bill. They are Bumble Bee Foods, Dell, DuPont, FPL Group, Google, HP, Johnson & Johnson, Johnson Diversity, Levi Strauss & Company, Nike, PG&E Corporation, and Xanterra Parks and Resorts.

Time to let your Congressman and Senators know you think this is a very bad idea.

By Alan Caruba

One of the most curious and, frankly, frightening aspects of environmentalism is its hatred of the use of energy. One can draw a straight line between the Carter administration that imposed a windfall tax on the U.S. oil industry and the present Obama administration that is all for offshore oil drilling just as long as it takes place in Brazil, not America.

There is, in fact, offshore oil exploration and drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, particularly near Florida. The problem is that it is being undertaken by China and Russia.

In America, Ken Salazar, Obama’s Secretary of the Interior, is likely to slow offshore development, but it should be noted that 85% of the nation’s continental shelf has long been under a ban against exploration and development, and was throughout the eight years of the Bush Administration. The same holds true for vast oil deposits in Alaska’s ANWR area.

Until the 1970s, America’s economy thrived on affordable energy. Fully 85% of all the energy we need and use comes from coal, oil and natural gas. That is not going to change despite all the blather about “renewable energy” sources such as solar or wind. Neither of these has proven to be either reliable or affordable without huge government subsidies wherever they have been tried.

As Seldon B. Graham, Jr. notes in his book, “Why Your Gasoline Prices Are High”, in 1981 a windfall profits tax was imposed, “This tax, in effect, sent U.S.A. Oil’s exploration and drilling budgets straight to the government to spend as it pleased; thereby leaving little or no exploration and drilling budgets for USA Oil.”

The result was “a death notice” to the industry. “Many U.S. oil and gas companies went bankrupt because of the windfall profits tax. Those U.S.A. oil companies which survived were forced to go overseas to explore and drill in foreign countries.”

The result of the windfall profits tax was that it forced “the U.S.A. to defend Middle East oil.” And that, dear reader, is why we are still in the Middle East providing an umbrella of protection, rescuing Kuwait from Iraq, then having to re-invade Iraq, and now faced with a decision to militarily end Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons with which to threaten other Middle East nations.

Graham, with more than fifty years experience in the oil industry, has also been vocal in opposition to yet another idiotic government mandate, the addition of ethanol to every gallon of gasoline drivers must purchase.

Ethanol is touted as another “clean” energy alternative, but Graham notes that even as it reduces the mileage available from each gallon, it also emits more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. “Clean biofuel is the big lie”, says Graham. That said, carbon dioxide not only plays no role in “global warming”, but there is no global warming; the Earth being in a cooling cycle for the past ten years.

Just like Jimmy Carter, Barack Obama regards oil, natural gas, and coal as the enemy. Jerome Corsi of World Net Daily recently warned that “President Obama declared war on oil and natural gas at the United Nations global warming summit and he made the same pitch to the G20 meeting in Pittsburgh.”

Obama told the UN, “I will work with my colleagues at the G20 to phase out fossil fuel subsidies so that we can better address our climate challenge.”

On September 10, Buddy Kleemeir, chairman of the Independent Petroleum Association of America told a Senate Finance Committee that “The Obama administration’s budget request would strip essential capital from new American natural gas and oil investment by radically raising taxes on American production.”

A recent New York Times article noted that “The oil industry has been on a hot streak this year, thanks to a series of major discoveries…these discoveries, spanning five continents, are the result of hefty investments that began earlier in the decade when oil prices rose…”

First, note that the discoveries are the result of risks taken nearly a decade ago. It takes a long time to find new oil reserves and it requires billions of dollars. Second, note that these discoveries have largely been in other continents.

Third, if U.S. policy deliberately reduces the ability to make those investments by phasing out “fossil fuel subsidies”, it ensures that the nation remains dependent on Middle East and other foreign oil imports. Fourth, it puts the lie to the endless talk of America becoming “energy independent.”

America has been systematically stripped of access to its own interior and offshore energy reserves since the 1970s and at the heart of this conspiracy have been the many environmental organizations that have first secured legislation to enable their obstruction and second to impose, often through the courts, measures that attack, not just energy, but agriculture, timber, and other formerly thriving elements of the nation’s economy.

The destruction of America is moving apace and we have a president who continues to lie about “global warming” in order to further its decline.

Caruba blogs daily at factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com

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

By Alan Caruba

From December 6 through the 18th, a conference sponsored by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will gather in Copenhagen, Denmark, to explore ways to “prevent global warming” and I would like to be among the first to tell all those idiots checking their passports and deciding what to pack that they can all stay home.

This is not an original thought on my part and, in fact, is occasioned by Prof. Henrik Svensmark. He is director of the Center for Sun-Climate Research at the Technical University of Denmark and, not surprisingly, knows a lot about the Sun and climate.

Permit me to share some of his thoughts. In a September 9th opinion titled, “While the Sun Sleeps”, Prof. Svensmark wrote, “Last week, the scientific team behind the SOHO (Solar and Heliospheric Observatory) reported that the number of sunspot-free days suggest that solar activity is heading towards its lowest level in about 100 years.”

“Everything indicates that the Sun is moving into a hibernation-like state and the obvious question is whether it has any significance for us on Earth.” Good question, Professor! Particularly since the Sun is the sole source of heat for the Earth. When it takes a nap, everybody takes notice.

The professor then had a little professorial fun describing the Little Ice Age that occurred after a period of medieval warmth that had begun around 1000 AD. After 1300, however, it got a lot colder. Settlements in Greenland disappeared. The Thames froze over repeatedly. And here’s where we need to pay attention, there were “long periods of crop failure.” Between starvation and disease, it reduced the population of Europe by about a third.

“It is important to note that the Little Ice Age was a global event,” said Prof. Svensmark. It did not end until the mid-to-late 19th century; around 1850 in America. Do your math. That’s five centuries. As the Earth began to warm up and particularly in the last fifty years, “solar activity has been the highest since the medieval warmth of 1,000 years ago.”

Now, keep in mind that a couple of hundred, perhaps a thousand or more diplomats, scientists, and environmentalists are going to gather in Copenhagen for the single purpose of extending or expanding the Kyoto Protocols that are based on the assertion that the Earth is warming even though it is not.

Moreover, the IPCC will announce that, if the industrialized nations do not dramatically reduce the production of “greenhouse gases” (carbon dioxide), we are all doomed. In the United States, the Cap-and-Trade bill which passed the House by a slim margin will be up for consideration in the Senate. It is based on the global warming lie. It will drive up the cost of energy for all Americans and basically wreck the economy!

Like the witches in Macbeth, for years the IPCC has been stirring a cauldron of lies about global warming and the world’s media, intoxicated by the fumes rising from the pot, have never ceased from telling us that the Earth is warming when it is not.

The Sun, however, is not cooperating.

“It now appears that the Sun…is heading towards what is called ‘a grand minimum’ as we saw in the Little Ice Age,” says Prof. Svensmark.

“Indeed, global warming has stopped and cooling is beginning.” At a recent World Climate Conference in Geneva one of the participants predicted the cooling will likely continue through the next 10 to 20 years.

All those IPCC computer models that have been predicting global warming were wrong, are wrong, and will remain wrong for all time until the Earth actually begins to warm again.

If, however, the Earth slips into a new Ice Age and not just a “little” one, it will be several hundred thousand years before they are valid.

The Copenhagen conference is, like global warming, a hoax.

I hear it’s very cold in Copenhagen in the winter.

By Alan Caruba

To understand how insane the Cap-and-Trade bill really is you need to know that it based on the belief that carbon dioxide emissions must be reduced to avoid a global warming that is NOT happening.

The American Clean Energy and Security Act is a giant scam involving “carbon credits” to be sold and traded. It is also about billions in taxpayer’s dollars being wasted on wind and solar generation of electricity. If this was a sensible way to produce energy, it would be a dominant producer, but it isn’t. Short of producing electricity by peddling bicycles, it is as inefficient and impractical as possible.

So-called “clean energy” accounts for just over one percent of all the electricity Americans use every day and it exists only because the government subsidizes it by taking your tax dollars and giving them to wind and solar energy producers. Some States require utilities to buy electricity from them.

As for “security”, how much energy security does the United States enjoy if it must import 60% of the oil it uses for transportation and a wide range of products, not the least of which is anything made from plastic?

Real security means drilling and mining right here, right now. There’s plenty of oil in ANWR and offshore. The government forbids access to it. And, where’s there’s oil there’s natural gas as well. As for coal, the U.S. has enough for centuries of affordable electricity, but the environmental organizations have in recent years stopped the building of a hundred coal-fired plants and they brag about it.

A study of the economic impact of the bill by the American Council on Capitol Formation and the National Association of Manufacturers concluded that, if passed, Cap-and-Trade would decrease the Gross Domestic Product of the United States by $2 and $3 trillion by 2030. That’s lost job and lost industrial production.

That’s because Cap-and-Trade would increase the cost of all activities, business and others, by increasing the cost of electricity, the master resource that powers everything in the nation.

Remember, this would be done to limit “greenhouse gas emissions.” This cost would solely be on the backs of Americans while other nations of the world would be free to continue emissions, i.e. providing jobs and producing goods.

Remember, too, that global warming is not occurring. The Earth has been in a cooling cycle for a decade.

This bill is so horrible, Americans can only guess at the consequences of its passage. One thing is certain. It would massively expand government because thousands would have to be hired to administer it.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates it would cost $8 billion over a ten-year period because to operate efficiently it would require the approval of approximately 1,500 new regulations and mandates involving at least 21 federal agencies.

The introduction of Cap-and-Trade would “create the nation’s largest commodity market in which polluters would buy and sell rights to emit carbon dioxide” according to a recent Washington Times article, but it is essential to understand that emitting CO2 is not “pollution.” Carbon dioxide is NOT a pollutant. It is a gas vital to all plant life on Earth. If CO2 were a pollutant, than surely oxygen is as well because oxidation causes rust.

The Cap-and-Trade’s carbon credits could “be a $2 trillion market within five years,” said Bart Chilton, commissioner of the Commodities Futures Trade Commission.

So Cap-and-Trade is NOT about greenhouse gases or global warming. It is about trading credits for the right to GENERATE or USE ENERGY.

How insane is that?

Keep in mind that the present financial crisis is the direct result of the GOVERNMENT getting into the mortgage loan market in the form of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, purchasing loans from banking institutions and mortgage lenders who were required by law to make bad loans. Those loans, in turn, were “bundled” and resold as assets, but they were worthless.

Nothing is more worthless than carbon credits. Nothing is more dangerous to the economic future of the nation than the Cap-and-Trade Act. The U.S. Senate must defeat this bill which has already been passed by the House. YOU must defeat this bill by demanding your Senators vote against it.

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

By Alan Caruba

If there is one thing Americans began to rapidly conclude following his inauguration in January, it is that President Barack Obama lies all the time and that those lies are often blatant. In pursuit of the “Cap-and-Trade” act that is a huge tax on all energy use in America, Obama’s favorite mantra is that massive subsidies to wind and solar energy producers, as well as biofuel producers, will generate millions of new “green” jobs. Perhaps the worst part of this lie is that they will actually destroy jobs. In the July edition of Energy Tribune, Michael Economides and Peter Glover co-authored “Green Jobs: Fast-Tracking Economic Suicide.” I know Economides and he is internationally recognized as one of the world’s authorities on energy issues. “Creating ex nihilo—literally, out of nothing—used to be a theological concept, God’s prerogative. Today, it seems, President Obama and certain Western politicians claim to possess the ability to do it,” write the article’s authors. “Against all the laws of economics and the marketplace, President Obama and others believe they can create millions of ‘green’ jobs ex nihilo, literally out of thin air, via cap and trade.” There are two driving forces behind Cap-and-Trade. One is the claim that “green” energy producers will generate new jobs if the government just provides a combination of legislative mandates for its use (wind and solar) and, two, that a massive new trading apparatus in “carbon credits” for the generation of “greenhouse gas emissions” will protect the Earth against “global warming.” It is increasingly obvious to everyone that the Earth is cooling, breaking thousands of previous records for cool weather in cities around America and similar conditions worldwide. The tide, too, is turning against the “global warming” hoax that is failing in the face of the obvious cooling weather and climate. Using “global warming” to justify any government mandates or to empower the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate carbon dioxide as a “pollutant” is a lie. It is a very big lie. Carbon dioxide is vital to all life on Earth. As the Energy Tribune authors point out, “To generate real industrial jobs, however, you need a basic commodity to trade, such as oil, gas or coal.” This is in marked contrast to wind and solar energy. “The trouble is that alternative energy technologies currently don’t work. That is to say, they remain inefficient, offering a very poor energy return on investment.” “Cut off the flow of public subsidies and the alternative energy industrial revolution would grind to a halt tomorrow.” In the real world, in 2008 the Marcellus gas industry in Pennsylvania generated $2.3 billion in total value added, more than 29,000 jobs, and $240 million in state and local taxes. If you extrapolate that to other sectors of the energy industry, you would be looking at thousands of real jobs, not lost jobs, but President Obama and his sycophants would rather you not know about that. If you had a choice, would you prefer to see wind, solar and biofuel energy producers receive billions in taxpayer subsidies or would you prefer to see independent energy producers permitted to extract oil and natural gas or the coal industry have access to the U.S. reserves that would provide electricity for centuries to come? This is not mere conjecture. The experience of European Union nations demonstrates that “for every green job created, a real job is destroyed elsewhere in the economy.” Carbon regimes drive manufacturing to nations that do not impose limits on coal, oil and natural gas. For example, “Germany’s Angela Merkel is insisting on major exemptions for German heavy industry come December’s global climate summit in Copenhagen. Merkel’s government is also supporting the building of 26 new coal-fired power plants across Germany.” Compare that with one hundred such plants whose construction was thwarted in the United States by environmental groups such as the Sierra Club and Friends of the Earth. “In June, deputy head of Poland’s Solidarity trade union, Jaroslaw Gresik, estimated that the EU’s climate policy would cost 800,000 European jobs.” Widely circulated data from a study of the heavily subsidized wind and solar energy industry in Spain revealed that its alternative energy program destroyed nearly 110,500 jobs elsewhere in its economy or 2.2 jobs destroyed for every ‘green job’ created. Consumers there have seen their electricity rate increase by 31 percent. Other independent studies reveal that Obama’s claim of five million new “green” jobs would cost an estimated $500 billion to create. Wake up, America! The Big Lie about “Green jobs” is going to cost jobs. The Cap-and-Trade bill is a massive tax increase. The summer recess is the time to contact your Senator and Representative and tell them you oppose Cap-and-Trade. If it is passed, it will undermine the economy, cost jobs, and leave the nation increasingly dependent on the import of energy resources while our own lay underground, unexplored, untapped, unused. Source