Tag: Views

By Alan Caruba, Warning Signs

What does it take to be a dedicated environmentalist—a Green—these days?

“The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.” An example would be a belief in “global warming” despite the fact that the planet has been cooling for a decade.

“To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed.” This describes anyone who says that carbon dioxide, CO2, is responsible for a warming that is not occurring or that this gas could cause it.

“To deny objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies.” This is how Congress can restrict access to national energy sources—oil, natural gas, and coal—while claiming it wants the USA to be “energy independent.”

The definition above comes from George Orwell’s “1984” and describes “double think” in his allegory of Communism.

President Obama’s environmental beliefs and policies are a composite of outright lies and high on the list is his promise of “Green jobs.” This is based on his intention to radically transform our society from one in which energy jobs in areas such as oil production and mining are replaced by those providing wind and solar energy.

The auto industry is getting a makeover as General Motors brands that sell well are forced by government fiat to be abandoned for those few that people want or can afford.

Regarding so-called Green jobs, Thomas J. Pyle, president of the Institute for Energy Research, recently pointed out that a study in Spain that was released in late March made clear that, “Spain has spent billions in taxpayer resources to subsidize renewable energy programs in an effort to jumpstart its ailing economy and what they have gotten in return are fewer jobs, skyrocketing debt and some of the highest and most regressive energy prices in the developed world.”

The lies Greens are telling, whether in Spain are here in the USA, always produce the same results. For every “Green job” created by the Spanish government over the past decade, 2.2 other jobs were destroyed as a result. To not expect the same result here is to be willfully ignorant.

All the talk of “clean energy”, wind and solar, is now shifting into high gear with the introduction of the Waxman-Markey legislation on March 31. It is touted as “a new direction for America’s clean energy future and fighting global warming.” At the risk of being repetitive, there is NO global warming. The Earth is now ten years into a cooling cycle.

This is possibly the most dreadful piece of legislation to be put before Congress in the history of the nation. It is the deliberate reordering of American society because without adequate energy, the economy will implode and the lifestyles that Americans take for granted, all based on affordable electricity and fuel for transportation will cease to exist.

It is based entirely on the “global warming” lie. It is based entirely on the lie that carbon dioxide (CO2) is the driving force behind “climate change.”

Clean jobs are just one more of the endless lies that Greens tell in order to put an end to America’s capacity to compete in the global marketplace.

Clean energy is the term applied to wind and solar energy, deemed “renewable”, amidst more lies about the oil and coal which most surely will neither be renewable nor even available if Congress and the White House continue to put the national lands under which they exist off limits to all exploration and extraction.

Totally supported by government subsidies and mandates for their use, wind and solar energy represents barely one percent of the electricity Americans use every day.

In countless ways, the Greens are working to destroy America’s ability to have the energy it needs to survive and grow. Our economy, already suffering from government mandates that destroyed the nation’s housing market, will utterly collapse when it can no longer access the energy required for the future.

Clean energy is a dirty lie.

Alan Caruba writes a daily blog at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com and a weekly commentary at http://www.anxietycenter.com, the website of The National Anxiety Center.

By Alan Caruba

It is the height of vanity to think the Earth will come to an end shortly after one’s mortal life ends. Some people think that, without them, the Earth cannot survive and we call these idiots environmentalists and, sometimes, megalomaniacs.

A perfect example of this is James Lovelock, the man credited with coming up with the Gaia Theory that says the Earth is a living creature and, of course, that humans are some kind of horrid cockroach infestation that is destroying it.

Now in his 90s, Lovelock has written “The Vanishing Face of Gaia: A Final Warming.” This book is an extension of all the other astonishingly bad “science” that has brought fame and fortune to Lovelock as he and other alleged scientists began warning that “global heating may all but eliminate people from the Earth.”

Like Al Gore and James Hansen, two other prominent “global warming” charlatans, Lovelock continues to say that the Earth is warming while, for the past ten years, the meteorological satellites and other measurement instruments have reported a distinct cooling trend. At the same time, the Sun which is the primary instrument of the Earth’s climate cycles, has gone “quiet.” It is currently into one of its well known cycles of low to no sunspot activity.

At the heart of all environmentalist propaganda is the view that humans are causing “global warming” and destroying the Earth by doing things like raising crops and animal stocks to eat, using the abundant oil, natural gas, and coal sources as energy for transportation and the maintenance of our lives and industries, and generally fouling everything we touch from our rivers, oceans, land areas, and other species.

“Simply cutting back fossil-fuel burning, energy use, and the destruction of natural forests will not be a sufficient answer to global heating,” says Lovelock, oblivious to the reality of a cooling planet; one that is on the cusp of a predictable ice age since we are now about 11,500 years into an interglacial period since the last one.

Why anyone credits Lovelock with having any special knowledge or insight is beyond my understanding. He made his early reputation for his discoveries in the transfer of infectious disease and advances in the measurement of trace gases in the Earth’s atmosphere. The man is not a climatologist or meteorologist.

Lovelock and others keep telling people that carbon dioxide will be the death of all of us, claiming erroneously that it is critical to the amount of heat that exists in the Earth’s atmosphere, but CO2 is barely 0.038 percent of the atmosphere, a very minor player that shows up in increased amounts 800 or more years after any major climate change.

Moreover, there have been periods in the Earth’s past when there was a lot more CO2 and, not surprisingly, forests, jungles, and all manner of vegetation were even more abundant than now. Dinosaurs grew to huge sizes thanks to the rich diet available or by dining off of the herbivores. And then they went extinct. No one suggests they died from an excess of CO2 in the environment.

The essential problem with Lovelock’s theories about carbon dioxide and global warming is that they lack any scientific merit. The other problem is that environmentalists and politicians worldwide have latched onto them as a means to exert total control over the lives of everyone on Earth.

If Lovelock were just an obscure scientist raving about the end of the world in some English pub, we could happily ignore him, but he is one of the founders of the movement that has been taken up by the United Nations and implemented in various ways by nations that have wasted billions on so-called “clean energy” such as wind and solar energy, biofuels like ethanol, and the set-aside of vast areas of America to ensure that millions of tons of coal cannot be mined, nor billions of barrels of oil and cubic feet of natural gas tapped for our use.

Always, at the heart of Lovelock’s and environmentalist programs is the view that humans are to blame for the Earth’s extraordinary, chaotic, and uncontrollable climate systems.

Lovelock despairs that “No voluntary human act can reduce our numbers fast enough even to slow climate change. Merely by existing, people and their dependent animals are responsible for more than ten times the greenhouse gas emissions of all the airline travel in the world.”

Lovelock thinks it was “brave” for ten thousand people to make the long journey to Bali, the site of the last United Nations climate control conference, but says that “As we hold our meetings and talk of stewardship, Gaia still moves step by step toward the hot state…” No, Jim, Gaia—Earth—is cooling, not heating. That invalidates all the rest of the gibberish in his latest book and the lies President Obama and others keep telling about global warming.

When it comes to the Earth, Lovelock says that it has “not evolved solely for our benefit, and any changes we make to it are at our own risk. That way of thinking makes clear that we have no special human rights; we are merely one of the partner species in the great enterprise of Gaia. We are creatures of Darwinian evolution, a transient species with a limited lifespan, as were all our numerous distant ancestors.”

Unlike other “transient species”, however, the human one has organized itself into complex societies that permit it to use energy sources to build vast cities, developed transportation that move millions around the globe every day, have communications systems that allow people to address all manner of needs and problems, created agricultural systems that feed six billion people every day, discovered how to eliminate or cure diseases that threaten our lives, and also found time to create music, drama, and literature that enhances our lives.

All this has occurred in the very brief period of about ten thousand years from the days the first humans stood upright, banded together in families, tribes, and nations, and about five thousand years ago began to devote most of our time to looting, pillaging and killing one another with greater efficiency.

Lovelock is now closing in on his own mortality and the odds are that he will join the many other prophets of doom who despise their own species while worshipping an Earth that constantly reminds us all with earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes, floods, droughts, ice ages, and other natural calamities that we are not in charge of anything.

Alan Caruba blogs daily at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com. He also posts a weekly commentary on the Internet site of The National Anxiety Center, www.anxietycenter.com

By Bob Ellis, Dakota Voice

Alan Caruba’s latest column provides some simple bullet-point truths about the religion of global warming which demonstrate that adherents to this religion are believing in something as silly as ancient astrology:

Here are a few things you need to keep in mind about carbon dioxide:

– CO2 is not a “pollutant.” It is a trace gas necessary for all life of Earth because it is essential to the growth of all vegetation.

– Without CO2 all vegetation—grasses, forests, jungles, crops such as wheat, corn and rice—dies. Then herbivores die. Then you die.

– The CO2 produced by human industry or activity is a miniscule fraction of a percentage of greenhouse gases. It constitutes a mere 0.038% of the atmosphere.

– The oceans emit 96.5% of all greenhouse gases, holding and releasing CO2 as it has down through the millennia of Earth’s existence.

– In past millennia, CO2 levels were often much higher than the present.

– CO2 levels rise hundreds of years after temperature rise on planet Earth.

– The Sun is the primary source of warmth on Earth. Rising CO2 is an effect of global warming, not a cause.

– Both global warming and cooling are natural phenomenon over which humans have no control.

– The Earth is not currently warming. It has been cooling for a decade and likely to continue for at least another twenty years or longer. If a new Ice Age is triggered, it will last at least 10,000 years.

– Polar ice is now at record levels and still growing.

Obviously this reality doesn’t match up with the flames of hysteria being fanned by Al Gore and the UN. The science is simply not on their side.

So why this massive campaign of unscientific lies? Well, it’s not hard to figure out, when you understand the great motivation of power-hungry big-government socialists.

And Caruba spells it out:

The EPA proposal is not about science. It is about power and it is about money. As the Wall Street Journal noted, “The administration has proposed a cap-and-trade system that could raise $646 billion by 2019 through government auctions of emission allowances.”

Folks, don’t fall for more socialist lies aimed to remove more of the money you earned from your pocket to make even bigger government which aims to rob you of more of your God-given liberties.

More and more Americans are waking up to the fact that the fantasy of anthropogenic global warming is a load of hot air.

Isn’t it time you took a look at how thin the “facts” are behind Al Gore’s religion, and join the rest of us in rejecting this anti-American nonsense? It’s time we relegated this crazy notion of man-made climate disaster to the place it truly belongs: a Saturday-afternoon C-grade Sci Fi Channel movie–something you might watch if you were snowed in and stuck in the house, but wouldn’t bother with if you had anything better to do.

By Alan Caruba, Warning Signs & The National Anxiety Center

I doubt that most Americans have a clue what the leading Green organizations like Friends of the Earth and the Sierra Club have as their agenda for 2009. They have already made it known to their members, so I will share it with you.

There are literally dozens of these groups in the United States and each has their own particular focus of attention, but the largest among them play well together in the giant sandbox of Green utopian fantasies. That’s why both FOE and Sierra Club announced they are looking forward to “a clean slate” from the Obama administration.

“There’s nothing like a fresh start. On his first day in office, President Obama could make four decisions that would start 2009 with a ‘clean slate’ of energy policies,” said Friends of the Earth at the same time, the Sierra Club announced its own “Clean Slate Energy Agenda” that—surprise—was the same.

The focus of both is on energy use and accessibility. Both want a lot LESS energy use. Along with all other environmental organizations both use the bogy man of “global warming” to demand huge reductions in “emissions.”

The Sierra Club informed its members that it wants to “reduce global warming emissions quickly by making it possible for over a dozen states to implement their clean car requirements.” This is the objective of one of President Obama’s earliest executive orders. Driving up the cost of owning and operating a car directly strikes at the ability of Americans to be mobile and independent. Justifying it as necessary to reduce global warming is just a big fat lie. There is NO global warming.

Friends of the Earth are totally opposed to any economy stimulus that might include improving the nation’s infrastructure of highways. They warned the plan “is in danger of being hijacked by the road-building lobby, which wants billions of dollars for unnecessary new roads that would increase global warming pollution.”

Over the years I have come to marvel at the ability of environmental organizations to conjure up statistics faster than a magician can pull a rabbit out of a hat. “”Transportation is responsible for 30 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions and 70 percent of our oil consumption” warned Friends of the Earth. What does it matter that carbon dioxide emissions (CO2) have no impact whatever on the Earth’s climate? And just what is wrong with oil consumption if it contributes to the success and growth of the nation’s economy?

“Just 10 miles of a new four-lane highway lead to emissions that are equivalent to the lifetime emissions of 46,700 new Hummers,” said Friends of the Earth. To which I reply, who cares? With oil prices plunging, those Hummers, particularly in parts of the nation hit by bad weather, look like a good idea. Bottom line: if you can afford a Hummer, where is it written you should not be allowed to own one?

Friends of the Earth, however, want to “shift the debate” in the environmental community to get the nation to avoid “car-centric highways and toward sustainable alternatives such as transit, biking, walking, and smart growth development, that will help fight global warming.”

What are these Green groups going to do when the vast population of the United States and elsewhere around the world concludes that there is no global warming? That day is not far off insofar as the Earth is now fully a decade into a cooling cycle that promises longer, harsher winters and a shift to generally cooler temperatures that will affect all northern hemisphere nations in particular and to an extent those in the southern hemisphere as well.

This explains why the United Nations environmental program has shifted into high gear to get the bogus Kyoto Protocols ratified. Not surprisingly, the U.S. has never signed on to it and even European nations that did are balking at emission reduction mandates. Meanwhile, neither China, nor India, nor many under-developed nations are subject to any of the restrictions. It’s a plan to undermine the economies of developed nations because greens hate humanity in general and successful economies in particular.

We’re not even halfway through the “clean slate” proposals. They include Sierra Club’s call to “require new and existing coal power plants to limit their global warming emissions” and to “end destructive mountaintop removal mining…” Finally, they want to “restore America’s international leadership in the fight to end global warming by publicly committing the U.S. to cut its CO2 emissions at least 35 percent by 2020.”

The Greens are so demented that the American Bird Conservancy released a statement in mid-December hailing the appointments of the new Obama administration. Its idea of stimulating the economy was to “invest $29 million dollars over the next four years in the Neotropical Migratory Bird Conservation Act” because “bird watching is now big business.” The Conservancy wants the U.S. to “invest “$540 million in America’s 543 national wildlife refuges” to create more “green jobs.” What a big help that will be to Americans who live primarily in America’s cities and suburbs.

The bird-lovers are a bit conflicted over another recommendation to “invest $30.5 million in the five year extension of the renewable energy production tax credit and making renewable energy tax incentives fully refundable. Wind energy is one of the alternative sources of energy” they recommend, but “if left unregulated, has the potential to kill large numbers of birds and bats and harm fragile habitats.” Well, which is it? Dead birds or more “alternative” energy? Both are extremely bad ideas.

The Greens for all their enthusiasm to spend tax dollars on their favorite notions remain opposed to any real energy generation by coal-fired or nuclear plants to meet current and future needs for electricity. They are utterly opposed to people driving around in cars for any reason and, one must assume, trucks that deliver the goods we require to live.

The longer one listens to what the Greens want, the more one becomes convinced that the members of these organizations must be utterly brain dead and that their objective is to render America a third-world nation by opposing the building of new power plants, along with the exploration and extraction of our natural resources of coal, natural gas, and oil.

Does this sound like a good plan to you?

Alan Caruba writes a daily blog at Warning Signs. Every week, he posts a column on the website of The National Anxiety Center.

By Alan Caruba, Warning Signs
On Monday, March 2nd, environmentalists will gather in Washington, D.C. for what they self-describe as the “biggest climate civil disobedience in U.S. history.” The purpose of the Capitol Climate Action Coalition is to bring at least 2,500 people to Washington, D.C. for the purpose of protesting the Capitol Power Plant that uses coal to generate electricity for the Capitol Building. The lighting, heating, cooling, and all other uses of electricity depend on this plant. The protest asserts that using coal for this purpose will contribute to “global warming.” Only there isn’t any global warming and coal is used to generate just over 50% of all the electricity the nation requires every day. Need it be said that both Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, and Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid, has endorsed the protest? The plant is owned by Congress. The Coalition says the plant is a symbol of “coal’s stranglehold on the environment and public health.” This is so absurd that only the brainwashed herds of people who still believe global warming is real would believe it. What the rest of us will be seeing is just one more piece of propaganda by the environmental movement to demonize coal and to advance the greatest hoax of modern times, “global warming.” Since 1998, the weather satellites have recorded a steady cooling trend on Earth. The Center for Public Integrity has analyzed the data and concluded that, “The number of lobbyists seeking to influence federal policy on climate change has grown more than 300 percent in five years, with a slew of new interests from Main Street to Wall Street adding to the challenge of addressing global warming.” These lobbyists represent a range of concerned parties from those who want to put the brakes on the global warming lies and the regulations that will flow from them to those who want to shape “cap-and-trade” legislation to do the least amount of harm to their interests. The largest number are those trying to end the use of coal as a source of energy in America. Dr. James Hansen, the man who in 1988 got the global warming ball rolling by testifying before a congressional committee that global warming was the greatest threat facing the Earth, actually participated in a video urging people to come protest. However, Dr. Hansen has been a government employee for decades, the head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. The Institute has become known for fudging the actual facts about climate trends, having to retract its statements. Dr. Hansen recently wrote to the heads of England, Germany and other nations demanding that they shut down all their coal-fired plants. There is something profoundly unethical, if not completely nutty, about Dr. Hansen’s activities and he should be fired. It is doubtful he will be because President Obama is on record as being opposed to coal-fired plants and doesn’t want any more of them built to meet the demand for more electricity as the population of the nation continues to grow. Obama has surrounded himself with dedicated socialists like Carol Browner as his environmental policy adviser, along with a complete loony, John P. Holdren, as his science advisor. Holdren favors surrendering U.S. sovereignty to “a comprehensive Planetary Regime.” The Coalition organizing the protest represent many of the largest environmental groups in the nation. There is even a television commercial being aired to suggest that coal-fired plants are a threat to everyone’s health. This is such blatant nonsense that it defies the mind. Do these people and the Obama administration want to plunge the nation into darkness? Well, why not? If your objective is to destroy the greatest economy and the world’s beacon for freedom and democracy, this makes sense. Meanwhile, the March 2nd protest will serve as yet another platform for all the lies the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has been telling for years. This globalist entity has used false and flawed computer models that have no relationship to the Earth’s actual climate system to advance the global warming hoax. While the nation’s economy continues to crater, the environmentalists are busy trying to divert everyone’s attention by raising their cries about global warming. You can be sure this will be big news so far as the mainstream media is concerned. It will get wide coverage. The second annual International Conference on Climate Change to be held in New York next week, March 8-10 is not likely to get media attention other than to ridicule a gathering of more than 500 of the world’s leading climatologists and meteorologists, the president of the Czech Republic, a former U.S. astronaut, and others who will offer scientific papers and presentations that demonstrate that global warming is a hoax. The D.C. protest will include actress Daryl Hannah and Grammy winner Kathy Mattea as part of the group that will speak out against the most abundant source of energy America possesses. This protest is part of an effort to systematically destroy America by denying it the electricity in needs to exist. Meanwhile, Congress refuses to allow any exploration and drilling for America’s oil and is putting off limits millions of acres of land that potentially is home to vast amounts of coal and oil that will continue to be denied to Americans. You don’t have to be paranoid or a conspiracy freak to believe that the enemy is inside the gates. Alan Caruba writes a daily blog at Warning Signs. Every week, he posts a column on the website of The National Anxiety Center .

By Alan Caruba

E.P.A. Expected to Regulate Carbon Dioxide, Global Warming Hoax

When The New York Times publishes a story, as it did on February 19, regarding the next step in the Obama administration’s intention to destroy the U.S. economy, it’s a very good idea to pay attention. “E.P.A. Expected to Regulate Carbon Dioxide” was the headline of John M. Broder’s article. “The Environmental Protection Agency is expected to act for the first time to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that scientists blame for the warming of the planet, according to top Obama administration officials.”

Those “top Obama administration officials” are unnamed and so too are the “scientists” claiming that the planet is “warming.” For the record, although you will never read this in The New York Times, the planet is NOT warming. It is COOLING. It has been cooling for a decade now and it is no secret to meteorologists who track the day to day temperatures or climatologists who study long term trends.

On March 8-10, more than 500 of those scientists who dispute the vast global warming hoax will meet in New York for a second international conference on climate change sponsored by The Heartland Institute, a non-profit, free market think tank.

Joining those scientists and others will be Vaclav Klaus, the president of the Czech Republic and current president of the European Union. Also participating will be Jose Maria Aznar, the former prime minister of Spain, along with American astronaut, Dr. Jack Schmitt, Richard Lindzen of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and other leading scientists who have led the effort to shed the light of truth on the global warming hoax.

You can be sure of one thing. They will all continue to be attacked as crazies denying the “consensus” that Al Gore is always braying about. Science is not about “consensus”, it is about reproducible facts. All the “facts” about melting glaciers, dramatically rising sea levels, and other claims by the GW crowd have been refuted.

The claims of the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the basis for the Kyoto Protocols to limit carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions have been demolished repeatedly but the mainstream press refuses to report this, nor the fact that the IPCC is a political, not scientific, entity designed to advance the global warming hoax. Many of the scientists initially enticed to participate have since resigned. The vast bulk, easily 80% or more of those cited as IPCC members are not scientists who deal with issues of climate.

The IPCC’s claims have been based entirely on computer models. This in itself should have raised flags long ago. These models, as Hans Schreuder, an analytical chemist, has pointed out, “regard the earth as a flat disk bathed in a constant 24 hour haze of sunlight, without north and south poles, without clouds, and without any relationship to the real planet we live on.”

The claim that rising levels of carbon dioxide are responsible for a global warming that is not happening is entirely without scientific merit and, if for no other reason, should not be the basis for implementing EPA regulation of so-called “greenhouse gas” emissions under the Clean Air Act.

While it is true that there has been an increase in CO2 since the end of the last mini-ice age that lasted from 1500 to 1850, there is no research that demonstrates CO2 and an increase in the Earth’s temperature has any relationship. What warming occurred was entirely natural. Indeed, CO2, at less than 400 parts per million by volume, cannot influence atmospheric temperature or climate in any measurable way.

CO2 represents just 0.038% of the Earth’s atmosphere. The dominant factors in the Earth overall temperature are the Sun, the oceans, and even clouds.

If the U.S. weather service climate models are unable to predict changes in the weather by more than a week’s time, why would anyone believe that the IPCC’s models could predict it twenty, fifty or a hundred years from now?

Despite this, the EPA is tasked to impose regulations on CO2 emissions that would wreck the economy by requiring a “cap-and-trade” of “carbon credits” that would impact every single business and industrial activity. The European Union tried this and it has proved a massive failure and a huge drag on its economy.

Carbon dioxide is not a “pollutant” as the Supreme Court has ruled. How can the Earth’s second most vital gas, other than oxygen, be a pollutant? Not one single piece of vegetation on Earth could exist without CO2. Without vegetation, no animal life including our own could exist on Earth.

The notion that the EPA would regulate it is preposterous. It is absurd. It is criminal. It is immoral. It has no basis whatever in the actual science of the world’s climate. It is based on a massive, global hoax masterminded by the United Nations and carried out by charlatans such as Al Gore and NASA’s James Hansen.

It is, however, the vehicle for the political control of the world’s economy that would fulfill the United Nation’s global government schemes and, if enacted here in America, would mark the destruction of an economy that is the engine of the world’s economy, despite its current difficulties.

The Earth has existed for 4.5 billion years. The assertion that human beings and/or industrial activity have any effect on its atmosphere is an instrument of fascism.

Here is the beginning of my post. And here is the rest of it.