While the three remaining presidential candidates try to out-green each other, the rest of the world is rebelling at the astronomical costs involved. “Somehow” this rebellion has received little U.S. media attention. This explains how Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John McCain can still advocate government- and tax-heavy approaches with straight faces.
Meanwhile, my nearly daily emails from the indefatigable Benny Peiser of CCnet, whose assemblages of environment and science links and summaries are essential for anyone who wants to keep up with worldwide environmentalist mischief, tell me that:
Governments elsewhere are balking at meeting mandatory targets for reducing so-called greenhouse emissions. A recent G8- and Europe-related example is here (”Rich nations must lead on climate change: UN official”).
Those same governments are using “climate protection” as a crutch as they attempt to do what governments do best — raise taxes.
Citizens, and politicians preferring to remain in office, are saying “Enough!”
Fortunately, government attempts at fiscal extraction are not faring well. First, from Germany:
“German Car Tax Plan to Be Delayed — Government”
The German government’s controversial plans to change rules on car tax from 2009 to take exhaust emissions into account will likely be delayed further, government officials said on Friday.
… The measures, part of a climate protection package agreed last year, have stoked tensions within Germany’s ruling conservative-Social Democrat coalition.
The measures need the backing of the upper house Bundesrat where the 16 states are represented as they receive around 9 billion euros ($14.2 billion) of annual income from the levy.
In Canada, a columnist who supports that country’s Liberal Party and appears to buy into “global warming” sees big political danger:
“The Suicidal Allure of a Carbon Tax”
If a carbon tax is to define and decide the next federal election in Liberal favour, Stéphane Dion will have to be a ghostbuster. Even though he seems blissfully oblivious, the Liberal leader’s bold gambit is haunted by the bad memory of too many other big ideas.
… There’s no doubt that a specific carbon tax is a political accident waiting to happen.
“The Sun Sets on Rudd’s Climate Change Credibility”
Kevin Rudd’s climate change honeymoon ended last week.
… Most Australians when surveyed want the government to fix climate change. But they also want cheaper petrol and electricity. Labor has been happy to play to this information disconnect by indulging voters’ naivety about what is coming, allowing them to believe these symbolic acts would be enough to solve the problem.
So they can hardly cry foul when the same voters turned on them.
The government’s flagship plan to combat global warming is hanging by a thread as National [the National Party — Ed] withdraws support for the Emissions Trading Scheme.
In a policy announcement on Sunday morning, leader John Key has revealed the party will not be supporting the scheme in its current form.
… Key says the government is cutting corners and risking people’s financial security in order to reach a political deadline for the ETS.
But the backlash is worst in the UK. Because of it, Gordon Brown may not be prime minister much longer. Just as Margaret Thatcher’s poll tax wrecked her once-assumed invincibility in 1990, Brown’s “Green Road Tax” (in essence, a per-vehicle levy of up to £440, or about $870, on “environmentally unfriendly cars”), as well as angry lorry drivers (truckers) who are incensed over higher fuel taxes, threaten to do the same to him.
For these and other reasons, Brown’s supply of political capital has shrunk dangerously. This month alone, his Labour Party suffered its worst drubbing in 40 years in local elections, including the London mayor’s race, and followed it three weeks later by losing control of a district it had held for 30 years.
Upping the UK madness ante, a group of MPs has proposed “personal carbon credits.” I’m not kidding:
The government should push ahead with a “radical” system of personal “carbon credits” if it wants to meet emissions targets, a committee of MPs has said.
They said people would be able to engage with the scheme, which would see everybody given an annual carbon limit to “spend” on items such as fuel and energy bills.
Those who wanted to spend more than their limit would be able to buy extra credits from low carbon emitters.
This prompted one Times Online columnist to ask, “What next? Little (green) Hitlers patrolling the streets?” I’m wondering when they will take up differences in individuals’ breathing rates and generation of flatulence.
What is happening outside the U.S. should be instructive to our presidential contenders. If Obama, Clinton, and McCain think they’ll somehow have an easier time pushing direct and indirect carbon-related taxes and cap-and-trade schemes on the public, I have a two-word reminder from the, uh, ash heap of 1993 history: BTU tax.
Politics: Imagine an America where the government decides what profits are acceptable. Imagine our country with the oil industry nationalized. Impossible? Not with Democrats in control of Washington.
One California Democrat, saying out loud what many on her side of the aisle have been thinking for some time, has threatened to seize the oil industry.
"This liberal will be all about socializing, uh, uh . . . would be about . . . basically taking over and the government running all of your companies," Rep. Maxine Waters told oil executives on May 22 during yet another show-trial congressional hearing.
Socializing, nationalizing — the term doesn't matter. But the result is the same. Oil industry takeovers are disastrous. Does Waters really want the U.S. to go the way of Venezuela, Iran, Bolivia or Mexico? Those nations that have nationalized their domestic oil operations and have suffered economically because of it.
And as wretched as their situations are now, their economic prospects are even poorer as long as their corrupt governments continue to control their oil industries.
Meanwhile, Waters' colleague from Pennsylvania's 11th district, Rep. Paul Kanjorski, is proposing a federal "Reasonable Profits Board." Its members would be charged with determining when oil and gas companies' "profits are in excess."
Forget that it's impossible to objectively define what's "excessive." When the energy companies' profits increase, so will their federal taxes.
Like many in his party — including Sen. Hillary Clinton, who has threatened to seize oil company profits for her political projects — Kanjorski believes the laws of economics are malleable to someone as smart as he. He's apparently deluded himself into thinking the mere threat of taxing oil companies' windfall profits will encourage them to keep their prices low.
In actual practice, though, the opposite happens. If the energy industry were relieved by Washington of its "excessive" profits, its incentive and means to explore for new sources of energy and develop them would vanish. The only response the market could have is to raise prices to forestall shortages as the supply is drained.
Skeptics who want to check the data need to search no further than the eight-year 1980s run of the energy industry windfall profit tax. During that time, domestic oil output fell to its lowest level in two decades. With domestic companies unable to extract more crude, the country's dependence on foreign sources rose by 8% to 16%, according to the Congressional Research Service.
It's possible Kanjorski knows better but is simply grandstanding for the voters back home. Remember, this is the lawmaker who admitted that "We, the Democrats . . . didn't say it, but we implied that if we won the congressional elections, we could stop the war. Now anybody who's a good student of government knows that wasn't true. But, you know, in the temptation to win back the Congress, we sort of stretched the facts."
It matters not, though, if Kanjorski is driven by ignorance or political opportunism. The outcome would be the same.
Kanjorski's plan sounds like an East German nightmare and Waters' as if it were taken from a fascist manifesto. But they're only a small taste of what we'll get if the Democrats keep both chambers of Congress and win the White House this fall.
By this time next year it will seem that Sen. Barack Obama's proposal to bully American businesses — through what's cynically called the Patriot Corporation Act — is the least harmful of all the economy- and spirit-crushing legislation being rammed through Washington.
It is well-established that the ancient Mayan, Aztec, Incan, and Toltec peoples offered human sacrifices, probably in the belief that such rituals would placate the gods who were in charge of nature; for instance, to help bring life-giving rains to their crops.
Although we shudder at the thought of such barbaric practices, I believe that we have unwittingly reinstituted human sacrifice in modern times. But while the list of justifications has grown immensely, our new rituals are still performed in the name of avoiding the wrath of the gods of nature.
Our environmental protection practices have already caused the deaths of millions of people, mainly in poor African countries. By far the most humans — mostly women and children — have been sacrificed in the mistaken belief that the use of any amount of the pesticide DDT would harm the environment. As a result, the preventable disease malaria has continued to decimate Africa.
Only recently has this genocide disguised as environmentalism been partly reversed through the reinstituted practice of twice-yearly DDT treatments of the entryways to homes. While most environmentalists continue to insist that there is no connection between international bans on DDT and human deaths, such protestations really are like denying that the Holocaust ever happened.
Now, the Senate is preparing to debate the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act, which aims to limit carbon-dioxide emissions in the belief that more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is disrupting the Earth’s climate and ecosystems.
Since we now have the scientific method, we rely on computer models to predict these future catastrophes rather than on our fears and prejudices. While this gives the illusion of modern objective precision, the truth is that all we have done is enlisted one of our modern idols — the computer — to justify what we want to believe anyway. And that fundamental belief is that anything mankind does to nature is inherently evil.
To be sure, the scientific method can help us understand the physical world… something the ancients could not do. But global-warming theory, unfortunately, is out of the realm of being a legitimate, testable scientific hypothesis.
For instance, to be a valid scientific hypothesis, there should be some kind of climate behavior observable in nature that would be inconsistent with the theory that mankind is responsible for global warming. But instead, everything we observe has now become consistent with the theory. Floods and droughts. Too much snow and too little snow. More hurricanes and fewer hurricanes. It is sometimes pointed out that a theory that explains everything really explains nothing.
Similarly, there is no experiment we can carry out in the laboratory to test the theory. Yes, carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, and yes we are adding more of it to the atmosphere. But since weather processes create and control over 90 percent of the Earth’s natural greenhouse effect through their continuous adjustments to water vapor and cloud amounts, it is not at all obvious that more CO2 will cause substantial warming. Indeed, it could well be that one of the functions of weather is to maintain a relatively constant greenhouse effect, no matter how much carbon dioxide is present.
Alarmists like Al Gore will use pseudo-scientific justifications and comparisons in their attempt to make a connection between carbon dioxide and global warming. Even though CO2 is necessary for life on Earth, the alarmists insist on calling it a pollutant, referring to our atmosphere as an “open sewer.”
For instance, Gore likes to point out that Venus has far more CO2 in its atmosphere than the Earth does, and its surface is hot enough to melt lead. Therefore, more CO2 causes warming.
But we also know that the Martian atmosphere has 15 times as much CO2 as our own atmosphere, and its surface temperature averages about 70 deg. F below zero. So you see, in science a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
Why do we love to believe that mankind is a plague upon the Earth? We view anything and everything that happens in nature, no matter how barbaric, bloody, or destructive, as good. Indeed, the word “natural” has no negative connotation at all.
If a volcano like Mt. Pinatubo in the Philippines dumps millions of tons of sulfur into the stratosphere, cooling the Earth for two or three years, this is simply Mother Nature at work. If humans did it, we would call it an environmental catastrophe.
And now we are teaching our children to perform their own acts of worship, again hoping to placate the gods of the natural world. Substituting compact fluorescent light bulbs for incandescent ones, and turning the light off when they leave the room, makes them feel good about themselves and their relationship to nature. These rituals being taught in the public schools will help define their still-developing worldviews and religious beliefs.
Lieberman-Warner will, in effect, punish the use of energy by making it more expensive. Yet, energy is necessary for all human activities. We are already causing a food crisis around the world by converting food, such as corn, into liquid fuels for transportation. Now, with the Climate Security Act, we will also be causing additional turmoil at home as the poor struggle to survive in a world where only the middle class and wealthy can afford to live relatively comfortably.
We will, in effect, be sacrificing even more humans at the altar of radical environmentalism in the vain hope that the gods in charge of weather and climate will look favorably upon us, and not destroy us.
Despite the “science is settled” and “consensus” claims of the global-warming alarmists, the fear of catastrophic consequences from rising temperatures has been driven not so much by good science as by computer models and adroit publicity fed to a compliant media. The lack of solid empirical evidence is striking. The theory is thus highly vulnerable in two ways. One is the accumulation of evidence that appears to falsify it, and the other is a public opinion that is no longer susceptible to media alarms. There are signs that both of these events are happening.
On the theory that rising CO2 emissions should lead to increased temperatures, we should have been experiencing steadily increasing warming, as we have certainly had steadily increasing CO2 discharged into the atmosphere. But the contrary has happened. Global average temperatures have been flat for the past decade, since 1998, and actually declined somewhat last year. Skeptics have been pointing out for a long time that there is no correlation in the historical record between CO2 and global temperature.
Just recently, Nature, which has been generally supportive of the warming alarm, published an article from German researchers predicting that the temperature would decline for another few years. That finally got media attention and produced some overdue questioning of the alarmist scenario. The authors were quick to point out that their article predicted that the heat would start rising again after 2015 or so, and that the big worry was still on. Others pointed out that 1998 was an unfairly chosen base year from which to measure that flat temperature, because a significant El Niño event that year made temperatures unusually high.
But, skeptics reply, if we start instead from 2001, we still get that flat or declining graph. And they are asking, Well, what kind of evidence would you accept as falsifying the reigning global-warming thesis? Another ten years of flat or declining temperatures? A comeback of arctic sea ice (which is already happening in both polar regions)? What? And the answer, as for all true believers, is that those who have staked their reputations on global-warming alarm are going to stick by their claims, because true believers cannot admit to being wrong.
Meanwhile, public support for measures meant to curb so-called greenhouse emissions is noticeably waning, especially in Europe, where “green” taxes are beginning to bite. The Labour government in Britain is under particular attack for effectively raising the costs of fuel for driving, heating, and generating electricity, costs that weigh most heavily on families of modest means. Labour is feeling the public’s disapproval at the polls, notably where it lost the race for mayor of London to a Conservative who beat a Labour incumbent running loudly and explicitly on a “green” program. Elsewhere in Europe, business leaders are warning that industries like steel, cement, and other large emitters of greenhouse gasses will leave the continent and take their jobs with them. They warn of Europe’s declining competitiveness in world markets across the board. The United States has yet to feel the full backlash against anti-global-arming schemes, and all three presidential candidates are still proclaiming their fealty to the alarm.
But the rumblings in Congress are increasing; and one can bet that any legislation, if it succeeds at all, will try very hard not to harm the American economy. The corn ethanol subsidy program has already turned sour, and the public and the politicians are on the alert. Stand by.
Now that another Earth Day has come and gone, let's look at some environmentalist predictions that they would prefer we forget.
At the first Earth Day celebration, in 1969, environmentalist Nigel Calder warned, "The threat of a new ice age must now stand alongside nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death and misery for mankind." C.C. Wallen of the World Meteorological Organization said, "The cooling since 1940 has been large enough and consistent enough that it will not soon be reversed."
In 1968, Paul Ehrlich, Vice President Gore's hero and mentor, predicted there would be a major food shortage in the U.S. and "in the 1970s ... hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death." Ehrlich said 65 million Americans would die of starvation between 1980 and 1989, and by 1999 the U.S. population would have declined to 22.6 million. Ehrlich's predictions about England were gloomier: "If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000."
World `likely to be ruined' by 2000
In 1972, a report was written for the Club of Rome warning the world would run out of gold by 1981, mercury and silver by 1985, tin by 1987 and petroleum, copper, lead and natural gas by 1992. Gordon Taylor, in his 1970 work "The Doomsday Book," said Americans were using 50 percent of the world's resources and "by 2000 they [Americans] will, if permitted, be using all of them." In 1975, the Environmental Fund took out full-page ads warning, "The World as we know it will likely be ruined by the year 2000."Harvard University biologist George Wald in 1970 warned, "... civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind." That was the same year that Sen. Gaylord Nelson warned, in Look Magazine, that by 1995 "... somewhere between 75 and 85 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct."
It's not just latter-day doomsayers who have been wrong; doomsayers have always been wrong. In 1885, the U.S. Geological Survey announced there was "little or no chance" of oil being discovered in California, and a few years later they said the same about Kansas and Texas. In 1939, the U.S. Department of the Interior said American oil supplies would last only another 13 years. In 1949, the Secretary of the Interior said the end of U.S. oil supplies was in sight. Having learned nothing from its earlier erroneous claims, in 1974 the U.S. Geological Survey advised us that the U.S. had only a 10-year supply of natural gas. According to the American Gas Association, there's a 1,000 to 2,500 year supply.
Here are my questions: In 1970, when environmentalists were making predictions of manmade global cooling and the threat of an ice age and millions of Americans starving to death, what kind of government policy should we have undertaken to prevent such a calamity?
When Ehrlich predicted that England would not exist in the year 2000, what steps should the British Parliament have taken in 1970 to prevent such a dire outcome?
In 1939, when the U.S. Department of the Interior warned that we only had oil supplies for another 13 years, what actions should President Roosevelt have taken?
Why believe them this time?
Finally, what makes us think that environmental alarmism is any more correct now that they have switched their tune to manmade global warming?
A few facts: Over 95 percent of the greenhouse effect is the result of water vapor in Earth's atmosphere. Without the greenhouse effect, Earth's average temperature would be zero degrees Fahrenheit. Most climate change is a result of the orbital eccentricities of Earth and variations in the sun's output. And natural wetlands produce more greenhouse gas annually than all human sources combined.
Millions of vacationers paid record prices for gasoline as they hit the roads over Memorial Day weekend. And only those who've been in the sun too long would like to see prices climb even higher. Yet several members of Congress seem determined to guarantee that they will.
They're trying to pass a bill that would raise pump prices. Why? Because they think it would force people to use less.
The America's Climate Security Act, sponsored by Sens. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., and John Warner, R-Va., would also increase electricity and natural gas costs, all in the name of supposedly fighting global warming.
The bill, scheduled to be debated in the Senate on June 2, essentially places limits on the amount of gasoline and other fossil fuels Americans can use. The aim is to cut our emissions of carbon dioxide, which is blamed for warming the planet.
Once the provisions take effect in 2012, prices would have to rise to reduce demand and meet these restrictions. The only question is by how much.
A recent study by The Heritage Foundation estimates a cost increase of at least 29 percent by 2030, or $1.10 per gallon based on current gasoline prices. The Environmental Protection Agency is a bit less pessimistic, estimating a price boost of 53 cents per gallon by that year. But others predict an earlier impact -- a National Association of Manufacturers' study projects as much as $1.07 more per gallon by 2014.
And these estimates are in addition to everything else that may drive prices higher in the years ahead. The impact could be far worse.
Consider Western Europe, which already has similar global-warming measures in place. Fuel there costs more than $8 a gallon, yet even at that level usage is still rising. As a result, few European Union nations are in compliance with their emissions-reductions targets.
If $8 isn't high enough to reduce emissions there, what will it take here? In truth, nobody knows for sure how much prices would rise in the U.S. if we adopted the European-style energy regulations in the Lieberman-Warner bill. But if it passes, we'll find out the hard way.
Some might argue that, if this bill prevents global warming-induced catastrophes, then it will be worth it. But there is growing evidence that the warming threat has been exaggerated. Indeed, 2008 is shaping up to be a cooler year than 2007, and some scientists are predicting that this countertrend will last for a while.
But even assuming the worst-case scenarios of runaway warming, this bill would make little difference. Many other nations, including fast-growing China and India, are doing nothing to reduce their energy use. Thus, any efforts to force Americans to use less energy would be offset by big increases elsewhere.
According to Margo Thorning, senior vice president and chief economist of the American Council for Capital Formation, Lieberman-Warner would cut global concentrations of carbon dioxide by only 4 percent below where they would otherwise be by the end of the century. Thus, at most, this bill would reduce the Earth's future temperature by a small fraction of a degree -- too little to even verify that it happened.
In other words, America's Climate Security Act promises lots of economic pain for almost no environmental gain.
Congress has been criticized before for making things worse. But taking up a measure that would boost gas prices -- only days after the most expensive Memorial Day weekend ever? That would represent a new low. Or, considering what they would do to gas prices, should we say high?
Barack Obama is getting called out again for his knowledge of history, including his own family’s, after declaring to veterans on Memorial Day that his uncle helped liberate the Auschwitz death camp at the end of World War II.
Two problems with the tale: Auschwitz was liberated by the Soviet Army, and Obama’s American mother was an only child.
Speaking in Las Cruces, N.M., on Monday, the Democratic presidential candidate said he did not serve, but comes from a family that did sacrifice for the nation. He was speaking about the many members of the military who suffer post traumatic stress disorder and should be given better care.
“I had a uncle who was one of the, who was part of the first American troops to go into Auschwitz and liberate the concentration camps and the story in our family is that when he came home, he just went up into the attic and he didn’t leave the house for six months, right. Now obviously something had really affected him deeply but at that time there just weren’t the kinds of facilities to help somebody work through that kind of pain,” he said.
However, a quick check on the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Web site shows that Soviet forces were the first to approach Auschwitz, which was in Poland.
“On Jan. 27, 1945, the Soviet army entered Auschwitz and liberated more than 7,000 remaining prisoners,” the site reads.
U.S. forces did liberate several camps, including Ohrdruf Concentration Camp on April 4, 1945; Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp on April 11, 1945; Buchenwald on April 12, 1945; Dachau on April 29, 1945; and Mauthausen on May 5, 1945.
Obama was raised in part by his grandparents, and his father served in the second World War.
A request for clarification has been made to the Obama campaign. Meanwhile, the Republican National Committee seized on the comments.
“Barack Obama’s dubious claim is inconsistent with world history and demands an explanation. It was Soviet troops that liberated Auschwitz, so unless his uncle was serving in the Red Army, there’s no way Obama’s statement yesterday can be true. Obama’s frequent exaggerations and outright distortions raise questions about his judgment and his readiness to lead as commander in chief,” said RNC Press Secretary Alex Conant.
UPDATE: OK, to be fair, upon further research it looks as if the man was just being historically lazy, not untruthful. However, if you are going to make such statements as a candidate for the most important job in this country, it might behoove you to do due diligence and at least speak accurately. In this case, I agree with Surrogate, it is a non-story.
That being said, given this man's historyof "misspeaking," who could blame me for being skeptical. Excluding Surrogate of course...
UPDATE II: Hmmm... Maybe I'm not as paranoid as some think:
A New Problem For Obama?
Okay, so we have supposedly learned that it was Obama's Great Uncle that liberated a sub-section of Buchenwald, not an uncle at Auschwitz. But if sources are correct and unless there's some arcane military history in his favor, Obama still has a problem.
What Obama's campaign released via first link above states he served in the Infantry. I assume it's possible the records are wrong, or he changed branches. But I'm unaware of that as a standard practice. Perhaps it happened during WWII for manpower reasons? Otherwise, Obama's Great Uncle would seem to have done most of his marching and liberating while at sea.
You've got it all. Power, passion, precision, and style. You're sensuous, exotic, and temperamental. Sure, you're expensive and high-maintenance, but you're worth it.
Rep. Kanjorski: "That if we won the Congressional elections, we could stop the war. Now anybody was a good student of Government would know that wasn't true. But you know, the temptation to want to win back the Congress, we sort of stretched the facts...and people ate it up."
WASHINGTON (AP) -- In a final report of the 15 environmental protection organizations and agencies, experts have released data showing that "everything" humans do causes harm to the environment. Things as simple as walking, using the bathroom, and breathing have been targeted in the study, to be released later today.
"We have slowly become aware of our impact on Mother Earth," said one of the study's 12 main authors, "but now we are certain that there really isn't anything we can do that will not harm her."
The 250 page report lists among other things, formerly environmentally friendly activities such as planting trees, recycling, and taking public transit as environmentally harmful. "Even the slightest movement that people make affects weather patterns that could potentially destroy fragile habitats on the other side of the globe," said one of the leading members of the environmental group who commissioned the study.
For those who believe that killing themselves is the ultimate good for the environment, the study disagrees. In a draft obtained by AP reporters, the study reads that killing oneself has an impact greater than "20,000 SUV-miles", a measure coined by the study's author.
Ironically, the final conclusion from the draft copy recommends that humanity "eliminate efforts to stabilize current environmental conditions" and that we must accept "large changes in habitats and climate measurements" in the future. Several study commissioners told the AP that the conclusions may be edited in the final report.
When the House of Representatives takes up arms against $4 gas by voting 324-84 to sue OPEC, you know that election-year discourse has entered the realm of the surreal. Another unmistakable sign is when a presidential candidate makes a gaffe, then, realizing it is too egregious to take back without suffering humiliation, decides to make it a centerpiece of his foreign policy.
Before the Democratic debate of July 23, Barack Obama had never expounded upon the wisdom of meeting, without precondition, with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Bashar al-Assad, Hugo Chávez, Kim Jong Il or the Castro brothers. But in that debate, he was asked about doing exactly that. Unprepared, he said sure -- then got fancy, declaring the Bush administration's refusal to do so not just "ridiculous" but "a disgrace."
After that, there was no going back. So he doubled down. What started as a gaffe became policy. By now, it has become doctrine. Yet it remains today what it was on the day he blurted it out: an absurdity.
Should the president ever meet with enemies? Sometimes, but only after minimal American objectives -- i.e., preconditions -- have been met. The Shanghai communique was largely written long before Richard Nixon ever touched down in China. Yet Obama thinks Nixon to China confirms the wisdom of his willingness to undertake a worldwide freshman-year tyrants tour.
Most of the time you don't negotiate with enemy leaders because there is nothing to negotiate. Does Obama imagine that North Korea, Iran, Syria, Cuba and Venezuela are insufficiently informed about American requirements for improved relations?
There are always contacts through back channels or intermediaries. Iran, for example, has engaged in five years of talks with our closest European allies and the International Atomic Energy Agency, to say nothing of the hundreds of official U.S. statements outlining exactly what we would give them in return for suspending uranium enrichment.
Obama pretends that while he is for such "engagement," the cowboy Republicans oppose it. Another absurdity. No one is debating the need for contacts. The debate is over the stupidity of elevating rogue states and their tyrants, easing their isolation, and increasing their leverage by granting them unconditional meetings with the president of the world's superpower.
Obama cited Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman as presidents who met with enemies. Does he know no history? Neither Roosevelt nor Truman ever met with any of the leaders of the Axis powers. Obama must be referring to the pictures he's seen of Roosevelt and Stalin at Yalta, and Truman and Stalin at Potsdam. Does he not know that at that time Stalin was a wartime ally?
During the subsequent Cold War, Truman never met with Stalin. Nor Mao. Nor Kim Il Sung. Truman was no fool.
Obama cites John Kennedy meeting Nikita Khrushchev as another example of what he wants to emulate. Really? That Vienna summit of a young, inexperienced, untested American president was disastrous, emboldening Khrushchev to push Kennedy on Berlin -- and then nearly fatally in Cuba, leading almost directly to the Cuban missile crisis. Is that the precedent Obama aspires to follow?
Senator Chuck Schumer [A known idiot... -- ed.] claims that coercing Saudi Arabia to increase oil production by 1 million barrels a day would drop the per barrel price by $25, saving Americans 62 cent per gallon at the gas pump. Yet, somehow, that same amount of oil coming from Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge would only ease oil prices by a penny.
In a Senate floor speech he gave on May 13th, the New York Democrat insisted that:
"If Saudi Arabia were to increase its production by 1 million barrels per day that translates to a reduction of 20 percent to 25 percent in the world price of crude oil, and crude oil prices could fall by more than $25 dollar per barrel from its current level of $126 per barrel. In turn, that would lower the price of gasoline between 13 percent and 17 percent, or by more than 62 cents off the expected summer regular-grade price - offering much needed relief to struggling families. "
Schumer repeated these words almost verbatim when grilling oil company executives during yesterday's Senate Judiciary Committee hearings.
Yet Schumer's daily magic number of 1 million barrels is the exact increase experts believe we would today be pumping through the Alyeska pipeline had Bill Clinton not vetoed ANWR drilling back in 1995. And even the most rabid anti-domestic-drilling Democrats don't take issue with that figure.
So then, the increase he demands of "Bush's friends," the Saudis - which he claims would reduce prices by up to 25 percent -- is the exact amount he argued earlier this month would only "reduce the price of oil by a penny" were it coming from ANWR - eco-sacred breeding ground of the Porcupine Caribou. [Hmmm... Seems like I heard a similar argument about the Alaska Pipeline... -- ed.]
It doesn't take a Ph.D in economics to know that both figures can't be right.
Nor one in Poli-Sci to know why they're so starkly different nonetheless.
Do you wonder why the price of oil has skyrocketed of late? Purportedly the governments of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela are engaged in a major covert effort to keep the world's oil tanker fleets from carrying petroleum to the thirsty global markets that need it. This is according to reliable sources who monitor the tanker industry, and sources within the American law enforcement community. The Iranian government has leased and engaged the bulk of the available supertankers, and smaller vessels and is storing oil in ten of them in the Persian Gulf, and keeping others idle whilst under lease or charter. The government of Venezuela is allegedly assisting Iran in this manipulative practice, which has resulted in the tripling of the daily charge for tanker use since April, because of a fifty per cent drop in vessel availability during the next thirty days, this is according to authoritative industry sources. Is this the functional equivalent of a declaration of economic war against the United States? What will the response be, and when will it occur?
Here is what we know so far:
A large number of tankers lie at anchor in the Persian Gulf, and elsewhere, all leased by Iran and Venezuela, and all therefore unavailable to carry oil for other prospective charter clients.
Iran has also commenced to lease tankers in the spot, or single-trip, market, where it had previously used only its own vessels. This of course, is a delberate act to tie up additional tankers. Its transparent claim, that it is storing grades of oil which have low global demand, cannot be taken seriously, as all levels of quality are urgently needed for the increased consumption rate.
Venezuela has a clasified agreement with Iran that requires it to engage available tankers, in support of the Iranian objective, which is to delay, and ultimately, deny oil shippers transport to needy consumer markets, thus driving up oil prices to stratospheric levels, and benefitting both countries financially. Notwithstanding its own oil revenues, Venezuela's economy is in a shambles, and its government has distributed both large amounts of dollars and free or discounted oil, all to fund radical political movements in Latin America. It is in desperate need of more money, and this dark maneuver could accomplish this, though at a high cost to the rest of the world.
The Iranian scheme will not only disrupt global markets, it could cause serious economic distress in both North America and Europe. Since we know that the US government is aware of the scheme, it should also be assumed that they have planned an adequate response, whether it be major regulatory sanctions, universal economic sanctions, limited military action, or even general war.
At this point, country risk evaluators must assume the worst, and create contingency plans to respond to any of these possiblities, no matter how remote the chance that they may occur.
We have an abysmal national energy policy and as our population grows and our economy expands, energy needs will increase, says Pete du Pont, chairman of the National Center for Policy Analysis.
From 1980 to 2006 America's annual energy usage increased from 78 to 100 quadrillion British thermal units, and the figure is estimated to grow to 118 quadrillion BTUs by 2030. If our regressive energy production policies continue when the next administration takes office, our economy and the personal lives of Americans will be severely affected, says du Pont.
We have failed to increase our country's crude oil production:
Domestic oil production has declined, to 1.9 billion in 2007 from 3.1 billion barrels in 1980.
Meanwhile imports increased to 3.7 billion barrels from 1.9 billion.
We are now importing about 60 percent of the oil we use.
One reason for the imports is that our public policy has forbidden offshore oil drilling, explains du Pont:
There is an estimated 85 billion barrels of recoverable oil and 420 trillion cubic feet of natural gas (an 18-year supply) contained within the Outer Continental Shelf and another 10 billion barrels of oil in Alaska.
Together they could replace America's imported oil for about 25 years, but the first President Bush issued a directive forbidding access to a significant portion of the Outer Continental Shelf.
President Clinton extended the restriction through 2012 and vetoed legislation that would have allowed drilling in Alaska.
So America has large amounts of oil and gas, but our efforts to extract it have been significantly reduced by the federal moratorium on drilling, says du Pont. America remains the only nation in the world that has curtailed access to its own energy supplies. Meanwhile, China will soon begin drilling for oil off Cuba and in Venezuela.
Source: Pete du Pont, "Energy and the Executive," Wall Street Journal, May 19, 2008.
You know that huge crowd that turned out for Obama in Oregon? What many media reports forgot to mention: Obama was immediately preceded by a free concert by a very popular band.
That band, The Decemberists, is known for using the National Anthem of the Soviet Union as an introduction at their concerts. I’m just sayin’.
UPDATE at 5/21/08 12:37:34 pm:
Reached for comment, Barack Obama didn’t state:
This whole notion that ... uh ... you can smear me and my kids by associating me with my associations with bands who ... uh ... associate themselves with the Soviet Union, who had the power to destroy the world 57 times, is ... uh ... offensive, and ... um ... not helpful when I’m just trying to unite this country with a message of hope and change. And change. Now lay off, sweetie. I’m trying to finish my arugula.
Climate Change: Nearly 32,000 scientists sign a petition that says they reject the claim that humanity is causing global warming. The media, who are heavily invested in the Gore Consensus, yawn.
But a British royal, no scientist he, says we have 18 months to save the rain forests or we will face a climate disaster, and the media are fascinated.
That same royal, Prince Charles, heir to the British throne, has also said that the fight against global warming is much like the war his predecessors fought against the Nazis.
He noted in a cleverly timed May 1 speech at a climate summit that when he served "in the Royal Navy . . . 'mayday, mayday, mayday' was the distress call used in cases of emergencies.
"And this (human-caused global warming) is an emergency that we face."
Al Gore, naturally, gets the same reverential treatment. He's no scientist, but the media dutifully report all the crackpot statements he makes about climate change, including his assertion that the deadly cyclone in Burma was likely due to global warming.
It's bunk, of course. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, in a newly released study, says that warming will actually cause fewer hurricanes, not more.
Not that Gore will heed the rebuke. He's been told before, by none other than William Gray, professor emeritus of the atmospheric department at Colorado State University who is known as the country's most reliable hurricane forecaster, that such claims are false.
Yet he sticks to his story. And the media stick to him.
Meanwhile, Arthur Robinson of the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine released Monday at the Press Club in Washington a petition signed by 31,072 Americans with university degrees in science, including 9,021 with doctorates, who reject the notion that greenhouse gas emissions will cause catastrophic heating of the planet.
Didn't hear about it? Oh, that's right — the media can't be bothered to report on something that challenges their narrative. They're too busy saving the world from imagined risks and ignoring the real threats we all share.
“In the 20 years that we have been researching competitiveness at IMD’s World Competitiveness Center, we have learnt one thing: no nation, however competitive, is immune to a collapse, especially when it stems from the financial sector. In the words of Benjamin Franklin: ‘even a small hole can sink a big ship…’&rdquo ; [Professor Stéphane Garelli, Director, and Suzanne Rosselet-McCauley, Deputy Director, of IMD’s World Competitiveness Center (May, 2008): full text here]
In this annual assessment of national competitiveness, the UK has fallen one place from twentieth, to twenty-first, having been overtaken by Israel. But, more significantly, the IMD report downgrades the UK’s position against its global rivals on the crucial factor of economic performance, from seventh out of 55 countries to an alarming sixteenth.
And the cause of this decline? Yes, you have guessed it - the rising tax burden and worsening business environment. As ever, Carl Mortished of The Times pens an excoriating piece [‘Alistair Darling counts cost as party over for UK plc’ (The Times, May 14/15)]:
“Whether we like it or not, the flow of oil, food and raw materials will shift increasingly towards China and India, rather than towards America and Europe.
Life will become more expensive and more difficult for Europeans and Americans. As capital moves east, so will the jobs that service capital; the process is already under way in the expanding financial centres in the Gulf.
The relocation of service jobs has begun and it will probably accelerate as banks and financial institutions, battered by the recent credit crisis, look for new opportunities and cheaper ways of doing business.”
Key Indicators Of UK Problems
Just so. Let us consider for a moment the straws in the wind for the UK economy:
+The Bank of England has cut forecasts for growth sharply, stating that GDP will grow by an average of as little as 0.2 per cent over the rest of 2008. Annual growth is then predicted to hit a truly miserable low of 1 per cent in 2009;
+At 3 per cent, inflation is already a full percentage point above the Government’s target of 2 per cent. Mervyn King, the Governor of the Bank of England, now estimates that inflation will climb to 3.7 per cent, and that it will remain high for at least two years. Further interest rate cuts are unlikely;
+Yesterday, the three-month London inter-bank offer rate [Libor] - the cost of borrowing in the wholesale funding market - rose from 5.70 per cent to 5.84 per cent;
+The pound has fallen by 12 per cent against a basket of currencies since last summer, but especially so against the Euro;
+For a third month running, unemployment has risen (by 7,200), following a 4,200 increase in February and March;
+The number of new housing starts in the first quarter of 2008 fell by around 25 per cent compared to 2007;
+According to the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML), new home loans from January to March slumped to 142,000, only marginally above the 140,000 recorded in the first quarter of 1975;
+New home loans for first-time buyers and owners have plummeted by 48 per cent compared to the same month last year;
+Over the last four years, disposable income - the amount remaining in our wallets after tax, mortgages, and inflation - has been increasing at half the ideal rate of around two per cent, because wages have been eroded by higher taxes and increasing debt [see: ‘Financial crisis: Labour’s history is repeating’, The Daily Telegraph, May 15].
A Titanic Sinking Feeling
I could go on and on, about higher food, petrol, and energy prices. But the point is already painfully clear. When times were good -“nice” to employ Mervyn King’s acronymic word - we could just about stomach nonsensical ‘Green’ trumpery over things like the Climate Change Levy and ‘Green’ taxes, which did nothing whatsoever about climate change, but which ‘sustained’ politicians in their pontificating about “Saving the Planet”.
By stark contrast, in the present challenging world economy, such follies, such self-inflicted burdens, have, recalling the words of Benjamin Franklin - “even a small hole can sink a big ship” - , morphed into the iceberg that could well help to hole H.M.S. Britannia below the water-line.
When metro-media-anti-business folk witter on incessantly about the imponderables of ‘global warming’, I get a queasy, sinking feeling. We are sailing blindly into an economic iceberg. We are unthinkingly blunting our competitive edge in the world; we are imposing more and more burdens on industry and on business, especially on small businesses, while others do not; we are forcing retrogressive costs and taxes onto the poorer of society; we are neo-colonially hindering development; and, we are losing power and influence in a world in which, as Carl Mortished so tellingly reminds us:
“... the flow of oil, food and raw materials will shift increasingly towards China and India, rather than towards America and Europe.
Life will become more expensive and more difficult for Europeans.”
Indeed, it will. Self-indulgent ‘Green’ trumpery can have no place in the real-world economic battles that lie ahead. This is no computer model, and it is no comfort that France may fare worse than us. The political party which grasps this truth first, and is then straight and honest with the electorate about the limitations of ‘Green’ policies, will not only improve Britain’s position, but, in the longer run, could well hone its own competitive, political edge as the British public returns to basics.
It is time to state clearly that I, for one, will vote for the major party with least damaging ‘Green’ trumpery. We need a ‘Rational Party’, and urgently. We require a Captain who can see the looming economic threat - an iceberg that will not melt under ‘global warming’ hot air.
We have a titanic task before us.
People, wake up to this Anthropogenic Global Warming Bullshit. That's all it is, BULLSHIT.
Worried about gas prices hitting $4 a gallon and beyond? Imagine if they were $6, $7 or even $8 a gallon. Those levels are a certain possibility should Congress pass cap-and-trade legislation, which could face a vote in early June.
Oil is trading at record levels, in excess of $120 a barrel. Leading Republican Sens. James Inhofe (Okla.) and Jeff Sessions (Ala.) both told the Business & Media Institute (BMI) energy prices would drastically increase if the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act (S. 2191) is signed into law.
“The studies show it would be directly affected, would be a $1.50 a gallon, in addition to what it is today,” Inhofe, the ranking Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said to (BMI).
Inhofe spoke at a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. on May 15 to introduce the “We Get It!” campaign – a program founded by evangelical Christians that question the merits of global warming alarmism. According to Inhofe, the bill will make it to the floor of the Senate on June 2.
“So now I think we need to concentrate on what it will cost the American people,” he said during the press conference. “To try to put it in a perspective people understand, if we had ratified, according to the Wharton School of Economics, the Kyoto Treaty, back five years ago, it would have cost about – between $300 and $330 billion – that was the range they had. This bill that’s up today is $471 billion – far more than that. And the question is, what do you get for it?”
Sessions, a member of the Senate’s Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, went a step further. He cited sources that suggest the increase could be as much as $5 a gallon.
“[L]et me tell you what’s heading down the tracks,” Sessions said to BMI on May 14. “In a few weeks, we expect that the cap-and-trade legislation that’s been voted out of Sen. Barbara Boxer’s (D-Calif.) Environment and Public Works Committee will be on the floor and according to the Environmental Protection Agency it will increase gas prices by $1.50. The National Association of Manufacturers says it will increase it as much as $5 per gallon.” [Hey, gotta save those Polar Bears... --ed.]
Sessions proposed that money should be spent on energy investment versus a regulatory bureaucracy to enforce the provisions of the Lieberman-Warner bill.
WASHINGTON - While carbon dioxide has been getting lots of publicity in climate change, reactive forms of nitrogen are also building up in the environment, scientists warn.
"The public does not yet know much about nitrogen, but in many ways it is as big an issue as carbon, and due to the interactions of nitrogen and carbon, makes the challenge of providing food and energy to the world's peoples without harming the global environment a tremendous challenge," University of Virginia environmental sciences professor James Galloway said in a statement.
"We are accumulating reactive nitrogen in the environment at alarming rates, and this may prove to be as serious as putting carbon dioxide in the atmosphere," said Galloway, author of a paper and co-author of a second on the topic in Friday's issue of the journal Science.
While nitrogen alone is inert and harmless, reactive nitrogen compounds — such as ammonia — have been released by its use in nitrogen-based fertilizers and the large-scale burning of fossil fuels.
Various forms of nitrogen contribute to greenhouse warming, smog, haze, acid rain dead zones with little or no life along the coasts, and depletion of the ozone layer in the stratosphere, the researchers concluded.
The researchers propose ways to reduce nitrogen use, ranging from encouraging its uptake by plants to recovering and reusing nitrogen from manure and sewage and decreasing nitrogen emissions from fossil fuel combustion.
Breathtakingly stupid. Maybe we should be concerned with the accumulation of dihydrogen monoxide as well?
Phil Klein calls our attention to an al-Jazeera news report that sounds like a parody, but is genuine: A report on Palestinians in Gaza who are phonebanking in support of Barack Obama's campaign.
I transcribed the most jaw-dropping parts:
REPORTER: It may be hard to believe, but working in this tiny Internet cafe in Gaza City may just be one of Barack Obama's biggest fans.
Before every U.S. primary, 23-year-old Ibrahim Abu Jayyab gathers 17 of his friends to try and rally support for Obama's campaign in the U.S.
So why does a young Palestinian living in Gaza spend so much of his time and money on an election thousands of miles away?
ABU JAYYAB: [translated] It all started at the time of the U.S. primaries. After studying Obama's electoral campaign manifesto, I thought, 'this is a man that is capable of change inside America.' As for potential change in the Middle East, he can also do that. I think he can bring peace to the area, or at least this is what we hope.
REPORTER: And the game plan? Ibrahim and his friends call random numbers in the U.S. before every primary to deliver one simple message:
ABU JAYYAB: [in English] Elect Senator Obama. I will change. I will achieve... the justice in the Middle East.
The rest of the report is about Bush failing to achieve peace in the Middle East, the U.S. "unwillingness to apply pressure on Israel over illegal settlements," a professor who says his students are following the election but
A potttery maker says, "unless you support Israel, you won't get in the White House."
The report concludes by showing graffiti in Gaza depicting a monstrous Bush, lips dripping with blood, clutching the world and drinking blood through a straw from a pile of skulls. The caption is, "Good bye Mr. Bush, we wont' miss you."
The reporter's voice over of the graffiti: "There does to be one thing people here agree on."
May 9, 2008 -- IN November, I was found guilty of "racial harassment" for reading a public-li brary book on a university campus.
The book was Todd Tucker's "Notre Dame vs. the Klan: How the Fighting Irish Defeated the Ku Klux Klan I was reading it on break from my campus job as a janitor. The same book is in the university library.
Tucker recounts events of 1924, when the loathsome Klan was a dominant force in Indiana - until it went to South Bend to taunt the Irish Catholic students at the University of Notre Dame.
When the KKK tried to rally, the students confronted them. They stole Klan robes and destroyed their crosses, driving the KKK out of town in a downpour.
I read the historic encounter and imagined myself with these brave Irish Catholics, as they street-fought the Klan. (I'm part-Irish, and was raised Catholic.)
But that didn't stop the Affirmative Action Office of Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis from branding me as a detestable Klansman.
They didn't want to hear the truth. The office ruled that my "repeatedly reading the book . . . constitutes racial harassment in that you demonstrated disdain and insensitivity to your co-workers."
A friend reacted to the finding with, "That's impossible!" He's right. You can't commit racial harassment by reading an anti-Klan history.
For months, I felt isolated and dejected. Yet I knew that most of the faculty, staff and students at Indiana University were good people. The campus is a growing, thriving part of Indy, where people of all colors and religions come to study.
But the $106,000-a-year affirmative-action officer who declared me guilty of "racial harassment" never spoke to me or examined the book. My own union - the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees - sent an obtuse shop steward to stifle my freedom to read. He told me, "You could be fired," that reading the book was "like bringing pornography to work."
Shame on the affirmative-action people and my union for displaying their ignorance and incompetence. Their pusillanimous actions, in trying to ban Tucker's anti-Klan history book, played into the hands of the hateful KKK.
After months of stonewalling, the university withdrew the charge, thanks to pressure from the press, the American Civil Liberties Union and a group called the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, or FIRE.
Let me be clear: I don't view this episode as a black-against-white or conservative-vs.-liberal issue. It's a basic civil-liberties issue.
Martin Luther King Jr. wanted a world where people "will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." The affirmative-action people at Indiana University never saw past the color of my white skin. (Ironically, I detest the Klan and I have dated a woman of color.)
Abolitionist Charles Sumner said, "Prejudice is the child of ignorance. It is sure to prevail where people do not know each other." The people at the Affirmative Action Office were so myopically intent on finding a Klansman, they failed to see a natural ally standing before them.
The unchecked power of such campus bureaucrats needs to be restrained. And if a union like AFSCME won't protect its workers' constitutional rights, it should go out of business.
If they can stop me from reading one book, then they can stop any American from reading any book.
In September of 1995, as part of the pompously named National Performance Review–Al Gore’s fatuous project to cut down government waste, fraud and mismanagement–the Vice President boldly declared that he was recommending the privatization of Elk Hills, a 47,000-acre oil-rich land in Southern California. Since 1912 it had been in the possession of the U.S. Navy as an emergency oil reserve. The oil companies salivated and made their bids. In October 1997 the Energy Dept. announced that the U.S. government would sell its stake in Elk Hills to Occidental Petroleum for $3.65 billion. Overnight, Occidental’s U.S. oil reserves tripled. Occidental’s stock surged and its stockholders glowed. One of them was the Vice President’s father, Al Gore Sr. He owned more than $500,000 worth of Occidental stock. A clear conflict of interest? Not to the airheads in the media. Neither then nor any time since have they evinced the slightest curiosity about this deal. Or indeed about the Gore family’s long and intimate connection with Occidental and, in particular, with its longtime chairman, the shady and sinister Armand Hammer.
Hammer devoted his life to negotiating business deals with the former Soviet Union. Following the 1917 revolution Hammer set up a bank in New York to channel hard currency from Russian emigres into the hands of the Bolshevik government. He also received money from the Bolsheviks that he distributed to spies and underground agents here. In later years he ran a pencil factory in the Soviet Union, the only Western capitalist permitted to operate in Stalin’s Russia. In the 1930s, as the Soviet regime’s need for hard currency grew ever more desperate, he was assigned the task of selling off Russian art in the West and remitting the proceeds. A lot of this art had been stolen by the Bolsheviks from its "capitalist" owners. A lot of it was junk. And a lot of it was forged. In return for the money, the Soviets sent him oak staves from which he would build beer barrels.
None of Hammer’s enterprises made much money He was continuously on the verge of bankruptcy until the 1960s, when by extraordinary persistence–and a lot of bribery–his company, Occidental Petroleum, won a lucrative oil concession in Libya. At last, he had serious money to play with.
Hammer could not have prospered during the Red Scare, the Cold War and the McCarthy era had he not had powerful friends. It was no easy feat to persuade the world that he was no red–just a businessman trying to make a buck. One man who was very helpful to him in this regard was Sen. Albert Gore Sr. In 1950 Hammer had taken Congressman Gore on as a partner in his cattle-breeding business. He also sent him annual Christmas gifts of antique silver. And Gore repaid Hammer in kind. In the late 1950s he introduced him to Sen. John F. Kennedy. After the 1960 election Gore proposed to Kennedy that he use Hammer as his personal envoy in any future Berlin crises. While Hammer did not get the Berlin assignment, Kennedy did have an important mission for him. The President had been informed that Soviet crabmeat was produced by slave labor. Gore suggested that he send Hammer to investigate. Hammer returned to announce triumphantly that there was no truth to the rumor about slave labor. With great fanfare the U.S. government lifted the ban on Soviet crabmeat.
Using the money pouring in from Libya Hammer bought the Island Creek Coal Co., the nation’s third largest coal producer. Following Gore’s 1970 electoral defeat, Hammer appointed him chairman of Island Creek as well as executive VP of Occidental. Gore’s took home a handsome $500,000 annually. By 1992 Gore owned Occidental stock worth $680,000. By now Hammer was, not surprisingly, cultivating the ambitious young Gore. In the 1960s, Gore Sr. informed Hammer that zinc ore had been discovered near his farm in Tennessee. Hammer bought the land for $160,000. He then promptly sold it back to him. Occidental then began payments of $20,000 a year for the right to mine it. Gore Sr. then sold the land to Gore Jr. for $140,000. According to the Center for Public Integrity, Gore Jr. has been receiving $20,000 a year from Occidental ever since. Interestingly, Occidental never did mine the land. In 1985, Gore leased the land to Occidental-competitor Union Zinc–clearly a sweetheart deal between Hammer and the Gore family.
Today, Gore Jr. is executor of his father’s estate, which holds $500,000 worth of Occidental stock. In other words, the Vice President himself controls $500,000 worth of Occidental stock. Not surprisingly, Occidental has been extremely helpful to Clinton and Gore. Occidental gave $50,000 to the Clinton’s 1996 reelection campaign. Since 1992 Occidental has given more than $470,000 in soft money to the Democratic Party. According to the Center for Public Integrity, two days after Ray Irani, Armand Hammer’s successor as chairman, slept in the Lincoln Bedroom, Occidental forked over $100,000 to the DNC.
Gore is famous for his tedious expostulations about the consequences for the Earth’s temperature of burning oil and coal. Yet when it comes to his own stock holdings the environment can take a running jump. In a few months Occidental is due to start drilling for oil in the Samore field in Colombia. Standing in Occidental’s way are the U’wa people, a remote Colombian Indian tribe inhabiting the country’s rainforests in the northeast, who do not want to leave their ancestral land. They promise to walk off a 1400-foot cliff in the Andes if Occidental begins drilling for oil. Predictably, Gore has said nothing. He has not protested Occidental’s mining decision, or threatened to dispose of his stock or rallied fellow stockholders on behalf of the U’wa.
There is one thing the Clinton administration has done. It proposed recently to step up aid to the Colombian military to the tune of $1.3 billion. Ostensibly the money is to fight the "drug lords." In reality, it is to make sure that Al Gore’s oil wells and pipelines are firmly protected.
Bill Tate When Maine officials tried to warn residents of the dangers of this winter's near-record snowpack, Big Media slanted the story, hampering efforts to warn folks of the danger. "This winters [sic] near-record snowfall has created a flood potential that is above normal," began a news advisory released by the Maine River Flow Advisor Commission on March 6th.
"Statewide water content readings from this week's snow survey are some of the highest since 1969, the 'snow season' of record, and in some locations higher than the record." In case there was any doubt, the banner headline on the release reads: "Spring Flood Potential Elevated Due to Near-Record Snowfall."
However, the lead in the Associated Press story in the next day's edition of the major regional daily, the Boston Globe, downplayed the threat posed by the snowpack, referring to it as just "above-average," ; and shifting the emphasis to concern about an approaching storm.
"The National Weather Service says weekend rain could cause some flooding of streets and small streams."
The story does eventually reference "near-record snowfall", in the 13th paragraph of a 17-paragraph story, with a spin that turned the Maine officials' warning on its head.
"While this winter's near-record snowfall has created a flood potential that is above normal, that doesn't guarantee flooding will occur this spring...."
The result? "There are people who are losing their property, their homes and their livelihoods," Maine Governor John Baldacci said after the flooding that officials had tried to warn the public about did occur last week.
Why did the AP and the Globe de-emphasize Maine officials' snowpack warning, especially when doing so endangered the property and safety of the public they are supposed to serve?
The Globe is owned by the New York Times Company. Both the Times and the Associated Press are heavily invested in the myth of Global Warming, or -- as I like to call it -- Global Warning. Record snowpack means higher than normal amounts of snow, colder than usual temperatures, or both. None of which readily fits into the MSM's chosen story line that mankind is giving Mother Nature a fever. Big Media's Global Warning bias has largely remained in the realm of theory; now it has begun to endanger people's lives and property in real time.
The AP and the Globe had the choice of reporting a truly inconvenient truth -- for them -- or of perpetuating Global Warning, of facilitating officials' efforts to protect the public or advancing their ideological agenda. Why are we not surprised by the decision they made?
HANOVER, MD, May 8, 2008 – Research done by the U.S. Department of the Interior to determine if global warming threatens the polar bear population is so flawed that it cannot be used to justify listing the polar bear as an endangered species, according to a study being published later this year in Interfaces, a journal of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS®).
On April 30, U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken ordered the Interior Department to decide by May 15 whether polar bears should be listed under the provisions of the Endangered Species Act.
Professor J. Scott Armstrong of the Wharton School says, “To list a species that is currently in good health as an endangered species requires valid forecasts that its population would decline to levels that threaten its viability. In fact, the polar bear populations have been increasing rapidly in recent decades due to hunting restrictions. Assuming these restrictions remain, the most appropriate forecast is to assume that the upward trend would continue for a few years, then level off.
“These studies are meant to inform the US Fish and Wildlife Service about listing the polar bear as endangered. After careful examination, my co-authors and I were unable to find any references to works providing evidence that the forecasting methods used in the reports had been previously validated. In essence, they give no scientific basis for deciding one way or the other about the polar bear.”
Prof. Armstrong and colleagues originally undertook their audit at the request of the State of Alaska. The subsequent study, “Polar Bear Population Forecasts: A Public Policy Forecasting Audit,” is by Prof. Armstrong, Kesten G. Green of Monash University in Australia, and Willie Soon of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. It is scheduled to appear in the September/October issue of the INFORMS journal Interfaces.
Professor Armstrong is author of Long-Range Forecasting, the most frequently cited book on forecasting methods, and Principles of Forecasting. He is a co-founder of the Journal of Forecasting, the International Journal of Forecasting, the International Symposium on Forecasting, and forecastingprinciples.com.
The authors examined nine U.S. Geological Survey Administrative Reports. The studies include “Forecasting the Wide-Range Status of Polar Bears at Selected Times in the 21st Century” by Steven C. Amstrup et. al. and “Polar Bears in the Southern Beaufort Sea II: Demography and Population Growth in Relation to Sea Ice Conditions” by Christine M. Hunter et al.
Prof. Armstrong and his colleagues concluded that the most relevant study, Amstrup et al. properly applied only 15% of relevant forecasting principles and that the second study, Hunter et al. only 10%, while 46% were clearly contravened and 23% were apparently contravened.
Further, they write, the Geologic Survey reports do not adequately substantiate the authors’ assumptions about changes to sea ice and polar bears’ ability to adapt that are key to the recommendations.
Therefore, the authors write, a key feature of the U.S. Geological Survey reports is not scientifically supported.
The consequence, they maintain, is significant: The Interior Department cannot use the series of reports as a sound scientific basis for a decision about listing the polar bear as an endangered species.
The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS®) is an international scientific society with 10,000 members, including Nobel Prize laureates, dedicated to applying scientific methods to help improve decision-making, management, and operations. Members of INFORMS work in business, government, and academia. They are represented in fields as diverse as airlines, health care, law enforcement, the military, financial engineering, and telecommunications. The INFORMS website is www.informs.org. More information about operations research is at www.scienceofbetter.org.
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com" title="http://www.JewishWorldReview.com" target="_blank"http://www.JewishWorldReview.... | Now that another Earth Day has come and gone, let's look at some environmentalist predictions that they would prefer we forget.
At the first Earth Day celebration, in 1969, environmentalist Nigel Calder warned, "The threat of a new ice age must now stand alongside nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death and misery for mankind." C.C. Wallen of the World Meteorological Organization said, "The cooling since 1940 has been large enough and consistent enough that it will not soon be reversed." In 1968, Professor Paul Ehrlich, Vice President Gore's hero and mentor, predicted there would be a major food shortage in the U.S. and "in the 1970s ... hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death." Ehrlich forecasted that 65 million Americans would die of starvation between 1980 and 1989, and by 1999 the U.S. population would have declined to 22.6 million. Ehrlich's predictions about England were gloomier: "If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000."
In 1972, a report was written for the Club of Rome warning the world would run out of gold by 1981, mercury and silver by 1985, tin by 1987 and petroleum, copper, lead and natural gas by 1992. Gordon Taylor, in his 1970 book "The Doomsday Book," said Americans were using 50 percent of the world's resources and "by 2000 they [Americans] will, if permitted, be using all of them." In 1975, the Environmental Fund took out full-page ads warning, "The World as we know it will likely be ruined by the year 2000."
Harvard University biologist George Wald in 1970 warned, "... civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind." That was the same year that Sen. Gaylord Nelson warned, in Look Magazine, that by 1995 "... somewhere between 75 and 85 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct."
It's not just latter-day doomsayers who have been wrong; doomsayers have always been wrong. In 1885, the U.S. Geological Survey announced there was "little or no chance" of oil being discovered in California, and a few years later they said the same about Kansas and Texas. In 1939, the U.S. Department of the Interior said American oil supplies would last only another 13 years. In 1949, the Secretary of the Interior said the end of U.S. oil supplies was in sight. Having learned nothing from its earlier erroneous claims, in 1974 the U.S. Geological Survey advised us that the U.S. had only a 10-year supply of natural gas. The fact of the matter, according to the American Gas Association, there's a 1,000 to 2,500 year supply.
Here are my questions: In 1970, when environmentalists were making predictions of manmade global cooling and the threat of an ice age and millions of Americans starving to death, what kind of government policy should we have undertaken to prevent such a calamity? When Ehrlich predicted that England would not exist in the year 2000, what steps should the British Parliament have taken in 1970 to prevent such a dire outcome? In 1939, when the U.S. Department of the Interior warned that we only had oil supplies for another 13 years, what actions should President Roosevelt have taken? Finally, what makes us think that environmental alarmism is any more correct now that they have switched their tune to manmade global warming?
Here are a few facts: Over 95 percent of the greenhouse effect is the result of water vapor in Earth's atmosphere. Without the greenhouse effect, Earth's average temperature would be zero degrees Fahrenheit. Most climate change is a result of the orbital eccentricities of Earth and variations in the sun's output. On top of that, natural wetlands produce more greenhouse gas contributions annually than all human sources combined.
[Peshawar] Unidentified attackers set fire to a girls’ high school and planted bombs in its science laboratory in the Charbagh area of the conflict-ridden Swat district in North West Pakistan.
School watchman, Toti Gul, said that 40-50 men entered the school at midnight and used gasoline to set ablaze nine rooms of the only girls’ high school in the area.
“The faces of the armed men were covered and they were chanting slogans. They directed me to take away all the copies of the Holy Quran from the school building. When I did that they set the school on fire and also planted bombs in the science laboratory. The bombs were later diffused by the bomb disposal squad,” he said.
The watchman said the school library was burnt to ashes due to the raging fire, adding that the militants were bold enough to stay there for 25-30 minute observing the fire until it engulfed the whole building.
As annual examinations for the Secondary School Certificate are in progress in North West Frontier Province, it is feared that in the wake of the recent terrorist attack hundreds of girls will miss their examinations.
The principal of the school said she was not sure whether tomorrow girls would be able to take their exams.
“I have repeatedly informed high officials in the district about the security concerns of the school teaching staff and the volatile situation in the area, but received no satisfactory response. Really, I feel very frustrated,” she added.
A district official said, on condition of anonymity, that attacks on girls’ educational institutions had intensified over the last year in Swat valley.
“We are investigating the matter and will bring the people responsible to justice,” he said.
The police have taken Toti Gul into custody for further interrogation.
Maulana Fazlullah, a militant leader and chief of the Taliban Movement’s Swat chapter, has discouraged girls’ education in his sermons through his unlicensed radio station and has forbidden parents to send their daughters to school.
Secretary of the Swat Private School Association, Zia-ud-Din, explained that girls’ education was the main casualty of the conflict between militants of hardliner cleric Fazlullah and Pakistan security forces.
“About 1,200 educational institutions have been closed due to the conflict in the valley. They have bombed girls’ schools in different areas and even killed female teachers. They preach that girls’ education leads to obscenity and vulgarity, therefore it should be discouraged. This is very wrong perception of Islam,” he said.
Militants encourage girls’ education in religious seminaries and even collect donations for this purpose. However, they strongly oppose teaching girls modern disciplines such as science, geography, social sciences and mathematics.
More than 20,000 Pakistan security forces are fighting Fazlullah’s militants, but have yet to prevent terrorist incidents in the once peaceful, paradise-like tourist district of the Frontier Province.
Locals say that despite the government’s peace deal with Maulana Sufi Muhammad, chief of the Movement for the Enforcement of Shari’a – commonly known as Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat Muhammadi – violence is on the rise in the valley.
Nice religion ya got there, "The Religion of PeaceTM"
The UK Telegraph reports on April 30: “Global warming will stop until at least 2015 because of natural variations in the climate, scientists have said. Researchers studying long-term changes in sea temperatures said they now expect a "lull" for up to a decade while natural variations in climate cancel out the increases caused by man-made greenhouse gas emissions. The average temperature of the sea around Europe and North America is expected to cool slightly over the decade while the tropical Pacific remains unchanged. This would mean that the 0.3°C global average temperature rise which has been predicted for the next decade by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change may not happen, according to the paper published in the scientific journal Nature.” End article excerpt.
This significant new study adds to a growing body of peer-reviewed literature and other scientific analyses challenging former Vice President Al Gore and the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). MIT Climate Scientist Dr. Richard Lindzen’s March 2008 presentation of data from the Hadley Centre of the UK Met Office found the Earth has had “no statistically significant warming since 1995.” (LINK)
Australian paleoclimate scientist Dr. Bob Carter also noted in 2007 that “the accepted global average temperature statistics used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change show that no ground-based warming has occurred since 1998.” Carter explained that the “temperature stasis has occurred despite an increase over the same period of 15 parts per million (or 4 per cent) in atmospheric CO2.” (LINK)
An August 7, 2007, peer-reviewed study by the UK Met Office, Britain's version of our National Weather Service, conceded that global warming had stopped as well. Both the journal Nature and UK Met Office analysis which appeared in the journal Science predict a continuation of global warming in future years. [Note: Hyping yet more unproven computer models of the future in response to inconvenient evidence-based data is the primary tool of the promoters of man-made climate doom. But it now appears that even these computer model scenarios are failing to predict a man-made climate “crisis.”Even the activists over at RealClimate.org admitted on April 10 that climate models were not "forecasts" or "predictions" but rather "scenarios." (LINK) ]
The May 1study in Nature essentially finds that global warming will have stopped for nearly 20 years (1998 until 2015). According to the UK Telegraph article; “Writing in Nature, the scientists said: ‘Our results suggest that global surface temperature may not increase over the next decade, as natural climate variations in the North Atlantic and tropical Pacific temporarily offset the projected anthropogenic [man-made] warming.’”
The UK Telegraph article by reporter Charles Clover noted the significant deficiencies in UN climate models: “The IPCC currently does not include in its models actual records of such events as the strength of the Gulf Stream and the El Nino cyclical warming event in the Pacific, which are known to have been behind the warmest year ever recorded in 1998.”
The evidence-based data showing the Earth’s failure to continue warming has confounded the promoters of man-made climate fear. The American people have consistently rejected climate alarm as a Gallup Poll released on Earth Day 2008 shows the American public’s concern about man-made global warming is unchanged from 1989. Gore's $300 million dollar campaign to promote climate fear is attempting to convince Americans that they face a climate "crisis" despite the new accumulating scientific evidence to the contrary.
The latest peer-reviewed scientific data showing the dominance of natural climate variability appears to be directly at odds with Gore's central climate message. On May 25, 2006, Gore declared, "We are the most powerful force of nature now. We are literally changing the relationship between the Earth and the Sun." Gore added that mankind's CO2 emissions have "the capacity to bring civilization itself to a dead halt." (LINK) [Note: Unfortunately, children seem to be the most susceptible to Gore's and others baseless climate doomsday message. See: New York Times article: Children may be driving alarm over global warming. (LINK) Also, read more about global warming propaganda campaign aimed at kids here. ]
This new study in Nature further reveals a “tipping point” for the promoters of climate alarm. 2007 and now 2008 have challenged man-made climate fear as new peer-reviewed studies continue to debunk rising CO2 fears. A U.S. Senate minority report reveals over 400 scientists dissented from man-made climate fears, and more and more scientists continue to declare themselves skeptical of a man-made climate “crisis” in 2008.
Sampling of key inconvenient developments for promoters of a man-made climate “crisis” so far in 2008: (See also related link at bottom of this report)
1) Oceans Cooling! Scientists puzzled by “mystery of global warming's missing heat” (LINK)
2) New Data from NASA’s Aqua satellite is showing “greatly reduced future warming projected as a consequence of carbon dioxide.” (LINK )
3) Climatologist Dr. Roy Spencer, formerly of NASA, found not one peer-reviewed paper has 'ruled out a natural cause for most of our recent warmth' (LINK)
4) UN IPCC in 'Panic Mode' as Earth Fails to Warm, Scientist says (LINK )
5) UN IPCC Chairman Rajendra Pachauri “to look into the apparent temperature plateau so far this century.” (LINK)
6) New scientific analysis shows Sun “could account for as much as 69% of the increase in Earth's average temperature” (LINK) & (LINK)
7) Scientists find dust free atmosphere may be responsible for up to .36 F rise in global temps (LINK)
8) Analysis in peer-reviewed journal finds cold periods – not warm periods – see increase in floods, droughts, storms, famine (LINK)
9) New York Times Laments Media's incorrect hyping of frogs and global warming (LINK)
10) Prominent hurricane expert reconsiders global warming's impact (LINK)
11) MIT Climate Scientist Dr. Richard Lindzen’s March 2008 presentation of data from the Hadley Centre of the UK Met Office found the Earth has had “no statistically significant warming since 1995.”-(LINK)
12) An International team of scientists released a March 2008 report to counter UN IPCC, declaring: “Nature, Not Human Activity, Rules the Climate” (LINK)
13) Emitting MORE CO2 may 'be good for life on Earth', says climatologist Dr. Roy Spencer, formerly of NASA in May 2008. (LINK)
14) New Report finds global sea ice GROWING: ‘World sea ice in April 2008 reached levels that were ‘unprecedented&rsqu o; for the month of April in over 25 years.’ (LINK)
Good news. This is what happens when the real scientist get involved.
And I’ve noticed a change lately in that many (mostly scientists) are now referring to “climate change” rather than “global warming”.
“Climate Change” is real and very well documented. The climate has been changing, sometimes quite drastically and even rather suddenly, ever since the Earth first had a climate and long before man came on the scene and the climate will continue to change with or without us. There are much more powerful forces at work that affect global climate including plate tectonics, volcanism, ocean currents, sun spot cycles and slight wobbles in the Earth’s tilt and orbits around the sun and there is nothing we can do to change or influence these forces.
But the question is, or should have been all along; is the Earth really warming for a long enough period of time to declare it more than just an anomaly over much longer trends and more reliable models and even “if” the climate is warming, is it really due to man made activity?
Of course the answer is that the activities of man have little or no effect on large scale global climate and only a very nominal effect on local climates – think of the “heat islands” in large cities during the hot summer months where the temperature in the heavily paved over downtown areas vs. the temperature in greener areas like the ‘burbs and rural areas that can vary by a few degrees. That’s truly man made “warming” but only on a small local scale and it has no real impact on the overall environment. Same with massive deforestation in localized areas – it can have a very real affect on local climates and conditions but not necessarily globally and long term as some would have us believe.
Global warming theories and dire predictions and calls for “action” is what happens when small scale statistics and scientific theories absent true rigorous scientific peer review and challenges are high-jacked by people with purely social, moral and political agendas. Caramelgal
Four of the past 5 months are “all-time” records for Southern Hemisphere sea ice anomalies, “unprecedented&rdqu o; since the data set began in 1979 as shown below:
On a global basis, world sea ice in April 2008 reached levels that were “unprecedented&rdqu o; for the month of April in over 25 years. Levels are the third highest (for April) since the commencement of records in 1979, exceeded only by levels in 1979 and 1982. This continues a pattern established earlier in 2008, as global sea ice in March 2008 was also the third highest March on record, while January 2008 sea ice was the second highest January on record. It was also the second highest single month in the past 20 years (second only to Sept 1996).
The graph below shows the monthly anomaly (aggregating NH and SH), collating information from sidads.colorado.edu/DATASETS/NOAA/G02135. Figure 2. Monthly anomaly sea ice area.
As suggested by a reader, here’s the same information with each monthly series plotted as a separate line (April-solid; January - dotted.) The surge in anomaly area in 2008 is not limited to a single month, but is consistent for all 4 months to date (and for the YTD average).
At Cryosphere Today, they provide the following scientific description of recent sea ice changes:
You’ve heard Al Gore comment that the “Earth has a fever”? It may also have major tooth decay.
They provide an animation showing declining sea ice to 2007 lows, but not the subsequent recovery in 2008:
Peruse an archive of map displays of the atmospheric and radiative climatic conditions leading up to the record setting Northern Hemisphere sea ice minimum of 2007: sea ice autopsy
Instead of perhaps celebrating the dramatic recent increase in sea ice, they complain that there has been a loss of “multiyear sea ice”.
TEHRAN (AFP) — A top cleric on Friday vowed that Iran would deal a knock-out blow to what he called maniacs in the United States and Israel if they ever attacked the Islamic republic.
"If maniacs in Washington or Tel Aviv seek to take action, the Iranian nation will slap them so hard they will not get off the floor," hardline cleric Ahmad Khatami said in a Friday prayer sermon carried live on state radio.
The Pentagon on Wednesday denied reports of new plans for military options against Iran, which is accused by the United States of seeking nuclear weapons, sponsoring terrorism and meddling in Iraq.
Iran vehemently denies all the charges.
However, Washington has never ruled out a military option in a bid to thwart Iran's nuclear drive, which Tehran insists is solely aimed at peaceful energy production.
The cleric said the fact that the United States had not yet attacked Iran was because it "has not been possible, not that it did not want to."
"Death be upon" Israel for "celebrating the killing of innocent people" in the Gaza Strip, Khatami also said. Iran does not recognise Israel, and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has called for the annihilation of the Jewish State.
"Israel should know that these pressures will pave the way for another Intifada which will turn the Israelis' day into night," Khatami said.
Israel, the Middle East's sole if undeclared nuclear power, accuses Iran of seeking atomic weapons and has urged tougher punitive measures against Tehran, which is already under three sets of UN Security Council sanctions for its refusal to halt uranium enrichment.
Khatami also took a swipe at US Democrat presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton for her threat to "totally obliterate" Iran if it launched a nuclear attack on Israel.
"Shame on you that your presidents should be weak-willed servants of Israel," he said.
Yeah, yeah, yeah,... Listen up blow hard, the last bigmouth who promised the US a mother-of-all battles, was pulled out of a spidy hole after hgiding like a little girl for months, had his head checked for lice on worldwide TV, and then swung from a gallows. Asshole.
By now most people are aware that the founder of The Weather Channel, John Coleman, said global warming is "the greatest scam in history" last November. On Monday, while speaking at the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change being held in New York City, Coleman took his criticisms further by advocating that all those involved in the sale and marketing of carbon credits, including Al Gore, should be sued "to finally put some light on the fraud of global warming.” As reported over at the Business & Media Institute by my colleague Jeff Poor (emphasis added throughout, h/t to many):
Coleman also told the audience his strategy for exposing what he called “the fraud of global warming.” He advocated suing those who sell carbon credits, which would force global warming alarmists to give a more honest account of the policies they propose.
“[I] have a feeling this is the opening,” Coleman said. “If the lawyers will take the case – sue the people who sell carbon credits. That includes Al Gore. That lawsuit would get so much publicity, so much media attention. And as the experts went to the [witness] stand to testify, I feel like that could become the vehicle to finally put some light on the fraud of global warming.”
How delicious. Of course, for those that are interested, Nobel Laureate Gore was invited to speak at this conference -- was even offered his normal fee to attend! -- but refused. As reported Monday by Anthony Watts, one of the conference speakers (emphasis added):
I was surprised to learn that Al Gore had been offered an opportunity to address this conference, and his usual $200,000 speaking fee and expenses were met, but that he declined.
I also know that invitations went out to NASA GISS principal scientists Dr. James Hansen, and Dr. Gavin Schmidt weeks ago as evidenced by their writeup of the issue on their blog, RealClimate.org a week or so ago.
They have declined the formal invitation sent, even though it would be easy for them to attend, given that NASA GISS is located just a few blocks away at Columbia University.
Since recent polls indicate that about 50% of Americans remain unconvinced that global warming is a serious issue, it would seem this would be a perfect place for Mr. Gore, Dr. James Hansen, and Dr. Gavin Schmidt to bridge the crevasse.
Exactly, Anthony. Sadly, these folks don't want to speak to the half of the nation not buying into their junk science, for it is so easily exposed as such, and that would bring an end to the fraud.
Of course, one has to wonder how all those that do believe in this myth feel about the fact that the leaders of their cause not only refuse to debate the issue, but won't even attend a conference dealing with it.
Regardless, Coleman on Monday also pointed his finger at The Weather Channel:
"The Weather Channel had great promise, and that’s all gone now because they’ve made every mistake in the book on what they’ve done and how they’ve done it and it’s very sad,” Coleman said. “It’s now for sale and there’s a new owner of The Weather Channel will be announced – several billion dollars having changed hands in the near future. Let’s hope the new owners can recapture the vision and stop reporting the traffic, telling us what to think and start giving us useful weather information.”
The $300 billion farm bill is being cobbled together by Congress this week. As Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) noted, "It's not just a farm bill. This is a farm and a food and an energy bill."
As Otto von Bismarck quipped, "Laws are like sausage. It's better not to see them being made." Let's take a look at these three aspects of this unappetizing piece of sausage.
First, what do the farmers get? Answer: A lot. Last year, net farm income reached a record level of nearly $89 billion due to high crop prices. Farm household income averaged $84,000 in 2007, according to the Environmental Working Group (the 2006 average for all U.S. households was $66,000). Despite such good times, the federal government showered $5 billion in direct payments on 1.4 million farmers.
These direct payments have nothing to do with crop productivity or a safety net in case of low prices—they are basically gifts to farmers just because they are farmers. In fact, farmers with gross incomes up to $2.5 million have been eligible for these payments. President Bush wants to cap that at $200,000 in income, but the House is considering a cap of $500,000, and the Senate voted to cap the payments at $750,000 per year in income. Overall, Congress shaved just 2 percent off of the direct payments of $5 billion per year over the next four years. While this is a barely discernible improvement, one would think record high farm incomes combined with a world food crisis would make this a good time for Congress to scrap farming subsidies altogether.
It is true that about two-thirds of farm-bill spending funds nutrition programs such as school lunches and food stamps. Lawmakers added $10 billion to the food stamp program to help lower-income Americans address higher food prices. But why are food prices higher in the first place? Part of the reason is the federal government's subsidies and its mandate to turn food into fuel—which brings us to the legislation's energy policy madness.
In December, Congress passed and President Bush signed the Energy Independence and Security Act, which mandated that the U.S. produce 9 billion gallons of conventional biofuels this year. The Act requires that 15 billion gallons of conventional biofuels be produced by 2015 and that 36 billion gallons of conventional and "advanced" biofuels be produced by 2022. How does this affect food prices?
Higher corn prices result from biofuel mandates and subsidies, which encourage farmers to plant fewer acres of wheat and soybeans—which in turn raises their prices. In addition, corn is the chief feed grain for which producers of beef, poultry, and pork must pay higher prices which they will eventually pass along to consumers. In 2006, a bushel of corn sold for just under $2; today it sells for nearly $6.
Currently, most biofuels are produced by turning corn into ethanol. The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that the 2008 corn crop will be 14.6 billion bushels, of which 3.2 billion[*] bushels will be fermented into ethanol. In other words, about 22 percent of our corn crop will be floating out the tailpipes of our automobiles next year.
The new farm bill contains a small gesture in the direction of sanity by reducing bioethanol subsidies from 51 cents per gallon to 45 cents per gallon. This should reduce the price of a bushel of corn by about 3 cents, according to the Des Moines Register. On the other hand, Congress is trying get around the unintended consequences of its biofuels policy by offering $1.01 per gallon subsidy for so-called cellulosic ethanol. Large-scale production of cellulosic ethanol has yet to take off, so the farm bill also disperses $400 million in tax credits in the hope of jumpstarting such production. In addition, the bill extends the tariff on imported ethanol until 2012.
The biofuel mandate is not the only reason for higher food prices—higher oil and fertilizer prices as well as commodity speculation also contribute substantially.
But there's no excuse for Congress to make matters worse with this farm bill. As Rep. Ron Kind (D-Wis.) declared, "Negotiators managed to avoid every opportunity to reform wasteful, outdated subsidies while piling on additional layers of unnecessary spending." As a consequence, Americans can look forward to thinner wallets as they struggle to fuel their cars and feed their kids. Ronald Bailey is reason's science correspondent. His book Liberation Biology: The Scientific and Moral Case for the Biotech Revolution is now available from Prometheus Books.
[*]: Due to an editing error, this originally read million.
NASA has confirmed that a developing natural climate pattern will likely result in much colder temperatures. Of course, the climate alarmists' favorite dubious data source was also quick to point out that such natural phenomena should not confuse the issue of manmade greenhouse gas induced global warming.
According to NASA's Earth Observatory, where you'll also find satellite images and detailed explanations of the event:
"A cool-water anomaly known as La Niña occupied the tropical Pacific Ocean throughout 2007 and early 2008. In April 2008, scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory announced that while the La Niña was weakening, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation-a larger-scale, slower-cycling ocean pattern-had shifted to its cool phase."
This shift in the PDO, which could last for 20 or 30 years, "can have significant implications for global climate, affecting Pacific and Atlantic hurricane activity, droughts and flooding around the Pacific basin, the productivity of marine ecosystems and global land temperature patterns."
And the greatest impact here in the states will likely be on west coast residents, particularly growers.
Warns meteorologist Anthony Watts: [emphasis in original]
"Look out California agriculture. The wine industry, fruits and nut growers will be hit with a shorter growing season and more threats of frost, among other things."
Watts cites two recent reports of frost-induced crop devastation -- an apple orchard in Paradise and wine grapes in Nevada County. He also offers a brief history of last century's PDO phase shifts, and warns that California's agriculture, which experienced "unprecedented growth" during the past warm phase, may now be in serious trouble as things cool down:
In 1905, PDO switched to a warm phase
In 1946, PDO switched to a cool phase
In 1977, PDO switched to a warm phase
Recently lower global temps, likely caused by the late start of Solar Cycle 24, already have some greenhouse gassers nervous - particularly amid speculation of a possible impending "little ice age."
But surely a 30 year protracted naturally-explainable cooling period concurrent with rising atmospheric CO2 levels would forever cool the public's receptiveness to AGW alarmism. No problem -- our ever panicking friends at NASA have that angle covered, too:
"Natural, large-scale climate patterns like the PDO and El Niño-La Niña are superimposed on global warming caused by increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases and landscape changes like deforestation. According to Josh Willis, JPL oceanographer and climate scientist, ‘These natural climate phenomena can sometimes hide global warming caused by human activities. Or they can have the opposite effect of accentuating it.'" [What an absolute load of bull. So, no matter WHAT happens, it's all our fault? Socialist assholes. --ed.]
