Everyone knows that the global warming/climate change true believers in the Biden Administration hate fossil fuels and want to eliminate its use. One of Joe’s first acts was to shut down the Keystone XL pipeline while inexplicably opening up the Russian Nord Stream 2. The other blow struck against devil oil was to shut down drilling on federal land, off shore and in Alaska. The final kick in the ass to oil companies has been to pressure banks to refuse to lend money to oil companies for drilling and exploration and cancelling leases for drilling in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge.
The result was to take the US from being a net exporter of oil to an importer, especially from Russia. It also more than doubled the cost of a barrel of oil to $93. Everyone feels this when they pull up to the pump to fill up or when they pay their monthly heating bill. Indirectly it is felt in the increase in cost of everything as fuel costs increase costs for shipments and delivery. Inflation is now running at 7.5% and certainly headed higher.
Sale of Russian oil and gas accounts for 60% of its exports and 30% of its GDP. Much of Europe relies heavily on it as does the East Coast of the US. It’s not as if the US has any shortage of natural gas. The nearby Marcellus shale deposit covers much of West Virginia, Pennsylvania and New York. New York State will not allow fracking so it is not produced there and, global warming true believers and their well-financed lawyers have prevented any pipelines from being built to deliver it. They need it, but can’t get it, so they buy it from the Russians.
There appears little doubt that Putin will invade Ukraine and Biden has threatened to shut down the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to Germany. This will certainly cause oil prices to jump up even higher. If Russia retaliated by stopping shipments of gas to the US, the east coast of the US would be in deep shit. The issue is not that we do not have enough natural gas, it’s that there are not sufficient pipelines to deliver it!
Biden’s team has put the US in this box and his global warming fanatics will not permit him to get out of it. I suspect gasoline prices at the pump will be at least $7.00/gallon by the time mid-term elections roll around and Biden’s approval rating will be near 30%. Let’s just hope we don’t find ourselves in another war over oil, especially when we are sitting on oceans of it.
Category Archives: Global Warming
Oil Wars
Filed under Democrats, Drilling, Environmentalism, Global Warming, Oil
Experts
As anyone who reads this blog knows, I am not a big believer in global warming, to say the least. Both the Vancouver newspapers with a decidedly leftward tilt, however, are all in on AGW.
I used to get upset with them about publishing articles that were clearly not done by climate scientists but came from some US-based advocacy group. They were cleverly disguised to look like a scientific study but you could never figure out any scientific group that had actually performed it.
So, I’d write them an email asking what peer-reviewed study this article came from. I said it was lazy reporting for their so-called journalists to simple publish some press release they received from a California anti-carbon group. They would never publish any of my letters to the editor pointing out the disinformation from the AGW crowd.
2015 was a drought year in the Pacific NW. The big sea of unusually warm water sitting out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean called an El Nino condition caused an unusually hot and dry summer. The summer and early fall were marked by frequent and serious forest fires.
The flip side of the El Nino event is the La Nina condition with colder than normal masses of water in the central Pacific. This is part of a normal cycle called the ENSO or the El Nino Southern Oscillation and reverses every seven to twelve years. The NOAA website says “… the ENSO has large scale impacts on global weather and climate.”
The people who study this stuff were predicting last fall that the El Nino was falling apart and the La Nina was taking over. A La Nina year usually means a cooler and wetter year in the PNW. So, it baffled me why a purported “expert” on water resources would confidently predict another exceptionally dry year in which Vancouver would likely have to ration water and allocate more money to fight forest fires. The underlying assumption on his part was that global warming would cause drought and less rainfall. AGW does not cause droughts in the PNW but an El Nino year can and does frequently.
One would hope that a “water expert” would know this fact. Apparently not. He confidently predicted that 2016 would be as dry and possibly worse, requiring rationing of water. “The Province” published his scare prediction on December 19 and ran a full-page headline stating, “Brace for Another Drought Crisis”. The teaser underneath stated, “Recent precipitation has replenished Metro Vancouver reservoirs but a water expert warns the worst is yet to come.”
I cut out the front page and the full-page article on the inside and set it aside. I said to myself, “Let see what actually happens.” I had just finished reading a book called “Future Babble” by Dan Gardner, a senior writer for the “Ottawa Citizen”. He had come to my attention a number of years ago when he wrote a 10 part series on drugs. Carefully researched and even-handedly written, I thought it was excellent. When I learned he had published a book, I had to read it.
Gardner carefully documented his study of “experts” and the success of their pontificated predictions on many subjects. He found that the experts were correct only about half the time and you could do just as well with a coin flip. He cites some highly public failures and how they shrug off their mistakes to make yet another sweeping prediction. Two examples among many in the book were Revi Batra who published a best selling book in 1985 called “The Great Depression of 1990.” Of course, that didn’t happen. Did he run off and hide from the press? Nope. He published numerous other books in subsequent years making pretty much the same predictions for future years and all did not happen.
Similarly, Paul Ehrlich who I have mentioned frequently, published “The Population Bomb” in 1968 predicting some 200 million people would die of starvation in the 1980’s. Obviously, did not happen, but did not deter him from continuing to predict and publish, appearing on talk shows and giving speeches. You gotta hand it to these guys, they have a lot of gall.
If Al Gore had been right, Florida would be underwater by now and the oceans would be 20 feet higher by the end of the century. But, the oceans are only rising less than 1/8th inch per year, the same pace since the end of the last ice age. He should miss it by 19 feet!
One expert in England predicted that children in school now would never have seen snow in their lifetimes. Nope. Wrong.
The La Nina took over in the central Pacific and it’s been a colder and wetter summer in the PNW as one would expect in a La Nina year. I checked with the various weather sites and BC has had a normal amount of moisture this year and September has been unusually wet this year. Subsequently, forest fires were minimal this summer.
Our water expert can join a long list of expert predictions that were totally wrong.
Filed under Environmentalism, Global Warming, Uncategorized
Regarding Rachel
Some of my readers have emailed expressing dismay at my Global Warming piece, calling it a “right wing rant”. Based on my complaints about Ms. Carson and her book Silent Spring that lead to the ban of DDT and the resulting death of millions in the poorer countries of the world, some readers have decided that I am both uncaring about the environment and “stuck in the 50s in my opinion of women”. About this latter charge I confess utter mystification.
I assure the few people who may actually read this blog, that I care very much about the environment, like nearly all my fellow hunters and fishers. This will be evident in an upcoming piece. I do find fault with anti-capitalist, radical environmentalists who blindly follow dogma and are not swayed by accepted science or common sense.
About the stuck in the 50s charge…. Probably true. I admired and respected women then and still do.
Ms. Carson remains an icon of the environmental community and is often credited with being the founder of that movement. Fair enough. But, why the reluctance to admit she might have been wrong about DDT? One of my readers helpfully referred me to a website to defend RC. One of the references in that article (A National Geographic piece entitled “Bedlam in the Blood” (about malaria) contained a quote from Dr. Robert Gwadz of the National Institute of Health. He said, “Banning DDT may have killed 20 million people.”
This is from a reference supposedly defending Ms. Carson! Another piece from the same site by John Tierney of the NY Times carries the title “Fateful Voice of a Generation Still Drowns Out Science”. You can guess what that says about ol’ Rach.
We hear what we want to hear and find whatever confirms our prejudices, either on the Internet or in print. A friend of mine years ago was a professor of marine biology at U of Miami Marine Laboratory. He said our personal battle against our own prejudices was a constant process. Once you get rid of one prejudice you adopt another. I am no different than anyone else in this regard.
But, pointing out Carson’s error of half a century ago is not the same thing as walking into a Wisconsin tavern and loudly proclaiming that Brett Favre was a lousy quarterback and should have retired years ago. On second thought, maybe it is.
Filed under DDT, Environmentalism, Global Warming, Uncategorized
A Big Melt
Midwesterners may “cling to their guns and religion” as candidate Obama alleged during the 2008 campaign. But it must also be acknowledged that liberals and the Obama Administration desperately cling to the theory of global warming despite a barrage of evidence suggesting the whole theory is a massive hoax.
As public opinion and concern has swung against them, AGW enthusiasts have become more and more shrill. Exhibit One in this phenomenon is Al Gore’s recent meltdown at the Aspen Institute where he addressed the Networks and Citizenship Panel. Bloated, red faced and with neck veins bulging, Gore delivered the following crude rant.
There’s no longer a shared reality. It’s no longer acceptable in mixed company – bi-partisan company- to use the goddamn word “climate.” Some of the exact same people
– I can go down a list of their names – are involved in this. And what do they do? They pay pseudo-scientists to pretend to be scientists to put out the message, “This climate thing is nonsense.” “Man-made C02 doesn’t trap heat.“ “It may be volcanoes.” Bullshit! “It may be sunspots.” Bullshit! “It’s not getting warmer.” Bullshit!
First of all, other than the obvious irony of having Gore overuse the word “bullshit”, something that has exemplified his whole career, one has to be stunned at his refusal to accept obvious
facts. Dr. Phil Jones who presided over the Climate Research Unit of the U. of E. Anglia, the outfit that got this whole hysterical movement going, admitted in Feb or 2010 that “… there has been no statistically significant warming in the last fifteen years.”
Say what?
In addition, there’s plenty of peer-reviewed science out there that shows C02 does not trap heat much, that volcanoes and the sun do have a great effect on climate. (See “Gaia is Pissed”, April 25,2010 for volcanoes). Also, you can check out the “Climate Audit” site for specifics
on the various studies.
Gore may be melting down because he’s going to have to split with his wife the considerable fortune he’s made being the guru of global warming. Tipper filed for divorce when she returned to their 20,000 sqft home in Nashville to find Al nude on the living room floor fornicating with a polar bear skin rug. OK, I just made that up. Maybe she just got tired of the boring clown or, being a Democrat, maybe he had an intern on the side?
Gore has made a pile of loot since leaving the White House with a net worth of some $2 million. 2008 estimates put the new number at over $100 million. His speaking fees variously estimated at $200,000 per and his many “green” investments have paid off handsomely. He got some $34 million of taxpayer money to start the Chicago Climate Exchange, a carbon trading operation, that promised to make billions if the Democrats came through with Cap and Trade legislation. When that didn’t happen and global warming fears cooled, the company folded. Poor Al is likely sweating his cash flow.
Meanwhile, the radicals at the EPA continue to pile on job killing regulations in their mad war on carbon. Lisa Jackson, EPA head, recently announced a new interpretation of old rules for clean air that would shut down 20% of the US coal generated electrical capacity. Estimated cost? 60,000 jobs and $129 billion. She was supposed to make these kinds of rule changes based on reports from the Clean Air Science Advisory Committee. She decided to go ahead a full two years before the report was due. Her justification? Saving lives.
The National Ambient Air Quality Study came out with a bogus report saying the rule changes would result in X number of “lives saved”. Really? That speculative crap sounds suspiciously like the “jobs saved” nonsense put out to justify the stimulus boondoggle. Donna Nelson, head
of the Public Utilities Commission in Texas, says the new rules will cause rolling blackouts in her state. Most likely many states will suffer the same fate.
This, however, should come as no surprise to anyone who is paying attention. Obama and Biden both promised in the campaign to shut down the coal industry. He happily said that he would bankrupt anyone who tried to build a coal fired electrical generating plant. Well, here ya go.
Obama’s team wants to use regulations to achieve goals not wanted by the people of even the politicians. Jackson’s EPA has already promulgated 75 new job killing regulations through mid- 2011 at a cost of $38 billion. Total cost of federal regulation on an annual basis? $1.75 trillion.
Filed under Global Warming, Gore, Obama, Politics
Gaia Is Pissed
April 14th on the run up to Earth Day, Mother Gaia or maybe Mother Nature decided to show us who is boss by blowing the top off Iceland ’s unpronounceable Mt. Eyjafjallajokull Western Europe , 100,000 flights got cancelled during a week causing massive disruption. (Note: I found several spellings for this volcano and one explanation. “Eyja = island, fjall = mountain and “joekull = glacier. Hereafter I will just call it Eyja)
Eyja last erupted in 1821 and that event lasted a year or two depending on which account you believe. It also erupted in 920 and 1612 and on each occasion within six months the adjacent
Iceland
In 1783
History provides other examples of volcanoes dropping temperatures.
One Muslim cleric seems to have found an explanation. Mr. Hojjat ol-eslam Kazem Sediqi said in a recent statement that “women who do not dress modestly lead young men astray and spread adultery in society” cause earthquakes. Since earthquakes precede and seemingly trigger volcanic eruptions, it is safe to conclude that mini-skirts and skimpy tops cause volcanoes to erupt. This theory will be put to the test on Monday. Jen McCreight, a Purdue student, has organized a “Boobquake” event with 40,000 followers so far. They will be simultaneously exposing and shaking their boobs in an effort to induce an earthquake. If Katla chooses that day to explode, burkas may replace the bare midriff look overnight. God forbid.
Meanwhile, Harry Reid, a man not to be humbled by Mother Nature, plans to introduce the Cap and Trade legislation in the Senate on April 26th. This notwithstanding the revelations of the “ClimateGate” scandal or the confession by Phil Jones, the former head of the Climate Research Unit and main author of the UN’s IPCC report, that “there has been no statistically significant warming in the past fifteen years.” ‘Why worry about facts?’ say the Democrats. Let’s ram this job busting, economy-destroying piece of legislation through instead while we still have our jobs in the Senate. Makes sense. Might as well take over as much of the
Filed under Global Warming, Harry Reid, Volcano
The New Deniers
Skeptics of man made global warming have been called “deniers”, a name purposely chosen to tie them to “holocaust deniers”. In other words, nut cases refusing to recognize the obvious. Skeptics like me were held in contempt and shouted down by the true believers. Most skeptics kept their doubts about the doomsday predictions to themselves.
One would have thought that after the publication of over 3000 emails and reams of data either hacked or released by a whistle blower on November 17th from the Climate Research Unit of the
“The
The ClimateGate emails revealed that the dons at CRU had fudged and cherry picked the data, conspired to “peer review” each other’s work, frustrated FOI requests for other researchers to see their data and methods and pressured scientific journals to exclude articles critical of their positions. Now they claim they have “lost” the original data on which they based their research! They also wrote each other lamenting the inability of their theories to account for recent cooling. Pretty damning stuff and those defending the emails as simply ‘banter between scientists’ sounded more than a little lame.
Honest and diligent reporters should have smelled out this story years ago. Canadians Steve McIntyre and Dr. Ross McKitrick have been working on it for years and have written papers discrediting Dr. Michael Mann’s famous “hockey stick” graph widely used by alarmists. The graph showed a dramatic rise in temperatures in the last century and eliminated the Medieval Warming Period of 800 years ago. M and M, as the CRU scientists called them, discredited the hockey stick proxy data showing that they had cherry picked the data. (Recently
You would think that when new evidence is presented a rational person would reevaluate their position. That does not seem to be the case with global warming (oops. Climate Change). And, with record breaking cold and massive snow dumps in Europe and
There seem to be two camps that have a vested interest in perpetuating the global warming alarmism: The scientists who receive massive amounts of money from various governments to conduct their research. If scientists scream the world is coming to an end government opens the purse to fund the research. CRU received $20 million from the Brits. The
The other camp includes socialists who believe the solution to all the ills of society can be rectified by a world government. Craig McInnes wrote a piece in today’s Sun (After Copenhagen: Political Climate Change Begins at Home). He summed it up for us with this quote: “What
What about the editors and journalists, you might ask? I suppose some are just lazy or hired to be the “environmental reporter” inclined to lean left and green. They have tended to just parrot news releases and propaganda put out by environmental groups without doing any serious checking of the facts. Hey, scary stuff sells papers. Don’t rock the boat.
If you really want to get information on global warming you have only to go to the internet. (Journalist take note.) You can start by viewing a special report by Fox News called “Global Warming, Or a Lot of Hot Air”. It ran last Sunday but it’s now posted on YouTube (part 1 of many–look for other links). If I could find it, you can. Next I would suggest Steve McIntyre’s site, Climate Audit and then Climate Depot. If you still believe in global warming after a little honest research God love ya. You’re a New Denier.
Filed under Global Warming, Politics
Another Blue Dress Moment?
We might all remember the moment it was discovered that Monica’s famed blue dress had a generous dollop of
Late on November 19 another “blue dress moment” occurred when it was discovered that over 3000 emails and data files had been either hacked or posted by an insider from the computers of the
What the emails have revealed so far is:
1). They have massaged the data in the past to get desired results and openly discuss among themselves how to manipulate the data to eliminate the recent global cooling.
2). They conspired to prevent the release of raw data requested under the FOIA, or to disclose their methods and source code to other scientists so that their work and conclusions could be verified.
3). Only studies favorable to the theory of global warming were published and the CRU scientists and their allies punished and threatened editors of journals that published contrary science.
Here’s a sample email from Dr. Phil Jones to other scientists. “I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in real temperatures to each series for the last 20 years (i.e. From 1981 onward) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.”
“Mike” refers to Michael Mann who published his famous and extensively promoted “hockey stick” graph in “Nature” magazine. This supposedly depicted a near vertical up tick of global temperatures in recent decades. Al Gore and others used Mann’s work to predict the end of the World. This graph was later widely discredited as nearly any data plugged into Dr. Mann’s model produced the hockey stick result.
“Keith” refers to Keith Briffa who published a study of tree ring data from
Some of the other emails derided skeptical scientists and one even celebrated the death of one of their vocal critics. Being an outspoken skeptic of global warming (frequently called “deniers”) has been an unpopular position, to say the least. A few weeks ago I wrote a letter to the editor of the “
While the news was reported by some press outlets, it has been largely ignored by the Main Stream Media. Of course, they are heavily invested in advancing the “settled science” of AGW and would be embarrassed to admit that they have been duped by a handful of researchers more interested in advancing a political agenda than objective science. One would hope that they would now want to reveal this information and promote a true open and honest debate on the science of global warming. John Coleman, the founder of the Weather Channel, says he has a petition signed by 30,000 scientists and meteorologists who want that debate.
This is especially important now as a cap and trade bill has already passed the House and a companion bill is ready in the Senate. Either one of those, if enacted, will seriously damage the
For further reading on this subject, check out: Climate Audit, Wattsupwiththat or Pajamas Media (Charles Martin).
Filed under Cap and Trade, Clinton, Global Warming
Earth Day
As I write this another Earth Day has come and gone. It began in Philadelphia in 1970, supposedly started by Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson and has, over the years, grown into a worldwide movement. I say supposedly because a man by the name of Ira Einhorn, a sixties radical–hippie, guru, anti-war activist and darling of the left–claimed to be the founder himself. He was at least a key organizer and MC of the first event, 
but was later disowned by the movement for his inconvenient killing of his girl friend, Holly Maddux. This was discovered 18 months after he had stuffed her body in a steamer trunk and stored it in his apartment. The neighbors finally complained about the smell and liquid dripping through the ceiling. Talk about an environmental issue. Ira had plenty of defenders on the left and managed to get out on $40,000 bail whereupon he promptly disappeared. In the 80s he turned up in France and avoided extradition until the late 90s when he was convicted and sent off to jail.
I would be the last to dispute that Earth Day and the raising of concern about the environment has done a lot of good over the decades. Much has been accomplished: the air and water have been cleaned up, sewage issues dealt with, spills of noxious chemicals stopped, mining waste controlled and landfills better managed. Although from the crap you see strewn along the highways and the graffiti on every flat surface in major cities (like this river in Manila), you get the feeling that not everyone has gotten the word.
I have always thought of myself as a “conservationist”. Indeed, my major in college (marine biology) fell under the supervision of the Conservation Department at Cornell. But, who doesn’t support clean air and water as well as the wise stewardship of our natural resources? I would not like to be called an “environmentalist” however. They have gone off the deep end with another agenda. As Stephen Hayward of the Pacific Resources Institute and author of the annual “Leading Environmental Indicators” states, “The environmental movement has been taken over by anti-capitalists and extremists. The agenda is now pulling down market economics, raising up central planning for egalitarian goals, forced lifestyle changes and the vilification- in hopes of eliminating- signs of wealth. Ironically, the creation of wealth allows the resources to invest in clean up.”
Indeed, the constant drumbeat that the environment is in grave danger from the left and the media has been effective. A poll commissioned by Habitat Heroes and conducted by Opinion Research found that 75% of blacks and 65% of Hispanics believe the planet will be irrevocably damaged by the time they reach adulthood. The schools have been drenching the children in eco-propaganda, laments Meghan Cox Gurdon in a piece for the WSJ (Taste Page, 4/17/09). This, she asserts, “causes stress that their smallest decision could have catastrophic effects on the globe.” [Another great article by the same author.]
She points out that children’s books have gotten in on the act. One of my favorite funny authors, Carl Hiaasen, has written several children’s books (Hoot, Flush, Scat) that feature eco-themes where young eco-warriors thwart fat, evil businessmen who damage the environment. Trite, but effective.
Mark Levin in his runaway best seller “Liberty and Tyranny” explains the motivation of the modern environmental movement in clear concise terms. He calls them “enviro-statists”. BTW, everyone should read this book… even my liberal friends (maybe especially my liberal friends). He explains a great deal about where we are and how we got there.
While the “Green” movement has followed the trajectory of many other fads and been championed to the point of nausea, the radical environmentalist have clearly gained the upper hand in promoting their agenda. Obama has loaded his cabinet with true believers starting with “Energy Czar”, Carol Browner. She served as a Gore protégé and once worked for Ralph Nader. She was also one of 14 leaders of Socialist International’s Committee for Sustained World Society that calls for “global governance”. Ken Salazar at Interior is slowly but systematically shutting down any hope of drilling for more oil. Stephen Chu, Energy Secretary and Lisa Jackson at EPA are both global warming firm believers and are actively promoting the proposed Cap and Trade legislation and/or advocating the restrictions on carbon emissions through EPA mandates.
They are not much interested in this just in from the four agencies that track the Earth’s temperatures: Hadley Climate Research Unit in Britain, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in NY, Christy Group at the U of Alabama and Remote Sensing Systems in CA. All four report that the Earth cooled in 2007 by 0.7C, the fastest drop on record. There has been no warming for the last 9 years. Last week Gore testified before Congress still claiming that the oceans will rise 20 feet and we are all doomed. Geeze, Al, get a grip. According to the latest poll, only about 30% of the US populace now believe that human activity has any impact on climate change.
Despite predictions from government and private sources that draconian restrictions on carbon emissions will result in huge increases in electricity and energy costs with concurrent job losses, the Administration persists in promoting their “renewable energy” (Solar and wind. Nuclear does not count even though it emits no CO2) program. Conservative estimates show that electricity prices will increase by 30% by 2020 and 101-120% by 2030. Job losses come in at 1.5 million by 2020.
Obama touts Germany as the poster child on how we should employ a renewable energy program. OK, let’s take a look.
Alex Alexiev in a NR article (“Green Bubbles Bursting”) points out that Germany achieved 15% of their electricity needs from renewables by offering that source seven times the wholesale price from conventional producers. Electricity prices went up 38% in one year. (2006-07) This, of course, does not include the infrastructure cost borne by the government. Part of the problem of renewables is the intermittent nature of the wind and sun. (News flash: the sun does not shine at night). These sources need to be backed up by conventional, usually gas fired, plants to provide energy to the grid.
There are other examples of European countries trying the green route but seeing the costs and irrationality, are now backing off. In Spain, another example cited by Obama, the Universidad Ray Juan Carlos calculates that for every “green job” created by their renewable program there were 2.5 jobs destroyed elsewhere in the economy.
There are also significant signs that Europeans have cast off their anti-nuclear hysteria and are planning on relying on nuclear energy for their future. Sweden has changed course, as has Italy that plans to get 25% of its future power from 8 new nuclear reactors. Great Britain will build 10 new reactors and even the Ukraine, site of the infamous Chernobyl disaster, plans 11 new reactors by 2030. Poland, Finland, Bulgaria and Romania are either planning or building new reactors. India plans to go from 3% to 45% nuclear with 40 new reactors, China plans a seven-fold increase and Japan wants to double from 30% nuclear.
Meanwhile, here in the USA nuclear is off the table while the agenda remains controlled by the hysterical environmental lobbies. Even as the Republicans timidly promote nuclear they know their suggestions fall on deaf ears. The primary tool of the environmentalists is litigation and the “citizen lawsuit provisions” of environmental law allow well-funded groups to bring lawsuits in the public’s name. They can and will hold up any project that does not fit their narrow theology.
coal fired plants, from a high of 97.8% in W. VA to 85% for many Midwestern states. Some states like CA get none or nearly none. These Senators realize that their states will be disproportionately impacted. Not good for re-election to vote for this turkey. The recent decision by the EPA declaring CO2 a hazard to health is meant to browbeat these reluctant Senators into line. Senator Boxer recently declared that if the Senate does not pass C & T, she would urge the EPA to act to regulate carbon.
Just what we need: economic and energy policy by fiat.
Filed under Cap and Trade, Czars, Earth Day, Environmentalism, Global Warming, Obama, Politics
Let’s Have the Debate
Journalist Peter Foster reports in the “National Post” today that he is heading off to New York City to attend the 2009 International Conference on Climate Change. Dubbed the largest ever gathering of climate change skeptics, the title of the event is: “Global Warming: Was it Ever Really a Crisis?” Dozens of presenters from the scientific community will offer papers disputing the conventional wisdom that global warming exists and that, in any event, is not a threat to humanity. Presumably, (and hopefully) they will discuss the economic folly of promoting drastic measures in the midst of a worldwide recession.
I suspect that this conference will not get even a passing reference in the mainstream media. That would prove embarrassing to the media and Obama Administration as they push forward with their plans to impose a $650 billion cap and trade regime (carbon tax) on the American people. Even Obama and his fellow socialists admit that energy costs will skyrocket, while they are less forthright in admitting that this war on CO2 amounts to a huge tax increase on everyone. No one in support of this scheme wants to confess that poorer citizens will be hardest hit. That famous 13 bucks a week in tax breaks (falling to $7.10 in 2010) for lower income Americans will quickly evaporate as the cost of everything goes up…. except the stock market, of course. That will be going down and so will the job market as industries flee the country. You really have to wonder if these guys have a clue. Or maybe, (and God I hate to say this) it’s intentional. Can it be possible that they hate business so much that they would intentionally destroy the American economy? When ideology trumps reason and science you have to wonder.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the pond in Merry Old England where they are still seething over the dissing of PM Gordon Brown by the White House, another conference is taking place. This one at the University of the West of England in Bristol brings together psychologists, sociologists and eco-gurus and will explore the Mental Disorder of “climate change denial”.
Yes indeed, the 650 certified meteorologists and climate scientists on the US Senate compilation of climate cataclysm skeptics and the 32,000 scientists who signed the Oregon Petition saying they dispute that humans are causing climate change are certifiably nuts. Hold on while I see if I can find a straight jacket on eBay.
Foster dubs this group climate true believers adherents of a “global state religion” or “eco-shariah” and anyone disagreeing with accepted dogma in need of serious psychological treatment. Like the medieval Christianity, Islamic fundamentalists or communist dissenters, non-believers need to be tortured (re-educated?) until they accept the true faith. Perhaps a little electro-shock therapy would do the trick?
This sort of thinking lends a lot of credence to the late Michael Crichton’s contention that modern society has embraced environmentalism as a secular religion. Only a true believer refuses to look at scientific evidence with an open mind.
One thing remains clear, no one in the Obama Administration wants to have a debate about the validity of global warming. (Al Gore doesn’t want to debate anyone on the science either.) And, they certainly don’t want to have a vote on this massive tax increase. They can avoid that messy confrontation by simply imposing cap and trade through the regulatory auspices of the EPA and/or regulations under the ESP (Endangered Species Act. 
Remember those “endangered” polar bears?) Having a debate would expose millions of people to the scientific evidence and raise the question of whether this is about saving the planet or simply a massive tax and power grab.
Filed under Global Warming, Obama, Politics, Tea Party
What If They’re Wrong?
Vancouver recorded the lowest temperature in forty years last night. Tonight we await the arrival of a blizzard that has already struck Portland and Seattle. This past week it snowed in Las Vegas, Houston and Malibu. My cousin who lives outside of San Diego sent me pictures of snow on the hills near his home.
This is, to say the least, highly unusual stuff.
Of course, Minnesota, Wisconsin and the East are getting whacked with vicious winter storms, but that’s normal. What is not normal is that winter has not yet officially arrived. Starts tomorrow.
Since this has started out to be a record breaking cold winter you might well imagine my surprise when the environmental clergy announced that a necessary step in curbing the planet-threatening advance of global warming would be the taxation of cow farts. Yes indeed, bovine flatulence, we are told, represents a large contributor to greenhouse gases. A tax on each offending cow seems to be the only idea on the table.
My entrepreneurial mind immediately clicked with an alternative. Why not, I mused, instead insert a tube into the anus of each cow and attach to it an inflatable balloon? The captured methane could then be collected and burned to generate electricity! Hey, it’s renewable energy and that’s what we’re looking for, right? I can see no flaw in this proposal.
Having quickly dealt with cow farts, a sacrilegious thought occurred to me: What if these guys are wrong about global warming? What if, instead of warming the planet is actually cooling? What if the school of science that links previous cycles of solar activity (sunspots) to warming and cooling periods on Earth are right and the sun determines these things, not whatever Man may or may not do? The evidence suggests we should give it some consideration… not to mention looking out the window and checking out the temp and snow depth from time to time.
The Maunder Minimum, an extended period of low sunspot activity occurred between 1645 and 1715 and coincides with the Little Ice Age. Cooling and warming periods also correlate with the Medieval Minimum (1040 to 1080) and Medieval Maximum (1100 to 1250) although one has to wonder who was measuring this stuff. Scientists also claim that solar cycles correlate perfectly with warming and cooling periods on Mars. Since I have heard no reports on the discovery of SUVs on Mars, I think we can pretty much rule out human activity having much to do with it.
Solar activity comes and goes on roughly an eleven-year cycle and on that pace does not have a significant impact as the warming and cooling effects get dampened somewhat by the oceans. You may remember from 8th grade science that the oceans cover about 75% of the globe…. A big heat sink. When the sun refuses to adhere to the eleven-year cycle, things can get out of hand. The question: will the current minimum in sunspot activity be a short one, or will we be in for the next ice age?
Bjorn Lonborg in The Skeptical Environmentalist points out that global cooling is a far bigger problem than global warming. Shorter growing seasons and less land mass available for cultivation make food an issue. And, he points out, far more people today die as a result of cold than heat. The consensus among scientists holds that by the end of the century, if global warming were to continue at the pace of the last 50 years, that the Earth would increase in temperature by 2 degrees and the oceans would rise by 8 inches. Not a big problem, and may actually be a benefit as more of the northern latitudes become available for food production.
President-elect Obama promised during the campaign to “save the planet and stop the oceans from rising”. (No point in setting modest goals.) With that in mind, he has loaded his incoming administration with global warming and anti-carbon true believers. They will certainly pursue a series of policies to battle global warming and reduce our national carbon footprint. I think it is worth asking if this is exactly the wrong prescription for what ails us? What if Al Gore and his acolytes are exactly wrong and the Earth is getting colder? What if instead of shutting down coal fired electrical plants and restricting oil drilling we should be doing the opposite, just so we can stay warm in the next decade? What if instead of propping up the auto industry we should be helping out the snowshoe industry? It’s something to think about.
By the way, my wife just informed me our water pipes are frozen in the upstairs bathroom.
Filed under Environmentalism, Global Warming