Updated Status of the Climate Change Fraud

Happy Earth Day! Heck, Happy Earth Week!! Gina McCarthy, Chief Protector of the Environmental Protection Agency, is engaged in a week of traveling the USA – five cities in all – “to ask Americans to act on climate change through simple actions to reduce carbon pollution in their daily lives.” In case you were planning to fly to five cities to celebrate Earth Week, don’t. Take Gina’s advice – not her example. Incidentally, Gina flies home to Boston most weekends to be with her family.

Earth Week is wonderful because it makes so many people happy. The Greenies and Alarmists are happy because they get to do something to save the planet. We skeptics are happy because we get to watch the ridiculous, hypocritical, foolish things they do that they think will save the planet. This week their obvious hypocrisy and stupidity illustrate the weakening of their Climate Change fraud.

To start things off,  President Obama, late on Friday afternoon, decided to delay yet again a decision on the Keystone XL (KXL) pipeline, until after the November midterm elections. Tom Steyer, the billionaire hedge fund manager, who has pledged $100 million to support Democrat politicians who oppose KXL, was jubilant. Warren Buffet, an Obama supporter, whose BNSF railroad carries oil from Alberta to the Gulf, was pleased. Mr. Steyer has also pledged additional millions for the Obama Presidential Library. Nothing could better illuminate the venality of the Obama administration and the Democrat Party.

Working men and women, however, hoping for the 40,000 jobs the pipeline would create, were not as pleased. “This is once again politics at its worst,” said Terry O’Sullivan, general president of the Laborers’ International Union of North America.“In another gutless move, the administration is delaying a finding on whether the pipeline is in the national interest based on months-old litigation in Nebraska regarding a state level challenge to a state process — and which has nothing to with the national interest.”

I’m sorry for the members of O’Sullivan’s union – which twice endorsed Obama for president, claiming he would “work to create jobs.” Pretty obvious who Obama works for, and that the “climate change” fraud is a weapon against the American middle class – whose median wealth is now second to the Canadian middle class. That’s why the latest Gallup poll shows increasing skepticism and decreasing belief. Since 2001, the number of the deeply skeptical has doubled; the number of “concerned believers” (Gallup’s term) has remained the same; the “mixed middle” group has lost about 10% – all of whom have joined us, the skeptics. None have joined Gore, Obama, the IPCC, and the other alarmists. There’s a reason for that.

Remember the TV Showtime documentary, Years of Living Dangerously, airing on Sunday evenings? I wrote about the first episode a week ago, pointing out that drought in West Texas is not convincing proof of “climate change.” The second episode aired this week; it failed to make the top 100 cable shows, and was beaten in its time-slot by a rerun of the animated cartoon, Bob’s Burgers. Yikes! Showtime spent $20 million on this turkey, directed by James Cameron. The emotional appeal doesn’t seem to be working.

Financially, you’ll be happy to know our Federal Government is spending less of your tax dollars on subsidies for wind power farms. The bird lovers among us will be pleased that fewer raptors and song birds are being sliced and diced. From Investors’ Business Daily:

The federal government has spent some $100 billion in taxpayer subsidies on green energy since 2006. Now we are seeing the flimsy and declining returns on that investment.

The wind industry saw its growth tumble by 92% last year, according to a new report from the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), and that’s off of a very low base to begin with.

Big Wind blames the decline in output on uncertainty over the future of a federal wind industry tax credit — an absurdly generous subsidy of 2.3 cents per kilowatt hour produced.

This handout is what keeps those giant turbines twirling. These subsidies have been thrown at the renewable energy industry for more than a decade and always with the promise by AWEA that profitability is right around the corner. Sure it is.

The reality is that the wind industry is to energy production what Amtrak is to intercity transportation — a perpetual tax-dollar burning machine.

Read More At Investor’s Business Daily

From its dreadful effects on the working middle class to the subsidies it steals from our pockets, the “climate change” fraud has been a disaster. But perhaps its greatest failure has been its absurd catechizing in the halls of higher education, among those with the most advanced educations. For example, from The Yale News, dated 21 April:

Parts of ancient Antarctica were as warm as today’s California coast, and polar regions of the southern Pacific Ocean registered 21st-century Florida heat, according to scientists using a new way to measure past temperatures.

Led by scientists at Yale, the study focused on Antarctica during the Eocene epoch, 40-50 million years ago, a period with high concentrations of atmospheric CO2 and consequently a greenhouse climate.

Merciful Heavens! 50 million years ago, Antarctica, like India and Australia, was an island continent in the South Atlantic, 2000 miles from the South Pole. Northern hemisphere continents were also dispersed away from the North Pole. Ocean currents flowed freely across the poles; major mountain ranges had not arisen. For these and other reasons, world climate was much warmer and more equable. Apparently there are senior editors at the Yale News who are unaware of continental drift, the foundation of modern geology. Faculty adviser? Let’s hope not.  The effect of the climate change fraud has been to dumb down science education, even at the highest levels. Unquestioning acceptance of authority is deadly to science.

We should be grateful for blessings – even small blessings. Vladimir Putin is helping convince even the most fervent believers in “climate change” that there are worse things. Michael Fallon says yesterday was the kickoff in development of shale gas in the UK. Who’s Michael Fallon? He’s the UK Minister for Energy and Climate Change!  Even politicians can sometimes see the light – if the threat to reelection is strong enough.