Anthem and the Meaning of the Light Bulb Ban

Humanity hangs the light bulb

Last week, I reread Anthem by Ayn Rand, an extraordinarily beautiful tribute to innovation as the life force of progress. It was published in 1937 but mostly drafted in Russia soon after World War I and the Bolshevik Revolution. But get ready for chills when you realize that this dystopian future is actually coming true, right now.

After a catastrophe has erased all of civilization from the earth, humanity’s surviving descendants live in a primitive but totalitarian society. In the tale, a cruel government committee cracks down hard on a young man who has re-discovered the light bulb. They condemn him for daring to think for himself and presuming to override the planned poverty of the social order. The society ruled by the total state is perfectly happy with its candles, and no steps forward can be taken that are not explicitly approved by the ruling class.

Rand used the example of the light bulb because it is such a great symbol of the power of the human mind. It is within our power to harness the energy that comes from the heavens. “The power of the sky can be made to do men’s bidding,” observes the protagonist. “There are no limits to its secrets and its might, and it can be made to grant us anything if we but choose to ask.”

The light bulb finally freed humanity from having to defer to the earth’s rotations to determine work and leisure time. It allowed night baseball, made our highways safer, and put society on a 24/7 basis. The light bulb means much more than what it is in its physical essence: it was the dawn of humankind’s mastery of the world. Civilization is measured in lux.

I was contemplating the novel and looked up at my ceiling fan. Three glorious incandescent bulbs were lighting up the room with a warm glow. These particular bulbs lack the blue and white frosting. The glass is clear and the curved filament is burning like a miniature flame, so intense that you can’t look directly at it. And yet that flame is caged and made a servant of human dreams and aspirations.

I had the sudden thought: these are going to be difficult to replace. The last time I visited the light bulb section of the big-box hardware store, there were 30 feet of bulbs, but it was extraordinarily difficult to find one that you want. There were vast numbers of “compact fluorescent lamp” bulbs that look like curly pasta wrapped tightly to fight into a small space. There are implausibly expensive halogen bulbs that promise to last nearly lifetime but break the bank upon purchase and burn so hot they could cook an egg. There are many other choices too and often it can be hard to tell what is what.

What seems nearly missing entirely are normal light bulbs. Where are they? And why is private enterprise trying so hard to foist on us inferior products that we don’t want?

The answer is a thoroughly insidious attempt by bureaucracies together with a gaggle of politicians (they know all about light bulbs, right!) to ban the light bulb as we’ve always known it. In other words, it’s the plot of Anthem lived in real-time.

It all began in 2007 with the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, which called for a phase-out of the incandescent bulb by 2012 (variously amended by Congress to push out the deadline). The law banned light bulbs by wattage but not by name. In practice, it meant death for the kind of light we’ve enjoyed since the 19th century.

Gone already from the shelves are incandescent bulbs of 100 watts. Then last year, 40- and 60-watt incandescent light bulbs were killed off. Factories that once produced them were shut. You can get these bulbs so long as supplies last, but in a few years, that’s it. They’ll all be gone.

There are certain exemptions. Photographers and stage managers can continue to use them. Other specialty lights can continue to be made and sold, but you and I won’t typically bump into them at the big-box store. Oddly, 3-way bulbs survive, presumably because they save energy. If you are rich enough, you can escape the worst of it.

What is the thinking here? Ostensibly, it is all about energy efficiency, which vaguely connects to the American obsession with security and hence the name of the bill that made all this happen. If you use old-fashioned light bulbs, you are supporting energy dependence, hence foreigners, and hence terrorism. If you use incandescent bulbs, you are supporting America’s enemies, not to mention destroying the planet.

Once you dig more deeply, you find something remarkable: there was no scientific basis for this ban at all. Consider the analysis of Howard Brandston, a fellow of the Illuminating Engineering Society of North America and the brains behind the refurbishment of the Statue of Liberty in the 1980s.

Brandston argues that the government’s metric of lumens-per-watt is completely bogus. It doesn’t consider the quality of light for a room. It doesn’t consider the costs of making replacements or the environmental risk of more “efficient” bulbs (fluorescent bulbs contain mercury), and it doesn’t consider the whole reason we have light bulbs to begin with: to light up a space. It focusses on one narrow metric at the expense of all these broader considerations.

“The calculations used by the government and others promulgating or promoting use of compact fluorescents,” he says, “is strictly mathematical conjecture and nothing to do with reality.”

So how can you tell which are the best bulbs? Brandston says that the consumer’s subjective judgment, tempered by a consideration of how long bulbs last, is more than enough. You don’t need bureaucrats, and you don’t need experts — just like every other basic consumer product.

But even if the new bulbs are awful, don’t they “save energy”? Brandston says: “Hoping that lighting is going to make a major contribution borders on ridiculous. . . . We’d be better off promoting occupancy sensors and dimming controls and recommending all dimmers be set to only provide 95 percent of the power to the light sources.”

The story you will not hear concerns the role of the industry: all of the major manufacturers supported the ban, the new standards, and the replacement bulbs. Profit margins were ridiculously small on old-fashioned light bulbs, which were being manufactured in China for pennies. How do you stop competition and push an expensive, highly profitable alternative? Testify before Congress and get them to force consumers to buy your expensive but poor-selling product lines.

The evidence is there for all to see. The National Electrical Manufacturers Association represents the entire industry connected with lightbulbs, every single one of the biggest players. The testimony to Congress by its president was not just about acquiesing to a ban of bulbs; the NEMA positively urged and demanded it, along with a ban on importation of incandescent bulbs. This is clearly a case of manufacturer-driven graft at work.

And it’s enough to break this capitalist’s heart. And there’s more evidence that this ban was all about money coming and going. The NEMA became very commited to Washington, doubling its lobbying expenditures around the time of the ban.

It also fits with everything else about federal policy for the last half century, which seems to have the goal of helping special interests by increasing human misery as its main policy objective. It is why our toilets, faucets, detergent, and washers have been wrecked with water-use controls — even though none of these policies make a significant difference in overall water usage.

It’s why we are pushed to recycle even though no one has ever demonstrated that the mandates help the environment. It’s why we are taxed on things we want to do like drive cars. It’s why we can no longer medicate ourselves in normal ways without a doctor’s permission. It’s why we must endure special taxes and, worse, condescending lectures from public officials about fast food, sweets, and trash generation.

What do all these policies have in common? They target things that we enjoy and that make our life better. They force on us expensive, inferior products and services. It’s the penance we must do in the interest of the common good — and never mind whether that the common good is actually enhanced in real life.

This whole ethos of modern policy is not inherent in the nature of government. There was a time when government actually sought to boost the material blessings we enjoyed. It did a terrible job of it, sure, but that was the intention, as late as the New Deal.

Now the intention is exactly the opposite. If there is something that we like, that makes our lives lovely, a product or service that increases our overall happiness — something as simple and normal and traditional as a light bulb — you can bet it is being targeted for destruction by some bureaucracy somewhere.

This gets us back to Rand. She had a prophetic way of seeing to the ugly truth about government. She grew up under a regime that promised heaven on earth but ended up making a hell for everyone not part of the ruling class.

She saw that governments could not produce imaginative goods — could not invent or create — and would eventually fall back on celebrating the poverty and destruction they cause, inventing an ethic of sacrifice as a means of covering up their crimes. (You only have to listen to the glorification of “authentic” poverty to see this meme in explicit action.) And if you don’t go along, you are an enemy of the people.

It’s rather incredible that we have come full circle. Just as in Anthem, the US government has actually banned the light bulb as we’ve known it (though unlike Anthem, it has been ironically sold as “progress.”) Just think about the awesome implications of that and ask yourself why we put up with it.


Jeffrey A. Tucker

Jeffrey Tucker is Director of Digital Development at FEE, CLO of the startup Liberty.me, and editor at Laissez Faire Books. Author of five books, he speaks at FEE summer seminars and other events. His latest book is Bit by Bit: How P2P Is Freeing the World.

The Environmental Insane Asylum

Earth Day was declared in 1970 and for the past 45 years we have all been living in the Environmental Insane Asylum, being told over and over again to believe things that are the equivalent of Green hallucinations. Now the entire month of April has been declared Earth Month, but in truth not a day goes by when we are not assailed with the bold-faced lies that comprise environmentalism.

Around the globe, the worst part of this is that we are being victimized by people we are told to respect from the President of the United States to the Pope of the Catholic Church. Their environmentalism is pure socialism.

Organizations whom we expect to tell the truth keep telling us that “climate change is one of the biggest global security threats of the 21st century.” This was a recent statement by “world leaders” like the G7, a group of finance ministers and central bank governors of seven advanced economies, the International Monetary Fund, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United States. On April 17 they adopted a report about the “threat” put together by think tanks that included the European Union Institute for Security Studies and the Wilson Center in Washington, D.C.

When I speak of “climate” I am referring to data gathered not just about decades, but centuries of the Earth’s cycles of warming and cooling. When I speak of “weather”, the closest any of us get to it other than today’s, are local predictions no longer than a few days’ time at best. The weather is in a constant state of flux.

Climate change is not a threat and most certainly there is no global warming. As Prof. Bob Carter, a geologist at James Cook College in Queensland, Australia, has written, “For many years now, human-caused climate change has been viewed as a large and urgent problem. In truth, however, the biggest part of the problem is neither environmental nor scientific, but a self-created political fiasco.”

The fact that the Earth is now into the nineteenth year of a natural planetary cooling cycle seems to never be acknowledged or reported. “The problem here,” says Prof. Carter, “is not that of climate change per se, but rather that of the sophisticated scientific brainwashing that has been inflicted on the public, bureaucrats and politicians alike.”

In a book I recommend to everyone, “Climate for the Layman” by Anthony Bright-Paul, he draws on the best well-known science about the Earth noting that “Since there is no such thing as a temperature of the whole Earth all talk of global warming is simply illogical, ill thought out, and needs to be discarded for the sake of clarity. The globe is warming and cooling in different locations concurrently every minute of the day and night.”

“Since it is abundantly clear that there is no one temperature of the atmosphere all talk of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) is simply an exercise in futility.” A look at the globe from either of its two poles to its equator and everything in between tells us with simple logic that being able to determine its “temperature” is impossible. The Earth, however, has gone through numerous warming and cooling cycles, all of which were the result of more or less solar radiation.

The Sun was and is the determining factor. The assertion that humans have any influence or impact that can determine whether the Earth is warmer or cooler is absurd.

The Earth had passed through warming and cooling cycles for billions of years before humans even existed, yet we are told that the generation of carbon dioxide through the use of machinery in manufacturing, transportation or any other use is causing the build-up of “greenhouse gases” in the atmosphere. We are told to give up the use of coal, oil and natural gas. That is a definition of insanity!

Here’s the simple truth that most people are not told: The Sun warms the Earth and the Earth warms the atmosphere.

As for carbon dioxide, the amount generated by human activity represents a miniscule percentage of the 0.04% in the Earth’s atmosphere. There has been more carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere—well before humans existed—contributing to the growth of all manner of vegetation which in turn generated oxygen.

Without carbon dioxide there would be no life on Earth. It feeds the vegetation on which animal life depends directly and indirectly. As Anthony Bright-Paul says, “A slight increase in atmosphere of carbon dioxide will not and cannot produce any warming, but can be hugely beneficial to a green planet.”

The Earth’s atmosphere is approximately 78% Nitrogen, 21% Oxygen, 0.9% Argon, 0.04% Carbon Dioxide, and the rest is water vapor and trace gases in very small amounts. They interact to provide an environment in which life, animal and vegetable, exists on Earth.

When you live in a Global Environmental Insane Asylum, you are not likely to hear or read the truth, but you can arrive at it using simple logic. We know instinctively that humans do not control the waves of our huge oceans, nor the vast tectonic plates beneath our feet, the eruptions of volcanoes, the Jetstream, cloud formation, or any of the elements of the weather we experience, such as thunder, lightning, and other acts of Nature.

Why would we blindly assume or agree to the torrent of lies that humans are “causing” climate change? The answer is that on Earth Day, Wednesday, April 22, we will be deluged with the propaganda of countless organizations worldwide that we are, in fact, endangering a “fragile” planet Earth. We hear and read that every other day of the year as well.

The achievement of the human race and the last 5,000 years of so-called civilization is the way we have learned to adapt to Nature by creating habitats from villages to cities in which to survive and because we have devised a vast global agricultural and ranching system to feed seven billion of us.

As for the weather, John Christy, the director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama, says he cringes “when I hear overstated confidence from those who describe the projected evolution of global weather patterns over the next one hundred years, especially when I consider how difficult it is to accurately predict that system’s behavior over the next five days.”

“Mother Nature,” says Christy, “simply operates at a level of complexity that is, at this point, behind the mastery of mere mortals—such as scientists—and the tools available to us.”

Whether it is the President or the Pope, or the countless politicians and bureaucrats, along with multitudes of “environmental” organizations, as well as self-serving “scientists”, all aided by the media, a virtual Green Army has been deliberately deceiving and misleading the citizens of planet Earth for four and a half decades. It won’t stop any time soon, but it must before the charade of environmentalism leaves us all enslaved by the quest for political control over our lives that hides behind it.

We must escape the Environmental Insane Asylum in which they want us to live.

© Alan Caruba, 2015

Orlando, FL: John Casey Continues to Lead in Climate Prediction

It’s official. Mr. John L. Casey, current President of the Space and Science Research Corporation (SSRC) in Orlando, Florida, has become one of few, if not the only U.S. climate and solar researcher to have correctly predicted the Sun’s energy output, as measured by sunspots, for the current eleven year solar cycle. Mr. Casey calculated the peak of solar activity for the ongoing solar cycle number 24, from his research completed eight years ago, in April 2007.

A widely used resource in the solar physics community, The Royal Observatory of Belgium (ROB), recently posted its sunspot counts on April 7, 2015. The ROB indicated they “completed the definitive sunspot numbers,” for the current solar cycle 24, and determined that the peak of the cycle’s activity by sunspot count had now passed. The ROB listed the Sun’s stats for this cycle at its “Solar Index and Long Term Solar Observations (SILSO) web site: See: http://www.sidc.be/silso/home.

Each solar cycle normally has two small peaks, not just a single peak, at its most active point; about half way through the standard eleven year solar cycle. The ROB has said the two small peaks at the top of cycle number 24 were in February 2012 at 66.9 sunspots, and April 2014 at 81.8 sunspots. Unusually, the 2014 peak was the larger of the two. Typically the first peak is the more intense. The simple average of the two peaks is 74.4. Mr. Casey‘s prediction was 74.

The prediction by Mr. Casey compares with NASA and NOAA, the U.S. government’s top space science agencies, who were significantly in error from their 2006-2007 forecasts, by as much as 100%, for the Sun’s energy output, using sunspots as an indicator. They had previously predicted this solar cycle would be one of the most energetic ever recorded with sunspot counts over 145.

NASA’s latest sunspot calculations from last week show the smoothed sunspot curve had a sunspot count “of about 72 in late 2013.” See: http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/predict.shtml.

In May 2007, Mr. Casey notified NASA that their prediction of a minimum of 145 sunspots for the peak of cycle 24 was “way off,” advising them that he predicted cycle 24 would have a peak of only 74 sunspots. NASA and NOAA solar experts confer annually on this sunspot number and since 2006, have been adjusting their 145 sunspot forecast down each year. NASA’s latest statement on the Sun also indicates the current solar cycle 24 was not the strong one they had predicted but instead was the weakest since February 1906. This is the least energetic Sun we have seen in 100 years.

The SSRC, under Mr. Casey has been leading the effort to warn the U.S. government, the media and the people, to get our country prepared for a coming cold climate. This now proven, declining energy output from the Sun, is what he and a growing number of scientists around the world say is the cause of this potentially dangerous climate change to a new cold era.

RELATED ARTICLE: Newsmax Begins Nationwide Climate Truth Program with “Dark Winter” book by John L. Casey

The Climate Change War Heats Up

AA - Climate Change Vs Capitalism

Climate change march denounces capitalism.

There is so much at stake for the charlatans that have foisted the failed “global warming” hoax, followed by the equally dubious claims and predictions regarding “climate change”, that it should come as no surprise that they have begun to wage a propaganda war on the courageous scientists who led the struggle to educate the public about the truth and the organizations who supported their efforts.

Along the way, many groups and publications claiming scientific credentials abandoned those standards to pump out global warming and climate change propaganda. Scientists discovered they could secure grant money for “research” so long as it supported claims that the North and South Poles, as well as all the world’s glaciers were melting. “Research” that predicted vast hurricane activity or a massive rise in ocean levels became routine headlines. None of it occurred. Both the government and liberal foundations provided millions to maintain the hoax.

Now we have a President claiming that his daughter’s asthma was due to “climate change.” It is obscene nonsense. If this was just a disagreement between scientists, we could look on as the facts determine the outcome, but there are vast agendas as stake so we have to keep in mind that billions have been wasted on “renewable energy” alternatives to replace fossil fuels; the oil, coal, and natural gas that are the heart’s blood of modern nations and our lives.

We have to ask why the United Nations Framework on Climate Change takes such a dim view of the world’s population that it cites its use of energy and other resources as a reason to reduce it instead of celebrating it. Hard-core environmentalists do not like humans because they build houses, start businesses, need roads, and generally consume a lot and then create trash. Climate change is also the platform the U.N. is using to “transform” the world’s economy.

We have to ask why our government is engaged in shutting down the coal-fired plants that provide the bulk of the electricity we use. This isn’t just a war on coal. It is a war on our entire economic system, capitalism. It is a war on Americans by their own government.

Lately, politicians at the federal level have declared war on those scientists whose research and findings have helped the public conclude, along with eighteen years of a natural cooling cycle, that “global warming” is no threat and that we have far greater threats to address than the vague notion that “climate change” is a problem we humans can affect in any way. We can’t and we don’t.

A recent example has been letters sent to seven university presidents by Arizona Rep. Raul Grijalva, the ranking Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee asking for information on scientists and professors who had given congressional testimony that raised questions about “climate change.” Grijalva had no legal authority to request such information, but his intention was intimidation. In 2013, when asked about his legislative agenda by These Times, he replied “I’m a Saul Alinsky guy” referring to the activist whose book, “Rules for Radicals”, spells out ways to attack one’s political enemies.

Pete Peterson, the executive director of the Davenport Institute for Public Engagement at Pepperdine’s School of Public Policy, identified Grijalva’s letters as “scare tactics” concluding that we have come to a time when “The inability of politicians to confront another’s argument much less to attempt to persuade the other side, has become standard operating procedure. Now this toxic approach is extending to the broader world of policy—including scientific research.”

Around the same time, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, Sen. Barbara Boxer, and Sen. Ed Markey sent a letter to a hundred companies, grade groups and other organizations “affiliated with the fossil fuel industry asking whether they spent money to support climate research.” The message was simple: do not sponsor research that would reveal inaccuracies or falsehoods regarding claims that “climate change” was a threat. The inference was that scientific research receiving such funding would betray scientific standards in ways that government or foundation funding would not.

Suffice to say the letters evoked outrage. As a policy advisor to the free market think tank, The Heartland Institute, I was aware of the response of its president, Joe Bast who called the letters something that “fascists do.” He was not alone. The Washington Times called the Senators “climate change Toquemadas” and The Wall Street Journal said the letters were nothing more than an effort to silence science.

When Sen. Whitehouse aired his unhappiness in an April 14 blog post the Huffington Post, “Right-Wing Groups Get Overheated on Climate Questions”, Bast responded asking, “If the Senator’s letter wasn’t intended as harassment of individuals who disagree with his extremist views on the climate, why the overly broad demand, the ridiculous deadline, the implied threat of action, and the news release saying it was intended to expose a diabolical conspiracy of ‘right-win groups’?”

When “climate change” reaches the political heights of Congress and the White House, it should come as no surprise that the charlatans who want to use this hoax for their own benefit and agendas are going to unleash efforts to smear and intimidate those scientists who have put true facts before the public.

In late March, Michael Bastash of The Daily Caller reported that “A new Gallup poll shows that Americans’ concern about warming has fallen to the same level it was in 1989. In fact, global warming ranked at the bottom of a list of Americans’ environmental concerns, with only 32 percent saying they were worried about it a ‘great deal.’”

That’s what has the politicians and U.N. officers on the offensive to silence scientists and defame think tanks and other organizations that have helped Americans come to the sensible conclusion that a “warming” isn’t happening and the planet’s climate is something over which they have no control.

© Alan Caruba 2015

RELATED ARTICLE: Here’s the Deal on the Court Fight Over Obama’s Carbon Regulations

Using the Global Warming Hoax to Destroy America

When President Obama announced on March 31 that he intends to ensure that the U.S. will slash its “greenhouse gas emissions” 26% below 2005 emissions levels by 2025 in order to keep pledges made to fulfill the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, he failed to mention that such levels would be comparable to what they were in our Civil War era, 150 years ago.

He also failed to mention that the U.S. has made no such pledges as regards the 1992 “Kyoto Treaty” which was resoundingly rejected by the U.S. Senate when then Vice President Al Gore brought it back from the U.N. conference.

There is no need, globally or nationally, to reduce such emissions. It would be a crime against humanity, especially for the millions that would be denied electrical power or would see its cost rise exponentially. “The President has no credible evidence to back up his claims,” said H. Sterling Burnett, a Research Fellow with the free market think tank, The Heartland Institute. “Obama’s climate actions are likely to cause far more harm to people, especially the poor, than any purported threats from global warming.”

“Global warming” and “climate change” are attributed to the use of fossil fuels to manufacture and transport ourselves and our goods, and to create electrical energy, despite the fact that the Earth, its oceans and land areas naturally generate such gases.

Volcano with SmokeThere are, for example, more than 1500 potentially active volcanoes and countless others under the oceans. They produce billions of tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other gases that are identified as “greenhouse gas emissions.” The human contribution pales in comparison to natural sources such as the warming ocean surface which releases CO2.

Even so, CO2 constitutes a mere 0.04% of the atmosphere. There is no evidence CO2 plays any role in the Earth’s global temperature.

Do these “greenhouse gas emissions” trap heat? Apparently not because the Earth has been in a natural cooling cycle for the past eighteen years breaking and making records for snow and ice. In the 1970s scientists were predicting a new Ice Age. Ten years later they were predicting “global warming.”

Why then is the President intent on slashing “greenhouse gas emissions” when (1) the Earth is not a greenhouse and (2) doing so would harm our economy for decades to come?

The answer lies in his promise to “fundamentally transform” a nation that does not need transformation except for the reduction of the size and scope of the federal government. Its economic system is the best in the world. Its military is the strongest. Its agriculture feeds Americans and is exported to other nations.

As David Rothbard, the president and co-founder of the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), a free market think tank, noted in the wake of Obama’s announcement, “The President will have to bypass the law-making process and use executive orders and regulations” to achieve his goal of slashing emissions. “To do so requires tortured readings of the Clean Air Act and other current laws.”

Significantly, “the President offers no suitable replacement for the lost generating capacity beyond pointing toward wind and solar which is not up to the task.” When Obama took office, coal-fired plants provided 50% of U.S. electricity. It is now down to 40% and headed lower if Obama has his way.

Rothbard warns that “Global warming campaigners see this presidency and the Paris U.N. Summit as the best chance they are likely to see to take control of American energy. The ramifications are disastrous for American freedom and prosperity.”

This brings us to the what John L. Casey, founder of the Space and Science Research Corporation (SSRC), an independent scientific research organization in Orlando, says about the forthcoming November 30 to December 15 U.N. climate conference in Paris which he describes as “doomed” and that’s the good news.

Its announced goal of imposing global limits on greenhouse gas emissions will not be mandatory and “President Obama has effectively gutted any meaningful agreement among the major industrialized nations, by having granted to the planet’s largest CO2 producer, China, free license to build as many coal power plants as they wish, and emit as many gigatons of greenhouse gases as they wish until 2030.”

This is, in fact, a global trend as many developing nations such as India do the same thing. Nor will they suddenly shut down electricity production fifteen years from now.

This huge, international farce formerly known as the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, began as an international treaty created in 1992. The U.S. Senate refused to ratify the Kyoto Treaty, but pledges to reduce greenhouse gases were made by 33 out of 195 countries, called their “Intended National Determined Contribution” are the main feature at the forthcoming Paris conference.

For all the media attention the President will try to generate for this idiocy, Ken Haapala, president of the Science and Environmental Policy Project, says “It is unlikely that the current Senate would approve a binding agreement.” Haapala notes that lawmakers that include the Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK)m and Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), “have all insisted that the international agreement the U.N. is working on is a treaty and cannot be enforced without Senate approval.”

Sen. McConnell warned, “Considering that two-thirds of the U.S. Federal government hasn’t even signed off on the Clean Power Plan and 13 states have already pledged to fight it, our international partners should proceed with caution before entering into a binding, unattainable deal.”

While most Americans have concluded that “global warming” or “climate change” are low on their list of fears President Obama has elevated this hoax to the top of his agenda for his last two years in office, along with the deal that would give Iran the opportunity to build a nuclear arsenal of weapons.

He doesn’t want to “transform” America. He wants to destroy it.

© Alan Caruba, 2015

The $15 Billion Failure to Store Nuclear Waste

“The American people have spent 30 years and $15 billion to determine whether Yucca Mountain would be a safe repository for our nation’s civilian and defense-related nuclear waste.” That’s a quote of Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) reported in the April issue of The Heartland Institute’s Environment & Climate News.

Compare that with the one year and 45 days it took to build the Empire State Building or the five years it took to build the Hoover Dam in the depths of the Great Depression. In the first half of the last century, Americans knew how to get things done, but the rise of environmentalism in the latter half, starting around the 1970s, has increased the cost and time of any construction anywhere in the U.S. In the case of Yucca Mountain it has raised issues about nuclear waste that is currently stored is less secure conditions.

As reported by CNS News in January, “The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has released the final two volumes of a five-volume safety report that concludes that Nevada’s Yucca Mountain meets all of its technical and safety requirements for the disposal of highly radioactive nuclear waste.” Five volumes!

So why the delay? The NRC says the Department of Energy “‘has not met certain land and water rights requirements’ and that other environmental and regulatory hurdles remain.”

Harry ReidA Wall Street Journal editorial on March 30 asserted that It is not about environmental and regulatory hurdles. It is about a deal that Nevada Senator Harry Reid, the former Senate Majority Leader, cut with President Obama to keep Yucca Mountain from ever opening for use. In return, Reid blocked nearly all amendments to legislation to shield Obama from having to veto bills. He virtually nullified the Senate as a functioning element of our government.

“Since there is no permanent disposal facility, spent fuel from the nation’s nuclear reactors—‘enough to fill a football field 17 meters deep’ according to a 2012 Government Accountability Office report—is currently being stored at dozens of above-ground sites. The GAO expects the amount of radioactive waste to double to 140,000 by 2055 when all of the currently operating nuclear reactors are retired.”

The United States where the development of nuclear fission and its use to generate electrical energy occurred is now well behind other nations that have built nuclear facilities and are adding new ones. As Donn Dear, an energy expert with Power For USA, points out “there are only four new nuclear power plants under construction, all by Toshiba-Westinghouse LLC. One other plant, Watts Bar 2, whose construction was held up for several years, is being completed by TVA.”

Meanwhile, as Dear notes, “South Korea is building four nuclear reactors in the United Arab Emirates. The Russian company, Rosatom, is building power plants in Turkey, Belarus, Vietnam, and elsewhere. The China National Nuclear Corporation is scheduled to build over twenty nuclear power plants.”

These represent jobs and orders for equipment that are not occurring in the United States, along with the failure to utilize nuclear energy to provide the growing need for electricity here. The same environmental organizations opposing construction here are the same ones supporting the Environmental Protection Agency’s attack on coal-fired electrical plants. The irony is, of course, that nuclear plants do not produce carbon dioxide emissions that the Greens blame for the non-existent “global warming”, not called “climate change.”

A cynical and false propaganda campaign has been waged against nuclear energy in the U.S., mostly notably with the Hollywood film, “The China Syndrome” about a reactor meltdown. If you want to worry about radiation, worry about the Sun. It is a major source. Three incidents, Three Mile Island in 1979 and Chernobyl in 1986, added to the fears, but no one was harmed by the Three Mile Island event and Chernobyl was an avoidable accident.

More recent was the March 11, 2011 shutdown of the Fukushima reactor in Japan as the result of an earthquake and subsequent tsunami. Three of its cores melted in the first three days, but there have been no deaths or radiation sickness attributed to this event. That’s the part you’re not told about.

CarterIn the end, all it takes is one ignorant President to set progress back for decades. In this case it was President Jimmy Carter for not allowing reprocessing of nuclear waste, a standard practice in France where only one-fifth of spent fuel requires storage. In the 1980s there were three U.S. corporations leading the way on the introduction and use of nuclear energy to produce electrical power; General Electric, Westinghouse Electric, and Babcock & Wilcox. Today only Babcock-Wilcox continues as a fully owned American company.

Thanks to President Obama, we have lost another six years on the Yucca Mountain project. That fits with his refusal to permit the Keystone XL pipeline. No energy project that might actually benefit America will ever see his signature.

Some are arguing that America is a nation in decline and they can surely point to the near destruction of our nuclear energy industry as one example. That decline can begin to end in 2017 with the inauguration of a new President.

© Alan Caruba, 2015

President Obama Pins Fading Legacy Hopes on Doomed UN Climate Conference

President Barack Obama is looking for a stunning feather to place in his legacy cap. He has his eyes set on the United Nations climate conference (COP 21) in Paris, France to make it happen.

The grand confab of world leaders is set for November 30 to December 15 this year. The White House goal is to have a consensus climate agreement that it will then use to signify President Obama’s coronation as the global leader who saved the planet from mankind’s climate changing CO2. At least that’s the plan.

Unfortunately, no comprehensive mandatory international agreement is forthcoming; far from it. There are many reasons for why the gathering in Paris will not produce the results the global warming community seeks and may be doomed at the outset:

  1. Results from the recent contentious UN climate negotiations in Lima Peru (December 2014) sent a clear message to all – only a voluntary agreement can be had in Paris, at best.
  2. President Obama has effectively gutted any meaningful agreement among the major industrialized nations, by having granted to the planet’s largest CO2 producer, China, free license to build as many coal power plants as they wish, and emit as many gigatons of greenhouse gases as they wish until 2030.
  3. India’s economic plan is for record future coal usage not a reduction. They will demand at least equal treatment to the Chinese and probably more. In fact, as reported by the Wall Street Journal just yesterday, India is expected to consume 170 million tons of coal in 2015. At current growth rates, they may eclipse China in the next few years as the top coal powered nation on the planet.
  4. Russia is hardly eager to sign on to anything President Obama asks for without monumental concessions by the U.S., even for a voluntary agreement. I fear U.S. friends and allies may pay the price of such a deal.
  5. There is a simmering anger from the third world countries. They have not received their promised billions of dollars from the US and other developed nations to help them manage climate change. This may resurface in Paris as most of the wealthier nations that made commitments, are struggling with flat to meager economic growth, mounting deficits, and thus inability to honor their promises.

Importantly, the attendees will be forced to ignore that the Earth’s climate is indeed changing – to a new potentially dangerous cold one. Many scientists are now convinced that the Earth is heading into a prolonged cold era with Russian climatologists saying a new ‘Little Ice Age’ may have already begun.

These cold climate predictions are well supported by global temperature trends. For example, there has been no global warming for eighteen long years! There is now impressive on-going growth in global sea ice and colder temperatures within the Arctic and the Antarctic. Yet another brutal winter in 2014 and 2015 saw thousands of new snow and cold records worldwide especially in the northeast U.S. This comes at a time when the global warming crowd had predicted there would no longer be any snow by now, much less shattering cold temperature records over 100 years old. It’s a good thing the conference is in Paris and not Boston.

To help set the stage for the UN conference, we should expect the President’s science agencies, will once again predict that this year will be the warmest on record. Every extreme weather event will take center stage in the media. White House climate staffers must be secretly hoping for a hurricane to hit Miami.

President Obama’s real legacy, however, will be lost among the celebrations and media-hyped accolades being preplanned for the UN climate conference.

Years from now, as crops worldwide are destroyed by the new cold climate, and the world’s people scramble about for food in a much colder, more insecure world, who will remember the U.S. President who reveled in and was praised for leading the fight to save the world from man-made global warming.

RELATED ARTICLE: The Backlash Against Obama’s Committing U.S. to International Climate Agreement

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is courtesy of Winslow Townson/AP.

Don’t be an April ‘Earth Month’ Fool

The annual calendar is filled with days and months designated for the purpose of calling attention to some event, personality, or cause. The U.S. celebrates the birthdays of Lincoln and Washington that fall close together. There’s Mother’s and Father’s Day, Labor Day and Veteran’s Day, Valentine’s, Independence Day, Thanksgiving, Easter and Christmas.

But who decided that April was “Earth Month” or that April 22 is “Earth Day”?

Why are we expected to worship the planet that was here billions of years before we showed up and will likely be here long after we manage to destroy ourselves with cataclysmic wars. And it is worship that is at the heart of these two events. That alone should tell you how essentially pagan they are.

This Earth Month will celebrate its 45th anniversary, having begun in 1970 and, not surprisingly, its theme is “Our planet in peril.” Our planet is not in peril. It’s been around for 4.5 billion years and short of a rogue asteroid or our getting sucked into a black hole, the planet will be around several billions of years more. The galaxy in which we live is relatively predictable and stable, so the notion that the Earth is in peril borders on idiocy.

Well, idiocy, if you think that it is in peril from us, the human species. This is at the core of the environmental mindset. It appears that merely using the Earth as a place to live is reason enough to hold us responsible for everything that naturally occurs to it.

Environmentalists do not like the human race and will not hesitate to tell you there are too many of us. They do what they can to reduce the population through disease by, for example, banning DDT and any other chemicals that protect us from insect and rodent pests that are major vectors for the transmission of disease.

According to the 2015 Earth Month Network, Inc. announcement “There are literally hundreds of problems and issues plaguing our global environment, i.e., climate change, global warming and their effects; and the continuation of polluting our delicate ecosystem just to mention a few.”

Which is it? Climate change or global warming? There hasn’t been any dramatic global warming in the past 19 years during which the planet has been in a natural cooling cycle, along with the Sun which we depend upon to warm us. So anyone claiming the Earth is warming is blowing smoke up your skirt.

As for climate change, that has always been occurring. Short term it’s called the four seasons. Long term it takes the form of ice ages, major glaciations that have occurred every 140 million years, and other eras such as the Great Permian Extinction, the largest in Earth’s history that wiped out an estimated 95% of every kind of life-form on Earth. It was one of four mass extinctions over the course of the 3.5 billion years that life has existed on Earth. Remember the mammoths? They died a mere 11,500 years ago.

Last year, the Earth Month theme was “Returning to Nature.” Do you really want to return to nature? No electricity. No shelter other than a nice cave. No food except for the animals or fish you would have to catch for dinner. No vegetables or fruits except those you could find wherever you lived. That’s right, no supermarkets! And, if you want to go anywhere, you will have to walk.

Yes, nature sounds wonderful and, in its own way, is wonderful, but the human species has devoted a great deal of time to finding ways to survive it.

I was reminded that April was Earth Month when I received an email from the Saybrook Point Inn & Spa which said this Connecticut site was “excited to offer a special package to honor Earth Day.” It is “a Certified Green Hotel” and you will be treated to a “unique Ecotourism Getaway” that provides an “environmentally friendly stay without sacrificing comfort.” Why would you want to pay them for their special package if it didn’t include comfort and lots of it? Mostly what Saybrook Point wants is your money, just like any other perfectly ordinary inn and spa that isn’t “certified.”

One can be confident that we are going to be regaled with all manner of “environmental” messages and events throughout April, all of which have the same theme: the Earth is in danger from YOU!

Do yourself a favor. Ignore them. Get in your car and go where you want. Go to the supermarket and don’t worry about the plastic packaging or the plastic bags. Set the temperature in your home or apartment to a level of comfort that you like. It’s your life and you pay good money to benefit from all the conveniences of modern life.

Let’s appreciate the Earth, not worship it.

Environmentalism is one of the great scams of the modern era. Its emphasis on “renewable energy” has been a huge, expensive failure. Its claims of disappearing forests are bogus and its demands for the reduction of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions will only harm all vegetation everywhere. The Earth needs CO2 in the same way you and all other living creatures need oxygen.

Let’s celebrate mankind’s mastery of the Earth in the form of agriculture, ranching, sophisticated shelters from the log cabin to the skyscraper, the channeling of rivers to produce energy and the technology that provides clean water for us. And, yes, manufacturing. You can’t even imagine what the world was like before the discovery of coal, oil, and natural gas.

The Earth is not in peril, only the truth and common sense are.

© Alan Caruba, 2015

President Obama’s FEMA Director: Sounds Like GOP ‘Denier’!?

FEMA Director Craig Fugate said hurricanes cyclical, not linked to AGW! Should FEMA Withhold Funds From FEMA?!

Image result for craig fugate fema

FEMA Director Dr. Craig Fugate

Flashback 2012: Obama Appointed FEMA Dir.: Frequency of Hurricanes Cyclical: Since 1850s ‘a cycle, & its over decades increased activity & decreased activity’ — Won’t Say If he Believes Global Warming Involved – Federal Emergency Mgt. Agency Dir. Craig Fugate: ‘If you look back for the amount information we have going back to about 1850s, you’ll see a cycle, and it’s over decades of increased activity and decreased activity. And so that cycle has been there. As far anything driving that, I’d really defer to climate scientists. But the reality is the history says we’ve had this period of activity, we’ve had a period of quiet’

2015: FEMA targets climate change skeptic governors, could withhold funding

2015: FEMA to withhold disaster-preparedness funds from states that don’t plan for climate change

2015: GOP Louisiana Gov. Jindal: WH Shouldn’t Use FEMA To Push Climate Change Ideology

Fugate’s 2012 comments – ExcerptBill Press asked, “Mr. Director, it seems there’s a lot more tornado activity in a lot more places. Do you see increased activity — looking historically — to hurricanes today? And do you attribute any of that to global warming?”

Fugate in 2012: “Well, I’m not a meteorologist. I’m not a climate scientist, and hurricanes are cyclic,” Fugate responded. “I do know history, and if you look at history and you look at hurricane activity, there are periods of increased and decreased activity that occurs over decades,” Fugate said. “Throughout the ‘60s, ‘70s, early ‘80s, up until about ’95, the Atlantic was actually in a period of below-average activity, even though you had significant storms like Andrew, Frederic, and David.”…

“But the reality is the history says we’ve had this period of activity, we’ve had a period of quiet,” Fugate said. “We’ve had a period of activity; we’ve had a period of quiet. And so what we’ve seen is not what we — we’ve seen this in history before.”

Climate Depot’s Marc Morano statement:

Morano: ‘Louisiana gets the most FEMA funds due to Hurricanes and the current director Fugate in 2012 was not impressed that hurricanes were influenced by global warming. Louisiana Gov. Jindal can now cite Fugate’s own words as evidence that the FEMA director agrees with the so-called GOP ‘deniers’ on hurricanes not being caused by ‘global warming.’

Unless FEMA director Fugate retracts his comments, the questions looms: Will FEMA withhold funds from FEMA?!

The larger issue is that the states should always prepare for extreme weather regardless of any potential human influence on climate. The whole FEMA issue of withholding funds based on man-made ‘climate change’ acceptance is pure politics, not science.’

Morano additional points:

  1. ‘This FEMA effort is part of a larger picture of global warming promoters attempting to silence skeptics before the UN Paris climate summit and the next Presidential election and its implications for EPA climate regulations.’ See: Climatologist Dr. Judith Curry: ‘I REALLY object to Obama’s ‘denier’ hunt…extreme scientization of political debate by Obama is absolutely pernicious to academic freedom’
  2. ‘Global warming proponents are trying to intimidate GOP presidential hopefuls like Ted Cruz if they say anything skeptical on climate change.’ See: Warmist Smearing Ted Cruz With Junk Science about ‘pause’ & Jerry Brown: Opposition on climate change ‘borders on the immoral’ – Ted Cruz’s skepticism ‘unfit to be running for office’
  3. ‘They are trying to intimidate any scientists who dared testify on behalf of GOP in Congressional hearings. (Pielke Jr., Curry, Lindzen, etc.)’ See: Shocking letter of intimidation from Congressman to MIT re climate skeptic Richard Lindzen
  4. ‘They are trying to ban skeptics like me from appearing on TV because they believe the debate is over. There is petition drive aimed at TV producers by climate activists to ban all skeptics.’ See: ‘Merchants of Doubt’ producer seeks media ban on skeptics: ‘Tell news editors: Stop booking climate deniers!’
  5. The Obama Admin. has a history of intimidating and silencing skeptics. See: Scientific Cleansing: Obama Interior Secretary Sally Jewell says ‘I hope there are no climate change deniers in the Department of Interior’ &   Skeptics blast Interior Sec. Jewell’s comments as ‘scientific cleansing’: Climate Depot’s Morano: ‘It’s a way for the Obama administration to silence any internal critics’
  6. ‘New Sony pictures film smears skeptics, links them to tobacco scientists.’: See: Reviews are in! Skeptic Morano as villain in warmist film is ‘terrifyingly impressive, sadistic’ – ‘The doc’s most engaging character’ – ‘A magnificent antihero, a cheery, chatty prevaricator’ – ‘Slick’ – ‘Scary’ – ‘A loathsome mercenary’ – ‘Sleazy spin doctor’

Morano note: ‘If current extreme weather trends continue, will FEMA have to reduce funds?!

http://www.climatedepot.com/2014/10/01/extreme-weather-failing-to-follow-global-warming-predictions-hurricanes-tornadoes-droughts-floods-wildfires-see-no-trend-or-declining-trends/

Extreme weather failing to follow ‘global warming’ predictions: Hurricanes, Tornadoes, Droughts, Floods, Wildfires, all see no trend or declining trends

Extreme weather at or near historic lows:

New paper unable to link 2013 extreme weather of droughts, heavy rain & storms to AGW

Hurricanes: 3,264 Days Without a Major (Cat 3 +) Hurricane Strike – ‘Nearly 9 years…the last being Wilma in October, 2005′

Tornadoes: U.S. Tornado Count Plummeting to Record Low Levels Three Consecutive Years

Droughts: New Research Confirms Human CO2 Not Causing A Global Drought Increase – ‘Droughts in the U.S. are more frequent and more intense during COLDER periods’

Floods: Prof. Roger Pielke Jr. : ‘Are US Floods Increasing? The Answer is Still No’ — ‘A new paper out today shows flooding has not increased in U.S. over records of 85 to 127 years’ — Quick Flood Facts: ‘The world’s ten deadliest floods all occurred before 1976. The historical flood record is horrific. Here is a small sampling of news stories’

U.S. Heatwaves: ‘The frequency of 90 degree days in the US has plummeted. with three of the five mildest summers occurring since 2004′

Wildfires: 2014 – Quietest Fire Season Of The Decade according to data from the National Interagency Fire Center data — US Forest Fires Near Historic Lows: ‘Burn acreage is much less than half of normal’ according to data from the National Interagency Fire Center

By:  – Climate Depot   October 1, 2014 9:58 AM

Climate Depot Round Up:  ”Despite the fact that climate activists have changed renamed ‘global warming’ into ‘climate change’ and then to climate ‘disruption’ and ‘global weirding’, the weather and climate is failing to cooperate. Below is a round up of the latest on extreme weather data and studies.”

Extreme Weather:

Fine print in Obama’s climate report breaks from warmist narrative — Admits no trends in droughts, storms, tornadoes and hail! – After cranking up the fear of increasing droughts, floods, hurricanes and tornadoes, the report offers some little disclaimers admitting to unsettled science: But the fine print that few will ever read acknowledges the real uncertainties of something as complex as the planet’s atmosphere. – “There has been no universal trend in the overall extent of drought across the continental U.S. since 1900,” the authors observe. We also learn that “trends in severe storms, including the intensity and frequency of tornadoes, hail, and damaging thunderstorm winds, are uncertain and are being studied intensively.”

New paper unable to link 2013 extreme weather of droughts, heavy rain & storms to AGW
Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. ‘the bottom line on this new NOAA special report: If you are attributing any extreme other than heat waves to Anthropogenic Climate Change, you are on weak (or worse) scientific ground.”

Hurricanes:

3,264 Days Without a Major (Cat 3 +) Hurricane Strike – ‘Nearly 9 years…the last being Wilma in October, 2005′ – Climatologist Dr. Roy Spencer: As of today (October 1) it’s been nearly 9 years since a major hurricane (Cat 3 or greater) has struck the U.S., the last being Wilma in October, 2005. Remember the 2005 hurricane season? Landfalling hurricanes right and left. Katrina! This was going to be the new normal in a Global Warming world. Then the bottom dropped out of tropical activity.

named-storms-climatology

Tornadoes:

U.S. Tornado Count Plummeting to Record Low Levels Three Consecutive Years

Possible record low number of tornadoes in Oklahoma

Wildfires:

Colorado WILDFIRES NOT MORE SEVERE since 1800s, says ‘massive’ University of Colorado study reveals – Funded by NSF

US Forest Fires Near Historic Lows: ‘Burn acreage is much less than half of normal’ according to data from the National Interagency Fire Center

2014 – Quietest Fire Season Of The Decade according to data from the National Interagency Fire Center data

Real Science: ‘Burn acreage so far this year in the US is lowest in a decade, less than half or normal, and one of the lowest on record.’

Scientist tells U.S. Senate: Global Warming Not Causing More Wildfires – ‘To attribute this human-caused increase in fire risk to carbon dioxide emissions is simply unscientific’

U.S. Networks Blame Wildfires, Droughts on Climate Change, Despite Fact They’ve Declined

Droughts:

New Research Confirms Human CO2 Not Causing A Global Drought Increase

NPR: 3 new papers make the case that forest fires in the West today burn less than in historical times

Climatologist Dr. David LEGATES TELLS U.S. Senate: ‘Droughts in the U.S. are more frequent and more intense during colder periods’

California drought is not related to climate change, much more severe ancient droughts occurred with ‘safe’ CO2 levels

California drought: Past dry periods have lasted more than 200 years, scientists say – ‘The state has been parched for much longer stretches before that 163-year historical period began’

Texas droughts – ‘The drought years of the 1950’s were both longer lasting , and more severe than the recent drought, as NOAA’s drought index shows.’

Floods:

Prof. Roger Pielke Jr. Rips flooding claims using UN IPCC quotes: ‘No gauge-based evidence has been found for a climate-driven, globally widespread change in the magnitude and frequency of floods’

Pielke Jr.: What did UN IPCC AR5 conclude on trends in flooding? 5..4..3..: ‘There continues to be a lack of evidence & thus low confidence regarding the sign of trend in the magnitude &/or frequency of floods on a global scale.’ -Pielke Jr.: But doesn’t more extreme precipitation mean more floods? Again the SREX authors in 5..4..3: ‘Despite the diagnosed extreme-precipitation-based signal, and its possible link to changes in flood patterns, no gauge-based evidence has been found for a climate-driven, globally widespread change in the magnitude and frequency of floods during the last decades.’Pielke Jr. : ‘How about IPCC SREX authors on floods? 5..4..3..: ‘A direct statistical link between anthropogenic climate change and trends in the magnitude/frequency of floods has not been established”Prof. Pielke Jr. : ‘Are US Floods Increasing? The Answer is Still No’ — ‘A new paper out today shows flooding has not increased in U.S. over records of 85 to 127 years’ — ‘This adds to a pile of research that shows similar results around the world’

Quick Flood Facts: ‘The world’s ten deadliest floods all occurred before 1976. The historical flood record is horrific. Here is a small sampling of news stories’

Shocking extremes in U.S. drought and flood conditions! … They occurred in the 1930′s, 1950′s, 1970′s, 1980′s… During the past decade, not so much’

Federal study finds no evidence that climate change caused more severe flooding during last century!– Inconvenient Reality: U.S. Geological Survey finds in some regions ‘floods become LESS SEVERE as greenhouse gas emissions have increased’ — USGS scientist Robert Hirsch: ‘Currently we do not see a clear pattern that enables us to understand how climate change will alter flood conditions in the future’ — But, USGS pleads they need more study (and money!): ‘Noted more research is necessary to better understand the relationship between climate change and flooding’

All Of The World’s Deadliest Floods Occurred With CO2 Well Below 350 PPM — ‘We know that hurricanes have declined, tornadoes have declined, floods have declined, and droughts have declined. That is why history has been redefined to start in the 1970s’

Global precipitation fails to obey theory of global warming: ‘There has been a slight decrease in global precipitation over past 30 years of global warming’

100/500 Year Floods : Every Few Weeks? Reality Check: ‘One of the big lies of 2011 is the claim that ‘the new normal is 100 year floods every year’ — ‘A search of news archives finds out that 100 year floods have been reported constantly, ever since someone thought the term up’

UK Scientist suggests Gore distorted his study: ‘Al Gore is doing a disservice to science by overplaying the link between climate change and weather’

New peer-reviewed paper on the 2010 Pakistan floods – nothing to do with ‘climate change’

1974: Climatologists Blamed US/Pakistan Flooding On Global Cooling

Is Flood Magnitude in the USA Correlated with Global CO2 Levels? Answer: No — ‘The results of 21 peer-reviewed studies on flooding & climate variability in N. America: ‘If anything, N. American flooding tends to become both less frequent and less severe when the planet warms…on average, we would expect that any further warming of the globe would tend to further reduce both the frequency and severity of flooding in N. America, which, of course, is just the opposite of what the world’s climate alarmists continue to claim would occur’

Which of the below worst floods on record were caused by carbon dioxide?

Date Location Dead
1887, September-October Hwang Ho (Yellow) River, China Over 900,000
1939 North China 500000
1642 Kaifeng, Honan Province, China Over 300,000
1099 England and the Netherlands 100000
1287, December 14 The Netherlands 50000
1824 Russia 10000
1421, November 18 The Netherlands 10000
1964, November-December Mekong Delta, South Vietnam 5000
1951, August 6-7 Manchuria 4800
1948, June Foochow, China 350

It’s Not “Global Warming” — It’s “Springtime 2015”

After decades of environmental claims that “global warming” would plunge the planet into catastrophic harm to its human and other inhabitants—at the same time blaming humans for causing it—the sheer arrogance and ignorance of these claims always ignores the real power that is represented by the Earth itself and the beginning of Spring should be proof enough for anyone paying any attention.

This year, Spring begins in the northern hemisphere on Friday, March 20 at 6:45 PM EDT. In the southern hemisphere it marks the beginning of Autumn.

Spring manifests itself in ways we take for granted yet it is a combination of many events that should make us marvel if we gave them any thought. For example, where does all the snow go? The U.S. and the rest of the world set records of snowfall levels throughout Winter.

As noted by the U.S. Geological Service, “in the world-wide scheme of the water cycle, runoff from snowmelt is a major component of the global movement of water.”

“Mountain snow fields act as natural reservoirs for many western United States water-supply systems, storing precipitation from the cool season, when most precipitation falls and forms snowpacks…As much as 75 percent of water supplies in the western states are derived from snowmelt.” Snowmelt ensures sufficient water for all of us and for the Earth that depends upon it for the growth of all vegetation.

How do the flowers know it is Spring? In a 2011 article for the Inside Science News Service, Katherine Gammon noted that “Just in time for the birds and bees to start buzzing, the flowers and the trees somehow know when to open their buds to start flowering. But the exact way that plants get their wake-up call has been something of a mystery.” A molecular biologist at the University of Texas, Sibum Sung, has been trying to solve that mystery and has discovered “a special molecule in plants that gives them the remarkable ability to recall Winter and to bloom on schedule in the Spring.”

Nothing on Earth happens by accident. It is a remarkable inter-related system to which we give little thought. The sheer power of all those blooming flowers and trees should tell us something about the power of Nature that dwarfs all the claims that humans have any influence whatever on the events of Spring or any other time of the year.

Then think about the role of the animals with whom we share the planet. In the Spring many come out of hibernation in their dens, while others such as birds make lengthy migrations from the warmer climes to those in the north. The huge migration of Monarch Butterflies should leave us speechless. Spring is a time when many animals give birth to their young.

AA - Aurora BorealisA sign of the Spring that leaves us breathless is the way it is the season for the aurora borealis. Dr. Tony Phillips of NASA notes that “For reasons not fully understood by scientists, the weeks around the vernal equinox are prone to Northern Lights. From Canada to Scandinavia they provide a great show.

“Such outbursts are called auroral substorms and they have long puzzled physicists,” says UCLA space physicist Vassilis Angelopoulos. They represent “a potent geomagnetic storm.” The equinox in Spring and Autumn is a time when magnetic connections between the Sun and Earth are most favorable.

One book, “Silent Spring”, by Rachel Carson, first published in September 1962, started the environmental campaign against pesticide use for any reason, leading most famously to the ban on DDT in the U.S. What Carson neglected to tell readers was how they were supposed to cope with the trillions of insects that come with the advent of warm weather.

No pesticide use does not mean less mosquitoes, less termites, less flies, less ants, or less of any other insect species and the diseases they spread, property damage, and the damage they cause to crops of all descriptions. And, of course, the much of the pollination of crops and other vegetation depends on insect species.

Carson’s claims of a silent spring bereft of bird species was a blatant lie. Rich Kozlovich, an authority on pest management, noted that “Bird populations were never so high in North America” despite the use of DDT and other pesticides. “Carson’s claim about how the poor robin was going to disappear was not only wrong, she was deliberately lying.”

“Carson was a science writer for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and absolutely had to know that in 1960 there were 12 times more robins, 21 times more cowbirds, 38 times more blackbirds, 131 times more grackles, etc., compared to 1941 numbers.”

Spring is a time of renewal in the northern hemisphere and it occurs with enormous levels of natural power. Most people, however, are oblivious to that power as they enjoy the sight of flowers and trees blooming.

I could almost guarantee that you will read or hear about “global warming” or “climate change” being attributed to the arrival of Spring. Do yourself a favor. Keep in mind that those claims, like Rachel Carson’s, represent an anti-humanity, anti-energy, and anti-capitalism agenda of the environmental movement.

Instead, celebrate the seasonal renewal of life on Earth and give thanks for the energy that permits you to control the environment of the structures where you live and work, that provides you the means to get in your car and go anywhere, and that powers every device you use.

© Alan Caruba, 2015

RELATED ARTICLE: California Dem Warns of Global Warming-Induced Prostitution

Is John Kerry a Moron?

genghis_john-thumb

John Kerry testifying before Congress on Vietnam War.

I can recall John Kerry, Obama’s Secretary of State, from the days he testified to a congressional committee and slandered his fellow soldiers as the spokesman for Veterans Against the Vietnam War in 1971. I was appalled then and my opinion of the man has not changed since those days. I opposed the war, too, but I did not blame it on the men who were conscripted to fight it, nor did I believe the charges he leveled against some of them.

These days Kerry is engaged in securing an agreement with the Iranians, if not to stop their program to make their own nuclear weapons than to slow it to a later date. Never mind that the Iranian government is listed by our own government as a leading sponsor of terrorism worldwide or that they have signed such agreements in the past and then tossed out the inspectors.

Kerry is convinced that the Obama administration can get an agreement that is, in his own words, “not legally binding”, nor is it a treaty that the U.S. Senate would have to vote for or against. In point of fact, President Obama can make the deal—sign the agreement—just as Presidents have done for over two hundred years. It can then be abrogated by whoever the next President will be.

Why Obama and Kerry are doing this defies my understanding. It gives the Iranians more time to reach nuclear capability. It is opposed by every nation in the Middle East. It puts every nation within reach of Iran’s missiles at risk and it virtually guarantees the destruction of Israel, a goal of Iran’s Islamic Revolution from the day it was born. Kerry is negotiating with people who took our diplomats hostage in 1979 and have played a role in the deaths of many Americans since then.

Is John Kerry a moron? I think so.

I asked myself this question in regard to another area of U.S. policy which the Secretary of State is also championing even if millions around the world have concluded otherwise.

On March 2nd, Kerry addressed the Atlantic Council in Washington, D.C, telling them what he has been saying in many forums. Let us understand that “climate change” is the name being used to replace “global warming”, because the Earth has been in a cooling cycle for the past 18 years or so. And let us understand that “climate change” has been happening for 4.5 billion years.

Kerry said, “So when science tells us that our climate is changing and human beings are largely causing that change, by what right do people stand up and just say, ‘Well, I dispute that’ or ‘I deny that elementary truth’?”

The problem with this is that human beings are not causing the planet’s climate change. Forces far greater than humans are involved, not the least of which is the Sun.

As for science, its most fundamental methodology is to constantly challenge the various ‘truths’ put forward as theories until they can be proved to be true by being independently reproduced. Nothing about the “global warming” theories has been true. All of the computer models on which it was based have been proven inaccurate. In some cases, they were deliberately rigged.

On television meteorologists remind us that every day, indeed, from morning to night, the temperatures of the area about which they are reporting are in a constant state of change. They show us satellite photography and mapping that demonstrates how dynamic the weather is on any spot on Earth. The climate, however, is measured in decades and centuries. Every one of the doomsday predictions of the global warming “scientists” and propagandists have been wrong.

The enemies of the use of energy to enhance and improve the lives of the residents of Earth began to claim in the 1970s and 80s that carbon dioxide (CO2) was threatening the climate.

At best, CO2 is a very minor element of the Earth’s atmosphere, about 0.04%, which gets it rated as “a trace gas.” As such, it plays no role with regard to the climate.

Kerry asserted that climate change is “one of the biggest threats facing our planet today” and should be ranked with terrorism, epidemics, poverty and nuclear proliferation…” Oh, wait! Isn’t this the same Secretary of State negotiating with Iran to allow it to become a nuclear power?

And what “solution” does he offer to reduce the “threat” of climate change? Kerry urged that the U.S. transition away from “dirty sources of energy” such as coal, oil and natural gas.

Writing in a recent issue of The Wall Street Journal, Matt Ridley noted that “In 2015, about 87% of the energy that the world consumed came from fossil fuels, a figure that—remarkably—was unchanged from 10 years before. This roughly divides into three categories of fuel and three categories of use: oil used mainly for transport, gas used mainly for heating, and coal used mainly for electricity.”

Fossil fuels have made the difference between modern life and burning cow dung to cook dinner. A billion people on Earth still do not have electricity.

Less obvious, but significantly more threatening is the White House effort to get the U.S. signed up for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and its International Climate Justice tribunal. This is a follow-up to the 1977 Kyoto Protocol that was unanimously rejected by the U.S. Senate. Why? Because such treaties threaten the sovereignty of the U.S. and, just as importantly, because the entire United Nation’s climate program is a huge fraud.

This is what John Kerry wants the U.S. to agree to, just like the Iran deal, and just to be sure the U.S. Senate, as mandated by the U.S. Constitution, doesn’t have a say in it, he and the President are calling these deals anything other than a treaty.

Is John Kerry a moron? Maybe not as dumb as he seems to be, but surely cynical and devious.

Unfortunately, he is the Secretary of State.

© Alan Caruba, 2015

RELATED ARTICLE: California Dem Warns of Global Warming-Induced Prostitution

Reviews are in! Skeptic Morano as villain in warmist film is ‘terrifyingly impressive, sadistic’…

‘The doc’s most engaging character’ – ‘A magnificent antihero, a cheery, chatty prevaricator’ – ‘Slick’ – ‘Scary’ – ‘A loathsome mercenary’ – ‘Sleazy spin doctor’

New Warmist film by Sony Pictures, ‘Merchants of Doubt’, portrays Marc Morano as evil nemesis/arch-enemy of climate change promoters – Morano is ‘a grinning-skull nihilist’

Global warming movies sets out to smear skeptics, but ‘features ‘a semi-affectionate portrait of professional attack dog Marc Morano’

[Note: The other upcoming documentary, Morano’s skeptical global warming documentary, ‘Climate Hustle’ ,is set to rock climate debate – Release set for later in 2015. Climatologist Dr. Judith Curry: ‘Morano’s film Climate Hustle; check out the trailer.  Seems to more entertaining anyways than ‘Merchants of Doubt.’…Stay tuned…]

‘Merchants of Doubt’ director pushing to ban Morano & other skeptics from TV!

New York Times: Morano exemplifies ‘slickness, grandiosity & charm’

New York Times: ‘Morano is a cheerful and unapologetic promoter of climate-change skepticism’

Morano in starring role as villain in warmist film ‘Merchants of Doubt’ – Morano: ‘I’m not a scientist, but I play one on TV’

Climatologist Dr. Judith Curry: ‘Morano is actually quite broadly knowledgeable about climate science and the associated politics’

Warmist review of Merchants Of Doubt criticizes film for being ‘swindled by the charm of charismatic talking heads’ like Morano

Warmist Naomi Oreskes: ‘People like Morano have made a career out of being contrarians, and they are very good at it. When a scientist comes up against a well-trained, savvy person, scientists will always lose in the debate.’

Warmist Randy Olson laments: ‘Wish the enviros had someone comparable to Morano, but they don’t’

TV villain slogan: “If only he’d used his powers for good, instead of for evil.”

Morano responds to tobacco smear: ‘The warmists have it exactly backwards. It is the global warming proponents who are guilty of the tobacco tactics.’ See: Flashback: Warmists’ mimic tobacco industry tactics: ‘Like tobacco industry, Warmists’ manufactured uncertainty & fear by stridently proclaiming certainty & consensus based on dubious & uncertain modeled results predicting disastrous consequences of a warmer climate’

Watch ‘Merchants of Doubt’ Trailer here:

Morano featured as villain in new warmist documentary: ‘Merchants of Doubt’ – Marc Morano in warmist film: ‘I am not a scientist, although I do occasionally play one on TV — Ok — Hell, more than occasionally.’ – ‘We (skeptics) the negative force, we are just trying to stop stuff.’

[Note: For those not interested in attempted smear job on global warming skeptics, Hollywood has the answer. See ‘Kingsman’ instead! See: The movie ‘Kingsman’: ‘The most subversive anti-AGW movie’ – ‘This movie presents in Technicolor the awful nature of alarmists; they are elitist, narcissistic and misanthropic. And riddled in hypocrisy’]

Producer of new Oreskes Warmist film: ‘My goal was to make people angry that they are being lied to’ – Morano featured as villain in new warmist film

NYT: Morano exemplifies ‘slickness, grandiosity & charm’ – New York Times: ‘Morano is a cheerful and unapologetic promoter of climate-change skepticism’ – NYT film review of warmist documentary ‘Merchants of Doubt’: ‘Public relations, in contrast, is built on slickness, grandiosity and charm. These traits are exemplified by Marc Morano, a cheerful and unapologetic promoter of climate-change skepticism and currently the executive director of the website Climate Depot. One of the film’s conceits is that the actions of Mr. Morano and his colleagues can be con games and magic tricks.’

Newspaper calls Marc Morano ‘terrifyingly impressive’ and ‘sadistic’ – Daily Californian’s film review of ‘Merchants of Doubt’: ‘Marc Morano is one of the terrifyingly, impressive and yet sadistic experts with this skill set. His statements add shock and give viewers a hard-hitting wakeup call’

Morano featured in Newsweek Mag: Warmist filmmaker: ‘I think Morano’s very funny, he’s very smart’ – Climate Depot featured as villain in new warmist Oreskes film

Mag. reviews ‘Merchants of Doubt’ – Calls Morano ‘a grinning-skull nihilist LulzSec member’ – Calls Climate Depot ‘leading site for climate change skeptics’ – Excerpt: Morano is ‘a grinning-skull nihilist LulzSec member, hacking reality for the LOLs—a mirror-world Yes Man who has decided there’s more to be gained in being an actual yes man.’ – ‘Morano, who ascended from accosting celebrities outside the men’s room for Rush Limbaugh’s TV show in the mid-1990s to debating Bill Nye on global warming on CNN in 2012, seems to relish revealing the secrets to his greatest illusions.

Warmist review of Merchants Of Doubt criticizes film for being ‘swindled by the charm of charismatic talking heads’ like Morano

Marc Morano was great in the film. It flopped anyway.

‘Merchants of Doubt’ producer seeks media ban on skeptics: ‘Tell news editors: Stop booking climate deniers!’

San Francisco Chronicle Calls Climate Depot’s Morano ‘shifty’, ‘slick’, & ‘scary’ – San Francisco Chronicle on ‘Merchants of Doubt’ film: ‘Much more powerful are the moments like the interview with climate change ‘expert’ Marc Morano, who luxuriates in his shifty tactics and misdirection plays. To him, it’s all fun and games — he’s both slick and scary.’

Salon Mag. calls Morano ‘a loathsome mercenary’ – ‘Driven by perverse conviction…to jam his thumb into the eye of liberal orthodoxy’

Film Review: Morano is ‘the documentary’s most engaging character’ – One of ‘sleazy spin doctors who will stop at nothing to obscure the truth’ – ‘Merchants of Doubt’ – The documentary’s most engaging character, after all, is self-described creator of chaos Marc Morano, who runs the climate denial site Climate Depot and who frequently appears as an “expert” on network news. (“I am not a scientist, although I do play one on TV,” he explains.)

LA Weekly review: Warmist film features ‘a magnificent antihero in Marc Morano, a cheery, chatty prevaricator’ – LA Weekly review of ‘Merchants of Doubt’: [Producer Robby] Kenner finds a magnificent antihero in Marc Morano, a cheery, chatty prevaricator who has made a mint by muddying water. His job is to promote skepticism of a truth that even Skeptic magazine believes in, and since Morano’s cocksure, and good at yelling on TV, he steamrolls over climate scientists on cable despite his lack of expertise. In interviews, he’s disarmingly guileless…The film and Morano agree on one thing: All that the deniers of climate change have to do to succeed is reduce the country’s certainty. They’ve been wildly successful.’

NY Post film review features Morano as a ‘shifty pundit’– ‘Merchants of Doubt’ doc pulls curtain back on shifty pundits’ – ‘One oft-quoted “climate change skeptic,” Marc Morano, admits in the film, ‘I’m not a scientist, but I do play one on TV occasionally…hell, more than occasionally.’

Warmist producer of Oreskes film: ‘Morano was very funny, very charming, and I think does great damage, but he was honest’ – San Fran Chronicle: Marc Morano, whose job it is to rebut climate change, is not only candid but also humorous. Kenner credits him with helping to set the tone of the film. “Morano was really frank,” he says. “That was a shocking interview. Any time I asked him a hard question, he was far from being insulted. Nothing could scare him. He was very funny, very charming, and I think does great damage, but he was honest.”

Watch: Morano featured as villain in new warmist documentary: ‘Merchants of Doubt’

Review: Warmist film features ‘a semi-affectionate portrait of professional attack dog Marc Morano’ – Review of ‘Merchants of Doubt’: ‘The totally amoral Morano, who more or less admits that he’s only in it for the thrill of the game. There’s a reason folks like Singer and Morano are able to affect public policy with specious data, and it’s because they’re good at playing characters and cracking self-deprecating jokes and generally being interesting on camera, and real climate scientists aren’t.’

Warmist thinks Morano is both ‘a talking bobble head for cable news’ and a ‘little man behind the curtain’?! – Morano is one of the ‘shills for the fossil fuel-industry’ – ‘The documentary’s interview with Morano reveals that he learned many of his tricks from door-to-door sales, including the need to keep it simple so that people can fill in the blanks with their pre-existing biases. Morano’s biggest piece of advice is that the best way to attack science is to attack individuals.’

Climatologist Dr. Judith Curry rips the ‘bankruptcy of the ‘Merchants of Doubt’ meme – ‘Morano is actually quite broadly knowledgeable about climate science and the associated politics’ – Curry on ‘Merchants of Doubt’: ‘Censorship and propaganda; lets call a spade a spade.’ – Curry: ‘I’ve met Marc Morano a number of times. He is actually quite broadly knowledgeable about climate science and the associated politics.  He is the one ‘doubter’ in this whole piece that actually has some influence in the current climate debate.’  – ‘And coming sometime next fall (I think; no release date set) is Marc Morano’s film Climate Hustle; check out the trailer.  Seems to more entertaining anyways than ‘Merchants of Doubt.’

Flashback: German Mag does wacko profile of Climate Depot! Morano the Godfather?! German Die Zeit declares: Doubt Being Fanned Worldwide By Climate Godfather Marc Morano

Godfather Morano plays villain in movie – ‘No movie is complete without a good villain, and Morano is good, because he is fearless and committed. I was impressed last week with the Mel Gibson villain role in The Expendables. Gibson has that spark of impetuosity, fearlessness and confidence that Morano displays–you just know when presented with a choice–Morano will ACT WITH VIGOR, as Yogi said–when you come to a fork in the road, take it. Morano will take BOTH CHOICES AND THEN DOUBLE BACK AND DO IT AGAIN.’

Film Review of Warmist film Merchants of Doubt says Climate Depot’s Morano is ‘proudly sleazy’ in ‘discrediting the science’ – Producer ‘Robert Kenner’s polished and deftly argued film finds compelling subjects on both sides of the fence, from the proudly sleazy Marc Morano, who boasts of his underhanded tactics to discredit the science.’

‘Merchants of Doubt’ producer Robert Kenner on Morano : ‘Marc was not thin-skinned. If I asked a tough question, he’d give a tougher answer’

‘Morano seems to be the most aggressive, bullying the scientists he debates’ – Morano stars as villain in new warmist doc ‘Merchants of Doubt’ –

Sony Classics Grabs Docu ‘Merchants Of Doubt’ About Professional Climate-Change Skeptics – Morano featured as part of ‘a secretive group of charismatic pundits-for-hire who present themselves in the media as scientific authorities – yet have the contrary aim of spreading maximum confusion’

‘The Marx Brothers’: Director Robby Kenner of ‘Merchants of Doubt’ is’ little brother of 1960s radical leftist Martin Kenner’ – Naomi Oreskes warned many skeptics ‘see environmentalists as creeping communists. They see them as reds under the bed. They call them watermelons — you know, green on the outside, red on the inside. And they worry that environmental regulation will be the slippery slope to socialism.’

‘Merchants of Doubt’ producer seeks media ban on skeptics: ‘Tell news editors: Stop booking climate deniers!’

Skeptic responds to ‘Merchants of Doubt’ producer’s Call to ban skeptics from TV – ‘Surely the best way to defeat a bad scientific argument is to engage with it and show how it is in error. Denying people free speech in the media only fuels the flames.’

Early returns: Warmist film ‘Merchants of Doubt’ struggling at box office – Heartland friend Marc Morano won the “Best Reading of Emails While Traveling in a Car in a Crummy Documentary” Prize at the Sundance Film Festival.

WashPost Film Critic Applauds Film Charging Climate ‘Deniers’ Just Like Tobacco Lobbyists

Morano responds: ‘The warmists have it exactly backwards. It is the global warming proponents who are guilty of the tobacco tactics.’ See: Flashback: Warmists’ mimic tobacco industry tactics: ‘Like tobacco industry, Warmists’ manufactured uncertainty & fear by stridently proclaiming certainty & consensus based on dubious & uncertain modeled results predicting disastrous consequences of a warmer climate’

Prof. Roger Pielke Jr. Rips ‘Big Climate’ for having ‘similarities’ with ‘Big Tobacco’ & ‘Big NFL’ – Pielke Jr. specifically linked UN IPCC and Michael Mann’s tactics to ‘Big Tobacco’ and ‘Big NFL’

Naomi Oreskes, THE Merchant of Doubt herself, uses tactics of the tobacco lobby – ‘Oreskes wrote an entire book designed to denigrate scientists based on tenuous links on unrelated topics with 20 year old documents. She is The Merchant of Doubt — it’s what she sells — “doubts” about the motivation of skeptical scientists. Her fantasies about skeptics using tobacco tactics is pure psychological projection…In a science debate about the climate, the only things that matter are evidence and reasoning about the climate. Those who can’t point out flaws in the science debate launch personal attacks from the gutter instead.’

Open Letter: Warmist Oreskes ‘Merchants of Doubt’ may face ‘potential major legal entanglement?’

Merchants of ‘smear’ movie slanders eminent Physicist Dr. Fred Singer – Singer Fires Back! – Dr. Singer: ‘I would prefer to avoid having to go to court; but if we do, we are confident that we will prevail.’ – ‘Oreskes book “Merchants of Doubt” contains a number of serious scientific errors; also, it is not in accordance with the kind of scholarship expected from an academic historian.  Instead of primary sources, she relies on secondary and even tertiary sources who have obvious, demonstrated agenda.’

Marshall Institute Rebuts Oreskes Silly New Book: ‘A Critique of Merchants of Doubt’

Report: ‘Merchants of Smear’ – Debunks claims that skeptics are ‘paid by industry to manufacture doubt about’ climate change

Warmist Naomi Oreskes warns of the mass extinction of household pets

Prof. Roger Pielke Jr.: ‘Merchants of Doubt’ in a nutshell: ‘How a 90 yr-old man and a few dead friends fool the stupid American public, end of civilization results.’

Related Link: 

Flashback: Newspaper Credits ‘Celebrity skeptic’ Morano with Fueling Growing Climate Skepticism: ‘Morano is one of the main leaders of the new breed of climate skeptics’

FL Governor Rick Scott, Secretary of State John Kerry Both Lose Spat over Climate

The people can only laugh and shake their heads to see the antics of both Secretary of State Kerry and Florida Governor Rick Scott as they throw darts at each other’s party and their knowledge, or lack thereof, on the subject of climate change.

The latest spat is driven by comments from the ever incredulous Secretary of State John Kerry when he indirectly condemned Governor Scott’s apparent silent policy of prohibiting state employees using terms like “climate change,” and “global warming.”

Kerry’s counter to Scott’s unwritten policy came via a diatribe at the Atlantic Council this week. Kerry said “…by what right do people stand up and just say ‘I dispute that’ or ‘I deny that’ …when science tells us that our climate is changing and human beings are largely causing that change.”

It was a media sop that would have carried even more weight if he were right about the “science” of climate change. Sadly, he was not.

Kerry’s implication is that we should all blindly follow the United Nations and U.S. government climate reports and their science that say mankind’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are the primary cause of climate variation. What Secretary Kerry failed to mention is that the United Nations and their U.S. government counterpart climate reports have been excoriated by a large body of opposing scientists. Further, he should have mentioned that the government’s green house gas based climate models are in error in predicting climate by a wide margin (as much as 300%). He also failed to pass on that a large number of the “leading scientists” who wrote the UN climate reports were exposed in the “climategate” email scandal as having falsified the data, hid opposing data, and came to predetermined conclusions to fit a political agenda.

In other words, the reports were unreliable at best, too flawed for policy making in any case, and quite possibly fraudulent.

What Secretary Kerry also did not say at the Atlantic Council this week were the ‘cold’ facts of the Earth’s climate status:

  1. There is no global warming nor has there been for over 18 long years.
  2. The Earth’s major climate parameters indicate a cooling of the planet is underway according to the most reliable climate change theories and climate models.
  3. Winters are getting longer and more brutal with record cold and snowfalls, despite some climate researchers at the UN saying snow would be a thing of the past by 2003!
  4. We now have more total global sea ice on the planet than ever before recorded since the satellite era began in 1979. This is true even though Al Gore and NOAA scientists said Arctic sea ice should have disappeared completely years ago.
  5. According to a growing body of solar-climate researchers, the Sun is the primary cause of climate variation and that mankind plays an almost insignificant role in global warming or any other kind of climate change.

The Republicans, however, with their weak stance, regularly play right into the Obama-Gore-United Nations climate hand. The Republicans have routinely permitted the Democrats to claim the scientific high ground, even as they make preposterous climate claims with impunity. The policy of ignorance, side-stepping, and ineptness by the Republican Party including in the Governor’s office in Florida, deserves the ridicule it receives.

Now that the planet is heading into what may be the most dangerous cold climate in 200 years, a feud over terminology is the last thing we need from our leaders, in either party.

Yes, we have some fearless Republicans like Senator James Inhofe and Senator Ted Cruz who are unafraid of labeling climate change (manmade global warming) the “hoax” that it is. They have no problem calling out the Democrats for what I have long said is, “the greatest international scientific fraud in history.”

It’s time for Governor Scott and all other Republican leaders to join those good Senators and the legions of scientists like me who are out there, and make a firm unmistakable call for an end to this climate charade and the climate deception of Secretary Kerry, President Obama and the United Nations.

RELATED ARTICLE: Kerry speaks out on Florida’s ‘climate change’ ban

Why Socialism Causes Pollution by THOMAS J. DILORENZO

Corporations are often accused of despoiling the environment in their quest for profit. Free enterprise is supposedly incompatible with environmental preservation, so that government regulation is required.

Such thinking is the basis for current proposals to expand environmental regulation greatly. So many new controls have been proposed and enacted that the late economic journalist Warren Brookes once forecast that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) could well become “the most powerful government agency on earth, involved in massive levels of economic, social, scientific, and political spending and interference.

But if the profit motive is the primary cause of pollution, one would not expect to find much pollution in socialist countries, such as the former Soviet Union, China, and in the former Communist countries of Eastern and Central Europe. That is, in theory. In reality exactly the opposite is true: The socialist world suffers from the worst pollution on earth. Could it be that free enterprise is not so incompatible with environmental protection after all?

I. Socialist Pollution

The Soviet Union

In the Soviet Union there was a vast body of environmental law and regulation that purportedly protected the public interest, but these constraints have had no perceivable benefit. The Soviet Union, like all socialist countries, suffered from a massive “tragedy of the commons,” to borrow the term used by biologist Garrett Hardin in his classic 1968 article. Where property is communally or governmentally owned and treated as a free resource, resources will inevitably be overused with little regard for future consequences.

The Soviet government’s imperatives for economic growth, combined with communal ownership of virtually all property and resources, caused tremendous environmental damage. According to economist Marshall Goldman, who studied and traveled extensively in the Soviet Union, “The attitude that nature is there to be exploited by man is the very essence of the Soviet production ethic.”

A typical example of the environmental damage caused by the Soviet economic system is the exploitation of the Black Sea. To comply with five-year plans for housing and building construction, gravel, sand, and trees around the beaches were used for decades as construction materials. Because there is no private property, “no value is attached to the gravel along the seashore. Since, in effect, it is free, the contractors haul it away. This practice caused massive beach erosion which reduced the Black Sea coast by 50 percent between 1920 and 1960. Eventually, hotels, hospitals, and of all things, a military sanitarium collapsed into the sea as the shoreline gave way. Frequent landslides–as many as 300 per year–have been reported.

Water pollution is catastrophic. Effluent from a chemical plant killed almost all the fish in the Oka River in 1965, and similar fish kills have occurred in the Volga, Ob, Yenesei, Ural, and Northern Dvina rivers. Most Russian factories discharge their waste without cleaning it at all. Mines, oil wells, and ships freely dump waste and ballast into any available body of water, since it is all one big (and tragic) “commons.”

Only six of the 20 main cities in Moldavia had a sewer system by the late 1960s, and only two of those cities made any effort to treat the sewage. Conditions are far more primitive in the countryside.

The Aral and Caspian seas have been gradually disappearing as large quantities of their water have been diverted for irrigation. And since untreated sewage flows into feeder rivers, they are also heavily polluted.

Some Soviet authorities expressed fears that by the turn of the century the Aral Sea will be nothing but a salt marsh. One paper reported that because of the rising salt content of the Aral the remaining fish will rapidly disappear. It was recently revealed that the Aral Sea has shrunk by about a third. Its shore line “is arid desert and the wind blows dry deposits of salt thousands of miles away. The infant mortality rate [in that region] is four to five times the national average.”

The declining water level in the Caspian Sea has been catastrophic for its fish population as spawning areas have turned into dry land. The sturgeon population has been so decimated that the Soviets have experimented with producing artificial caviar. Hundreds of factories and refineries along the Caspian Sea dump untreated waste into the sea, and major cities routinely dump raw sewage. It has been estimated that one-half of all the discharged effluent is carried in the Volga River, which flows into the Caspian Sea. The concentration of oil in the Volga is so great that steamboats are equipped with signs forbidding passengers to toss cigarettes overboard. As might be expected, fish kills along the Volga are a “common calamity.”

Lake Baikal, which is believed to be the oldest freshwater lake in the world, is also one of the largest and deepest. It is five times as deep as Lake Superior and contains twice the volume of water. According to Marshall Goldman, it was also “the best known example of the misuse of water resources in the USSR.”

Factories and pulp mills have been dumping hundreds of millions of gallons of effluent into Lake Baikal each year for decades. As a result, animal life in the lake has been cut by more than 50 percent over the past half century. Untreated sewage is dumped into virtually all tributaries to the lake.

Islands of alkaline sewage have been observed floating on the lake, including one that was 18 miles long and three miles wide. These “islands” have polluted the air around the lake as well as the water in it. Thousands of acres of forest surrounding the lake have been denuded, causing such erosion that dust storms have been reported. So much forest land in the Lake Baikal region has been destroyed that some observers reported shifting sands that link up with the Gobi Desert; there are fears that the desert may sweep into Siberia and destroy the lake.

In other regions the fact that no compensation has to be paid for land that is flooded by water projects has made it easy for government engineers to submerge large areas of land. “As much land has been lost through flooding and salination as has been added through irrigation and drainage in the Soviet Union.”

These examples of environment degradation in the Soviet Union are not meant to be exhaustive but to illustrate the phenomenon of Communist pollution. As Goldman has observed, the great pollution problems in Russia stem from the fact that the government determined that economic growth was to be pursued at any cost. “Government officials in the USSR generally have a greater willingness to sacrifice their environment than government officials in a society with private enterprise where there is a degree of public accountability. There is virtually a political as well as an economic imperative to devour idle resources in the USSR.”

China

In China, as in Russia, putting the government in charge of resource allocation has not had desirable environmental consequences. Information on the state of China’s environment is not encouraging.

According to the Worldwatch Institute, more than 90 percent of the trees in the pine forests in China’s Sichuan province have died because of air pollution. In Chungking, the biggest city in southwest China, a 4, 500-acre forest has been reduced by half. Acid rain has reportedly caused massive crop losses.

There also have been reports of waterworks and landfill projects severely hampering fish migration. Fish breeding was so seriously neglected that fish has largely vanished from the national diet. Depletion of government-owned forests has turned them into deserts, and millions of acres of grazing and farm land in the northern Chinese plains were made alkaline and unproductive during the “Great Leap Forward.”

Central and Eastern Europe

With Communism’s collapse, word has begun to seep out about Eastern Europe’s environmental disasters. According to the United Nations Global Environment Monitoring Program, “pollution in that region is among the worst on the Earth’s surface.” Jeffrey Leonard of the World Wildlife Fund concluded that “pollution was part and parcel of the system that molested the people [of Eastern Europe] in their daily lives.” Evidence is mounting of “an environmental nightmare,” the legacy of “decades of industrial development with little or no environmental control.”

Poland

According to the Polish Academy of Sciences, “a third of the nation’s 38 million people live in areas of ecological disaster.” In the heavily industrialized Katowice region of Poland, the people suffer 15 percent more circulatory disease, 30 percent more tumors, and 47 percent more respiratory disease than other Poles. Physicians and scientists believe pollution is a major contributor to these health problems.

Acid rain has so corroded railroad tracks that trains are not allowed to exceed 24 miles an hour. The air is so polluted in Katowice that there are underground “clinics” in uranium mines where the chronically ill can go to breathe clean air.

Continuous pumping of water from coal mines has caused so much land to subside that over 300,000 apartments were destroyed as buildings collapsed. The mine sludge has been pumped into rivers and streams along with untreated sewage which has made 95 percent of the water unfit for human consumption. More than 65 percent of the nation’s water is even unfit for industrial use because it is so toxic that it would destroy heavy metals used by industry. In Cracow, Poland’s ancient capital, acid rain “dissolved so much of the gold roof of the 16th century Sigismund Chapel that it recently hd to be replaced.”

Industrial dust rains down on towns, depositing cadmium, lead, zinc, and iron. The dust is so heavy that huge trucks drive through city streets daily spraying water to reduce it. By some accounts eight tons of dust fall on each square mile in and around Cracow each year. The mayor of Cracow recently stated that the Vistula River — the largest river in Poland — is “nothing but a sewage canal.” The river has mercury levels that are three times what researchers say is safe, while lead levels are 25 times higher than deemed safe.

Half of Poland’s cities, including Warsaw, don’t even treat their wastes, and 41 animal species have reportedly become extinct in Poland in recent years. While health statistics are spotty — they were not a priority of the Communist government–available data are alarming. A recent study of the Katowice region found that 21 percent of the children up to 4 years old are sick almost constantly, while 41 percent of the children under 6 have serious health problems.

Life expectancy for men is lower than it was 20 years ago. In Upper Silesia, which is considered one of the most heavily industrialized regions in the world, circulatory disease levels are 15 percent higher, respiratory disease is 47 percent higher, and there has been “an appalling increase in the number of retarded children,” according to the Polish Academy of Sciences. Although pollution cannot be blamed for all these health problems, physicians and scientists attach much of the blame to this source.

Czechoslovakia

In a speech given on New Year’s Day of 1990, Czechoslovakian President Vaclav Havel said, “We have laid waste to our soil and the rivers and the forests…and we have the worst environment in the whole of Europe today.” He was not exaggerating, although the competition for the title of “worst environment” is clearly fierce. Sulfur dioxide concentrations in Czechoslovakia are eight times higher than in the United Sates, and “half the forests are dead or dying.”

Because of the overuse of fertilizers, farmland in some areas of Czechoslovakia is toxic to more than one foot in depth. In Bohemia, in northwestern Czechoslovakia, hills stand bare because their vegetation has died in air so foul it can be tasted. One report describes the Czech countryside as a place where “barren plateaus stretch for miles, studded with the stumps and skeletons of pine trees. Under the snow lie thousands of acres of poisoned ground, where for centuries thick forests had grown.” There is a stretch of over 350 miles where more than 300,000 acres of forest have disappeared and the remaining trees are dying. A thick, brown haze hangs over much of northern Czechoslovakia for about eight months of the year. Sometimes it takes on the sting of tear gas, according to local officials. There are environmental laws, but they aren’t enforced. Sulfur in the air has been reported at 20 times the permissible level. Soil in some regions is so acidic that aluminum trapped in the clay is released. Scientists discovered that the aluminum has poisoned groundwater, killing tree and plant roots and filtering into the drinking water.

Severe erosion in the decimated forests has caused spring floods in which all the melted snow cascades down mountainsides in a few weeks, causing further erosion and leading to water shortages in the summer.

In its search for coal, the Communist government has used bulldozers on such a massive scale that they have “turned towns, farms and woodlands into coarse brown deserts and gaping hollows. Because open-pit mining is cheaper than underground mining, and has been practiced extensively, in some areas of Czechoslovakia “you have total devastation of the land.”

East Germany

The new German government has claimed that nearly 40 percent of the East German populace suffers ill effects from pollutants in the air. In Leipzig, half the children are treated each year for illnesses believed to be associated with air pollution. Eighty percent of eastern Germany’s surface waters are classified as unsuitable for fishing, sports, or drinking, and one out of three lakes has been declared biologically dead because of decades of untreated dumping of chemical waste.

Much of the East German landscape has been devastated. Fifteen to 20 percent of its forests are dead, and another 40 percent are said to be dying. Between 1960 and 1980 at least 70 villages were destroyed and their inhabitants uprooted by the government, which wanted to mine high-sulfur brown coal. The countryside is now “pitted with moon-like craters” and “laced with the remains of what were once spruce and pine trees, nestled amid clouds of rancid smog.” The air in some cities is so polluted that residents use their car headlights during the day, and visitors have been known to vomit from breathing the air.

Nearly identical problems exist in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, and Yugoslavia.

Visiting scientists have concluded that pollution in Central and Eastern Europe “is more dangerous and widespread than anything they have seen in the Western industrial nations.”

II. United States: Public Sector Pollution

The last refuge of those who advocate socialistic solutions to environmental pollution is the claim that it is the lack of democratic processes that prevents the Communist nations from truly serving the public interest. If this theory is correct, then the public sector of an established democracy such as the United States should be one of the best examples of environmental responsibility. But U.S. government agencies are among the most cavalier when it comes to environmental stewardship.

There is much evidence to dispute the theory that only private businesses pollute. In the United States, we need look no further than our own government agencies. These public sector institutions, such as the Department of Defense (DOD), are among the worst offenders. DOD now generates more than 400,000 tons of hazardous waste a year — more than is produced by the five largest chemical companies combined. To make matters worse, the Environmental Protection Agency lacks the enforcement power over the public sector that it possesses over the private sector.

The lax situation uncovered by the General Accounting Office (GAO) at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma is typical of the way in which many Federal agencies respond to the EPA’s directives. “Although DOD policy calls for the military services to … implement EPA’s hazardous waste management regulations, we found that Tinker has been selling…waste oil, fuels, and solvents rather than recycling,” reported the GAO.

One of the world’s most poisonous spots lies about 10 miles northeast of Denver in the Army’s Rocky Mountain Arsenal. Nerve gas, mustard shells, the anti-crop spray TX, and incendiary devices have been dumped into pits there over the past 40 years. Dealing with only one “basin” of this dump cost $40 million. Six hundred thousand cubic yards of contaminated soil and sludge had to be scraped and entombed in a 16-acre, double-lined waste pile.

There are plenty of other examples of Defense Department facilities that need major cleanup. In fact, total costs of along-term Pentagon cleanup are hard to get a handle on. Some officials have conceded that the price tag could eventually exceed $20 billion.

Government-owned power plants are another example of public-sector pollution. These plants are a large source of sulfur dioxide emissions. The federal government’s Tennessee Valley Authority operates 59 coal-fired power plants in the Southeast, where it has had major legal confrontations with state governments who want the Federal agency to comply with state governments who want the Federal agency to comply with state environmental regulations. The TVA has fought the state governments for years over compliance with their clean air standards. It won a major Supreme Court victory when the Court ruled that, as a federal government enterprise, it could be exempt from environmental regulations with which private sector and local government power plants must comply.

Federal agricultural policy also has been a large source of pollution, in the past encouraging over utilization of land subject to erosion. Powerful farm lobbies have protected “non-point” sources of pollution from the heavy hand of regulation places on other private industries.

III. Policy Implications

These examples of environmental degradation throughout the world suggest some valuable lessons. First, it is not free enterprise per se that causes environmental harm; if so, the socialist world would be environmentally pristine.

The heart of the problem lies with the failure of our legal institutions, not the free enterprise system. Specifically, American laws were weakened more than a century ago by Progressive Era courts that believed economic progress was in the public interest and should therefore supersede individual rights.

The English common law tradition of the protection of private property rights — including the right to be free from pollution — was slowly overturned. In other words, many environmental problems are not caused by “market failure” but by government’s failure to enforce property rights. It is a travesty of justice when downstream residents, for example, cannot hold an upstream polluter responsible for damaging their properties. The common law tradition must be revived if we are to enjoy a healthy market economy and a cleaner environment. Potential polluters must know in advance that they will be held responsible for their actions.

The second lesson is that the plundering of the environment in the socialist world is a grand example of the tragedy of the commons. Under communal property ownership, where no one owns or is responsible for a natural resource, the inclination is for each individual to abuse or deplete the resource before someone else does. Common examples of this “tragedy” are how people litter public streets and parks much more than their own yards; private housing is much better maintained than public lands but maintain lush pastures on their own property; the national forests are carelessly over-logged, but private forests are carefully managed and reforested by lumber companies with “super trees”; and game fish are habitually overfished in public waterways but thrive in private lakes and streams. The tragedy of the commons is a lesson for those who believe that further nationalization and governmental control of natural resources is a solution to our environmental problems.

These two pillars of free enterprise — sound liability laws that hold people responsible for actions and the enforcement of private property rights — are important stepping stones to environmental protection.

ABOUT THOMAS J. DILORENZO

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is courtesy of FEE and Shutterstock.

The EPA Thinks You’re Stupid

The folks at the Environmental Protection Agency, starting with a long line of its administrators that now includes Gina McCarthy, think you and the Congress of the United States are stupid. They have been telling lies for so long they can’t imagine that their chokehold on the American economy will ever end.

EPA Director - Gina McCarthy

EPA Director Gina McCarthy

It is, however, coming to an end and the reason is a Republican-controlled Congress responding to the countless businesses and individuals being ravaged by a ruthless bureaucracy driven by an environmental agenda determined to deprive America of the energy sources vital to our lives and the nation’s existence.

This was on display in early March when Gina McCarthy testified to the Senate Environmental and Public Works Committee, asking for a nearly $500 million increase in its 2016 budget. The total discretionary budget request would have topped out at $8.6 billion and would reward states nearly $4 billion to go along with the EPA’s Clean Power Plan.

The problem is that the Clean Power Plan is really about no power or far more costly power in those states where the EPA has been shutting down coal-fired plants that not long ago provided fifty percent of all the electricity in the nation.

In February 2014, the Institute for Energy Research reported:

“More than 72 gigawatts (GW) of electrical generating capacity have already, or are now set to retire because of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) regulations. The regulations causing these closures include the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (colloquially called MATS, or Utility MACT), proposed Cross State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR), and the proposed regulation of carbon dioxide emissions from existing power plants.

To put 72 GW in perspective, that is enough electrical generation capacity to reliably power 44.7 million homes—or every home in every state west of the Mississippi River, excluding Texas. In other words, EPA is shutting down enough generating capacity to power every home in Washington, Oregon, California, Idaho, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, and Louisiana.

EPA - Shutdown of Electricity

Plants closed or soon to be closed. For a larger view click on the map.

Over 94 percent these retirements will come from generating units at coal-fired power plants, shuttering over one-fifth of the U.S.’s coal-fired generating capacity. While some of the effected units will be converted to use new fuels, American families and businesses will pay the price with higher utility bills and less reliability for their electricity.”

What nation would knowingly reduce its capacity to produce the electricity that everyone depends upon?

Answer: The United States of America.

Why? Because the EPA has been telling us that coal-fired plants produce carbon dioxide (CO2) and it is causing ours and the world’s temperature to increase to a point that threatens our lives. They have been claiming that everything from blizzards to droughts, hurricanes to forest fires, are the result of the CO2 that coal-fired plants produce.

That is a huge, stupendous lie.

In the Senate Committee meeting, McCarthy said, “Climate change is real. It is happening. It is a threat. Humans are causing the majority of that threat…the impacts are being felt. Climate change is not a religion. It is not a belief system. It’s a scientific fact. And our challenge is to move forward with the actions we need to protect future generations.”

Climate change is real. It’s been real for 4.5 billion years and it has absolutely nothing to do with anything that humans do, least of all heating, cooling and lighting their homes, running their businesses, and everything else that requires electricity.

McCarthy said that the EPA’s overall goal was to save the planet from rising sea levels, massive storms, and other climate events that impact our lives. No, that’s not why the EPA was created in 1970. Its job was to clean the water and the air. It has done a relatively good job, but its mandate had nothing to do with the climate, nor does the provision of energy have any impact on the climate.

The reverse is true. The climate has a lot of impact on us.

Regarding the “science” McCarthy referred to, according to a 2013 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, there were record low tornadoes, record low hurricanes, record gain in Arctic and Antarctic ice, no change in the rate of sea levels, and there had been NO WARMING at that point for 17—now 19—years.

When Sen. Jeff Sessions asked McCarthy a number of questions about droughts and hurricanes, she either dodged providing a specific answer or claimed, as with hurricanes, that “I cannot answer that question. It’s a very complicated issue.”

Asked about the computer models on which the EPA makes its regulatory decisions, McCarthy replied, “I do not know what the models actually are predicting that you are referring to.” Sen. Sessions said that it was incredible that the Administrator of the EPA “doesn’t know whether their predictions have been right or wrong.”

As for any “science” the EPA may be using, much of it is SECRET.

Heartland - Climate News (1)H. Sterling Burnett, the managing editor of the Heartland Institute’s Environment & Climate News, reported on The Secret Science Reform Act (HR 4012) introduced by the House Science Committee late last year. The bill would “prohibit the Environmental Protection Agency from proposing, finalizing, or disseminating regulations or assessments based on science that is not transparent or reproducible.”

The House passed the Act on November 20, 2014 and it has been received in the Senate, read twice, and referred to the Committee on Environment and Public Works. If it passes the Senate, that will be a giant leap forward in gaining oversight and control of the EPA.

Until then, the EPA’s administrator and staff will continue to work their mischief in the belief that both Congress and the rest of us are stupid. We’re not.

© Alan Caruba, 2015

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