By Alan Caruba
A lot of us are going to figuratively hold our noses and vote for John McCain because the notion of Barack Obama as President is too awful to contemplate, but if you go to JohnMcCain.com, you will find some of the worst Green babble posted on his “Issues” page and bodes ill for ridding us of a lot of bad science and worse “solutions” to solve so-called environmental problems that do not even exist.
Here’s what passes for McCain’s “Principles for Climate Policy”
# Climate policy should be built on scientifically-sound, mandatory emission reduction targets and timetables.
#Climate policy should utilize a market-based cap and trade system.
#Climate policy must spur the development and deployment of advanced technology.
#Climate policy must facilitate International efforts to solve the problem.
Given these “principles”, I recommend that McCain choose Al Gore as his vice presidential running mate, because they could have been written by Gore.
They are so wrong for so many reasons, but the most obvious is that we do not have to reduce emissions, i.e. carbon dioxide, because (1) it constitutes 0.038% of the Earth’s atmosphere, (2) it has virtually no role as regards the Earth’s climate, and (3) it is the second most essential gas other than oxygen because every bit of vegetation on Earth requires it.
Beyond that, mandatory emission reductions will only manage to impose large and very unnecessary expenses on all manner of human activity from manufacturing to transportation to agriculture, et cetera.
This brings us to McCain’s advocacy of a cap and trade system. This is the bogus buying and selling of “carbon credits” to create a whole new market for something that will simply drive up the cost of doing business for no good reason. The costs will be passed along to consumers and those running the exchanges for these credits will make any money from this scheme along with, of course, charlatans like Gore who run companies that sell these specious “credits.”
You might as well be buying credits for promising not to eat cotton candy or marshmallows.
As to spurring the development of advanced technology, what does McCain think American corporations and entrepreneurs do for a living? Our $14 trillion economy is built on research and development. The U.S. government has already wasted $50 billion on so-called “climate research” and none of it points to any global warming.
Finally, seeking “international” efforts to solve the problem will only prolong the history of the United Nations’ lies about global warming at a time when the Earth is a decade into what is likely to be a very long cooling period. In short, there is no warming and hasn’t been since 1998.
McCain’s climate policy is ignorance squared, especially if you pause just one moment and ask yourself what exactly can humankind do with regard to changing, altering, slowing or improving the climate in any way? The answer is nothing.
The Earth has been around 4.5 billion years, undergoing all kinds of climate from ice ages to long periods in which the CO2 levels were far higher than they are today.
These principles need to be scrapped, but they won’t be because they are a blatant attempt to skim off some votes from so-called environmentalists who have no more clue about the Earth than McCain.
Showing posts with label environment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label environment. Show all posts
Monday, June 30, 2008
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Losing Our Grip on Reality
By Alan Caruba
As one approaches Earth Day, April 22, my fear increases that as a nation we have lost our grip on reality. The Greens have substituted their “truth” for what anyone can see with their own eyes.
Is the world warming? No, it is now into a cooling cycle. This passed winter included record-breaking blizzards in China and elsewhere, along with snow showing up in the Middle East and in places in the southern hemisphere where it has not been seen, often in living memory. Glaciers are advancing. Both the Arctic and Antarctic ice shelves have been expanding.
Can America be “energy independent”? No. In fact, no nation can be energy independent. Even Iran imports gasoline for lack of refining capacity. Meanwhile, the Congress of the United States refuses to permit exploration and extraction of vast known national oil reserves while individual States thwart efforts to build coal-fired plants to generate the electricity we need.
How insane do we have to be to permit Congress to ban the purchase of incandescent light bulbs by 2014?
How insane do we have to be to insist that so-called “endangered species” take precedence over access to energy, the building of hospitals, schools, housing, and other elements of our national infrastructure?
For reasons known only to him, President Bush has reversed seven years of sensible policy to advocate reducing “greenhouse gas” emissions.
How out of touch with reality do we have to be to believe that 0.038% of the Earth’s atmosphere, carbon dioxide, determines the Earth’s climate when a child can look up and see the Sun, intuitively understanding that it is the primary driver?
How can we ignore the food riots occurring around the world and not understand that is a Congressional mandate to turn corn, soy, and palm oil into a fuel additive that is causing these shortages? Unless repealed, the situation, aggravated by weather-related crop losses, will only grow worse.
How bizarre is it to believe that man “controls” the climate when it is and always has been manifestly evident that mankind’s success has been the adaptations we have made to survive the challenges the climate poses? How we heat and cool our homes is just one of these adaptations and, without oil, coal, and natural gas, without electricity, we will be at the mercy of nature once again.
Why would any people turn to the two least efficient and reliable forms of energy, solar and wind, when there are ample reserves of fossil fuels to meet our present and future needs?
A nation that began with a protest against “taxation without representation” now submits to all forms of visible and invisible taxation of all goods and services, on all means of transportation, on investments and savings. We are being systematically impoverished as individuals in order to fund a profligate government system based on the redistribution of income.
The tyranny of demography, the demands of an aging population, hold forth serious challenges to our pension and entitlement systems. The funding will not be available no matter how successful our economy may be.
While all this occurs, a warrior cult called Islam threatens to drag us all back to the culture and values of a seventh century Bedouin tribe. No efforts to compromise will succeed and elements of Islam have nuclear weapons or soon will. The most repressive societies on Earth want to impose their religion on the most successful.
Until and unless the nation can regain a grip on the realities of the world in which we live, we risk losing our nation to the lies environmentalists tell, the laws a blind Congress passes in the name of the environment, an economy transformed from capitalism to socialism, and perhaps the very freedoms embedded in our Constitution.
As one approaches Earth Day, April 22, my fear increases that as a nation we have lost our grip on reality. The Greens have substituted their “truth” for what anyone can see with their own eyes.
Is the world warming? No, it is now into a cooling cycle. This passed winter included record-breaking blizzards in China and elsewhere, along with snow showing up in the Middle East and in places in the southern hemisphere where it has not been seen, often in living memory. Glaciers are advancing. Both the Arctic and Antarctic ice shelves have been expanding.
Can America be “energy independent”? No. In fact, no nation can be energy independent. Even Iran imports gasoline for lack of refining capacity. Meanwhile, the Congress of the United States refuses to permit exploration and extraction of vast known national oil reserves while individual States thwart efforts to build coal-fired plants to generate the electricity we need.
How insane do we have to be to permit Congress to ban the purchase of incandescent light bulbs by 2014?
How insane do we have to be to insist that so-called “endangered species” take precedence over access to energy, the building of hospitals, schools, housing, and other elements of our national infrastructure?
For reasons known only to him, President Bush has reversed seven years of sensible policy to advocate reducing “greenhouse gas” emissions.
How out of touch with reality do we have to be to believe that 0.038% of the Earth’s atmosphere, carbon dioxide, determines the Earth’s climate when a child can look up and see the Sun, intuitively understanding that it is the primary driver?
How can we ignore the food riots occurring around the world and not understand that is a Congressional mandate to turn corn, soy, and palm oil into a fuel additive that is causing these shortages? Unless repealed, the situation, aggravated by weather-related crop losses, will only grow worse.
How bizarre is it to believe that man “controls” the climate when it is and always has been manifestly evident that mankind’s success has been the adaptations we have made to survive the challenges the climate poses? How we heat and cool our homes is just one of these adaptations and, without oil, coal, and natural gas, without electricity, we will be at the mercy of nature once again.
Why would any people turn to the two least efficient and reliable forms of energy, solar and wind, when there are ample reserves of fossil fuels to meet our present and future needs?
A nation that began with a protest against “taxation without representation” now submits to all forms of visible and invisible taxation of all goods and services, on all means of transportation, on investments and savings. We are being systematically impoverished as individuals in order to fund a profligate government system based on the redistribution of income.
The tyranny of demography, the demands of an aging population, hold forth serious challenges to our pension and entitlement systems. The funding will not be available no matter how successful our economy may be.
While all this occurs, a warrior cult called Islam threatens to drag us all back to the culture and values of a seventh century Bedouin tribe. No efforts to compromise will succeed and elements of Islam have nuclear weapons or soon will. The most repressive societies on Earth want to impose their religion on the most successful.
Until and unless the nation can regain a grip on the realities of the world in which we live, we risk losing our nation to the lies environmentalists tell, the laws a blind Congress passes in the name of the environment, an economy transformed from capitalism to socialism, and perhaps the very freedoms embedded in our Constitution.
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
An Extraordinary Event
By Alan Caruba
For two days, March 2-4 in New York, I and about five hundred other people attended the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change, including some of the world’s leading authorities on climatology, meteorology, economics, energy, and other fields of knowledge.
It was an extraordinary event, held in New York and sponsored by the Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based think tank that has been among those leading the effort to educate and inform the public about the mountain of lies that have led them to believe that the Earth is experiencing a huge increase in heat, a "global warming", that is allegedly the direct result of human activities, primarily from the use of energy that includes coal, natural gas, and oil.
The conference message is simplicity itself: There is no “consensus” on global warming. The science is not “settled.” Indeed, this conference marks a highpoint in the effort to rescue the planet from people who regard their fellow human beings as a cancer afflicting the Earth.
This hoax, generated out of the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, actually included some IPCC members who have labored long and hard to dispute the IPCC reports on the basis of real science, not the spurious claims based largely on flawed and even deliberately false computer models.
In breakfasts, luncheons, and dinners, some of these now-famed global warming “dissenters” and “deniers” presented talks complete with power-point presentations filled with statistics and charts that disputed the alleged facts of the IPCC. These presentations were then augmented by a series of panels on paleoclimatology, climatology, the impacts of the global warming hoax, its affect on the economics of both developed and developing nations, and how it twists the politics of our nation and others.
What made this event so extraordinary was that it is, to my knowledge, the first time since the global warming hoax was perpetrated back in the 1980s (it had been preceded by a campaign in the 1970s asserting—correctly—that we are closer to the next ice age) that such a gathering has occurred. It has taken three decades to bring together these experts and the reason why is fairly simple.
The forces behind the global warming hoax, the environmental organizations, have been heavily funded by foundations and, as in the United States, by billions of government dollars directed to research on the climate. These groups have garnered more money from membership and the sales of all manner of books, publications, DVDs and other items. Still others have made their money by suing the government and having their legal fees reimbursed along with any other rewards.
The “stars” of the conference were men with impeccable credentials, but largely unknown to the general public because the media has been enthralled with the global warming hoaxers, either deliberately or by virtue of being disinterested in the actual science involved. Too many have failed their commitment to journalism’s high standards and they have failed a public that depends on them to explain these complex issues. By March 4, The Washington Post published a "hit job" on the Conference depicting its speakers and attendees as "flat Earth" loonies.
For decades, the headlines have heralded all manner of crisis to the point of absurdity whereby now blizzards are attributed to warming tends. This passed year has seen significant and unusual blizzard conditions worldwide and this too, the public has been told, results from a dramatic warming that is not occurring.
For me, there was the particular pleasure of actually meeting many of those who have been on the front lines of disputing the hoax, but our work is far from finished.
Much damage is being done to America by legislation based on the global warming lies, particularly as regards their impact on the provision of the energy this nation requires to be competitive in the global marketplace and to sustain our lifestyle. Our political candidates all subscribe to the global warming hoax. The leaders in the Senate and House all advocate it as well.
The result is legislation that forces the nation to literally burn its food crops—notably corn—in order to turn it into an efficient fuel additive, ethanol. This in turn is forcing up the cost of food. It is legislation that does not permit for the exploration and extraction of energy reserves such as oil and natural gas along 85% of our nation’s continental shelf, nor in Alaska where billions of barrels of oil remain untapped. It is legislation that grants huge subsidies—a form of hidden tax—to wind and solar energy, the two most inefficient and unreliable forms of energy. It is legislation that bans the future use of incandescent light bulbs.
In short, America is gripped by a form of life-threatening insanity perpetrated by the Greens and legislated by politicians who haven’t a clue about the ways they are wrecking our economy in the name of global warming.
So this extraordinary conference, drawing men and women from as far away as Australia, New Zealand, China, the United Kingdom and Europe, may well be the last best hope to turn away from a future that will be marked by the undermining of America’s and Europe’s economies.
For two days, March 2-4 in New York, I and about five hundred other people attended the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change, including some of the world’s leading authorities on climatology, meteorology, economics, energy, and other fields of knowledge.
It was an extraordinary event, held in New York and sponsored by the Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based think tank that has been among those leading the effort to educate and inform the public about the mountain of lies that have led them to believe that the Earth is experiencing a huge increase in heat, a "global warming", that is allegedly the direct result of human activities, primarily from the use of energy that includes coal, natural gas, and oil.
The conference message is simplicity itself: There is no “consensus” on global warming. The science is not “settled.” Indeed, this conference marks a highpoint in the effort to rescue the planet from people who regard their fellow human beings as a cancer afflicting the Earth.
This hoax, generated out of the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, actually included some IPCC members who have labored long and hard to dispute the IPCC reports on the basis of real science, not the spurious claims based largely on flawed and even deliberately false computer models.
In breakfasts, luncheons, and dinners, some of these now-famed global warming “dissenters” and “deniers” presented talks complete with power-point presentations filled with statistics and charts that disputed the alleged facts of the IPCC. These presentations were then augmented by a series of panels on paleoclimatology, climatology, the impacts of the global warming hoax, its affect on the economics of both developed and developing nations, and how it twists the politics of our nation and others.
What made this event so extraordinary was that it is, to my knowledge, the first time since the global warming hoax was perpetrated back in the 1980s (it had been preceded by a campaign in the 1970s asserting—correctly—that we are closer to the next ice age) that such a gathering has occurred. It has taken three decades to bring together these experts and the reason why is fairly simple.
The forces behind the global warming hoax, the environmental organizations, have been heavily funded by foundations and, as in the United States, by billions of government dollars directed to research on the climate. These groups have garnered more money from membership and the sales of all manner of books, publications, DVDs and other items. Still others have made their money by suing the government and having their legal fees reimbursed along with any other rewards.
The “stars” of the conference were men with impeccable credentials, but largely unknown to the general public because the media has been enthralled with the global warming hoaxers, either deliberately or by virtue of being disinterested in the actual science involved. Too many have failed their commitment to journalism’s high standards and they have failed a public that depends on them to explain these complex issues. By March 4, The Washington Post published a "hit job" on the Conference depicting its speakers and attendees as "flat Earth" loonies.
For decades, the headlines have heralded all manner of crisis to the point of absurdity whereby now blizzards are attributed to warming tends. This passed year has seen significant and unusual blizzard conditions worldwide and this too, the public has been told, results from a dramatic warming that is not occurring.
For me, there was the particular pleasure of actually meeting many of those who have been on the front lines of disputing the hoax, but our work is far from finished.
Much damage is being done to America by legislation based on the global warming lies, particularly as regards their impact on the provision of the energy this nation requires to be competitive in the global marketplace and to sustain our lifestyle. Our political candidates all subscribe to the global warming hoax. The leaders in the Senate and House all advocate it as well.
The result is legislation that forces the nation to literally burn its food crops—notably corn—in order to turn it into an efficient fuel additive, ethanol. This in turn is forcing up the cost of food. It is legislation that does not permit for the exploration and extraction of energy reserves such as oil and natural gas along 85% of our nation’s continental shelf, nor in Alaska where billions of barrels of oil remain untapped. It is legislation that grants huge subsidies—a form of hidden tax—to wind and solar energy, the two most inefficient and unreliable forms of energy. It is legislation that bans the future use of incandescent light bulbs.
In short, America is gripped by a form of life-threatening insanity perpetrated by the Greens and legislated by politicians who haven’t a clue about the ways they are wrecking our economy in the name of global warming.
So this extraordinary conference, drawing men and women from as far away as Australia, New Zealand, China, the United Kingdom and Europe, may well be the last best hope to turn away from a future that will be marked by the undermining of America’s and Europe’s economies.
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Governors Ignore Infrastructure, Discuss Environment
By Alan Caruba
At a time when America’s infrastructure—bridges, roads, seaports and airports—is in need of repair, the nation’s governors are gathering to discuss ways to waste time, money, and labor on something that is impossible, “an energy independent” America. No nation on Earth is energy independent.
On Feb 23, the 2008 National Governors Association will gather for their winter meeting and the primary topic will be making America “a global leader in energy efficiency, clean energy technology, alternative fuels use, and energy research…” I doubt that the subject of building more coal or gas burning, let alone nuclear, electricity generation facilities will be high on their priorities. Indeed, in state after state, governors have expressed opposition this vital necessity.
Saturday’s open session will feature Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s presentation, “Securing a Clean Energy Future.” This is code for the increased use of wind turbine and solar energy. At present, these two provide barely one percent of the nation’s energy needs. They are incredibly inefficient and are incapable of replacing coal, natural gas, oil and nuclear energy to meet the needs of the nation.
The term “clean energy” is code for opposition to greenhouse gas emissions, primarily carbon dioxide, but CO2 is just 0.038 percent of the Earth’s atmosphere and plays an insignificant role as a greenhouse gas. It is the Sun that is the determining factor when it comes to heating or cooling the Earth. The Earth is getting cooler, not warmer.
Former CIA Director, R. James Woolsey, will address “the need to develop and support alternatives to imported petroleum.” I don’t know who Woolsey is shilling for, but I have personally heard his standard speech on this topic and I can tell you he is full of hot air. There isn’t a nation on Earth that can afford to reduce its imports of petroleum. It is a global commodity that is sold to the highest bidder. Oil doesn’t have a nationality—only a price.
The notion that America can, will or should reduce oil imports is a huge misrepresentation of the truth. Energy is the engine of our economy. Reduce or restrict its use and you will see businesses and jobs move anywhere it’s available. And yet Congress refuses to grant access to the vast oil reserves going untapped in Alaska or our continental shelf.
What’s scary about all this hogwash about energy efficiency and alternative energy sources is that these are the people who will shape the future of their individual States and of the nation.
Instead of advocating a better tax structure to encourage and stimulate industries and small businesses in their States, they are wasting time on discussing ways to thwart the building of new electricity generating plants, new refineries, and insuring that our own natural resources go unused.
These are the same governors whose States have been on a spending spree for a very long time, far outpacing their revenues. They have borrowed and borrowed to the point where our grandchildren and their children will be paying off the debt load.
America is in trouble and the governors want to discuss ethanol, wind turbines, and solar panels when they need to be discussing bridge maintenance, potholes, and jobs leaving for places where it costs far less to produce anything.
At a time when America’s infrastructure—bridges, roads, seaports and airports—is in need of repair, the nation’s governors are gathering to discuss ways to waste time, money, and labor on something that is impossible, “an energy independent” America. No nation on Earth is energy independent.
On Feb 23, the 2008 National Governors Association will gather for their winter meeting and the primary topic will be making America “a global leader in energy efficiency, clean energy technology, alternative fuels use, and energy research…” I doubt that the subject of building more coal or gas burning, let alone nuclear, electricity generation facilities will be high on their priorities. Indeed, in state after state, governors have expressed opposition this vital necessity.
Saturday’s open session will feature Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s presentation, “Securing a Clean Energy Future.” This is code for the increased use of wind turbine and solar energy. At present, these two provide barely one percent of the nation’s energy needs. They are incredibly inefficient and are incapable of replacing coal, natural gas, oil and nuclear energy to meet the needs of the nation.
The term “clean energy” is code for opposition to greenhouse gas emissions, primarily carbon dioxide, but CO2 is just 0.038 percent of the Earth’s atmosphere and plays an insignificant role as a greenhouse gas. It is the Sun that is the determining factor when it comes to heating or cooling the Earth. The Earth is getting cooler, not warmer.
Former CIA Director, R. James Woolsey, will address “the need to develop and support alternatives to imported petroleum.” I don’t know who Woolsey is shilling for, but I have personally heard his standard speech on this topic and I can tell you he is full of hot air. There isn’t a nation on Earth that can afford to reduce its imports of petroleum. It is a global commodity that is sold to the highest bidder. Oil doesn’t have a nationality—only a price.
The notion that America can, will or should reduce oil imports is a huge misrepresentation of the truth. Energy is the engine of our economy. Reduce or restrict its use and you will see businesses and jobs move anywhere it’s available. And yet Congress refuses to grant access to the vast oil reserves going untapped in Alaska or our continental shelf.
What’s scary about all this hogwash about energy efficiency and alternative energy sources is that these are the people who will shape the future of their individual States and of the nation.
Instead of advocating a better tax structure to encourage and stimulate industries and small businesses in their States, they are wasting time on discussing ways to thwart the building of new electricity generating plants, new refineries, and insuring that our own natural resources go unused.
These are the same governors whose States have been on a spending spree for a very long time, far outpacing their revenues. They have borrowed and borrowed to the point where our grandchildren and their children will be paying off the debt load.
America is in trouble and the governors want to discuss ethanol, wind turbines, and solar panels when they need to be discussing bridge maintenance, potholes, and jobs leaving for places where it costs far less to produce anything.
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
A Green Exercise in Idiocy
By Alan Caruba
Hardly a day goes by anymore without some breathless announcement of some new “Green” initiative. It’s all rather boring really, but politicians are eager to associate themselves with these idiotic exercises in futility. Obviously, the greatest of these is “saving the Earth” as if anyone could actually do a thing about it if an asteroid hit, the Sun decided to fry us all, or more likely, a new Ice Age arrives any day now.
Anyway, on November 7, the National Governors Association (NGA) announced “an innovative clean energy partnership with the “Climate Savers Computing Initiative” (CSCI).
Try and wrap your mind around this. A bunch of computer manufacturers and at least two utterly besotted state Governors think they are going to save the Earth by instituting “a 50 percent reduction in current energy consumption from state-owned computing equipment over the next four years.”
NGA Chair, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty and Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius will be “the first governors to commit their states to this partnership and will be sending a letter to all governors encouraging them to join the program as well.”
In case no one noticed, a large bridge in Minnesota collapsed not long ago and apparently the state had not allocated proper attention or funds for its maintenance. Kansas just voted to kill off several proposed coal-fired electrical utilities and one can only guess where its growing population is going to get more when they really need it. But cutting the amount of electricity that some computers use is their real priority.
Why? Because "The wasted electricity is dispersed as heat and increases the cost of powering the computer, as well as the emission of greenhouse gases." Say what? Computers are giving off greenhouse gases? Hell, human beings exhale two pounds of CO2 every day!
This is the kind of feel-good window dressing that governors and other politicians just love, but it does absolutely nothing to address the real, human problems that beset their states such as enticing and keeping businesses from deciding to set up shop in India or China. It has no affect on crime, poverty, and the provision of education or health services.
Instead it gives politicians a change to blather about reducing the amount of electricity some computers use and all in the name of “saving the Earth.”
This is why anyone with half a brain hates most politicians.
Hardly a day goes by anymore without some breathless announcement of some new “Green” initiative. It’s all rather boring really, but politicians are eager to associate themselves with these idiotic exercises in futility. Obviously, the greatest of these is “saving the Earth” as if anyone could actually do a thing about it if an asteroid hit, the Sun decided to fry us all, or more likely, a new Ice Age arrives any day now.
Anyway, on November 7, the National Governors Association (NGA) announced “an innovative clean energy partnership with the “Climate Savers Computing Initiative” (CSCI).
Try and wrap your mind around this. A bunch of computer manufacturers and at least two utterly besotted state Governors think they are going to save the Earth by instituting “a 50 percent reduction in current energy consumption from state-owned computing equipment over the next four years.”
NGA Chair, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty and Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius will be “the first governors to commit their states to this partnership and will be sending a letter to all governors encouraging them to join the program as well.”
In case no one noticed, a large bridge in Minnesota collapsed not long ago and apparently the state had not allocated proper attention or funds for its maintenance. Kansas just voted to kill off several proposed coal-fired electrical utilities and one can only guess where its growing population is going to get more when they really need it. But cutting the amount of electricity that some computers use is their real priority.
Why? Because "The wasted electricity is dispersed as heat and increases the cost of powering the computer, as well as the emission of greenhouse gases." Say what? Computers are giving off greenhouse gases? Hell, human beings exhale two pounds of CO2 every day!
This is the kind of feel-good window dressing that governors and other politicians just love, but it does absolutely nothing to address the real, human problems that beset their states such as enticing and keeping businesses from deciding to set up shop in India or China. It has no affect on crime, poverty, and the provision of education or health services.
Instead it gives politicians a change to blather about reducing the amount of electricity some computers use and all in the name of “saving the Earth.”
This is why anyone with half a brain hates most politicians.
Friday, October 12, 2007
Nobel Prize for the Biggest Liar
By Alan Caruba
Well, it’s official. The Nobel Peace Prize now is being awarded for the Biggest Liar of the Year. Naturally, Al Gore took top honors.
The former Vice President received his award primarily for a documentary that cannot be shown in the schools of Great Britain without giving students a warning that it is filled with errors and deliberately false claims.
“An Inconvenient Truth” won an Oscar for documentaries in the last Hollywood festival that brings together over-paid actors, directors, and others who hate America and see film as a means of attacking foreign and domestic policies far beyond their comprehension.
Previous winners of a prize that was supposed to be given only to people who actually furthered peace in the interest of mankind included Yassir Arafat who rejected any peace agreement offered by the Israelis and rewarded their efforts with years of terrorism. His legacy has been taken up by Hamas, Hezbollah and their sponsor nation, Iran.
I fully expect to see Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran, receive the award next year for his denunciation of the Holocaust and his demand that Israel be “wiped off the map.”
He would join the ranks of prize-winners like Kofi Annan, the former Secretary General of the United Nations, who heard nothing and saw nothing while Saddam Hussein turned the UN Food for Oil program into a huge bribery scheme to rip off millions for himself, his sons, and his cronies when not engaged in the mass murder of Iraqis. The list of UN failures under Annan’s administration is too long to discuss here, but they did include the massacres in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia.
It isn’t the first time the Nobel Prize committee paid honor to a liar. There was Rigoberta Menchu, a Guatemalan who had penned a book filled with lies about the oppression of that nation’s Indian population that included the assertion that her brother had been killed by government agents when, in fact, he was alive and living nearby her at the time.
Except for the $1.5 million in prize money, the Nobel Peace Prize is utterly bereft of any value anymore. Of course, the money will help pay the enormous energy bill that Gore pays for the maintenance of his home in Tennessee and for the cost of the gasoline and jet fuel needed for his chauffeured limousines and private jets.
The Nobel Peace Prize has become more than just a bad joke. It is an obscenity and an offense to the memory and intent of Alfred Nobel.
Well, it’s official. The Nobel Peace Prize now is being awarded for the Biggest Liar of the Year. Naturally, Al Gore took top honors.
The former Vice President received his award primarily for a documentary that cannot be shown in the schools of Great Britain without giving students a warning that it is filled with errors and deliberately false claims.
“An Inconvenient Truth” won an Oscar for documentaries in the last Hollywood festival that brings together over-paid actors, directors, and others who hate America and see film as a means of attacking foreign and domestic policies far beyond their comprehension.
Previous winners of a prize that was supposed to be given only to people who actually furthered peace in the interest of mankind included Yassir Arafat who rejected any peace agreement offered by the Israelis and rewarded their efforts with years of terrorism. His legacy has been taken up by Hamas, Hezbollah and their sponsor nation, Iran.
I fully expect to see Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran, receive the award next year for his denunciation of the Holocaust and his demand that Israel be “wiped off the map.”
He would join the ranks of prize-winners like Kofi Annan, the former Secretary General of the United Nations, who heard nothing and saw nothing while Saddam Hussein turned the UN Food for Oil program into a huge bribery scheme to rip off millions for himself, his sons, and his cronies when not engaged in the mass murder of Iraqis. The list of UN failures under Annan’s administration is too long to discuss here, but they did include the massacres in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia.
It isn’t the first time the Nobel Prize committee paid honor to a liar. There was Rigoberta Menchu, a Guatemalan who had penned a book filled with lies about the oppression of that nation’s Indian population that included the assertion that her brother had been killed by government agents when, in fact, he was alive and living nearby her at the time.
Except for the $1.5 million in prize money, the Nobel Peace Prize is utterly bereft of any value anymore. Of course, the money will help pay the enormous energy bill that Gore pays for the maintenance of his home in Tennessee and for the cost of the gasoline and jet fuel needed for his chauffeured limousines and private jets.
The Nobel Peace Prize has become more than just a bad joke. It is an obscenity and an offense to the memory and intent of Alfred Nobel.
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
Green Lies About Antarctica
By Alan Caruba
Yesterday I received a news release about a new book, “Antarctica: The Global Warming”, a collection of photos by Sebastian Copeland. Celebrating it were two events and it struck me that the environmentalists have mastered propaganda in ways that are as impressive as they are deceptive.
According to the release, Copeland says, “Most people think of Antarctica as utterly remote from their lives and their worlds—and they’re right, it is thousands of miles away from most of us. But our actions here, in the industrialized world, are changing this fragile, beautiful continent forever, and I wanted my book to ask people to think about that.”
This is utter nonsense. There is nothing that those of us in “the industrialized world” are doing that has any affect on Antarctica, nor are we “changing” that continent “forever.” This assertion puts humans at the center of all life on earth and then blames humans for despoiling it, presumably because of “industrialization.” What we find in this statement is the Greens' distaste and even hatred for anything we recognize as modernization, technology, and the improvement in the lives of all who benefit from it.
The release goes on to note that the first celebration of the book will be at the United Nations in New York and that the UN Environmental Program is hosting an exhibition of the photos. It is essential to understand that the UN is the nexus for all the “global warming” lies that have been the core of a program designed to extend its control over all nations and all the people of the world.
Global warming as described by these lies is the current and near-future warming of the earth in ways that threaten all life on it. Currently, just about everything that does happen is attributed to “global warming” and it has reached a point where even people with no knowledge of science recognize how ridiculous this is. The earth has been naturally warming since the end of the last mini-ice age in the 1800s. We are all in an interglacial period between major ice ages. Nothing we do will alter that natural cycle. Nothing we do has any effect on the actions of the Sun, the oceans, clouds, volcanoes, and other the other things that determine the earth’s climate.
So, while Copeland’s photos are no doubt beautiful, they are being used to continue the lies that Antarctica is suffering the effects of “global warming.”
In September, Meteorologist Joe D’Aleo reported that Antarctica “has quietly set a new record for most ice extent since 1979. The Southern Hemispheric area coverage is the highest in the satellite record, just being out 1995, 3001, 2005 and 2006. Since 1979, the trend has been up for the total Antarctica ice extent.”
While noting that the Antarctica Peninsula area “has warmed in recent years and the ice near it diminished during the Southern Hemisphere summer, the interior of Antarctica has been colder and ice elsewhere has been more extensive and longer lasting, which explains the increase in total extent.”
So, being told that one portion of Antarctica has been warmer—in the summer—and that some of its ice has diminished is much like hearing that California has experienced some climate event and that this should be extrapolated to include the entire United States.
Ohio State researcher, David Bromwich, agreed with D’Aleo, saying “It’s hard to see a global warming signal from the mainland of Antarctica right now.” He might as well have added, “or ever.” According to the NASA GISS data, the South Pole winter (June through August) cooled about 1 degree Fahrenheit since 1957 and the coldest year was in 2004. New cold records were set in Australia, South America, and Africa.
So the news releases are going out, the UN’s environmental liars are holding their celebrations, and the drumbeat of “global warming” continues. It is all part of the greatest hoax ever perpetrated in modern times and it’s time for it to end.
Visit http://www.iceagenow.com/ for more information.
Yesterday I received a news release about a new book, “Antarctica: The Global Warming”, a collection of photos by Sebastian Copeland. Celebrating it were two events and it struck me that the environmentalists have mastered propaganda in ways that are as impressive as they are deceptive.
According to the release, Copeland says, “Most people think of Antarctica as utterly remote from their lives and their worlds—and they’re right, it is thousands of miles away from most of us. But our actions here, in the industrialized world, are changing this fragile, beautiful continent forever, and I wanted my book to ask people to think about that.”
This is utter nonsense. There is nothing that those of us in “the industrialized world” are doing that has any affect on Antarctica, nor are we “changing” that continent “forever.” This assertion puts humans at the center of all life on earth and then blames humans for despoiling it, presumably because of “industrialization.” What we find in this statement is the Greens' distaste and even hatred for anything we recognize as modernization, technology, and the improvement in the lives of all who benefit from it.
The release goes on to note that the first celebration of the book will be at the United Nations in New York and that the UN Environmental Program is hosting an exhibition of the photos. It is essential to understand that the UN is the nexus for all the “global warming” lies that have been the core of a program designed to extend its control over all nations and all the people of the world.
Global warming as described by these lies is the current and near-future warming of the earth in ways that threaten all life on it. Currently, just about everything that does happen is attributed to “global warming” and it has reached a point where even people with no knowledge of science recognize how ridiculous this is. The earth has been naturally warming since the end of the last mini-ice age in the 1800s. We are all in an interglacial period between major ice ages. Nothing we do will alter that natural cycle. Nothing we do has any effect on the actions of the Sun, the oceans, clouds, volcanoes, and other the other things that determine the earth’s climate.
So, while Copeland’s photos are no doubt beautiful, they are being used to continue the lies that Antarctica is suffering the effects of “global warming.”
In September, Meteorologist Joe D’Aleo reported that Antarctica “has quietly set a new record for most ice extent since 1979. The Southern Hemispheric area coverage is the highest in the satellite record, just being out 1995, 3001, 2005 and 2006. Since 1979, the trend has been up for the total Antarctica ice extent.”
While noting that the Antarctica Peninsula area “has warmed in recent years and the ice near it diminished during the Southern Hemisphere summer, the interior of Antarctica has been colder and ice elsewhere has been more extensive and longer lasting, which explains the increase in total extent.”
So, being told that one portion of Antarctica has been warmer—in the summer—and that some of its ice has diminished is much like hearing that California has experienced some climate event and that this should be extrapolated to include the entire United States.
Ohio State researcher, David Bromwich, agreed with D’Aleo, saying “It’s hard to see a global warming signal from the mainland of Antarctica right now.” He might as well have added, “or ever.” According to the NASA GISS data, the South Pole winter (June through August) cooled about 1 degree Fahrenheit since 1957 and the coldest year was in 2004. New cold records were set in Australia, South America, and Africa.
So the news releases are going out, the UN’s environmental liars are holding their celebrations, and the drumbeat of “global warming” continues. It is all part of the greatest hoax ever perpetrated in modern times and it’s time for it to end.
Visit http://www.iceagenow.com/ for more information.
Friday, October 5, 2007
Public Relations, Consumer Confidence, and Liars
By Alan Caruba
I was interviewed recently by a reporter for National Public Radio’s “Marketplace”, providing a sound bite about the coverage of Countrywide Financial’s problems as its stock price heads south, causing the layoff of a huge number of employees in the wake of the subprime mortgage loan debacle.
I have long been accustomed to being the “go to” guy when the press has questions about public relations and the news was about a small army of Burson-Marsteller PR folks brought in to fix the ailing home lender’s image.
When trust returns to the home mortgage industry in general, Countrywide—if it is still around—will rebuild. Meanwhile, it has to very publicly reinforce the need for ethical practices and not use “competition” as an excuse for a lack of caution.
Meanwhile, it's a good idea to keep in mind that the economy is doing just fine. Unemployment is still at record low rates. As the holidays approach, consumers will open their wallets. Some of them will look at the new housing prices and decide to buy one. The economy is amazingly resiliant.
It has been interesting to see the growth of “crisis control” in tandem with “reputation management” as an important function of public relations, but I tend to favor fighting one’s enemies long and hard before any crisis is allowed to happen. This is particularly true when it comes to issues of public policy and public opinion.
Environmental groups have, for years, used lies of every kind to advance their agenda. The result has often caused the needless loss of life as in the case of the ban on DDT. The vast "global warming" hoax threatens to waste trillions of dollars limiting "greenhouse gas emissions" by imposing "carbon taxes" when humans have no role whatever regarding the earth's climate.
Any enterprise whose success is predicated on issues involving energy, chemicals or pharmaceuticals, agriculture, and—most importantly—consumer confidence has got to be prepared to join the war against those who spread lies about the good things they do.
If not, the liars win. It’s just that simple.
I was interviewed recently by a reporter for National Public Radio’s “Marketplace”, providing a sound bite about the coverage of Countrywide Financial’s problems as its stock price heads south, causing the layoff of a huge number of employees in the wake of the subprime mortgage loan debacle.
I have long been accustomed to being the “go to” guy when the press has questions about public relations and the news was about a small army of Burson-Marsteller PR folks brought in to fix the ailing home lender’s image.
When trust returns to the home mortgage industry in general, Countrywide—if it is still around—will rebuild. Meanwhile, it has to very publicly reinforce the need for ethical practices and not use “competition” as an excuse for a lack of caution.
Meanwhile, it's a good idea to keep in mind that the economy is doing just fine. Unemployment is still at record low rates. As the holidays approach, consumers will open their wallets. Some of them will look at the new housing prices and decide to buy one. The economy is amazingly resiliant.
It has been interesting to see the growth of “crisis control” in tandem with “reputation management” as an important function of public relations, but I tend to favor fighting one’s enemies long and hard before any crisis is allowed to happen. This is particularly true when it comes to issues of public policy and public opinion.
Environmental groups have, for years, used lies of every kind to advance their agenda. The result has often caused the needless loss of life as in the case of the ban on DDT. The vast "global warming" hoax threatens to waste trillions of dollars limiting "greenhouse gas emissions" by imposing "carbon taxes" when humans have no role whatever regarding the earth's climate.
Any enterprise whose success is predicated on issues involving energy, chemicals or pharmaceuticals, agriculture, and—most importantly—consumer confidence has got to be prepared to join the war against those who spread lies about the good things they do.
If not, the liars win. It’s just that simple.
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Friends of the Earth are Not Friends of Consumers and Taxpayers
By Alan Caruba
On September 27, Friends of the Earth issued a statement to the effect that “Powerful Representative John Dingell (D-MI)—known for his loyalty to the auto industry—stunned many when he joined the likes of Friends of the Earth and Al Gore by announcing his support for a carbon tax.”
It’s doubtful that Dingell took this action without first insuring that auto industry representatives had signed off on it. Corporations prefer knowing the cost of things and will even accept such taxes if they think it means they can factor it into operations and pricing. Given the U.S. auto industry’s errors of judgment in recent times, losing its dominant position in the marketplace to Japanese automakers, going along with carbon taxes is just another big mistake. Consumers take note!
Friends of the Earth thinks that “the rate at which Dingell’s bill taxes carbon is too low to encourage the kind of carbon-cutting we need to stop global warming, the bill represents a serious legislative attempt to use a direct tax to fight global warming.”
What is wrong with this statement? Here’s a hint—there is no global warming beyond the most normal and natural warming that has occurred since the end of the last mini-ice age in the 1800s. The earth is not heating up. It is not going to heat up. If anything, the earth is at the end of a long interglacial period between ice ages. These cycles run from 10,000 to 11,500 years and it has been 11,500 years since the last major ice age ended. We are due for a new ice age.
Global warming? Not likely. Not happening. But the perfect instrument with which the Greens can impose all manner of limitations on the discovery, extraction, and use of energy sources such as oil, natural gas, and coal.
Only reluctantly have Greens come around to endorsing nuclear energy because it is pollution-free. They have fought the construction of new nuclear energy facilities for years, just as they continue to obstruct any new oil drilling at the very time that America needs to reduce its dependency on the Middle East.
The folks at Friends of the Earth know that “a carbon tax (will) put a price on carbon emissions sooner than the complex ‘cap and trade’ proposals currently under consideration, but a carbon tax is also less likely to get bogged down in litigation after it is enacted.”
In the end, they don’t care how people are punished for using oil, natural gas and coal for electricity, to heat their homes, to fuel their cars. What matters is that they be made to pay more for it.
To make it palatable Friends of the Earth know that the Dingell bill must have “a way of refunding to the poor any costs they incur from the tax. The downside of taxing consumption directly is that it can punish the poor who have no choice but to consume…”
What they do not acknowledge is the obvious fact that all of us have no choice either. So, at a time when the dollar is losing value against other currencies and there’s a mortgage and housing crisis, Friends of the Earth demonstrate once again that they are not friends of consumers and taxpayers.
Do you want to pay a carbon tax? No? Then you had better tell your Congress critter before you end up paying to save the earth from something that isn’t happening because the whole theory behind global warming is a fabric of lies.
On September 27, Friends of the Earth issued a statement to the effect that “Powerful Representative John Dingell (D-MI)—known for his loyalty to the auto industry—stunned many when he joined the likes of Friends of the Earth and Al Gore by announcing his support for a carbon tax.”
It’s doubtful that Dingell took this action without first insuring that auto industry representatives had signed off on it. Corporations prefer knowing the cost of things and will even accept such taxes if they think it means they can factor it into operations and pricing. Given the U.S. auto industry’s errors of judgment in recent times, losing its dominant position in the marketplace to Japanese automakers, going along with carbon taxes is just another big mistake. Consumers take note!
Friends of the Earth thinks that “the rate at which Dingell’s bill taxes carbon is too low to encourage the kind of carbon-cutting we need to stop global warming, the bill represents a serious legislative attempt to use a direct tax to fight global warming.”
What is wrong with this statement? Here’s a hint—there is no global warming beyond the most normal and natural warming that has occurred since the end of the last mini-ice age in the 1800s. The earth is not heating up. It is not going to heat up. If anything, the earth is at the end of a long interglacial period between ice ages. These cycles run from 10,000 to 11,500 years and it has been 11,500 years since the last major ice age ended. We are due for a new ice age.
Global warming? Not likely. Not happening. But the perfect instrument with which the Greens can impose all manner of limitations on the discovery, extraction, and use of energy sources such as oil, natural gas, and coal.
Only reluctantly have Greens come around to endorsing nuclear energy because it is pollution-free. They have fought the construction of new nuclear energy facilities for years, just as they continue to obstruct any new oil drilling at the very time that America needs to reduce its dependency on the Middle East.
The folks at Friends of the Earth know that “a carbon tax (will) put a price on carbon emissions sooner than the complex ‘cap and trade’ proposals currently under consideration, but a carbon tax is also less likely to get bogged down in litigation after it is enacted.”
In the end, they don’t care how people are punished for using oil, natural gas and coal for electricity, to heat their homes, to fuel their cars. What matters is that they be made to pay more for it.
To make it palatable Friends of the Earth know that the Dingell bill must have “a way of refunding to the poor any costs they incur from the tax. The downside of taxing consumption directly is that it can punish the poor who have no choice but to consume…”
What they do not acknowledge is the obvious fact that all of us have no choice either. So, at a time when the dollar is losing value against other currencies and there’s a mortgage and housing crisis, Friends of the Earth demonstrate once again that they are not friends of consumers and taxpayers.
Do you want to pay a carbon tax? No? Then you had better tell your Congress critter before you end up paying to save the earth from something that isn’t happening because the whole theory behind global warming is a fabric of lies.
Rainforest Action Network attacks Coal
By Alan Caruba
As always with the environmental movement, the very thing that keeps any modern nation going, energy and its sources, is under incessant attack. Coal is responsible for more than half of all the electricity generated in America, so naturally the Rainforest Action Network (RAN) has announced a campaign directed “against two of the financial sector’s biggest funders of coal expansion in the United States.”
Oblivious of the nation’s growing need for electrical power to serve its more than 300 million citizens, RAN will hold a teleconference on October 2nd and release “a briefing paper detailing these bank’s contributions to the coal industry.”
One would almost think that these banks were funding concentration camps when, instead, what they are doing is insuring a steady supply of one of America’s greatest and cheapest reserves of energy, coal.
“People across the country are waking up to the threats posed by coal”, said the RAN news release. “The world’s dirtiest, most carbon-intensive and most heavily used energy source—and demanding that it be replaced by energy efficiency and clean, renewable energy sources like solar and wind.”
This is so idiotic and false as to almost defy comment. One would have to cover the whole of the land surface of America with wind farms and solar radiation facilities to even begin to generate a small portion of the amount of electricity Americans use every day. Both wind and solar are so inefficient and costly they depend on government subsidies and grants to even exist.
Wind farms only function when the wind is blowing and solar when the sun is shining. The rest of the time, when not drawing down on their stored energy, both require conventional energy generation facilities to fill in when they cease to provide electrical power. These latter facilities, sourced by coal, hydroelectric, or nuclear power, must be kept running anyway, so where’s the savings? Answer: None!
And Americans are surely not “demanding” more wind farms or solar energy. The cost of installing solar panels on an average home in New Jersey runs about $60,000.
“Coal power is the leading source of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States and a top contributor to air pollution, asthma and ecological destruction,” says RAN. Rubbish!
The U.S. has had air quality standards overseen by the Environmental Protection Agency since the 1970s and there is no evidence to support these claims. Moreover, new coal burning plants have technology available to trap carbon dioxide (CO2) before it hits the atmosphere.
The next time you see anything that RAN announces, I suggest you RUN to find the truth. It’s out there. You just won’t hear it from RAN.
As always with the environmental movement, the very thing that keeps any modern nation going, energy and its sources, is under incessant attack. Coal is responsible for more than half of all the electricity generated in America, so naturally the Rainforest Action Network (RAN) has announced a campaign directed “against two of the financial sector’s biggest funders of coal expansion in the United States.”
Oblivious of the nation’s growing need for electrical power to serve its more than 300 million citizens, RAN will hold a teleconference on October 2nd and release “a briefing paper detailing these bank’s contributions to the coal industry.”
One would almost think that these banks were funding concentration camps when, instead, what they are doing is insuring a steady supply of one of America’s greatest and cheapest reserves of energy, coal.
“People across the country are waking up to the threats posed by coal”, said the RAN news release. “The world’s dirtiest, most carbon-intensive and most heavily used energy source—and demanding that it be replaced by energy efficiency and clean, renewable energy sources like solar and wind.”
This is so idiotic and false as to almost defy comment. One would have to cover the whole of the land surface of America with wind farms and solar radiation facilities to even begin to generate a small portion of the amount of electricity Americans use every day. Both wind and solar are so inefficient and costly they depend on government subsidies and grants to even exist.
Wind farms only function when the wind is blowing and solar when the sun is shining. The rest of the time, when not drawing down on their stored energy, both require conventional energy generation facilities to fill in when they cease to provide electrical power. These latter facilities, sourced by coal, hydroelectric, or nuclear power, must be kept running anyway, so where’s the savings? Answer: None!
And Americans are surely not “demanding” more wind farms or solar energy. The cost of installing solar panels on an average home in New Jersey runs about $60,000.
“Coal power is the leading source of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States and a top contributor to air pollution, asthma and ecological destruction,” says RAN. Rubbish!
The U.S. has had air quality standards overseen by the Environmental Protection Agency since the 1970s and there is no evidence to support these claims. Moreover, new coal burning plants have technology available to trap carbon dioxide (CO2) before it hits the atmosphere.
The next time you see anything that RAN announces, I suggest you RUN to find the truth. It’s out there. You just won’t hear it from RAN.
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Climate Change Conferences are Green Propaganda
By Alan Caruba
It is no accident that the United Nations, the lead perpetrator of global warming nonsense via its Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, held a “summit” on the topic the same week as the White House conference Thursday and Friday. While the Bush administration has wisely avoided signing onto the 1997 UN Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change, one suspects its conference is a sop to all the environmentalists and a way of saying to the Democrat leadership, “See, we can be Green, too.”
None of the nations that signed the UN Kyoto Protocol ever met its mandated limits on emissions. To do so would have been economic insanity. And, of course, both China and India were exempt!
At the UN, the Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was saying stupid things like, “the time for doubt has passed.” Hardly! The fact is that more and more climatologists and meteorologists around the world are beginning—finally—to speak out against the global warming hoax. Could it be the Greens are getting nervous, even desperate, as the hoax begins to come apart thanks to greater public doubts?
Also attending the UN gathering was California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and he is going to wreak havoc on his State if it mandates strict emissions standards to supposedly avoid “greenhouse gases.” You can sit back and watch large, medium and small industry exist California and leave it to the farmers and Hollywood. The notion that humans can and should do something about carbon dioxide (CO2) is idiotic. Every one of us exhales two pounds of it daily! When you inflict laws on every form of business activity that might emit something, anything, in the name of global warming, all you’re doing is providing them with a good reason to leave.
California’s air quality problems are real and have a lot to do with the millions of cars on its highways, often as not driven by illegal immigrants. The Rocky Mountains and other mountain ranges within California effectively trap the ozone to the point where brown clouds of it are visible, but none of this has anything to do with global warming.
At the White House, you can be sure a lot of hot air will be expended on the subject of climate change, but that is exactly what the climate does. It changes. In fact, it is such a natural, normal function of climate that many of the cycles of change are already well known to scientists. Getting upset over climate change is like being upset that it will rain tomorrow or next week. That’s what weather does and predicting it is limited to maybe three or four days at best. After that, it is just an informed guess.
In their Washington Times September 26th article, Timothy Ball, a noted climatologist, and a colleague of his gave some good advice on how to recognize propaganda when you hear or read it. It involves:
# Activists claiming natural events are unnatural, or normal events abnormal.
# Speculation and exaggeration presented as unbiased fact.
# Exploitation of basic fears.
# Taking advantage of public ignorance about science.
# And continuously shifting goalposts. Predictions for near-term events are pushed off to be in the future.
Don’t be fooled and complain to your Congress critter or Senator if they try to vote for anything based on global warming. The earth has been warming since the end of the last mini-ice age in 1800. It’s normal. Claims of a sudden rise in the earth’s temperature are bogus.
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Welcome to Facts Not Fantasy
http://www.anxietycenter.com
Welcome to Facts Not Fantasy, a blog by yours truly, Alan Caruba. This blog is intended to augment my weekly commentaries on my website for The National Anxiety Center, a clearinghouse for information about "scare campaigns" intended to influence public policy and opinion.
The range of topics FNF will cover will include environmentalism, energy, education, immigration, the North American Union which is being stealthily imposed, Islam and the Middle East, natural security issues and, of course, politics.
For indepth comment on any of these topics, you should visit the Center's website. Its archives provide carefully researched and documented information, along with opinion.
This is the result of my having begun my professional life as a journalist. For most of the past years, however, I have been a public relations counselor and this has brought me into contact with many different aspects of the economy through the many people who get up every morning and set out to do the very best job they can.
Another website of mine you might want to visit is http://www.bookviews.com. Since the 1960s I have been a reviewer and am, in fact, a founding member of the National Book Critics Circle. In addition, I am a longtime member of the American Society of Journalists and Authors, the Society of Professional Journalists, and the National Association of Science Writers.
This blog is called "Separating Fact from Fantasy" to represent my dedication to facts, to the truth as best as it can be determined.
Welcome to Facts Not Fantasy, a blog by yours truly, Alan Caruba. This blog is intended to augment my weekly commentaries on my website for The National Anxiety Center, a clearinghouse for information about "scare campaigns" intended to influence public policy and opinion.
The range of topics FNF will cover will include environmentalism, energy, education, immigration, the North American Union which is being stealthily imposed, Islam and the Middle East, natural security issues and, of course, politics.
For indepth comment on any of these topics, you should visit the Center's website. Its archives provide carefully researched and documented information, along with opinion.
This is the result of my having begun my professional life as a journalist. For most of the past years, however, I have been a public relations counselor and this has brought me into contact with many different aspects of the economy through the many people who get up every morning and set out to do the very best job they can.
Another website of mine you might want to visit is http://www.bookviews.com. Since the 1960s I have been a reviewer and am, in fact, a founding member of the National Book Critics Circle. In addition, I am a longtime member of the American Society of Journalists and Authors, the Society of Professional Journalists, and the National Association of Science Writers.
This blog is called "Separating Fact from Fantasy" to represent my dedication to facts, to the truth as best as it can be determined.
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