Obama's Eco-Lies

Editor's Note: All this week in the run-up to Earth Day, this blog will post commentaries exposing environmentalism as the totalitarian ideology it has always been.

By Alan Caruba

As the nation and the world closes in on Earth Day, April 22nd, a tsunami of Green propaganda will overwhelm us with all the usual lies about global warming—now called climate change—and calls to reduce the use of all fossil fuels in order to reduce “greenhouse gas” emissions.

This Big Lie ignores the fact that there is no relationship between carbon dioxide (CO2) and the climate. CO2 reacts to climate change. It does not drive it. The Big Lie ignores the fact that the Earth has been cooling for fourteen years.

The past three and a half years of the having Barack Obama as President have been filled with constant crisis, not the least of which was the nation’s financial crisis which he constantly reminds us he “inherited.” He has not, however, solved it with proven ways to put millions back to work and turn around a stagnant economy.

Instead he devoted his best efforts to a takeover of one-sixth of the nation’s economy, the healthcare industry. His administration has waged a steady war on access to energy reserves vital to the nation’s economy. The result of these policies are being felt at the gas pump as prices rise to historic highs while billions of barrels of oil in the U.S. remain underground.

His devotion to all the eco-lies was seen in the millions wasted on “green jobs” with his failed “stimulus” and loans to “green industries”, primarily wind and solar power. Other schemes included high-speed trains where none are needed or wanted. To this day Amtrak has never made a profit. And electric cars remain impractical and unaffordable.

His environmental commitment was perhaps best seen and heard when Obama attended a United Nations Conference of Parties in Copenhagen in March 2010. His speech to the delegates and world press contained all the lies associated with “climate change” and the failed policies he was pursuing two years ago and earlier.

“We come together here in Copenhagen because climate change poses a grave and growing danger to our people. You would not be here unless you—like me—were convinced that this danger is real. This is not fiction, this is science," said Obama.

Aside from the fact that the climate has always been in a state of change for Earth’s 4.5 billion years, the science employed to frighten people about such change does not bear any resemblance to real science which is an impartial blend of data based on replicable experiments.

Real science does not have a political agenda. The bogus science of global warming was revealed in November 2009 when the world learned that a handful of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) “scientists” had systematically distorted the scientific process, conjuring up false computer models that ignored significant elements of climate history. The revelations would be dubbed “Climategate.”

Never one to not criticize America, Obama reminded the delegates that America was “the world’s second largest emitter” of greenhouse gases even though such gases do not function as a greenhouse, trapping and holding heat. If they did, how would one explain the fact that the Earth has been in a natural cooling cycle since around 1998?

What is the mark of a developing or successful economy? It is the use of energy!

Obama promised that the U.S. would work “to phase out fossil fuel subsidies” and promised “historic investments in renewable energy” and his intention to put Americans “to work increasing efficiency in our homes and buildings; and by pursuing comprehensive legislation to transform to a clean energy economy.”

Such a transformation is ludicrous. America runs on oil, on coal, on natural gas, on hydroelectric and nuclear power. The investments in wind and, in particular, solar power, have wasted millions of taxpayer dollars. Combined, wind and solar provide less than two percent of the nation’s electrical power while coal provides nearly half. It has been the use of coal that the Obama administration’s Environmental Protection Agency has been determined to reduce or end, falsely claiming CO2 is a "pollutant."

Typically, Obama said “There is no time to waste.” In reality the Obama administration has wasted every opportunity to increase access to America’s vast energy reserves. Even when bragging about oil production, Obama never admits that it is occurring on private land. His administration has virtually shut down access to exploration and extraction on federally owned and managed land.

Environmentalism is the mask of communism, concentrating ownership of all property and productivity in the hands of the government. Even when addressing the need to ensure clean air and water, it has been used as a blunt instrument of power to limit economic development.

These are well established environmental lies and they are Obama’s environmental lies.

The Copenhagen conference came to a hasty end as the world’s leaders fled the city to avoid being trapped there by a massive blizzard. The global warming they all warned against in 2010 was not occurring and is not occurring.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

The Green Jobs, Clean Energy Scam

By Alan Caruba

There will probably never be a definitive calculation of how much money the United States (and other nations) has wasted on Green programs, litigation, grants, research, and projects such as those involving “renewable” or "clean" energy. It will surely add up to several trillion because it has been going on for a very long time through administrations reaching back to Jimmy Carter’s and Richard Nixon’s.

A recent article in Washington Examiner.com revealed the amount of money taxpayers pay out to Green organizations that sue the EPA and other government agencies. In point of fact the EPA encourages such law suits in order to use the court system to affirm regulatory efforts that might otherwise by stopped by Congress.

As this is being written, there are several pieces of proposed legislation in Congress to keep the EPA from utterly and completely destroying the economy and the ability to provide Americans with electricity.

Following an request from Republican Sens. Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma and David Vitter of Louisiana, the Government Accountability Office undertook an investigation regarding the cost of environmental litigation and while it proved daunting, the GAO reported that “the Department of Justice spent at least $43 million from 1998 to 2010 defending the Environmental Protection Agency in court, while the Department of Treasury paid about $14.2 million from 2003 through 2010 to successful plaintiffs for attorney’s’ fees and associated costs. The EPA paid about $1.4 million from 2006 and 2010 to plaintiffs”

Earlier, in a special report, the Washington Examiner noted that “the major players in the environmental movement are lavishly funded by private contributions from individuals and foundations. And many of them also receive hundreds of millions more dollars in government grants and contracts, so it’s not as if these groups are unable to pay their legal legions out of their own coffers.”

But no, the taxpayers are stuck with the bill.

The cost of Green “solutions” to non-existant environmental problems is proving particularly evident as reports reveal that “renewable energy” companies rapidly fail when federal subsidies are ended or spent. A case in point was the Senate vote in June to end billions of dollars in subsidites for the U.S. ethanol industry.

Ethanol, also known as “moonshine” had been ordered by the government to be added to every gallon of gasoline consumers use despite the fact that it produces less energy, reducing mileage, and adds to the cost at the pump. It was, of course, another Green lie about reducing “greenhouse gas emissions” said to be the source of a “global warming” that was not occurring. Ethanol producers have been closing their doors in droves now that the tap has been shut off. In a world afloat on billions of barrels of oil, the need for ethanol never existed.

In a similar fashion U.S. manufacturers of solar panels are also closing their doors, sustained initially by U.S. subsidies and loan guarantees. The latest is Solyndra, a California firm that just declared bankruptcy.

President Obama had touted Solyndra as a shining example of Green jobs and technology, offering $535 million in loan guarantees. China, however, has captured much of the market for solar panels. Touted as a way to help reduce electricity costs, left unsaid is that they are expansive to purchase and install. The average homeowner would have to wait ten or twenty years to amortise their investment.

Without similar subsidies and mandates, the wind power industry would rapidly collapse as well.

The impact of Green initiatives and mandates has been particularly onerous at the state level. As I noted in an earlier commentary, “In July, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie pulled out of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a consortium that would have required renewable energy use for the provision of electricity.

In Pennsylvania, Gov. Tom Corbett has been aggressively de-emphasizing renewable energy use and energy conservation. He has shut down the state department of environmental protection’s office of energy and technology development.

The President has been touting Green jobs since he took office and, if he does so in the course of his speech to a joint session of Congress, you will know that this Big Green Lie is still part of his continuing failure to address the real causes of unemployment in America, taxation, regulation, and a general assault on the energy industry and others..

Word is that Obama still hasn’t installed solar panels on the roof of the White House despite promises to do so. The last President to do that was Jimmy Carter and they were removed by President Reagan.

Green Lies have cost Americans trillions of dollars since the environmental movement began in earnest in the 1970s.

This is written prior to President Obama’s address, but if you hear him speak of “Green jobs” or “clean energy” or “renewable energy”, feel free to turn the channel to anything else because this is the most duplicitous and incompetent President to ever hold the office.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

Obama Fatigue

By Alan Caruba

It occurred to me (and probably a lot of others as well) that it’s just over for Obama. It doesn’t matter that he intends to present yet another “plan” to get Americans working again after his Martha’s Vineyard vacation.

Whatever plan Obama puts forward will simply repackage his failed “stimulus”, his “tax the rich”, and other idiotic socialist notions of how to “fix” the economy. They didn’t work during the Great Depression and will not work now.

Like a female preying mantis that eats the head of the male who mates with her, just about everyone that has had any contact with Barack Obama suffers as a result. It didn’t matter if it was his white grandparents who took him in when his mother abandoned him---after having gone through two husbands. It didn’t matter if it was his longtime pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, in whose church he learned the fundamentals of black liberation theology. He has a habit of abandoning or denying relationships. His marriage appears to be the exception.

Presidents, though, are judged on their accomplishments and Obama has so few it’s becoming an embarrassment. Like the woman who told him she was “exhausted” from trying to defend him, a lot of die-hard liberals are looking for cover as he hits the campaign trail to secure the nomination for a second term. If there is such a thing as an honest Democratic Party consultant or strategist, they would surely tell you that Obama is going to be overwhelmingly defeated.

A former Louisiana Governor, Edwin Edwards, famously said that the only way he could be defeated was if he was found in bed with a live boy or a dead girl. The only way the Republican candidate will be defeated would involve similar indiscretions. That has not stopped liberal scum from advertising for “dirt” on Gov. Rick Perry.

This is likely to be one of the dirtiest, if not the dirtiest, campaign ever waged against whoever is the Republican choice to run against Obama. That’s the “Chicago way.”

Come September, policy wonks will be looking to see what Obama has to say about the one issue that will surely defeat him, unemployment. Let me save you some time, the ill-famed “stimulus” devoted much of its billions as transfers to states so teachers, police and fireman could be retained and pensions paid, to ill-fated “green” enterprises, and to a few infrastructure projects after Obama discovered there weren’t many that were “shovel ready.”

The other part of his plan was to expand the size of the federal government through the creation of some truly monstrous bureaucracies such as those associated with Obamacare and the passage of the Dodd-Frank oversight of banks and financial firms.

Simply stated, government does not create jobs in the private sector. It just creates government jobs. Even The New York Times took note of a Brookings Institution report that found “clean-technology jobs accounted for just two percent of employment nationwide.”

To which I say, “Duh!” If you want to know where solar panels and wind turbines are manufactured, Google CHINA. In the U.S., they are merely assembled for sale. So-called “green” companies are filing for bankruptcy with predictable frequency, taking taxpayer subsidies and grants with them.

What I confess I find astonishing are the continuing reports of the President’s fund-raising success. Notably Obama has already scheduled far more such events than the last four presidents who preceded him. Hollywood gives gobs of money and so does Wall Street. The latter has always struck me as odd if only because it represents a hotbed of capitalism while, in reality, its denizens tend to be raving liberals.

What worries me more than anything else about President Obama is the fact that he has sixteen months left in which to inflict as much damage on the economy and the nation’s future as possible. I have little doubt that is his intent.

He just issued an Executive Order as an end-run around the illegal alien amnesty issue that Americans have defeated a half dozen times when Congress tried to get it passed. The new fuel economy standards his administration has announced will add an average of $11,000 to the cost of buying a new car.

Another recent executive order tells the heads of departments and agencies to make sure their hiring practices involve “diversity” which is another way of saying pass on qualified whites and hire blacks and Hispanics. His Supreme Court appointee, Sonia Sotomeyer, once ruled that a local fire department had to lower its hiring standards because no blacks passed its application exam. Whatever happened to color blind hiring?

A President is expected to provide leadership and Obama has provided none, domestic or foreign.

Americans cannot begin to fathom how much other nations around the world look to America to set the tone and provide direction in the conduct of their affairs with each other. We have seen what happens when foreign leaders and troublemakers conclude the President of the United States of America can be ignored with impunity.

America is experiencing Obama Fatigue. He has worn out everyone with endless speeches. The man lies. He lies all the time. He lies more than Bill Clinton during the awful Monica Lewinsky scandal or Richard Nixon during Watergate.

His job plan will be another lie, another pathetic liberal concoction in which the government just spends more money it does not have. Or worse, intends to tax people for money they cannot spare.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

Blowing Wind Up Your Skirt

By Alan Caruba

One of the keystones of the Obama administration’s energy policies has been a very expensive emphasis on “clean energy”, sometimes called “renewable energy”, allocating billions to the wind and solar energy producers. Like much of the “stimulus” bill that money is a waste.

The wind power trade group, the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) has been pouring big bucks into a public relations effort to convince Americans that wind is the energy source of the future and that acres of wind turbines should be installed to replace the proven sources, primarily coal-fired, natural gas, and nuclear plants currently providing more than 80% of the nation’s electricity needs.

Thanks to Freedom of Information requests, the Chicago Tribune revealed significant collusion among Department of Energy officials and AWEA, as well as other third-party special interest groups such as the Center for American Progress, a think tank that pushes Green and other liberal agendas.

The Tribune reported that an Assistant Secretary of Energy, Cathy Zoi, who formerly held top positions at Al Gore’s Alliance for Climate Protection, was charged with crafting renewable energy policy for the Obama administration and emails obtained revealed that she was working closely with AWEA to rebut and discredit a ground-breaking study by Dr. Gabriel Calzada of Madrid’s King Juan Carlos University.

Dr. Calzada’s research concluded that, for every “green job” the Spanish government created, 2.2 jobs were destroyed and that nine out of ten government-created “green jobs” were temporary at a time when Spain’s unemployment rate is at an all-time high, not unlike the situation in the U.S.

At the time that Dr. Calzada’s study was reported, the Obama administration was pushing “Cap-and-Trade” legislation through the House. This legislation would set up a system for the sale, auction, and trade of “carbon credits” based on the totally discredited assertion that “greenhouse gases”, primarily carbon dioxide, were “causing” global warming. The bill remains in the Senate awaiting a vote.

Back in January AWEA was ecstatic over an Obama administration award of $2.3 billion in “clean energy manufacturing tax credits and the President’s call for an additional $5 billion.” There is no economic or scientific justification for the waste of taxpayer dollars in this fashion.

Also in January, a Boston Herald article by Jay Fitzgerald revealed that “National Grid customers will experience sticker shock after the giant utility negotiates a long-term electric contract with Cape Wind developers, energy experts warn.”

“The Rhode Island deal calls for National Grid to pay an eye-popping 24 cents per kilowatt hour for electricity from Deepwater Wind’s proposed wind farm off Block Island for 20 years. That’s three times higher than the current price of natural-gas generated electricity—and the Rhode Island deal includes a 3.5 percent annual increase over the life of the contract.”

Meanwhile, in Minnesota, in February eleven wind turbines froze because their hydraulic fluid had turned to gel and oil lubricants were rendered sluggish. These kinds of problems do not occur in other sources of electricity. In Oregon, General Electric had announced a big wind project involving 338 wind turbines that it claimed would power 235,000 homes. Naturally, it was applying for federal subsidies.

In Great Britain, in January, its wind turbines representing six percent of total generating capacity and billions invested, supplied virtually no power most days because, as Dennis T. Avery, a former senior policy analyst for the U.S. State Department noted “The wind tends not to blow when and where it’s already cold.”

Avery pointed out that neither Denmark, nor Germany, leaders in wind energy projects, has decommissioned any fossil fuel plants. “The fossil generators are kept in ‘spinning reserve’ to keep the lights on in the schools, factories, and hospitals when the wind dies.”

The wind and solar energy industries, as well as the biofuels industry, continue to depend on government subsidies to exist, as opposed to private enterprises that have a long track record of providing affordable electricity.

First the government gives the wind energy producers your money and then you end up paying higher energy bills as a result. Both wind and solar energy depend on government mandates for their use. If cap-and-trade is enacted, you will be further taxed for its use.

These are facts you need to keep in mind every time President Obama speaks of “clean energy” and “green jobs.” Like so much else one hears from the TelePrompter-in-Chief, it has no relation to the truth.

Editor’s Note: For more information about wind power, visit http://windpowerfacts.info.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

The Lies About Green Jobs

By Alan Caruba

“I was impressed as never before by the utter lack of logic of the man, the scantiness of his precise knowledge of things that he was talking about, by the gross inaccuracies in his statements, by the almost pathological lack of sequences in his discussion, by the complete rectitude that he felt as to his own conduct, by the immense and growing egotism that came from his office, by his willingness to continue the excoriation of the press and business in order to get votes for himself, by his indifference to what effect the long-continued pursuit of these ends would have upon the civilization in which he was playing a part.”

No, this was not a judgment of President Barack Obama, though the description eerily fits him. It was the view of Raymond Moley, a Columbia University professor and member of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “Brain Trust” who often wrote or helped write FDR’s major speeches. FDR’s policies extended the Great Depression for ten years.

Here are some facts worth considering every time Obama calls for an expansion or intercession of the federal government as an answer to the current financial crisis:

Social Security, a cornerstone of FDR’s administration, was established in 1935. After 74 years it is on the brink of insolvency because Congress gave itself access to its funds.

Fannie Mae was established in 1938 to facilitate home ownership. It has been around for 71 years. Congress has had to seize control of it and of Freddie Mac, established in 1970. Together, they presently own or guarantee about half of the United States’ $12 trillion mortgage market.

The War on Poverty started in 1964. One trillion dollars has been transferred to “the poor” and it has not worked.

The Department of Energy was established in 1977 to lessen dependence on the import of foreign oil. With 16,000 employees and an annual budget of $24 billion, the United States has imported more oil with every passing year while denying U.S. companies access to vast national reserves in ANWR and off our continental shelf. It is an abysmal failure.

All of these programs were put forth by liberals, now calling themselves “progressives”, initiated by Democrat administrations to advance what they call “social justice.” The Obama administration is hell-bent on “health care reform” that will put one sixth of the U.S. economy under the control of the federal government whose interventions in the free market have been the cause of the previous recessions.

In 2010, the Obama administration says it intends to relieve the job shortage by creating “green jobs” in the sectors of wind and solar power and biofuels. It has announced a program that will cost $2.3 billion, costing approximately $135,000 per job.

“Show me one other industry that requests and receives a nearly 30 percent taxpayer subsidy,” says Thomas J. Pyle, president of the market-based Institute for Energy Research. “If the President really wants to create an environment that will foster economic growth and job creation, he need not look any further than the domestic oil, gas and coal industries.”

In November 2009, a Washington Times editorial said, “’Green energy’ is proving to be no miracle solution to the nation’s monumental unemployment problems, and it is doing little to help the economy emerge from its deepest recession in decades, economists say.”

A large part of the administration’s $786 billion dollar stimulus bill was devoted to green or renewable energy projects, but the rate of unemployment continues to rise, the cost of gasoline and heating oil continues to rise in the face of the coldest winter on record in decades, and real jobs in energy industries are thwarted by Obama administration restrictions on the exploration and development of our national energy reserves.

Similar green jobs programs in Spain, Germany, and other nations that signed onto the UN Kyoto Protocols limiting carbon dioxide emissions have demonstrated that such jobs cost too much to create and eliminate other jobs in the process.

Following recent Climategate revelations, it is abundantly clear that so-called greenhouse gas emissions do not cause a non-existent “global warming” which was and is a massive science-based fraud.

Despite this, a Cap-and-Trade bill awaits a vote in the U.S. Senate that would impose a huge tax on energy use. At the same time, the EPA is claiming that carbon dioxide is a pollutant that must be regulated.

The lies simply do not stop.

So-called Green jobs depend on two of the most impractical and unreliable sources of electricity generation. Solar and wind farms require backup by coal-fired and nuclear power sources for the blatantly obvious reason that the sun does not shine full-time, nor do the winds blow full-time. These, plus biofuel producers, are parked on the doorstep of Congress to secure the subsidies they need just to be in business; subsidies that are derived from our taxes

Biofuels divert valuable crops like corn to create ethanol, driving up the cost for a gasoline additive that incongruously produces less mileage and increases the cost of the many food products that utilize corn.

America, the home to centuries-worth of massive amounts of coal, has a President who has openly declared war on the coal industry that currently provides half of all the electricity used by Americans. By contrast, solar and wind provide just over one percent!

When the President talks of “green jobs” he is lying to Americans who need real jobs. The stimulus bill was nothing more than a political “pork” bill and is providing no real surge in job creation. Indeed, the administration has claimed to have “saved” or produced jobs in non-existent Congressional districts.

Meanwhile, the members of the U.S. House and Senate have voted themselves $4,700 and $5,300 in new raises at the same time they have voted to deny a Social Security cost of living increase in 2010 and 2011.

The job of every voter in November 2010 is to remove from office every Senator and Representative that voted for and supported the Obama administration’s policies who will run for reelection.

Then, maybe, we can put America on an economic footing that will generate real jobs and put an end to the Green Lies about “green jobs”, environmentally inspired legislation, and the existing Green laws and regulations that are currently killing any hope of recovery.

Job Summits Do Not Create Jobs

By Alan Caruba

It has taken less than a year for most Americans to conclude that the Obama White House is all about appearances. The “Job Summit” is a classic example. Just how does one hold such a conference without inviting representatives of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to participate?

Most administrations worry about their credibility, whether most of the public believes what they are saying, but this one doesn’t really care. The result is an endless succession of staged events in which the hand-picked participants all say what the White House wants.

The December 2nd edition of Business Week, however, had something different to say on the subject of “The Slow Road to Jobs.” Reporter Jane Sasseen began by asking, “Could it take as long as five years for the economy to replace all of the eight million jobs lost since the Great Recession began? The most bearish economists think so.”

“Job creation,” reported Sasseen, “is proving to be painfully slow, and Washington is starting to panic. With unemployment at a 26-year high of 10.2% and climbing, the Democrats are scrambling to rev up the economy before the midterm elections next November.” Unofficial estimates put the unemployment rate closer to 17% which would put it in the category of a full-blown Depression.

The notion that the White House or Congress can create any jobs other than government jobs is a fallacy. Real jobs are largely created by small business owners and by major corporate enterprises, but the latter keep leaving the United States because they are paying among the highest corporate taxes to be found anywhere in the world. Neither can plan ahead thanks to the uncertain penalties that Obamacare would impose.

The prospect of an increase in the costs of healthcare insurance and/or the complete government takeover of healthcare is enough to make corporations look for a friendlier place in which to set up shop.

The present recession differs from previous ones. “The U.S. economy, once the greatest job-creation machine in the world, has taken longer and longer to replace the jobs lost in recent recession,” reported Sasseen. “This time could be even worse. U.S. payrolls peaked at 138 million in December 2007; today they stand at roughly 130 million.”

As household and businesses reduce their spending, the prospect of any near-term increase in hiring or economic recovery is unlikely.

The government’s spending binge continues. Fox News reported that “The federal government spent $3.5 trillion during President Obama’s first year in office.”

Though fond of blaming President Bush for all the ills of the economy, President Obama “shattered the budget record for first-year presidents, spending nearly double what his predecessor did when he came into office and far exceeding the first-year tabs for any other U.S. president in history.”

“That price tag came with a $1.4 trillion deficit, nearly $1 trillion more than last year. The overall budget was about a half-trillion more than Bush’s for 2008, his final full fiscal year in office.”

The stimulus bill has billions allocated for so-called “green jobs” in the area of solar, wind, and biofuels; so-called “renewable energy.” In a December 2 commentary in The Washington Examiner, Thomas J. Pyle of the Institute for Energy Research pointed out that, “At the height of its construction this past summer, the largest solar plant in the United States employed 400 workers. Now that it's complete, the DeSoto Solar Center in Arcadia, Florida, stakes claim to two – yes two – full time ‘green jobs.’”

Contrast this with an estimated 1.2 million energy jobs that would be made available if the Obama administration would permit exploration of the nation’s vast continental shelf for the vast oil and natural gas resources going untapped. There are an estimated 115 billion barrels of recoverable oil and more than 565 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. The Institute for Energy Research estimates those jobs would generate $70 billion in annual wages. Then add in the savings in the cost of importing these energy sources, plus the bonus if increased national security.

The costs of the proposed economy-killing healthcare “reform” could be reduced starting with tort reform, opening the marketplace for the sale of insurance, and a serious effort to reduce the estimated $70 billion in Medicare fraud.

Instead of taking billions out of Medicare and thus likely causing some hospitals to shut down and the widespread denial of care to the millions of seniors who paid into the system, the Obama administration is more focused on government control of one-sixth of the economy. Or what will be left of it after they run it into the ground.

All manner of steps could be taken to energize the economy, not the least of which would be tax cuts that would encourage spending and hiring.

But no, the Obama administration would rather put on a show for the cameras.

Greening Our Schools and Nation

By Alan Caruba

If those of you who have doubts that the Earth is dramatically warming and that the planet is about to be plunged into the kind of heat that will likely destroy all life, then it must be puzzling that so many people continue to believe that “global warming” is happening when the planet is quite obviously into a decade-old cooling cycle that is likely to last for several more decades.

A large component of this belief is the indoctrination in the nation’s schools in which virtually every subject area has been given a “green” component and textbooks are filled with references to drowning polar bears, disappearing rain forests, rising sea levels, and the usual claptrap about “global warming.” No child could pass through such an avalanche of junk science without becoming convinced of its authenticity.

An example of this occurred when Michael Kundu, “a whale photographer” and school board president in Marysville, Washington, threw a fit after receiving The Skeptic’s Handbook by Australian science communicator, Joanne Nova.

The 16-page booklet is published by The Heartland Institute, a free-market think tank headquartered in Chicago. The booklet was sent to all 14,000 public school board presidents, accompanied by a letter from climate scientist, Bob Carter, a professor at James Cook University in Queensland, Australia.

Kunda sent an email to other school board presidents encouraging them “to stuff that junk mail directly into the recycle basket.” I picked up my copy at a three-day climate change conference sponsored by Heartland in March of this year in New York City. The conference featured seminars led by national and internationally leading climate scientists, all of whom demonstrated that the “science” of “global warming” is balderdash.

The vitriol of the school board president reflects the desperation of “global warming” advocates such as Al Gore who keeps revising his End of the World predictions and is now demanding “global governance” to save the Earth. Considering that the hoax was generated by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, this is global governance we can do without.

The “Cap-and-Trade” bill, a huge tax on energy use that will drive up the rates that utilities charge all Americans, passed the House and is now in the Senate for consideration. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) is on record saying that if the Senate doesn’t pass the bill there will be droughts, floods, fires, loss of species, damage to agriculture, worsening pollution and, one assumes, plagues of frogs and locusts.

Did I mention the desperation surrounding the “global warming” hoax? Yes, I did. The Greens have reason to be desperate because both “global warming” and the economy-killing legislation based on it is in big trouble in the U.S. and increasingly around the world. At the recent G-8 conference, both China and India made it clear they have no intention of destroying their economies in the name of something that is not happening.

You can and should ignore President Obama’s promises of millions of “green jobs” and “energy independence.” The jobs are a myth and, for decades, the U.S. government has made it impossible to access our own vast reserves of coal, oil, and natural gas, negating any hope of greater energy self-sufficiency.

The White House just announced its guidelines that will allow “renewable energy” companies, about 5,000 in all, to apply for some $3 billion in government funds—your money. Three billion dollars on wind and solar power that currently accounts for just over one percent of the electricity we use daily! Without subsidies, few of these companies would even exist. Even billionaire T. Boone Pickens has tossed in the towel over his plan to install hundreds of wind turbines.

Meanwhile, back in Heartland’s Chicago, a July 9 news report noted that “For the 12th time this meteorological summer (since June 1), daytime highs failed to reach 70 degrees Wednesday. Only one other year in the past century has hosted so many sub-70-degree days up to this point in a summer season—1969, when 14 such days occurred.” It’s getting colder in Chicago and I guarantee you that it is going to get colder there and everywhere else in the U.S.

It behooves the school board presidents and members around the nation to take a look at the “environmental” agenda being taught in their schools because it is mostly the same kind of lies being told by Al Gore, Sen. Boxer, along with Reps. Henry Waxman, and Edward Markey, the authors of Cap-and-Trade.

Kudos to The Heartland Institute for leading the effort to educate the public, our nation’s legislators, and those responsible for the education of our children in this national life-and-death struggle to demonstrate that real climate science totally rejects this hoax.