Friday, April 10, 2009

A Dangerous New Global Warming Law

By Alan Caruba

Let us begin by understanding that the entire basis for declaring the second most vital gas on Earth, carbon dioxide, a “pollutant” that requires regulation and is the object of a proposed elaborate “cap-and-trade” scheme is the generation of enormous amounts of money for the government while allowing it to exercise complete control over the use of any energy for any purpose.

Carbon dioxide is said to be the chief cause of “global warming”, but there is NO global warming. The Earth continues to COOL—ten years since the completely natural cycle began in 1998.

Nor is the Earth running out of energy sources such as oil, natural gas or coal. Here in the United States, however, Americans have long since run out of access to the extraction of the vast amounts that reside under the states and the offshore continental shelf.

Since around the 1970s, America has been systematically starved for access to its own energy reserves and forced to rely on imports, most notably of oil. Politicians and Greens who keep calling for “energy independence” are lying through their teeth. No nation on Earth is energy independent,

When you control energy, you control people’s lives and the entire economy. Simple example; a blizzard causes power lines to fail. All of a sudden people served by those lines are at risk of freezing to death. Another example, power fails during a heat wave. The elderly and ill are at risk of death for lack of air conditioning or even an electric fan. In 1995, a heat wave in Chicago killed over 600 people.

So, when House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman, Henry A. Waxman, a California Democrat, and Rep. Edward J. Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, conjure up an energy/climate bill designed to curb carbon dioxide emissions alleged to be causing “global warming”, they are perpetrating a massive fraud on Americans.

When that bill includes a provision that would permit anyone, absolutely anyone, to sue the government as victims of global warming and in anticipation of suffering as the result of global warming, Waxman-Markey have opened the door wide to a deluge of lawsuits that have no merit whatever in scientific fact or truth.

As reported in The Washington Times, “The measure sets grounds for anyone ‘who has suffered, or reasonably expects to suffer, a harm attributable in whole or in part’ to government inaction to file a ‘citizen suit.’ The term ‘harm’ is broadly defined as ‘any effect of air pollution (including climate change) occurring or at risk of occurring.’”

In practical terms, this means everyone with shorefront property can sue the government for a predicted loss due to rising sea levels. The fact that they have been rising naturally at a rate of a few insignificant millimeters a year for centuries will surely be ignored.

The law as currently written—but subject to change as it goes through the standard legislative practice when the two houses of Congress seek to achieve agreement—would allow citizens to seek up to $75,000 in damages from the government each year, but would cap the total amount paid out each year at $1.5 million.

It is a little known fact that many environmental organizations reap vast amounts of money suing the government over the enforcement of various laws affecting clean air, clean water, and endangered species.

The Western Environmental Law Center is just one example. It just sent “an urgent letter to Lisa Jackson, the Environmental Protection Agency administrator, asking her to “speed issuance of regulations aimed at restricting greenhouse pollution to include black carbon, or soot, among climate forcing agents to be regulated.” Soot!

The Greens are now prattling about “unmanageable and calamitous disruption of the climate system.”

Can anyone cite a single example of how human activity could possibly cause or prevent “unmanageable and calamitous disruption of the climate system”?

As this is written, Mount Redoubt in Alaska is threatening a huge volcanic explosion and there is nothing the good citizens of Alaska can do about it. In Italy, whole villages were wiped out by a recent earthquake and there was nothing they could do about it. A tsunami hit Indonesia some years ago, killing thousands, and there was nothing anyone could do about it.

At the White House, the new science advisor to the President is proposing an utterly crazed scheme to shoot “pollution” into the Earth’s atmosphere to reflect back the Sun’s rays to stave off global warming. The Sun, meanwhile, has gone scarily “quiet” for several years with virtually no magnetic storms (sunspots), thus reducing its production of solar energy to warm the Earth.

Yet there is a new law making its way through Congress that posits that the federal government can do something about a “global warming” that is not occurring and permits any one of the 310 million Americans to sue the government for failing to take action.

The end result of the Waxman-Markey law would be to vastly enrich the many environmental organizations that would be filing hundreds of thousands of suits and ultimately collecting millions, if not billions, of dollars on the basis of something that is not occurring and the alleged inaction of the government to stop it!

Only the collected stupidity and indifference of the American people will permit this new law to reach the desk of the President who will surely sign it. It is a death warrant for our lives, our economy, and our nation.

16 comments:

Dave's Daily Day Dream said...

It is the height of foolishness, in my opinion, to continue to encourage lawsuits for thousands and millions of "federal" dollars. First of all, of course, there's no such thing as a "federal dollar", secondly, and most important, is that soon there will be no dollars to wish, hope, earn or sue for here in these United States. We are a bankrupt people, governed by a spineless horde. We live in a soon to be bankrupt nation. The means of production and creating wealth have been demonized, moved offshore or otherwise corrupted by those who would see us bow even lower in the presence of our Saudi masters. People laugh at me when I suggest a return to an understanding of Biblical morality. There also, is found the way to prosperity.

Bluejohn said...

I would argue that CO2 is THE most important atmospheric gas. Oxygen is important for animal life but the basis of the food chain, plant life, needs CO2 so no CO2 no plants, no plants NO LIFE at all.

Anonymous said...

That stupid Malthusian, John Holdren, Obama's 'science' advisor is proposing that we blot out the sun to reduce global warming. That idea is insane. That man is insane.
The cretin would have us shoot black particles into the atmosphere to reflect the sun's life-giving rays back into space.
Has anyone asked the plants how they will photosynthesise; how they will grow and provide our food supply? Have they looked to enquire how the biosphere will survive without adequate sunlight? And what of our vitamic D requirements - are we to witness a monumental resurgence of Rickets?
Of course, forget about solar power - useless even with full sunlight. With so little sunlight to drive the world's winds reliably, forget already pathetic wind power.
And while we are at it forget life on earth; there are people out there intent on killing-off ALL life that eats and farts.
Maddened to distraction? I really am when these dangerous and powerful people are proposing such idiocy.
To follow on from this monumental abberation of 'intelligent' life it was only this week that US Interior Secretary, Ken Salazar had an idea of Damscene proportions that the total demand of US energy could be supplied by wind turbines, replacing 3000 coal fired turbines (which the US does not posses). The one million MW would be produced by 309,587 giant turbines spread over 1,800 miles of pristine coastline or 172 monsters per mile. If it comes to pass just hope and pray that Billy Wind blows 24/7.
This type of Alice in Wonderland dreamland thinking is not just in the USA - I just wonder to where all the sanity is draining; where sense and sensibility has gone and what will become of us if such crackpot ideas materialise.
If ever the saying "God help us" was relevant surely it is at this moment.

Alan Caruba said...

Clive: My weekly commentary expresses the identical views to yours and will be posted on Sunday here and on Tuesday over at www.anxietycenter.com.

Great minds, etc.

Rich Kozlovich said...

I don't know if anyone has read Amity Schlaes' book, The Forgotten Man, but all of this idiocy is so familiar.

During the Hoover administration the Smoot Hawley tariffs were signed into law by Hoover. Businessmen and economists from all over the country begged him not to sign this bill, predicting that it would “spell economic isolation” (and the) “most severe depression ever experienced”.

Originally the bill was intended to protect and increase farmer’s income. Hoover’s rationale being that “Such a tariff not only protects the farmer in our domestic market, but also stimulates him to diversify his crop.” . It did the opposite. Farmers couldn’t sell their products overseas and this encouraged them to continue uneconomical over production practices promoted by the Hoover administration in the first place.

It made it impossible for foreign countries to repay America back in gold (the currency standard at that time) because they couldn't sell products to Americans so they set up their own tariffs triggering a trade war. The Swiss were so enraged that they boycotted all American products.

What has this to do with Global Warming laws? The same kind of arrogant, delusional and meddlesome thinking is at work here, and they results will be the same.

By the way! Unfortunately Hoover wasn't a do nothing president, as the FDR propagandists claimed. He actually started the process that FDR continued; FDR merely out Hoovered Hoover.

Alan Caruba said...

I have a curious connection with Amity Schlaes. Her mother was a beautiful girl with whom I went all through grade to high school. I think she was the first girl I took to the Saturday matinee on a real "date." We met again at a fiftieth reunion.

As to Hoover and FDR, one looks back and wonders how stupid they could have been, but I suspect this younger generation will be doing the same many years from now.

Rich Kozlovich said...

Although I saw Amity Shlaes interviewed many months ago, I don't remember what she looks like, but she certain has a beautiful mind.

Anonymous said...

Another line of thought struck me when I considered how different is the apparent world in which we live to that of the ruling power brokers.
It's as though we are on one track and they are on another track coming in the opposite direction - a kind of doppelgänger effect which renders the solutions that every sane scientist offer, which gives truth to the conflicts which tear us assunder, as nothing by the Psalms of Gore and Hansen, which are in direct conflict to balanced reason.
We are headed for disaster if something or someone cannot pursuade a reality upon someone who can see reason on knowing that the earth will go its own way and asert itself out without the intervention of silly pseaudo-science and its promulgators. Are our voices to no avail, Alan? How can we, as knowing people in the blogosphere, turn the tide of this dangerous rediculousness?

tshpbooklover said...

Are you saying that global warming does not really exist and people are making it up?

Alan Caruba said...

Is "global warming" an invention? It is if you mean a rapid rise in the temperature of the Earth caused by human beings as the result of greenhouse gas (CO2) emissions.

This is not to say that the Earth has not warmed. Since the end of a little ice age from around 1500 to 1850, the Earth has indeed warmed and it did so naturally, not as the result of anything humans did.

That is as simple an explanation as I can provide and you can and should do your own research. Check the blog roll on this site to find interesting sites filled with science-based information, not the "computer models" that have been used to justify what Nature does not.

You have asked a good question and you must find the answers for yourself because that is the essence of education.

tshpbooklover said...

The thing that confuses me is I don't know who to believe because some people do't believe in global warming others do and some think it could be an ice age which does not make much sense. i have a project to do on global warming and need to get the facts right.

Alan Caruba said...

Then you must decide who to believe! You must educate yourself to a point where you know the basic facts about the Earth's atmosphere to know what is true and what is not.

Listening to what some halfwit actor tells you about the environment is foolish. The fact is there are any number of people who can and do explain the facts every day on the Internet.

Go to ClimateChangeFraud.com.
Go to IceAgeNow.com.
Go to IlovemyCO2.com

Did you know, for example, that no computer model can include the actions of clouds on the Earth's temperature? Even meteorologists don't know why clouds do what they do. Yet it is climate models that are used to justify the "global warming" lie.

As for an ice age, civilization has occurred because the Earth has been in an interglacial (between ice ages) period of some 11,500 years. Since such periods last about that long, there is a strong likelihood we shall encounter an ice age soon. When? No one knows.

One thing is known. The activity of sunspots (magnetic storms on the surface of the Sun) has dropped to nearly zero. This has always proceeded a cooling period on Earth and we are now fully ten years into such a period.

Go! Read! Study! Learn! Don't be just one more person who believes everything they're told or is confused by conflicting things because you lack the knowledge. You can acquire the knowledge swiftly. It doesn't require a high school diploma or college degree.

tshpbooklover said...

Do you think Al Gore's book (An Inconvenient Truth the planetary emergency of global warming and what we can do about it) is a reliable source of information?

Alan Caruba said...

No. Al Gore has been lying about global warming for a very long time. A British Court determined that his so-called documentary could not be shown in their schools with a long list of its inaccuracies being read before viewing.

May I suggest, if you have more questions, you email me at acaruba@aol.com to facilitate the process, rather than going back and forth on this blog?

tshpbooklover said...

Do you have any recommendations on who is a reliable source?

Alan Caruba said...

Okay, now, you need to pay attention. First, I gave you my email address to facilitate the Q&A process.

Second, I directed you to the blog roll on this site and three specific sites to visit and to learn the actual facts regarding "global warming."

Do that and you will not need me any further.