"Earth Hour's" Global Propaganda Campaign ... Alan Caruba

"Earth Hour's" Global Propaganda Campaign

By Alan Caruba

 On Saturday, 8:30 PM local time, everyone will be invited to turn off all their electrical devices and presumably sit in the dark. According to the World Wildlife Fund, Earth Hour is intended to “encourage American cities to prepare for the costly impacts of climate-related extreme weather and reduce their carbon footprint.”

Earth Hour is an example of the enormous funding available to the Greens and of their continued assault on the world’s population to encourage and maintain its message that the Earth is imperiled by mankind’s activities, i.e., the use of energy. Earth Hour is a huge piece of international propaganda. Millions of dollars and man-hours have been expended to get the lights turned off from the Eiffel Tower to the Empire State Building, the Leaning Tower of Pisa to Australia’s Opera House.

You may have noticed there is no longer any reference to “global warming.” That’s because a growing percentage of Americans have concluded that global warming is a hoax. The same charlatans behind Earth Hour and the forthcoming Earth Day on April 22nd have mostly abandoned any reference to global warming and are now lying to you about “climate change” and, soon enough, will shift their message to “sustainability.”

On December 21, 2012, you will find the same people who have drunk deeply of the global warming Kool-Aid sitting on mountaintops waiting for the end of the world as predicted by a Mayan calendar. You will not find any Mayans there because that civilization is long gone.

More recently, Pastor Harold Camping predicted the end of the world in 1994 and then revised his prediction to May 21, 2011. People have been predicting the end of the world for a very long time. They have all been wrong.

Earth Hour fits into this pattern, but its insidious purpose to maintain the same levels of anxiety and fear that has driven the environmental movement since it began in earnest back in the 1970s when it was predicting an ice age would arrive. A decade later they switched gears and began predicting global warming, projecting the end over periods of time from a decade to fifty years or so.

Global warming—a dramatic rise in the Earth’s temperatures—did not occur for two reasons; (1) it was a hoax based on computer models created by charlatans and, (2) largely due to a natural cooling cycle that set in around 1998 as the Sun’s sunspot activity began its own natural cycle in which fewer such magnetic storms occurred. Scientists have long known that a reduction of sunspots has always been accompanied by cooling on Earth.

The Green’s claim that a build-up of carbon dioxide (CO2) would plunge the Earth into a period of warming is the greatest lie of the modern era. The Earth has had periods in which the level of CO2 was much higher. Vital to all life on Earth, CO2 is to all vegetation what oxygen is to all animal life.

The notion that “man made” CO2 portends disaster is false and is directed at forcing the reduction of the use of all “fossil fuels” for industrial and all other uses. It is the greatest scam ever perpetrated because the Greens use it to sell “carbon credits”, worthless pieces of paper that could be sold or traded in the same way as the “indulgences” that were sold as a way to buy a ticket into heaven.

I recommend that you read a short book that explains how and why the environmental movement is a huge scam and a hideous attack on mankind. “Roosters of the Apocalypse” by Rael Jean Isaac ($8.95) is published by The Heartland Institute and can be purchased from its website. In less time than it takes to watch “Dancing with the Stars”, you will learn everything you need to know about the global warming scam and all the ways you and everyone else are being robbed by the schemes tied to it, to “climate change”, and to “sustainability.”

Ms. Isaac tells the story of how, in today’s South Africa, the Xhosa tribe destroyed its economy in 1856. Based on a prophecy of a 15-year-old orphan girl, they killed an estimated half-million of their own cattle, ceased planting crops, and destroyed their grain stores. “By the end of 1857 between thirty and fifty thousand of them had starved to death—a third to a half of their population.”

Turning off all electricity during Earth Hour is no different from what the Xhosa tribe did and refusing to allow the drilling for oil and natural gas, or mining coal, all of which the United States has in sufficient abundance to make us energy independent and exporters of these energy reserves, is an act of national suicide; one that this international symbolism portends for any nation that abandons the energy that sustains economic growth and the welfare of millions.

The Earth is 4.5 billion years old. Human activity, mostly in the past five thousand years that we call civilization, has not had a thing to do with its existence, but some humans are foolish creatures, easily spooked by prophecies that do not come true or claims that they are responsible for its existence and future. Some of them will turn off their electricity on Saturday.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

Abolish The EPA

Abolish The EPA

A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet

The EPA's recent move toward strangling the coal-fired electricity generating plants in America is another power grab by the "greenies" in the US government.  If not stopped by the Congress these new regulations will close and shutter dozens of coal-fired plants around the country and thousands upon thousands of workers in the electricity generating business, and businesses associated with them, will be out of a job. 

We are looking at a shortage of electricity in America if Congress does not vacate these regulations.  Rolling blackouts will be common here (in America) as they already are in developing countries.

I reside in Hurricane Alley so I know a thing or two about having no electricity for days and weeks on end. You are not going to like it, America.  But you'd better prepare yourself because it is coming as surely as a Martin flies to its gourd.

Look.  You may not like it.  You may not want to hear it -- but -- the plain fact is: Windmills and solar panels cannot produce the quantity of electric power a vibrant economy like America MUST HAVE to thrive.  It is simply impossible.  On the other hand, it might work if we bought Europe and covered it will windmills and solar panels.  But, frankly, I suspect even that would not be enough. 

Solar panels are great for powering driveway lights and small weather stations and such.  But to power a single city, like New York or Los Angles, you'd need an area larger than the size of Nebraska with nothing but solar panels twinkling at the sky.  It is a DUMB idea!

Windmills are a joke.  Unfortunately they are a lethal joke to the thousands of birds slaughtered by those whirling blades every year.  And they are butt-ugly!  Have you seen them?  Forget the little Dutch windmills on greeting cards and such.  They are tiny compared to today’s modern wind machines. 

Today's windmills stand as much as two hundred to three hundred feet tall and their blades span as much as three hundred feet across.  They are monsters.  Did I mention they are ugly, to boot?

Oh, and did I mention the secret bout windmills?  No?  well, you see -- they don't work when the wind is not blowing.  Now, when we say the wind is blowing, we don't mean the breeze we mortals thing of as "the wind."  No we are talking about the kind of winds you find on mountain slopes and along the shorelines.  Strong winds.  So, what happens when the wind isn't blowing and the windmills aren't producing electricity?  Well, power plants fueled by coal, nuclear power, and natural gas have to be fired-up to generate enough electricity to keep pumping power out onto the national power grid.  

When the sun's not shining -- solar panels produce zero electricity.

When the wind's not blowing-- Windmills produce zero electricity.

If you call the popular play and movie "Man of La Mancha," you will recall that he only TILTED at windmills (and he was as mad as a hatter).  Our dreamy-eyed President has embraced the cussed things.  (Did I mention they are ugly, too?)

The only practical electric car I have ever seen was a toy.  It actually did what it was supposed to do and that was to create fun for a child -- and NOTHING more.

While I am on electric cars -- I don't recall anyone saying what it would cost the owner of one of those battery powered cars when, and if, they had to replace the batteries!  I suspect one could buy a fairly good used car for what one would have to pay to replace those batteries.

Generally speaking, Americans are not dumb -- even though the Obama Administration gives every indication they believe we are.  Americans are not going to purchase electric cars for many decades into the future -- if ever.  Like the bullet trains the President is so fond off, so far as battery powered cars are concerned -- we don't need them, we don't like them, and we sure as heck, don't want them.

The EPA is the point of the spear for the green/socialist agenda in the United States.  I did not like it when President Richard Nixon created the EPA some forty years ago.  I feared, even then, the EPA would become and would do exactly what it has become and is doing.  Any agency with that kind of power -- and unanswerable to the American people -- can always be expected to go rogue.

A dark side of the human condition, human nature, if you will, is a thirst for power over one's fellow human beings.  Given an opportunity, sad to say, those who tend toward slacking their thirst for power will do so.

The EPA has become so powerful it defies the Congress of the United States.  In a free country a government agency gone rogue must be put down.    

In my lifetime there have been three, count 'em, THREE organizations that have wrought unspeakable damage on their respective countries -- the Gestapo in Nazi Germany, the KGB in the Soviet Union, and the EPA in the United States.

The Environmental Protection Agency has become a rogue agency.  It is power hungry and it has an agenda.  That agenda is based on a lie and a hoax, but it makes little difference because the EPA has the power to FORCE Americans to abide by the will of the EPA or be destroyed.  There is another agenda, akin to a "back story" to the pubic agenda of the EPA and that is the furtherance of socialism in America.

Make no mistake about it.  The green agenda and the socialist agenda are one and the same.  While environmentalism, much like a watermelon, is green on the outside, inside it is communist red.    If communism had an official religion, it would be environmentalism.

Again, we call upon the US Congress to abolish the EPA.  Funding should be cut off, entirely, until the dismantling of the agency is complete.

In an article entitled "The EPA Wrecking Ball," my friend Alan Caruba said:  "We are witnessing the destruction of the nation by the environmental movement and the EPA has just provided you with the most dramatic example of that plan." (SOURCE)

LINK:http://www.factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/2012/03/epa-wrecking-ball.html

I could not agree more with Alan.  Sometimes it feels as if we conservative writers suffer from much the same curse as that with which Apollo hobbled Cassandra of Greek mythology. 

You may recall that Apollo gave Cassandra the gift of prophecy, but when she failed to return his love -- he added the curse that no one would ever believe her predictions.    

In the face of all our predictions over the past four decades nothing has been done to put a stop to this government agency that is off the reservation.  Now it has grown so powerful it tells the US Congress what it (The EPA) will do and dares the Congress to stop it.

The EPA has gone beyond the pale. As an agency of the US government, which is constitutionally answerable to the American people, the EPA is now outside the limits of acceptable behavior.  Its actions are now objectionable and certainly improper in a free country.

Abolish the EPA -- NOW.

J. D. Longstreet

I'll Tell Vlad, Mr. President

I'll Tell Vlad, Mr. President

ALL Microphones ARE HOT!

A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet 

I was in the broadcasting business for thirty years.  One of the first things you learn is that one must always consider a microphone, ANY and EVERY microphone to be HOT  -- in other words,  switched on and transmitting with the "pot" set at 80 decibels, or more.

I recall a number of times two or more broadcasters would be having a discussion in a control room, or studio, when a mike would be turned on.  The room would go deathly silent --instantly.  Some speaking would halt in mid-word as if an unseen laser had suddenly severed their vocal cords.  Broadcasters become so sensitive around microphones that it becomes something of a sixth sense.  Even with that extra sense we still manage to have our moments of embarrassment before a mike. 

A broadcaster learns never to have a conversation -- anywhere near a mike -- that he doesn't mind the entire world hearing.   Forget distance from a mike.  Microphones are so sensitive today, there IS no "safe" distance from a mike that your conversation cannot be picked up electronically.

I have a digital recorder, smaller than a pack of cigarettes that will record conversations twenty to thirty feet away in a meeting room -- clearly.   And that is not even considered high tech, anymore.

The lesson I am attempting to impart is simply this:  If you are tempted to have a private conversation anywhere -- where you know there is a microphone -- DON'T!

When the small lavalier mikes first came on the market, entertainers and ministers gobbled them up.  Those tiny mikes would clip onto your tie or lapel and a small wire ran from the mike to a battery pack and transmitter located someplace on one's person out of sight of the audience or congregation.   The lavalier mikes would transmit to the main transmitter in the studio or church and be broadcast or sent through the public address system in the church.

Now, entertainers, as a rule, are "mike smart."  They know not to do something, or say something, stupid -- after you have been "miked." 

Early on, however, ministers were not that mike savvy.  The men of the cloth soon learned a hard and embarrassing lesson when a few,  after being "miked," decided to visit the restroom, one last time, before entering the pulpit.  You can guess what happened.  Once that mike is clipped on you and turned on -- you have no secrets.

You would think the folks who handle Presidents, especially the unit that handles Presidential electronic communications, would make a point of instructing our Presidents and Vice-Presidents in such basic mike etiquette.  Who knows?  Perhaps they do and our illustrious leaders fluff them off -- until they say something stupid, confidential, or even secret, in the presence of a live microphone. 

Once a microphone has been tested and the "level" set, as a rule, that mike is left on (hot) until the performer or speaker takes the stage, lectern, or pulpit.  Yes, there IS a reason for that.  Should the mike show signs of a problem while it is set and waiting for the speaker, it allows the sound engineers time to solve the problem or replace the mike -- BEFORE the speaker begins.

It is all basic stuff.

Knowledge of mike basics is not enough.  One must practice the proper etiquette or one will suffer the consequences.

Had President Obama had the self restraint to remain mute, with a mike so close, and not engage in a private conversation with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev he might not have frightened roughly half the people of earth with his comments about his "flexibility" after his reelection.  What he actually said was: “This is my last election,” Obama said. “After my election, I have more flexibility.”

OK.  Before my liberal friends get all bent out of shape, I DO recall President Reagan's on-mike remarks paraphrased here:  "Let the bombing begin."  That, too, was in front of a hot mike.  The difference was this:  Reagan was doing a mike test to allow the engineers to set the "level" of the microphone. 

People's voices modulate differently.  For a good quality sound and to properly sense, or "pick up," a speaker's voice, a test is run and the levels are set before a speaker is ready to speak on the air or for a recording. (You may recall that occasionally "voice prints" are used in court.  Each person's voiceprint is different)

A mike test is supposed to be private.  All sorts of things are said -- jokingly -- during a mike test.  Reagan's joke was not meant for public consumption.  He was an actor and very familiar with testing mikes on the set.  I would imagine someone was dressed-down, shall we say -- energetically -- (if not fired) after that mike test was released to the public.

Obama's gaffe has the world wondering what, exactly, he meant by his remarks that Medvedev promised he would repeat to Vladimir Putin, the President-Elect of Russia. Was he referring to the missile shield proposed for Poland and other eastern European countries?  If so -- what did he mean?  Was he referring to his breath-taking endeavor to cut America's nuclear stockpile by a humongous eighty percent?

(Obama's should be advised that Putin is about as flexible as four-inch steel rebar.)   

We conservatives feel it is just a sample of what we have been warning about if Obama wins a second term.  He has been restrained during his first term because he wants to be reelected.  In a second term there are no such restraints and, frankly, we expect Mr. Obama, the socialist ideologue that he is, to basically go wild and really push his socialist agenda on the people of the US. It is NOT a chance we want to take.

So, all in all, maybe Obama's faux paux has given Americans a realistic look into his plans -- if granted a second term.  At least Mr. Obama's second term intention toward "flexibility" is no longer something the American voter has to guess about.  We are, however, worried about what he will be more flexible on:  gun control, illegal immigration, gay rights, socialized medicine, and the biggest of all -- interpretation of the US Constitution.

The American electorate has now had a "heads-up."  There is no excuse remaining for reelecting Obama.  Conservatives would be well advised to redouble their efforts to deny Obama an extension of his lease on the Oval Office.

J. D. Longstreet

The EPA Wrecking Ball ... J. D. Longstreet

The EPA Wrecking Ball

By Alan Caruba

The Environmental Protection Agency is using its power to advance the objective of the environmental movement to deny Americans access to the energy that sustains the nation’s economy and is using the greatest hoax ever perpetrated, global warming—now called “climate change”—to achieve that goal.

“This standard isn’t the once-and-for-all solution to our environmental challenge,” said Lisa Jackson, the EPA administrator, “but it is an important commonsense step toward tackling the ongoing and very real threat of climate change and protecting the future for generations to come. It will enhance the lives of our children and our children’s children.”

This is a boldfaced lie. Its newest rule is based on the debasement of science that is characterized and embodied in the global warming hoax. It will deprive America of the energy it requires to function.

Since the 1980s the Greens have been telling everyone that carbon dioxide was causing global warming—now called climate change—and warning that CO2 emissions were going to kill everyone in the world if they weren’t dramatically reduced. The ball was put in motion with the United Nations 1997 Kyoto Protocols when many nations agreed to this absurd idea and carried forward by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ever since.

The Environmental Protection Agency was created to clean the nation’s air and water where it was deemed that a hazard existed. Like most noble ideas and most Congressional mandates, the initial language was vague enough to be interpreted to mean anything those in charge wanted it to mean. Add in the global warming hoax and you have the means to destroy the nation.

Now it means that the source of fifty percent of all the electricity generated in the United States is being systematically put out of business and please do not act surprised; that’s exactly what Barack Obama said he intended to do if elected President.

This is evil writ large.

Shutting down utilities that use coal, an energy source the U.S. has in such abundance that it could provide electricity for the next hundreds of years, and ensuring that no new ones are built fits in perfectly with all the Green pipedreams about "renewable" energy. Solar and wind presently provide about two percent of the nation’s electricity and, without government subsidies and mandates requiring their use, they would not exist at all.

How stupid is it to not build more nuclear power plants when this form of power doesn’t emit anything but energy?

How stupid is it not to use coal when the U.S. is the Saudi Arabia of coal?

How stupid is it to begin to find reasons to regulate and thwart fracking, the technology to access trillions of cubic feet of natural gas that has been in use for decades?

How stupid is it to cover miles of land, far from any urban center, with hundreds of solar panels or huge, ugly wind turbines that kill thousands of birds every year?

The sun does not shine all the time, nor does the wind blow all the time. In the event of overcast skies or a day without wind, traditional plants—those using coal, gas, nuclear or generating hydroelectric power—have to be maintained as a backup. Take away the coal-fired plants and there were be huge gap in the national grid.

Darkness will descend and Americans will begin to live with blackouts and brownouts that will undermine every aspect of our lives. It’s bad enough when a town or even a city briefly loses power because of a storm, but imagine that occurring on a regular basis because there just aren’t enough utilities generating power!

What kind of people stand by idly while its own government conspires to take away the primary source of energy that everything else depends upon? The answer? You. The answer is the many elected politicians that have done little to rein in a rogue government agency intent on undermining the nation by denying it the ability to generate power with the least expensive source of electricity, coal.

The EPA, an unelected bureaucracy, has just ensured that all Americans, industries, small businesses, and individuals will begin pay far more for electrical power.

Richard J. Trzupek, the author of “Regulators Run Wild” and an environment policy advisor for The Heartland Institute, said of the new rule, “With around 50,000 megawatts of coal-fired power set to be forcibly retired in the next few years—thanks to the draconian policies of Obama’s EPA—this rule ensures that no new modern, efficient coal fired power plants will be built to fill the gap.”

In a triumph of crony capitalism, Trzupek notes that “The big winner will be Obama’s good friend, GE Chairman Jeff Immelt. Since solar and wind cannot fill a 50,000 megawatt baseload gap, the only way to ensure continued reliability of the grid is to build a lot of natural gas-fired plants quickly. And who is the biggest supplier of natural gas-fired combustion engines? GE of course.”

If you think that environmental organizations like the Sierra Club and Friends of the Earth, among many others, are seeking to “protect” the Earth, you are seriously mistaken. They have been among the leading opponents of coal and they have had allies in Congress such as the Majority Leader of the Senate, Harry Reid, (D-NV) who has said “Coal makes us sick. Oil makes us sick.”

NO! Coal provides the engine of our nation’s electrical power and oil provides the energy that fuels our transportation and is the basis for countless products that enhance and improve our lives every day.

We are witnessing the destruction of the nation by the environmental movement and the EPA has just provided you with the most dramatic example of that plan.

© Alan Caruba, 2012
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Alan Caruba's commentaries are posted daily at "Warning Signs" his popular blog and thereafter on dozens of other websites and blogs. If you love to read, visit his monthly report on new books at Bookviews. To visit his Facebook page, click here For information on his professional skills, Caruba.com is the place to visit.

Violent Death in America is an Equal Opportunity Crime ... Alan Caruba

Violent Death in America is an Equal Opportunity Crime

By Alan Caruba

I have had an interest in demography, the study of populations and trends within populations, for a long time. Racial animosities in America have been a factor from the moment white colonists stepped off the boat and were greeted by Native Americans and, not that long after, when the first blacks arrived from Africa where slavery had flourished for centuries.

I lived in the South when Jim Crow laws were on the books and public facilities were segregated. I was a young reporter during the Civil Rights era of the 1960s and even met Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on one occasion. I have seen the best and worst of what race represents in America.

I would count the initial reporting on the killing of Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida, as among the worst media coverage in a while because, as the facts begin to emerge after a month, it turns out that there was an eye witness to the incident in which George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer, suffered a broken nose and injuries to the back of his head consistent with an attack.

The Black Panther Party issued a reward for Zimmerman’s “capture.” In the meantime, Rev. Al Sharpton and Rev. Jesse Jackson, have been out doing what they always do, stirring up black anger and blaming all whites for what occurred.

Let’s look at the demographic facts. In 2007 the Associated Press reported that “Nearly half of the nation’s murder victims were black and the number of black men who were slain is on the rise.” The other half were murdered white victims.

Murder in America is an equal opportunity crime.

The article went on to note that black people represented an estimated 13 percent of the U.S. population in 2005, the latest data then available, but were the victims of 49 percent of all murders and 15 percent of rapes, assaults and other nonfatal violent crimes nationwide.”

The U.S. Justice Department study found that “Most of the black murder victims—93 percent—were killed by other black people.”

The study also found that 85 percent of white victims were slain by other white people. Of the black victims, 51 percent were in their late teens and twenties.

More recent statistics from 2009, posted on the website of the U.S. Department of Justice show pretty much the same trend. That year, 2,604 blacks were killed by blacks, along with 454 whites, but whites managed to kill each other to the tune of 2,963 victims, while killing 209 black victims.

Nationally by 2010, homicide was the leading cause of death for black young men ages 10-24 and the second leading cause of death for black women ages 15-24.

Overall, between 1974 and 2004, 52 percent of murderers were black, 48 percent were white, while 51 percent of the victims were white and 47 percent were black. If one can spin these statistics to suggest that the killing of Trayvon Martin was racial, be my guest.

Appearing on the Sean Hannity program Monday evening, Zimmerman’s friend, Joe Oliver, calmly defended him saying “he is not a racist.” Oliver is black.

Why Barack Obama felt it necessary to insert himself into the situation before the facts are established was a reminder of an earlier situation in 2009 when he took issue with an incident between Cambridge, Massachusetts police and a black professor who was hauled off to jail for failing to cooperate with them. Always assuming the police are to blame or inferring that Trayvon Martin was killed because he could have looked like Obama’s son, if he had one, is a serious breach of judgment. To say it out loud is even worse.

Finally, lost in all the hasty assumptions and accusations is the fact that Zimmerman was, as previously noted, a neighborhood watch volunteer and this suggests the Sanford, Florida neighborhood had crime problems. Trayvon, we’re learning, had some earlier experiences with the local police, so he was on that evening a subject of concern to Zimmerman who reported his presence to the police and was returning to his car when the shooting occurred.

No one takes any pleasure in the death of Trayvon Martin or any other young black man. It is a tragedy, but it is also one that is repeated far too many times in too many American cities for reasons that cannot be passed off as racism. His death reflects the pathologies that plague too many of America’s black population.

We should be celebrating the black men and women that escape their cultural bondage, embrace middle class values, and ennoble their lives through their personal achievements.

Exploiting his death is a disservice to both America’s black and white population.

© Alan Caruba, 2012
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Alan Caruba's commentaries are posted daily at "Warning Signs" his popular blog and thereafter on dozens of other websites and blogs. If you love to read, visit his monthly report on new books at Bookviews. To visit his Facebook page, click here For information on his professional skills, Caruba.com is the place to visit.