Will Warmists Face Justice for their Deceptions? ... Alan Caruba

Will Warmists Face Justice for their Deceptions?

By Alan Caruba

When you murder someone the case is never closed. The same holds when you murder the truth. No matter how long it takes, truth is defended despite all the calumnies heaped on those who stand firm against the lies and the propaganda intended to persuade those who have been deceived.

Ultimately, truth is its own defense. There never was a shred of truth in the claim that humans were causing the Earth’s climate to heat up by using so-called “fossil fuels” and engaging in manufacturing and other activities. There was no dramatic “global warming” in the 1980s until the present.

The Earth’s climate has warmed very slightly since the end of the Little Ice Age, dated to around 1850. Five hundred years of extremely cold weather had gripped the northern hemisphere starting around 1300. The much heralded “climate change” is, unlike the weather, measured in terms of centuries, not days, weeks or years. It is used by politicians that do not know what they are talking about. It is also used by charlatans, but I repeat myself.

Under the direction of the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) a massive fraud was engineered. The object was to turn carbon dioxide (CO2), a common though minor atmospheric gas, into a commodity that could be traded in exchanges around the world that would issue “carbon credits” to utilities, industrial facilities, and others who would be required to pay for permission to produce energy and products. It was an audacious scheme.

It began with the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, otherwise known as the Kyoto Protocol. It set binding targets for the reduction of CO2 by 37 industrialized nations and the European community and was adopted on December 11, 1997 and entered into force on February 16, 2005. The U.S. never signed the Protocols. They were rejected by a unanimous vote in the Senate.

It was a complete lie without any basis in science. C02 plays no role in climate change and reducing whatever amount industry and other human activities might produce would be meaningless.

Surely the people behind the scheme knew this. The IPCC charged a small clique of climate scientists to come up with “proof” that global warming was happening. In England they were located at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit and, in America, they were led by Dr. Michael Mann working first at the University of Virginia and later at Penn State University.

Dr. Michael Mann's "Hockey Stick" Graph

Mann’s research, assisted by co-authors Bradley and Hughes, was published in 1998. “Northern Hemisphere Temperatures During the Past Millennium: Inferences, Uncertainties, and Limitations” became famous for a graph dubbed the “hockey stick”. Its sudden upward curve, intended to demonstrate a dramatic increase was based on tree ring reconstruction of climate over a thousand years.

To say it attracted attention is an understatement. It and other studies produced by the IPCC clique became the cornerstone of the “global warming” hoax. The problem for Dr. Mann was that Steve McIntyre, a Canadian mathematician in Toronto, along with Ross McKitrick of the University of Guelph concluded it was bogus science and published a paper in 2004 criticizing it.

In science, when a theory or hypothesis is put forward, the data supporting it is as well. Years went by before McIntyre could get access to it. The tree ring data had been provided by Keith Briffa of the Hadley UK Climate Research Unit. Neither Dr. Mann, nor Briffa made it available, but McIntyre was able to secure it from another source. When he plotted all the tree ring data, not just the parts cherry-picked by Mann, the “hockey stick” disappeared.

In November 2009, thousands of leaked emails between Dr. Mann and other "warmists"---scientists responsible for the global warming hoax, revealed nothing less than a massive fraud.

Flash forward to a freedom of information (FOI) request by Chris Horner on behalf of American Tradition Institute’s Environmental Law Center. Despite stonewalling for years, Dr. Mann’s former employer, the University of Virginia complied in May 2011, agreeing to release Dr. Mann’s computer files containing the data he had kept hidden for more than a decade.

Serendipitously, a similar FOI issued to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has revealed the level of financial gain received by another key player in the global warming hoax, Dr. James Hansen, a longtime NASA employee and the man credited with generating the hoax with testimony before a congressional committee in 1988. He has been the director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies since 1981

It turns out that in 2010 alone he received “between 236,000 and $1,232.500 in outside income”! When you add in all the awards and speech fees Dr. Hansen has received over the years it is a tidy sum while he exploited his taxpayer-funded position. The agency had resisted disclosing this information for years, but as a federal employee Dr. Hansen waives privacy interests as a condition of employment.

A former government employee, Vice President Al Gore, became the face and voice of the hoax, earning millions in the process.

What has the global warming cost Americans? Joanne Nova of the Science and Public Policy Institute has estimated that the U.S. government spent more than $32.5 billion on climate studies between 1989 and 2009, nor does that include about $79 billion more spent for related climate change technology research, foreign aid, and tax breaks for “green energy” (solar and wind).

For deception on that scale, one might think they will be punished at some point, but it will likely be years more before those responsible for the global warming fraud will stand before the bar of justice, if ever.

© Alan Caruba, 2011
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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.

The Wrong Solution? ... Paul Driessen and Robert Carter

Lomborg’s wrong solution to a partly real problem
The best Plan B is to prepare for and adapt to all future climate changes
Paul Driessen and Robert Carter
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Bjorn Lomborg has been energetically courting publicity for his new film, “Cool It.” The film has attracted minimal box office sales thus far, but he has been publishing articles at an impressive clip, in a quest for more exposure, influence and funding.

He correctly observes that public discussion about global warming is largely between two entrenched camps of opinion. Lomborg is also right about our needing a “Plan B” climate policy that defuses the current rancorous and unproductive debate about “the manmade climate problem.”

His first camp is inhabited by warming alarmists, supported by the majesty of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Most major institutions in western society have joined their funereal fugue (and funding pipeline) in supportive chorus.

In Lomborg’s other camp, empiricists (including a majority of independent scientists) argue implacably that we still await actual, factual evidence that our planet is still warming at all – let alone dangerously, let alone because of human carbon dioxide emissions.

Reality, of course, is a lot more nuanced. For example, it is simply incorrect to say, as Lomborg does, that most independent scientists argue that “global warming was a fabrication.”
The truth is, all competent scientists agree on three things. Earth has been warming since the Little Ice Age ended 150 years ago, and its climate changes frequently. Human activities (not just CO2 emissions) definitely affect local climate, and combined together have the potential to affect global climate, perhaps measurably. Third, carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, albeit a minor one.
The real scientific debate is not about any of this. It is, rather, about the direction and magnitude of global human effects, and their likely significance when considered in the context of natural climate change – which has been occurring ever since Earth developed its oceans, atmosphere and climate many eons ago.

After spending more than $100 billion since 1990 to support research by thousands of scientists, we are still unable to isolate and measure human influence on global temperature. That influence remains buried deeply in the noise and natural variation of Earth’s climate system.

Lomborg is either ignorant of this fact, or chooses to ignore it. He simply assumes “the manmade climate problem” is real – and proceeds to offer a “solution.” He now asserts that governments should allocate yet more money for more research, this time into new renewable technologies for power generation, so that “green” energy will eventually (and presumptively) become cheaper than hydrocarbon-based energy!

There are two major problems with this. First, technological innovation is not enhanced by governments attempting to pick winners, but by encouraging and rewarding private investment and entrepreneurship in truly free markets.

Spending taxpayer money on problems that government wants to solve generally means the “problems,” and the funding recipients, are chosen for political reasons. As failures like Europe’s Concorde, Australia’s pink batts home insulation program and America’s Synfuels Corporation attest, they rarely achieve the desired result, but breed enormous cost, waste and corruption.

Second, the amount of capital invested in attempting to improve the efficiency of “green” energy over the last three decades is many tens of billions of dollars in tax credits and other subsidies. The results are lamentable, and fraught with waste and corruption on an embarrassing scale.

Even when the sun shines or wind blows, solar-cell and wind-turbine power remains inefficient, unreliable, destructive of landscapes, and at least three times more expensive than conventional alternatives. These technologies survive solely because governments are in political thrall to small, but noisy and powerful, Green voter minorities and their rent-seeking corporate allies.

Can anyone seriously support pouring yet more unrequited money down this drain?

Lomborg also seems to have missed the fact that the debate over global warming has moved on. The ClimateGate emails were followed by the wholesale discrediting of the IPCC as a source for reliable scientific or policy advice. Moreover, new scientific papers continually weaken the already tottering hypothesis that human carbon dioxide emissions are causing dangerous climate disruption.

Many independent scientists and commentators now realize that the real hazards we face come from natural climatic events and changes – rather than from hypothetical, computer-modeled “manmade global warming.”

The appropriate response to climate hazards, whether natural or human-caused, is to adapt to events, as and when they happen. Two recent books (Adaptive Governance and Climate Change, by Ronald Brunner and Amanda Lynch, and Climate: the Counter Consensus, by Robert Carter) describe this approach in detail. As former British Chancellor of the Exchequer Nigel Lawson puts it, “First and foremost, we must do what mankind has always done, and adapt to whatever changes in temperature may in the future arise.”

Public debate about global warming has been dominated for far too long by scientists, economists and social scientists who proceed from the assumption that human CO2 emissions are causing dangerous warming. Most are unable to assess the latest science themselves, or have accepted verbatim what the world has now come to realize is the deeply flawed, alarmist advice of the IPCC.

The time has come to listen instead to the majority opinion of qualified independent scientists. They conclude that climate hazards are overwhelmingly natural problems, and thus should be dealt with by the time-honored civil defense technique of preparing for adverse events in advance, and adapting to them when they occur.

Whether the hazards are short-term (hurricanes and floods), intermediate (drought) or long-term (warming or cooling trends), preparation must be specific and regional in scale, for the hazards themselves vary widely by geographic location. If governments prepare properly for the full range of natural climatic hazards to which their countries are regularly exposed, this “be prepared” approach will also address the risk of future human-caused climate disruptions, should they ever occur.

Preparation and adaptation for all climate change is the simple, commonsense, cost-effective and precautionary Plan B that all governments can, and should, support.
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Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power - Black death. Professor Robert (Bob) Carter is an emeritus fellow of the Institute of Public Affairs in Australia, chief science advisor to the International Climate Science Coalition, and author of Climate: the Counter Consensus.

The Climate Mafia Gather in Cancun ... Alan Caruba

The Climate Mafia Gather in Cancun
By Alan Caruba

On November 14, 1957, leaders of the American and other Mafia organizations gathered at the home of Joseph “Joe the Barber” Barbara in Apalachin, New York; approximately one hundred Mafiosi from around the United States, Canada, and Italy attended.

Up to then, J. Edgar Hoover, the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, had refused to acknowledge that the Mafia even existed, but a succession of prime time television appearances before Congressional committees by members of the Mafia made it abundantly clear that crime in America was, indeed, organized and led by some very colorful and ruthless descendents of the Sicilian Mafia.

It is time for the U.S. government to acknowledge that a climate mafia has existed since the gathering in Kyoto, Japan, to establish the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

The December 11, 1997 treaty was, upon ratification, to go into force on February 16, 2005. Its expressed purpose was to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for the purpose of avoiding “global warming”, but its real purpose was to create an entirely bogus system of emissions trading to be known as “the carbon market.”

On July 25, 1997, the U.S. Senate, responsible for the ratification of international treaties, unanimously passed (95-0) a resolution rejecting the Kyoto Treaty on the grounds that it “would result in serious harm to the economy of the United States.”

As this is written, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is striving to secure authorization to regulate GHG emissions despite massive evidence that they pose no threat to the environment and despite the fact that this authority would, as in 1997, cripple and likely destroy an already ailing economy.

There was no “global warming” then or now. Carbon dioxide (CO2) was deemed the chief cause of “global warming” when, in fact, it plays little or no role in climate change. The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is a criminal enterprise set up as a mechanism to facilitate the sale of bogus “carbon credits” and to transfer billions from industrialized, developed nations to those that have failed to keep pace. This latter scheme is little more than extortion.

In 2007, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded jointly to Al Gore and the IPCC for their efforts to further this fraud. This demonstrates just how vast the effort to impose it had become. In the U.S., “Cap-and-Trade” legislation, the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, sponsored by Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-CA) was passed in the House and sent to the Senate. Political pundits say it is unlikely to come up for a vote.

In November 2009, the leak of thousands of emails between the scientists leading two university-based climate research centers responsible for the data published by the IPCC demonstrated they had deliberately rigged the data to assert a “global warming” that did not exist then or now. It was quickly dubbed “Climategate.”

The Climategate revelations doomed last year’s conference in Copenhagen that was intended to further the “global warming” fraud. It was attended by President Obama who said, “Today we’ve made (a) meaningful and unprecedented breakthrough here in Copenhagen. For the first time in history all major economies have come together to accept their responsibility to take action to confront the threat of climate change.”

There is no threat of climate change beyond those natural climate events such as hurricanes and blizzards over which humankind has no control.

Abandoning the term “global warming” and substituting “climate change” does not change the fact that there has been NO dramatic increase in the Earth’s overall temperature and ignores the fact that, since 1998, the Earth has entered a predictable and natural cooling cycle.

The President was lying then and continues to lie today about “climate change.”

Billions worldwide have been wasted on the needless reduction of GHGs. Billions here in the U.S. have been diverted to two of the most unpredictable and least effective means of energy production, wind and solar power.

Billions have been wasted on the U.S. mandate that ethanol be mixed with the gasoline Americans purchase, despite the fact that ethanol releases more CO2 into the environment than gasoline without it. Due to expire on December 31st, it would save an estimated six billion dollars. Even Al Gore has disowned ethanol.

The IPCC meeting in Cancun began on November 29 and will generate a lot of hot air for two weeks.

The Earth doesn’t need less carbon dioxide; vital to all crops, forests and vegetation. It needs more. The world doesn’t need less energy production. It needs more; vital to the economies of developed and developing nations.

The future of six billion people on planet Earth depends on the failure of the Cancun conference.

Alan Caruba

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Alan Caruba blogs daily at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com. An author, business and science writer, he is the founder of The National Anxiety Center, a clearinghouse for information about “scare campaigns” designed to influence public opinion and policy.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

Greenwashing America ... Alan Caruba

Greenwashing America
By Alan Caruba

Every time you see some product being sold as “Green”, allegedly safer or beneficial for the environment, you can be sure that it is more expensive than a comparable product that does the same thing without making this claim.

Everything you eat, drink, wear or use begins as a “natural” product. It is absurd to think that calling it “Green” improves it in any fashion. Countless inspections before anything reaches the marketplace ensure product safety. To put it another way, a carrot is a carrot is a carrot.

Recently I received a news release from a public relations firm touting clients selling Green products such as “Parsley Plus All-Purpose Cleaner”, along with “stylish organic bed linens, “natural and organic clothing”, a “99.6% natural line” of shampoos, and, “100% Bamboo towels.”

In a similar fashion, every time you hear a corporation claiming it is concerned about the environment you can be sure that it is trying to protect itself against lawsuits from environmental groups or Environmental Protection Agency action that will eat into its profits and dividends.

A recent Wall Street Journal article, “Misleading Claims on ‘Green’ Labeling” cited a study asserting that “more than 95% of consumer products examined committed at least one offense of ‘greenwashing’, a term used to describe unproven environmental claims, according to TerraChoice, a North American environmental-marketing company that issued the report.”

“Environmental-marketing company”? By reading further down in the article, one learns that “TerraChoice was recently acquired by Underwriters Laboratories, an independent product-safety certification organization”, adding that both companies “could benefit if more manufacturers seek third-party verification of the eco-claims.” You think?

Consumers Union, an independent testing company, has built its reputation on its review of various products. Underwriters Laboratories has done the same, but there is no reason to believe any Green product claim, particularly since TerraChoice has announced it is probably a scam. Not surprisingly, third party certification has been offered by some major environmental organizations as yet another way to raise a few bucks.

It is no accident that the term “greenwashing” is akin to “brainwashing”, a term that came out of the Korean War when it was learned that American prisoners of war were subjected to “re-education” by their captors.

Communists have always been big on re-education, a practice of nations such as China, Vietnam, North Korea, Cambodia, and others where you were expected change your mind and learn to love Big Brother. The alternative was that you either stayed in their concentration camps or were systematically murdered for the crime of having been an intellectual, a landowner, or a bourgeois capitalist.

Communism murdered more people in the last century than all its wars combined.

Environmental organizations, in league with an unquestioning mainstream media, have been greenwashing and brainwashing the public for decades. It usually takes the form of scare campaigns and, in the case of supermarket products, it is directed a chemicals, plastics, how livestock is raised, or some other totally superfluous “issue” that has nothing to do with the quality, price or safety of the product. The object is always the same, to lay a guilt trip on the consumer, i.e., to greenwash them.

Green product claims go hand-in-hand with the metastasizing Green regulations whose bottom line raises the costs of everything in America these days. Angela Logomasini of the Competitive Enterprise Institute is an expert on regulatory affairs. When it comes to the environment, Congress passed 1,163 new laws between 1973 and 2006. Ms. Logomasini found that only 85 of those statutes reduced government regulation, while 795 increased it. The remaining were deemed to lack significant regulatory impact.

Five of the fifty volumes containing the federal regulatory code are devoted exclusively to environmental regulation and an additional twelve also address environmental regulation in some respect. The Small Business Administration concluded that environmental regulation is the leading regulatory expense for businesses with fewer than 20 employees, averaging $3,296 per worker.

Currently, the Environmental Protection Agency that generates the new laws and regulations is totally out of control. It has been on a regulatory binge anticipating a Congress controlled by Republicans. Nothing rational explains President Obama’s continued reference to greenhouse gas emissions, Green cars, and, especially, Green jobs when so many Americans are out of work..

The EPA, created by Richard Nixon with an executive order in 1970, has to be downsized to its original mandate, ensuring clean air and clean water. When it began to define rain puddles as navigable waters and ordinary dust as a pollutant, you have to know just how crazed and dangerous it has become.

It will take a generation or two for Americans to shake loose of the insanity that is environmentalism. Long seen as a religion, it seeks total control over every aspect of your life.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

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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.

Goodbye Global Warming, Hello Biodiversity ... Alan Caruba

Goodbye Global Warming, Hello Biodiversity
By Alan Caruba

After three decades of trying to push the global warming scam to a point where billions could be made selling and trading bogus “carbon credits”, the global schemers have abandoned it in the wake of 2009 revelations that a handful of rogue climate scientists were literally inventing the data to support it.

If there is one lesson to be learned from and about environmentalists, it is that they are utterly relentless. The ultimate goal is one-world government directed from the United Nations by unelected bureaucrats who are soulless strangers to the truth, to morality, to humanity.

The United States supports this abomination to the tune of billions every year.

The United Nations is a place where some of the world’s dictatorships have delegates representing them on its Human Rights Council, where a vast Oil-for-Food scandal flourished while Saddam Hussein held power in Iraq, where a single agency’s sole purpose is to ensure that Palestinians remain refugees six decades after the rebirth of Israel.

It is an organization where all manner of international treaties are ginned up to extend its control over the entire land mass and all the waters of the earth.

It is where the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) practiced its deceit, regularly documenting a rise in the earth’s average temperature even when a new natural cooling cycle began in 1998.

Everything that could be attributed to a phony global warming to keep the people of the world scared flowed from this enormous lie. It caused governments to invest billions into the worst forms of energy, wind and solar, along with endless other equally worthless “Green” programs.

So, now, permit me to introduce you to the NEXT Big Lie—biodiversity!

It is the claim that a “Global extinction crisis looms, new study says.” That’s the headline on an October 27 Washington Post article by Juliet Eilperin, the Post’s designated shameless scaremongering reporter.

In June, the delegates from 200 nations gathered in Busan, a South Korean port city, under the banner of the Intergovernmental Science Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), a platform just like the discredited IPCC, but with the goal of denying vast areas of the earth from the development needed to feed six billion people and provide the raw materials vital to the energy required for a modern technological society dependent on electricity and on transportation fuels.

The “reason” for this is the alleged extinction of “nearly 26,000 species across the globe.” The list was compiled by the International Union for Conservation of Nature that purports to count all the mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles, and fish in the world to determine how “imperiled” there.

The very idea evokes incredulity. It is laughable and it is impossible. In the same fashion people were told that the global warmers could predict the temperature of the Earth fifty to a hundred years from now, we are expected to believe that all current species are imperiled. Just as humans were blamed for a non-existent rise in the Earth’s temperature, human are blamed on a massive and fictional extinction.

Consider that, from the earliest forms of life on earth to the existence of present species all have been engaged daily in the act of killing and eating one another. Ruminants that dine on grasses and other vegetation remain the prey for predator species.

Consider that of all the species that ever existed on Earth, 99% are extinct.

Nicholas K. Dulvy, a co-author of the list of alleged endangered species, complained that “We’ve transformed a third of the habitable land on earth for food production.” Oh, heaven forbid that humans should have enough food!

So, naturally, as reporter Eilperin noted, “Environmental groups are pushing for a goal of protecting 25 percent of all land on earth and 15 percent of the sea by 2020” even though, under the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, roughly 14 percent of terrestrial areas and less than one percent of the ocean are already subject to so-called “environmental safeguards.”

Expect to begin hearing from yet a new group of “scientists” claiming that every creature from antelopes to zebras, from anteaters to weasels, albatrosses to vultures, crocodiles to vipers, and all the fish in the seas are doomed! Doomed! Doomed!

Billions of dollars that should go to feeding the hungry, caring for the sick, and all manner of humanitarian needs will be siphoned off by this new group of United Nations grifters and charlatans for endless “research” grants and, of course, more international meetings to discuss this horrible new crisis.

This is how the cruel enviro-mafia works. We have all had a taste of it since the late 1980s when the global warming hoax was first perpetrated. The biodiversity lie needs a quicker death.

Alan Caruba writes a daily post at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/. An author, business and science writer, he is the founder of The National Anxiety Center. © Alan Caruba, 2010

Good Intentions, Horrible Consequences ... Pastor David Rosales

Good intentions, horrible consequences
Destroying jobs and hurting families, in the name of preventing climate change
Pastor David Rosales

God does not judge us by our intentions, but by what we actually do. The consequences of our actions matter, both intended and unintended.

We need to keep that in mind, as our nation ponders whether to enact new rules that some say are needed to “break our addiction to oil,” prevent “dangerous global warming,” and replace hydrocarbon energy with “renewable” power.” These rules include climate and energy bills that some Senators want to enact after the November elections, and new regulations that the Environmental Protection Agency is already imposing on America’s transportation, construction and manufacturing industries.

The extent and importance of natural and human influences on the climate are hardly settled. Whether alternate energy sources, like wind and solar power, can actually provide sufficient energy for our dynamic, energy-dependent economy is equally subject to debate.
Meanwhile, other, more pressing questions are not being sufficiently addressed.

Few are more important than the impacts these rules are likely to have on poor and minority families. Proponents of climate change and renewable energy policies insist that the effects will be positive. However, Europe’s experience strongly suggests that the exact opposite would occur.
As Greece, Hungary and other countries teeter on the brink of bankruptcy, a new report notes that families in Eastern Europe are increasingly being forced to heat with wood and lignite coal, because they cannot afford electricity. This is leading to deforestation around cities, high levels of indoor air pollution and chronic lung diseases, in addition to rising carbon dioxide and soot emissions.

In England, high energy taxes, the closure of coal-fired power plants, and a legally mandated transition to “green” energy have sent prices soaring and put 5.5 million households in “fuel poverty” – meaning they can no longer afford to heat their homes properly. Soaring energy prices have forced companies to lay off workers, especially in energy-intensive industries.
Average annual energy bills climbed from $1,620 in 2005 to $2,250 by the end of 2009, the National Housing Federation says. Analysts for an energy switching company project that household bills could skyrocket to $8,000 by 2020. People have been shocked and angered, and pensioners are burning books to stay warm, because they are cheaper than “carbon-priced” coal otherwise used in small home heaters.

According to the NHF, some 25,000 more people died during the winter than during the summer – mostly poor pensioners with circulatory, respiratory and other health problems. That underlines the reality that cold weather is always more deadly than heat waves or a couple degrees increase in average global temperatures. It also underscores the importance of affordable energy.

American politicians claim none of this will happen here, because some of the hundreds of billions in new energy taxes raised under a cap-and-trade regime would be rebated to poor families.
But how will a $500 or so rebate to the poorest families help them and middle class households pay for $2,000-4,000 in higher annual energy, food, transportation, clothing, healthcare and other living expenses, caused by climate and renewable energy legislation? What about families whose breadwinners are laid off, because their employers had to reduce their work forces to pay soaring energy bills?

Energy cost rebates to poor families do nothing to help businesses and factories pay for electricity, heating, cooling, transportation and raw materials expenses that will likely add thousands or even millions to annual operating costs. They don’t help offices, shops, schools, hospitals, churches and other organizations pay energy costs that are rocketing upward.
School districts, for example, will have to pay far more to operate buses and heat buildings. That will mean increased debt, higher local taxes, teacher salary cuts and workforce reductions, or reduced music, athletic and special education programs.

Climate policies that are supposed to help reduce carbon emissions will, ironically, drive jobs overseas to countries that have less restrictive environmental protections than we do – and global carbon dioxide levels will continue to increase.

To impose costs like these – based on computer models, politicized science and bald assertions that fossil fuel use is causing a climate disaster – is morally wrong. It violates the trust we have placed (or misplaced) in our elected officials and our regulators.

Before taking any final action on climate and energy laws, politicians and regulators must demonstrate clearly and convincingly that we face an imminent manmade crisis, that their proposals will in fact prevent the crisis, and that they will safeguard families, businesses and workers from these devastating economic impacts. Thus far, they have failed to make that case.

It may be expedient politics to insist that “We have to do something,” for the sake of demonstrating concern or activity. But that is not leadership – and it isn’t moral to make workers and poor families pay for this folly.

David Rosales
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David Rosales is the Senior Pastor of Calvary Chapel Chino Valley, a Southern California church with more than 9,000 attendees, the national radio host of A Sure Foundation, and an Advisor for the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation.

Tilting At Windmills ... Benjamin B. Phillips

Editor's Note: The coming "Lame Duck" session of Congress, soon after the November 2nd Mid-Term Election, is shaping up to be a "knock down, drag 'em out" brawl! If the GOP reclaims the House of Representatives, Dems are expected to make multiple efforts to ram through much of their liberal-socialist agenda in a last chance "Banzai Charge."

The dems are so deeply invested in keeping the hoax of Global Warming/Climate Change alive they are expected to push a requirement that electric power companies must include renewable energy (wind, solar, geothermal) as part of their electricity generation efforts. Oh, and a part of the mandate is expected to be taxes that, of course, will be passed along to the consumer.

Benjamin B. Phillips, an assistant professor of systematic theology at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary's Houston Campus and a research fellow of the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, a national network of clergy, scientists, economists, and other experts has some interesting things to say about what we can expect. We thoght you might be interested in what Mr. Phillips has to say as sort of a "heads-up."

J. D. Longstreet
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Tilting at windmills
In its quixotic quest for renewable energy, the government is picking more losers than winners.
By: Benjamin B. Phillips

The Senate continues to consider a range of energy policy proposals, and may take one or more up during the “lame duck” session after the November elections. It is not yet clear which ones will emerge. However, some of the options include renewable electricity standards, requiring power companies to include renewable energy (wind, solar, geothermal) as part of their electricity generation mix, and do so in escalating percentages by specific dates – regardless of whether affordable, reliable technologies actually exist by those dates.

Alternatively, some other scaled-down energy bill could potentially be reconciled with the comprehensive cap-tax-and-trade scheme that the House passed last year.

A central element in each of these proposals will be ways in which the Federal government will try to “incentivize” business to reach federally mandated goals for energy savings and reduction of carbon dioxide emissions. Of course, taxation will be part of the mix, as will direct regulation. But another facet of any bill which passes the Senate is likely to be tax breaks and federal (taxpayer and consumer) subsidies for favored approaches to creating and saving energy.

In a period of economic recession and potentially catastrophic budget deficits, the cost-effectiveness of these proposals will be not only an economic and fiscal issue, but also a moral question. Proverbs teaches us that “in the house of the wise are stores of choice food and oil, but a foolish man devours all he has” (21:20). Our government has not been very wise about spending our tax money for quite a while, as our $13 trillion national debt shows.

Proverbs, and our recent history, prompts us to ask whether Senators can play the role of “the wise” when it comes to picking which technologies to subsidize, and which to ignore. Can Congress really legislate the most efficient and effective use of our money, when it comes to our choices about energy production and consumption? Does it have the expertise and wisdom – or the ability and willingness to do so outside the realm of politics and political favors?

Take as a test case the governmental push for wind turbines as a source of energy, in comparison to the “recycling” approach begun in Indiana a few years ago.

Wind power is at the cutting edge of environmental-chic. Images of wind farms, with their tall towers and rotating blades, simply scream “eco-friendly” (though no one wants them in their neighborhoods, and birds and bats don’t like them either). Politicians have rushed to spend taxpayer money on these projects – to the tune of $93 million in last year’s “Recovery Act” alone.
Yet wind-based electricity is notoriously unreliable (working only 7-hours a day on average) and expensive to construct (requiring 10 times more steel and concrete than other sources to produce the same amount of electricity less dependably). Wind is also expensive (and carbon-intensive) to back up, because it requires natural gas or coal-fired generators that kick in when the wind dies down or blows too hard; that’s about as energy-efficient as flooring your gas pedal every time the light turns green, only to slam on the breaks at each stoplight.

Even the claim that wind-projects create jobs is suspect. Spain’s wind program cost $754k for every job created, and one of President Obama’s recent “green jobs” proposals would spend over $1,000,000 per job created! All this for a technology that cannot compete with existing power sources without such subsidies.

“Recycled” power, on the other hand, does not receive such lavish support. Recycled power technologies are systems that use energy wasted from one process to fuel a second process. One prominent, recent example is the Arcelor Mittal steel mill in East Chicago, IN. This company installed boilers mounted over their blast furnaces to heat water into steam, which in turn powers turbines, which produce electricity for the plant. Arcelor Mittal is now saving over $100 million a year in electricity costs, all without direct government funding.

The point is not that recycled energy projects should be federally subsidized (though that would certainly be a better use of taxpayer dollars than wind farms). Instead, the point is that the government has picked wind as a “winner” over recycling energy projects like the one in East Chicago. It has bet our money on the wrong horse.

There is a better system for allocating the financial resources of the nation with regard to energy production and consumption. It is the free decisions of responsible persons in a free marketplace of goods, services and ideas, under reasonable and necessary regulations.

People, and thus companies, clearly want more environmental responsibility. They also want cost-effective solutions, instead of decisions made on the basis of how effective lobbyists are or how many campaign dollars come into political campaigns. Americans know how to find the greatest “bang for the buck.”

Federal energy policy should focus on liberating American ingenuity. It should not be in the business of picking winners and losers, tilting like Don Quixote at windmills that our legislators imagine are evil fossil-fuel-breathing dragons – or mandating and subsidizing gargantuan windmills that generate expensive electricity only 30% of the time.

When people are allowed to make free choices, “We the People” will show ourselves to be like the wise woman of Proverbs 31:18, who “sees that her trading is profitable, and her lamp does not go out at night.”
_______________

Benjamin B. Phillips is an assistant professor of systematic theology at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary's Houston Campus and a research fellow of the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, a national network of clergy, scientists, economists, and other experts committed to helping the poor and caring for the environment.

Wind Power Mirages ... Pastor Jay Dennis

Wind Power Mirages
Would generating more electricity from wind really help poor families or the environment?
Pastor Jay Dennis

We Americans are often told we must end our “addiction” to oil and coal, because they harm the environment and Earth’s climate. “Ecologically friendly” wind energy, some say, will generate 20% of America’s energy in another decade, greatly reducing carbon dioxide emissions and land use impacts from mining and drilling.

These claims are a driving force behind the cap-tax-and-trade and renewable energy bills that Congress may try to ram through during a “lame duck” session – as well as the Environmental Protection Agency’s economy-threatening regulations under its ruling that carbon dioxide “endangers human health and welfare.”

It is true that we are commanded to be good stewards of the Earth and resources God gave us. We should conserve energy, use it wisely, and minimize harmful impacts on lands and wildlife. But we also need to safeguard our health and that of our neighbors, preserve jobs, and help poor families build wealth and improve their standard of living. I want all children, not just mine, to have a better future.

Heaven knows I’m not an engineer. But Robert Bryce’s readable book, “Power Hungry,” has opened my eyes and helped me appreciate what it really means to be good stewards – and why we depend on hydrocarbons for 85% of the energy that keeps our homes, businesses and communities running smoothly.

Bryce points out that we are no more “addicted” to fossil fuels than we are to food, housing and clothing. It’s simply that fossil fuels give us more abundant, reliable and affordable energy, from less land, than any alternatives we have today. They enable us to have jobs, hospitals, cars, schools, factories, offices, stores – and living standards better than royalty enjoyed a mere century ago. As fossil fuel consumption increases, so does agriculture, commerce, mobility, comfort, convenience, health and prosperity.

Oil, natural gas, coal and gasoline also give us huge amounts of energy from small tracts of land. One oil well producing just ten barrels a day provides the energy equivalent of electricity from wind turbines on half of Delaware, according to Bryce.

Wind-based electricity is unreliable. It’s available only when the wind is blowing enough but not too hard. It can add to our electrical grid, but can’t be depended on to power a business or operating room. And no factory or city can get by just on wind power – not in my lifetime, anyway. Wind as a primary or dominant energy source is simply a mirage.

Wind turbines actually generate electricity only seven hours a day on average – and 2 hours a day on sweltering Texas summer days and frigid Minnesota winter nights. That means every watt of wind power must be backed up by gas-fired generators that kick in every time the turbine blades stop turning.

And that’s just the beginning.

Wind turbine farms need ten times more steel and concrete than a nuclear, coal or gas power plant for the same amount of electricity. You also need thousands of tons of raw materials for the backup generators and the thousands of miles of new transmission lines to get the electricity to cities hundreds of miles from the wind farms. All these materials have to be dug out of the ground someplace.

All that mining and manufacturing is powered by fossil fuels, which requires more mining and drilling. The backup power plants have to be running constantly – and then roar to full strength every time the wind dies down. That’s like having to stop your car repeatedly for red lights along miles of highway: idling and then gunning it to 55 mph over and over. That uses huge amounts of fuel and emits enormous amounts of carbon dioxide and pollutants. In the end, we barely reduce America’s CO2 emissions – and may actually increase them.

Finally, even with billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies, wind-based electricity is far more expensive than power generated by coal, natural gas or nuclear plants. That hurts families, sends business costs skyrocketing, and means people lose their jobs.

I’m not opposed to wind or solar or biofuels. I just don’t like it when our politicians, news media, environmental groups and government officials aren’t honest with us about these tradeoffs. Companies get fined for deceptive advertising. Politicians, journalists, eco-activists and bureaucrats should be held to the same standards.

Telling the truth is a basic moral principle. So is being a good steward of the Earth and its resources, by considering all the facts, the environmental impacts, and the harm to jobs and families from needlessly unreliable and expensive energy.

America can’t afford to shut down the fossil fuels that make our jobs and living standards possible – or slap huge new climate change taxes on them – before we have a real alternative to replace them, not just mirages.

___________

Jay Dennis is senior pastor of the 10,000-member Church at the Mall in Lakeland, Fla., and a senior advisor for the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation.

Environmental injustice en Español ... by Rev. Sam Rodriguez

Environmental Injustice en Español
Liberal Latino pressure groups’ campaign will drive up energy prices, kill jobs and hurt families
Rev. Sam Rodriguez

********

Nineteen Latino activist groups recently asked Congress and President Obama to oppose any attempts to delay or scale back proposed Environmental Protection Agency air pollution and climate regulations.

The groups’ letter cites EPA claims that “rising temperatures caused by human activities” would lead to higher levels of ground-level ozone, the main ingredient in smog. This they assert, again citing EPA claims, would lead to health problems in cities with large Hispanic populations, because low-income and minority communities are often less able to pay costs associated with heat-related health threats.

Therefore, they argue, any legislation that affects the proposed Clean Air Act initiatives “will severely jeopardize” public health and productivity in our communities. These initiatives are needed to ensure “environmental justice” and avoid “disproportionate impacts” from climate change in minority communities, by emphasizing renewable energy, better weatherization and “green jobs.”

My organization, the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, represents over 25,000 congregations and 16 million Hispanic Evangelical Christians. We were not consulted or asked to sign the letter. If we had been, we would have offered some very different insights and perspectives.

First, the legislative actions alluded to in the letter result from Congress’s failure to enact climate change, cap-and-trade and energy legislation. The House of Representatives did pass a complex, partisan, thousand-page monstrosity that no one read before legislators narrowly approved it. A similar bill died in the Senate, as the public began to rebel over its scope, growing scientific questions about “dangerous global warming,” and previous hurried votes on unread stimulus and healthcare bills whose hidden costs and regulatory landmines became apparent only after President Obama signed them into law.

EPA intends to use the Clean Air Act to regulate carbon dioxide – and thus major energy users, CO2 emission sources and huge sectors of the American economy – in the absence of congressional action, based on its assertion that this vital plant-fertilizing gas somehow “endangers human health and welfare.”

Many members of Congress, many states and numerous citizens are loath to give a single federal agency such vast powers. They insist that any such decision must be debated fully and openly, subjected to high standards of scientific evidence – and read carefully by lawmakers and voters, prior to any vote.

Second, many of the assertions made in the Latino activists’ letter and EPA documents are questionable, convoluted or based on a deplorable lack of understanding of energy, health and economic realities.

Yes, poor families, including many Hispanics, find it hard to pay for healthcare, including heat-related problems. However, driving up the cost of energy (and thus the cost of literally everything we eat, make, drive and do), impairing job creation and retention, and virtually ensuring brownouts and blackouts in the midst of heat waves and cold snaps, would undermine the very health, economic and environmental justice goals the Latino groups claim to champion.

Global warming could arguably increase summer temperatures and heat waves. However, heat-related health problems would become far worse if families cannot afford air conditioning, or wind-generation makes their electricity as unreliable as in many Third World countries. Those conditions would make even a 0.01 degree rise in average global temperature deadly.

Moreover, far more people die during the winter, especially when they cannot afford adequate heat. For millions of Hispanic and other minority families that live in our northern states, this would become a serious health threat, because the proposed EPA rules would dramatically increase heating costs. Worse, they would do so for little health or environmental benefit, because automobile, factory and power plant emissions have already been reduced way below 1970 levels – and most mercury emissions and microscopic soot now come from volcanoes, forest fires and overseas sources.

Although atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have been rising steadily, even scientists who worry about “dangerous” warming now acknowledge that there has been no warming since 1995. This undermines EPA’s claim that carbon emissions pose a health threat. And even if the United States eliminated nearly all its CO2 emissions, global levels would continue to rise, because China, India and other emerging economic powerhouses are using far more coal and oil energy.

Indeed, EPA itself admitted in a June 3, 2010 Federal Register notice that regulating emissions from US cars and trucks would reduce average global temperatures by an undetectable 0.002 degrees by 2100. The agency also admits that regulating factories, power plants, cement kilns, and large office and apartment buildings under its onerous global warming rules and permitting requirements would “slow construction nationwide for years” and cause “adverse impacts” on US economic development.

In other words, EPA’s new rules might result in jobs and “cash for caulkers,” perhaps with much of the funding channeled from taxpayers through the Latino groups that wrote the letter. But the rules would cost millions of factory, construction and other jobs – for little or no environmental benefit.

Official US unemployment remains mired at 9.6 percent. That’s the 14th consecutive month it’s been over 9.5% – the worst streak since the Great Depression. EPA’s rules would only make this worse.

One of the groups signing the letter claims Latino voters are willing to pay more to protect the environment. Are Hispanics really that eco-conscious? A 2009 Wilson Research Strategies poll found that 76% of black Americans are unwilling to pay more than $50 more per year for electricity, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. A September 2010 Ipsos Public Affairs poll found that half of all Americans are unwilling to pay even $60 more per year in total energy costs.

If only reality were so kind. Studies by the Brookings Institution, Heritage Foundation, Congressional Budget Office and others found that the House-passed climate bill would add $1,500 to $3,000 to the average family’s annual energy bill! It would raise electricity rates 90-130% and gasoline prices 60-140% after adjusting for inflation. EPA rules would have similar impacts.

We should not be surprised. Over in Britain, where they have already imposed a host of “green energy” and “climate protection” laws, energy prices are already soaring, 5.5 million households have been driven into “fuel poverty” – and 25,000 more elderly people died during the winter than during the summer.

The fact is, when energy and regulatory compliance costs increase, building construction slows, businesses stop hiring or lay people off, the cost of everything we do soars higher, the vaunted Hispanic entrepreneurial spirit is stifled, and poor people’s hopes of achieving the American Dream are thwarted. This is not “environmental justice.” This is perverse, unnecessary and unacceptable.

Speaking of polls, a brand new Pew Hispanic Center survey found that Latinos are far less enthusiastic about heading to the polls this November than in 2008. That makes the timing and thrust of this activist letter smell like an effort to energize these reluctant voters and buttress White House and EPA agendas on energy, climate change and a new “green economy.”

Weatherproofing homes and improving energy efficiency are generally good things. But if cash for caulkers is the quid for the quo of activist groups promoting government agendas that drive up energy costs and kill jobs, we have a serious problem. For then politicized groups and their leaders profit at the expense of those they claim to represent. That is environmental injustice en Español. And it is wrong.

Rev. Sam Rodriguez
**************
Rev. Sam Rodriguez is president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference and co-chair of the Affordable Power Alliance, a humanitarian coalition of civil rights, minority, small business, senior citizen and faith-based organizations that champion access to affordable energy: http://www.affordablepoweralliance.org/

No Science, Fake Science, and the Deliberate Destruction of the Nation ... Alan Caruba

No Science, Fake Science, and the Deliberate Destruction of the Nation

By Alan Caruba

Any scientist who has not sold his soul to the environmental movement will tell you that the reason that greenhouse gases, primarily carbon dioxide (CO2), do not cause any warming is due to the fact that they have to conform to the laws of thermodynamics. The first law states that “energy can be neither created nor destroyed. It can only change form.” Energy produced by coal, natural gas, oil, or nuclear is energy that has changed from one form of matter to another.

The attack on these sources of energy is a direct attack on the economic success of America and it is one that is at a dangerous peak of activity generated by the Obama administration, primarily through the Environmental Protection Agency.

There is simply no such thing as “dirty energy.” The push for so-called clean or renewable energy is a fiction to advance the use of the two worst, most unpredictable and unreliable forms of energy, solar and wind. They exist solely because of government subsidies and mandates. They produce little over three percent of the energy used nationwide every day.

The September 12 edition of Bloomberg Businessweek addressed this in an article, “Lisa Jackson’s High-Wire Act on Carbon Controls.” What the article did not say was that, if the EPA gains the authority to control carbon dioxide, it will literally control all business and industrial activity in the nation as well as the lives of all Americans. What the article did not say is that there is no scientific justification for controlling CO2 because it plays no role in the so-called “climate change”, the new language being used to avoid saying “global warming.” It should be evident to a kindergartner that humans not only do not affect the climate, but have no control over it.

The environmental movement that has devoted decades and millions to perpetrate the greatest science fraud in the history of mankind has backed away from “global warming” for the obvious reason that the Earth has been in a cooling cycle for the past decade, the result of a reduction in solar activity, a dormant period that has a long history of preceding periods of cooling.

One of President Obama’s goals has been to secure legislation, known as “Cap-and-Trade” that would authorize a scheme by which “carbon credits” would be bought and sold by utilities and industry for the right to produce and use energy. It is part of the global warming fraud and its sole purpose is political power while enriching a few insiders betting on the expansion of alternative energy sources.

As the Business Week article noted, the EPA has been attempting to exert authority over CO2, but has been doing so "cautiously" to avoid evoking a public outcry against it. Thus, Lisa Jackson has offered a “tailored” approach “that exempts mom-and-pop dry cleaners and pizza parlors and initially regulates only power plants and oil refineries.” The effect on oil refineries would drive up the cost of gasoline and every other oil derivative. Under the Clean Air Act, however, the EPA does not have this authority as CO2 is exempt from such action. Moreover, as noted, there is zero need to control CO2 as a threat to the environment because, without it, all life on Earth would not exist. It is CO2 that is the vegetative equivalent of oxygen that maintains all animal life. The two are symbiotic and have been for billions of years.

Americans and people worldwide have been deluged with fake science based entirely on computer models whose results have been deliberately skewed to produce results that affirm CO2 as a primarily factor affecting the Earth’s climate. It is not. As Dr. Klaus L.E. Kaiser has noted in his book, “Convenient Myths”, and in articles on the subject, “The atmosphere contains currently a bit less than 0.04% CO2. The rest is mainly oxygen (20%) and nitrogen (79%).” This represents an increase since the Industrial Age when the amount was an infinitesible 0.03%.

If all the CO2 produced by power plants and the use of coal, oil, and natural gas was reduced to levels the EPA and environmental groups deem “safe” it would have zero affect on the atmosphere.

As Dr. Klaus noted, “Nearly all life on earth depends on the presence of CO2 in the atmosphere. Without any CO2, the Earth would be a barren place like the moon, or our neighboring planets, Venus and Mars.”

The EPA is lying to Americans using fake science. On July 29, 2010 it refused to “reconsider its greenhouse gas endangerment finding.” It avoided citing any of the scientists in its employ, instead it quoted the chief scientist of the Environmental Defense Fund, an organization that is entirely devoted to the global warming fraud. That so-called scientist, Dr. Steven Hamburg, said “The science behind EPA’s finding is strong. Now America needs to forge clean energy solutions that reduce the vast pollution discharged into our air.”

That is a lie. Indeed, more CO2 in the atmosphere would be extremely beneficial, aiding larger crop yields to feed Americans and others worldwide. It would improve the health and vitality of the planet’s forests. Ads on television touting “carbon sequestration” are part of the lie.To sum up, Cap-and-Trade and any control of CO2 is in its simplest terms, a vehicle to destroy the nation’s economy. You won’t read that in the BusinessWeek article, but it is a truth that cannot be denied and it is a battle for the future of the nation that must be won against this administration, against the EPA, and against the environmental organizations that have devoted themselves to this purpose.

Alan Caruba

Alan Caruba writes a daily post at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/. An author, business and science writer, he is the founder of The National Anxiety Center.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

End environmental experiments on Africans! ... Fiona Kobusingye

End environmental experiments on Africans!
Fiona Kobusingye

I wish I had a shilling for every time someone told me spraying homes with
DDT to prevent malaria is like using Africans in evil experiments. I would
be a rich woman.

That claim is a blatant falsehood. Even worse, it hides the many ways poor
Africans really are being used in environmental experiments that cause
increased poverty, disease and death.

If any people were ever used in DDT experiments, it was Americans and
Europeans. During World War II, this insecticide and mosquito repellant was
sprayed on tents and around camps to keep American and British soldiers from
getting malaria. After the war, millions of concentration camp survivors,
and millions of German and Italian citizens were sprayed with DDT (right on
their bodies) to prevent typhus.

Then in the 1950s and 1960s, America and Europe sprayed huge amounts of DDT
all over, as a critical part of their campaign to eradicate malaria. Yes,
they still had malaria in those countries! But not anymore.

Numerous scientific and medical studies found that DDT was safe, and that it
did not cause cancer or other health problems worse that skin rashes, even
with high levels of exposure. Anti-insecticide activists still say "some
experts think" DDT "may be linked" to things such as low birth weights in
newborn babies, lactation failure in nursing mothers or slight reductions in
mental power. However, they have never been able to prove any of this - and
we know malaria clearly does cause these problems.

America and Europe banned DDT anyway, but only after they had used it to
eliminate malaria. And in Africa we only want to spray a little on the walls
of houses, to keep mosquitoes out, keep them from biting if they do come in
the house, and save millions of lives! Nothing else works as well, at any
price.

America and Europe used a chemical (DDT) that environmentalists now claim is
dangerous. But the chemical got rid of malaria. Nobody got cancer or other
health problems from DDT.

Just as important, around the same time, thousands of brave American and
Canadian parents let their children be used in another health experiment:
they had them inoculated with the Salk vaccine, to see if it would prevent
polio. It worked! And it started a worldwide program that has almost
eliminated that terrible disease.

If Africans used DDT for indoor residual spraying, they will be using a
chemical that America, Europe, India, South Africa, Ethiopia, Mozambique,
Namibia, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe have all shown is effective in
fighting malaria, and safe for people and the environment.

But environmentalists still say, don't do it in Uganda, Rwanda and other
countries where malaria is still killing our parents and babies. They say we
should just use bed nets, ACT drugs and maybe some Icon. These things
certainly help. But they only reduce malaria by 30% or so - whereas we could
prevent and almost eradicate this disease, if we would also use DDT.

Bluntly put, environmentalists are using African parents and children in
anti-DDT experiments. Against all the evidence from decades of using only
nets and drugs and maybe other insecticides, they want to keep ignoring DDT
as a long-lasting spatial insect repellant. They want to keep us doing what
has at best worked only partially, on the assumption that maybe it will work
better next year - or that a 30% malaria reduction is good enough.

They are playing with our lives. So are the government agencies, health NGOs
and others who support their policies. This is wrong and immoral. And it is
only one of the ways they use Africans as experimental laboratory animals.
They are also denying us access to other modern technologies that can
improve and save lives.

600 million people in sub-Sahara Africa live on two million shillings ($900
USD) or less per year. Nearly 700 million never have electric power for
lights, refrigeration, schools, shops and clinics - or have it only a few
hours per week. Millions die from diseases that would be prevented, if they
did not have to burn wood and dung, and had safe water, better healthcare
and higher living standards that reliable, affordable electrical power would
bring.

But environmentalists constantly block coal, gas and hydro-electric power
plants. They want us to live in experimental societies where people get
whatever limited electrical power can be generated day to day with wind
turbines or solar panels. They pressured the World Bank to reject loan
applications for power plants in Ghana and South Africa, and support
President Obama when he says Africans should focus on wind, solar and
bio-fuel power, instead of fossil fuels.

Meanwhile, they live in wealthy countries, with all the electrical power
they need. With the health, opportunity and prosperity electrical power
brings. With freedom and mobility that cars and fossil fuels bring. With
blessings most Africans can only dream of.

Radical greenies also oppose agricultural technologies that would bring a
green revolution to Africa. They denounce seeds that have been "touched by
corporations" - even hybrid, but especially biotech seeds - that produce
bigger, more nutritious crops, resist plant diseases like banana wilt and
cassava brown streak, survive droughts, thrive in nutrient-poor or saline
soils, and require fewer pesticide applications.

They want us to rely on traditional "open-pollinated" seeds that have lower
germination rates and crop yields - seeds that require more land and more
backbreaking labor, but generate so little income that farmers stay
impoverished for life, and people continue to starve.

China and India put up with this immoral eco-colonialism for decades.
Finally, they had enough. They refused to be the environmentalists'
experimental pawns any longer. They took charge of their own destinies,
charted their own future, financed their own projects, and refused to be
stopped again by anti-development green policies, politicians and pressure
groups.

Uganda, the Great Lakes Region and all of Africa need to do the same thing.
We have the land and natural resources, the bright and hard working people.
Let us be brave and bold! Let us become prosperous and healthy together.
__________
Fiona Kobusingye is co-chair of the Congress of Racial Equality Uganda and
Kill Malarial Mosquitoes Now coalition.

The EPA Must Be Stopped! ... Alan Caruba

The EPA Must Be Stopped!

By Alan Caruba

*************
On August 12, the Environmental Protection Agency sent out a press release, “EPA Proposes Rules on Clean Air Act Permitting for Greenhouse Gas Emissions”.

It is a frontal attack on the U.S. economy that is currently in the throes of a decline that has not been seen since the Great Depression.

If the EPA succeeds in this Big Lie, the provision of affordable energy in America will cease.

“The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is proposing two rules to ensure that businesses planning to build new, large facilities or make major expansions to existing ones will be able to obtain Clean Air Act permits that address their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.”

The Clean Air Act does not cover carbon dioxide (CO2) which the EPA deems the primary GHG. This is because it poses no threat to the environment and, indeed, is a vital and essential element of the environment insofar as all vegetation from a blade of grass to a giant Sequoia tree is dependent on it for growth.

Moreover, the proposed regulation of CO2 is based on the global warming fraud that says that it is responsible for a significant warming of the planet. There is not a scintilla of proof of this and, indeed, the Earth is presently in one of its natural cycles of cooling, not warming.

Thus, there is no scientific justification for the regulation of carbon dioxide no matter how many times the EPA says there is.

The EPA release says “projects that will increase GHG emissions substantially will require an air permit.”

If American industry, particularly the targeted “power plants and oil refineries”, are required to get GHG permits, it will put yet another huge sector of the nation’s economy under the thumb of the most insidious exponents of the global warming fraud, enemies of any economic growth.

“The Tailoring Rule covers large industrial facilities like power plants and oil refineries that are responsible for 70 percent of the GHGs from stationary sources,” says the EPA news release.

What it doesn’t say is that this power to regulate that does not exist in the present Clean Air Act.

It will cause electricity costs to skyrocket along with gasoline and all other oil derivatives. It will utterly wreck the U.S. economy that is already in dire straits.

If an invading nation had imposed these kinds of restrictions on Americans, we would be in the streets with guns and any other means to fight them.

There is NO global warming. Carbon dioxide plays NO role in this non-event.

This is regulation by deception, by lies, by the arrogance of environmentalists who view the human race as a cancer on the planet.

And, naturally, they have waited until Congress has gone on recess to “propose” this attack on the nation.

Take action! Contact your Representatives and Senators. Drown the White House in protests.

The EPA must be stopped!

Alan Caruba
*****************
Alan Caruba blogs daily at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/. An author, science and business writer, he is the founder of The National Anxiety Center.© Alan Caruba

Climate Proposals Threaten Pursuit Of Happiness And Justice ... Paul Driessen

Climate proposals threaten pursuit of happiness and justice
New study documents harmful effects of “cap-and-trade” and “endangerment” schemes
Paul Driessen
***********************
Environmental justice demands that the United States address global warming, the gravest threat facing minority Americans, insist the EPA, Congressional Black Caucus and White House. Are they serious?


The alleged threat pales next to unwed teen motherhood, school dropouts, murder and other crime. But even assuming human carbon dioxide emissions will cause average global temperatures to rise a few degrees more than they have already since the Little Ice Age ended, it is absurd to suggest that any such warming would harm minorities more than policies imposed in the name of preventing climate change.


Human activities have not replaced the complex natural forces that drove climate change throughout Earth’s history. But even if manmade greenhouse gases do contribute to planetary warming, slashing US emissions to zero would bring no benefit, because steadily rising emissions from China, India, Brazil and other rapidly growing economies would almost instantly replace whatever gases we cease emitting.


Most important, fossil fuels power the economic engine that ensures justice and opportunity in America today. Policies that make energy less reliable and affordable reduce business revenues and profits, shrink investment and innovation, imperil economic recovery, and hobble job creation, civil rights, and the pursuit of happiness and the American dream.


Whether they take the form of cap-and-trade, carbon taxes, restrictions on drilling and coal mining, or EPA rules under its claim that carbon dioxide “endangers” human health and welfare, anti-energy policies frustrate the natural desire of poor and minority Americans to improve their lives.


As to coping with higher temperatures, restrictive energy policies send electricity prices skyrocketing, making it harder for low-income households to afford air conditioning, and putting lives at risk. They send poor families back to pre-AC misery of bygone eras, like the 1896 heat wave that killed 1,300 people in New York City’s sweltering tenements. In wintertime, they make heating less affordable, again putting lives at risk.


I recently documented the connection between energy policies and civil rights. My “Justice through Affordable Energy for Wisconsin” report focuses on the Dairy State, where I grew up. However, its lessons apply to every state, especially the 26 that get 48-98% of their electricity from coal or have a strong manufacturing base. (The full report can be found at http://www.cfact.org/)

Energy is the foundation for America’s jobs, living standards, and everything we make, grow, eat, wear, transport and do. Climate change bills, energy taxes and renewable energy mandates deliberately restrict supplies of reliable, affordable hydrocarbon energy – sending shockwaves through the economy.


Fossil fuels generate three-fourths of Wisconsin’s electricity, keeping costs low and enabling its $45-billion-a-year manufacturing sector to compete in a tough global marketplace. Hydrocarbons sustain thousands of jobs in agriculture, tourism and other sectors of the state’s economy. They ensure that hospitals and clinics can offer high-tech diagnostic, surgical and treatment services.


They enable school districts, families, churches, shops and government offices to operate in the black. Soaring fuel and electricity prices would force schools to spend millions more for buses, heating and lighting. That would mean higher taxes – or reduced music, sports, language and special education programs. Poor and minority neighborhoods would be impacted worst.


Small and minority businesses are often young and undercapitalized. Increasing their operating costs, while decreasing the disposable income of their customers, puts them on the verge of bankruptcy.


“A single worker in our Rhinelander fabrication plant can do the work of ten who do not have access to cranes, welding machines, plasma burners and all other machinery that allows us to cut, bend and fabricate steel up to six inches thick, and make all kinds of heavy equipment,” says Oldenburg Group executive vice president Tim Nerenz. But the machinery and facilities are energy-intensive. If energy costs rise, the company would have to cut wages and benefits or lay off workers, as contract prices are fixed and overseas competition is fierce.


Indoor pools and other facilities make tourism a year-round industry, sustaining local economies during frigid Wisconsin winters, making resorts like the Chula Vista Resort in Wisconsin Dells popular jumping-off points for cross country skiing, snowmobiling and dining. Rising energy costs would reduce family vacations, hammer bottom lines, force layoffs, and cause foreclosures throughout these communities.


In every case, it is blue-collar workers, low and moderate income families, minorities and the elderly that are affected most severely.


Nor are these impacts likely to be offset by “green” jobs. As Spain, Germany and other countries have discovered, wind and solar power require constant infusions of money from increasingly strapped taxpayers and energy consumers. When the economy sours, the subsidies disappear, and so do the jobs.


Wind and solar electricity is expensive, intermittent and unreliable – necessitating expensive gas-powered backup generators, and further damaging family and business budgets. Plus, most of the jobs will be in China and India, where low energy and labor costs, and access to rare earths and other raw materials that America refuses to mine, supply wind turbine and solar panel factories that easily under-price US firms.


The entire cap-tax-and-trade, renewable energy and green-jobs edifice is a house of cards, propped up by claims that humans are affecting the Earth’s climate. As EPA and EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson repeatedly assert, “Climate change is already happening, and human activity is a contributor.”


However, that is not the issue. The issue is whether our use of fossil fuels is now the dominant factor in global warming and cooling, and whether future manmade climate change will be catastrophic. There is no replicable or credible evidence to support that proposition.


Headline-grabbing disaster scenarios forecast for 50 or 100 years in the future are the product of speculation, assumptions, unreliable computer models, and articles by climate activists falsely presented as peer-reviewed scientific papers in IPCC reports, news stories and political speeches. As my Wisconsin study explains, they are not supported by actual data and observations regarding historic and current global temperatures, ice caps, glaciers, sea levels, rainforests or cyclical weather patterns.


Energy taxes and subsidies, renewable energy mandates, soaring prices for everything we need – and severe impacts on families, businesses, jobs, opportunities, living standards and basic civil rights – might be justified if we did indeed face a manmade climate disaster. But even then we should carefully examine the costs and benefits of any proposed actions.


We should determine whether slashing fossil fuel use will stabilize our planet’s ever-turbulent climate, and whether our limited resources might be better spent on adapting to future changes, natural and manmade, just as our ancestors did.


If global warming science is inaccurate, dishonest, slanted or fraudulent, there is even less justification.


We cannot have justice without opportunity, or opportunity without energy. We cannot have justice by sharing scarcity, poverty and skyrocketing energy prices more equally – especially on the basis of erroneous, speculative or manipulated climate science.


We must therefore be forever vigilant, to ensure that Congress does not slip cap-tax-and-trade proposals through during a post-election lame-duck session – and EPA does not shackle our economy and civil rights progress with its job-killing “endangerment” rules.

Paul Driessen
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Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) and Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power - Black death.