Filed under: Environment, Global Warming, Junk Science, Politics, Science/Technology | Tags: Dr. Tim Ball, Endangered Species, Phony Statistics
Climate Scientist Dr. Tim Ball said recently that 83 percent of all statistics are made up on the spot. Probably true, as it is becoming established that the computer models proclaimed to predict future climate aren’t predicting anything.
A good example is a 2008 report that claimed,
Human activity is wiping out close to one percent of every other species on Earth every year, a global environmental report said Friday.
What absolute rubbish. They can’t possibly substantiate these claims. We don’t know how many species there are. We don’t have even crude estimates of populations. We don’t know how much population numbers vary. What do they mean by “every other”? They should name all the species that comprise their claims.
Numbers in the 2008 Report are part of the ridiculous, completely unscientific claims made originally by E.O. Wilson about species extinction. Self-proclaimed Canadian environmentalist David Suzuki traveled across the country a few years ago claiming the demise of 2 species an hour. He wouldn’t name any of them because it’s a false claim. …
Animal populations and distributions vary considerably over time. Every report of decline or discovery in a new location is now attributed to human induced climate change or other human activity. Perhaps the most outrageous is the claim of humans hunting Ice Age species to extinction. All ignore natural variability, but that is the pattern of anti-humanity environmental hysteria. As Lord Dunsany said,
It is very seldom that the same man knows much of science, and about the things that were known before science came.
Do read the whole thing, Dr. Ball gives some wonderful examples of how false statistics have led us astray. Now that the computer climate models on which global warming alarmism depends have been shown to be fraudulent, their predictions false, and the vast enterprises spawned by a fear that the climate was warming shown to be a waste of funds, waste of regulation and waste of concern. I wish someone would tell President Obama.
Filed under: Energy, Environment, Freedom, Global Warming, Humor, Junk Science, Politics, Science/Technology | Tags: 15 Years Without Warming, Bonn Climate Talks, The Models Don't Work
The latest round of UN Climate talks has been going on in Bonn. People from the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) were on hand and thought it might be a good idea to see if delegates were aware of the fact that global temperatures have stopped rising for the last fifteen years? Well, no, they are unaware, and hilarity ensues. Facts don’t really matter to them anyway. You must not question their religious faith. They believe.
Increases in CO2 are not the cause of warming temperatures. Warming temperatures are the cause of increases in CO2. Don’t worry, be happy. You just had it backwards.
Filed under: Capitalism, Democrat Corruption, Economy, Energy, Junk Science, Religion | Tags: A Hidden Agenda, Cost Benefit Analysis, Doing it the Sneaky Way
Now that we have established, once again, that the climate models cannot predict anything, and that increases in CO2 don’t cause warming temperatures, but warming temperatures cause increases in CO2 — Obama has quietly raised the ‘carbon price’ to combat climate change.
This was buried in a little-noticed rule on microwave ovens. [Now what are they doing to our microwaves?] It is a change in the U.S. government’s accounting for carbon emissions that can have wide-ranging implications for everything from power plants to the Keystone XL pipeline.
The increase in the so-called ‘social cost’ of carbon to $38 a metric ton in 2015, from $23.80 adjusts the calculation the government uses to weigh costs and benefits of proposed regulations. This is meant to approximate the losses from global warming such as flood damage and diminished crops. “Cult science!”
And “cult science” leads to “cult math.” Anything from new mileage standards to clean energy loans will seem more valuable in its cost-benefit analysis. Environmentalists, or cult scientists, can use the cost-benefit analysis to fight projects that they oppose, like the Keystone XL pipeline , or any coal mining on public lands. That these projects would create thousands of highly paid jobs, and plentiful cheap energy can now be attacked on the basis of cost-benefit analysis based on false figures. The cult science folks won’t give up easily.
As we learn that climate damage is worse and worse, there is no direction they could go but up,” Laurie Johnson, chief economist for climate at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said in an interview. Johnson says the administration should go further; she estimates the carbon cost could be as much as $266 a ton.
This sort of thing is supposed to be opened to public comment, but the Obama administration often does things behind closed doors. That’s why they are so embroiled in scandals. Expect it to get worse. Obama will attempt to get what he wants through executive order and regulation. The EPA will have all sorts of rules coming up to deprive us of cheap efficient power and force us into dependence on expensive, inefficient wind and solar.
Obama is determined that one of his great accomplishments will be saving us from the rise of the oceans and beginning the healing of the planet. The attempt to force us to rely on “clean energy” from wind and solar will collapse, because the technologies won’t work — wind is too intermittent and solar is too diffuse, and we an only make them useful at all by supporting them with ordinary energy.
Filed under: Education, Environment, Global Warming, Junk Science, Science/Technology | Tags: "Model World' v."Real World", Helmut Schmidt University Presentation, Professor Murry Salby
Climate “Model World” Diverges Starkly from “Real World”
The world-renowned astrophysicist Professor Murry Salby of Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia made a presentation in Hamburg, Germany at Helmut Schmidt University on April 18, as part of a European tour.
Professor Salby is the author of the textbook Physics of the Atmosphere and Climate (Cambridge University Press) and Fundamentals of Atmospheric Physics (Academic Press).
He recently caused excitement with new findings on the relationship of the 12C-and 13C isotopes and the development of CO2-concentration. From the findings he concluded that the anthropogenic emissions only had a slight impact on the global CO2-concentrations. They are mainly a consequence of temperature changes. This relationship is known up to now only from the warming phases after the last ice ages. Professor Salby extends this relationship to our current climate development. (From Die kalte Sonne)
Most of the presentation is very mathematical and technical. But the last 10 minutes sum up everything very nicely for laypersons.
At the 1:04:05 mark he sums it up neatly:
CO2 then evolves not like temperature, as it does in the model, but like the integral of temperature. In dotted blue is the integral of observed temperature. It closely tracks observed CO2 — even after the 1990s when the observed record of CO2 and temperature clearly diverged. If CO2 tracks the integral of temperature, which it clearly does, it cannot track temperature, which it clearly doesn’t.
In the model, CO2 and temperature are related directly. In the real world they are also related, but differently. The distinctly different relationship between CO2 and global temperature represents a fundamental difference its evolution in the model world and the real world. If the global energy balance is wrong, everything else is window dressing.
—”In the Real World global temperature is not controlled exclusively by CO2, as it is in the Model World.
—In significant part, however, CO2 is controlled by Global Temperature, as it is in the Proxy Record.”
At the end of his presentation, Salby implies, quoting Richard Feynman, that CO2 science today can be described as “Cult Science.”
He sums up, quoting Feynman: “If it differs from observations, then it’s wrong. That’s all there is to it.”
______________________
And yesterday from the “Cult Science ” bunch, this wonderful piece:
“It’s Too Late: Fight Against Climate Change Has Failed”
Dana Milbank, of the Washington Post, ventures forth to explain how it’s all over. The flood walls to protect downtown Washington from a rising Potomac River have never been finished. The fight against climate change, the cause celebre of the environmental movement for more than a decade, has failed in its primary purpose. In the race to prevent disaster, it’s already too late.
Among climate-change activists, the realization is spreading that the combination of political inaction on greenhouse gases, plentiful new petroleum supplies and accelerating changes in weather patterns means there is no escaping more life-altering floods, droughts and fires. Although ongoing efforts to reduce carbon emissions could mitigate even worse catastrophe, momentum has shifted in part to preparing for the inevitable consequences of a warmer planet.
Mayor Bloomberg rolled out a $19.5 billion plan Tuesday “to prepare for the impacts of a changing climate. By midcentury, up to a quarter of all New York City’s land area, where 800,000 residents live today will be in the flood plain, and 40 miles of our waterfront could see flooding on a regular basis just during normal high tides.”
Do read the whole thing. This is Cult Science at its best. These people can never grasp the difference between weather and climate.
Filed under: Democrat Corruption, Domestic Policy, Energy, Environment, Global Warming, Junk Science, National Security | Tags: Affordable Energy, Crony Capitalism, Offshore-Wind Market?
The Obama administration Department of the Interior has long busied themselves with preparations for the country’s first-ever federal offshore-wind lease sales, and the administration plans to start with a plot off the Atlantic coast that they hope will prove what a potential offshore-wind market will look like. Will there be any interest? Depends on how much subsidy Interior is promising.
“Trust us,” the wind industry intoned, “the enormous public investment is just seed-funding. It will be well worth it if costs fall in the cause of saving Mother Gaia.”
Energy insiders never bought it. The Victorians replaced windmills with steam driven machinery because they weren’t cost-efficient enough. But it’s easy to understand why Joe Average and populist politicos bought it. After all, aren’t most of us suckers for fictional romantic notions of wafting windmills able to harness the wind and create ‘free energy?’
Except that’s not how it worked out in the real world:
(Peter C.Glover)
Sally Jewell, the new Secretary of the Interior, and former head of consumer co-op REI, said “If there is good interest in this one, then I think you will have this happening on a consistent basis.” She said Interior considered many factors, including which areas would yield the highest potential for wind power while avoiding bird migration patterns and shipping lanes. Timing for developing a commercial offshore wind industry, she added, is up to the private sector. “The market will dictate, but we certainly don’t want to get in the way.”
Numerous articles document how European climate policies have been disastrous for affordable energy, economic growth, entire industries, people’s jobs and welfare, wildlife habitats and human lives.
The Obama administration is still trying to save the earth from global warming, though even the IPCC is admitting that there hasn’t been any warming in 15 years, even while CO2 continues to increase (and green the world). The president has shown no signs of approving the Keystone XL. The administration ignores the fact that wind farms are killing thousands of eagles, bats and other birds, and in spite of the fact that eagles are a federally protected species and it is a crime to kill one. Most European countries are recognizing that their huge investment in wind energy has been a flop, and are trying to reconsider. In the meantime, they are buying wood to fuel their power stations — that they get from American forests. Go figure.
The Sierra Club has long since changed from an environmental club that wanted to protect the Sierra mountains, into a radical environmental group. They have just decided to go whole “Deep Ecology,” and oppose any form of energy other than wind and solar. Even hydro is a problem for them because they’d prefer to tear down dams. This is all quite precious and sensitive, but would leave Americans freezing to death in a cooling climate. We can adapt to slight rises in heat, but cold kills. Wind and solar just don’t produce enough energy to even begin to power our country. It simply does not and cannot work.
Top Swedish climate scientist Dr. Lennart Bengstrom wrote: Warming is not noticeable —the warming we have had in the last 100 years is so small, if we didn’t have climate scientists to measure it, we would not have noticed. Sea level has risen fairly evenly for 100 years by 2 -3 mm per year. The pitch has not accelerated.
So there you have it. This president will continue to push more money into wind and solar, probably directed to his cronies, and continue to leave fossil fuels out of his “all of the above” energy plan, though he is happy to take credit for the rise in our natural gas and oil production on private lands that he had nothing whatsoever to do with.
Filed under: Democrat Corruption, Global Warming, Junk Science, Media Bias, Progressivism, The Constitution | Tags: Not Exactly Peace in Our Time, Republicans v. Democrats, The Real Battle
The extreme differences between the thinking of Liberals and that of Conservatives is an endlessly distasteful obsession of mine. If you read some of the early fulminations in the media upon the election of Barack Obama, it’s clear that he was widely regarded as someone who would bring the two warring camps in Washington together. Bipartisanship. Bringing people together — peace in our time.
It was only talk. Liberals want to do away with Conservatives, not get along with them. Their hatred for Conservatives is palpable — because we disagree. They don’t just want to defeat us in elections, they want us unable to compete at all. Liberals are apt to approach subjects emotionally, to turn to those who agree with them and reject those who don’t. They say silly things about the right because their understanding comes from what their friends say — they have no direct experience of conservatives. Haven’t you noticed that they all say the same thing at the same time?
For example, Liberals want to raise the minimum wage. They feel deeply for the poor, and think it is just plain mean to expect someone to support a family on the minimum wage at $7 an hour. The minimum wage is meant to be a starting point for beginners, not families. Studies show when it is raised too much, businesses are unwilling to pay people while they are trained to perform the most minimum tasks adequately. Increasing the minimum wage eliminates the first step on the ladder of lifetime employment. Liberals are not interested in studies.
What got me started on this was a video on the Boston Herald site. A female reporter was interviewing the photographer who took the iconic photographs of the immediate aftermath of the Boston marathon bombing. She showed a photo, full screen, and asked the reporter “How did you feel when you took that picture?” Stark photos of the first-responders in among the wounded and the debris. Then she’d show another and ask “How did you feel when you took this one?” Repeat, over and over. [ I have worked with lots of photographers, I can tell you that the one thing he was totally unaware of was his "feelings." He was concerned with getting a good shot, representing the horror going on, catching the rush to help, the faces, the bodies, the wounds, the lighting, the design.] I knew Liberals thought of emotion first, but really!
Here is an important example of the liberal mindset, with three articles that make the problem clear:
— From Slate:the liberal view of global warming, Fox News, and the narrow right-wing wackos for whom Fox is their only news source.
— From the Washington Times: David Deming, a geophysicist and professor at the University of Oklahoma, explains the science.
— From the Weekly Standard: Steven Hayward, indispensable intellectual, professor, explains the rise and fall of the Climate Circus, how it happened, and why it matters.
Do read all three, they’re not long and they are keepers — that explain the confusion about the whole global warming issue. Global Warming is not just an emotional issue for Liberals, it is about as close as you can get — to a true religion. The left on the one hand talks about progress and how to fix everything that is wrong with the world today. On the other hand, their solutions are the same old failed progressive ideas that have been handed down from Wilson, Roosevelt, Johnson, Clinton to Obama. Their ideas have never worked, but they are sure that this time it will be different.
Liberals are perpetually discontented. They are sure that if they can just fix the things that so annoy them, change the bad things, they will arrive at some happy Utopia — or at least a better place. They admit to no underlying principles. They would like to have some, but they just can’t figure out what they are.
On the right, you find conservatives consistently talking about principles, facts, studies, freedom and free markets and how those principles apply to the problems of the day. The Constitution is revered by conservatives as the document devised by the people, who grant limited powers to the government that exists at their pleasure. It is a simple document that states general principles and doesn’t pretend to address all the problems of a country. At 226 years of age, it is the longest serving constitution in the world, and has served us well, and most Americans take pride in it.
Conservatives are more apt to recognize ordinary human nature as rather messy and not fixable. Perhaps what makes conservatives different from liberals is that they paid attention when their mothers told them that “life isn’t fair. You just have to do the best you can.” Liberals kept whining about stuff not being fair, and are convinced that if you just trust their expertise,
they will fix it.
Filed under: Capitalism, Democrat Corruption, Economy, Energy, Junk Science, Politics, Progressivism | Tags: Overlapping Programs, Waste and Duplication, Wind Energy Projects
Accountability. Good word. You have to be responsible for your own actions. Hard to believe, but we have a Government Accountability Office (GAO) that is trying to make our government accountable. In theory each person and each department will stand up and say, yes I’m in charge of that and I screwed up. Uh huh. Not so’s you would notice. But that’s why we have the GAO, to keep track of duplication and waste. The Inspectors General are part of this office.
So we had, as you know, The Sequester. You surely know that President Obama has gone to great efforts to make sure you know that there is a sequester and the Republicans are entirely responsible. (Did I just explain accountability? The Sequester originated in the Oval Office, and was entirely Obama’s idea and attempt to trap the Republicans into giving him more money to spend). The President is not accountable, nothing is ever his fault, and his efforts to make the public feel the pain of every last cent of the $85 billion in sequester cuts aren’t working. People are supposed to freak out and demand that Congress give the president the money he wants so he can spend it.
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) reports they have found 162 areas where services are duplicated or money is being wasted in the federal government. The annual cost of these programs is estimated at roughly $250 billion— that’s three times the amount involved in the sequester, which is only a reduction in the increases for next year, not the present budget. One would think that eliminating government waste would be more popular than ending White House tours and locking National Park bathrooms. Here’s some of what The GAO found:
— Renewable Energy Initiatives Federal support for wind and solar energy, biofuels, and other renewable energy sources has been estimated at several billion dollars a year — is fragmented because 23 agencies implemented hundreds of renewable energy initiatives in fiscal year 2010 — the latest year for which GAO developed these data.
The GAO has identified 82 federal wind-related projects being implemented by nine different agencies in fiscal year 2011. The 7 dozen initiatives are split up across agencies, and have overlapping characteristics, and duplicative financial support. Big wasteful Bureaucracy.
— Sixty-eight of the 82 programs overlapped with at least one other because of shared characteristics. They were administered by Energy, Interior, Agriculture, Commerce and Treasury. Why are all these departments involved in wind projects? These five departments collectively implemented 73 of the 82 proposals. Does the left hand know what the right hand is doing, and are they doing the same things?
The federal government should get out of the business of betting taxpayer dollars on energy projects. They should let the American people vote with their pocketbooks on which forms of energy and which projects should succeed.
Flushing good money after bad, the government has increased the production tax credit because of inflation, and wind, geothermal and biomass projects will now get 2.3 cents per kilowatt-hour of electricity produced, up from 2.2 cents. The IRS keeps updating the tax credit. The tax break costs taxpayers about $1 billion a year, and the new increase adds another $545 million in support for the wind industry. Just as the wind industry cannot exist without subsidy, it cannot exist without support from fossil fueled power plants. The wind is intermittent and requires full-time support from a dependable power source.
— The 2008 Farm Bill assigned the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service responsibility for examining and inspecting catfish and for creating a catfish inspection program. Repealing this provision would save millions of dollars annually without affecting the safety of catfish intended for human consumption.
— The Department of Defense’s approach to combat uniforms is fragmented. Developing and acquiring uniforms could be more efficient, and better protect service members resulting in $82 million in savings in development and acquisition costs through collaboration among the military services.
Filed under: Democrat Corruption, Energy, Freedom, Humor, Junk Science, Politics, Sports | Tags: A Differet Kind of Freedom, Imaginary Physics, Who's In Charge Here?
The Centrifuge Brain Project is a short (fictional !) film by German digital artist Till Nowak about making super imaginative amusement park rides that are divorced from ordinary physics and reality. As Chief Engineer Dr. Nick Laslowicz says “These machines provide total freedom…”
You could consider this a metaphor for the president’s budget released today, only two months late. Divorced from reality. But adventurous.
(h/t: thekidshouldseethis.com)
Filed under: Capitalism, Economy, Energy, Environment, Global Warming, Junk Science, National Security, The Constitution | Tags: Common Sense and an Open Mind, Going Around in Circles, The Triumph of Ideology
You may have noticed that President Obama’s speeches often come with an expiration date, which is sometimes the next day. He’s good with the teleprompter, but has trouble with facts. In the debates just before the election, he rounded on Gov. Romney for claiming that government lands were not producing oil and gas. He claimed that his administration had opened up public lands and we’re actually producing more than the previous administration, and the previous president was an oil man. “Natural gas isn’t just appearing magically,” he said.
A new Congressional Research Service report states that oil production on federal lands has fallen by 23% in the last two years, and natural gas production has dropped by 33%. The president is responsible for not one drop of increased oil and gas production. The increases are all from private lands. It’s important to understand the American people’s real energy situation. It makes a difference in the price of gas at the pump. It makes a difference in the cost of electricity, for some of our power plants are natural gas fired. It makes a difference in Obama’s efforts to force a green energy regime on the country, and it makes a difference in taxpayer money poured into useless schemes.
In the wake of Deepwater Horizon, the administration put a moratorium on drilling in the Gulf. When the moratorium was finally “lifted”after bankrupting many businesses in the Gulf region, they installed a “permitorium” slowing and making impossible efforts to drill. They removed areas that were available for oil leases, took areas off-line, and placed extensive restrictions on where it was possible to drill for oil. The entire East coast became unavailable for drilling, but quite available for offshore wind turbines.
Obama is still wedded to his primary victory rhetoric “this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow, and our planet began to heal.” But it turns out that the oceans are not rising but a millimeter a year, and the planet is doing nicely and does not need healing. Human produced CO2 is not the cause of global warming, and the globe is not warming, nor has it warmed for nearly 20 years……………………..(click to enlarge)
All those valiant efforts to keep us from producing any carbon dioxide — the windmills, the solar arrays, the green biodiesel that’s supposed to run the Navy, but isn’t produced in any quantity yet, the electric cars, ethanol, it was all a lie, and all the billions spent were simply a waste and a fraud. Al Gore is not now and never was a climate scientist. And the fact is that most of the subsidies for producing all these green wonders went to cronies and campaign contributors.
Obama just ordered that all federal agencies cannot approve any major projects — from pipelines to highways — until they have considered the impact on global warming. Obama plans to “expand the scope of a Nixon-era law,” the National Environmental Policy Act, “that was first intended to force agencies to asses effect of projects on air, water and soil pollution.” If Congress won’t pass the laws he wants, — in this case passing a carbon tax —then Obama will just make law on his own without all that constitutional bother.
Ross Eisberg, vice president of the National Association of Manufacturers, told Bloomberg that Obama’s proposal has “got us very freaked out.”
They were always wrong about carbon dioxide. It’s what we breathe out, and it makes plants grow. It is greening the earth as Matt Ridley explained at some length in this video. There has been way more CO2 in the atmosphere in the past, we are at kind of a low point, and if it increases more, so will our forests.
That’s the trouble with ideology, you fall in love with certain ideas, and close your mind to anything that does not agree with your treasured ideas. You can’t speak about how important creating more jobs is to you, and then do everything you can to shut down the possibility of growth. At some point you have to get off the merry-go-round and walk on.
Filed under: Environment, Heartwarming, Junk Science, Science/Technology | Tags: A Conservation Success Story, Arctic Sea Ice, Ursus Maritimus Obesus
Biologist Susan Crockford gives us ten good reasons not to worry about polar bears.
1. Polar bears are a conservation success story. Their numbers have rebounded remarkable since 1973, and there are more polar bears now than there were 40 years ago. Polar bears join a long list of marine mammals whose populations rebounded spectacularly after unregulated hunting stopped: sea otters, all eight species of fur seals, walrus, elephant seals, whales (grey, right, bowhead, humpback, sei, fin, blue and sperm whales.
2. The only polar bear subpopulation that had a statistically significant decline in recent years is the one in Western Hudson Bay. A few others have been presumed to be decreasing based on suspicions of overharvesting, assumed repercussions of decreased sea ice and/or statistically insignificant declines in body condition— not actual population declines.
3. Sea ice in the Bering Sea has rebounded from record lows over the last ten years, a good reason not to be worried about polar bears in the Chukchi. A recent survey suggests that Chukchi bears are doing very well. Sea ice coverage has been higher than average.
4. A survey by the Nunavut government in 2011 showed polar bear numbers in Western Hudson Bay have not declined since 2004 as predicted and all available evidence indicates that Hudson Bay sea ice is Not on a steadily precipitous decline.
5. Population decreases in bear numbers attributed to earlier sea ice breakup in Western Hudson Bay have not been anywhere near as severe as the catastrophic decline that took place in 1974 in the eastern Beaufort Sea, which was associated with exceptionally thick sea ice.
6. Polar bears need spring and early summer ice (March through June) for gorging on young, fat seals. Documented declines in sea ice have rarely impinged on that critical feeding period.
7. There is no plausible evidence that regulated subsistence hunting is causing polar bear numbers to decline.
8. Global temperatures have not risen in a statistically-significant way in the last 16 years, a standstill not predicted by climate models, and a phenomenon even the chairman of the IPCC has acknowledged. This suggests that the record sea ice lows of recent years are not primarily due to CO2-caused increases in global temperatures. Such changes in Arctic sea ice appear to be normal habitat variations that polar bears have survived before.
9. Survival of polar bears over a hundred thousand years of variable sea ice coverage indicates that biologists who predict a doomed future for the bears have grossly underestimated its ability to survive vastly different conditions than those that existed in the late 1970s when Ian Stirling began polar bear research.
10. Polar bears are well-distributed throughout their available territory, which is a recognized characteristic of a healthy species.
Polar bears have evolved into a highly efficient predator of ice-associated seals. They are excellent swimmers compared with other bear species, the use the sea ice to travel, hunt, mate and rest. They have adapted to the annual loss of sea ice in the summer by migrating onto land. While there, they cannot hunt seals and must rely on their fat reserves to see them through until the ice returns. Though I assume they eat fish and berries.
Polar bears can swim for long distances (60 miles or more). Arctic sea ice grows in the winter and melts in the summer. Polar bear science is surprisingly new, and there is much that we don’t know about the species yet. Counting them is hard and inaccurate.Female bears have been tagged, but you can’t collar male bears as their necks are bigger than their heads.
The bears are very beautiful, and the cubs cute as can be, which is probably why environmentalists got all panicky about declining numbers. In general many supposedly endangered species turn out not to be endangered. Many times declining numbers are due to unregulated hunting or uncontrolled predators. Preservation of species is complicated, and we’re just beginning to get the hang of it. This is derived from a much longer and more informative post at Anthony Watts’ wonderful What’s Up With That website, which explains sea ice and what we know about bears and climate.
Filed under: Domestic Policy, Economy, Media Bias, Energy, Democrat Corruption, Capitalism, Junk Science | Tags: Earth Hour, Celebrate Electricity, Cheap Abundant Power
At 8:30 pm on Saturday, March 23, 2013, the World Wildlife Fund has mandated that millions of people should turn off all their lights for one hour, for no discernible reason. They call it “Earth Hour.” I suggest you turn them all on, to celebrate electricity. “Abundant, cheap electricity has been the greatest source of human liberation in the 20th century. Every material social advance of the 20th century depended on the proliferation of inexpensive and reliable electricity.”
Ross McKitrick continued: “Giving women the freedom to work outside the home depended on the availability of electrical appliances that free up time from domestic chores. Getting children out of menial labour and into schools depended on the same thing, as well as the ability to provide safe indoor lighting for reading. Development and provision of modern health care without electricity is absolutely impossible. The expansion of our food supply, and the promotion of hygiene and nutrition, depended on being able to irrigate fields, cook and refrigerate foods, and have a steady indoor supply of hot water. Many of the world’s poor suffer brutal environmental conditions in their own homes specifically because they have no access to electricity.”
I have lived without reliable electric power, without any electric power, and a modern refrigerator has it all over an icebox and putting up ice in the winter. Filling the lamps, trimming the wicks and cleaning the chimneys loses big time to simply changing a lightbulb.
This is another of those precious gestures so favored by the environmental left, that simply don’t work.
Between 2006 and 2011, U.S. farmers converted more than 1.3 million acres of grassland into corn and soybean fields. In corn-belt states like Iowa and South Dakota, about 5 percent of pastureland is being converted into cropland every year. This pasture destruction will lead to serious environmental harm. Grassland soil captures carbon better than cropland. Corn crops require more fertilizer and pesticides, and are turning prairie into a potential dust bowl.
Congress passed the Renewable Fuel Standard in 2005, expecting considerable production of cellulosic ethanol made from switchgrass, wood chips, and other plant refuse. This has driven up prices across the board, and harmed millions of people in poor countries dependent on U.S. corn exports. And biofuel still has not been reliably produced.
The Renewable Fuels law mandates that ethanol production ramp up from 13 billion gallons this year to 36 billion gallons by 2022. The idea was that ethanol would help America to achieve energy independence, but with new technologies America could be energy independent right now, if Obama would stop blocking it. Refiners are crashing into a “blend wall”, where the feds have forced them to purchase more ethanol than they can safely put in their gasoline. Consumers don’t want it, and a higher blend 14.4% next year, will damage older cars and small engines.
That incandescent light bulb ban was another environmental bad idea. Governments are simply incapable of good business decisions. The free market is always better than politicians at picking efficient solutions. CFLs are impractical, more expensive and may be a cancer risk.
Solar energy was going to save us from foreign oil, except they forgot that the sun goes down in the west every night. Wind energy would replace all those coal-fired power plants, except that they found the wind only blows occasionally, chops up birds like a Cuisinart, and makes unbearable noise.
The whole global warming scare is turning out to be a fraud, and governments all over the world are retreating from their failed green dreams as millions freeze because they can’t afford enough energy to keep warm in a cooling climate.
Filed under: Politics, Domestic Policy, Education, Economy, Health Care, Democrat Corruption, Capitalism, Junk Science | Tags: The Democrats Produced a Budget, Increases Spending, $1.5 Trillion New Taxes
After Four Years, Senate Democrats finally decided to obey the law. They produced a budget, and it’s no surprise that they wanted to keep their ideas hidden for so long. It is revealing. The Democrat’s Budget never balances; it increases spending by 62% over ten years; and it adds $7 trillion to the national debt, in spite of raising your taxes by $1.5 trillion.
The Budget Committee, Chairman Patty Murray (D-WA), unanimously opposed balancing the federal budget. Mrs. Murray was first elected in “the year of the woman” as “the mom in tennis-shoes.” That seemed to be her only qualification at the time, or since. Democrats advance by seniority rather than qualifications. Mrs. Murray will do exactly as she is told, as she has been doing for years.
In an interview with George Stephanopoulus, President Obama explained why he doesn’t need to balance the budget.
And, so, we don’t have an immediate crisis in terms of debt. In fact, for the next ten years, it’s gonna be in a sustainable place.
Look, balancing the budget in part depends on how fast you grow. You remember– you were in the Clinton administration. The reason that you guys balanced it was a combination of some tax hikes, some spending cuts, and the economy grew.
And, so– you know, my goal is not to chase– a balanced budget just for the sake of balance. My goal is how do we grow the economy, put people back to work, and if we do that we’re gonna be bringin’ in more revenue. If we’ve controlled spending and we’ve got a smart entitlement package, then potentially what you have is balance. But it’s not balance on the backs of, you know, the poor, the elderly, students who need student loans, families who’ve got disabled kids. That’s not the right way to balance–
Obama always shifts into folksy talk, droppin’ his gs and saying things like ‘gonna’ when he’s trying to come across as just one of the folks.
Someone seems to have been telling Obama that growth is just around the corner. He speaks of America becoming a magnet for good jobs — apparently meaning new jobs in new careers that aren’t invented yet. (Probably those magical green jobs that are always just ahead). When Republicans worry about spending, and balancing the budget, we might as well be talking in an alien language.
Obama counts only the jobs created each month, neglecting to subtract the growth in the population and the growth in the numbers of people who have dropped out of the labor force, so it looks like there has been real progress in putting people back to work, when that is not the case. He goes to new factories and sees promise of future wonders. He sees the common core curriculum teaching our kids all to be able to read a complicated instruction manual. He sees government creating new technologies, new opportunities if he just has plenty of government money to “invest”in research and development, with no understanding that government is not good at new ideas.
Obama is a fierce competitor. He does not understand negotiation. He intends to win. Nobody believes in his “charm offensive,” not even his own people. He wants to force Republicans into an untenable position, so that he can win back the House in 2014, and complete his program.
He seems to have a movie running in his head that doesn’t match the reality that Republicans see. In that show, in which he is a hero, ObamaCare is the answer to Progressives’ long held dreams, and it will heal the sick and make everyone dependent on the government which will be much better for them, for the government knows best. Never mind that the cost of health care was slowly and continuously dropping, Obama is convinced that the problem is not excess spending, but the growing cost of health care. Yet ObamaCare will explode the cost, and eliminate many benefits.
The president is intent on weaning America off of nasty fossil fuels, to that end plans a big tax on carbon emissions. Since carbon does not pay taxes, this is a pure tax on the middle class, on whom he promised not to raise taxes. Carbon emissions are not responsible for global warming, for as carbon in the atmosphere has increased, there has been no warming at all for 16 years.
The movie promises to be a big flop at the box office. Lots of extravagant reviews, but it won’t make any money.
