Filed under: Environment, Europe, Global Warming | Tags: Global Warming, Liberal Lunacy, Saving the Planet
The idea that human beings have changed and are changing the basic climate system of the Earth through their industrial activities and burning of fossil fuels — the essence of the Greens’ theory of global warming — has about as much basis in science as Marxism and Freudianism. Global warming, like Marxism, is a political theory of actions, demanding compliance with its rules.
Marxism, Freudianism, global warming. These are proof — of which history offers so many examples — that people can be suckers on a grand scale. To their fanatical followers they are a substitute for religion. Global warming, in particular, is a creed, a faith, a dogma that has little to do with science. If people are in need of religion, why don’t they first turn to the genuine article?
— Paul Johnson
I post often about the problem of global warming — which is not that the seas will rise and the poles will melt and drought ensue — but that we respond to the alarmist’s false doctrine by altering our government to deal with a nonexistent problem, diverting time and funds that are needed elsewhere.
The British are discovering just how much the EU’s new package of climate change measures will impact — by about 73 billion euro ($93 billion) per year by 2020, or £600 ($890) per year per family of four in the UK. That would get your attention. A EU directive designed to limit pollution and associated acid rain will see nine UK power plants close by 2015. Four nuclear power stations will also shut. But there is nothing to replace them.
Thirty one experts quizzed by the BBC in a survey fear not enough stations are being built. Thirteen said there is an unacceptable risk of blackouts in the next ten years, and seven warned of problems in just five years. Labor and the Tories are arguing and having studies, consulting experts and not doing much of anything. The EU seems to be backing off from their mandates as they begin to grasp the financial side of their fantasies of saving the planet.
California, already in financial trouble, plans to shift to a 33% requirement for renewable power by 2020. It is part, they proclaimed, of California’s “clean energy future.” As a result, the state must start asking how they will achieve 33% renewable energy.
The California Public Utility Commission says it will require an infrastructure build-out on a scale and timeline perhaps unparalleled anywhere in the world. It will cost at least $60 billion between 2010 and 2020 to meet the goal.
Roger Helmer MEP, points out that wind farms in the English East Midlands are “gesture politics”, a lovely term for political overreaching. It is all like being trapped in an Alice in Wonderland culture. Politicians will save us from fantasy problems with fantasy solutions while steadfastly ignoring the very real problems that they are causing. How do we stop them? How do we wake them up?
The American people know better. They voted decisively against these solutions that were on the ballot. Californians defeated three measures. Polls say that Americans don’t believe in anthropogenic global warming. Perhaps there is more to the story than appears on the surface. Could that be?
Filed under: Science/Technology, Socialism | Tags: Healthcare, Office of the President-elect, Scientific Research
The Office of the President-elect has announced that his first efforts when he takes office will be to undo many of George W. Bush’s executive orders and replace them with his own. This seems to me to be an unusually classless announcement, for someone who claimed that he would bring unity to Washington.
Most important, it seems, is to block any drilling on lands in Utah where new oil leases were approved by the Department of Interior. Following close behind is allowing federal funding of embryonic stem-cell research.
There are some strange things going on here that seem puzzling. Apparently, Obama believes all the rude things he said about the Bush administration during the campaign. Bush Derangement Syndrome lives. My guess is that Liberals believe that — the evil Bush, because of his fundamentalist religion, and his antipathy to science, has prevented all the wonderful cures that might come from exploiting the promise of embryonic stem cell treatments — or something like that. They seem not to have noticed that adult stem cells are delivering on all that promise.
Embryonic stem cells, as I understand it, have monumental problems with rejection and with turning rapidly into cancer cells, problems that may not be able to be overcome. Venture capital funds are not readily available because there are so many problems and so little proof of potential. Adult stem cells are taken from the patient’s own body, so there is no problem with rejection. They can be teased into becoming pluripotent, that is adapting to any cell in the body. Scientists have been working with adult stem cells for decades and have had many, many successes. Embryonic stem cells have not yet been used for even one therapy.
The astonishing advances that have helped to restore bladder and muscle control to patients with paralysis, heart patients that have been helped, hope for people with Parkinson’s, remission for patients with multiple sclerosis are not of interest to liberals. They believe that only religious extremism stands in the way of vast advances with stem cell treatment. And they are sure that as soon as embryonic stem-cell treatment is funded by the taxpayers there will be help for patients with paralysis, help for heart patients , hope for people with Parkinson’s and remission for patients with multiple sclerosis. Oh, do I repeat myself? They do not care that we are well under way for finding cures for these conditions, or they don’t know, or it’s just the “wrong” cure.
Isn’t this odd? Never mind the bird in the hand, go for the one in the bush — quick, quick, before he gets away.
