I saw irrational fear years ago with a friend, his name was Johnny or Barb Wire Johnny. He was one of the best horsemen, I’ve ever known. Johnny lived in the bush country of Northern British Columbia, he was an outfitter, trapper, and horse trainer. A small man with long black flowing hair that the most beautiful women in the world can only dream about.

With a gentle heart and calm steady hands he could make the best ranch horses, mountain horses, pack horses, and driving horses I have ever seen. For all his abilities, Johnny had his personal demons; like many in the North he was part native and possessed a weakness for alcohol, a common affliction in the North. He also had a taste for high venison, most of us ate moose and moose hardly ever spoils, but Johnny liked to hang his venison until it started to spoil. It caused him to have a permanent case of dysentery and Johnny never quite made the connection. Like many of the old timers, Johnny wore moose hide moccasins and leggins, in the winter he also wore a union suit beneath his moose hide clothes. That’s a pair of woolen long johns with a flap in the back for life’s necessaries.

Unfortunately, Johnny might be overtaken by his dietary problems at any moment, so he liked to stuff straw or hay in the back door of his union suit, just in case. Moose hide stretches and Johnny was always stretching his leather leggins from riding horses and stuffing the hind end with straw. It was funny to watch a little man with an oversized and sagging butt walking away, but I never said anything.

I was Johnny’s connection to the outside world, I would bring the whiskey, horses for training, and cash paying hunters. I lived on a ranch with a phone, a real advantage for a business man. There was usually at least a dozen people listening to every conversation, but it was a phone none the less. I helped him with the hooves, shoes, and teeth and he taught me of the mystical world of man and horse or the science of turning two critters into one, many of these lessons I use in my business to this day.

Johnny struggled for a long time trying to make spurs out of barb wire that would work with moccasins, no matter what he did he couldn’t get them to stay in place. I finally made a pair of spurs in the forge that would work for tiny moccasin’ed feet, he was so grateful it was touching. Little did he know, I would use his knowledge and techniques to build a business that would take me all over the world.

On a cold October day, I was bringing in a couple of hunters from the States along with several green colts for Johnny to train, when darkness overtook us. Traveling in the dark is risky business, it’s easy to lose an eye or run a snag through yourself or your horse, so we made camp about twelve miles from Johnny’s cabin. The temperature dropped to 30 below, and the hunters suffered from the cold; but I didn’t want the hunters to ride in the dark, there are just too many accidents waiting to happen.

We rode into the yard in the grey light of a snowy morning and heard screaming like someone was torturing Johnny in the cabin. I drew my rifle from the scabbard and jumped off my horse and hit the ground on the run. The cabin door was latched from the inside, I kicked it open while listening to Johnny screaming in agony. I stepped into Johnny’s cabin expecting to put rounds through one or more bad guys.

Johnny saw me and yelled, “shoot him Skook! Shoot him!”

I surveyed the scene in front of me, propped my rifle against the cabin wall, drew my knife and walked towards Johnny‘s bunk.

During the night the fire had gone out and Johnny’s moisture laden breath froze his beautiful black locks to the iron bedstead. While trapped by his own hair, Johnny let his imagination run away with him, he dreamed or envisioned the devil holding him down by the hair; consequently, he promised to give up drinking when he saw his departed mother praying for him over the tongue of the wagon.

I drew my knife through Johnny’s hair next to the iron rail, he jumped up and ran outside to collapse on the ice and snow in front of the two hunters who probably thought they had entered into an asylum.

I walked outside, knelt down and consoled Johnny, who was in his sweat soaked union suit and barefoot. “Skook, Skook you are the bravest man in the world. You threw down your rifle and took on the devil with your knife. There has never been a braver man than you.”

I smiled, all I had to do is let Johnny carry on with his delusion and I would be a legend in the Omineca Peace Region for hundreds of years. “No Johnny, the devil wasn’t in the cabin. Your hair was frozen to the iron rail on your bed.”

Johnny looked at me as if I were crazy. “I, I saw my mother on the tongue of the wagon praying for me.”

I shook my head, “No Johnny, it’s impossible to see your mother on the tongue of the wagon from your bed, that was your imagination.”

Johnny was slowly regaining his grasp of reality. “I swore if I could get loose from the devil, I would give up whiskey, but the devil didn’t really have me.”

“No Johnny, the devil wasn’t there,” I told him.

“Then I don’t have to give up drinking!”

I could see an advantage disappearing, I tried another direction, “it depends on how you look at it Johnny.”

Suddenly with an inner calm, Johnny asked, “did you bring the whiskey?”

I couldn’t lie, “yes, I have whiskey.”

“Good, I need a drink, you talk to those hunters while I get ready and then we will take them out for a hunt.”

Johnny’s hysteria is not much different from the hysteria over H1N1 or the Global Warming Hoax; Johnny was duped by his own imagination and was on the verge of believing anything during his delusion, especially if I had taken sadistic pleasure in perpetuating the delusion.

Americans are proving to be a gullible people, following the pied piper-like images of Al Gore and Obama. Their delusion and vivid imagination is being used to ensnare them into the belief that the government will save them from destruction and death, if only they will trust the good intentions of the Socialist State. Thus our lemming like public is being duped by the Obama administration.

A basic difference between me and the Obama administration is that I didn’t want to use a delusion to advance my own agenda.

They fail to report on some pretty significant drops in the poll….drops that if it had been swung the other way would of been in big bold letters:

Fifty-four percent of respondents to the latest CNN poll disapprove of Barack Obama’s performance on the economy, a 17-point swing in six weeks. That isn’t the worst of the poll, either; 57% now disapprove of Obama’s performance on health care, a 19-point swing in that same time.

~~~

a 17-point reversal on the economy and a 19-point reversal on health care would be, well, news. One has to wonder why neither get mentioned in a report on the popularity of a president whose central issues are health care and the economy. The rapid disintegration of his popularity on these positions will have enormous implications for Obama’s ability to push his agenda through Congress in both arenas, and also on the midterm elections a year from now if this becomes a trend.

In fact, it’s hard to find an issue where Obama has not lost ground:

• Economy – 46%/54%, was 54%/45%
• Foreign affairs – 51%/47%, was 58%/38%
• Health care – 42%/57%, was 51%/47%
• Afghanistan – 42%/56%, was 49%/46%
• Taxes – 49%/50%, was 52%/42%
• Helping the middle class – 50%/49%, was 67%/32% (six months ago, last time question asked)

His numbers stayed roughly the same on Medicare, with just a rounding difference. Otherwise, Obama has lost serious ground on every issue, mainly over the last six weeks.

17 point and a 19 point swing into the disapproval area and nary a peep in the article. Ed also notes they fail to note the party identification numbers. Quite telling.

Another quite telling note about the poll. His approval rating on nearly every issue has declined but he is still approved of by 54% as a whole?

Bradley effect?

There are currently 192 countries making up the United Nations members list. The vast majority of the member nations are dictatorships by any other name. You can dress their leaders in fancy robes and toss an occasional crown on a head, but from Saudi Arabia to Libya and Gambia, their leaders oppress their populations. They loot as much as they can from their economies, while enjoying a comforting credibility rubbing shoulders with other narcissistic misanthropes under the opulent umbrella of the UN General Assembly.

The UN has never been an effective vehicle for achieving real peace and security, although it was intended to achieve exactly that when it replaced the impotent League of Nations. The overwhelming power of the United States has been the major underlying force that has prevented major international wars since WWII. The UN has been an inept bystander to international affairs. America’s power and influence has generated kick-back that has been fomented within the UN where jealousy found broad fertile ground amongst a majority of member nations, including Europeans such as Norway, and Denmark. No need here to extend the list of envious pretenders that easily includes the likes of Russia.

The reaction against the U.S. found new energy when the world found itself in an economic recession, and fingers could be pointed at America for having been too self serving. In slide the opportunists. Beating the newfound drums of climate change fear and catastrophe, they will mutate the upcoming Copenhagen meeting on climate change into a perfect vehicle through which begrudging usurpers will once again attempt elevating the UN to status of world power, “over” the U.S.

We can rest confident that the contemplated Copenhagen Treaty emanating from this meeting will find elements to mirror in the cap-and-trade bill now being promoted by Obama and Congress. This, along with the December 10 Nobel Peace Prize presentation, will lock-in support from Washington for the agreement. Obama and Congress will have unwittingly signed on for the formation of Two disasters. The first will be a UN managed onerous extraction of cash from the United States and Canada for what can only be described as payment of a “climate debt.” The second will be the unprecedented endowment of the UN with sweeping powers over the economies of all nations. The text currently contemplated for signing by the membership will provide this body with incisive absolutism over the economic engines that have fuelled both America’s hegemony, as well as its population’s independence of thought and freedoms.

Keep in mind that many, if not most, of the enlightened leaders of UN member countries are the same ones responsible for crimes against humanity, … their own humanities within their own home borders. This is also a membership heavily populated by misogynistic individuals who believe in the subjugation of women and criminalization of homosexuality, all the while pretending to promote the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights.

The time has long passed for the UN’s charter to be changed. The UN has no ability or capacity to act as a world peace maker. It could remain as an organization directed toward humanitarian efforts, and provide a meeting place for resolving broad international challenges pertaining to education, population, or agriculture. It cannot, however, be allowed to morph into a world power. The United States, which funds almost one quarter of the UN’s budget, should not allow it. Obama and Congress should refuse signing America on to the Copenhagen agreement, or any version of it. Copenhagen has nothing to do with cleaning up our refuse or CO2.

I should add a Third ensuing disaster if Copenhagen materializes: A weaker America would not be positive for long term prospects of world peace.

Let’s first dispel any doubt that the offered reasons for awarding President Obama the Nobel Peace prize were ungenuine. He hadn’t warmed the king sized bed in the White House when he was nominated, which means that any real evaluation of his authentication as a Nobel awardee, other than the oratory of his campaign, was impossible. In the end, the Nobel Committee stated that it, “… attached special importance to Obama’s vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons.” Reality and common sense in both Norway and the White House seem to have vacated the premises.

Promises made by politicians are for electioneering, and they rarely see daylight. Remember when Obama made a bold and firm commitment that he would pull out of Iraq if he were made President? That was a defining and differentiating moment in the race to the Oval Office. Did he do what he committed to do? Are some of his phantasmagorical promises also the delusions of the Norwegian Nobel Committee? We will find an answer in the upcoming Copenhagen climate summit to be held in early December.

140 nations will meet in Copenhagen to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which runs out in 2012, with a global deal supposedly intended to limit CO2 emissions, reduce the destruction of rainforests, and help developing countries to become low-carbon economies. On the surface, the publicly claimed intentions of cleaning up our emissions from our air, our garbage from the oceans, and our toxins from the soil are lofty objectives very deserving of acclamation. The reality that will arise from the United Nations Copenhagen Climate Change Conference will prove to be something altogether different. What is to become the “Copenhagen Agreement,” will in fact be the largest international redistribution of wealth ever undertaken. The Earth and our environment will enjoy no benefit.

On December 10, Obama will receive his award in Oslo, just in time to energize the “Copenhagen” agenda. Whether or not he shows up at the UN meeting, the ideological intensions and expectations have been air freighted in the form a Nobel Prize. The Nobel awarded to Obama is a very personal stimulation to procure his support and therefore the financial commitment of the U.S. to a blueprint claiming to save the world.

The Copenhagen meeting in December will require that the United States and Canada annually transfer billions of dollars to the developing world as “climate debt” for past transgressions in their emissions of CO2. A key element in the penalization process will be the degree to which a developed country meets an allocated allowable emission schedule. Countries like the U.S. and Canada will have a tougher time than most, since it is always the last 10% or 20% that is the most difficult and most expensive to “scrub” from your emissions when you have already done more than most to clean up your own mess.

Developing countries will be using starting points with disastrous emission levels, comparable to that of the U.S. and Canada over a century ago. Minor improvements will give poor countries a leg-up on developed countries. Industrialized countries will in effect be penalized for already having well equipped, technologically advanced infrastructures. Canada in particular will very likely incur the highest penalties per capita since it is a net energy producer with production requiring extensive energy consumption, and it endures cold winters and hot, humid summers. This is not to say that every industrial sector should not strive to reduce its carbon footprint. We all should. The conundrum rests in what methodology to apply to the process and to enforcement given the reality that much has already been done by developed countries, and more is planned since all levels of society have become conscious of the need to reduce pollution.

The transfer payments from developed nations to poor ones will be made through purchases of unused “credits,” as well as through outright payments which will be made over and above the current billions distributed as foreign aid. Developing countries will be compensated for “lost opportunities, resources, lives, land and dignity,” and the funds are to be divinely distributed by the United Nations. The UN will also be the arbiter of good taste in all things CO2 emissionable, including all approvals of emission scrubbing plans and the ensuing allocations of emission credits. The agreement also leaves room for developing countries to do absolutely nothing on emissions should they feel they are not receiving enough technological and financial support from developed countries. How is that for a backdoor to escape adaptation?

An invigorated and supremely powerful United Nations is in the offing. The principal justification for turning the UN into a true world power is this: The most advanced industrialized countries are responsible for global warming which in turn is responsible for the drought and famine being suffered by the poorest nations, ergo, the most developed countries owe cash to the undeveloped ones. How more obvious can the planners be than allowing rich countries to buy offsets rather than make emission cuts at home?

Kyoto’s good intensions have mutated into a politically charged Copenhagen draft agreement for a global plan to redistribute wealth to the tune of an estimated $1.4 trillion over the coming decade, which in and of itself will have little or no impact on pollution. The agreement’s impact on climate change will be even more amorphic, nevertheless, we can expect an abundance of fear mongering on the road to ratification.

Obama’s upcoming acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize and the invisible strings attached to it, while he is quite entitled to claim it, along with his plans for Cap and Trade, may prove to be an enormously expensive exercise for all taxpayers on this continent. The “Copenhagen” supporters on the Nobel Committee, on the other hand, are counting on it.

Crossposted from The Pacific Gate Post

Only problem was that Phelim McAleer, the maker of Not Evil Just Wrong, showed up and as some liberals are known to do when the questioning gets tough….the organizers cut his mike as he asked some tough questions of Gore:

All Gore could do was hem and haw and then go back to his typical backup. Polar bears…..what about the polar bears!

Retarded.

And his claim that the courts vindicated his movie? Not so true:

One day before Friday’s announcement that he was a co-winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, a British High Court judge ruled that Gore’s global warming film, “An Inconvenient Truth,” while “broadly accurate,” contained nine significant errors.

The ruling came on a challenge from a UK school official who did not want to show the film to students. High Court Judge Michael Burton said that the film is “substantially founded upon scientific research and fact” but that the errors were made in “the context of alarmism and exaggeration.”

Burton found that screening the film in British secondary schools violated laws barring the promotion of partisan political views in the classroom. But he allowed the film to be shown on the condition that it is accompanied by guidance notes to balance Gore’s “one-sided” views, saying that the film’s “apocalyptic vision” was not an impartial analysis of climate change.

He hangs his hat on the fact that the movie was allowed to be played as long as notes were presented to the class that balances Gore’s one-sided view and exposed all the errors?

That’s what he’s proud of?

What Phelim says at the end of that video bears repeating:

At the Society for Environmental Journalists, the reaction of the journalists, the reaction of Andrew Revkin of the New York Times, the reaction of the journalists, was to shut down the journalists and protect the politicians.

What I would like of environmental journalists like myself is that you treat Big Environment the same way as you treat Big Politics, and Big Government, and Big Business. Y’know, treat Big Environment the way you treat Big Business. Where does the money come? Who’s channeling it? …. Where is the independent verification of those claims? But they don’t. If an environmentalist organizer says something, it’s accepted as gospel.

Phelim is on a roll….here he is questioning those going to a premier of a global warming alarmist movie and gets thrown out.

The hypocrisy is unbelievable.

Scientists……give me a break.

(h/t Newsbusters)

Problem is, after the interview the Professor and Stanford both sent lawyers to the makers to order them to cut his footage out. (h/t The Hope For America)

Why send lawyers to threaten the filmmakers? The only one who is at fault for being so knee deep in leftist propaganda you fall all over yourself for the latest, greatest, climate scaremongering is yourself Professor Schneider.

Until today, I considered myself a climate skeptic, and as a result, I entered into debates on every issue put forward covering unsubstantiated claims and useless proposals from the Alarmist crowd covering such topics as taxing carbon, CO2 levels, oil drilling, renewable energy, global warming, er cooling, and wild projections of our doom as a result of human-caused environmental changes. I was and I remain convinced that there has been no empirical evidence presented that human activity is the cause of changing climate conditions.

Today I reviewed two writings that took my mind above the fray. Now I will no longer engage in idiotic ideological discussions with environmental whackos, those unduly influenced by them and those who will benefit from the implementation of immense unneeded projects. First of all, there is the breathtaking Prologue to Jurassic Park, written by Michael Crichton. The second article is a review of Mike Hulme’s book, Why We Disagree about Climate Change, Understanding Controversy, Inaction and Opportunity.

Michael Crichton takes our minds above the magnificent sphere that we live on and reminds us that we are but mere pissants in the scheme of our environment:

You think man can destroy the planet? What intoxicating vanity. Let me tell you about our planet. Earth is four-and-a-half-billion-years-old. There’s been life on it for nearly that long, 3.8 billion years. Bacteria first; later the first multicellular life, then the first complex creatures in the sea, on the land.

Then finally the great sweeping ages of animals, the amphibians, the dinosaurs, at last the mammals, each one enduring millions on millions of years, great dynasties of creatures rising, flourishing, dying away — all this against a background of continuous and violent upheaval. Mountain ranges thrust up, eroded away, cometary impacts, volcano eruptions, oceans rising and falling, whole continents moving, an endless, constant, violent change, colliding, buckling to make mountains over millions of years.

Earth has survived everything in its time. It will certainly survive us. If all the nuclear weapons in the world went off at once and all the plants, all the animals died and the earth was sizzling hot for a hundred thousand years, life would survive, somewhere: under the soil, frozen in Arctic ice. Sooner or later, when the planet was no longer inhospitable, life would spread again. The evolutionary process would begin again. It might take a few billion years for life to regain its present variety.

Of course, it would be very different from what it is now, but the earth would survive our folly, only we would not. If the ozone layer gets thinner, ultraviolet radiation sears the earth, so what? Ultraviolet radiation is good for life. It’s powerful energy. It promotes mutation, change. Many forms of life will thrive with more UV radiation. Many others will die out. Do you think this is the first time that’s happened? Think about oxygen. Necessary for life now, but oxygen is actually a metabolic poison, a corrosive glass, like fluorine.

When oxygen was first produced as a waste product by certain plant cells some three billion years ago, it created a crisis for all other life on earth. Those plants were polluting the environment, exhaling a lethal gas. Earth eventually had an atmosphere incompatible with life. Nevertheless, life on earth took care of itself. In the thinking of the human being a hundred years is a long time.

A hundred years ago we didn’t have cars, airplanes, computers or vaccines. It was a whole different world, but to the earth, a hundred years is nothing. A million years is nothing. This planet lives and breathes on a much vaster scale. We can’t imagine its slow and powerful rhythms, and we haven’t got the humility to try. We’ve been residents here for the blink of an eye. If we’re gone tomorrow, the earth will not miss us.

Mike Hulme is a UK academic deeply involved with the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) which influences the climate policies of governments individually (including the U.S.) and worldwide through the UN. He is among those who has declared that the global man-made warming debate is over. He says that climate change is useful:

“Because the idea of climate change is so plastic, it can be deployed across many of our human projects and can serve many of our psychological, ethical, and spiritual needs.”

In other words, socialists like Hulme can frame the global warming issue to achieve unrelated goals such as sustainable development, income redistribution, population control, social justice, and many other items on the liberal/socialist wishlist.

Like the notorious Stephen Schneider, who once said, “We have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts one might have. … Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest,” Hulme writes, “We will continue to create and tell new stories about climate change and mobilize them in support of our projects.”

These “myths,” he writes, “transcend the scientific categories of `true’ and `false’.”

“The function of climate change I suggest, is not as a lower-case environmental phenomenon to be solved. Solving climate change should not be the focus of our efforts any more than we should be ‘solving’ the idea of human rights or liberal democracy. It really is not about stopping climate chaos. Instead, we need to see how we can use the idea of climate change – the matrix of ecological functions, power relationships, cultural discourses and materials flows that climate change reveals – to rethink how we take forward our political, social, economic and personal projects over the decades to come.”

I have concluded that climate change controversy does not arise from “intoxicating vanity” as Crichton imagined but from political arrogance imposed on us to further the power of the government over the governed; while, at the same time, lining the pockets of the politicians and power brokers. World socialistic tendencies have now become Marxist and the present government in Washington is marching lockstep with this new world order.

Do people know that most 2009 models qualified for vouchers? Democrats define “clunkers” the way Islam defines those in need of subjugation. If it is not a “green” vehicle then it is by definition a “clunker” whose demise is not to be mourned, but is to be paid for and celebrated. (Check here whether Democrats would pay for the destruction of your prized possession.)

You see a one year old crew cab Tundra, capable of hauling your business and your family and think, “what wouldn’t I do to keep that $40,000 workhorse from destruction.” Democrats see the same vehicle and think, “I would gladly pay $4,500 of other people’s money to drop that affront to my eco-religion into the crusher.”

1 acre out of 1500

To document one corner of the car-slaughter that is now underway, I took pictures of every one of the full acre of “clunker” trade-ins at Fremont Toyota. Out of the 450 cars in this lot, hardly a dozen even have a dent (click pic for slideshow):

A Freemont Toyota executive offered an insight why so many of the doomed cars are in immaculate condition. He told me that an unusually small number of Cash for Clunkers participants bought on credit. These were mostly “conservative older people,” he said, the cautious frugal types, bringing in their lovingly cared for 15 or 20 year old cars and paying with a check.

1500 acres of mostly top-quality used cars. This cream of the used car market would have been sold to less wealthy folks who now will face a much tighter and more expensive used car market.

“The $3,000-to-$5,000 car is just gone.”

Good for Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn for speaking up. From USA Today:

Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., called that provision [to destroy the trade-ins] “nuts” during debate in the Senate last week. He said that in his state, one trade-in had less than 10,000 miles on the odometer. “We’re going to destroy the opportunity for somebody less fortunate to have that automobile,” he said.

Used car dealers agree. They say fewer older cars are at auction.

Too few older cars at reasonable prices could put some dealers out of business, says Tim Swift, general manager of the Corry Auto Dealers Exchange, an auction operation for dealers in Corry, Pa.

“It’s was tough finding them before, and now, it’s even worse,” says Mike Williams, owner of Auto Wise in Shelbyville, Ky. “The $3,000-to-$5,000 car is just gone.”

Manheim Consulting tracks the used car market. They don’t yet have figures for August (Cash for Clunkers began in late July), but they do have some anecdotal information:

A cursory look at the vehicles already being traded-in under the program, as well as discussions with dealers, indicate that the majority of the vehicles deemed “clunkers” would have, absence the program, eventually been retailed by dealers catering to the deep subprime or Buy-Here, Pay-Here market.

These are NOT the bottom tier of cars. What got turned in were mostly cars that dealers would keep on their second hand lots. Such cars are typically resold with substantial guarantees. In other words, dealers’ impressions were that these cars would check out as reliable, just as I heard from Fremont Toyota.

“He wanted the fun of participating.”

I also visited Capitol Toyota in San Jose, where an employee offered another insight into the high quality of the cars being turned in. He was amazed at the number of $5000 to $7000 vehicles that people were taking $3500 to $4500 for. “Some just didn’t want the hassle of getting their car smogged and selling it on ebay or whatever,” he told me, while others “wanted to support the program.” He mentioned one guy who turned in a low mileage Lexus LS400 in primo condition that would easily have brought more than $10,000. The dealership itself would have given him substantially more than the $4500 Cash for Clunkers voucher, but the guy believed in the program and “wanted the fun of participating.”

Instead of letting his fellow countrymen buy his better-than-perfectly-good used car, he would rather take taxpayer money to destroy it. We are talking here about the absolute epitome of human manufacturing. The $50,000 price of an LS400 reflects the year of unprecedentedly efficient labor, divided among thousands of individuals, that goes into crafting one of these beauties.

Here is one of the more typical LS400 trade ins:

Car slaughter vs. people slaughter

The loss from slaughtering cars is not comparable to the loss from slaughtering people, but the mental process that approves this wanton destruction is the same. The only value that the Communists in Cambodia accounted was value that served Communist ideology. Everything heterodox got valued at zero, or negatively, as an enemy to be dispatched. Hence, kill all the educated people.

The green religionists are the same. They have an ideology of how people should behave, and everything heterodox is valued at zero, or negatively, as an enemy to be dispatched. Hence, destroy all the cars that are big enough to fit the needs of most people. If it is not a Prius or a Scion or some other green sacrament, the world will be a better place without it. Democrats will actually PAY to get rid of it, regardless of the value of the service it provides.

Real morality consists in husbanding and following all evidence of value, then accounting the resulting discoveries of value wherever they are enough at stake to be worth accounting. It is this accounting of value that tells one how to act for most value. The communist/Democrat mental process is the opposite. They don’t start with value (the value of a person’s life, or the services provided by a car). They start with their presumptions about what is to be done, and simply refuse to account the value of anything that stands in their way, or they account it negatively BECAUSE it stands in their way.

Cash for Clunkers is the same KIND of evil as Communist mass murder, just applied to something that is important to people, instead of to people themselves. The refusal to account the value of what they destroy is the same. And of course it WILL hurt people. It does not by itself kill anyone, but it will take a couple thousand dollar bite out of the welfare of a half million less-prosperous Americans (or a lesser bite out of several million less-prosperous Americans, adding up either way to the value of the cars destroyed).

That is a big hurt for a lot of people and some will indeed lose their grip on the economic ladder because of it, especially as Obama’s intentionally-created anti-energy recession deepens.

Cash for Clunkers is just the tip of the iceberg. Obama wants to wreak the same wanton destruction on an economy-wide scale, destroying our present “dirty” energy economy so he can replace it with his preferred “clean” energy economy. Think a comparison between destroying things and destroying people is far-fetched? You won’t once you see how many “things” Obama destroys: basically our entire established energy infrastructure, and without energy there is no prosperity, no modernity, just the radical contraction of civilization that green leaders so fervently desire.

Midwest Jim has some pertinent quotes from the former Obama’s “green jobs czar” Van Jones: ‘Green Jobs’ Goal is ‘Complete Revolution’ Away From ‘Gray Capitalism’

As Dick Morris notes, if cap-and-trade becomes law, green czar Jones “would be in charge of basically deciding how American manufacturing could cope with the need to reduce carbon output, which firms lived and died.”

Priusts and Sciontists

The eco-religionists are not real priests and they are not real scientists. Theirs is a dishonest religion, justified by utterly unscientific claims of dangerous CO2-driven global warming. As my noted in my last post, solar activity accounts statistically for 60-80% of global temperature variation on all time scales, and anyone can verify it in a couple of minutes (just follow the links), yet the alarmists build it into their models that solar activity has a much smaller impact on temperature than CO2.

The graph below shows how the IPCC models are parameterized. CO2 is much more powerful than solar activity BY ASSUMPTION, the opposite of what the statistical evidence says, and the opposite of what the scientific method requires. Data is supposed to take precedence over theory, not vice versa.

Actually, there is no statistical evidence that the human contribution to atmospheric CO2 has any effect on global temperature at all. We know theoretically that it should have SOME heat-trapping effect, but it seems to be too small to show up in the data. Parameterizing this unobservable effect at 14 times the strength of the known primary driver of global temperature is pure anti-scientific fraud. As Fred Singer put it recently:

…by focusing only on TSI [the latest IPCC report] disingenuously considers solar influences on climate to be insignificant when compared to the forcing by greenhouse gases.

Can the destruction be stopped?

The ironies are tragic. Here is the Governator, signing used vehicles for the State of California to auction off in a pathetic attempt to toss a single bucket of debt overboard while 40 ft. waves of debt crash over the gunnels. California’s two or three hundred acres of top quality Cash for Clunkers trade-ins, on the other hand, could be auctioned off for real money, enough to actually help the state’s budget while at the same time leaving the citizenry flush with inexpensive quality cars. People’s productivity would be enhanced, and they would be able to spend their savings elsewhere in California’s beleaguered economy.

Where are the advocates for such common sense? Walled off from most Americans, unfortunately.

Every elite institution in America today is controlled by the Democrats: academia, the mainstream media, the charitable foundations, the professional organizations, the public unions, the private unions, both houses of Congress and the presidency. All of them accept the lie that in order to save the planet from CO2, humanity and modernity must radically contract, a liberty-hating ideology every bit as ambitious as Nazism and Communism.

America pays thousands of professors to teach moral philosophy, yet faced with this latest society-wide eruption of moral perversity masquerading as moral rectitude, our professional moralists are silent at best. The only audible voices are riding the global warming bandwagon. Is there a single moral philosopher alive today who is not morally oblivious?

If you have a free hour, think about taking your camera to any nearby auto dealer to photograph the cars that are about to be destroyed. The decimation of America’s used-car market won’t be felt until after the hundreds of acres of non-clunker turn-ins have been destroyed, but if we can’t stop this crime we can at least document a little bit of it, to remind our impoverished future what a glory we once had: the best used car market ever seen.

At least we can take some consolation that we are only destroying 700,000 cars, unlike Germany, which destroyed 2,000,000, starting from a much smaller base. That’s okay. They’ll just make a new car their next welfare entitlement, then they won’t need a used car market. Show us the way Germany. We’ll corkscrew in behind you.

Mike posted earlier on how Democrats plan to memorialize commemorate the events of September 11th, this year:

Van Jones, an Obama environmental adviser, said 9/11 would be an opportunity to “connect, to find other people in your peer group who are also passionate about repowering America but also greening up America and cleaning up America.”

Musings of a blame-America Firster:

We need to get down on our knees and thank these Native American communities. But also the Latino community, Asian community, and every other community that’s willing to come here and help us out, ’cause we obviously need some help. We need some wisdom from someplace else. ‘Cause what we’ve come up with here don’t make no sense at all.”

* [W]hat about our sisters and brothers that are in prison right now?

Yeah, America’s the worst of all possible nations- a blight upon the planet earth that “don’t make no sense at all”. Throw it all out- bathwater, baby, rubber ducky, and all.

Any surprise he’d also believe 9/11 was orchestrated by the machinations of our government than by Islamic takfiri terrorists?

Gee…what was I thinking?!

Sometimes, I can be such an @$$hole….

When Obama stole Chrysler from its stockholders and gave it to his union cronies, we knew he would take every opportunity to waste taxpayer dollars trying to keep this lead balloon afloat. The Cash for Clunkers subsidy is just particularly egregious, since it works by subsidizing the last people in the world who need a subsidy: those who are well off enough to buy new cars in the midst of a deep recession. Talk about a middle class welfare program!

Crime 2: Eliminating Government Motors’ competition by gratuitously slagging an expected 750,000 perfectly good used cars in the sub-$4500 price range.

The Obamacrats aren’t just subsidizing cars for the well-to-do. They are destroying the cars that the less well-off are in the market for, driving up used car prices as part of their effort to make new cars more attractive:

Some parts may be kept but the engine and drive-train must be destroyed. Specifically the engine will be injected with a liquid glass solution to permanently disable the engine and it will be the responsibility of the dealer to make sure this is done to the engine.

Injected with liquid glass? Sounds like a Quentin Tarentino murder fantasy, and the reality isn’t any prettier. Witness Obama’s procedure for destroying the would-be cars of the non-wealthy:

Here is another one, a spiffy-looking Volvo that holds out for 4-plus minutes. Some clunker, and check out the row of semi-new cars lined up to go next:

Take THAT all you graduate students, newlyweds, store clerks, aspiring actors, single moms, non-deadbeat dads, warehouse workers, journalists, hippies, and other assorted poor relations. You want a car, you can scrape together your savings for a down payment on the privilege of paying hundreds of dollars a month to Government Motors for FIVE YEARS, just like everybody else.

How big is this crime?

A very substantial portion of the population NEVER buys a new car. I, for instance, have never bought a new car, and I never expect to. Why would I, when California has the best used car market in the world? In the last 10 years I have bought two 1984 Toyota Vans, one with 45,000 miles, one with 115,000 miles, each for $1500. Both still run great. One is set up as a work vehicle. One converts from passenger van to camper. No new vehicles would serve as well, or look as sharp.

My two uber-vans, one extra-dirty from its recent 2000 mile trek to Seattle and back. (Shasta, Crater Lake, Boeing Museum of Flight, Blue Angels, Olympic Peninsula, Fort Stevens, Oregon Dunes, North Coast, and back across the Golden Gate. Ain’t that America?)

The vehicles that are being gratuitously destroyed are newer than my two vans (which are just outside the 25 year age limit) and they are up to three times the price. For instance, the immensely popular Toyota Previa vans (1990-96) all qualify.

A good California Previa with a hundred thousand miles left on it sells for two to three thousand dollars. The government’s offer of 35-45 hundred is outbidding the market even on these top quality used vehicles. Cash for Clunkers is a misnomer. Some bottom-of-the-barrel cars will be turned in, but the rules insure that most will not be these “clunkers.”

To qualify, a car must have been registered in the name of the new car buyer for the last 12 months and it must have been insured for the last 12 months. These actively-used cars of people who buy new cars are the quality core of the used car market. Most “clunkers” will be perfectly good cars that would be prize possessions for a half million less well-off Americans, wantonly destroyed only because the Obamacrats prefer that they be destroyed. Dollar for dollar, this is the equivalent of trying to solve the glut of housing foreclosures by purchasing the houses with taxpayer money then burning them down.

Any Obama supporter who claims to be motivated by distributional justice, go soak your head. You want to subsidize the better off? Be as stupid as you want. But don’t go destroying en masse what the less well-off need to survive.

All justified by a lie

Obama’s excuse for decimating the last two generations of used vans, SUV’s, pick-up trucks and full size cars is the global warming hoax. The ascendancy of Obama was, in his own narcissistic words:

…the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.

Energy consumption must be curtailed in the extreme:

…under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.

It is all about CO2 and the phony global warming industry that Vice President Al Gore created with $10b of seed money when he pioneered and administered the executive branch’s global warming portfolio (now called “climate change,” since the earth stopped warming 10 years ago). Gore’s appointees have directed almost all of the full $79b that the U.S. has spent on climate science since 1989, and they don’t care at all whether CO2 is actually warming the planet. Their real motivation is an eco-religious belief that economic activity is gobbling up the natural world, so that for the natural world to survive, economic activity must contract.

To these high priests of green religion, CO2 is the perfect fall guy, no matter how insignificant its actual impact on climate. If the CO2 released by fossil fuel burning can be framed as a threat to the planet, that provides a rationale for drastically curtailing human economic activity, thereby stopping economic activity from gobbling up the natural world, whether or not CO2 itself actually has any harmful effects.

CO2 alarmists reject the scientific method

We can say with nearly complete certainty that the bulk of 20th century warming was NOT caused by CO2. This is because we know what DID cause the warming: the “grand maximum” levels of solar-magnetic activity that obtained for most solar cycles between 1930 and 2003.

Numerous studies have found a high degree of correlation (.6 to .8) between solar-magnetic activity and global temperature. That is, solar-magnetic activity “explains” statistically 60-80% of global temperature change on all time scales. That degree of correlation, observed over thousands and millions of years, HAS to be causal, and the causation can only go one way. It is not the temperature of the earth that is causing sunspots.

What is not well understood is HOW solar-magnetic activity drives global temperature. We just know that it does, just as before Einstein we did not know what mechanism causes massive objects to fall towards each other, we just knew that they do.

We actually have some pretty good theories of how solar-magnetic activity drives global temperature but set that aside. The eco-religionists, who thanks to Al Gore control ALL of the research funds for the “climate change” industry, use uncertainty about HOW solar-magnetic activity drives global temperature as an excuse for completely omitting the solar-magnetic variable from their models. They explicitly put theory over data, exactly the opposite of the scientific method, which says that data is always supposed to trump theory.

This anti-scientific method misattributes to CO2 the warming caused by high 20th century levels of solar-magnetic activity. Put solar-magnetic activity back into the equation, attributing to it what warming has historically been correlated with high levels of solar-magnetic activity, and the levels of warming that could possibly be attributable to CO2 become small. In particular, they become benign.

Warming in general is good. When Greenland was green, civilization prospered, as did plants and other living things. Nothing gobbles up the natural world like ice. It is only by claiming that CO2 could cause some unprecedented “runaway warming” that the alarmists have been able to present CO2 as dangerous. Stop misattributing solar-magnetic warming to CO2 and that possibility is off the table.

The dominant driver of global climate is solar-magnetic activity and any modicum of warming we can get out CO2 is all to the good. If our fossil fuel burning has the side effect of making our warm times a little warmer and our cold times a little less cold, that is a happy bit of luck for a world that ALWAYS seems to be colder than the optimum, with the next glacial period due any millennium.

Proof that the IPCC completely omits the solar-magnetic variable

Just look at any of the IPCC assessment reports. They all include the following graphic (slightly updated over the years):

From the 4th Assessment Report (figure 2.4 on page 39 of the Synthesis Report).

The only “natural” climate influence accounted by the IPCC is “solar irradiance,” which means visible light and other electro-magnetic radiation. It does not in any way include the solar-magnetic flux, which is completely omitted from all IPCC models, even though every climate scientists knows full well that, according to the raw data, magnetic effects are the primary driver of global temperature.

EVERY educated person who accepts CO2 alarmism on the authority of the global warming anti-scientists is failing the most basic due diligence.

Technically, the alarmists’ anti-scientific inversion of theory and evidence takes the form of what is called “omitted variable fraud,” where the omission of any important explanatory variable causes its explanatory effect to be misattributed to whatever correlated variables are included (in this case CO2 which, like solar activity, also went up in the 20th century). This is the most basic, the most common, the most familiar form of statistical fraud. Everyone who has ever studied not just any physical science but any social science at any moderately high level is fully competent recognize for themselves the statistical fraud that is being committed by the CO2 alarmists.

The educated Democrat-voting elites who are pushing to unplug industrial capitalism on the authority of alarmist anti-scientists have an obligation of due diligence to check for themselves whether the facts of the matter are beyond their own competence, and they are ALL failing this basic obligation. They are just assuming that they have to accept on authority that the survival of the planet requires the radical curtailment of CO2, when even a quick look at the facts reveals that the statistically most important variable is omitted from the alarmist models.

Why this willingness uncritically enlist as foot-soldiers for the destruction of modernity? Because like the CO2 anti-scientists themselves, these Democrat elites also don’t care whether CO2 is actually a threat. They too are eco-religionists who are glad for any excuse to curtail the economic growth that according to their presumptions is gobbling up the natural world.

Wrong about economics too

Of course the eco-religionists are also wrong about economic growth being bad for the environment. Economic growth creates and is created by technological advance, and it is technological advance that is allowing mankind and the natural world to both thrive at once. Economic activity is not the enemy of the natural world. It is the salvation of the natural world.

Having dedicated their intellectual resources to maintaining their religious presumptions instead of following reason and evidence, our Democrat elites have become pure political animals in the lowest sense, driven entirely by their lust for power. Every excuse, be it phony concern for distributive justice or phony concern for the environment, is wielded with complete dishonesty, utterly heedless of how distributive justice or the environment are actually affected, until all that is left is their ultimate presumption: that the one thing most necessary is that THEY have power.

This pathology finds its epitome in President Obama. Cash for Clunkers is just one paltry multi-billion dollar program, but the same coming-and-going perversity is manifest in Obama’s larger jihad against CO2—his push for cap and trade legislation. If we would uncork energy, the economy would rebound tomorrow, but Obama is determined to close the energy spigot down, not open it up.

Anybody who thinks this recession is ending is out of their minds. Obama is draining the oil and pouring in the silica slurry. If you want to hear where the economy is headed, listen to the “squirk” from the end of the Obama-car-death video, when the engine jerks at the end of the hangman’s rope.

This is the sound of a valuable helper being sacrificed by government to the false idols of green religion. It isn’t just barbarous. It is a clear violation of the establishment clause. Execute the worst human criminals, yes, but Mission Solano has it right: “No Death Penalty for Cars!”

Having posted this idea four years ago myself, I have to admit it’s a bit wacky. On the other hand, Hurricane Katrina devastated a substantial chunk of my country, so anything that MIGHT be able to slow these monsters down ought to at least be talked about.

The Gates scheme is lumbering and passive. My Hurricane Stopper is agile and active, giving it a better chance of being practical. My idea was to have wind-turbine powered jet-boats suck their propellant water from the cold depths and spread it around in the hurricane’s path. Think of barge-like wind-farms, big enough to ride out hurricane seas.

Downsides: Might not be possible to build a wind-farm barge capable of riding out hurricane winds and seas; would kill a lot of birds and fish; possible ill effects from changing the temperature gradient in the Gulf, if used on massive scale.

Gate’s scheme is similar to mine in that it also uses the hurricane’s own energy, but it does so passively. He would dot the Gulf with giant tubs, ballast-regulated to ride so that hurricane seas would lap over the edges of the tubs, raising the water level in the tub above the surrounding sea level. Gravity would then drive the water in the tub down through a drain in the bottom that extends down to the cold depths:

At whatever rate the waves lap over the top, the same amount of water should flow out the bottom. But is it really possible to in this way get the warm top-water off of the cold water below?

The patent claim is that when the top-water gets pushed down to the cold depths, it pushes the cold water up, but will it? How can cold rise through warm? It seems more likely that the warm water exiting the drain will float back up, but not all the way because it has been cooled by its exposure to deep water, with the warm top-water continuing to sit as a lid on the cold water below.

The only way any cold water would make it to the surface is by roiling of the waters from below, but this roiling would be originating 155 feet down, and only by passive means. If it brings any cold water to the surface, it won’t be much.

Neither will these giant tubs be very mobile, meaning the Gulf would have to be pre-saturated with these lap-tubs. FAIL.

In sum, Gates claim to the general idea of stopping hurricanes by bringing cold water to the surface is pre-empted by my four year old scheme, and his “best embodiment” of this general idea is far inferior to my embodiment, leaving him with nothing. Sorry Bill. You should have been reading my blog. I’d have been glad to work with you on a patent claim before the one year post-publication deadline for filing.

Let that be a lesson to everyone. Read my blog!

Another freebie: mitigate global cooling with sooty coal

With the earth cooling rapidly (by historical standards) for 10 years now, and with our quiescent sun guaranteeing a significantly extended cooling phase going forward, we need to start figuring out how to mitigate the growing cold, because unlike global warming, global cooling is actually dangerous. Cold really does feed on itself in a way that can get away from us, and it directly constricts the space available for living things, both seasonally and absolutely. Nothing gobbles up the biosphere like glaciation.

It is the feedback mechanism that creates the danger. Spreading snow and ice increase the earth’s “albedo,” or reflectivity, bouncing sunlight away and cooling the earth, creating yet more snow and ice. Of course this feedback cycle also works in the warming direction, but with a big difference. In the warming direction, the albedo feedback effect gets smaller and smaller as warming progresses. Once snow and ice have shrunk back to arctic regions, they are that point only reflecting away a small amount of sunlight, so further melting cannot shrink the albedo much further.

In the cooling direction, the albedo feedback effect gets larger and larger as cooling progresses. When snow and ice come down to lower latitudes, they cover progressively larger swaths of land and they reflect away sunlight that is progressively more direct. This is why the earth regularly experiences runaway cooling, and spends most of its time in 100,000 year long glacial periods, but has never experienced run-away warming. Warming feedbacks diminish as they progress. Cooling feedbacks build.

The last two years are illustrative, as near record snow- cover in Asia and North America have spawned our present cool summer. We are seeing right now just how fast cooling feedbacks can ramp up, but there may be something we can do about it.

We just need to darken the snow. Where oh where can we get our hands on a massive steady supply of black sooty stuff that we can pump out onto the snow all winter long across the great white north?

Just build, build, build coal burning electric plants across North America, Scandinavia and Asia, and leave the scrubbers off the smokestacks. As a handy by-product, the resulting cheap energy will bring our “green”-around-the-gills economy rocketing back from its current death spiral.

If we would de-regulate energy development (real energy development, not the phony “green” garbage), our economy would start booming tomorrow, and there is absolutely no reason to regulate CO2.

The facts are in: the CO2 theory of late 20th century warming has been debunked

There are two competing theories of 20th century warming. One, backed by the known history of correlation between solar activity and global temperature, says it was caused by the extraordinarily high levels of solar activity between 1930 to 2000. The other, formulated by anti-capitalist ideologues who claimed in the 1970’s that fossil fuels were causing global cooling, says that fossil fuels caused the warming from 1980-1998.

With both candidate causes galloping along at high levels until 2003, both theories claimed validation. Then the sun went quiet, as atmospheric CO2 continued to grow apace–the perfect experiment for finding which theory is correct–and the results are in. The planet is cooling, supporting the solar warming theory and debunking the CO2 warming theory.

The alarmist theory is not just wrong, but is actually an obvious case of omitted variable fraud. The only way the CO2 alarmists could pretend that the tiny CO2 greenhouse effect could cause runaway global warming was by completely omitting the known solar-magnetic warming influence from their models and misattributing this warming effect to CO2. As NASA climate-modeler Gavin Schmidt puts it:

[T]here is no obvious need for ‘new’ or unknown physics to explain what [is] going on.

Schmidt feels no “need” to account a known warming effect when he can make his model work just as well (even better, for his purposes) by misattributing this warming effect to CO2. Dirtbag.

Solar warmists never behave in this anti-scientific way. They never omit CO2 greenhouse effects from their calculations, but only do what scientists are supposed to do: use reason and evidence to gauge the magnitude of the different warming effects as best as they can. Their calculation that the dominant climate driver is solar activity has now been confirmed. That means CO2 cannot cause run-away warming, which means that whatever warming effect it has is all to the good. In general, warming is good for people and other living things, while cooling is bad. Mankind and the biosphere both thrived when Greenland was green.

Now that we are entering a cooling phase, people may start wishing that CO2 had a significant warming effect, but it doesn’t. The one place where CO2 can be of significant help is as a fertilizer for plant growth. With the shorter growing seasons that go with global cooling, we need as much of that effect as we can get. Thus there is a non-negligible grounds for subsidizing CO2, and no reason to suppress it, as our demented Democrats are doing.

Dirty coal might actually require subsidization

When the eco-religionists talk about “clean coal,” they are not talking about soot at all, but are talking about sequestering the colorless, odorless, harmless plant-food called CO2. What we need is not just “dirty coal” in the CO2 emitting sense, but real dirty coal, chock full of good old fashioned snow-darkening soot.

Getting genuinely dirty coal power probably will require subsidization, because old-time soot is the byproduct of an inefficient burning process. It will take some R & D to develop plants that can be switched back and forth between fully efficient summer-mode burning, sans soot and sulpher, and “inefficient” winter burning, with black soot intact (efficient once the external value of soot is counted as an output).

Massive expansion of dirty northern coal-fired electrical generation will kill several birds with one stone: it will rejuvenate the world economy; it will decrease wintertime albedo cooling feedbacks, significantly mitigating global cooling; the release of CO2 from coal-burning will give some relief from cold-driven crop shrinkage; and it will contribute very slightly to the earth’s blanket of greenhouse gases, mitigating global cooling itself by a very slight amount.

So that’s my freebie. Dig here. Back to the future. Return to dirty coal. Hard to patent the past, but I predict that at least a few hefty diamonds will be pulled from this ash heap.

An international group of academics is urging world leaders to abandon their current policies on climate change.

The authors of How to Get Climate Policy Back on Course say the strategy based on overall emissions cuts has failed and will continue to fail.

They want G8 nations and emerging economies to focus on an approach based on improving energy efficiency and decarbonising energy supply.

Critics of the report’s recommendations say they are a dangerous diversion.

The report is published by the London School of Economics’ (LSE) Mackinder Programme and the University of Oxford’s Institute for Science, Innovation & Society.

LSE Mackinder programme director Gwyn Prins said the current system of attempting to cap carbon emissions then allow trading in emissions permits had led to emissions continuing to rise.

He said world proposals to expand carbon trading schemes and channel billions of dollars into clean energy technologies would not work.

“The world has been recarbonising, not decarbonising,” Professor Prins said.

“The evidence is that the Kyoto Protocol and its underlying approach have had and are having no meaningful effect whatsoever.

“Worthwhile policy builds upon what we know works and upon what is feasible rather than trying to deploy never-before implemented policies through complex institutions requiring a hitherto unprecedented and never achieved degree of global political alignment.”

Meanwhile Senator James Inhofe plans on shining a spotlight on another of Obama’s “new transparency” examples. That of Alan Carlin, a senior analyst at the EPA, and a 35 year veteran of the agency, who tried to show that the science behind global warming needed another look.

…Mr. Carlin and a colleague presented a 98-page analysis arguing the agency should take another look, as the science behind man-made global warming is inconclusive at best. The analysis noted that global temperatures were on a downward trend. It pointed out problems with climate models. It highlighted new research that contradicts apocalyptic scenarios. “We believe our concerns and reservations are sufficiently important to warrant a serious review of the science by EPA,” the report read.

The response to Mr. Carlin was an email from his boss, Al McGartland, forbidding him from “any direct communication” with anyone outside of his office with regard to his analysis. When Mr. Carlin tried again to disseminate his analysis, Mr. McGartland decreed: “The administrator and the administration have decided to move forward on endangerment, and your comments do not help the legal or policy case for this decision. . . . I can only see one impact of your comments given where we are in the process, and that would be a very negative impact on our office.” …

Mr. McGartland blasted yet another email: “With the endangerment finding nearly final, you need to move on to other issues and subjects. I don’t want you to spend any additional EPA time on climate change. No papers, no research etc, at least until we see what EPA is going to do with Climate.” Ideology? Nope, not here. Just us science folk. Honest.

Senator Inhofe plans to grill the head of the EPA soon on the reasons why this analysis was swept under the carpet:

An example of the kind of chart the EPA is suppressing:

QandO Blog describes the chart:

What it shows is we’ve undergone another drop in temperature this past month (coolest June since 1958). In fact:

This latest drop in global temperatures means despite his dire warnings, the Earth has cooled .74°F since former Vice President Al Gore released “An Inconvenient Truth” in 2006.

It is also the information that the EPA tried to suppress recently despite the Obama administration’s pledge that science would now take precedence over ideology.

The new information adds to an 8 year trend of dropping global temperatures. Here’s another view of the same chart with a few important annotations:

Truth be damned when the whole of the Obama party…er, Democrat party, is desperate to get Cap & Trade passed before the truth can no longer be fended off.

You can imagine how irritating it gets when out trying to enjoy a beer and one of Al Gore’s cult followers begins proselytizing to the cause of Global Warming. But I’ve discovered that like the followers of any other religion, debating someone’s belief system is pointless. Pointing out how Climate Change is based more on belief than fact quickly sets them off, and they usually proceed to cite heavily flawed studies or quotes from an equally unreliable source. You could go back and forth all day, or you can end the conversation fairly quickly – simply state that you don’t debate religion, and if you’re to be expected to treat it like science, your green friend has to do so first. They can accomplish this by answering three simple questions:

1) Given the age of the planet and how widely the temperature has fluctuated over time, what is the ideal temperature that the Earth must be, and how will we maintain it over time?

2) One of the foundations of scientific theory is that it stands up to defeating theories that prove it wrong. We’ve heard how shrinking glaciers prove global warming, growing glaciers prove global warming, more storms prove global warming, and fewer storms prove global warming. What events prove their theories false?

3) Every few years a new threat comes along that threatens our very existence unless drastic action is taken yesterday. Of course, the media provides sensational screaming headlines backed up by irrefutable scientific evidence to promote these scares. Off of the top of my head here are a few from the last 40 years:

• Population would outgrow food supply causing mass starvation
• Oil reserves would be depleted by 1980
• Global Cooling
• Dioxin threatened us all (until it was discovered a pint of Ben & Jerry’s contains 3,000 times the “safe” level)
• Oil reserves would be depleted by 2000
• The hole in the ozone layer would continue to grow at an exponential rate

Since all of these crises turned out to be wrong, why is it that this time is different?

The followers of Al Gore don’t like having their views challenged, but if they want me to treat their beliefs like science they’re going to have to do it first. Not that these are necessary, but here are some bonus questions:

• Assuming we go completely green and rely only on renewable energy, how much will it cost? And how much of the countryside will have to be covered with windmills and solar panels?
• How come Iran is allowed to build nuclear power plants but we’re not?
• If we are truly in a crisis, why does the issue’s #1 advocate live in a hugely energy inefficient house while flying around the world in a private jet? Shouldn’t he live a more carbon neutral life like this great American?
• Given how incontrovertible he claims the evidence to be, why won’t Gore debate Bjorn Lomborg?

• Why did the nomenclature for this crisis have to change from Global Warming to CLimate Change?

To answer the obvious question, I haven’t made anyone see the light, and you probably won’t either. But at least your acquaintance will be irritated at you enough to shut up and let you enjoy your beer in peace.

And as Independence Day approaches, what could be more American than that?

Crossposted from Brother Bobs Blog

Dear Mr. Obama

We are the heads of a few of your largest constituents, including Dow, GE and DuPont. This letter represents our sentiments in wishing to express our gratitude for your and Ms. Pelosi’s efforts on our behalf. We thank you, our shareholders thank you, and certainly all of us look forward to contributing to your Presidential Library, once you leave office, if we did not sufficiently contribute already prior to the election.

We can appreciate that neither yourself nor your dear friends in Congress have had time to read the new Bill that opens: “A BILL – To create clean energy jobs, achieve energy independence, reduce global warming pollution and transition to a clean energy economy.” This Bill is very, very, very long and boring. It is also very complex. We conceived it and structured it in such way that the fewer the readers, the less editing would take place. We therefore anticipate that its passage will be swift. The sooner that train leaves the station, the more impossible its progress will be to reverse. It would also not be advantageous if the irrationality, and fear surrounding humanity’s hand in the process of global warming were to subside. Now, is an opportune time to strike.

Attaching the name “Cap and Trade” to this whole business has been a stroke of genius. No one really understands what it all means, and the media believes everything you tell them, so keep plugging it, and keep promoting the “reduction in CO2” stuff. That works really well in LA. Have you seen the air out there? Terrible. Terrible, or “turbull” as Charles Barkley would say. We are all thrilled that you have successfully reconstructed the original intent of CO2 reduction, into an energy consumption reduction program. We knew you could do it.

The impact on consumption reduction will, in our view, be minimal, and fortunately, that is not our objective. We wish you much luck in managing this monster, and in building an administration capable of verifying such things as the veracity of corporately claimed offsets. This Bill is so complex that it will provide endless possibilities for abuse and excesses, and we can smell the fraud stinking up the air already. As you know, a transparent system such as a simple graduated carbon tax, paralleled with targeted caps on emissions, would not have been as financially beneficial for us. Not even close.

We are well aware that most of our smaller brethren in the business will get put out to pasture as a result of their inability to move off-shore quickly enough, or by the fact that they will not be able to afford the carbon pollution permits. We, on the other hand, already have unregulated facilities around the world to which we can reallocate resources at a moment’s notice. Our competitors will also not have our advantage of receiving significant Cap and Trade credits based on our being able to provide all necessary products supporting this bill, from solar panels to wind mills in the sky. Our smaller competitors will also be unable to sustain the sheer costs of managing the government’s bureaucratic intrusion into their affairs, as it deploys armies of newly hired climate science experts to distribute and oversee capping and trading of carbon dioxide emissions.

We anticipate much higher costs in the manufacture of many alternate energy sources, such as solar energy absorption cells, and this will impact the expansion of solar cell farms, but well, we have no choice.

The Bill will be very effective in rendering the cost of any carbon-based energy unaffordable through overwhelming taxation. That should help you refill the government coffers somewhat, although the hole you are digging for American taxpayers is becoming rather considerable. Households across the country will bear the brunt of the costs, through higher product prices and a heavier tax burden, but most people seem very accepting of a “price” for reducing climate change. Even if most don’t believe that they impact climate, they still feel that the air needs cleaning. We are unsure, however, how taxpayers will feel about being mandated into financing the adoption of efficient technologies overseas. They will probably not be thrilled with paying to prevent the clear-cutting of the Amazon, for example, at a time when many households are barely paying their food bills. We, on the other hand, will not be affected, whatever reactions surface on that front, although a couple of us feel bad for our buddies running operations like aluminum, or steel mills. They are in for some tough times.

We note that some of our other friends on Wall Street are very preoccupied, as we write this letter, coming up with new and extremely creative financial tools which they expect to launch upon the Bill’s passing. Those boys have amazing ways of getting in on any game with the potential of throwing off billions in cash. They look forward to a whole new set of opportunities opening up for them, replacing the ones eclipsed by the recent devastating financial compression. Listening to some of them, one might conclude that they have been holding séances with Jeffrey Skilling of Enron fame.

We are anxious to be in receipt of our free Trade Allowances, but most of all, we are excited with the anticipation of enjoying astronomical growth for many years. In passing, we should thank you for having allowed, and fuelled with cash, firms like Goldman Sachs or Morgan Stanley to become even bigger, and more powerful than they were before the financial down-turn. This action set a tremendous precedent we look forward to duplicating in our industries. If you thought “too big to fail” applied to these giants before the crash, wait until you see how big a few of us get in the next five years.

We have one last request if we can be so bold. Could you repeat as often as possible to the Nation that this Bill will not cost over $3,000 per household each year, and that much like the national objective of being carbon neutral, so too the cost will be, … “neutral.” Explain to America that it is just a methodology for keeping track of excessive energy consumers, and polluters. Perfect, don’t you think? They’ll all buy it. The media will promote that theme for you.

We will continue to postulate assertively on the need for battling global warming, and look forward to your persistent oratory on getting this momentous Bill passed into law.

Sincerely.
Your Friendly Benefactors

Crossposted from The Pacific Gate Post

Bono Mack (CA) (202) 225-5330
Castle (DE) (202) 225-4165
Kirk (IL) (202) 225-4385 (And he’s seriously considering running for Senate!)
Lance (NJ) (202) 225-5361
LoBiondo (NJ) (202) 225-6572
McHugh (NY) (202) 225-4611
Reichert (WA) (202) 225-7761
Smith (NJ) (202) 225-3765

You remember now don’t you?

Well, those who voted on it could not remember much seeing as how it DOESN’T EXIST:

Nobody could have read the bill the House passed last night because there is no bill. There apparently wasn’t time to pull together a finished product that accounted for the hundreds of pages of amendments because of Pelosi’s headlong rush to slam this lunacy through before anybody had a chance to learn what was actually in it. So there is no “it” that all the pages and pages of words can be found “in.” Democrats have passed a concept — not a bill.

The Washington Examiner:

Texas Republican Reps. Joe Barton and Louie Gohmert have just asked the chair whether there exists a complete, updated copy of the Waxman-Markey carbon-cap bill.

“If a bill for which there is no copy were to actually pass this body,” Barton asked, “could the bill without a copy be sent to the Senate for its consideration?”

Through a series of parliamentary inquiries, the Republicans learned that the 300-plus page managers’ amendment, added to the bill last night in the House Rules Committee, has not even been been integrated with the official copy of the 1,090-page bill at the House Clerk’s desk, let alone in any other location. The two documents are side-by-side at the desk as the clerk reads through the instructions in the 300 page document for altering the 1,090 page document.

But they cannot be simply combined, because the amendment contains 300 pages of items like this: “Page 15, beginning line 8, strike paragraph (11)…” How many members of Congress do you suppose have gone through it all to see how it changes the bill?

Wonderful….just how I imagined a Pelosi run Congress would operate.

So, it passed the House. This tax, a tax in which Obama promised he would never force upon his adorers seeing as how he promised nobody making under 250 grand a year would pay any new federal taxes.

The left says, its not a tax! It’s a fee you see. Because any business that wishes to emit carbon will have to pay the fee to operate.

That’s a tax folks. Anytime you HAVE to pay our government and they use that money to operate the government…that’s a tax. We all know whats going to happen once the business’s are forced to pay more to operate, that burden will be passed on to the consumer. So our prices will go up for all sorts of goods. Then our utility bills will rise, as Obama promised:

So, as the Tax Foundation study stated, we are going to be paying about 2% more annually. Check that link for a calculator to find out how much more your gonna be paying per year because of the bill…or I should say, the bill that doesn’t exist……yet.