Candidates need to be ready to blow away the arguments

By Steve Milloy

If you’re thinking of becoming a Republican presidential candidate – and who isn’t these days – you can plan on being pressed on the climate issue. In the wake of last week’s new report from a panel of the National Research Council (NRC) reiterating its old talking points on climate, The Washington Post editorialized that all (read “Republican”) candidates for political office should be quizzed about whether they agree with the “scientific consensus of America’s premier scientific advisory group.”

Although this threat is intended to intimidate Republicans who tend toward queasiness when confronted with environmental issues, the attack is easy to parry and then even to counterattack – that’s why Al Gore and his enviros duck debating so-called “climate skeptics.”

First, let’s dismiss a couple of faulty premises of The Post’s editorial.

While it is true that the NRC operates under the umbrella of the National Academy of Sciences, the NRC panel that authored the report has nothing to do with the prestigious individual scientists who make up the National Academy of Sciences membership. NRC panels are highly politicized and often stacked, and no climate skeptics were included in the panel that wrote last week’s report.

Next, science doesn’t work on a consensus basis. We don’t accept that the Earth revolves around the Sun because most scientists or a group of scientists have agreed to say so. Science is driven by data, not groupthink.

In actuality, the NRC report is more an exercise in political science than climate science.

Read the rest of this op-ed at the Washington Times.

Steve Milloy is the author of Green Hell.

By Dr. Tim Ball

Traditionally, the older scientists held to the prevailing wisdom and were challenged by the new, skeptical graduates looking for wider answers. In climatology, the opposite has happened. The so-called skeptics challenging the prevailing wisdom are the professors who have researched and taught the subject for 30 years or longer. Their knowledge is much wider than that of the new young scientists because climate science has stagnated for thirty years. All the funding was directed to only one side of climate science, and that was the side promoted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and accepted as the ‘official science’ by governments.

It’s now frightening how little climate science is known by both sides of the debate on human causation of global warming. I wrote this sentence before I saw a paper from Michigan State University that found,

Most college students in the United States do not grasp the scientific basis of the carbon cycle – an essential skill in understanding the causes and consequences of climate change.

The professor says students need to know because they must deal with the buildup of CO2 causing climate change. This discloses his ignorance about the science of the carbon cycle and the role of CO2 in climate. It’s not surprising, and caused by three major factors:

1. a function of the emotional, irrational, religious approach to environmentalism;
2. the takeover of climate science for a political agenda; and
3. funding directed to prove the political, rather than the scientific, agenda.

The dogmatism of politics and religion combined to suppress openness of ideas and the advance of knowledge critical to science.

Read the Rest at Dr. Ball’s “A Different Perspective.”

Wind Turbine

By American Tradition Institute

As the new state legislature scrutinizes Minnesota’s restrictive energy policies, a study commissioned by the American Tradition Institute and the Minnesota Free Market Institute provides several reasons for lawmakers and new Gov. Mark Dayton to reverse the state’s damaging Renewable Portfolio Standard.

The study found that Minnesotans would pay $15 billion more for electricity between 2016 and 2025 because of the state’s RPS, as alternative energy is more costly and unreliable than conventional sources such as coal or natural gas. Meanwhile there will be negligible environmental benefit, as it is unlikely that use of renewables – especially wind, which the state mandates as a large percentage of its RPS – actually reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The study was prepared by economists at the Beacon Hill Institute at Suffolk University in Boston.

Read the rest at American Tradition Institute.

The last we saw such an economy was in the 13th Century

By Jerry Taylor and Peter Van Doren

“Green” energy such as wind, solar and biomass presently constitute only 3.6% of fuel used to generate electricity in the U.S. But if another “I Have a Dream” speech were given at the base of the Lincoln Memorial, it would undoubtedly urge us on to a promised land where renewable energy completely replaced fossil fuels and nuclear power.How much will this particular dream cost? Energy expert Vaclav Smil calculates that achieving that goal in a decade–former Vice President Al Gore’s proposal–would incur building costs and write-downs on the order of $4 trillion. Taking a bit more time to reach this promised land would help reduce that price tag a bit, but simply building the requisite generators would cost $2.5 trillion alone.

Let’s assume, however, that we could afford that. Have we ever seen such a “green economy”? Yes we have; in the 13th century.

Renewable energy is quite literally the energy of yesterday. Few seem to realize that we abandoned “green” energy centuries ago for five very good reasons.

Read the rest at Forbes.

By Paul Chesser

Living in a home with four kids and two dogs, one child’s “clean” can mean “unacceptable” to an adult — think barely visible shower scum or machine-washed plates without phosphates.

And necessary energy levels and types mean different things to different people: A back-to-nature maiden who practices what she preaches needs much less than a multitasker who watches her LCD TV while researching on the Internet and listening to her iPod.

And as we know from years of observation of political discourse, one man’s “standard” is another’s moral abhorrence.

Put them together in a “Clean Energy Standard” (CES) and you ask for real trouble.

But that’s not stopping Sens. Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who on Monday — as Chairman and Ranking Republican respectively of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee — issued a “white paper” that solicits comments on what should constitute a CES. You might remember that in his State of the Union address last January 25, President Obama proposed that the federal government impose an 80 percent standard by the year 2035.

Read the rest at the American Spectator.

The intent of the Clean Air Act needs to be manipulated beyond logic to believe the EPA has any authority to regulate CO2

By Marlo Lewis

In a recent issue of the Daily Caller, reporter Jonathan Strong asserts that EPA’s global warming regulations are “no end-run around Congress,” because “This time Congress is being held hostage by its own laws.” That’s exactly what EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson and just about every environmental advocacy group in America says. They are mistaken.Interestingly, much of Strong’s argument leads to conclusion that EPA is engaged in an end-run. His column leaves little doubt that the Clean Air Act (CAA) is a stunningly inappropriate framework for regulating greenhouse gases. That should make him wary of environmentalist claims that EPA is just carrying out the will of Congress.

Strong notes that President Obama and others depicted CAA regulation of greenhouse gases as “heinously bad” when they wanted to spook Republicans into supporting cap-and-trade legislation as a lesser evil. But why would Congress authorize something heinously bad? Granted, Congress does many foolish things, but it has never, ever voted to put EPA in charge of making climate policy.

Read the rest at Pajamas Media.

By Jo Nova

The good news is that skeptics are the majority, the bad news is that we’ll all have to pay the tax anyway. The IPA commissioned a Galaxy Poll in Australia and only one third of Australians believe that man-made global warming is real. Despite the advertising, the propaganda, the Nobel Prizes, the support of major institutions, the ABC censorship of skeptical science news, and the educational indoctrination at schools, most people are unconvinced.

Despite the falling polls, today the Gillard Government committed itself to getting a “carbon price” – the nice way of saying “tax”. (Note the poll attached to that story: Do you support a carbon tax? 84% say NO.)

(see full article for poll results)

It’s a question of youth

From the full results it’s clear that belief is mostly a “young” naive thing, and that by the age of 30 people are waking up to the truth.  Half of the 18-24 year olds think that man is to blame, but only a quarter of the over 50′s do.  The old cats who’ve been there and done that are wiser to exaggerated scare campaigns. Half of the 25 -34 year old group answered that they are not sure.

Read the rest at JoNova.

From Freedom Action

Freedom Action this week launched a national grassroots campaign to repeal the ban on incandescent light bulbs that is scheduled to begin on January 1, 2012. Supporters of repealing the ban are being invited to sign a petition to Congress at FreeOurLight.org.The ban on standard incandescent bulbs was included in comprehensive anti-energy legislation passed by the Democratic-controlled Congress and signed into law by Republican President George W. Bush in 2007. The chief sponsors of the ban were Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) and Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.).

Rep. Upton, now Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, has said that his committee will hold a hearing on the ban, but he has not promised to repeal it, as was erroneously reported in the press in December. The 2007 law makes the sale of standard incandescent 100-watt bulbs illegal as of January 1, 2012, 75-watt bulbs as of January 1, 2013, and 60- and 40-watt bulbs as of January 1, 2014.

Read the rest at Freedom Action and see FreeOurLight.org.

By Jeff Stein

The future of the CIA’s unit on climate change and U.S. national security is “in jeopardy” because of pressure for intelligence budget cuts and resistance from conservative lawmakers, a new report says.

The CIA’s Center on Climate Change and National Security opened its doors a year ago over the objections of conservatives who attempted to block its funding, Northwestern University’s National Security Reporting Project recounted Monday.

“Now, with calls for belt tightening coming from every corner, leadership in Congress has made it clear that the intelligence budget, which soared to $80.1 billion last year, will have to be cut,” wrote student reporters Charles Mead and Annie Snider. “And after sweeping victories by conservatives in the midterm elections, many political insiders think the community’s climate change work will be in jeopardy.”

Read the rest at the Washington Post.

By J. Brady Howell

At an all-day White House conference on “environmental justice,” Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced that her department is creating a new task force to battle the effects of climate change on domestic security operations.Speaking at the first White House Forum on Environmental Justice on Thursday, Napolitano discussed the initial findings of the department’s recently created “Climate Change and Adaptation Task Force.”

Napolitano explained that the task force was charged with “identifying and assessing the impact that climate change could have on the missions and operations of the Department of Homeland Security.”

Read the rest at CNS News.

By Phyllis Schlafly

The global warming prophets and propagandists, who enjoy living in style on other people’s money, gathered last month in the plush resort of Cancun, Mexico, where January temperatures usually hover around 80 degrees. God must have a sense of humor because Cancun was hit by its coldest temperature in a hundred years.The first day of the conference featured an address from Mexico’s President Felipe Calderon, who spoke with much concern about global warming and the damage that humans are perpetrating on the planet.

He cited the deaths of 60 people in Mexico because of weather extremes, but didn’t mention Mexico’s 22,000 deaths caused by the illegal drug trade.

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon announced that “we need to fundamentally transform the global economy, based on low-carbon, clean-energy resources.” Barack Obama’s announced goal of fundamentally transforming the United States has morphed into transforming the world.

This 16th annual conference of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), called COP 16 (Conference of the Parties 16), attracted some 20,000 delegates from 194 countries.

It had little to do with any science about climate change and everything to do with trying to get the United States and other industrialized nations to redistribute their wealth to the poorer nations under the supervision of eager United Nations bureaucrats.

Read the rest of this editorial at Investors Business Daily.

From The Guardian

Hidden behind the save-the-world rhetoric of the global climate change negotiations lies the mucky realpolitik: money and threats buy political support; spying and cyberwarfare are used to seek out leverage.

The US diplomatic cables reveal how the US seeks dirt on nations opposed to its approach to tackling global warming; how financial and other aid is used by countries to gain political backing; how distrust, broken promises and creative accounting dog negotiations; and how the US mounted a secret global diplomatic offensive to overwhelm opposition to the controversial “Copenhagen accord“, the unofficial document that emerged from the ruins of the Copenhagen climate change summit in 2009.

Negotiating a climate treaty is a high-stakes game, not just because of the danger warming poses to civilisation but also because re-engineering the global economy to a low-carbon model will see the flow of billions of dollars redirected.

Seeking negotiating chips, the US state department sent a secret cable on 31 July 2009 seeking human intelligence from UN diplomats across a range of issues, including climate change. The request originated with the CIA. As well as countries’ negotiating positions for Copenhagen, diplomats were asked to provide evidence of UN environmental “treaty circumvention” and deals between nations.

Read the rest of the column.

Global warming is now such a serious threat to mankind that climate change experts are calling for Second World War-style rationing in rich countries to bring down carbon emissions.

By Louise Gray

U.S. ethanol consumes about 40 pct corn crop; Impact on food prices “real”

By Gerard Wynn

ATHENS, Nov 22 (Reuters) – Former U.S. vice-president Al Gore said support for corn-based ethanol in the United States was “not a good policy”, weeks before tax credits are up for renewal.

U.S. blending tax breaks for ethanol make it profitable for refiners to use the fuel even when it is more expensive than gasoline. The credits are up for renewal on Dec. 31.

Total U.S. ethanol subsidies reached $7.7 billion last year according to the International Energy Industry, which said biofuels worldwide received more subsidies than any other form of renewable energy.

“It is not a good policy to have these massive subsidies for (U.S.) first generation ethanol,” said Gore, speaking at a green energy business conference in Athens sponsored by Marfin Popular Bank.

“First generation ethanol I think was a mistake. The energy conversion ratios are at best very small.

“It’s hard once such a programme is put in place to deal with the lobbies that keep it going.”
He explained his own support for the original programme on his presidential ambitions.

“One of the reasons I made that mistake is that I paid particular attention to the farmers in my home state of Tennessee, and I had a certain fondness for the farmers in the state of Iowa because I was about to run for president.”

Read the rest at Reuters.