There’s no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to ‘decarbonize’ the world’s economy

By 16 concerned scientists (see end of article)

A candidate for public office in any contemporary democracy may have to consider what, if anything, to do about “global warming.” Candidates should understand that the oft-repeated claim that nearly all scientists demand that something dramatic be done to stop global warming is not true. In fact, a large and growing number of distinguished scientists and engineers do not agree that drastic actions on global warming are needed.

In September, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Ivar Giaever, a supporter of President Obama in the last election, publicly resigned from the American Physical Society (APS) with a letter that begins: “I did not renew [my membership] because I cannot live with the [APS policy] statement: ‘The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring. If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth’s physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.’ In the APS it is OK to discuss whether the mass of the proton changes over time and how a multi-universe behaves, but the evidence of global warming is incontrovertible?”

In spite of a multidecade international campaign to enforce the message that increasing amounts of the “pollutant” carbon dioxide will destroy civilization, large numbers of scientists, many very prominent, share the opinions of Dr. Giaever. And the number of scientific “heretics” is growing with each passing year. The reason is a collection of stubborn scientific facts.

Perhaps the most inconvenient fact is the lack of global warming for well over 10 years now. This is known to the warming establishment, as one can see from the 2009 “Climategate” email of climate scientist Kevin Trenberth: “The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.” But the warming is only missing if one believes computer models where so-called feedbacks involving water vapor and clouds greatly amplify the small effect of CO2.

Read the rest at the Wall Street Journal

Washington, D.C. – Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works commented on President Obama’s State of the Union Address.

“President Obama has clearly received the message that his global warming agenda is gone, dead, done with the American people – that’s why he was touting oil and natural gas so much in his State of the Union address tonight,” Senator Inhofe said. “He understands that especially in a weak economy, Americans want the hundreds of thousands of jobs, the affordable energy prices, and the increased energy security that domestic fossil fuel development brings. But while he talks the talk, he is clearly still determined to achieve his global warming agenda by shutting down oil, gas and coal development so that energy prices will, as he said himself, ‘necessarily skyrocket.’

“President Obama congratulated himself tonight on decreasing imports of oil from the Middle East, but failed to mention that his policies of energy austerity, which have caused gasoline prices nearly to double since he took office, are responsible for it. If he is determined, as his Energy Secretary Steven Chu said, to ‘boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe’ he is well on his way to achieving that goal. He claims to care about energy security, yet he stopped the Keystone pipeline – and the 20,000 American jobs it would have created – which would have done more than any other project to increase our energy security and revive our economy.”

Read the rest at the US Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.

From CBS San Francisco

After filing for bankruptcy last year, Fremont solar company Solyndra still owes American taxpayers half a billion dollars. But CBS 5 caught them destroying millions of dollars worth of parts.

At Solyndra’s sprawling complex in Fremont, workers in white jumpsuits were unwrapping brand new glass tubes used in solar panels last week. They are the latest, most cutting-edge solar technology, and they are being thrown into dumpsters.

Forklifts brought one pallet after another piled high with the carefully packaged glass. Slowly but surely it all ended up shattered.

And it’s not a few loads. Hundreds of thousands of tubes on shrink-wrapped pallets will meet a similar demise.

Solyndra paid at least $2 million for the specialized glass. A CBS 5 crew found one piece lying in the parking lot. Solyndra still owes the German company that made the tubes close to another $8 million.

Read the rest and see video at CBS San Francisco

By Doug Powers

Yesterday there was another White House document dump regarding Solyndra’s bankruptcy filing just after the 2010 elections. While Solyndra is the crown jewel in the Department of Energy’s “you can’t make a green omelette without breaking a few hundred million taxpayer eggs” trial-and-error initiative, there are many other examples.

CBS News’ Sharyl Attkisson — who was one of the first reporters on the Solyndra trail — featured 11 other DoE loan recipients that either have or probably will take a Solyndra-style plunge and suck down $6.5 billion of taxpayer loans with them.

Read the rest at Michelle Malkin.

By Dan Chapman

The failed Range Fuels wood-to-ethanol factory in southeastern Georgia that sucked up $65 million in federal and state tax dollars was sold Tuesday for pennies on the dollar to another bio-fuel maker with equally grand plans to transform the alternative energy world.

LanzaTech, a New Zealand-based biofuel company, paid $5.1 million for the plant in Soperton. Its main financial backer: Vinod Khosla, a California entrepreneur who also bankrolled Range Fuels, and helped secure its government loans, before Range went bust last year.

LanzaTech hasn’t received the same type of loans, but the company has received $7 million from the U.S. departments of Energy and Transportation to assist in the development of alternative fuels.

Read the rest at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Wind Turbine

By Patrick Moore

Southwestern Ontario’s flourishing wind energy industry came under fire Wednesday from the co-founder of Greenpeace.

Dr. Patrick Moore told more than 1,000 area farmers the industry destroys more jobs than it creates, and causes energy prices to climb for all users.

“The industry is a destroyer of wealth and negative to the economy,” said Moore, speaking at the 19th annual Southwest Agricultural Conference at Ridgetown campus of the University of Guelph.

Moore, who now refers to himself as the “sensible environmentalist,” said the solar bubble has burst and thinks the wind bubble is about to burst.

“I’m happy for the farmers who are receiving royalties for allowing the wind towers to be built on their farms,” he said. “They deserve it — but the cost to consumers will continue to climb — partly because of rate increases and partly due to tax increases.”

Moore said there wouldn’t be wind farms in southwestern Ontario if taxpayers weren’t paying the bill.

Read the rest at Climate Realists.

By the P/O’d Patriot

I, like many of you, did a few cartwheels when I noticed the headline on Drudge that said:

“Congress Overturns Incandesenct Light Bulb Ban…”

The dreaded “green” light bulb ‘mandate’ that was created in 2007 was dead! I began to proclaim the good news from the highest mountains in the land of Facebook without even reading the article. 

Shame on me for doing so…

I shortly found an article in Forbes that popped my bubble. So did Congress reverse the light bulb ban?  No, No, not really…

Read the rest at Gateway Pundit.

Obama in 2008: “Under my plan… electricity rates will necessarily skyrocket.”

By Dennis Cauchon

Electric bills have skyrocketed in the last five years, a sharp reversal from a quarter-century when Americans enjoyed stable power bills even as they used more electricity.

Households paid a record $1,419 on average for electricity in 2010, the fifth consecutive yearly increase above the inflation rate, a USA TODAY analysis of government data found. The jump has added about $300 a year to what households pay for electricity. That’s the largest sustained increase since a run-up in electricity prices during the 1970s.

Electricty is consuming a greater share of Americans’ after-tax income than at any time since 1996 — about $1.50 of every $100 in income at a time when income growth has stagnated, a USA TODAY analysis of Bureau of Economic Analysis data found.

Read the rest at USA Today.

By Paul Chesser

Last week Frito-Lay, the $12 billion snack foods division of PepsiCo, boasted it would add 10 all-electric delivery trucks in Orlando, Fla., as part of its plan to deploy 176 such vehicles in the U.S. and Canada by the end of year. 

As is custom with corporate announcements that proclaim their eco-accomplishments, so as to pacify persistent climate alarmists, Frito-Lay said the vehicles would emit “zero” pollutants from tailpipes and release 75 percent fewer greenhouse gases than diesel. The ETs (electric trucks) can allegedly run 100 miles on a single charge, and Frito-Lay says the groundbreaking new haulers provide “a long-term economically viable solution” – apparently to solve global warming.

Regular readers of NLPC should know the Chevy Volt sticker price, before the $7,500 tax credit, is $41,000, and for the Nissan Leaf it’s $35,200. So the cost for an electric delivery truck must be somewhat higher, right? And you’d think that Frito-Lay, and any other company that undertakes an electric truck program to meet its distribution needs, would go to great expense for a much heavier and larger electric transporter than the Volt and Leaf, correct? 

Not so fast, Sparky. 

While it is certainly true the electric trucks (ETs) are more expensive, that doesn’t mean Frito-Lay is footing the bill for them. Yes, astute NLPC reader, you’ve figured out who’s covering the bill: taxpayers.

Read the rest at National Legal and Policy Center.

The closing this week of the Chicago Climate Exchange, which was envisioned to be the key player in the trillion-dollar “cap and trade” market, was the final nail in the coffin of the Obama administration’s effort to pass the controversial program meant to combat global warming.

“It is dead for the foreseeable future,” said Myron Ebell, director of the Center for Energy and the Environment with the Competitive Energy Institute, which had fought the measure.

Read the rest at Fox News.

By Paul Chesser

On Monday NLPC’s Mark Modica smartly called into question Consumer Reports’ sudden change in opinion about the electric hybrid Chevy Volt from a vehicle that they once believed “doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense,” to one the publication recommends. The next day, however, CR delivered an online review of the major all-electric vehicle on the U.S. market “the Nissan Leaf ” and while not intended to be scathing, the account given by reviewer Liza Barth makes the car sound so unappealing, she should have panned it outright.

I wish I could reproduce her entire account here without a charge of plagiarism, to detail exactly what a turkey the Leaf is, so make sure you follow the link to Barth’s assessment. And while giving somewhat a nod of approval in a late September review based upon CR’s very controlled facility testing, Barth’s real-life experience told the true story.

Her test of the vehicle was over the course of a long weekend, beginning on a Thursday evening. On her Friday morning commute from her New Jersey home to CR’s Yonkers headquarters which she said normally includes a 33-mile ride that incorporates the Tappan Zee Bridge over the Hudson River. She already suffered a case of range anxiety. “So,” Barza wrote, “I opted to travel fewer miles and pay the $12 toll over the George Washington Bridge and another $2.25 over the Henry Hudson Bridge.” Ouch.

Barza contended that she and her kids enjoyed the Leaf and had fun driving it, but apparently only so long as she traveled no farther than the corner store (or an equivalent distance). Then she and her husband planned an evening dinner date, so she plugged the Leaf in during the afternoon for five hours (isn’t that an entire afternoon?), which she said only raised the range from 25 miles to 75 miles. “I wasn’t confident we would make it there and back to our dinner location, which was 60 miles round trip,” Barza recounted. So the Leaf could not transport them for the evening.

Read the rest at National Legal and Policy Center.

From Plains Daily

North Dakota Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem is announcing a lawsuit against the State of Minnesota over the latter state’s restrictions on using power from coal plants, among other sources.

“It is unfortunate it has come to this. As Minnesota seeks to rebuild its economy, it will need energy,” said Stenehjem in a press release. “Much of that energy will need to come from sources outside Minnesota.”

In its lawsuit, North Dakota alleges that the Next Generation Energy Act violates the Commerce Clause of the United States Constitution, unconstitutionally interfering with North Dakota’s energy production. The NGEA imposes prohibitions on energy imported from North Dakota, and while the law does make some exemptions the State of North Dakota is alleging that those exemptions benefit only Minnesota-based businesses and projects.

Read the rest at Plains Daily.

By Johnathan Serrie

Just months after obtaining more than $400,000 in federal stimulus funds, TR Auto Truck Plaza off Interstate 40 sits idle.

The Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT) handed out the $424,000 Environmental Protection Agency stimulus grant for electrical hookups so that truckers wouldn’t have to burn diesel fuel while resting. Both the state and EPA were apparently unaware that owner Rick Lewis had a history of legal and financial problems and had filed for bankruptcy.

What was originally lauded as Tennessee’s first electrified truck terminal is now boarded up.

“It is Solyndra in miniature,” said Rep. Phil Gingrey, R-Ga., referring to a Silicon Valley solar panel manufacturer that filed for bankruptcy shortly after receiving a $535 million loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Energy. “What I am questioning is the vetting and oversight and the fiduciary responsibility that the federal government — the people who run these programs — have to we, the taxpayer.”

Even before his latest bankruptcy filing, Lewis had a history of financial troubles. He filed for bankruptcy in 2003, a year after a conviction on 31 counts of theft. And Lewis currently faces indictments for allegedly writing worthless checks, according to court records.

Read the rest at Fox News.