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An Extraordinary Event
For the last two days, March 2-4, I and about five hundred other people attended the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change, including some of the world’s leading authorities on climatology, meteorology, economics, energy, and other fields of knowledge.
It was an extraordinary event, held in New York and sponsored by the Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based think tank that has been among those leading the effort to educate and inform the public about the mountain of lies that have led them to believe that the Earth is experiencing a huge increase in heat, a "global warming", that is allegedly the direct result of human activities, primarily from the use of energy that includes coal, natural gas, and oil.
The conference message is simplicity itself: There is no "consensus" on global warming. The science is not "settled." Indeed, this conference marks a highpoint in the effort to rescue the planet from people who regard their fellow human beings as a cancer afflicting the Earth.
This hoax, generated out of the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, actually included some IPCC members who have labored long and hard to dispute the IPCC reports on the basis of real science, not the spurious claims based largely on flawed and even deliberately false computer models.
In breakfasts, luncheons, and dinners, some of these now-famed global warming "dissenters" and "deniers" presented talks complete with power-point presentations filled with statistics and charts that disputed the alleged facts of the IPCC. These presentations were then augmented by a series of panels on paleoclimatology, climatology, the impacts of the global warming hoax, its affect on the economics of both developed and developing nations, and how it twists the politics of our nation and others.
What made this event so extraordinary was that it is, to my knowledge, the first time since the global warming hoax was perpetrated back in the 1980s (it had been preceded by a campaign in the 1970s asserting—correctly—that we are closer to the next ice age) that such a gathering has occurred. It has taken three decades to bring together these experts and the reason why is fairly simple.
The forces behind the global warming hoax, the environmental organizations, have been heavily funded by foundations and, as in the United States, by billions of government dollars directed to research on the climate. These groups have garnered more money from membership and the sales of all manner of books, publications, DVDs and other items. Still others have made their money by suing the government and having their legal fees reimbursed along with any other rewards.
The "stars" of the conference were men with impeccable credentials, but largely unknown to the general public because the media has been enthralled the global warming hoaxers, either deliberately or by virtue of being disinterested in the actual science involved. Too many have failed their commitment to journalism’s high standards and they have failed a public that depends on them to explain these complex issues.
For decades, the headlines have heralded all manner of crisis to the point of absurdity whereby now blizzards are attributed to warming tends. This passed year has seen significant and unusual blizzard conditions worldwide and this too, the public has been told, results from a dramatic warming that is not occurring.
For me, there was the particular pleasure of actually meeting many of those who have been on the front lines of disputing the hoax, but our work is far from finished.
Much damage is being done to America by legislation based on the global warming lies, particularly as regards their impact on the provision of the energy this nation requires to be competitive in the global marketplace and to sustain our lifestyle. Our political candidates all subscribe to the global warming hoax. The leaders in the Senate and House all advocate it as well.
The result is legislation that forces the nation to literally burn its food crops—notably corn—in order to turn it into an efficient fuel additive, ethanol. This in turn is forcing up the cost of food. It is legislation that does not permit for the exploration and extraction of energy reserves such as oil and natural gas along 85% of our nation’s continental shelf, nor in Alaska where billions of barrels of oil remain untapped. It is legislation that grants huge subsidies—a form of hidden tax—to wind and solar energy, the two most inefficient and unreliable forms of energy. It is legislation that bans the future use of incandescent light bulbs.
In short, America is gripped by a form of life-threatening insanity perpetrated by the Greens and legislated by politicians who haven’t a clue about the ways they are wrecking our economy in the name of global warming.
So this extraordinary conference, drawing men and women from as far away as Australia, New Zealand, China, the United Kingdom and Europe, may well be the last best hope to turn away from a future that will be marked by the undermining of America’s and Europe’s economies.
Ruining Our Youth & America’s Future
Those of us who grew up in the 1940s and 50s almost universally look back on those days with great fondness. Born into an era that saw the end of the Depression and living as children through World War II, we were nonetheless somehow shielded from it by parents who took care to ensure that these calamities in the world did not take from us the sheer joy of being young.
By 1945, America emerged from the war as one of the world’s recognized superpowers, plunging immediately into the Cold War with the Soviet Union, a totalitarian regime that, like all Communists, promised a worker’s paradise and delivered a new form of serfdom.
We grew up with school drills in the event of the "bomb" as America helped rebuild Europe, guarding it against the Russians. While the grownups tended to these matters, we kids were treated to television shows free of the salaciousness of too many of today’s programs.
One could not be a teenager in the 1950s and not be aware of the great concern regarding the infiltration of our government by Communist spies and sympathizers. Decades later, thanks to the revelations of the Venona intercepts of Soviet communications with those spies, we learned just how thorough the infiltration had been and how many sympathizers worked at the highest levels of our government. Sen. Joseph McCarthy, it turns out, was right.
In the end, by standing firm against the Soviet Union the United States and its allies would see its end. Its threat has been replaced by a resurgence of a particularly evil Islamic fanaticism and now, as there were then, those of a liberal frame of mind are telling us not to meet it on the field of battle and everywhere else it threatens Western civilization.
For all their bad intentions, the Soviets were not bent on suicide and were subject to negotiation where mutual interests existed. This is not the case of people who are convinced that their god requires them to subdue or kill "unbelievers." The Russians never hijacked commercial airliners to fly them into our skyscrapers or the Pentagon.
To be young in those decades following World War II was to grow up in one of the most dynamic periods of innovation this nation has known. As the economy boomed, it brought with it an astonishing burst of invention that included the spread of television, air conditioning, fabulous chrome-plated automobiles, and all manner of home appliances that are, of course, taken for granted today.
The 1960s, however, produced a spoiled, surly, arrogant, drug obsessed, and unwashed element of youth spurred on by the growing resistance to the Vietnam War and a belief that the work ethic of their parents and others of their generation was for suckers. Even I marched against the Vietnam War, albeit wearing a suit and tie. This subset of the Turn On and Tune Out youth would later dominate the faculties of colleges and universities.
The result has been a new generation who has been importuned since pre-school to view the Earth as an endangered environment that threatens all mankind. They have grown up listening to the ravings of Al Gore and a legion of organizations that subverted science because the real science does not support the delusion of global warming.
I think the so-called environmental movement is an altered form of Communism and one that has systematically deprived this new generation of the fun of being young.
A case in point is a news release I received from the Student Environmental Action Coalition, "Nation’s Youth Battle Coal Instead of Hangovers This Spring Break." This is but one small example of how environmentalists brainwash our youth. With the attack on our educational system that began in the 1960s to turn it into one massive instrument of socialist indoctrination, the youth who will participate in the effort to take on "Big Coal" clearly have no idea the role that coal played in the Industrial Revolution or that it currently provides 52% of the electricity on which they and everyone else in America depends.
Instead of heading toward some of America’s glorious beaches over Spring Break to indulge in just being young, "hundreds of college students" we’re told will head for "Mountain Justice Spring Break in Virginia (March 1-9) and Ohio (March 22-30) where they "will experience first hand the coal industry’s environmental and social degradation." They will be urged, "to stop U.S. coal expansion and begin building a clean and just energy future."
They will be taught "how to fight new power plants" and learn "that coal hurts people and communities." This is a perfect Marxist expression as an example of the forces at work to destroy the American economy and the lifestyle these young people take for granted.
The fact is, however, that in 2007 the effort to deprive America of the electricity it needs resulted in plans for 59 new coal plants being cancelled or shelved. Even the cleanest form of electrical power, nuclear generation, has been continually resisted by environmentalists. That leaves gas-fired or hydroelectric plants as an alternative and we have exhausted locations for the latter.
Instead, these youth will be told about "clean" energy generation by wind or solar power. These are the most inefficient, untrustworthy, and costly forms of energy that together represent barely one percent of all the electricity being provided to the nation. Both of these "clean" forms of energy require existing backup of coal, gas or nuclear plants because they are incapable of providing consistent, dependable power.
Meanwhile, the United States has several hundreds of years of coal reserves that could power all the electricity we will need. In China, in an effort to modernize, they are building a new coal-fired plant every week.
I feel sorry for the kids that will attend these training schools for the destruction of an essential element of the power generation America needs now and will need more of in the future. They should be partying. They won’t be young forever and, if they are successful, they will be spending much of the future living with brownouts and blackouts.
News Note: I will be attending the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change, sponsored by the Heartland Institute, March 2-4. Held in New York, it will be attended by several hundred of the world’s leading global warming skeptics, scientists, economists, and policy makers, in an effort to highlight the science that refutes the "theory" being used to justify misguided policies in the U.S. and worldwide.
Our Incredibly Dumb Governors
Being a governor has always been a steppingstone to the presidency. It’s just a thought, but perhaps people are less and less confident in their governors these days because so many seem to be part of a succession of governors who have left their states ever deeper in debt?
One notes that neither former Governor Mitt Romney, nor Mike Huckabee, fared all that well in the Republican primaries and that two former governors who made it to the White House in recent times left it under a shadow. Former Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter was and is a moron, while former Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton, though elected and re-elected, is now best remembered for turning the Oval Office into the Oral Office. Of the modern era of presidents, only Ronald Reagan, a former governor of California, restored any luster to the White House.
Governors are on my mind because the National Governors Association finished their winter meeting in Washington, D.C. on February 25th and they managed to ignore the crisis most common to their states, budgets that are so over-extended that some wrenching news awaits citizens from California to New Jersey. Indeed, the exodus of people from both California and New Jersey is turning into a stampede as they stream into Nevada and Arizona in the West and head toward the Carolinas in the East.
California faces a $14 billion deficit this year while New Jersey has a $3 billion deficit. Both can boast of having some of the highest tax burdens in the nation.
So what did the National Governors Association devote their meeting to? "Reinforcing the role of states in advancing a clean energy future for America." Clean energy is code for throwing money, subsidies and tax credits, at the least efficient forms of energy, wind and solar, while ignoring the need to encourage the improvement and expansion of the nation’s electrical grid that enables everything to function or encouraging the building of new refineries to insure a supply of gasoline and other petroleum fuels. There’s a need, too, for more nuclear plants and more coal or gas-fired plants to generate electricity.
Instead the states keep mandating that a portion of all electrical power must come from wind and solar sources that would not exist if they were not subsidized with tax and rate-payers dollars. Both require backup reserves of power providers that rely on coal, gas, or nuclear because the wind does not blow all the time and the sun does not shine at night.
"From the discussions we’ve had these past three days, it’s clear that governors are leading the way to ‘Americanize’ this country’s energy future," said NGA Chair, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty. Someone better explain to Gov. Pawlenty and the other 49 governors that America runs on imported oil and will for the foreseeable future. We buy it from Canada, Mexico, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, and anywhere else that will sell it to us. The same holds true for natural gas.
The most American form of power available is coal. We have about two or three hundred years of estimated reserves, but in states like Texas and Kansas, the building of much needed coal-fired plants to provide electricity was thwarted. Meanwhile, China is building a new coal-fired plant every week. Some plants are gas-fired and, when a major energy company, ExxonMobil, recently announced it wanted to build a billion-dollar storage facility for liquefied gas way off the coast of New Jersey, the first response was to tell them to go away.
"We’re on the verge of an energy revolution in this country," said NGA Vice Chair Pennsylvania Gov. Edward Rendell. "And it’s clear that charting our own energy future will require every available resource at America’s disposal, from clean coal and nuclear to biofuels and renewables."
Biofuels are a pipedream, as are so-called renewables (wind and solar). If we start building nuclear plants to generate electricity right now, we may avoid a future of brownouts and blackouts. Clean coal is a joke. Coal is dirty, but coal is cheap, plentiful and a powerful source of energy. Coal-fired plants that currently provide 52% of America's electricity would keep the lights on for the next few centuries. Because of clean-air regulations, America actually imports some forms of coal rather than being able to use its own.
None of the goals the governors have in mind will generate any kind of national "energy security" because no nation on earth can be energy independent. Even Iran has to import gasoline. Brazil that is always touted for its ethanol production actually earns much of its wealth from its abundant sources of oil. All ethanol does is reduce the amount of actual mileage a tank of this additive provides. It amounts to burning a valuable source of food for fuel that, in turn, just drives up the cost of food.
If I know this, why don’t our nation’s governors? It’s not like it’s a secret or that any of the experts in their state universities couldn’t tell them this.
With some exceptions, we have governors who apparently don’t have a clue about the realities of energy these days and for the future. Instead, they invite speakers to tell them of the wonders of ethanol made from wood chips, electricity from hundreds of huge wind turbines no one wants to live near or some comparable fantasy. One wonders if the insanity of ethanol is fueled by political donations from Archer Midland Daniels and others too self-involved to give a damn about America’s real energy needs?
None of this bodes well for the future of America. We expect our elected leaders to have some understanding of the true dynamics of how energy is produced and where the millions of gallons of gas and diesel we use for transportation comes from.
Meanwhile, as the governor’s meeting concluded, the U.S. National Climatic Data Center announced that snow cover over North America is greater now than any time since 1966. The average temperature in January "was –0.3 degrees Fahrenheit cooler than the 1901-2000 (20th century) average."
Do you think the governors know this?
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2008 Alan Caruba.
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