EPA’s Dream World

The folly of the EPA is beyond parody. So I thought for this weekend I’d do something we haven’t done in awhile, and have a “name the most egregious example of EPA excess day." Allow me to start off with an example that is making the rounds of [conservative] reporting right now.

Living in the dream world of green miracles, the EPA requires that oil refiners produce millions of gallons of gasoline containing cellulosic ethanol.

Not ethanol per se mind you, but gasoline containing the miracle ingredient cellulosic ethanol. This requirement has been in place since 2005, and each year the number of gallons required of the miracle ingredient increases automatically. If the refiners don’t produce the required number of gallons of gasoline containing cellulosic ethanol, they are surtaxed on production—essentially a penalty. Before anyone says it, this is one boondoggle that Obama can at least partially blame on Bush.

Seven years after the addition of this EPA regulation, the fines are becoming extremely heavy. Well, that’s fair if the refiners don’t do what the government requires of them, right? I say “beat those global-warming producers over the head with their failure to comply with EPA regulations.” Or at least I would say that except for one small detail. Cellulosic ethanol doesn’t exist except in the fevered minds of green weenies who think that wishing will make it so.

Here’s how the inimitable Wikepedia describes the product: “It is a type of biofuel produced from lignocellulose, a structural material that comprises much of the mass of plants. Lignocellulose is composed mainly of cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin. Corn stover, panicum virgatum (switchgrass), miscanthus grass species, wood chips and the byproducts of lawn and tree maintenance are some of the more popular cellulosic materials for ethanol production. Production of ethanol from lignocellulose has the advantage of abundant and diverse raw material compared to sources such as corn and cane sugars, but requires a greater amount of processing to make the sugar monomers available to the microorganisms typically used to produce cellulosic ethanol by fermentation.” Wow!

Which is to say, don’t rely on Wikipedia to give you meaningful and accurate information about anything that has a political component. It all depends on the meaning of the word “is.” Small quantities of this product have been produced in experimental laboratories. Beyond that, the production of the product in any significant quantities is more pie-in-the-sky. One refiner, largely using federal grants and subsidies, is building a plant which will allegedly produce enough of the product to start the grass waving. Think “Solyndra,” only with plant material. Such as pond scum.

Now rather than the “is” that Wikipedia uses, let’s take a look at what the proponents of the product are actually saying. Here’s something from Brooke Coleman, executive director of the Advanced Ethanol Council of the Renewable Fuels Association: “We are going to reduce your blending obligation by 98% because we think it’s the right thing to do. We are going to maintain your blending obligation on the gallons that we think are going to emerge" (emphasis added). ‘Nuff said?

Well, that’s my example for the day. I now throw the floor open for discussion of your favorite EPA excess. Have some fun! To tweak your Pavlovian responses, I suggest the words “wetlands” and “endangered species.”

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Burning Down The House

If there’s one thing liberals/leftists just can’t get out of their systems, it’s the desire to act like Nazis. They just love the idea of imprisoning and killing those who disagree with them. And no, I’m not kidding. Every single socialist movement the world over has rounded up opponents and even here there are those who openly wish such things. . . people like global warming enthusiast Steve Zwick.

Steve Zwick, for those who don’t know, is a “climate change” alarmist who periodically writes for Forbes magazine. In his most recent article, he pulled a Hitler. Specifically, he said this:

“We know who the active denialists are – not the people who buy the lies, mind you, but the people who create the lies. Let’s start keeping track of them now, and when the famines come, let’s make them pay. Let’s let their houses burn. Let’s swap their safe land for submerged islands. . . They broke the climate. Why should the rest of us have to pay for it?”

Stick in the word “Jews” and this thing comes right out of any speech by Hitler. Note how Zwick suggest the creation of an enemies list. Those people need to be marked, perhaps with a yellow sun on their lapels. They are to be considered subhuman. And when Zwick decides it’s time for his final solution, we are to burn their houses and drown them. They must pay for their treachery, these climate Jews.

And don’t think this is an isolated incident. Earlier this month, University of Oregon “Professor” Kari Norgaard (right) said climate change skeptics are akin to “racists” and should be “treated” (medically) as if they had a mental disorder. Norgaard also wrote a letter to Obama in which she called on Obama to suspend democracy to satisfy her climate-fetish. Norgaard, by the way, is a big supporter of Obama climate advisor John P. Holdren who wrote in 1977 that we should carry out forced abortions, mandatory sterilization procedures and drugging of the water supply to weed out the surplus supply of humans. She has also praised NASA global warming alarmist Dr. James Hansen, who has advocated eco-terrorism, including blowing up damns and demolishing cities in the hopes of returning the planet to an agrarian age.

She’s not alone either in advocating dictatorship. Environmental James Lovelock asserted that “democracy must be put on hold to combat global warming.” (Maybe that’s where Dem. Gov. Bev Perdue got the idea that we should suspend elections until Obama can fix the economy?)

In 2006, environmentalist magazine Grist Magazine wrote that there should be “Nuremberg- style war crimes trials” for the “bastards” who are part of the “denial industry” who oppose the global warming enthusiasts. . . both Al Gore and Bill Moyer have endorsed that magazine.

Nice huh?

Anyway, back to Zwick. Besides advocating the murder of people with whom he disagrees, Zwick also became the point man for trying to defend the climategate scandal. In that defense, he actually argued that the Freedom of Information Act should not apply to requests made by right-wingers.

So there you have it:

● Right wingers should not be allowed information on what the government is doing. The law should only work for liberals.

● Climate change critics should be tracked and their homes burned.

● Obama should suspend democracy to enforce global warming enthusiasts' goals.

● And murder, forced abortion, forced sterilization and eco-terrorism are all valid tools for the government to use in helping the global warming enthusiasts achieve their fetishistic goals.

So much for it only happening in Nazi Germany. Now that I think about it. . . maybe we should start burning their houses down?

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Chevy Volt: Obama’s Folly

There is perhaps no greater example of the stupidity of the left than the Chevy Volt. It is the story of massive government subsidies going to solve a non-existent problem which result in a product no one wants and which doesn’t really work. This thing should become the new mascot of the Democratic party, forget the donkey, the donkey’s a vision of perfection by comparison.

Created by the bailed-out General Motors, the Chevy Volt has been an unmitigated disaster. The car was meant to be an environmentalist dream. It would combat global warming by reducing carbon emissions and would one day free us from our dependence on evil oil. But that’s not quite how it turned out.

To ensure the car could be called a “success,” GM stacked the deck by doing two things. First, they limited the release of the car in 2011 to big liberal cities: Washington, D.C., New York City, Austin, Texas, and California, with subsequent roll outs in other liberal states, and then all fifty-seven states by November 2011. This was meant to make sure that plenty of environmentalists would be on hand to buy the car, so GM could report brisk sales. Further, they limited the initial production run to 10,000 to ensure they would have more demand than supply and could report a sell out.

They even gave it all kinds of incentives. For example, while the car has a suggested retail price of $40,280, buyers get: (1) a $7,500 federal tax credit under the TARP bailout, (2) a $1,500 “state” rebate through the state’s Clean Vehicle Rebate Project (more federal money), (3) a federal tax credit for the purchase and installation of the charging unit, which is listed at costing $490 plus installation, but which Consumer Reports says costs around $2,000. That’s $11,000 in subsidies to buyers.

And that’s on top of the $2.4 billion in direct subsidies given to GM by the federal government, i.e. you, to develop the Volt, not to mention the $27 billion given to keep GM afloat so they could make wonderful cars like the Volt.

That’s a lot of federal help. So how did GM do? After thirteen months of sales, GM has sold only 7,997 cars. . . they couldn’t even sell the full 10,000 they made. To give you a comparison, the Toyota Prius sold 159,000 cars in the same period.

And that’s just the beginning of the morass.

See, it turns out the car ain’t as green as they made it out to be.

The Volt actually includes a gasoline engine. So in that sense, the car is not a true electric car, but is instead a hybrid. And if you calculate the “fuel economy rating” the same way it is calculate for other hybrids, the Volt only gets 48 miles per gallon, making it one of the worst hybrids. So GM objected and argued that it was unfair to treat this car as a hybrid and instead demanded that the car be tested using only the electric engine, i.e. that the EPA pretend the owners can use the gas engine. According to GM, that would result in a fuel economy rating of 230 miles per gallon.

Team Obama, the definition of more-ass, happily agreed to play along with GM’s fraud and tested the car in the new way. But even then it couldn’t come anywhere near GM’s claims of 230 miles per gallon. Instead, they found 93 miles per gallon in electric mode and 37 miles per gallon in gasoline mode, for an overall 60 miles per gallon. By comparison, the EPA rates the Prius at 51 mpg. Also, to get the 93 mpg, you need to drive it at low speeds on the highway.

It gets worse. The EPA also measured the tailpipe emissions and found 84 grams of carbon dioxide per mile using gasoline and “nearly zero” using electricity. But a study in the UK which calculated the emissions from the electricity used to charge the battery resulted in 199 grams per mile for the electric motor. Not only is that more pollution than several other cars, but that means you actually pollute less using the gasoline engine in the Volt than you do using the electric engine. Imagine that.

And then there’s the other problem: it’s a death trap.

See, it turns out that when the Volt gets in an accident, particularly from a side hit, the batteries can be damaged. This leads to a coolant leak which causes the car to catch fire. But it doesn’t happen right away. Instead, the fire can start minutes, hours, days or weeks later. In one instance, the car caught fire three weeks after the collision. GM claims to have fixed this by adding padding to the car, but has had to offer to buy back “a couple dozen” cars from people who are now too scared to own them. A couple dozen is around 5% of the total number sold.

And that’s not the only problem with the batteries. GM put an 8 year warranty on the batteries, but estimates right now are that the battery will need to be replaced every six to eight years. The cost of that replacement? $10,000. In other words, every six to eight years, you need to put in $10,000 to keep this turkey running. Given that the resale value is expected to fall 51% in three years, that means the car is effectively disposable. . . talk about a pollution nightmare!

It’s no wonder no one wants this car.

This is what happens whenever the government gets involved in the subsidy business. No rational business would ever try to make this car. It’s too expensive (GM apparently isn’t even making money on the current prices), it pollutes more than the evil polluting cars it’s meant to replace, it costs too much to own and it’s dangerous.

Moreover, it’s fixing a problem that apparently even Global Warming enthusiasts are starting to admit doesn’t exist – according to data released by the same enthusiasts who brought you climate gate and who have repeatedly said every single year for over two decades “this year was the hottest year on record,” the world stopped warming in 1997 and has been cooling ever since!

In an age when Obama’s folly can be seen in “green tech” companies going down in flames like bankruptcy dominoes after being handed mongo Federal cash, the Volt still stands out at the zenith of stupidity.... and you’ve paid $2.5 billion dollars so far to support that stupidity. Makes you proud, doesn’t it?

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Climategate(redux): Second Verse, Same as the First

By T-Rav

Let’s face it, 2011 has been a rough year for the proponents of global warming ManBearPig climate change. First, they were still dealing with that embarrassing stack of emails showing climate data had been manipulated, better known as “ClimateGate.” Then there was the Solyndra fiasco and a bunch more “the science is settled” studies which turned out to be hogwash. Now we’re in the midst of “ClimateGate 2.0.”

As a refresher, the original “ClimateGate” scandal involved the exposure of a number of highly embarrassing emails from Phil Jones, head of climate research at the University of East Anglia in Britain, and Penn State professor Michael Mann, among others. These showed the deliberate misuse of data by Mann and others to create the infamous “hockey stick” chart venerated by Al Gore and other charlatans. In addition, the so-called scientists were shown to have conspired to silence any critics of their work, and to be refusing FOIA requests, so the rest of us won’t know what’s going on behind the scenes. (For a full recap, see Andrew’s initial article on the scandal.) Mann and his cohorts have been warning each other ever since to delete their communications, lest more damaging emails get out. Well, guess what. More damaging emails got out.

Over Thanksgiving week, FOIA.org kindly released about 5,000 more emails hacked from the accounts of these goons. (There are reportedly another 220,000 lying around encrypted.) They date from about the same time period as the first batch—from the mid-‘90s through November 2009—and are similar in substance as well. There are, however, a number of new gems worth noting:

● Remember how Al Gore claimed global warming was making the snows on Mt. Kilimanjaro disappear? Yeah, apparently no one in a position to know believed him, but of course they lied and said publicly that they did. Multiple professors said in the emails the shrinkage of ice was probably being caused by sublimation, not melting. But they were simultaneously using this as support for their press releases, along the lines of “This is just more evidence of how climate change is impacting our world.” There was also considerably more controversy behind the scenes than we first knew about the truth of the hockey stick graph.

● The blacklisting of skeptics within academia is even worse than we thought. The corrupt climatologists attempted to have Chris de Freitas, professor at the University of Auckland and editor of the journal Climate Research, fired from both jobs. Because he had spoken out against climate change, you might ask? No, because he allowed an article to be published that expressed skepticism. Even worse, the emails make it clear they were planning to manufacture charges to get the man fired. Excerpt from one of the messages: “I hope the co-editors of ‘Climate Research’ can agree on some joint action. . . Any action must of course be effective and also not give the sceptics an excuse for making de Freitas appear as a martyr – the charge should surely be not following scientific standards of review, rather than publishing contrarian views as such.” {emphasis added} In other words, they were going to accuse him of being unprofessional when they were really upset at him allowing dissenting views. (Dr. de Freitas, I might add, has his defenders and is doing just fine in lovely New Zealand.)

● In 2007, the National Research Council was established by the U.S. government to review all prior climate studies. One email shows that Phil Jones was in contact with members of this council, discussing how to quash the questions raised by their skeptical colleagues. Not that there were many of these, to be sure: another email, this one from Mann and referring to the council’s review of his hockey stick shenanigans, assuredly states, “The panel is solid. Gerry North should do a good job in chairing this, and the other members are all solid. Chrisy is the token skeptic, but there are many others to keep him in check.” {emphasis added}

● Even the peer-review process, in some ways the ultimate safety valve on bad science, got corrupted. As one example, the head of the American Meteorological Association asked Jones—hardly an impartial figure—to review some of the temperature research being presented. At Jones’ urging, the scientists presenting the research were told to tone down the language of their findings, which argued against a significant increase.

There’s much more, along with evidence of participation in the spin by government and media representatives and some highlighting of the flaws in the actual data, but the big takeaway from these new emails is the conspiratorial, collectivist, and even vindictive attitude of the AGW crowd in the face of criticism. Highly respected scientists have collaborated for years to make sure their version of the truth is the only one heard.

In my opinion, this is the most dangerous weapon in the environmental activists’ arsenal. It’s easy to ignore or dismiss the ranting of Al Gore and other public figures like him; they can be easily identified as blowhards. But it’s not so easy when it comes to the guys with letters after their names. Not only do we put our trust in them, we can’t even comprehend that they might have ulterior motives. I decided a very long time ago that global warming was a bunch of crap, but I couldn’t understand why dedicated scientists would willingly take part in such a pack of lies. In fact, until more recently I didn’t believe it at all; I chalked their collusion up to not thinking about the data in the right way. It’s hard to accept as realistic interpretations like Michael Crichton’s State of Fear, which castigated the scientific community as conspiratorial and only pushing climate change to get research funding.

But with the release of information like this, I can come up with no other explanation than that, for whatever reasons, the leading lights of the scientific community have decided climate change is something we all need to believe in, and to that end are deliberately screwing with the evidence and suppressing opposing views. This is inexcusable and disgraceful conduct.

So what’s come of these revelations so far? Not much, as far as the guilty parties are concerned. In Britain, Phil Jones and others at East Anglia are being covered thus far by the BBC and The Guardian, which seems to think the email hacking and smearing of the “scientists” reputations is the only scandal here. On our side of the pond, Penn State has been backing up Mann and his colleagues, and is even—with monumentally bad timing, in more ways than one—proceeding with a panel on “climate ethics.” The story is, on the other hand, receiving more attention than its predecessor from the mainstream media, at least in the U.K. And the information is out there. If the climatologists can’t stop these leaks, the public will get a growing sense that it cannot trust scientists, at least not in this case. That’s bad news for science but good news for the end of this hysteria (I hope).

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An Ill Windbag

Al Gore has found his carbon-trading schemes to be unpopular with the American people, so he's taking his Magical Mystery Climate Change Tour on the road. Last week, he was the keynoter for a Scottish clan of global warming enthusiasts. Scotland--the land of the bagpipe. The bagpipe, like Gore, is an ill wind that nobody blows good.

Having abandoned the simple phrase "global warming" in favor of "climate change," Gore is still making the same tired arguments about global warming/climate change being the result of human activity. The attacks on global warming theory were numerous and telling, but who can deny that the earth is going through, and has always gone through, climate change? The trick is to blame it on anthropogenic global warming so the green weenies can get rich at the expense of the poor suckers who actually believe that man is the source of climate change.

The speech was before the Scottish government-supported Low Carbon Investment Conference in Edinburgh. You see, just like the Obama administration, the Scottish government believes it has the right to select winners and losers in the energy game. Given the name of the conference, I think it's easy to infer just exactly who is out to profit from this climate change scam. Apparently in Scotland, as in the United States currently, "investment" means taxpayer money being diverted to friends of the government, regardless of either the riskiness or foolishness of the "investment."

Gore goes off once again about consensus among scientists that the "climate crisis" and "extreme weather events" are man-made. There is no such consensus. What consensus there is exists among junk scientists who would have no jobs and no funding if their scam were completely discredited. It is the job of fat-cat hysterics such as Al Gore to make sure that doesn't happen. Like the myth of the melting glaciers and drowning polar bears, Gore perpetuates non-scientific anecdotes as evidence of his latest "scientific discoveries." "Flooding in Pakistan, China and elsewhere" are proof that extreme weather is the result of climate change.

Yes, that's true enough, but how does it go to prove that global warming or climate change is caused by human activity? Yep, climate change is pretty likely the cause of extreme weather. And the oceans are wet, largely because they are full of water. Stating the obvious doesn't answer the question. And Gore pulls out all the stops to keep people from noticing that he still can't prove that man is the cause of global warming or climate change. He merely drags out "consensus" again. "Every single national academy of science of every major country on earth agrees with the consensus. The need for urgent action is now indisputable."

Every scientist I know of agrees that the earth is sort of round. Does that consensus mean that the earth is round because of human activity? The "consensus" that climate change/extreme weather is the result of human activity does not exist, but you're not supposed to notice that detail amidst the apocalyptic hysteria. The real hope of the Goreists is that by changing the words of the debate from global warming to climate change to extreme weather, thinking people will be too stupid to realize that the underlying thesis of anthropogenic climate change is not even close to being a consensus.

Outside of the green "investment" hacks and the junk scientists who depend on taxpayers and other suckers to keep their jobs, the majority of scientists have concluded that man may play some very small part in climate change (more so in the 19th century than in the 20th), but the major factors are the sun and internal changes within the earth's core. The climate changes on earth are reflected on Mars, where there are no SUVs or fossil-fueled energy plants that I know of.

Gore took a shot at ignorant Americans who have elected representatives unwilling to support Gore's personal plan to increase his wealth with hare-brained carbon trading schemes. He is a rich man who would become immensely richer if America would only buy into his schemes. Yet he attacks both capitalism and the American government in one sentence in which he decried: "the effect of lobbying and money-raising on the U.S. Congress, and on carbon producers who employ four Washington lobbyists for every member of Congress." There are no green weenie lobbyists, of course. Just ask the execs at Solyndra.

Gore went on to extol the job-creation wonders of green technology and carbon trading. I doubt he will make the same speech in Spain, where the government committed itself to energy schemes nearly identical to Gore's, and ended up losing nine jobs for every four jobs created. He also called the reluctance of Congress to enrich him and his cronies while raising energy costs and reducing energy efficiency an unwarranted attack. "In the language of computer culture, our democracy has been hacked." Well, I guess he ought to know since he invented the internet.

Gore and his Tour will be moving on to China in the near future. I guess he plans to challenge China's massive increases in both production and CO2-based air pollution by raising the specter of Scotland as taking the lead in energy production. To a standing ovation in Edinburgh, Gore announced that "Scotland will lead the world in wind power." Now, about those bagpipes.
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Photo Challenges Polar Bear Study

The United States Geological Survey recently published a study in which it determined that polar bears are losing cubs and losing weight because of the longer distances between ice floes occasioned by global warming. The long swim from floe to floe is allegedly causing illness and death amongst our furry white friends.

Commentarama's crack investigative reporters have blown a hole in that theory with our featured photo of how polar bears actually get from one floe to another and then back to the mainland or large, solid ice packs. The USGS study carefully followed a huge sampling of female polar bears with cubs (eleven, to be exact, or twenty, or sixty-eight, depending on which part of the report you're reading) by the use of GPS collars from 2004 to 2009. I know it was a long swim (around thirty miles), but the USGS didn't mention how heavy the GPS collars were. Perhaps that weighed them down and made the swim more difficult.

The study concentrated on polar bear mothers and cubs swimming in the area around the Chukchi and southern Beaufort seas, an area where the distance between floes did increase, at least until 2007. But that is only one part of the true picture. The USGS purposely avoided other areas where the distances have decreased and polar bears smart enough to know where those areas exist are having a good laugh at their dumber sisters.

In fact, our intrepid reporters took a candid photo of some of the smarter bears taking a break between padding their larders doing Coca Cola commercials. Using a sound camera, the reporter caught the bears complaining about the rigorous duties of having to drink gallons of Coke just to get the right shot. The cubs are not shown, since they had rebelled and were off at another location doing their own Coke commercials (the moms weren't sharing the profits).

Of the eleven mothers studied by the USGS, it was found that dependent cubs survived the swims in six cases, but five cubs could not be found after the long-distance swim. In defense of its study, USGS zoologist George Durner said that they could not be sure that the cubs drowned. "But the evidence suggests long-distance swimming may be risky. I wish we had better information to see whether the mortality was actually occurring. That would give us a lot more information, but we don't have that." In other words: If they had the information, they'd have the information. But why do you need information when you can just guess?

Once again, our reporters found the missing cubs, who weren't actually missing at all. They just knew where they should be swimming. We caught one of the cubs during a break, sharing a Coke and a smile with a friendly penguin. When we confronted the USGS spokesmen, they were shocked to discover that we had uncovered the truth. We even had the sound portions in which the cub and the penguin are practicing "I'd Like To Teach The World To Sing." Their reply to our accusation was: "But, but, but, but, but . . . "

The USGS study had also pointed blame for the disappearing ice floes and the resulting increased swimming distances at global warming caused by greedy corporations. What they failed to point out is that responsible corporations were aware that in certain limited areas, the ice floe distances were indeed increasing. So they provided swimmy floats for the bears that chose to remain in those areas. Clearly, the USGS has an agenda which includes ignoring the evidence right in front of their faces. Admittedly, Commentarama has a much larger budget than the USGS, and surely we have dozens more employees to investigate these matters (our Boiler Room Elves alone would dwarf the USGS staff). Still, some evidence is just too obvious to ignore.

Well, it's been exhausting debunking the USGS report, and the temperature here in Caliente will approach 105 today. So I'll close now, and head for the refrigerator to get a Coke. (Full disclosure, I am not now, nor have I ever been, an employee, consultant, affiliate or associate of the Coca Cola Corporation)

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Global Warming Enthusiasts Caught Again

The climate change industry is a disgrace. They’ve been exposed for faking their data, falsifying their formulas, conspiring to keep contrary opinions from being published, and simply making things up -- like the story about the snow vanishing from the Himalayas. Well, they’ve done it again, and you’re not going to believe the audacity this time.

The latest incident involves climate “scientist” Liliana Hisas of the Universal Ecological Fund. Hisas just put out a report that projected a 2.4 degree Celsius increase in temperature during the next decade, which will of course cause massive worldwide food shortages and all kinds of other horrible things. The report in question was published on the American Association for the Advancement of Science website, and was of course, widely covered in the press.

Well, it turns out that the report is wrong. . . very wrong. So wrong, in fact, that the report had to be pulled from the AAAS website.

How wrong was it? It turns out that even if you use the highest estimate for warming, the best you could achieve by 2020 is a 0.2 degree Celsius increase. Thus, the report overstated the maximum amount of warming by ten times. Moreover, according to a climate “scientist” who reviewed the report after this problem arose, the “study. . . confuses ‘equilibrium temperature rise’ with ‘transient temperature rise.’” In other words, the report confuses temporary with permanent.

Ok, embarrassing right? Well, it gets more interesting than that.

Hisas was told about these mistakes before she published the report. So why didn’t she change the report? Well, let’s let climate “scientist” Rey Weymann explain that one:

“The author of the study was told by several of us about this error but she said it was too late to change it.”

Seriously? It was too late to correct the numbers? It was too late to yank the report before she had it published. . . on a website, not in a printed journal? It was too late to include a disclaimer. . . . “this report is spectacularly wrong”? How in the world can it be too late?

At least she’s acknowledging the problem now, right? I mean, she retracted the report, right? Well, no. AAAS yanked the report. But the public relations firm which helped issue the report on her and the Universal Ecological Fund’s behalf has issued a statement standing by the study.

Can you imagine a scientist in a real scientific field knowingly publishing a report they knew to be wrong and not retracting it or correcting it, and then even issuing a statement standing by it once their fraud became widely known? Bigfoot scientists have more scientific integrity than this!

And before you think this was just one disreputable scientist, let me point out that climate “scientist” Osvaldo Canziani was listed as scientific advisor on the project. Who is Canziani? He’s part of the 2007 Nobel Prize winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change -- the United Nations climate group whose figures are being used by all global warming enthusiasts and government policy makers everywhere. So what does he say about his utter failure to catch this fundamental and devastating mistake or about the failure to correct these problems even after they were known?

Nothing. He claims to be ill and unavailable for interviews.

The IPCC, by the way, whose reports are used by governments to set environmental policy, has itself been accused of exaggerating its claims.

So what is the response of global warming enthusiasts? Are they repudiating this “scientist” and her lack of interest in putting out accurate reports? Nope. They’re calling this an “honest mistake” and they stand by her conclusions. . . just 100 years from now instead of 10.

This tells us a lot about the validity of climate science. That such a report could be issued and given publicity when the author and the entire global warming enthusiast community knew the report was wrong is stunning. And this report isn’t just wrong, it’s so spectacularly wrong as to be 1000% off in its conclusion. Yet, they stand by the report and its conclusions. This is borderline fraud, and they’re standing on the wrong side of the border. If a drug company had issued something similarly fraudulent, there would be calls for prison time for all of the participants. Yet, strangely, we’re supposed to overlook the utter fraudulence of the report and still believe its conclusions?

So much for climate "science."


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Baby--It's Warm Outside

Yesterday I discussed a major delegation of power from elected representatives to faceless bureaucrats at the EPA. Those same bureaucrats, environmental zealots all, are poised to destroy a major portion of the economy and turn the clock back to the nineteenth century, all in the name of reducing greenhouse gases. And why? To combat another problem which probably doesn't exist in the first place--anthropomorphic global warming.

In order to determine how to fight the melting of the polar icecaps and the tides rising to engulf New York City, we would first expect to have scientific proof that the earth is indeed warming over a significant period of time. And we have that proof, largely provided to us by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. As the NOAA itself says, "for detecting climate change, the concern is not the absolute temperature--whether a station is reading warmer or cooler that a nearby station placed on grass--but how that temperature changes over time."

Sounds right, doesn't it? Don't you believe it. Those are just weasel-words to make you think the administration actually took scientific controlled measurements from multiple sources over a lengthy period of time. What they are really doing is trying to distract your attention from the fact that their measurement of temperature has been unscientific, haphazard, jury-rigged, and in violation of their very own standard of keeping thermometers away from heat sources (thus, the pooh-poohing of "placed on grass").

The earth may or may not be getting warmer, but the NOAA measurements don't prove a bloody thing, except possibly how zealots will rely on the most amateurish of "facts" to advance their own agendas. The infamous "hockey stick" graph is based largely on measurements taken by NOAA and related agencies. So what did the statement from NOAA actually say to you? I read it in its simplest and most likely form: "We took really lousy measurements, real scientists have vilified our methods, so for detecting climate change, temperature readings don't matter." That reminds me of the old gag about touch-feely psychotherapists saying "don't tell me what you think--tell me what you feel.

The temperature measurements and methodology of the NOAA are simply so grossly wrong that there is absolutely no way any thinking person could possibly rely on them or find a way to reinterpret the results to fit into any meaningful conclusion. The measurements are so wildly off-kilter, that the NOAA is asking people to simply ignore science and the scientific method and replace it with some sort of zen philosophy about protecting mother earth. Says NOAA: "Accuracy doesn't matter, what is important is the trend." But if you don't know the broad scope of temperatures accurately, how can you determine a trend?

Here are a few samples of how and why the NOAA is simply unreliable, even within its own guidelines. There is a hierarchy of climate measuring sites. The most important are categories 1 and 2 (for obvious reasons). These sites must be placed over grass or low local vegetation. The area should be somewhat flat so the the view of the sky is unobstructed except at the lowest angles of the sun above the horizon. For categories 1 and 2, there can be no artificial heating source within 100 meters, and for the three remaining categories, no closer than 10 meters.

An independent study conducted in 2007 by three highly-respected meteorologists led by Anthony Watts found that 90% (yes, you read that right--90%) of the sites do not meet NOAA's own criteria. This was no small study. A group of over 650 science students conducted the survey and documented the fact that almost all the sites were well within 33 feet (10 meters) of an artificial heat source. The study showed the sites to be close to asphalt or concrete roadways, large buildings, in confined areas, on rooftops, at waste treatment plants which produce unnatural heat, and on or near air-conditioning vents.

The administration has an excuse, but not a scientific explanation for this "warm" bias. After abiding somewhat by their own rules, a big "breakthrough" required that they toss the standards to the winds. In order to get more accurate thermometer readings on the newly-invented MMTS/Nimbus thermometers to replace the old mercury thermometers, it was necessary to move the highly-accurate thermometers to areas where the accuracy related to the new (and warmer) locations.

You see, unlike an old-fashioned thermometer which works pretty accurately wherever you put it, these new scientific wonders are hard-wired to the weather station or building where the readings are being recorded. The old thermometer locations which complied with the guidelines wouldn't work anymore because the cables which go from the new thermometers to the recording devices prohibit the thermometers from being located that far away. So the dummies simply moved the new thermometers closer to those heat sources they aren't supposed to be around. Hence--the reading for any given location was actually not from the same location it had been previously, and because of the heat sources, always read warmer than the prior readings.

Based on their own idiotic violations of their own guidelines, the NOAA has managed to conclude that "there is no question that the surface temperatures in the United States have been rising rapidly during the last 50 years." Yet when outside sources which continued to abide by the NOAA standards over the fifty-year long studies put their data together, they came up with an entirely different conclusion. In the 60s and 70s, the earth's overall temperature was cooling. In the 80s through the late 90s, there was a warming trend which brought the earth's temperature (at least in the United States) back to the temperature at the beginning of the study. Most of the independent sources using the NOAA standards have concluded that since the late 90s, there has been no discernible rise or drop in overall temperatures.

So now we know where we got those scientific measurements that produced the hockey stick graph. They came from a government agency run by hockey pucks. Their repositioning of the thermometers is that old nostrum: "if it doesn't fit, make it fit." And based on their horribly inaccurate measurements, and current "ignore the measurements" propaganda, our economy and well-being are being determined by a companion agency, the EPA, which completely buys into the NOAA's voodoo global warming determination.
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The Cost of "Fixing" Global Warming

Sometimes I run across information that is too interesting to ignore, especially when the MSM has chosen to ignore it or doesn’t see its real meaning. A week or so ago, several members of the MSM were reporting that. . . well, forget what they were saying because it was all garbage. But what was interesting, was that the data they presented gives us a hint of how our economy would look if we “fixed” global warming.

Here’s the deal: the enviro-left has decided that a reduction of 20% in the amount of carbon emissions will save the planet from the evil humans intent on heating it up. Ignore for a moment the fact that they pulled the 20% figure out of each other’s rear ends (and that some are now suggesting 30%). Ignore also the fact that the warming they are talking about would be a boon to the world, particularly agriculture. Ignore also that the temperature of our planet is controlled by the sun, not carbon emissions. Ignore also the fact that mankind produces only 3% of the carbon in the atmosphere -- the rest comes from volcanoes and decaying “biomass” -- and thus, what we do is entirely irrelevant.

Basically, ignore for the moment that this theory is stupider than the idea that evil spirits cause disease and that bleeding someone with leaches will cure them. Instead, let’s just take them at their silly little words this time.

Ok, now that we know the ground rules, let’s get to the point. At the height of the Great Recession in 2008, economic activity slowed because that’s what happens during recessions. This slowing resulted in a reduction in carbon emissions in Europe and America of approximately one third of the 20% that the left is hoping to achieve. In other words, around 6%. That 6% translated into unemployment of 10% in the United States, with real unemployment drifting just above 17%. It also resulted in a dramatically slowed economy -- a drop of 3.9% of GNP, which brought with it a corresponding drop in tax revenues.

If we assume a straight-line effect, then achieving the goal of a 20% reduction in carbon emissions would mean damage to our economy equal to 3.3 times the effect of the Great Recession. That means, to achieve that 20% goal, unemployment would have gone to 21.5%, with real unemployment going to around 36.5%! The effect on GNP would be at least a drop of 12.9%. And that would be a permanent drop, not a temporary drop.

And there’s more to this, because we really can’t assume a straight line effect. Indeed, it’s always harder to squeeze the last few percentage points out of anything than it is to get the first few. So we should expect these numbers to be higher yet.

Moreover, the effects will be disproportionately felt by poor and middle class people as their food, gas and electricity costs will skyrocket. That means less mobility and less flexibility for finding new jobs. It also means a significantly higher cost to government benefits. And all of those things make the numbers worse again.

I would say that a 25% unemployment rate (40% real) is not out of the question based on these figures.

So the next time they tell you about the promise of green jobs or some such garbage, or they try to sell you the line that going green won’t hurt the economy, think back on 2008 and remember that we were only 1/3 of the way to utopia at that point. Anybody want to finish that journey?


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Are Republicans Finding Their Manhood?

It would seem so. And at least one of the early moves toward taking the momentum away from the expansionist federal monstrosity is being led by a woman. Lisa Murkowski, Republican Senator from Alaska, has introduced a resolution of disapproval to overturn the Environmental Protection Agency's determination that greenhouse gas emissions, particularly carbon dioxide, endanger public health and welfare.

This would be a major step toward slapping down the bureaucratic circumvention of the independent powers of Congress and the executive branch. The Messiah, tutored by the Goracle, decided it was time to stop any moves which would endanger their march toward economic meltdown by empowering the EPA to do by indirection that which the law had previously denied them directly. By declaring carbon-dioxide to be a dangerous emission, the federal bureaucracy would be able to force restrictions on industry and production without having to go to Congress for authorization. In other words, it's the fast-track to cap and trade legislation. Congress would be forced to find a scheme to finance a reduction of greenhouse gases that Obama and Gore both believe are the cause of global warming, or climate-change, or whatever they're calling it this week. That whole theory is blowing up in their faces, and any impediment to enforcement of carbon trade-off legislation endangers their underlying plan--to gain government control of every facet of our lives and to tax American businesses into oblivion.

In proposing this resolution of disapproval under the Congressional Review Act, Murkowski is taking an angry shot across the statist bow. And she understands "strike while the iron is hot." In the wake of the Massachusetts victory and the revolt of the Tea Party movement, even blue dog Democrats, already feeling shaky, are positively trembling about their futures. As a result, Murkoswki's resolution is co-sponsored by Democrats Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, Ben "Cornhusker Kickback" Nelson, and Mary "Lousiana Purchase" Landrieu. And Murkowski knows that if she can bring along her party and seven additional Democrats on a resolution, she's home free because under Senate rules, a CRA resolution of disapproval only requires a majority vote and cannot be filibustered.

Murkowski faces formidable opposition, led by my junior Senator, Her Majesty Doctor Professor Queen-of-the-Hill Don't Call Me Ma'am Senator Barbara Boxer. Says Babs: "Imagine if in the 1980s the Senate had overturned the health finding that nicotine in cigarettes causes lung cancer. How many more people would have died already? Imagine if a senator got the votes to come to the floor to overturn the finding that lead in paint damages children's brain development? How many children and families would have suffered? Imagine if the senator had come down to the floor and said, you know, I don't think black lung disease is in any way connected to coal dust. Imagine!"

Well, Ma'am, would you listen to a Senator who said that all your examples are "settled science" which can't even come close to being said about your crazed ideas about carbon dioxide and global warming? How would you feel if a Senator came down to the floor and said "we believe that chocolate is killing children at a horrendous pace, so we want production taxed, limited and ultimately eliminated, and if you'll just give us another fifty to seventy-five years, we'll have bought enough junk scientists to prove it?" (Theoretically, the latter Senator would also produce a hockey-stick graph to demonstrate how the increased use of chocolate in the last decade has caused a huge spike in the death rate of chocolate-eating children).

It's all "for the children" isn't it, Ma'am? So anything goes. Well, maybe not. More germane, Murkowski joins many of us in wanting legislation which cleans up the air that we, and our children, breathe. Even we troglodyte conservatives see the good in preventing further despoliation of our air, land and waters. Murkowski merely sees the underlying statist scheme and the immense damage it would produce, and says that what the Democrats are proposing won't work, is based on highly-disputed science, would be costly beyond imagination, produce wealth for carbon-traders like Al Gore while crippling major American business and industries for no good reason, and set a precedent for bureaucratic decision-makers to reach conclusions in which they have a vested interest.

With the approval of the Obama administration, and the past docility of the Congress, the EPA is working toward making itself the sole power controlling a major portion of the economy. By declaring carbon dioxide a dangerous emission, the EPA can control heavy industry, energy producers, the automobile industry, the construction industry, and myriad small businesses. And it does all that without public agreement or the necessity of Congressional votes.

Before passage of the Clean Air Act, Congress had reserved to itself the power to determine what is, and what is not, a poisonous emission. If EPA was allowed to regulate anything, it had to get that power from Congress first. The new power to make that determination came from Congress's failure to put that reservation into the Clean Air Act, and a terrible decision from the U. S. Supreme Court in Massachusetts v EPA which held that without specific language regarding regulation of the list of dangerous emissions authorized by Congress, EPA's power to do so was inferred from the text of the Act.

Boxer's argument is that if we waited for Congress to make the determination, it could take years. Yes, Ma'am, it might. It's called democracy, and it's messy and time-consuming. But prior to the new-think from the Progressive era, we did not tolerate government by bureaucracy. Speed and efficiency are no substitute for public debate, Congressional action, and the will of the people. The Clean Air Act is simply another example of Congress unconstitutionally delegating its power to legislate to a regulation-crazy bureaucracy. Murkowski proposed to halt that ongoing process. The correction is actually quite easy. Amend the Act so that Congress takes back its rightful power of determining what the EPA can and cannot do in the area of "greenhouse gases." Murkowski's resolution is a first step in accomplishing that. Nevertheless, Her Majesty the High and Mighty Senator Boxer calls the action "unprecedented." I wonder where she got that word?
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"Climategate" Explained

Climategate is the most important scandal of our time. For decades now, a small group of scientists have dominated the debate on global warming. Based on their “research,” governments around the world have begun spending billions of dollars and doing trillions of dollars of damage to their economies, all in the name of stopping a problem that this group tells us could destroy our planet. They lied.

Good Science v. Bad Science

Before we delve into the fraud exposed by Climategate, let’s begin with a quick background on how science works. Scientists work by observing facts, creating theories about what causes those facts, and then trying to prove their theories and disprove all alternative theories. The global warming crowd didn’t do that. They created a theory and then set about trying to find facts that fit into that theory. That’s not science, that confirming your prejudices.

Think of it this way. A scientist who sees an elephant standing on a pond and wants to understand why the elephant doesn't sink, would observe relevant facts, like the depth of the water, would create theories, like elephant-buoyancy, and would devise tests to confirm or disprove those theories until they come up with the only possible explanation. The global warming crowd is more like a scientist who assumes elephants can walk on water and then spans the globe looking for evidence to support that theory.

Even worse, they have manufactured evidence where they couldn’t find any and they’ve zealously demonized all who disagree with them. For example, in 2008, NASA’s James Hansen called for trying global warming skeptics for “high crimes against humanity.” Robert F. Kennedy declared of warming skeptics: “This is treason and we need to start treating them as traitors.” He also called for sending coal company CEOs to “jail for all of eternity.” Former Clinton Administration official Joe Romm warned warming skeptics: “An entire generation will soon be ready to strangle you and your kids while you sleep in your beds.” The Nazis had nothing on these creatures.

What is Climategate?

Climategate began when a hacker took computer code and several thousand e-mails from the computers of the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit ("CRU") in England and uploaded them to a Russian website for all the world to see. Those e-mails and comments made in the computer code revealed that researchers at the CRU and other locations have been lying and manipulating data to give the impression that the earth is warming.

Why is the CRU important?

The CRU is important because it is one of a handful of centers around the world that collects and disseminates global temperature data. Indeed, the CRU is the biggest feeder unit for UN climate data used by the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change ("IPCC"), the main UN group addressing “climate change.”

This is an important point because one of the defenses that warmists have raised in response to Climategate is that whatever the CRU may have done, they are just one of thousands of scientists monitoring global warming and, thus, this scandal is irrelevant. But in reality, (1) there are only a handful of sites monitoring temperature data, and problems have now been exposed at other sites as well (NASA, New Zealand and Australia), and (2) most all of these thousands of supposedly independent researchers obtain their warming data from the CRU.

So what was exposed?

Climategate exposed three types of misconduct: (1) the stifling of opposing views, (2) collusion to hide or destroy evidence, and (3) the manipulation or manufacturing of data to create a warming trend.

Misconduct: Stifling Opponents

The first misconduct exposed was the concerted efforts by warmists to stifle dissenting views. Not only did this include a good deal of hateful comments, like CRU director Phil Jones “cheering” the death of a skeptic or talking about being tempted to “beat the crap” out of opponents, but, more importantly, this demonstrated their efforts to keep their opponents from getting published in scientific journals.

Why was this important? Because they would then cite the lack of articles by their opponents as proof that the scientific community unanimously agreed with the warmists' views. They would also attack individual skeptics for not having published any work in such “peer-review” journals.

For example, Michael Mann of Penn State told the New York Times that Stephen McIntyre, founder of the website Climate Audit and one of the most important skeptics, “operate[s] entirely outside of this system [and is] not to be trusted.”

How did they achieve this? First, people like Mann and Jones controlled the peer-review process and would reject any view which did not support their own. At one point, they even changed the rules for publication midstream to prevent opposing views from being published. Climategate e-mails also showed them discussing which scientists could be trusted to sit on the peer-review committees and which should be excluded because they were not “predictable.” And if journals nevertheless considered printing such views, they would blackball the journal.

Who is Mann?

Mann, a climatologist from Penn State, is the warmist who created the infamous hockey stick diagram that Algore used in his movie. The hockey stick diagram purports to show that global temperatures remained flat or declined until 1900, and then began to rise steadily, shooting up most recently. This results in a diagram that looks like a hockey stick turned on its side, with the blade facing upwards in the current years. This graph was used by Algore and others to argue that warming had to be caused by mankind and industrialization.

However, in 2003, Stephen McIntyre pointed out that the hockey stick failed to account for a medieval warming period, which could not have been caused by mankind or industrialization. McIntyre then demolished the hockey stick diagram entirely by showing that the mathematical model Mann used to create it would cause a hockey stick formation to appear no matter what numbers were inserted into the model. This was later backed up by eminent US statistician Professor Edward Wegman.

Misconduct: Colluding To Hide And Destroy Evidence

The second misconduct exposed was the warmists' attempts to prevent anyone they did not trust from verifying their work. This involved attempts to illegal avoid responding to FOIA requests and to destroy incriminating evidence.

For example, in a series of e-mails, Phil Jones of the CRU is caught stating that he has “managed to persuade [East Anglia] to ignore all further FOIA requests if the people have anything to do with Climate Audit.” In another e-mail, David Jones of Australia’s version of the CRU states that they will ignore FOIA requests from known skeptics. In another, Jones asks Mann to delete e-mails between Mann and certain others.

All in all, in these e-mails, various warmists admit deleting data, hiding source code, manipulating data to make it more difficult to use, and flat out refusing to comply with the law whenever skeptics sought information.

In his defense, Jones now admits that “some of the published emails do not read well” but he notes that “some were clearly written in the heat of the moment.” As if that was a valid defense.

The Competitive Enterprise Institute has noted similar problems with NASA, noting that NASA has ignored most of their FOIA requests. NASA claims to be working on their requests. . . for years now.

NASA, by the way, has been caught repeatedly massaging their data. For example, McIntyre caught James Hansen of NASA manipulating his data to increase current temperatures. It has also recently been revealed that NASA was inserting data from warmer months into colder months to raise the temperatures. NASA has even been forced to recalculate its data as a result of criticism.

At one point, CRU “admitted” (claimed) that they had thrown away the raw temperature data upon which their predictions of global warming are based. This would have prevented anyone from verifying their data. But this now appears to have been a lie as they have recently promised to release the data.

This is important because the only data CRU has ever agreed to make available is what they call “value-added data.” What is value-added data? Value-added data is the temperature data they use after it’s been subject to scaling and adjustments by the CRU. Why is that important? Because those adjustments account for more than 80% of the rise in temperatures that the CRU is calling global warming. Read that again: 80% of the case for global warming was added by the CRU as a fudge factor to the temperatures that were actually recorded.

Consider the following. US Historical Climate Network reports for the lower 48 states show a temperature increase of 0.6 degrees Celsius since 1940. But 0.5 of those degrees are the result of adjustments or fudge factors -- only 0.1 of those degrees were actually recorded. This data comes from the NOAA’s own webpage.

Take a look at the following chart (again from the NOAA’s own webpage). The chart shows the difference between the recorded temperature and the “adjusted” temperature by year. Notice that until the 1940s, this data was barely manipulated. Indeed, if anything, the adjustments lowered the temperature. But since then, the warmists have been adding more and more to the adjustments each year.

Misconduct: Manipulation/Manufacturing of Data To Create Warming Trend

The misconduct that has received the most notice involves the manipulation of data to create warming where none otherwise exists. The e-mail that really hit the headlines was one from Jones in which he writes about using the “trick of adding in the real temps” to get the data to show that warming was occurring. Jones tried to claim he did not mean anything deceptive by the word “trick,” that he only meant “a clever way,” but that’s not what really happened, nor is that the only damning evidence.

Once again, we turn to Stephen McIntyre who explains the trick. What Jones was doing was averaging each data point with surrounding data points to create a smooth curve. This makes the data appear more consistent and definite. But when one reaches the end of the data points, there are no further data points that can be used to smooth the curve. The “trick” involved using temperature records to provide additional data that could be used to smooth the curve.

That sound esoteric and seems minor, but McIntyre has been kind enough to show us the effect of this in a series of graphs. Take a look at this first graph. This shows the data as prepared by Jones and crew. The various colored lines represent different ways in which temperature has been measured, e.g. ice core samples or tree ring size. Notice the dramatic upswing. This is similar to the hockey stick graph.


Now take a look at the last few decades in isolation. Pay particular attention to the sudden drops that each of the temperature lines experiences -- see the orange arrow. Notice also, that despite that drop, the temperatures turn around again and shoot up.


That’s the trick. If the trick is removed and the date is simply shown without the trick, the temperatures actually continue to fall. Here is a chart of what the data would have looked like without this supposedly harmless trick:


And that’s not the only evidence to show that CRU was faking its data. Another of Jones’s e-mails reads: “I would like to see the climate change happen so the science could be proved right.” In other words, there is no proof to support their claims, even though they were producing studies that purported to show such proof.

Moreover, an examination of the comments within their software code reveal a system that is either hopelessly dysfunctional and/or was intentionally manipulated to achieve the desired result. Here are some of the comments that were found within the code itself:

• One warmist admits manufacturing the result he wanted: “What the hell is supposed to happen here? Oh yeah -- there is no ‘supposed’, I can make it up. So I have :-)”

• Another complains that the Australian weather reporting stations (among others) are a mess and “this renders the station data meaningless.” He then adds, “of course, it’s too late for me to fix this.” Thus, admitting the use of flawed data.

• Various warmists warn repeatedly not to incorporate data from prior to 1960 because this would create a cooling trend

• Another notes that recent cooling trend data has been removed from the database, but complains that the data will still be too accurate: “NOTE: recent decline in tree-ring density has been ARTIFICIALLY REMOVED to facilitate calibration. THEREFORE, post-1960 values will be much closer to observed temperatures than they should be”

• Another complains: “OH FUCK THIS. It’s Sunday evening, I’ve worked all weekend, and just when I thought it was done I’m hitting yet another problem that’s based on the hopeless state of our databases. There is no uniform data integrity, it’s just a catalogue of issues that continues to grow as they’re found.”

Conclusion

That’s why Climategate matters. It’s shown that the handful of people who created the entire global warming industry have lied, manipulated data, manufactured evidence, suppressed countervailing evidence, and waged a dirty war against anyone who disagreed with them.

This doesn’t necessarily disprove global warming (that’s for another post), but it does show that the evidence upon which it is based is false.

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Watch Out World!

The Governator has boldly destroyed California's economy with his green/climate change agenda, and now he's heading to Copenhagen to pump up the rest of the world. If you're wondering where all those uninvited guests for the UN Summit on Climate Change came from, they're the California business people and working taxpayers who have exited the state in droves to get away from the oppressive and crippling legislation, rules and regulations foisted upon them by the beefy man-bot.

California is the leader in environmental pseudo-science and mindless legislation which has brought the world's fifth or sixth largest economy to, and perhaps over, the brink of ruin. More than 250,000 jobs were lost in California in one year alone, and today's official unemployment rate is 12.3% and climbing (the real figure is probably even higher when you include workers who have simply given up on the idea that they will ever be able to get a decent job again, run out of their unemployment insurance benefits, and ended up on welfare).

But never fear, he'll be back. And he announced recently that the green jobs creation will produce a whopping 400,000 jobs to replace the nearly million jobs which will have been lost by the end of the current five-year period. Aside from the fact that 400,000 is considerably less than a million, even a robot can be honest enough to admit that it will take ten to twelve years to produce those theoretical jobs.

The Kyoto Accord has nothing on California legislation. Many major nations never signed on to Kyoto, and those that did are not even close to making their goals. California has more control over its citizens than that. It has been three years since Ahnuld enthusiasically signed the job-killer bill also known as AB 32 which mandated that California reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by the year 2020. That bill alone is projected to cost the state nearly $72 billion per year, while costing consumers another $149 billion and killing 1.1 million real jobs. And the state government has used all means available to it to collect the taxes and enforce the rules necessary to achieve this lofty goal.

But that projection doesn't stop the determined Governator. When asked by a reporter if Schwarzenegger might consider modification of the legislation or temporary suspension of its harshest provisions during the big recession, the RINO (robot in name only) looked up at Skynet and replied: "I will not suspend regulations that are creating jobs and stimulating the economy." I think there are a few wires crossed in the man-bot's head.

Nothing in the present, real world will dissuade Ahnuld from his course of action. Originally somewhat hesitant about AB 32, he is now an enthusiastic booster of this pie-in-the-sky legislation. He sees things that never were, and never will be, and declares them to be the true facts. Amazing what they can do with computer programming these days, isn't it? He joyfully reports that many of the provisions of the bill won't even go into effect until 2012. That means that they will kick in right near the end of the current five-year downhill slide, making the present restrictions and mandates look like child's play. To any sane person, that means it's going to get worse. But to a humanlike machine it means "By then, the economy will continue to improve ('continue?'), helped by the growth of California's clean tech sector."

Those of us who watched the California Coastal Commission grab huge swaths of California land to "preserve the environment" and prevent development of any real substance thought that was as bad as it could get. We thought drying up the lush Central Valley farms and fields in order to protect a fish that is of no use to anybody was just a temporary disconnect. Yet most of these predations occurred before this sociocrat posing as a conservative Republican came into office. He is making those enviro-nuts look absolutely sane and reasonable in his zeal to turn California into a fictional movie paradise of the future.

"Today Kahleeforneea, Tomorrow the World" is Schwarzenegger's rallying cry as he heads off to the conference of highly-confused Euroweenies, Asian opt-outers, and African handout seekers. Watch out world--resist him not. He keeps coming back, and coming back, and coming back. He will not give up until he has destroyed humanity and replaced them with well-programmed, non-polluting, hydrogen and solar powered machines. The earth will be pristine again, but there won't be anybody there to appreciate it.
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The Dark Ages (Redux)

A few years back, a group of environmentalists decided to see what would happen if you thrust a country back into the Dark Ages. They chose Britain, possibly because the British were too busy stabbing each other and binge-drinking themselves into a stupor to notice. With nary a hint of protest, the environmentalists set their plan into motion. Now the free range chickens have come home to roost.

Here’s what happened. Beginning in the 1990s, the Labor government started a concerted effort to destroy the British power grid in the name of stopping global warming. . . er climate change. . . er the next ice age.

Noting that coal and nuclear power plants account for about 45% of all power generated in Britain, Labor chose those forms of power as the best place to start. So they made it virtually impossible to build nuclear plants. Then they made it unprofitable to run existing coal-fired plants, and finally they all but forbade the construction of new coal-fired plants. And here is what they’ve achieved:

Britain currently gets around 13% of its electricity from nuclear plants. But most of their nuclear plants are simply too old to carry on. Indeed, half of their existing nuclear plants have already been shut down and the remaining plants will soon follow. The last one should be closed by 2023. New nuclear plants are planned, but the earliest one of those could be up and running is 2017, and that’s probably insanely optimistic.

Britain also gets around 31% of its electricity from coal-fired plants, but this will end soon. EU environmental rules require that coal plants be fit with expensive scrubbers or be shut down. But these scrubbers are too expensive to make economic sense. So owners are finding it cheaper to just shut the plants down. Indeed, right now these plants are operating (in a reduced capacity) under an exception that expires in 2015, after which time they will be shut down.

So by 2015, Britain will lose about 44% of its capacity to generate electricity. Alas, they don’t have the capacity to spare. The chart on the left shows the problem. Beginning in 2015, Britain will not be able to generate enough electricity to meet demand. This gap between supply and demand will continue to grow until around 2030, at which point Britain will be able to meet only half of its demand.

What does this mean? Blackouts.

In the 2007, South Africa experienced blackouts because of a moratorium put in place in the 1990s on the building of new power plants. Consequently, the national power company, Eskom, began rolling blackouts, cutting off power for hours at a time. Initially, these blackouts were announced. But they soon discovered that this attracted thieves to the affected neighborhoods, so they stopped announcing them.

Britain will be heading down the same path. So, if burglary is your thing -- and if you live in Britain, we know it is -- you are about to experience a golden age of crime. It will be glorious!

But wait, in all fairness, I don’t want to overstate the problem. The same idiots who caused the problem have a “solution.” They prayed to the Great Unicorn for magical new technologies that will produce the missing electricity without harming the environment. Here is what they got:

Over the next eleven years (fortunately 2015 is more than 11 years away), they intend to build enough maritime windmills to produce 33 Gig Watts of power. Not bad huh? And while many claim that Britains lacks the resources to produce this many windmills, we should not doubt that they can pull this off. After all, Britain is the world’s biggest producer of wind power. In fact, in 2008, Britain produced a whopping 0.6 GW! See, they're almost there. . . only another 98.2% to go!

But there is a catch with this marvelous plan. The government estimates that it’s about to lose 75 GW of power because of all these plant closures (failures). Thus, even if Plan Quixote works, it will still come up 42 GW short. . . actually, that’s not true. There’s another problem I haven’t mentioned yet. It turns out that windmills don’t work on calm days. I know, knock you over with a feather! Even the government estimates that 25 GW of potential from windmills will only be able to replace 5 GW of fossil-fuel fired power. Thus, to plug the gap with wind, the Brits need to produce 375 GW of wind power -- more than ten times what they’re building. It would seem, the Great Unicorn has failed them?

And this doesn’t even account for the fact that their oil and gas fired plants are running out of fuel as their North Sea reserves run dry (they peaked in 1999).

Yet, there is an out. When the darkness and the cold become unbearable and the number of patients dying in the dark in hospitals increases well beyond its currently high levels, the Brits can start building gas-fired plants. And to fuel those plants, they can call upon old reliable, dependable Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Of course, that will be expensive and will wreak havoc on anyone who pays for their own electricity, partly because the prices will vary dramatically day by day, and partly because Putin loves him some predatory pricing. But it should keep the lights on most of the time. And so what if it makes Britain dependent on Russia. Economic slavery sure beats global warming. . . cooling. . . whatever.

Of course, there is something else they could do. They could burn environmentalists and Labor MPs to keep warm.

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Here's To The Late Great American Economy

There seems to be a slowly-building movement in Congress to stop the Obamanomics juggernaut it its tracks. Except for a few smiley face RINOs, Republicans have ranged from total opposition to the Obama money-printing/money-burning plans to reasoned disagreement and major modification. As of this morning the cracks within the Democratic wall continue to spread. At long last, there's hope that there will be a lot less change.

TARP: The Wall Street Journal assessed the looming government debt for TARP, the earliest of the massive government programs, to be as much as $23.7 trillion. Special Inspector General Neil Barofsky, charged with supervising the $700 billion financial sector bailout said the Treasury Department isn't disclosing enough information about how taxpayer money is being spent." Well, there's news. Barofsky said that all programs specifically designed to "save corporations, prop up banks and insurance companies, provide make-work jobs for government employees, and otherwise 'stimulate' the economy, including moneys simply sitting unused," would reach that near $24 trillion level.

Although the TARP provisions can be revised downward to reduce the total indebtedness, the fact is that the main damage has already been done, and the Obama administration is claiming that it isn't enough. The stimulus that doesn't stimulate needs to be made bigger, say the Obamacrats. The money-printers in the White House have begun to sound like high school cheerleaders--do it again, do it again, harder, harder. The quarterback-sneak play we just used three times cost us a negative 85 yards, so let's do it again, only this time with greater feeling!

Barofsky went on to say "It is a scheme to shift toxic assets and that there are 'fundamental vulnerabilities' relating to conflicts of interest and collusion, transparency, performance measures and anti-money laundering." The Treasury Department has essentially been silent about the criticisms, and hasn't responded directly to inquiries from the Journal, The Financial Times and CBS News, except to deny that there is any disagreement that doesn't revolve around certain financial accounting procedures.

CLIMATE CHANGE: Cap and trade and various schemes to play God and regulate the weather would cost American taxpayers dearly. It may cost some politicians dearly as well. Despite a squeak-through in the House, the Senate has not rolled over and played dead for the administration. Many House Democrats along with certain turncoat Republicans have already been targeted by concerned organizations for public humiliation in the media and defeat at the polls. The groups are calling the various bills and proposals out for what they really are. The National Republican Congressional Committee has targeted several freshman Democrats for supporting "a giant energy tax." Roll Call calls climate change the "ticking political time bomb on the Senate's agenda this fall, and Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) has the timer set to go off in late September." The globaloney climate change enthusiasts are hoping the health care debate will continue to cover up the deep divisions within the Democratic Party over how to approach global warming. To add to their woes, there seems to be no way to appeal to Republicans short of abandoning the whole project entirely. How much will these programs cost us in trillions of dollars? Unknown as yet, but Al Gore and the cap and trade snake-oil salesmen are counting on it costing the taxpayers almost as much as the profit they will make from their gargantuan scam. Speaking of which, there is always:

HEALTH CARE: No matter how sick the economy, the Obamacrats insist that each of us is even sicker. Although the Republic and its citizens have survived since 1789 without a complete government takeover of all things medical, the administration has decided that it's a crisis (yeah, one of those) which has become so horrific that it must be resolved immediately, forthwith, without delay, and before the Congressional August recess. Damn the torpedoes (and the economy and personal choice), full speed ahead! The administration has determined the actual cost of its various plans to be, well, who the hell knows? But it will be a lot, trust us. Still, in the long run, it will all be worth it since we will have universal access to doctors and hospitals--just like Cuba.

Health care is an issue which must be addressed, as demonstrated by the excellent and thorough examination being conducted here at Commentarama by my associate Andrew Price. But it is not a crisis which requires hocking our economic future or our physical well-being for the sake of rushing to judgment simply to satisfy a President's monumental ego. There is no simple solution, and the current proposals are disastrous. How carefully has the administration thought this out? See above ($23.7 trillion, with negligible results).

HOW FARES THE REPUBLIC? The public has been a bit under the weather lately (pun intended), but it seems to be coming out of its coma. There are major rumblings of dissatisfaction with both the administration and Congress popping up all over. TARP revision will have to wait, but it is unlikely that the public will countenance even the suggestion of another bailout package despite Obama's insistence that it should. Polls continue to show downward trends in the numbers of people who support the climate change junk science and the cap and trade scheme. Dissatisfaction is moving quickly upwards with Congressional and Presidential performance. A recent Quinnipiac poll shows Mitt Romney (a potential Republican candidate) in a virtual tie with Barack Obama (an incumbent President) for the nation's highest office. That tends to indicate that Obama's popularity is more apparent than real.

As for health care, Obama has stated as recently as Tuesday morning that there is good progress for passing a bill before his stated deadline of the August recess. But that doesn't seem to fit the facts. His first and biggest problem is his "no tax increase for those earning under $250,000" pledge. Ignoring the complete disingenuousness of that pledge, the "eat the rich" philosophy is wearing thin with the public very quickly. Most recognize that "the rich" includes almost every small business owner who is struggling to make ends meet and keep his or her business from going under. Anybody remember "read my lips--no new taxes?" It is becoming increasingly close to impossible for Obama to hide the immense taxes he is imposing without actually calling them taxes. And on the issue of health care, nobody with an IQ above room temperature believes that the current administration/Congressional proposals can be accomplished without substantial increases in taxes. Even Obama's own top people have been called in, not to discuss how to avoid new and crippling taxes, but how to raise them.

POLITICAL OUTLOOK FOR HEALTH CARE: Two final notes on health care proposals in their present form. First, Roll Call reports that Democrats in the Senate have "determined that the political landscape of health care reform, and their options for bringing up a comprehensive bill [before the August recess] appear to be narrowing with the gradual realization no matter what they do, they're probably going to need 60 votes to pass it." Even with the seating of the joker Democrat Al Franken in the Senate, the number of hostile Democrats combined with even more hostile Republicans makes that less likely by the hour." As AP reports "Backup reconciliation plans could become mired in the same 60 vote problem they currently face on cap and trade, as liberals, centrists and a handful of Republicans battle it out over the direction of a final Senate bill.

Second, the Washington Post reports while the President's "overall rating remains high at 59%, since April, approval of Obama's handling of health care has dropped from 57% to 49%, with disapproval rising from 29% to 44%." The Post goes on to say that the administration is trying a tack which may backfire: "The White House has launched a new phase of its strategy designed to dramatically increase public pressure on Congress: all Obama, all the time." And finally, even the Obama-obsessed New York Times reports on its front page that the nation's governors "Democrats as well as Republicans, voiced deep concern Sunday about the shape of the health care bill emerging from Congress, fearing that the federal government is about to hand them expensive new Medicaid obligations without providing the money to pay for them. There was bipartisan animosity voiced against the Obama administration's plan."

It's time for Congress to slow down, take a deep breath, think before acting, and read before passing chaotic legislation. And it's time for Congress to start asking the big question that the public is increasingly asking: "What's the big hurry?"
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