Published with Permission of Viv Forbes, Carbon Sense Coalition
The Carbon Sense Coalition today claimed that Australia and New Zealand were in danger of becoming the green peasants of the Pacific.
The Chairman of “Carbon Sense”, Mr Viv Forbes, said that the only way the two countries could achieve their unrealistic emissions targets was by exporting their industries, reducing their population or creating chronic recession.
In a detailed submission to the New Zealand Government, the Carbon Sense Coalition concludes that their emissions targets are not feasible, not sustainable and not justified.
The submission, entitled “Clean, Green and Barefoot in the Snow” can be found here.
“The submission analyses the maths of the proposal to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to 50% of 1990 levels by 2050. In the period from the base year of 1990 to 2010, New Zealand emissions have grown by 22%. This 22% growth will need to be eliminated before the Kiwis get to the start of the process of achieving 50% cuts from 1990 levels.
“Moreover, New Zealand’s population has also grown since 1990, and is expected to rise from 3.5 million in 1990 to 6.2 million by 2050. “As a result, the maths shows that the 50% cut to 1990 levels by 2050 will require Kiwis to reduce emissions per capita by 73% from 1990 levels. Will their grandkids learn to happily live on just 27% of the resources used now?
“Even in the Great Depression, production of carbon dioxide only fell by 25% from booming 1929 to the dreary bottom in 1932, when many people minimised their emissions by queuing quietly outside soup kitchens. These targets thus promise to be three times worse than the great depression.” See Hertzberg PDF.
There are four major sources of man’s production of carbon dioxide in Australia and New Zealand - transport, electricity generation, agriculture and basic industries such as cement, steel and aluminium. (Of course this excludes heavy breathing from 25 million humans).
Politicians need to explain to us how they plan to massively cut our use of carbon fuels in all of these essentials of modern life. (Their preferred solution is ration cards, called Emission Permits.)
The only options feasible today are greatly increased use of hydro, nuclear or geothermal energy to produce electricity and some use of electric powered cars and buses in cities. It seems politically improbably that large new hydro or nuclear plants will be built in a hurry in either country and geothermal will never fill the gap in time. Meanwhile the green subsidysuckers like wind, solar and biofuels are already causing the de-industrialisation of Europe.
Our politicians are gambling massive community assets on some wobbly computer forecasts of global warming. But nature will continue to surprise us with earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, tornados, fires or even global cooling. Climate is always changing. Mankind must do what successful humans have always done - be prepared for the next disaster, whatever it is. Then be equipped to recover and rebuild afterwards. And take all forecasts with a grain of salt.
Both Australia and New Zealand would be better off today if all the money wasted on the climate change industry had been spent building more robust infrastructure and establishing shelters and emergency resources. Money spent on preparation for provision of water, electricity, communications, medical services and shelter after a disaster will be far more appreciated by victims than knowing that our politicians are playing a leading role in the Climate Change Circus. Reliable forecasts of flood levels and research into earthquake prediction would be far more useful than wild guesses about minute change in global temperature, many decades ahead.
New Zealand aims to be the Leader of the Lemmings in our region. The Green/Gillard government in Australia is longing to follow. But who else in our region will renew their Kyoto vows of poverty? Not India or China; not Japan or Taiwan; not Canada, USA or South America - no one will follow us in the race to become the Green Peasants of the Pacific. Some consensus!”
Politicians Produce Pollution.
Carbon dioxide (CO2) is a colourless, non-toxic natural gas occurring in trace amounts in our atmosphere. It is crucial to all life on earth. Plants extract CO2 from the air and all animals get their carbon based proteins, sugars and fats from plants. CO2 is also the source of that other crucial gas of life - oxygen. Plants use solar energy and the magic of photosynthesis to extract carbon from carbon dioxide and release the oxygen back to the air. Human activity completes the carbon cycle of life by burning the carbon food and fuels for energy and releasing CO2 back to the atmosphere.
Currently for every million molecules of air there are about 390 molecules of CO2 a tiny amount which is almost the lowest it has ever been in the long history of the planet. At just 150 parts per million (ppm) plants starve and plant growth ceases. Most life probably evolved at levels of 1,000 ppm or more. The dinosaurs flourished in air with 1,800 ppm of CO2 400 million years ago, life flourished with 4,500 ppm CO2. US Submariners live comfortably in air with 8,000 ppm and normal human lungs exhale air with 40,000 ppm.
At what level does this gas of life morph into “pollution” and attract a carbon tax? Or is the term “carbon pollution” just another misleading Wongism?
For a revealing look at the importance of wonderful carbon to our world see Brignell and Brisnmead.
World Climate Report
Back in the fall of 2008, we summarized our arguments that we submitted to the EPA as to the myriad reasons why the EPA should not make a finding that “greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health and welfare.” Ultimately, our arguments fell on deaf ears.
Perhaps the most persuasive argument that we made, in our minds anyway, was that the most direct measure of human health and welfare that there is life expectancy - has increased by about 2/3rds over the past 100 years (Figure 1), while surface temperatures rose about 0.7C. The EPA thinks that this temperature rise is primarily the result of rising human greenhouse gas emissions (although we think that they are overly confident in this assertion).
Figure 1. Life expectancy at birth in the U.S., 1900-2009 (source: Centers for Disease Control)
Now, don’t get us wrong, we don’t believe that much of the rise in life expectancy is due to climate change, but we do assert that a substantial portion of it come from the benefits derived from a plentiful and inexpensive energy supply, largely from fossil fuels.
And life expectancy just keeps on rising. The latest report from the Centers for Disease Control is that in 2009 the U.S. life expectancy exceeded 78 years for the first time ever. At the turn of the last century, this number was 47.3 years.
In fact, in the life expectancy during 10 of the past 10 years was the highest on record.
These numbers and trends are not what one would expect if climate change/greenhouse gas emissions, in the EPA’s words, “endangered” human health and welfare. See recent testimony to congress by EPA and APHA.
The EPA nonetheless insists upon saving us from ourselves by limiting our emissions of greenhouse gases. For the foreseeable future anyway, the only way to do so is to lower our use of energy - which has the very real possibility of stopping or slowing the growth of life expectancy.
While the EPA apparently is convinced that this is a risk worth taking, a lot of the rest of us aren’t so sure.
A question worth asking: Is our health and welfare more endangered by U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, or by attempts to reduce them?
By Darren Goode, Politico
Former President Bill Clinton said Friday that delays in offshore oil and gas drilling permits are “ridiculous” at a time when the economy is still rebuilding, according to attendees at the IHS CERAWeek conference.
Clinton spoke on a panel with former President George W. Bush that was closed to the media. Video of their moderated talk with IHS CERA Chairman Daniel Yergin was also prohibited.
But according to multiple people in the room, Clinton, surprisingly, agreed with Bush on many oil and gas issues, including criticism of delays in permitting offshore since last year’s Gulf of Mexico spill.
“Bush said all the things you’d expect him to say” on oil and gas issues, said Jim Noe, senior vice president at Hercules Offshore and executive director of the pro-drilling Shallow Water Energy Security Coalition. But Clinton added, “You’d be surprised to know that I agree with all that,” according to Noe and others in the room.
Clinton said there are “ridiculous delays in permitting when our economy doesn’t need it,” according to Noe and others.
“That was the most surprising thing they said,” Noe said.
The two former presidents both generally agreed on the need to get offshore drilling workers back on the job.
Clinton and Bush also agreed on the need for more domestic shale gas production, with Clinton noting that it has been done safely for years in his home state of Arkansas.
Bush - who referred to oil and gas in the discussion as “hydrocarbons” - described the anti-hydrocarbon sentiment in Washington as “dangerous.” He said while there is a need to develop new energy technologies, “we have to be prosperous in order to afford those technologies and, in order to be prosperous, we need to drill,” according to Noe.
Read full story here.
Icecap Note: Good for you Bill. The current administration has been dragging its feet on permitting even as reports show the United States has the largest supply of energy of any country in the world. The administration is hoping prices will rise to make their green energy alternatives more competitive as Paul Driessen correctly noed in the Joe’s Blog post above.
Meanhile in the Hill post here
THE HILL POLL: Expand drilling to ease energy crisis, voters say
By Ben Geman
Rising energy prices are prompting support among likely voters for expanding U.S. drilling and releasing oil from the country’s emergency stockpiles, a new poll conducted for The Hill shows.
By a 66-25 percent margin, likely voters say President Obama should encourage more oil and gas exploration offshore, and by a 50-35 percent margin they favor releasing oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to moderate gas price increases. H/T GWPF
Marlo Lewis, GlobalWarming.org
Marlo comments on Dr. Somerville’s testimony. He argue (a) that Somerville invokes the moral authority of policy-neutral science to push a policy agenda, and (b) that he unwittingly provides a compelling reason to overturn EPA’s Endangerment Rule.
EPA’s supposedly scientific assessment locks the USA into an agenda of coercive de-carbonization - it dictates public policy. Indeed, it even predetermines the options by which de-carbonization is to be achieved.
If alarmist scientists really believe that science should only inform, not dictate it, then they should support the Energy Tax Prevention Act!
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Earlier this week, the House Energy & Commerce Committee held its third hearing on the Energy Tax Prevention Act, a bill to stop EPA from determining national policy on climate change through the Clean Air Act, a statute enacted in 1970, years before global warming was even a gleam in Al Gore’s eye. The hearing, requested by ranking member Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), was entitled Climate Science and EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Regulations.
Although Democrats are now the minority party in the House, they got more witnesses (4) than did the majority (3). I don’t know how Rep. Waxman pulled that off. Did he ever let Republicans have more witnesses when he was in the chair? No. Would he return the favor if Dems regain control of the House? Doubtful.
The most effective minority witness, IMO, was Dr. Richard Sommerville, whose testimony updates the continual - and predictable - refrain that ‘climate change is even worse than we previously predicted.’ Much of Somerville’s testimony is drawn from a report he co-authored called the Copenhagen Diagnosis.
It’s not my purpose here to provide an alternative assessment of climate science, though if you’re looking for one, check out Drs. Sherwood and Craig Idso’s Carbon Dioxide and Earth’s Future: Pursuing the Prudent Path.
My beef, rather, is with Somerville’s claim that he’s simply a spokesman for science, not for an agenda. It’s amazing he can say this with a straight face and in the same testimony spout partisan cant about the Climategate scandal. He writes:
In late November 2009 . . . a crime was committed in which thousands of emails of prominent climate scientists were illegally obtained from a server at the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom. . . .The short answer is that the hacked emails do not undermine the science in any way [emphasis added].
Now, I always thought scientists deal with facts and evidence. Where’s the evidence that the Climategate emails were hacked rather than leaked by a whistle blower fed up with the Climatic Research Unit’s stonewalling and refusal to comply with the UK Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)? Somerville provides none. Whether the person who leaked the CRU emails was a hacker or a whistle blower remains an open question. For Somerville to assert as a fact what is actually conjecture casts doubt on everything else he purports to say as a “scientist.”
Let’s delve into this a bit further. Somerville says:
The Copenhagen Diagnosis is about climate change science, not policy. For example, we summarize recent research underpinning the scientific rationale for large and rapid reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions, in order to reduce the likelihood of dangerous man-made climate change. However, we have no political or policy agenda, and we do not speak to the issue of formulating policies to achieve such reductions in emissions. As scientists, when climate change research is relevant to public policy, we consider it important to bring that research to the attention of the wider world. We are convinced that sound science can and should inform wise policy. This conviction led us to write The Copenhagen Diagnosis. In this testimony, I also have no political or policy agenda. I am simply summarizing my view of the current state of scientific understanding.
And again:
Like IPCC, we insisted on being policy-relevant but policy-neutral.
Who does he think he’s fooling? Cap-and-trade, carbon taxes, EPA regulation of greenhouse gases through the Clean Air Act, and President Obama’s “clean energy standard” proposal are all part and parcel of one and the same agenda. How governments choose to ration, restrict, or penalize the carbon-based fuels that supply 85% of U.S. and global energy - or, in Somerville’s words, how governments compel “large and rapid reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions” - is a subordinate issue. The fundamental policy issue is whether governments should coercively limit the production and use of greenhouse gas-emitting fossil fuels. Somerville is emphatically a spokesman for a political and policy agenda - the Kyoto agenda of coercive de-carbonization.
It’s a very old rhetorical trick. Throughout history, partisans of one stripe or another have claimed to speak on behalf of some trans-political moral authority. In antiquity is was the gods. In the Middle Ages it was Holy Writ. Today it’s the “Consensus of Scientists.” Thus we have the spectacle of Al Gore, in An Inconvenient Truth, portraying himself as a non-political Mr. Science while lambasting G.W. Bush and other political opponents. Gore even insinuates as the film begins that Bush appointees on the Supreme Court stole the 2000 year presidential election from him. How very scientifical!
Surely one objective of the Copenhagen Diagnosis report was to buck up those at the 2009 Copenhagen climate conference advocating “large and rapid” greenhouse gas reductions. That’s “policy neutral” only if you think the Kyoto-inspired campaign to restrict mankind’s access to fossil energy is policy neutral. Somerville’s post-mortem on the Copenhagen conference leaves no doubt that the Copenhagen Diagnosis was designed to drive the negotiations in a specific direction:
Thus, it is profoundly regrettable that what I must characterize as dithering and procrastination at COP15 in Copenhagen continued a year later in December 2010 at COP16 in Cancun, Mexico.
Just how “large and rapid” does Somerville think greenhouse gas reductions should be? He says:
To stabilize climate, a decarbonized global society - with near-zero emissions of CO2 and other long-lived greenhouse gases - needs to be reached well within this century. More specifically, the average annual per-capita emissions will have to shrink to well below 1 metric ton CO2 by 2050. This is 80 to 95% below the per-capita emissions in developed nations in 2000.
To be sure, Somerville acknowledges that policymakers, not scientists, get to decide “how much climate change is tolerable”:
This choice by governments may be affected by risk tolerance, priorities, economics, and other considerations, but in the end it is a choice that humanity as a whole, acting through national governments, will make. Science and scientists will not and should not make that choice.
But his message is obvious even if not explicit: ‘Morally you have no choice but to adopt my agenda and mandate large and rapid greenhouse gas reductions.’
The irony is that EPA is doing exactly what Somerville professes to believe scientists should not do - presume to determine, rather than merely inform, the direction and even the content of public policy. EPA is now ‘legislating’ climate policy through the Clean Air Act, issuing regulations to control greenhouse gas emissions from both mobile and stationary sources. On what authority? The authority EPA conferred on itself by issuing its “Endangerment Rule.”
By issuing an assessment that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare, EPA obligated itself to promulgate greenhouse gas emission standards for new motor vehicles. That, in turn, obligated EPA to apply Clean Air Act permitting programs to stationary sources of greenhouse gases. In addition, the Endangerment Rule authorizes or obligates EPA to establish: (1) greenhouse gas emission standards for heavy trucks, marine vessels, aircraft, locomotives, and other non-road vehicles and engines; (2) greenhouse gas performance standards for potentially dozens of industrial source categories; and, (3) national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS) for greenhouse gases set below current atmospheric concentrations. In short, the Endangerment Rule not only set the stage for a very rapid transition to what Somerville calls a “decarbonized” society, it also predetermines the options for advancing that agenda.
Even if EPA were an honest broker of climate science, the agency’s greenhouse gas regulations would still amount to a usurpation of legislative power, since, as Somerville says, the job of science is to inform policy choices, not dictate them.
EPA, however, is not an honest broker; it is a stakeholder, a dog in the fight. The scientific assessment EPA made in its Endangerment Rule directly advances the agency’s interest in expanding its power, prestige, and budget.
An elementary principle of justice is that no one should be judge in his own cause. Implication: One and the same agency should not have the power to make the scientific assessments that authorize regulation and the power to promulgate rules based on such assessments. Otherwise, the agency has an inescapable conflict of interest. It will always be tempted to assess the science in ways that expand its power.
More importantly, though, an assessment should only inform policy, not dictate it. A good example is the famous 1964 Surgeon General’s Report detailing the evidence that cigarette smoking causes cancer. A purely scientific assessment, the Surgeon General’s Reportdid not even offer policy recommendations. How different from EPA’s Endangerment Rule, which triggers a cascade of policy decisions Congress never approved!
If Somerville really believes science should only inform policy, not dictate it, then he should support the Energy Tax Prevention Act! Contrary to the bill’s detractors, the Energy Tax Prevention Act takes no position on climate science. It neither affirms nor denies the reasoning or conclusions EPA sets forth in its Endangerment Rule.
Rather, the bill aims to overturn the legal force and effect of the Endangerment Rule, ensuring that Congress, not bureaucrats pretending to custodians of policy-neutral science, make public policy.
Jeremy Lovell, E&E European correspondent
LONDON—Britons, who have become increasingly skeptical about climate change, have found a new political voice: a housewife from southern England who is preparing a campaign to get the country’s groundbreaking 2008 Climate Change Act repealed.
Fay Kelly-Tuncay admits she has an uphill struggle on her hands. The act, which commits the country to slash carbon emissions by at least 80 percent from 1990 levels by 2050 in pretty much even steps, drew support from all political parties when it was passed by the then-Labour government. But she is undeterred.
“We feel there was a rush to legislate under the influence of the green movement. But the science is certainly not settled, and the general public is not getting an accurate picture,” she asserted to ClimateWire by telephone from her home in Guildford some 20 miles southwest of London.
Fay Kelly-Tuncay. Photo courtesy of Kelly-Tuncay.
“We feel that the act should be scrapped. This is a matter of mobilizing public opinion. There is a mood out there that we can tap into,” she added.
She might have a point. A recent public opinion poll showed that only 26 percent of Britons currently see climate change as primarily due to human activity. At the other end of the spectrum, 25 percent think it’s not happening at all.
Kelly-Tuncay, who has been gathering support on the Internet, begins her official campaign on March 19. “We will be launching the campaign and with it a petition. We hope to collect 100,000 signatures over the next year,” she said.
Her message is as simple as it is unequivocal. The climate change issue in general and the Climate Change Act in particular have been hijacked by the financial institutions, which see serious money to be made.
“The whole climate change agenda has been captured by those with a vested interest in making money out of it. Just look at carbon trading. It is riddled with fraud,” she said, referring to the recent theft of about $40 million worth of carbon emission credits under the European Union’s Emissions Trading System—the latest in a spate of such thefts in an insecure international trading system.
“Look at the Climate Change Act. It is pure mitigation with no mention of adaptation. That is just engineering work, so of no interest to the money men,” Kelly-Tuncay said. “The whole financial sector has benefited from climate alarmism.”
‘A case for people power’
But although she watches with interest the activities of former U.K. Chancellor of the Exchequer Nigel Lawson’s climate skeptic vehicle, the Global Warming Policy Foundation, Kelly-Tuncay is not a member.
“I am not a skeptic; I am a climate realist. I have a degree in archaeology and environment and have been taking an interest in it for years. But as I looked deeper, I became more doubtful of the science. It is certainly not settled, regardless of what they were trying to tell us,” she said. “The public have been misled. The Climate Change Act will push up domestic energy bills and force many more people into fuel poverty. That is making a lot of Labour members start to feel very uncomfortable.”
“The trouble is that politicians have got into bed with the people behind the wind farms, so it is very difficult to get any traction. That is why it is a case for people power,” she asserted. “There has been no evidence of climate ‘tipping points,’ so why have we rushed to legislate on this issue?”
Fuel poverty is defined as a household having to spend 10 percent or more of income on energy bills.
Kelly-Tuncay said there was certainly a place for investing in adaptation to natural hazards such as flood prevention but that pouring money into mitigating for an event that might never happen was simply pointless.
She rejected the notions that Russia’s control over Europe’s gas supplies and the current oil price spike from turmoil in the Middle East were strong arguments in favour of investments in renewable energy.
“There is a lot of oil out there. They are using alarmism to ratchet up the prices. And as for gas, shale gas and shale oil are real game-changers, and they are much lower in carbon than coal,” Kelly-Tuncay said.
Kelly-Tuncay also rejected the stereotype that most climate change doubters were on the political right. “We are very much a mixed, grass-roots group with membership across all parties. People on the left are starting to feel very let down by what has been going on. Our campaign is a move away from the characterization of skeptics being on the political right.”
ICECAP Comments: We applaud this across the political spectrum, grass root, back to reality effort and hope it will succeed and spread. Our board and membership crosses the political spectrum. Whereas we may disagree on politics, we all share the same or similar view of climate change - we are like Kay Climate Realists, who recognize that man plays some role in climate locally through urbanization, land-use changes, irrigation, and aerosols, we believe natural factors are the real drivers as the past few years should have made clear. Alarmists have had to refer to natural factors to explain why their model forecasts have been failing. We think CO2 is getting a bad rap and has enormous benefits for plants and crops.
By Kerry Picket, Washington Times
Senior Vice President of NPR Ron Schiller met with individuals he believed to be potential donors. However, undercover video was running during this meeting. In the following clip, Mr. Schiller and his co-worker Betsy Liley describe how NPR covers those who deny climate change is happening.
Ms. Liley talks about a donor who would only give to NPR if the outlet did not talk to those who believe climate change is not happening:
“This funder said to us, ‘ you know you would like us to support your environmental coverage, but we really don’t want to give you money if you’re going to talk to the people who think climate change is not happening,’” Ms. Liley recounted.
She continues to say, “It is a complicated thing, though. There’s a political question and there is a scientific question and we were talking to him about supporting the science desk. And so we’ve gone back to the science editor and asked how have you planned to cover this thing? Our coverage, if you look at our coverage, you would say that science coverage has accepted that climate change is happening and we’re covering it. But in politics, our Washington desk, might actually cover it should it resurface as a political issue...this debate.”
“So it’s more complicated than saying, ‘Where was Obama born?’ In Hawaii or not? Is he an American citizen or not?” she asks. Ms. Liley then describes the birthers as conservatives.
“We’re not covering the birthers. We are not covering them. There’s a whole movement within the conservative group about questioning something that Obama has said as fact, ‘I was born in Hawaii, when it was the United States.’ The group that questions this, some of whom are commentators...I don’t know any who are Democrats, but they are primarily conservative commentators and people who follow them question if Obama is [a citizen],” she further explains.
“I think the challenge in our society now is that we are questioning facts. It’s not opinions we are debating. I mean, what are the facts? Is the world flat? Is that the next question we’re going to debate?” Ms. Liley wonders.
Mr. Schiller chimes in later saying, “The main point here is that it is not our responsibility to present the opinion of a non-scientist through our science desk. All educated scientists accept that climate change as fact. On the political side, however, where it is not accepted as fact, and the fact that debate is happening is news and it’s really important news. And our point of view requires that we cover that debate, if for no other reason than to have Americans understand there are still people who believe that it is not fact.”
See more also at Politics Daily.
By Chris Horner
Former Bush administration chief of the Council on Environmental Quality James Connaughton is now the government affairs head for an electric utility, Constellation Energy. But more than that, he is a media darling for his willingness to push the climate agenda on behalf of his company, which is hoping to profit from it - at your expense - via wealth transfers, taxes and other inefficiencies in the name of schemes that no one actually claims would detectably impact the climate.
As such, it is unreasonable to believe that the whole mess is about the climate, particularly when you toss in the rest of the admissions by Gang Green when they slip off-message. But, still, when you rob Peter (you) to pay Paul (Constellation, et al.), you can count on Paul’s enthusiastic support.
Better yet, with Mr. Connaughton the press gets to run the green cheerleading as coming from a “former Bush official.”
And so it comes to this. Today, we see ClimateWire’s story “SCIENCE: Former Bush official defends IPCC,” with the gag-inducing subhead, “Connaughton calls IPPC [sic] findings ‘fabulous.’”
The story is referring to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, which has suffered under revelations that its supposedly cutting-edge, peer-reviewed science includes unsupportable twaddle cut and pasted from green group press releases, student theses, popular magazine articles and telephone interviews with alarmists who now deny their own musings.
But then there is this:
Connaughton also criticized attacks on the East Anglia scientists, whose e-mails showed some hostility toward research that questioned the link between human emissions and global warming (ClimateWire, Nov. 17, 2010).
“The left’s attack on the Bush administration for manipulating the science was as overwrought as the right’s attack on East Anglia, because it didn’t go to the science,” he said.
Except that it did. The East Anglia scientists called for records to be destroyed, said that they were “hiding the decline” in temperatures to declare a warming that wasn’t, made computer code annotations about insert[ing a] very artificial adjustment here, and so on. And this week, as I understand things, we will see some more rather disturbing evidence, affirming just how absurd that already silly effort at rationalization and denial is. For now I will simply tease the document being sent to Capitol Hill as coming from a federal inspector general who affirms what is already clear to anyone who read the self-exonerations of “ClimateGate”: the scandal was whitewashed.
Records were indeed destroyed by one principal at the request of another; the latter of whom was, to put things mildly, deceptive about this fact while the former somehow managed to go without being asked about it. Some things were apparently better left unsaid, in the eyes of those charged with looking into the matter.
Except that someone has finally gotten around to asking the obvious. And the specific reply implicates both the investigators and the investigated. Not only was ClimateGate never investigated, there appears to be a new name on the list of the complicit.
But even before this coming bombshell, we saw in the ClimateWire story that there may be no lower boundary beyond which the rent-seekers, the new tax collectors for the green welfare state, are unwilling to stoop.
Chris Horner is a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute
Dr Charles Battig
Letter to the editor, reprinted with author permission.
Virginians know that “Virginia is for Lovers.” We also know the adage that love is blind. Such blindness is exemplified by Gov. Bob McDonnell’s and Sen. Frank Wagner’s love affair with renewable energy.
Offering reason to those committed to love relationships obviously seen as disastrous to rational outsiders is often futile. Scientific analyses, cost-benefit economic impact studies and the disastrous experience of wind power and solar power have not dissuaded the governor.
For lovers, cost may be no object to happiness; for others it is objectionable. The Massachusetts Cape Wind and the Rhode Island Deepwater Wind projects stick the consumer with guaranteed higher electric-rate costs and guaranteed profits to promoters of taxpayer-subsidized projects. Ignored are the additional conventional power plants needed to provide reliable power when the wind fails.
Evergreen Solar Company loved $58 million of Massachusetts taxpayer subsidies. After two years, it closed shop, laid off 800 workers and moved to China, even as China builds more coal and nuclear power plants and sells low-cost solar and wind-turbine components to the West.
Renewable lovers will find disappointment in Spain, France, Denmark, Holland, Germany and England. Spain’s splurge on subsidized solar and wind resulted in a 20 percent unemployment rate. France has seen the light and is cutting subsidies for solar and installation of Chinese solar panels. Denmark’s on- and off-shore wind-power craze has climaxed with the closing of five wind-turbine production facilities, the highest residential electricity rates in Europe and no lower coal usage. Holland is slashing renewable subsidies and planning its first nuclear power plants in 40 years. Germany has the second highest electric costs in the EU and is projecting power blackouts. England reports shortfalls in renewable energy production.
Perhaps McDonnell might share the hidden charms he sees in renewable energy, everywhere else a demonstrably more expensive and less reliable energy source.
Charles Battig,
President, Piedmont Chapter,
Virginia Scientists and Engineers for Energy and Environment.
Charlottesville.