As the alarmists stage their dramatic pretense at shock and surprise over what is widely being described as a revelation and conversion by South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham, readers of Red Hot Lies will recall the following passage that keeps things in perspective:
“In a March 2008 speech to the Nuclear Energy Institute [Graham] observed ‘The one way to gather support for nuclear energy is to embrace climate change because there’s no way anyone can deny nuclear’s place at the table as it provides a source of energy that doesn’t pollute the planet.’ Yes, Senator, they figured that out some time ago.”
Sen. Graham quite rightly seeks a path forward for the nuclear energy industry, victimized itself by environmental alarmism to the point that its future remained very much in doubt (an explanation for the nukes’ effort to ride this bandwagon, if the very opposite of an excuse). And this longtime sidekick of longtime cap-and-trade enthusiast Sen. John McCain sees a deal on cap-and-trade as that path forward.
Which is all that his current preening represents. To the extent it informs us of anything, it is about Senator Graham, not the merits of cap-and-trade.
AUSTRALIANS are warming to the idea of nuclear power, with almost one in two saying it should be considered as an alternative source of energy to help combat global warming. An Age/Nielson poll found 49 per cent of Australians believed nuclear should be on the nation’s list of potential power options, while 43 per cent were opposed outright. The finding marks a big shift of public opinion from 2006, when a Newspoll showed just 38 per cent in favour of nuclear power and 51 per cent opposed.
The survey came as political haggling in Canberra over emissions trading drew a sharp rebuke from former government climate adviser Ross Garnaut. ‘’This whole process of policymaking has been one of the worst examples of policymaking we’ve seen on major issues in Australia,’’ he said.
Despite the poll findings showing more support for nuclear power, the Rudd Government yesterday restated its total opposition to it as an option to help Australia meet its future carbon reduction targets. During the 2007 election campaign, after prime minister John Howard put nuclear power on the agenda, then opposition leader Kevin Rudd said: ‘’If you elect a Labor government, there will be no nuclear reactors in Australia, full stop.’’
Supporters of nuclear power say it is the only practical low-emissions alternative to coal for generating baseload electricity - the minimum required by industry and residential users. Arguments against focus on safety - the risk of accidents and the fact that radioactive waste must be stored securely for thousands of years. Opponents also say it would take too long develop a nuclear power industry.
Ziggy Switkowski, who chairs the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, said: ‘’[We must] provide for the next generation of baseload electricity generation with clean energy. The only way to do that is with nuclear power.’’ Support for considering nuclear was strongest among Coalition supporters (58 per cent), and opposition was strongest among Greens voters (62 per cent). ALP voters were evenly divided, with 46 per cent in favour and 46 per cent opposed.
Survey respondents were told: ‘’The introduction of nuclear power has been suggested as one means to address climate change’’, and then asked: ‘’Do you support or oppose the Federal Government considering the introduction of nuclear power in Australia?’’
Federal Energy Minister Martin Ferguson restated the Government’s opposition to nuclear power. He also cast doubt on the viability of photovoltaic solar power as a future energy resource. He said the renewable sector kept falsely insisting it could be an alternative to coal as baseload power. But he believed solar thermal technology, which uses the sun’s heat to boil liquids to power turbines, was a more likely answer.
Victorian Energy Minister Peter Batchelor dismissed nuclear power as an option for the state. He said increased reliance on lower-emitting gas, clean coal and renewable energy sources were the way ahead. However, hopes for a cleaner future for Victoria’s power industry received a setback last month with the abandonment of a ‘’carbon capture’’ project at a proposed power station near Morwell, which instead is to become a gas-fired station. In another setback for the renewables sector, Solar Systems, which was to have developed a 154-megawatt solar photovoltaic power station near Mildura, was put into administration.
Meanwhile, the annual Lowy Institute poll has found that climate change is dropping as a priority for Australians. The poll, released today, found Australians have gone from ranking climate change in 2007 as the equal most important foreign policy goal to putting it seventh out of 10 possible goals. The issue fell 10 points since last year and 19 points from 2007.
Senator Xenophon said Treasury was acting politically. He said he could not support the Government’s scheme unless it included changes to the way the electricity sector was treated. There was a risk the Government’s model would cause energy security problems, including blackouts. The Seven Network reported an analysis commissioned by the NSW Government from Frontier last year on the Rudd Government scheme said that in the long term it could lead to real wages 8 per cent below the level they would otherwise reach, if long-run unemployment was to be avoided.
By Christina Wilson, Collegians for a Constructive Tomorrow
Madison, WI: October 10, 2009
Today hundreds gathered in at the State Capitol in Madison, Wi to oppose Al Gore and his alarmist Climate Change policies. Despite the cold, an enthusiastic crowd gathered to send Al Gore a clear message: “Don’t Fry Our Economy!”
“It was an amazing turnout, even though rain and cold usually keeps people away. We were out to tell Al Gore and his friends that Cap and Trade will kill our economy, take jobs away, and tax American families out of their homes,” said UW CFACT president Alex Hansen.
Senator Glenn Grothman and Representative Jim Ott both spoke on the truth about climate change and the affect this legislation would have on Wisconsin families.
Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner, and Phelim McAleer (director of the film Not Evil Just Wrong) who were attending the conference Al Gore spoke at, dropped by to say hi to the friendly crowd and also comment on the devastation Cap and Trade will bring to the U.S. economy.
“People are concerned. These policies affect real human beings, real families. If enacted, especially globally, they will kill people. Countries cannot develop industry using solar and wind power alone. These policies will keep these countries back, and move the United States in the wrong direction for progress,” says CFACT Upper Midwest Director Christina Wilson.
Cap and Trade will cost over 1 million jobs average per year. These are American jobs that will not come back, they will be gone forever. Students at UW and members of the Madison community gathered to show their opposition to Cap and Trade. Chants of “Stop Cap and Trade” and “Save Our Jobs” echoed throughout the Capitol square. We hope this message reaches ears all over the U.S.
As yet another iteration of the GORE EFFECT, the first snowshowers of the season occurred on Saturday and temperatures dropped to 25 after Al’s talk. Al’s itinerary works better than the forecast and climate models. See more here.
See post here. See what happened when Phelim McAleer questioned Gore here. See Newsbusters recount of Gore’s non-answer and failed memory here.
I recently enjoyed a reunion of my University of Wisconsin undergraduate school roommates last month in beautiful northern Wisconsin. Here is a picture from way back in the middle of the last cold PDO. Yours truly bottom right.
In those frigid winters, we went ice boating on Lake Mendota. That is me on the left.
Madison has had two incredibly snowy winters the last two years in the new cold PDO, including the snowiest ever on record.
’In recent years, many Americans have had cause to wonder whether decisions made at EPA were guided by science and the law, or whether those principles had been trumped by politics,” declared Lisa Jackson in San Francisco last week. The Environmental Protection Agency chief can’t stop kicking the Bush Administration, but the irony is that the Obama EPA is far more “political” than the Bush team ever was.
How else to explain the coordinated release on Wednesday of the EPA’s new rules that make carbon a dangerous pollutant and John Kerry’s cap-and-trade bill? Ms. Jackson is issuing a political ultimatum to business, as well as to Midwestern and rural Democrats: Support the Kerry-Obama climate tax agenda -or we’ll punish your utilities and consumers without your vote.
The EPA has now formally made an “endangerment finding” on CO2, which will impose the command-and-control regulations of the Clean Air Act across the entire economy. Because this law was never written to apply to carbon, the costs will far exceed those of a straight carbon tax or even cap and trade - though judging by the bills Democrats are stitching together, perhaps not by much. In any case, the point of this reckless “endangerment” is to force industry and politicians wary of raising taxes to concede, lest companies have to endure even worse economic and bureaucratic destruction from the EPA.
Ms. Jackson made a show of saying her new rules would only apply to some 10,000 facilities that emit more than 25,000 tons of carbon dioxide each year, as if that were a concession. These are the businesses - utilities, refineries, heavy manufacturers and so forth - that have the most to lose and are therefore most sensitive to political coercion.
The idea is to get Exelon and other utilities to lobby Congress to pass a cap-and-trade bill that gives them compensating emissions allowances that they can sell to offset the cost of the new regulations. White House green czar Carol Browner was explicit on the coercion point last week, telling a forum hosted by the Atlantic Monthly that the EPA move would “obviously encourage the business community to raise their voices in Congress.” In Sicily and parts of New Jersey, they call that an offer you can’t refuse.
Yet one not-so-minor legal problem is that the Clean Air Act’s statutory language states unequivocally that the EPA must regulate any “major source” that emits more than 250 tons of a pollutant annually, not 25,000. The EPA’s Ms. Jackson made up the higher number out of whole cloth because the lower legal threshold - which was intended to cover traditional pollutants, not ubiquitous carbon - would sweep up farms, restaurants, hospitals, schools, churches and other businesses. Sources that would be required to install pricey “best available control technology” would increase to 41,000 per year, up from 300 today, while those subject to the EPA’s construction permitting would jump to 6.1 million from 14,000.
That’s not our calculation. It comes from the EPA itself, which also calls it “an unprecedented increase” that would harm “an extraordinarily large number of sources.” The agency goes on to predict years of delay and bureaucratic backlog that “would impede economic growth by precluding any type of source -whether it emits GHGs or not - from constructing or modifying for years after its business plan contemplates.” We pointed this out earlier this year, only to have Ms. Jackson and the anticarbon lobby deny it.
Usually it takes an act of Congress to change an act of Congress, but Team Obama isn’t about to let democratic—or even Democratic—consent interfere with its carbon extortion racket. To avoid the political firestorm of regulating the neighborhood coffee shop, the EPA is justifying its invented rule on the basis of what it calls the “absurd results” doctrine. That’s not a bad moniker for this whole exercise.
The EPA admits that it is “departing from the literal application of statutory provisions.” But it says the courts will accept its revision because literal application will produce results that are “so illogical or contrary to sensible policy as to be beyond anything that Congress could reasonably have intended.”
Well, well. Shouldn’t the same “absurd results” theory pertain to shoehorning carbon into rules that were written in the 1970s and whose primary drafter -Michigan Democrat John Dingell - says were never intended to apply? Just asking. Either way, this will be a feeble legal excuse when the greens sue to claim that the EPA’s limits are inadequate, in order to punish whatever carbon-heavy business they’re campaigning against that week.
Obviously President Obama is hellbent on punishing carbon use - no matter how costly or illogical. And of course, there’s no politics involved, none at all. See post here.
This headline may come as a bit of a surprise, so too might that fact that the warmest year recorded globally was not in 2008 or 2007, but in 1998. But it is true. For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures.
And our climate models did not forecast it, even though man-made carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise. So what on Earth is going on?
Climate change sceptics, who passionately and consistently argue that man’s influence on our climate is overstated, say they saw it coming. They argue that there are natural cycles, over which we have no control, that dictate how warm the planet is. But what is the evidence for this? During the last few decades of the 20th century, our planet did warm quickly.
Recent research has ruled out solar influences on temperature increases
Sceptics argue that the warming we observed was down to the energy from the Sun increasing. After all 98% of the Earth’s warmth comes from the Sun.
But research conducted two years ago, and published by the Royal Society, seemed to rule out solar influences. The scientists’ main approach was simple: to look at solar output and cosmic ray intensity over the last 30-40 years, and compare those trends with the graph for global average surface temperature. And the results were clear. “Warming in the last 20 to 40 years can’t have been caused by solar activity,” said Dr Piers Forster from Leeds University, a leading contributor to this year’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
But one solar scientist Piers Corbyn from Weatheraction, a company specialising in long range weather forecasting, disagrees. He claims that solar charged particles impact us far more than is currently accepted, so much so he says that they are almost entirely responsible for what happens to global temperatures. He is so excited by what he has discovered that he plans to tell the international scientific community at a conference in London at the end of the month. If proved correct, this could revolutionise the whole subject.
Ocean cycles
What is really interesting at the moment is what is happening to our oceans. They are the Earth’s great heat stores. In the last few years [the Pacific Ocean] has been losing its warmth and has recently started to cool down. According to research conducted by Professor Don Easterbrook from Western Washington University last November, the oceans and global temperatures are correlated. The oceans, he says, have a cycle in which they warm and cool cyclically. The most important one is the Pacific decadal oscillation (PDO). For much of the 1980s and 1990s, it was in a positive cycle, that means warmer than average. And observations have revealed that global temperatures were warm too. But in the last few years it has been losing its warmth and has recently started to cool down. These cycles in the past have lasted for nearly 30 years.
So could global temperatures follow? The global cooling from 1945 to 1977 coincided with one of these cold Pacific cycles. Professor Easterbrook says: “The PDO cool mode has replaced the warm mode in the Pacific Ocean, virtually assuring us of about 30 years of global cooling.” So what does it all mean? Climate change sceptics argue that this is evidence that they have been right all along. They say there are so many other natural causes for warming and cooling, that even if man is warming the planet, it is a small part compared with nature.
But those scientists who are equally passionate about man’s influence on global warming argue that their science is solid. The UK Met Office’s Hadley Centre, responsible for future climate predictions, says it incorporates solar variation and ocean cycles into its climate models, and that they are nothing new. In fact, the centre says they are just two of the whole host of known factors things that influence global temperatures - all of which are accounted for by its models. In addition, say Met Office scientists, temperatures have never increased in a straight line, and there will always be periods of slower warming, or even temporary cooling. What is crucial, they say, is the long-term trend in global temperatures. And that, according to the Met office data, is clearly up.
To confuse the issue even further, last month Mojib Latif, a member of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) says that we may indeed be in a period of cooling worldwide temperatures that could last another 10-20 years.
The UK Met Office says that warming is set to resume
Professor Latif is based at the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences at Kiel University in Germany and is one of the world’s top climate modellers. But he makes it clear that he has not become a sceptic; he believes that this cooling will be temporary, before the overwhelming force of man-made global warming reasserts itself.
So what can we expect in the next few years? Both sides have very different forecasts. The Met Office says that warming is set to resume quickly and strongly. It predicts that from 2010 to 2015 at least half the years will be hotter than the current hottest year on record (1998). Sceptics disagree. They insist it is unlikely that temperatures will reach the dizzy heights of 1998 until 2030 at the earliest. It is possible, they say, that because of ocean and solar cycles a period of global cooling is more likely. One thing is for sure. It seems the debate about what is causing global warming is far from over. Indeed some would say its hotting up. Read post here.
The film Not Evil Just Wrong is far too politically incorrect to be feted in Hollywood or the politicos. This is the last movie they want anybody seeing.
Irish filmmaker Phelim McAleer pulled a Michael Moore at the recent New York “eco-premiere” of the environmental disaster movie The Age of Stupid. The film suggests that flying is one of the worst things you can do to the planet, so Mr. McAleer, microphone in hand, started asking those coming down the recycled green carpet how they’d travelled to the Big Show. Gillian Anderson, of X-Files fame, pronounced, “you know sometimes, sometimes people have to fly to make a stand in order to get peoples’ attention for these issues.” The film’s director, Franny Armstrong, evaded the question and claimed that the film had only generated the emissions of four average Americans over a year. Mr. McAleer persisted and soon found himself hustled outside the green velvet rope, insisting “I only want to ask celebrities difficult questions.”
Some hope.
Mr. McAleer was trying to drum up a little publicity for his own, very different, film, Not Evil Just Wrong, which has its world premiere on October 18. Only it won’t be at the World Financial Center. It will take place in homes, on campuses, and at privately-organized screenings across North America. (You can be part of the event by ordering a package complete with DVD, poster, and swatch of red carpet from www.noteviljustwrong.com.)
Mr. McAleer and his wife Ann McElhinney - who also made Mine Your Own Business, a documentary that fingered anti-development radicals and “the dark side of environmentalism” - have inevitably not attracted the kind of attention lavished on The Age of Stupid (ICECAP NOTE: a term which aptly describes collectively the UN, politicians, the alarmists, environmentalists, hollywood and media supporters), which features a lone archivist looking back from a devastated world in the year 2055 and wondering how we could have allowed it all to go so terribly, terribly wrong. (ICECAP NOTE: more likely that the world followed the UN and company down their path to global governance/destruction)
It is surely worth noting that those who claim that there is “consensus” on global warming science being “settled” seem to imagine that this gives them licence to then compete with each other in producing eco-porn that goes far beyond anything in the very worst scenarios peddled by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Shouldn’t warmists stick to the script before they roll the carbon credits?
Not Evil Just Wrong in fact has a field day with apocalyptic science, particularly that peddled by Al Gore and his pet boffins. NASA’s James Hansen almost convulses onscreen at the mention of Canadian independent researcher Stephen McIntyre, the man who broke the IPCC’s iconic “hockey stick” temperature graph, and continues to hold alarmists to the highest standards. Meanwhile another of Mr. Gore’s gurus provides a parallel to Mr. McAleer’s being escorted off Stupid’s green carpet. The Not Evil team went to Stanford University to interview climatologist Stephen Schneider. It was apparently inconceivable to Professor Schneider that anybody in the film community could be anything other than a full warmist, so imagine his surprise when Messrs. McAleer and McElhinney were impolite enough to point out that in the 1970s he had been one of the leading proponents of catastrophic global cooling! Clearly Professor Schneider didn’t want his image attached to any such inconvenient recollections, so Stanford University’s lawyers withdrew permission for any shots of either the good professor or the campus to be shown.
Not Evil Just Wrong is far too politically incorrect to be feted in Hollywood, or welcomed by political elites. This is the last movie that those squabbling down the road to Copenhagen want anybody seeing or thinking about. That’s why it needs maximum exposure on October 18.
What is truly frightening is the slavish adulation that film makers such as Ms. Armstrong receive. While claiming to be “indie” and low-budget, and grassroots “crowd-funded,” Ms. Armstrong has the vast clout of environmental organizations such as Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth behind her, as well as billionaire George Soros’s Moveon.org. The New York premiere was beamed to numerous locations around the world. In Nigeria, the Governor of Lagos was an attendee. In Amsterdam and Copenhagen, membes of the Dutch and Danish Royal Families turned out. The New York premiere was followed by a question and answer session featuring Kofi Annan, former secretary general of the United nations, and Mary Robinson, a former president of Ireland and past head of the UN’s Human Rights Commission.
Stupid meanwhile had already been screened for “the United Nations, Center of American Progress, EPA, The World Bank, the UK Parliament, the European Union, and the Scottish, Welsh, Swedish, Australian and Dutch parliaments.”
The film’s London premiere early this year was attended by a bevy of politicos, including the Labour government’s Environment Minister, Ed Miliband, who was promptly ambushed by the film’s star, Pete Postlethwaite, over new coal plants. Mr. Postlethwaite threatened to hand back his Order of the British Empire if they weren’t stopped! That must have sent a shudder through Buckingham Palace.
Being a bit of calculated masochist, Mr. Miliband then agreed to debate Ms. Armstrong, whereupon she used the occasion to launch a “10 by 10” campaign, to cut carbon emissions by 10% by the end of 2010. Soon not only Mr. Miliband but Prime Minister Gordon Brown and the entire cabinet had signed on, plus the shadow cabinet, along with a raft of major corporations, municipalities, soccer clubs and other publicity seekers.
Messrs McAleer and McElhinney meanwhile have received death threats, been described as “stinking, selfish, sociopathic fascists,” and received wishes that their children be born handicapped. That’s what you get for asking “difficult questions.” Read more here.
Icecap Note: The elitists trecking to see the Age of Stupid are mostly not stupid, just ignorant and they are desperate to find just enough material to keep them that way. One Columbia professor expressed great frustration that nature was not cooperating with their forecast cataclysmic view of the future. If you can get some of them to see Not Evil Just Wrong, their eyes may be opened, if they allow their minds to be opened. I have seen an earlier version of NEJW and it is worth your time to see the hypocrisy of the environmenal extremists and Al Gore, to see James Hansen speechless and what the environmental agenda may do to the hard working people of this great country and other countries, large and small, of the world.
UPDATE: Apparently according to Paul Chesser, Heartland Institute Correspondent on an October 9th post, Phelim McAleer, co-director/producer of “Not Evil Just Wrong” and asker of difficult questions, reportedly just had his microphone turned off as he queried Al Gore at the Society of Environmental Journalists conference in Madison, Wisconsin. At the Society of Environmental Journalists conference today, he says pulling just one thread will solve three crises: climate, national security and the economy.
