By Jim Sims, Senior Counsellor, Americans For American Energy
Our rapidly growing national pro-consumer grassroots network is going to shake the halls of Congress next week in its demand for more American energy. Led by the Congress of Racial Equality, a coalition of leaders from the African American, civil rights, agriculture, Christian, senior citizen and consumer rights communities will stage a “Stop The War On The Poor” Rally and press conference on the U.S. Capitol Grounds next Tuesday, July 15 at 2 p.m. You can see details on this event here.
We expect a few dozen Members of Congress—both Democrats and Republicans—will participate in next Tuesday’s rally. This rally will kick off a large, highly integrated national campaign that will activate several million citizens by the end of this year to push for more domestic energy production. You can see a brief summary of the national “Stop The War on the Poor” campaign plan here.
These leaders and their large constituencies are rallying behind the message of Roy Innis, Chairman of the Congress of Racial Equality, who contends in a new book ("Energy Keepers, Energy Killers") that federal policies that raise the cost of energy disproportionately hurt the poor because low-income families must devote a larger portion of their income to energy costs than middle- or high-income families. These policies amount to a de facto “War On The Poor,” which is fueling consumer anger and rapid grassroots activation on a national scale.
No industry or business representatives will be on the stage next Tuesday—only grassroots, consumer and community leaders. However, you are encouraged to attend the event and be a part of the crowd. See more on organization here.
By Rupert Neate , UK Telegraph
Scientists are examining cow farts and burps in a novel bid to combat global warming. Experts said the slow digestive system of cows makes them a key producer of methane, a potent greenhouse gas that gets far less public attention than carbon dioxide. In a bid to understand the impact of the wind produced by cows on global warming, scientists collected gas from their stomachs in plastic tanks attached to their backs.
Argentine scientists are strapping plastic tanks to the backs of cows (Reuters). Larger image here.
The Argentine researchers discovered methane from cows accounts for more than 30 per cent of the country’s total greenhouse emissions. As one of the world’s biggest beef producers, Argentina has more than 55 million cows grazing in its famed Pampas grasslands. Guillermo Berra, a researcher at the National Institute of Agricultural Technology, said every cow produces between 8000 to 1,000 litres of emissions every day.
Methane, which is also released from landfills, coal mines and leaking gas pipes, is 23 times more effective at trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide. Scientists are now carrying out trials of new diets designed to improve cows’s digestion and hopefully reduce global warming. Silvia Valtorta, of the National Council of Scientific and Technical Investigations, said that by feeding cows clover and alfalfa instead of grain “you can reduce methane emissions by 25 percent”. Read full story here.
By Lawrence Solomon, National Review On-Line on CBS News
Ever wonder how Al Gore, the United Nations, and company continue to get away with their claim of a “scientific consensus” confirming their doomsday view of global warming? Look no farther than Wikipedia for a stunning example of how the global-warming propaganda machine works. As you (or your kids) probably know, Wikipedia is now the most widely used and influential reference source on the Internet and therefore in the world, with more than 50 million unique visitors a month. In theory Wikipedia is a “people’s encyclopedia” written and edited by the people who read it - anyone with an Internet connection. So on controversial topics, one might expect to see a broad range of opinion.
Not on global warming. On global warming we get consensus, Gore-style: a consensus forged by censorship, intimidation, and deceit. I first noticed this when I entered a correction to a Wikipedia page on the work of Naomi Oreskes, author of the now-infamous paper, published in the prestigious journal Science, claiming to have exhaustively reviewed the scientific literature and found not one single article dissenting from the alarmist version of global warming. Of course Oreskes’s conclusions were absurd, and have been widely ridiculed. I myself have profiled dozens of truly world-eminent scientists whose work casts doubt on the Gore-U.N. version of global warming. Following the references in my book The Deniers, one can find hundreds of refereed papers that cast doubt on some aspect of the Gore/U.N. case, and that only scratches the surface.
Naturally I was surprised to read on Wikipedia that Oreskes’s work had been vindicated and that, for instance, one of her most thorough critics, British scientist and publisher Bennie Peiser, not only had been discredited but had grudgingly conceded Oreskes was right. I checked with Peiser, who said he had done no such thing. I then corrected the Wikipedia entry, and advised Peiser that I had done so. Peiser wrote back saying he couldn’t see my corrections on the Wikipedia page. I made the changes again, and this time confirmed that the changes had been saved. But then, in a twinkle, they were gone again. I made other changes. And others. They all disappeared shortly after they were made.
Turns out that on Wikipedia some folks are more equal than others. Kim Dabelstein Petersen is a Wikipedia “editor” who seems to devote a large part of his life to editing reams and reams of Wikipedia pages to pump the assertions of global-warming alarmists and deprecate or make disappear the arguments of skeptics. Holding the far more prestigious and powerful position of “administrator” is William Connolley. Connolley is a software engineer and sometime climatologist (he used to hold a job in the British Antarctic Survey), as well as a serial (but so far unsuccessful) office seeker for England’s Green party. And yet by virtue of his power at Wikipedia, Connolley, a ruthless enforcer of the doomsday consensus, may be the world’s most influential person in the global warming debate after Al Gore. Connolley routinely uses his editorial clout to tear down scientists of great accomplishment such as Fred Singer, the first director of the U.S. National Weather Satellite Service and a scientist with dazzling achievements. Under Connolley’s supervision, Wikipedia relentlessly smears Singer as a kook who believes in Martians and a hack in the pay of the oil industry. Wikipedia is full of rules that editors are supposed to follow, and it has a code of civility. Those rules and codes don’t apply to Connolley, or to those he favors. “Peisers crap shouldn’t be in here,” Connolley wrote several weeks ago, in berating a Wikipedian colleague during an “edit war,” as they’re called. Read full story here.
We have pieces of this story before, but felt it was newsworthy it appeared on cbsnews.com. Also it is a reminder to you and your children not to trust Wiki as a reliable source. It was a good idea let go astray.