Month: October 2008

IgNobels for Obama

By Steven Milloy
October 30, 2008, FoxNews.com

Seventy-six American Nobel laureates in science endorsed Barack Obama this week. Despite their scientific successes, their political analysis just doesn’t make the grade.

Featuring signatories such as James Watson — the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA who shocked the world in 2007 with his assertion that blacks were not as intelligent as whites — the Nobelists praised Obama in an Oct. 28 letter as a “visionary leader who can ensure the future of our traditional strengths in science and technology and who can harness those strengths to address many of our greatest problems: energy, disease, climate change, security, and economic competitiveness.”

Although the election is between Obama and John McCain, the letter first criticized President Bush for “stagnant or declining federal support” of science and politicizing the scientific advisory process.

But in 2007, Bush asked Congress to double the funding for AIDS programs from $3 billion per year to $6 billion per year. During the Bush administration, the budget for the National Institutes of Health increased by 38 percent from $17.1 billion to $23.7 billion. Bush increased funding for climate change research by 15 percent from $1.75 billion to $2.02 billion. The National Science Foundation budget went from $4.4 billion in 2001 to $6.0 billion budget in 2008. The budget for the National Institute of Standards and Technology increased by 34 percent from 2002 to 2008 ($692 million to $931).

In August 2007, Bush even signed the so-called “America Competes Act,” a law that would double federal funding for basic science research by 2016. Ironically, it is the Democratic-controlled Congress that so far has failed to appropriate funds to implement the law.

Although the Obama Web site says,“Barack Obama and Joe Biden support doubling federal funding for basic research over ten years…,” there’s no indication they’ve made any progress in convincing their fellow congressional Democrats on this point.

While the Nobelists claim that “Senator Obama understands that Presidential leadership and federal investment in science and technology are crucial elements in successful governance of the world’s leading country,” they overlook the fact that McCain also supported the America Competes Act and, on his web site, says he “will fully fund” the law.

The Nobelists’ assertion about the Bush administration politicizing science is also a canard that boils down to their political differences with Bush on subjects like embryonic stem cell research and global warming.

The Nobelists wrote that, “We have lost time critical for the development of new ways to provide energy, treat disease, reverse climate change, strengthen our security and improve our economy.” But what does any of this really mean?

Shouldn’t the 48 signatories who won their Nobels for chemistry and physics return their prizes for signing a letter that calls for climate change to be “reversed”? Just how would that be physically accomplished? And, then, reverse the climate to what point? What it was in, say, 1750, 1850 or 1950? Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that they actually did reverse climate change; how would they keep climate from changing the moment after they got it where they wanted it?

On the other hand, there’s not a single climate expert among the letter’s signatories — so maybe they really didn’t understand what they were signing.

The “treat disease” comment in the letter is undoubtedly aimed at the embryonic stem cell research controversy. But despite limitations in the U.S., the rest of the world was free to conduct such research. Has there been any progress? There’s been nothing to speak of except a lot of fraud — remember South Korean researcher Hwang Woo-suk?

Is Obama really a science “visionary” as compared to McCain? As liberal-leaning Associated Press reporter Seth Borenstein wrote on Oct.16, “Both presidential candidates… offer policies farther from the president than they are from each other. They advocate mandatory caps on the main global warming gas and favor federal funding for embryonic stem cell research — positions opposite the Bush Administration.”

A quick review of the political contributions of the 76 Nobelists revealed that at least 28 of them have contributed to Democratic politicians, including Barack Obama. There seems to be no recent record of any of the signatories contributing to any Republicans.

Contrary to the Nobelists positioning themselves as independent geniuses looking out for the nation’s best interests, the group appears to be nothing more than a collection of liberal academics who rely on their elite status rather than well-reasoned argument to promote a political candidate.

Steven Milloy publishes JunkScience.com and manages the Free Enterprise Action Fund. He is a junk science expert and an adjunct scholar at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Greens Aim to Take Us Forward to the Past

By Steven Milloy
October 23, 2008, FoxNews.com

If you need more evidence that the Greens intend to destroy our standard of living, you need not look further than the Oct. 18 issue of New Scientist magazine — the cover of which reads, “The Folly of Growth: How to stop the economy killing the planet.”

The issue features eight articles that New Scientist editors believe justify their editorial entitled, “Why economic growth is killing the planet and what we can do about it.” Presented below the editorial is an ominously drawn graph purporting to show how global temperatures, population, carbon dioxide concentrations, GDP and loss of tropical rainforest and woodland have dramatically spiked upward since 1750, and how species extinctions, water use, motor vehicle use, paper consumption, fisheries exploitation, ozone depletion and foreign investment spiked during the 20th century.

The editorial concludes that “the science tells us that if we are serious about saving the Earth,” economic growth must be limited.

In the first essay, University of Surrey (UK) sustainable development professor Tim Jackson doubts renewable energy technologies will work without reduced consumption. Rather than buying an energy efficient TV, he says, you ought to consider not buying a TV at all.

Next, prominent Canadian Green David Suzuki says that nothing is more important than the environment and that we need to lower our standard of living. You need to judge your standard of living by “quality of life, your relationships with other people and your community,” Suzuki says. Stores filled with food, record longevity and wealth are an “illusion,” he asserts, because we’re using up our children’s and grandchildren’s inheritance.

University of Maryland ecological economist Herman Daly claims that we’ve passed the point where economic growth provides benefits and that we need to “transform our economy from a forward-moving aeroplane to a hovering helicopter,” but that such a “steady-state” economy “doesn’t have to mean freezing in the dark under a communist tyranny.” In trying to explain his latter comment, he says that “Most of the changes could be applied gradually, in mid-air,” by which he apparently means replacing the income tax with a tax on goods to “encourage people to use them sparingly.” Although he acknowledges that this regressive policy would hurt the poor, he says taxes could be used to provide welfare.

James Gustave Speth — Yale University dean, co-founder of the Natural Resources Defense Council and former adviser to President Jimmy Carter — says that green values stand no chance against market capitalism. Economic growth “creates barriers to dealing with real problems,” he says. While we need to spend more money on social services and environmental protection, he is “not advocating state socialism,” he claims, but rather a “non-socialist alternative to today’s capitalism,” whatever that means.

Andrew Simms of London’s New Economics Foundation describes as “disingenuous” the argument that global economic growth is needed to eradicate poverty. He says that “we have to overcome knee-jerk rejection of the ‘R’ word — redistribution” and that we need a “Green New Deal” that controls capital and raises taxes to create environmental jobs.

Susan George of the Amsterdam-based Transnational Institute advocates developing a World War II-type mentality toward life including rationing, “victory” or home gardens and the government run by wealthy elites who would work for a salary of $1 per year.

London Metropolitan University “environmental philosopher” Kate Soper says that the tourist industry, food service industry, dating services and gyms are evidence that we need to shift to a less work-intensive economy. “Of course, we would have to “sacrifice some conveniences and pleasures: creature comforts such as regular steaks, hot tubs, luxury cosmetics and easy foreign travel,” she says, but “human ingenuity will surely contrive a range of more eco-friendly excitements.”

What’s missing from the New Scientist compilation of Green-think, of course, are essays from Thomas Malthus, Karl Marx and, perhaps, Al Gore. Malthus, a prominent 19th century economist, famously predicted that a geometrically expanding human population would outpace the arithmetically expanding food supply. Unable to foresee the improvements in agricultural technology, he turned out to be entirely wrong.

Karl Marx could have chimed in with his communist slogan, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need” — where the government gets to determine what your needs are. As implemented in the Soviet Union and Communist China, Marxism resulted in the starvation and murder of perhaps more than 100 million people and the political and social repression of the survivors.

Al Gore could have contributed an essay reassuring Green elites that none of this wealth redistribution and standard of living contraction would affect those who, like him, can already afford home indoor heated pools or those who can could afford to spend $65,000 and three weeks jetting around the world with the World Wildlife Fund.

The New Scientist essays reveal how the Greens aim to eviscerate life as we know it. They want to take us from 200 years of “more-bigger-better” to a future of “less-smaller-worse.” Won’t happen, you say?

With Barack Obama leading in the polls, one of his advisers recently issued an ultimatum to Congress regulate carbon dioxide emissions in 18 months, or an Obama EPA will do it unilaterally. And then there’s Obama’s famous colloquy with “Joe the Plumber,” where he said he was for redistributing the wealth. And let’s not forget Obama’s comment in May that “We can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times…”

Obama has said he’s for economic growth, yet he’s willing to force-feed us Green policies that would crush it. And as it turns out, that’s what the Greens are really after in the first place.

Steven Milloy publishes JunkScience.com, manages the Free Enterprise Action Fund. He is a junk science expert, and an adjunct scholar at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Greens Aim to Take Us Forward to the Past

By Steven Milloy
October 23, 2008, FoxNews.com

If you need more evidence that the Greens intend to destroy our standard of living, you need not look further than the Oct. 18 issue of New Scientist magazine — the cover of which reads, “The Folly of Growth: How to stop the economy killing the planet.”

The issue features eight articles that New Scientist editors believe justify their editorial entitled, “Why economic growth is killing the planet and what we can do about it.” Presented below the editorial is an ominously drawn graph purporting to show how global temperatures, population, carbon dioxide concentrations, GDP and loss of tropical rainforest and woodland have dramatically spiked upward since 1750, and how species extinctions, water use, motor vehicle use, paper consumption, fisheries exploitation, ozone depletion and foreign investment spiked during the 20th century.

The editorial concludes that “the science tells us that if we are serious about saving the Earth,” economic growth must be limited.

In the first essay, University of Surrey (UK) sustainable development professor Tim Jackson doubts renewable energy technologies will work without reduced consumption. Rather than buying an energy efficient TV, he says, you ought to consider not buying a TV at all.

Next, prominent Canadian Green David Suzuki says that nothing is more important than the environment and that we need to lower our standard of living. You need to judge your standard of living by “quality of life, your relationships with other people and your community,” Suzuki says. Stores filled with food, record longevity and wealth are an “illusion,” he asserts, because we’re using up our children’s and grandchildren’s inheritance.

University of Maryland ecological economist Herman Daly claims that we’ve passed the point where economic growth provides benefits and that we need to “transform our economy from a forward-moving aeroplane to a hovering helicopter,” but that such a “steady-state” economy “doesn’t have to mean freezing in the dark under a communist tyranny.” In trying to explain his latter comment, he says that “Most of the changes could be applied gradually, in mid-air,” by which he apparently means replacing the income tax with a tax on goods to “encourage people to use them sparingly.” Although he acknowledges that this regressive policy would hurt the poor, he says taxes could be used to provide welfare.

James Gustave Speth — Yale University dean, co-founder of the Natural Resources Defense Council and former adviser to President Jimmy Carter — says that green values stand no chance against market capitalism. Economic growth “creates barriers to dealing with real problems,” he says. While we need to spend more money on social services and environmental protection, he is “not advocating state socialism,” he claims, but rather a “non-socialist alternative to today’s capitalism,” whatever that means.

Andrew Simms of London’s New Economics Foundation describes as “disingenuous” the argument that global economic growth is needed to eradicate poverty. He says that “we have to overcome knee-jerk rejection of the ‘R’ word — redistribution” and that we need a “Green New Deal” that controls capital and raises taxes to create environmental jobs.

Susan George of the Amsterdam-based Transnational Institute advocates developing a World War II-type mentality toward life including rationing, “victory” or home gardens and the government run by wealthy elites who would work for a salary of $1 per year.

London Metropolitan University “environmental philosopher” Kate Soper says that the tourist industry, food service industry, dating services and gyms are evidence that we need to shift to a less work-intensive economy. “Of course, we would have to “sacrifice some conveniences and pleasures: creature comforts such as regular steaks, hot tubs, luxury cosmetics and easy foreign travel,” she says, but “human ingenuity will surely contrive a range of more eco-friendly excitements.”

What’s missing from the New Scientist compilation of Green-think, of course, are essays from Thomas Malthus, Karl Marx and, perhaps, Al Gore. Malthus, a prominent 19th century economist, famously predicted that a geometrically expanding human population would outpace the arithmetically expanding food supply. Unable to foresee the improvements in agricultural technology, he turned out to be entirely wrong.

Karl Marx could have chimed in with his communist slogan, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need” — where the government gets to determine what your needs are. As implemented in the Soviet Union and Communist China, Marxism resulted in the starvation and murder of perhaps more than 100 million people and the political and social repression of the survivors.

Al Gore could have contributed an essay reassuring Green elites that none of this wealth redistribution and standard of living contraction would affect those who, like him, can already afford home indoor heated pools or those who can could afford to spend $65,000 and three weeks jetting around the world with the World Wildlife Fund.

The New Scientist essays reveal how the Greens aim to eviscerate life as we know it. They want to take us from 200 years of “more-bigger-better” to a future of “less-smaller-worse.” Won’t happen, you say?

With Barack Obama leading in the polls, one of his advisers recently issued an ultimatum to Congress regulate carbon dioxide emissions in 18 months, or an Obama EPA will do it unilaterally. And then there’s Obama’s famous colloquy with “Joe the Plumber,” where he said he was for redistributing the wealth. And let’s not forget Obama’s comment in May that “We can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times…”

Obama has said he’s for economic growth, yet he’s willing to force-feed us Green policies that would crush it. And as it turns out, that’s what the Greens are really after in the first place.

Steven Milloy publishes JunkScience.com, manages the Free Enterprise Action Fund. He is a junk science expert, and an adjunct scholar at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Candidates don't come clean on coal

By Steven Milloy
October 16, 2008, FoxNews.com

A squabble about “clean coal” has broken among the presidential candidates. Neither side has leveled with voters.

Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden kicked off the controversy in September when he commented at an Ohio campaign stop that, “We’re not supporting clean coal.” He then had to back track since Barack Obama supports clean coal, as he reiterated in last week’s second presidential debate. Then, at a rally in Scranton, Pa. this week, Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin jumped in the fray saying that, “So whether Joe Biden approves it or not, John McCain is going to develop clean coal technology here in America…”

It’s a lot of hot air about an idea that is unlikely to go anywhere fast.

The “clean coal” debate is about air emissions from power plants that burn coal to generate electricity. Nowadays when the candidates talk about “clean coal,” they’re not talking so much about power plant emissions of particulate matter (soot), sulfur dioxide (SOX) and nitrogen oxide (NOX) so much as they are that great global warming boogeyman, carbon dioxide (CO2). When the candidates say they support “clean coal,” they’re talking about technologies that would capture CO2 emissions before they are emitted into the air and then store them permanently underground. The shorthand for this process is “carbon capture and storage.”

But the technology for simply capturing carbon dioxide isn’t ready for prime time and won’t be anytime soon — if ever — on the sort of commercial scale that would need to occur for it to make any sense. The main problem is cost. The most promising technology for CO2 capture is called IGCC (Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle). But the cost of building a power plant with IGCC technology to capture 90 percent of the CO2 generated is 47 percent higher than that for traditional power plant, according to a July 2006 study by the EPA.

Capturing CO2 imposes a cost amounting to about $24 per ton. At the largest U.S. power plant which emits about 25 million tons of CO2 annually, the extra cost would be $600 million per year. For all U.S. coal-fired power plants, which emit a total of more than 2.2 billion tons annually, the cost would be a staggering $52 billion per year. Passing along the capital and operating costs to consumers would raise electricity prices by almost 40 percent according to the EPA. And since the EPA is not known for overestimating costs, the actual cost is likely to be much higher and even more difficult to pass on to consumers.

So it’s no wonder that private investors have shunned IGCC technology, forcing its promoters to rely on government subsidies. But even those are vanishing. Earlier this year, the deep-pocketed federal government pulled out of the FutureGen project — a pilot effort to build and operate the first zero-emissions, coal-fired power plant — because of cost.

Capturing CO2 is hardly the end of the game, however. The gas has to be stored somewhere, after all. But where would you store the approximately 1.2 trillion cubic meters of CO2 produced annually produced by the nation’s coal-fired power plants?

Underground geological repositories, like saline formations and depleted oil and gas fields are being considered. But it’s not at all clear that these potential repositories could reliably hold vast and ever-increasing amounts of CO2 forever without leaking and without polluting surrounding groundwater. CO2 leaching into groundwater would acidify it. Then there’s the possibility of explosion. In August 1986, a natural formation of CO2 under Cameroon’s Lake Nyos exploded killing hundreds of people.

If repositories are identified, we’d need a nationwide network of pipelines to pump the CO2, oftentimes, hundreds of miles from power plants. This would be a massive project that would cost hundreds of billions of dollars factoring in the acquisition of rights of way, construction, operations, maintenance and environmental monitoring costs.

Keep in mind that much energy would be needed to pump CO2 long distances through pipelines which would have to be kept dry to prevent corrosion and leak-free to prevent groundwater pollution requiring expensive cleanup. Rest assured that environmentalists and trial lawyers would be monitoring for leaks.

Past the cost and technical challenges, there’s the public acceptance problem. A July 2008 report from the Congressional Research Service concluded that CO2 pipelines and storage may give local communities much gas.

Even if all the aforementioned problems were solved, perhaps the most daunting obstacle remains — the Greens. One of the most powerful special interest lobbies of our time, the Greens don’t like coal even if it is “clean.” Obama endorser and Natural Resources Defense Counsel attorney Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., for example, says that “there is no such thing as clean coal.” He alleges that the “true costs” of coal include “dead forests and sterilized lakes from acid rain, poisoned fisheries in 49 states and children with damaged brains and crippled health from mercury emissions, millions of asthma attacks and lost work days and thousands dead annually from ozone and particulates.” An e-mail alert from Greenpeace ahead of this week’s final presidential debate called clean coal a “myth” since coal mining “destroys mountains and forests and pollutes America.”

The irony is that coal — which is used to provide about one-half of our electricity — is already burned cleanly and safely in the U.S. with existing pollution control equipment and enforcement of government regulations, regardless of what hysterical Greens claim. There is no credible evidence to the contrary.

So beware of politicians talking about “clean coal” — it’s just another promise they couldn’t keep even if they tried.

Steven Milloy publishes JunkScience.com, manages the Free Enterprise Action Fund. He is a junk science expert, and an adjunct scholar at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Five-Star Green Hypocrisy

By Steve Milloy
October 09, 2008, FoxNews.com

Move over Al Gore. Swankier carbon charlatanism has come to town in the form of the World Wildlife Fund’s luxury getaway called “Around the World: A Private Jet Expedition.”

“Join us on a remarkable 25-day journey by luxury private jet,” invites the WWF in a brochure for its voyage to “some of the most astonishing places on the planet to see top wildlife, including gorillas, orangutans, rhinos, lemurs and toucans.”

For a price tag that starts at $64,950 per person, travelers will meet at the Ritz-Carlton in Orlando, Fla. on April 6, 2009 and then fly to “remote corners” of the world on a “specially outfitted jet that carries just 88 passengers in business-class comfort.” “World class experts — including WWF’s director of species conservation — will provide lectures en route, and a professional staff will be devoted to making your global adventure seamless and memorable.” Travelers will visit the Amazon Rain Forest in Brazil, Easter Island, Samoa, Borneo, Laos, Nepal, Madagascar, Namibia, Uganda or Rwanda, and finish up at the luxury Dorchester Hotel in London.

This is the very same WWF that says “the current growth in [carbon dioxide] emissions must be stopped as soon as possible” and that blames Americans for emitting 21 percent of global CO2 emissions even though the U.S. accounts for only 5 percent of the global population. In December 2007, the WWF launched its “Earth Hour” campaign, a global initiative in which cities and communities simultaneously turn out their lights for one hour “to symbolize their leadership and commitment to finding solutions for climate change.”

So how does this fantasy trip square with the WWF’s alarmist rhetoric?

Using the carbon footprint calculator on the WWF’s own web site, the 36,800-mile trip in a Boeing 757 jet will burn about 100,000 gallons of jet fuel to produce roughly 1,231 tons of CO2 in 25 days — that’s the equivalent of putting about 1,560 SUVs on the road during those three-plus weeks and that doesn’t even include emissions related to local air, ground and water transport and other amenities.

The WWF laments on its web site that the average American produces 19.6 tons of CO2 annually, which is nearly five times the world average of 3.9 tons per person. But during the WWF’s posh excursion, travelers will produce 14 tons of CO2 per person. That’s 71 percent of the average American carbon footprint and 360 percent of the average global footprint in a mere three-and-one-half weeks. But who’s counting — especially when you’re in “19 rows of spacious leather seats with full ergonomic support” enjoying “gourmet meals, chilled champagne [and] your own chef.”

I guess those are the rules when you’re one of WWF’s wealthy donors, but now contrast this with the how the WWF says the rest of us should live our lives. The group’s web site states that “It clearly is time for all Americans to roll up their sleeves, to take steps to reduce emissions, to prepare for climate change, and to encourage others to do the same.”

We, the masses, should — nay, must — use compact fluorescent light bulbs, reduce hot water use, turn thermostats down in the winter and up in the summer and use low-flow shower heads and faucets. We should pledge to commute by car pool or mass transit, switch to “green power,” and get more fuel efficient cars. We should make our lives more expensive and less convenient so that the Green elites don’t feel too guilty while jet-setting to exotic locales.

Maybe, you’re thinking, the WWF plans to makes its trip “carbon neutral” by purchasing carbon offsets — after all, the group does offer a carbon offset calculator on its web site under the heading “Join WWF in our mission to save life on Earth.” But neither the trip brochure nor the WWF web site mentions that any offsets will be purchased — and there seems to be good reason for that.

According to the WWF’s calculator, it would cost in excess of $44,000 to offset the carbon emissions from the jet travel alone. Then there’s the September 2008 report from the General Accounting Office which concluded that the carbon offset market lacked credibility. The Republican leader of the congressional committee requesting the report commented that “that the lack of standardization of offsets and fundamental problems assessing and verifying credibility, leave consumers in the dark and exposed to waste, fraud, and abuse.” Former Clinton official Joseph Romm wrote on his blog that, “the vast majority of offsets are, at some level, just rip-offsets.”

The Greens are apparently reluctant to fall for their own scams.

If you can’t make the WWF’s private jet expedition, the group offers a wide variety of other pricey, carbon-spewing tours. You might be interested in the WWF trip to the Galapagos or Fiji Islands, where you’re less likely to run into pesky downscale local tourists. The WWF has called for limitations on local tourism in the Galapagos and Fiji Islands saying that it causes greater environmental damage than “larger tourist operations” — like the WWF’s.

I’ve been thinking that WWF’s bandit-like panda bear was an appropriate logo given the group’s promotion of “rip-offsets.” But now, I think that a new logo may be in order — perhaps a hippo-crite?

Steven Milloy publishes JunkScience.com, manages the Free Enterprise Action Fund. He is ajunk science expert, and an adjunct scholar at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Greens Exploit Wall Street Bailout

By Steven Milloy
October 02, 2008, FoxNews.com

Will the Wall Street bailout be the beginning of the New (Green) Deal?

Environmental activists are trying to figure out ways to advance their global-warming-regulation agenda by exploiting the current financial crisis, including the Wall Street bailout bill to be voted on by the House.

The good news for them is that they may not need to succeed, since someone with a very Green agenda will be in charge of implementing the bill should it become law.

As reported by Carbon Control News (Sep. 24), “Environmentalists and some Democrats are seizing upon the financial sector crisis to call for major federal investments in energy efficiency and improvements in the electricity grid as a way to address climate change and spur a lagging economy.”

Michael Moynihan, former Clinton administration economic adviser and director of the Green Project for the New Democrat Network, has called for a national infrastructure bank to fund clean energy projects.

Following up on this idea, two house Democrats introduced a bill last week to establish a “Clean Energy Investment Bank.”

Although Moynihan claims this would be an improvement over the current earmark system, the bank seems to be little more than a permanent Green earmark.

The activist group Friends of the Earth (FoE) is lobbying for the Treasury Department to conduct global-warming impact reviews under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) — the federal law requiring federal agencies to conduct environmental-impact studies of their actions.

Through its citizen-lawsuit provisions, the Greens often use NEPA to block energy, highway and logging projects that involve federal agencies and lands.

FoE claims that as the Treasury Department becomes a significant shareholder in financial institutions that it bails out, it would be obligated to carry out environmental impact studies since, to some extent, the activities of those financial institutions would also be activities of the Treasury Department.

“Subjecting entities that receive financial backing from taxpayers to NEPA could provide a hook for environmentalists to force greater scrutiny of actions by those entities that increase greenhouse gas emissions, including the underwriting of fossil fuel projects,” reported Carbon Control News (Sep. 26)

Anti-nuclear Greens are trying to use the recent bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers to block the construction of the first nuclear reactor built in the U.S. in 30 years.

This column previously reported on how the Greens are trying to stop Maryland from permitting the construction of a third reactor at Constellation Energy’s Calvert Cliffs power plant by arguing that emission-less nuclear power actually worsens global warming.

Lehman’s bankruptcy raised concerns about the financial health of Constellation, leading to a buy-out offer from the Warren Buffet-led Mid-American Energy Holdings Company.

The Greens called for the project to be halted “in light of the nation’s worsening financial crisis and serious concerns about the stability of the company building the project,” according to Carbon Control News (Sep. 26).

Monday’s rejection of the Wall Street bailout bill by the House has opened the door for the alternative-energy industry to again try to renew the tax credits about to expire for wind power projects such as the Pickens Plan.

The Senate bill passed Wednesday night extends the much-lobbied-for tax credit.

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman called on Congress to “Green the Bailout” (Sep. 28).

Friedman quoted a green-collar jobs proponent who said, “You can’t base a national economy on credit cards. But you can base it on solar panels, wind turbines, smart biofuels and a massive program to weatherize every building and home in America.”

Finally, even if none of these provisions make it into the bailout bill, the Greens will likely be able to count on Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson to implement their agenda for them.

The former head of Goldman Sachs — who simultaneously headed up the Nature Conservancy and recently told Fortune magazine that action on global warming is crucial to the U.S. — is no stranger to using “other people’s money” to implement the Green agenda on land secured by distressed debt.

Paulson could use bailout money to purchase debt securities that are secured by property either coveted by Greens or targeted for energy or natural resource development projects that the Greens oppose.

Once the U.S. Government owns the securities (and, thereby, the property) an omnipotent Paulson could essentially take the land out of circulation by “preserving” it as public land.

He could even claim — through the economic device of “contingent valuation” — that the acquired land has more value as pristine public land than as, say, an energy or logging project.

Contingent valuation uses opinion surveys to value intangible assets for which there is no market, such as scenic views and crystal-clear air.

Respondents are asked hypothetical questions like, “How much would you pay to preserve a seashore view from oil drilling?” or “How much is it worth to keep a forest pristine and un-logged?”

Though the whole process is pretend — the respondents know they won’t actually spend any of their own money for this preservation — the government uses the method to establish monetary values of preserved lands.

It doesn’t take too much imagination to see how contingent valuation could be used to gin up phony bailout profits through land preservation.

Paulson has already said that he would bequeath the bulk of his fortune — in the neighborhood of $500 to $800 million — to Green causes.

Imagine what he would be willing to do with your money.

Steven Milloy publishes JunkScience.com and DemandDebate.com. He is a junk science expert, and advocate of free enterprise and an adjunct scholar at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.