Der Spiegel lambastes Obama

Europe is unhappy with President Empty-Suit on climate. But why would they have expected anything from someone who has no history of accomplishing anything except self-advancement and self-aggrandizement? Did they miss both of Obama’s auto-vapor-ographies?

Check out what Christian Schwägerl’s has to say in his Der Spiegel column, “Obama Has Failed the World on Climate Change“:

US President Barack Obama came to office promising hope and change. But on climate change, he has followed in the footsteps of his predecessor George W. Bush. Now, should the climate summit in Copenhagen fail, the blame will lie squarely with Obama…

Obama Lied to the Europeans

Barack Obama cast himself as a “citizen of the world” when he delivered his well-received campaign speech in Berlin in the summer of 2008. But the US president has now betrayed this claim. In his Berlin speech, he was dishonest with Europe. Since then, Obama has neglected the single most important issue for an American president who likes to imagine himself as a world citizen, namely his country’s addiction to fossil fuels and the risks of unchecked climate change. Health care reform and other domestic issues were more important to him than global environmental threats. He was either unwilling or unable to convince skeptics in his own ranks and potential defectors from the ranks of the Republicans to support him, for example by promising alternative investments as a compensation for states with large coal reserves…

Dreamt Up by Hollywood

For most Americans, the world beyond the US’s borders is nothing more than an irritating nuisance. Hence arguments based on appeals about drowning Bangladeshis, starving Africans and flooded islands in Indonesia have little effect. In Hollywood, the United States has an industry that continually pushes the materialistic ideal of Western prosperity to billions of people around the world, while at the same time bombarding them with apocalyptic visions in the form of disaster movies.

Many Americans clearly also believe that real climate change is just something dreamt up by the entertainment industry…

The Nobel Committee should postpone the award of the Nobel Peace Prize from Dec. 10 to Dec. 20. Only if Obama has achieved a convincing deal at the Copenhagen conference will there be a real reason to honor him.

Der Spiegel lambastes Obama

Europe is unhappy with President Empty-Suit on climate. But why would they have expected anything from someone who has no history of accomplishing anything except self-advancement and self-aggrandizement? Did they miss both of Obama’s auto-vapor-ographies?

Check out what Christian Schwägerl’s has to say in his Der Spiegel column, “Obama Has Failed the World on Climate Change“:

US President Barack Obama came to office promising hope and change. But on climate change, he has followed in the footsteps of his predecessor George W. Bush. Now, should the climate summit in Copenhagen fail, the blame will lie squarely with Obama…

Obama Lied to the Europeans

Barack Obama cast himself as a “citizen of the world” when he delivered his well-received campaign speech in Berlin in the summer of 2008. But the US president has now betrayed this claim. In his Berlin speech, he was dishonest with Europe. Since then, Obama has neglected the single most important issue for an American president who likes to imagine himself as a world citizen, namely his country’s addiction to fossil fuels and the risks of unchecked climate change. Health care reform and other domestic issues were more important to him than global environmental threats. He was either unwilling or unable to convince skeptics in his own ranks and potential defectors from the ranks of the Republicans to support him, for example by promising alternative investments as a compensation for states with large coal reserves…

Dreamt Up by Hollywood

For most Americans, the world beyond the US’s borders is nothing more than an irritating nuisance. Hence arguments based on appeals about drowning Bangladeshis, starving Africans and flooded islands in Indonesia have little effect. In Hollywood, the United States has an industry that continually pushes the materialistic ideal of Western prosperity to billions of people around the world, while at the same time bombarding them with apocalyptic visions in the form of disaster movies.

Many Americans clearly also believe that real climate change is just something dreamt up by the entertainment industry…

The Nobel Committee should postpone the award of the Nobel Peace Prize from Dec. 10 to Dec. 20. Only if Obama has achieved a convincing deal at the Copenhagen conference will there be a real reason to honor him.

Call Lindsey Graham: Tell him cap and trade turns you off

From the American energy Alliance:

Call Lindsey Graham’s state offices:

  • Greenville, SC: 864-250-1417
  • Columbia, SC: 803-933-0112
  • Florence, SC: 843-669-1505
  • Mt. Pleasant, SC: 843-849-3887
  • Rock Hil, SC: 803-366-2828
  • Pendelton, SC: 864-646-4090

Skeptics abound in Ill. gubernatorioal race

From the Associated Press:

Most of the Republican candidates for Illinois governor flatly reject the idea that human activity contributes to global warming, a position that contradicts the overwhelming consensus among climate scientists.

Five of the seven Republican candidates claim rising temperatures have nothing to do with pollution from cars, factories or power plants.

Teed off: Golf balls the new eco-problem

From CNN:

Research teams at the Danish Golf Union have discovered it takes between 100 to 1,000 years for a golf ball to decompose naturally. A startling fact when it is also estimated 300 million balls are lost or discarded in the United States alone, every year. It seems the simple plastic golf ball is increasingly becoming a major litter problem…

Suggestion: Punish mulligans as a hate crime against nature?

World Wildlife Fund: The hypocrisy that keeps on giving

We received the following invitation from the World Wildlife Fund to “Celebrate the Bounty of the Bering Sea… Before It’s Too Late” — with the latter part of the invite referring to the much-dreaded climate change.

WWF Alaska

And just how did the WWF “celebrate the bounty of the Bering Sea”? By eating it, of course. As the invitation states, “Taste wild Alaskan salmon, the bounty of the sea.” So for the salmon on the menu, it was already too late. But we digress…

The glaring hypocrisy here is the WWF’s dual focus on eating wild Alaskan salmon while fretting about global warming. How does the WWF think the wild Alaskan salmon got to Manhattan? Did they swim? Walk? Drive a SmartCar? Bicycle? Were they beamed to Manhattan by Scotty?

None of the above — they were, of course, flown by airplane.

According to Alaska Airlines, it flies about 750,000 pounds of Alaskan salmon annually to diners from San Francisco to Manhattan.

How green is this?

As reported by Seattle Weekly,

“For seafood…, ‘fresh’ often means ‘air-flown,’ which is 10 times more emission-intensive than transporting products by ship… Pablo Päster, an authority on carbon emissions with the Toronto-based environmental consulting group ClimateCheck, recently… compared the carbon impact of transporting a Copper River king salmon (headed and gutted on shore to a weight of 25 pounds) the 1,738 miles from Cordova to Anchorage and on to Seattle, versus shipping it the same route. His conclusion: Delivery by air produces 57 times more CO2. In this sense, first is worst.

We sent folks to take pictures at the WWF event. Look at that wild Alaskan salmon/Bounty of the Bering Sea… you can almost feel the planet heating up!

WWF slide

WWF plate

WWF salmon

And to think that it was only about a year ago that we broke the “Five Star Green Hypocrisy” story involving the WWF’s $65,000-per-person, 25-day private luxury jet tour of the world’s most exotic locales.

The WWF and its elitist supporters may think — or may want you to think — that the world is coming to an end because of carbon dioxide, but they plan on savoring every emission they can while denying yours.

Global cooling hurts Duke Energy

It seems as if Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers should be lobbying for increased greenhouse gas emissions.

Rogers is convinced — because his grandchildren told him so — that carbon dioxide emissions are warming the planet. So Rogers helped form the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, a coalition of a few big businesses and environmental groups that lobbies for carbon caps.

Ironically, the very global cooling that Rogers seems to be for is actually hurting his company’s earnings.

According to Duke’s the third quarter earnings report, earnings-before-interest-and-tax (EBIT) for Duke’s electric and gas division decreased:

  • $46 million because of unfavorable weather (i.e, a cooler summer);
  • $22 million because of reduced industrial demand (i.e., weak economy); and
  • $27 million because of the expiration of a temporary rate raise (i.e., government granted windfall).

All very interesting since Rogers wants to:

But for the three factors mentioned above, USFE&G’s Q3 EBIT would have increased by 11%.

Finally, Duke has spent about $10 million since 2008 lobbying for carbon caps. That’s a lot of lost earnings itself spent working against the interests of Duke shareholders and customers.

Hey Jim, there’s a reason children aren’t allowed to run the world.

NY Times excuses Gore’s climate profiteering

The New York Times and reporter John Broder get partial credit for spotlighting Al Gore’s climate profiteering on the front-page of today’s paper.

Unfortunately the article offers really lame justifications for Gore’s self-serving alarmism.

Gore only responded to the Times in an e-mail:

Mr. Gore says that he is simply putting his money where his mouth is.

“Do you think there is something wrong with being active in business in this country?” Mr. Gore said. “I am proud of it. I am proud of it.”

In an e-mail message this week, he said his investment activities were consistent with his public advocacy over decades.

Or is it that he’s putting his mouth where his money is?

Don’t forget that Al Gore testified before the House last spring that he has no profit motive. As reported by Broder:

But at the hearing in April, he was challenged by Ms. Blackburn, who echoed some of the criticism of Mr. Gore that has swirled in conservative blogs and radio talk shows. She noted that Mr. Gore is a partner at Kleiner Perkins, which has hundreds of millions of dollars invested in firms that could benefit from any legislation that limits carbon dioxide emissions.

“I believe that the transition to a green economy is good for our economy and good for all of us, and I have invested in it,” Mr. Gore said, adding that he had put “every penny” he has made from his investments into the Alliance for Climate Protection.

“And, Congresswoman,” he added, “if you believe that the reason I have been working on this issue for 30 years is because of greed, you don’t know me.”

It was apparently “a bridge too far” for Broder to notice that Gore’s House testimony is entirely inconsistent with Gore’s e-mail to the Times.

Readers of this blog will recall that it was this Steve Milloy column in Human Events that prompted Rep. Marsha Blackburn to ask Gore about his profiteering. But rather than saying he was “putting his money where his mouth was,” Gore chose to dissemble, if not outright lie, to Congress.

And let’s not forget about Gore’s feigned ignorance before Congress of his relationship with Goldman Sachs.

What would it take to replace coal in the U.S?

From today’s Financial Times, here’s what it would take to replace coal as a fuel for generating electricity:

It would take a massive effort to replace coal production. Peabody Energy, which owns North Antelope and is the world’s largest private sector coal company, says replacing coal would be a gargantuan task. It would require 2,400 times more solar generation, 40 times more wind power, 250 new nuclear plants, almost double the US production of natural gas, 500 hydro plants the size of the Hoover Dam or halving electricity consumption. Even then, the US would have to find a way to meet new demand, given growth forecasts.

The greens’ choice, of course, is the “halving electricity consumption” option. But never in the history of mankind has reduced energy use been associated with social and economic advancement.

Exelon CEO bobbleheaded at Senate hearing

Meet Exelon CEO John Rowe…

John Rowe is the “Carbon Bandit.”

Wanted Poster Exelon Sketch Final

Here’s his JunkScience.com-commissioned bobblehead…

Rowe Bobblehead 092309

… and here’s the bobblehead being presented to his Rowe at last week’s Senate hearing on Kerry-Boxer:

Rowe gets bobblehead

 

Will the real John Rowe please stand up… or at least stop rent-seeking?