Category: Miscellaneous

Antonia Senior: Better dead than green

From The Times (July 24):

… Our intransigent refusal to choose green will be met by a new militancy from those who believe we must be saved from ourselves. Ultra-green states cannot arise without some form of forced switch to autocracy; the dictatorship of the environmentalists.

The old two-cow analogy is a useful one. You have two cows. The communist steals both your cows, and may give you some milk, if you’re not bourgeois scum. The fascist lets you keep the cows but seizes the milk and sells it back to you. Today’s Green says you can keep the cows, but should choose to give them up as their methane-rich farts will unleash hell at some unspecified point in the future. You say, sod it, I’ll keep my cows thanks. Tomorrow’s green, the Bolshevik green, shoots the cows and makes you forage for nuts.

If the choice is between ecological meltdown, or a more immediate curtailment of our freedom, where do those of us who are neither red nor green, but a recalcitrant grey, turn? Back to those small desires, and a blinkered hope that the choice never becomes so stark. If it does, I’ll take my chances with Armageddon.

U.S. investors not sweating global warming

From Bloomberg:

…almost two-thirds of U.S. investors say climate change is a minor danger or “no real threat,” according to the first Quarterly Bloomberg Global Poll.

But European and Asian investors hold the opposite view:

In Europe and Asia, Bloomberg users are “more concerned about their governments taking too little action,” [pollster Ann Selzer] said. “In the U.S., the common response is fear government will take too much action.”

It just goes to show that Europeans and Asians learned nothing from the 20th century.

All hail Belchatow…

Below is a photo of Poland’s Belchatow power plant, the largest single carbon dioxide emitter in Europe — about 31 million metric tons annually.

Belchatow is driving European greens nuts as it plans to increase its generating capacity by 20% next year — even though this means buying more emission allowances. Belchatow also signals the failure of the European emissions trading scheme, the British green group Sandbag told ClimateWire.

So for being the largest emitter of life-giving CO2 in Europe and simultaneously helping to sabotage the Kyoto Protocol, let’s take a moment to venerate the aptly named Belchatow.

Poland's Belchatow power plant: Drives greens nuts
Poland's Belchatow power plant: Drives greens nuts

Welfare for mad scientists? AMS endorses federal funding of geoengineering

The American Meteorological Society this week endorsed federal funding of geoengineering — that is, the Society believes that taxpayers should support surplus, unemployable, over-educated madmen willing to research how best to blot out the sun and implement other bizarre schemes in hopes of  slowing climate change. Our only question is where the giant rubber-room research facility will be constructed.

California Screaming: Wind, solar lobbies to squeeze taxpayers amid budget crisis

Amid the worst budget crisis in its history, the state of California is set to make things worse at the behest of the wind and solar industries.

The California Air Resources Board (CARB) is set to increase the state’s so-called renewable portfolio standard (RPS) to 33% by 2020, up from 20% — meaning that one-third of the electricity produced in the state must come from so-called renewable sources like wind and solar, according to a report in Restructuring Today.

To meet that standard, the utility industry will need to spend an estimated $115 billion over the next 10-plus years. Given that only about $23.5 billion in financing was available annually for renewable projects nationwide before the financial crisis, the new standard would require that California utilities obtain about 50% of available funding each year.

CARB chairman Mary Nichols, a Democrat appointed by Gov. Schwarzenegger and a former Clinton administration EPA appointee, admitted to Restructuring Today that,

It’s going to be a challenge to reach that goal without negatively impacting reliability or leading to huge cost boosts for consumers.

A California Senate consultant told Restructuring Today that since the state’s budget crisis has been “temporarily” resolved, the bill containing the new standard is likely to pass and be signed into law this September.

The new standard will essentially require that each man, woman and child in California borrow about $3,108 in principal alone to pay for it — that is, the privilege of paying higher electricity prices for no environmental gain.

Great! Recession helps UK meet Kyoto limits

The ongoing global recession has reduced UK productivity so much that the nation’s CO2 emissions are below the levels set by the Kyoto Protocol, reports the Guardian.

But don’t expect the greens top be happy about it. Sandbag’s Bryony Worthington told The Guardian that,

“With too many rights to pollute in circulation, the [Kyoto emissions trading scheme] is in danger of being rendered irrelevant. At a time when other countries are looking to set up their own trading schemes and the world is set to debate a global deal on how to tackle climate change, [this] flagship policy urgently needs rescuing – starting with much tougher caps.”

So a recession isn’t good enough for the greens. We need a depression.

John Kerry: Darfur caused by CO2

At a Council of Foreign Relations meeting last month, Sen. John Kerry (D-Teresa’s skirt) said, according to ClimateWire:

“Almost indescribable, catastrophic things can happen” should concentrations of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere exceed the “tipping point” of 450 parts per million, Kerry said at the meeting. “The crisis in Darfur, Sudan, is but one example of how climate change can contribute to a more dangerous world.“

Also according to the report,

Kerry noted that so-called “environmentally displaced persons” may soon outnumber war refugees but added that the United States faces other climate-related security risks beyond refugee crises.

Earth to Sen. Kerry: Drought is a weather event, not climate change. The Darfur crisis involves civil war not carbon dioxide.

BTW, let’s not forget that Sen. Kerry previously said that the Waxman-Markey bill won’t work.

John Kerry: Darfur caused by CO2

At a Council of Foreign Relations meeting last month, Sen. John Kerry (D-Teresa’s skirt) said, according to ClimateWire:

“Almost indescribable, catastrophic things can happen” should concentrations of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere exceed the “tipping point” of 450 parts per million, Kerry said at the meeting. “The crisis in Darfur, Sudan, is but one example of how climate change can contribute to a more dangerous world.“

Also according to the report,

Kerry noted that so-called “environmentally displaced persons” may soon outnumber war refugees but added that the United States faces other climate-related security risks beyond refugee crises.

Earth to Sen. Kerry: Drought is a weather event, not climate change. The Darfur crisis involves civil war not carbon dioxide.

BTW, let’s not forget that Sen. Kerry previously said that the Waxman-Markey bill won’t work.

Manufacturers go Judas: 1.5% of allowances is the new ’30 pieces of silver’

American manufacturers are ready to sell America down the river if they can get an extra 1.5 percent of the CO2 emission allowances allocated in the Waxman-Markey bill.

In a July 15 letter, the American Materials Manufacturing Alliance (comprised of the Aluminum Association, American Chemistry Council, American Forest & Paper Association and the American Iron and Steel Institute) asked Sen.  Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) to increase the free allowances allocated to energy-intensive manufacturers from 13.5% to 15% percent — a modification “valued at billions of dollars over the life of the program.”

Beyond the “30 pieces of silver” nature of the manufacturers’ request, granting it would mean that some other special interests would have to lose 1.5% of free allowances — so look for an intensified struggle among  the rent-seeking thieves for the free taxpayer money that free allowances represent. Over the life of Waxman-Markey, Congress would issue $9 trillion worth of allowances.

Here are the Judases that are willing to betray America to the Marxist-Socialists for an extra 1.5% of Waxman-Markey’s free allowances:

Steel's Tom Gibson
Steel's Tom Gibson
Aluminum's Steve Larkin
Aluminum's Steve Larkin
AFPA's Donna Harman
AFPA's Donna Harman
Chemical's Cal Dooley
Cal Dooley: Willing to screw America for Waxman-markey lite

Hillary Clinton: Ugly American?

During her visit to India to persuade that country to join in a new global warming treaty, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stopped at the undistinguished brick-and-sandstone headquarters of the hotel division of Indian tobacco giant ITC Ltd. The building’s L-shaped design maximizes natural lighting which reduces energy use and makes the building “green.”

As the Washington Post reported,

Clinton likened the squat, plain-looking building — which was constructed with U.S. assistance — to a new version of the Taj Mahal, grandly declaring it was “a monument to the future.”

But if Hillary thinks that this…

ITC-green-centre

… is the new this…

taj-mahal

… then it’s no wonder that the India rejected her pleas to reduce its emissions and forego improvement in its standard of living.

Smart Democrat of the day: Sen. Byron Dorgan

Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND) rails against the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill and all the opportunities created therein for carbon market speculation in a July 16 Senate floor speech.

Sure, Dorgan is misinformed on the need for a cap on carbon emissions, but first things first: the Senate version of Waxman-Markey neededs to be defeated and then we can move on to re-educating those who have been deceived by Al Gore and the greens.

Dorgan should be congratulated — at least so far — for his courageous stand in favor of taxpayers and consumers and against the likes of the morally bankrupt Al Gore, Goldman Sachs and others who would sell our country down the river in order to profit from cap-and-charade.