The standard for an environmental hazard: Litigators clean up while taxpayers are taken to the cleaners

By Steve Milloy
The Washington Times, May 27, 2010

The EPA has a history of impeding environmental protection, most notably with toxic-waste-site cleanup and nuclear waste storage.

In the wake of the 1978 Love Canal controversy, a lame-duck Congress and president enacted the Superfund law in December 1980 to provide for the cleanup of so-called toxic-waste sites. But the Superfund law was poorly designed. By the early 1990s, few sites had been cleaned up. Moreover, while it would take only about two years to actually clean up a site, it would take 10 years to progress to the point of implementation. An average cleanup cost $25 million. The Department of Energy was looking down the barrel of $300 billion worth of cleanups. More money was spent litigating cleanups than actually cleaning up.

Although there were many problematical aspects of the Superfund law, the EPA’s control over cleanups was the greatest obstacle to the program’s goals. “How clean is clean?” was the famous rhetorical question of the time. In the early years of Superfund, the EPA doggedly maintained that sites had to be cleaned up virtually to something near Garden of Eden status – an obviously silly goal for a dump or an industrial facility. It wasn’t good enough just to seal off the facilities and prevent public exposure to substances at the site. Such standards added unnecessary millions to the cost of every cleanup. Because private parties had to pay, they fought the EPA every step of the way.

Sites began getting cleaned up faster and more cheaply during the Clinton administration after cleanup standards became more reasonable in a practical effort to get the program moving. No longer was the groundwater at sites being pumped and treated until it was good enough to be bottled. No longer was soil treated to the point where a hypothetical child could eat spoonfuls of soil from the site’s most contaminated or “hot” spot.

Another example of EPA impeding environmental protection is the now-abandoned project to store spent nuclear fuel at the Yucca Mountain facility in Nevada. Although the Yucca Mountain site was in a remote part of the Nevada desert and the spent fuel would have been stored in sealed casks one mile underground, the EPA set standards that virtually guaranteed the facility would never open.

The EPA decided that the Department of Energy (DOE) would have to be able to guarantee that there would be no significant exposures to the public from radiation for a period of 1 million years – about 200 times longer than recorded history. The DOE was being forced by the EPA to figure out how it might communicate with and warn future civilizations that might not understand English-language warnings about the spent nuclear fuel stored beneath the mountain.

DOE, of course, could never hope to meet the EPA’s standards. Despite 25 years of engineering and $30 billion in costs, Yucca Mountain was a dead man walking when the Obama administration defunded it early in 2009. Because of the lack of a long-term storage facility for spent nuclear fuel, nuclear power plants are forced to continue storing spent fuel in on-site storage pools – facilities that are running out of space.

Cap-and-pain sinks Dems

By Steve Milloy
The Daily Caller, May 21, 2010

Sometime before June 7, the so-called Murkowski resolution to block EPA regulation of greenhouse gases will be voted on in the Senate. Democrats up for re-election this fall may want to think twice about a knee-jerk “no” vote.

Finalized last December but not yet implemented, EPA regulation of greenhouse gases would be even worse economically than cap-and-trade, which is already bad enough. (How bad is cap-and-trade? So bad that massive Democrat congressional majorities can’t pass it.)

EPA greenhouse gas regulation would empower the agency to control energy use (and, hence, the economy) without any of the potential ameliorative effects from the trade part of cap-and-trade or the dividend part of Cantwell-Collins’ cap-and-dividend. EPA regulation would just be cap-and-pain.

Some quick-learning Democratic senators, like Louisiana’s Mary Landrieu, Arkansas’ Blanche Lincoln, and Nebraska’s Ben Nelson have already figured out the politics of EPA cap-and-pain. They joined Sen. Lisa Murkowski when the resolution was introduced in January.

But senators like Colorado’s Michael Bennett, Nevada’s Harry Reid, and North Dakota’s Byron Dorgan are still dithering hoping that Murkowski will either not bring her resolution to the floor for a vote or that it will be overtaken by a separate effort by West Virginia’s Jay Rockfeller that would delay EPA regulation for two years.

But Sen. Murkowski seems undeterred in what could be the only Senate vote this year on climate.

Given the ornery mood of the electorate — ask Utah’s Bob Bennett or Indiana’s Evan Bayh — it should be a no-brainer for Senate Democrats to vote for Murkowski. After all, it’s really a free vote for them since even if a similar bill passed the House, President Obama would surely veto it and the EPA would not be curbed. At least they could claim they tried to do the right thing.

Yet Senate Democrats seem willing to go on record as supporting EPA control and destruction of the economy. How they expect this will help them other than with their extreme leftie supporters (who are not numerous enough to get them elected to anything) is anyone’s guess.

The original idea behind EPA regulation was to force businesses to capitulate and swallow cap-and-trade. But that hasn’t happened. The Climategate scandal has given new life to lawsuits challenging EPA regulation of greenhouse gases. Businesses — even some that are for cap-and-trade — oppose cap-and-pain and are ready to fight.

The vote on the Murkowski resolution will be close. Should it fall a vote or two short, you can bet on that vote being a major issue this fall in Senate races. Should the EPA actually try to regulate greenhouse gases starting in 2011, you can bet that the 2012 election will take an even greater toll on the Democrat Party.
There is no political upside to permitting EPA to implement cap-and-pain. Clear thinking Senate Democrats will figure that out sooner rather than too-later.

Steve Milloy publishes JunkScience.com and is the author of Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them (Regnery 2009).

Kerry-Lieberman’s Great American Rip-off

By Steve Milloy
The Daily Caller, May 13, 2010

There are only three things you need to know about the Kerry-Lieberman cap-and-trade bill that was released Wednesday—it will accomplish nothing for the environment; it will cost a lot of money and it will financially enrich and politically empower a host of scoundrels.

Regardless of what you think about manmade carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, it is undeniable that the emissions reductions contemplated by Kerry-Lieberman don’t amount to a hill of beans. The goal of Kerry-Lieberman, like the goal of the House-passed Waxman-Markey bill, is to reduce U.S. carbon dioxide emissions to 17 percent of 2005 levels by 2050.

But rather than such paltry emissions cuts, let’s say that starting next year, we just shut down America—zero emissions—and kept it shut down for the next 100 years. What difference would that make atmosphere-wise?

Roughly speaking, U.S. energy use (at 2005 levels) adds to atmospheric CO2 at a rate of about 1 part per million every three years. So after 100 years, U.S. energy use would add about 33 ppm of CO2 to the atmosphere. Is that a lot?

Well, atmospheric CO2 has increased by over 35 ppm since 1995 without producing any global warming at all—that’s according to IPCC contributor and Captain Climategate himself, the University of East Anglia’s Phil Jones. Moreover, physicists agree that every molecule of CO2 added to the atmosphere has less global warming potential than the molecule that preceded it. So the next 35 ppm of atmospheric CO2 will have less impact than the preceding 35ppm, which had no discernible effect.

None of this is a secret, the EPA did this analysis for itself in 2007.

Back to Kerry-Lieberman, it carbon emissions reduction provisions would obviously be nowhere near as severe as the shuting-down-America-for-100-years-scenario.

So what will Kerry-Lieberman cost us to accomplish nothing?

Based on the Waxman-Markey bill, which Kerry-Lieberman is modeled after, the Brookings Institution (hardly a hotbed of climate skeptics or Chicago-school economic thought) estimated that between 2012 and 2050, mandatory CO2 emission reductions would make energy cost $9 trillion more—this works out to a cost of about $3,100 per year for a family of four.

This of course doesn’t take into account the inflationary aspects of making energy cost more—after all, all goods and services are produced with energy and energy that costs more will necessary inflate the cost of everything. Americans will have a hard time paying these costs given all the jobs that will flee overseas to places like China, India and Mexico where carbon caps won’t exist, and energy and labor prices will be lower.

But surely someone will benefit from Kerry-Lieberman, right? That $9 trillion, after all, must go somewhere.

Sales of permits to emit CO2 will fill federal coffers with more money for politicians to hand out to special interest groups. Many CO2 emission permits will be handed out for free to special interests who will be able to turn around and sell them in the market for guaranteed profits. Wall Street will get to profit from the trading—just assume that every time you switch on a light a bell will ring at Goldman Sachs notifying it of yet more profits from nonproductive financial shenanigans. Al Gore’s venture capital firm of Kleiner Perkins has invested more than a billion dollars in dozens of companies that are Kerry-Lieberman dependent. Talk about Gore-porate greed.

Kerry Lieberman contains a host of mandates and programs for energy efficiency, so-called green technologies and other corporate welfare programs. Companies like GE would profit from electric utilities being forced to buy expensive “renewable” technologies and from consumers being forced to buy more expensive appliances.

Worse than the transfer of wealth from the hard-working to the hardly-working, is the transfer of power from Americans over their own lives and businesses to governmental goons and busy-bodies. The Environmental Protection Agency—the most rogue federal agency of all —would be responsible for administering Kerry-Lieberman. While EPA control over the economy and the power to enforce that control would be immensely expanded, American business and individuals would have essentially the same ability as now to defend themselves against the EPA—pretty much none.

Although Kerry-Lieberman is a loser of a bill for the vast majority of America, we will have our hands full fighting its financial and political beneficiaries. Even if the bill fails to pass before the election, there is talk on Capitol Hill of procedural shenanigans by which a lameduck Congress could pass it regardless of what Americans have to say in November.

Rise up America, while you still can.

Steve Milloy publishes JunkScience.com and is the author of Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them (Regnery 2009).

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2010/05/13/kerry-liebermans-great-american-rip-off/#ixzz0np4oHpUh

The People v. The Hockey Stick Felony?

My column in today’s Washington Times is dedicated to those skeptics and libertarians who, confused about Virginia AG Ken Cuccinelli’s investigation of Michael Mann, are aiding and abetting the enemy.

Tree Ring Circus
By Steve Milloy
May 12, 2010, Washington Times

Are academic scientists some special sub-species of humans who are beyond suspicion and above the law? That is the question now being played out in a drama between Virginia Attorney General Ken Cucinelli and the dead-end defenders of global warming’s poster junk scientist, Michael Mann.

Cucinelli is under assault by global warming alarmist brigades and the American Civil Liberties Union for launching an investigation into whether any fraud against taxpayers occurred with respect to Mann’s hiring by the University of Virginia and his receipt of government grants. Cuccinelli recently sent UVA a civil investigative demand (CID) requesting e-mails and other documents pertaining to Mann.

Cuccinelli’s rationale is simple to understand: Mann’s claim-to-fame — the infamous “hockey stick” graph — is so bogus that one cannot help but wonder whether it is intentional fraud.

Developed in the late-1990s while Mann was at the University of Massachusetts, his hockey stick graph purports to show that average global temperature was fairly stable over the past millennium and up until the 20 the century, when it spiked up impliedly because of human activity. The hockey stick was latched onto by the alarmist community, incorporated into government and United Nations assessments of climate science and held out to the public (particularly by Al Gore in “An Inconvenient Truth”) as proof that humans were destroying the planet.

But by the mid-2000s the hockey stick graph began to be revealed for what it was — pure bunk.

Critics of the hockey stick graph first became suspicious because it failed to show two well-known periods of dramatic swings in global temperature — the so-called Medieval Optimum and the Little Ice Age. Mann’s indignant refusal to share his data and methods with critics only added fuel to the fire. Eventually, it was discovered that the computer model that produced the hockey stick would produce a hockey stick graph regardless of what data was input. But it gets worse.

Mann apparently created the hockey stick by cherry-picking data he liked and deleting data he didn’t like. While the vast majority of the hockey stick is based on temperature data extrapolated from tree rings going back hundreds of years, the tip of the blade (representing the late 20th century) was temperature data taken from thermometers. Past the obvious apples-and-oranges problem, as it turns out, Mann appended the thermometer data to the hockey stick at a point at which the tree ring data actually shows cooling. This cooling trend data was then deleted. This is what is referred to by the now-famous Climate-gate phrase “Mike’s Nature trick to … hide the decline.”

Mann’s defenders characterize this deletion of data as an elegant statistical technique. There is, however, nothing sophisticated, much less innocent about it. Contrary to Mann’s defenders, the hockey stick has never been vindicated by anyone. If nothing else, proof of its discredit lies in the fact that no one, not even the ethically challenged United Nations, relies on it anymore as evidence of manmade global warming.

Mann’s name-making hockey stick work occurred while he was at the University of Massachusetts, after which he was hired by the taxpayer-funded UVA. Did UVA hire Mann under the illusion that his hockey stick was a legitimate scientific achievement? Did Mann receive taxpayer-funded grants based on what amounts to scientific misconduct? These are legitimate inquiries — but not to everyone.

Left-wing academics, global warming alarmists, and the ACLU object to Cucinelli’s probe. They cast aspersions such as “witch hunt,” McCarthyism,” and “abuse of office.” In their less hysteric moments, they claim Cuccinelli threatens academic freedom. This is all so much rot.

Some scientists have actually been known to commit scientific misconduct tantamount to fraud. A Tulane researcher was found guilty of misconduct by the federal Office of Scientific Integrity in the late 1990s for fabricating data about pesticides being dangerous hormonal system disrupters. Don’t forget the South Korean researcher that was indicted for claiming false advances in stem cell research. Only political correctness saved a University of Pittsburgh researcher from conviction during the 1990s of manipulating data allegedly linking lead-based paint with lower IQs.

Believe it or not, scientists are just like the rest of the population — a mixture of good and bad. Mann’s hockey stick is such bad science that it compels the question, “Why?” Would UVA have hired Mann and would government grants have been awarded to him had the truth about the hockey stick been known by university and state decision-makers at the time? Were they intentionally deceived?

As the Climategate scandal has revealed, the climate alarmist mob is, at the very least, devious and unethical. It has conspired to silence its critics and to dispense with the normal give-and-take of the scientific process — all the while trumpeting the junkiest of science in trying to frighten the public and politicians into keeping the grant money flowing.

Have some of the climate mob’s members acted criminally as well? No one knows at this point. But through his hockey stick shenanigans, Mann has certainly provided Cuccinelli with “probable cause” to consider the possibility. A thorough investigation by someone not in cahoots with the climate mob is the only way to answer legitimate questions related to the expenditure of taxpayer money.

Steve Milloy publishes JunkScience.com and is the author of Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them (Regnery 2009).

Tree Ring Circus

By Steve Milloy
May 12, 2010, Washington Times

Are academic scientists some special sub-species of humans who are beyond suspicion and above the law? That is the question now being played out in a drama between Virginia Attorney General Ken Cucinelli and the dead-end defenders of global warming’s poster junk scientist, Michael Mann.

Cucinelli is under assault by global warming alarmist brigades and the American Civil Liberties Union for launching an investigation into whether any fraud against taxpayers occurred with respect to Mann’s hiring by the University of Virginia and his receipt of government grants. Cuccinelli recently sent UVA a civil investigative demand (CID) requesting e-mails and other documents pertaining to Mann.

Cuccinelli’s rationale is simple to understand: Mann’s claim-to-fame — the infamous “hockey stick” graph — is so bogus that one cannot help but wonder whether it is intentional fraud.

Developed in the late-1990s while Mann was at the University of Massachusetts, his hockey stick graph purports to show that average global temperature was fairly stable over the past millennium and up until the 20 the century, when it spiked up impliedly because of human activity. The hockey stick was latched onto by the alarmist community, incorporated into government and United Nations assessments of climate science and held out to the public (particularly by Al Gore in “An Inconvenient Truth”) as proof that humans were destroying the planet.

But by the mid-2000s the hockey stick graph began to be revealed for what it was — pure bunk.

Critics of the hockey stick graph first became suspicious because it failed to show two well-known periods of dramatic swings in global temperature — the so-called Medieval Optimum and the Little Ice Age. Mann’s indignant refusal to share his data and methods with critics only added fuel to the fire. Eventually, it was discovered that the computer model that produced the hockey stick would produce a hockey stick graph regardless of what data was input. But it gets worse.

Mann apparently created the hockey stick by cherry-picking data he liked and deleting data he didn’t like. While the vast majority of the hockey stick is based on temperature data extrapolated from tree rings going back hundreds of years, the tip of the blade (representing the late 20th century) was temperature data taken from thermometers. Past the obvious apples-and-oranges problem, as it turns out, Mann appended the thermometer data to the hockey stick at a point at which the tree ring data actually shows cooling. This cooling trend data was then deleted. This is what is referred to by the now-famous Climate-gate phrase “Mike’s Nature trick to … hide the decline.”

Mann’s defenders characterize this deletion of data as an elegant statistical technique. There is, however, nothing sophisticated, much less innocent about it. Contrary to Mann’s defenders, the hockey stick has never been vindicated by anyone. If nothing else, proof of its discredit lies in the fact that no one, not even the ethically challenged United Nations, relies on it anymore as evidence of manmade global warming.

Mann’s name-making hockey stick work occurred while he was at the University of Massachusetts, after which he was hired by the taxpayer-funded UVA. Did UVA hire Mann under the illusion that his hockey stick was a legitimate scientific achievement? Did Mann receive taxpayer-funded grants based on what amounts to scientific misconduct? These are legitimate inquiries — but not to everyone.

Left-wing academics, global warming alarmists, and the ACLU object to Cucinelli’s probe. They cast aspersions such as “witch hunt,” McCarthyism,” and “abuse of office.” In their less hysteric moments, they claim Cuccinelli threatens academic freedom. This is all so much rot.

Some scientists have actually been known to commit scientific misconduct tantamount to fraud. A Tulane researcher was found guilty of misconduct by the federal Office of Scientific Integrity in the late 1990s for fabricating data about pesticides being dangerous hormonal system disrupters. Don’t forget the South Korean researcher that was indicted for claiming false advances in stem cell research. Only political correctness saved a University of Pittsburgh researcher from conviction during the 1990s of manipulating data allegedly linking lead-based paint with lower IQs.

Believe it or not, scientists are just like the rest of the population — a mixture of good and bad. Mann’s hockey stick is such bad science that it compels the question, “Why?” Would UVA have hired Mann and would government grants have been awarded to him had the truth about the hockey stick been known by university and state decision-makers at the time? Were they intentionally deceived?

As the Climategate scandal has revealed, the climate alarmist mob is, at the very least, devious and unethical. It has conspired to silence its critics and to dispense with the normal give-and-take of the scientific process — all the while trumpeting the junkiest of science in trying to frighten the public and politicians into keeping the grant money flowing.

Have some of the climate mob’s members acted criminally as well? No one knows at this point. But through his hockey stick shenanigans, Mann has certainly provided Cuccinelli with “probable cause” to consider the possibility. A thorough investigation by someone not in cahoots with the climate mob is the only way to answer legitimate questions related to the expenditure of taxpayer money.

Steve Milloy publishes JunkScience.com and is the author of Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them (Regnery 2009).

The President’s Oil Drilling Bait-N-Switch

By Steve Milloy
Investor’s Business Daily

So President Obama says he’s for more offshore oil drilling. Does he really mean it? Would it matter if he did?

Addressing the latter question first, consider President George W. Bush called for offshore drilling in June 2008, when gasoline prices hit $4 per gallon and Congress was less Democrat-controlled than today.

Nothing happened — well, that’s not exactly true.

Offshore drilling advocates were ecstatic in July 2008 when they thought a deal had been reached with green groups to permit drilling off Santa Barbara, Calif. — the first since the January 1969 oil spill there.

New Hampshire Union Leader editor Andrew Cline gushed in a July 2008 Wall Street Journal op-ed: “When an environmental group formed for the sole purpose of opposing offshore oil drilling warmly embraces a plan to drill off its own coast, you know something important has changed in our culture; Americans have recognized that offshore drilling is largely safe.”

But less than a week later, the greens wrote the Journal to correct the record: “(T)o be accurate, the (op-ed’s) title should have read ‘Environmentalists Secure End to Oil Development’ … The agreement struck … is remarkable because it sets a fixed date for the termination of existing offshore and onshore oil production facilities in Santa Barbara County. We see this agreement as a direct complement to our support for the federal oil moratorium. Just as we need to say ‘no’ to new oil development, we must put an end to existing development if we are to protect our coast from the risks of offshore oil and gas development, and protect society from climate change.”

Despite the “agreement” and approval of offshore drilling by the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors, the greens subsequently got the California State Lands Commission to deny the offshore leases and then, in July 2009, got the California Assembly to block Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s proposal to revive offshore drilling.

Last December, the Obama administration actually granted Shell Oil leases to drill three exploratory wells in Alaska’s Chukchi Sea. But claiming a shoddy approval process, the leases are being challenged by green groups in the enviro-friendly 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Without wondering whether the Obama administration set Shell up for frustration, my money is on the greens in that venue.

The lesson here is that the greens oppose, and will use every tactic possible on the local, state and federal level to prevent, offshore drilling, regardless of what emanates from the Oval Office.

But then, there are many reasons to question the sincerity of Obama’s rhetoric in the first place.

Despite campaign rhetoric about supporting more drilling, last fall the Obama administration canceled drilling leases in Utah previously granted by President Bush.

The leases were denied for the flimsiest reasons, including possible damage to the habitat of the sage grouse and avoiding the dust and noise pollution from drilling.

Next, and most important, President Obama needs both Republican and moderate Democrat support to get a much sought after cap-and-trade bill through the Senate.

Right now, South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham is the only Republican interested in cap-and-trade. He wants to include increased oil and gas production and nuclear power.

President Obama no doubt hopes pro-oil drilling rhetoric will also help him win the support of other Senate swing votes, including Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and Mary “Louisiana Purchase” Landrieu, D-La.

Finally, while announcing his drilling proposal, Obama spent the bulk of his time talking about how we need to use less oil and wean ourselves off oil altogether.

He spent little time talking about producing more oil. He limited his remarks to a proposal merely for more oil “exploration” — not to increasing production and supply.

Talk is cheap and President Obama knows that. Let’s hope Senate Republicans and moderate Democrats know that too.

False promises about supporting oil drilling are bad enough, but it would be a travesty if they brought cap-and-trade.

• Milloy publishes JunkScience.com and is the author of “Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them.”

California AG tries to sabotage anti-cap-and-trade ballot initiative

California attorney general Jerry Brown is trying to sabotage the state anti-cap-and-trade ballot initiative by changing its name.

The ballot initiative would rollback the California cap-and-trade law (AB 32) pending a decline in state unemployment.

The original name of the ballot initiative was the:

California Jobs Initiative

The initiative’s new Brown-ized name is the:

Suspends Air Pollution Control Laws Requiring Major Polluters To Report And Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions That Cause Global Warming Until Unemployment Drops Below Specified Level For Full Year Initiative

Who wouldn’t vote for that?

The official announcement is below:

25 February 2010 – Update

Assemblyman Dan Logue, along with Congressman Tom McClintock and
Edward J. Costa INITIATIVE –

Received by Attorney General Office 25 November 2009- assigned number 09-0094 to the initiative titled California Jobs Initiative

On 03 February 2010, was renamed by Attorney General Jerry Brown to:

SUSPENDS AIR POLLUTION CONTROL LAWS REQUIRING MAJOR POLLUTERS TO REPORT AND REDUCE GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS THAT CAUSE GLOBAL WARMING UNTIL UNEMPLOYMENT DROPS BELOW SPECIFIED LEVEL FOR FULL YEAR. INITIATIVE STATUTE.

The INITIATIVE is to SUSPEND implementation of AB 32 (Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006) until unemployment in California drops below 5.5% for four consecutive quarters; it also prevents any agency from implementing any regulation of AB 32.

Negotiations are underway to modify the title authored by Attorney General Brown to more satisfactorily and truthfully reflect what the INITIATIVE really is intended.

To monitor progress of this INITIATIVE:
AG.CA.GOV/INITIATIVES/ACTIVEINDEX.PHP –
Select 2009 Initiatives and this is filed under 09-0094.

What would Reagan say about Obama?

Speaking before the Business Roundtable yesterday, President Obama denied that he was a socialist, stating:

“Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, I am an ardent believer in the free market… We have arrived at a juncture in our politics where reasonable efforts to update our regulations, or make basic investments in our future, are too often greeted with cries of ‘government takeover’ or even ‘socialism’…” [Emphasis added]

Now check out this excerpt from James Mann’s The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan: A History of the End of the Cold War (Viking 2009):

In a 1960 letter to Playboy publisher Hugh Hefner, who had published an article by [screenwriter and Communist Party member Dalton Trumbo] and defended his right to freedom of speech, Reagan recalled how his views [on communism] had been formed during [the late-1940s]. “I once thought exactly as you think… It took seven months of meeting communists and communist-influenced people across a table in almost daily sessions while pickets rioted in front of studio gates, homes were bombed and a great industry almost ground to a halt.” What bothered Reagan above all, he wrote, was the discovery that Communist Party members operated in secret and did not tell the truth. “I, like you, will defend the right of any American to openly practice and preach any political philospophy from monarchy to anarchy,” he told Hefner. “But this is not the case with regard to the communist. He is bound by party discipline to deny that he is a communist so that he can by subversion and stealth impose on an unwilling people the rule of the International Communist Party which is in fact the government of Soviet Russia.” Anticommunism for Reagan, then, was not primarily foreign policy or geopolitics; it was personal and moralistic in nature, driven by his experiences with people he considered sophisticated and devious, who did not abide by the small-town Midwestern values he had absorbed in his youth.

While Obama says he’s for the free market and that his policies are not socialist, all his actions, policies and proposal are in actuality anti-free market and socialist — e.g., the auto takeover, cap-and-trade, and nationalized health care to name just a few. Moreover, Obama surrounds himself with admitted socialists and communists, like Carol Browner, Van Jones to name just two.

So what would Reagan say about Obama?

Pachauri cancels US tour

IPCC chief Rajendra Pachauri announced yesterday that the IPCC was working on a strategy to better police the experts who produce its studies, reports the Wall Street Journal.

Pachauri said,

“We certainly don’t feel comfortable with the loss of even one iota of trust.”

So how many iotas are there in a sh**load, Raj?

Pachauri’s comments come in the wake of the cancellation of his high-profile visit to the US. He was scheduled to be a keynote speaker at the Wall Street Journal’s ECO-nomics conference (March 3-5 in Santa Barbara) and at the energy conference CERAWEEK 2010 (March 8-12 in Houston).

In addition to Climategate, Pachauri is laboring under revelations of financial conflicts of interest between his heading the IPCC and his private consultancies/board memberships/employment by renewable energy firms.

It could be, of course, that Pachauri simply couldn’t decide which of his custom-tailored suits to bring along on his trip — each of which costs about 10% of what the average worker in India makes.

Al Gore found! JunkScience gets exclusive photos of MIA alarmist

Missing global warming alarmist Al Gore was captured today in a pre-dawn raid on his remote tropical island hideout.

The former vice president had been missing since the Copenhagen global warming conference last December, when he erroneously dismissed the Climategate scandal as having to do with e-mails that were 10 years old.

Since Gore was last seen in public, Climategate has been followed by glacier-gate, rainforest-gate, sea-level gate, the resignation of UN climate chief Yvo de Boer, revelations of IPCC chief Rajendra  Pachauri’s financial conflicts-of-interest and admissions by Climategate’s Phil Jones of no global warming since 1995 and the existence of a possibly warmer-than-now Medieval Warm Period.

The exclusive images below show an emaciated Al Gore, badly in need of a haircut.

Ozone Al gets a cut courtesy of JunkScience.com.

Gore’s capture was eerily reminiscent of the capture of Imperial Japanese Army Sgt. Shoichi Yokoi, who hid in the jungle for 28 years after the 1944 Battle of Guam.

Sgt. Yokoi with escorts after capture.
Sgt. Yokoi gets a haircut after his capture.

Echoing Sgt. Yokoi’s famous comment upon his return to Japan in 1972, Gore told his capturers that,

“It is with much embarrassment that I have returned alive.”

Like Sgt. Yokoi, Gore apparently knew that the war was over, but he was too humiliated by defeat to be seen in public.

Sgt. Yokoi became a popular television personality upon his return to Japan and an advocate of austere living. There was no immediate word from Al Gore on whether he planned to follow Sgt. Yokoi’s footsteps in austerity, say, by giving up his Nashville estate (with an indoor swimming pool that costs $600 per month to heat), houseboat, frequent private jet and limousine travel, and lucrative business dealings with the Kleiner Perkins venture capital firm, Generation Investment Management, Google, Apple and Current TV.

But since Gore didn’t much care about his own carbon footprint during those pre-Climategate fanatasy days when “the science was settled and the debate was over,” there’s even less point now in sweating his green hypocrisy.