Last week’s exploding kids video was not a one-of-a-kind twisted green ad. Below is an ad from ACT-Responsible:
Time for a name change for Act-Responsible.
Last week’s exploding kids video was not a one-of-a-kind twisted green ad. Below is an ad from ACT-Responsible:
Time for a name change for Act-Responsible.
… Michael Mann is a witch.
The Washington Post today editorialized that the Virginia attorney general is on a witch hunt. [Click for Cuccinelli’s new investigative demand to the University of Virginia.] But even the Post is not too thrillled with Mann’s work, labeling it “not unacceptably poor.” At least now we’re all only debating how “poor” Mann’s hockey stick is.
The Post tries to exonerate Mann by claiming that he was cleared by the National Academy of Sciences and his employer, Penn State. Neither claim is true.
First, while the post refers to the prestigious National Academy of Sciences, it was actually a panel of the non-prestigious, for-hire National Research Council that actually reviewed Mann’s work. Below is the NRC’s conclusion about the hockey stick:
In response to a request from Congress, this report assesses the state of scientific efforts to reconstruct surface temperature records for the Earth over approximately the last 2,000 years and the implications of these efforts for our understanding of global climate change. Because widespread, reliable temperature records are only available for the last 150 years or so, scientists estimate temperatures in the more distant past by analyzing “proxy evidence,” which includes tree rings, corals, ocean and lake sediments, cave deposits, ice cores, boreholes, and glaciers. Starting in the late 1990s, scientists began using
sophisticated methods to combine proxy evidence from many different locations in an effort to estimate surface temperature changes during the last few hundred to few thousand years. This report concludes that large-scale surface temperature reconstructions are important tools in our understanding of global climate change that allows us to say, with a high level of confidence, that global mean surface temperature
was higher during the last few decades of the 20th century than during any comparable period during the preceding four centuries. Less confidence can be placed in large-scale surface temperature reconstructions for the period from A.D. 900 to 1600, although available proxy evidence indicates that temperatures at many, but not all, individual locations were higher during the past 25 years than during any period of comparable length since A.D. 900. Very little confidence can be assigned to statements concerning the hemispheric mean or global mean surface temperature prior to about A.D. 900, primarily because of the scarcity of precisely dated proxy evidence. [Emphasis added]
No part of that conclusion, of course, exonerates Mann or his hockey stick. Where in that conclusion, for example, does it say that the hockey stick appropriately deleted the Medieval Optimum or the Little Ice Age? Where in that conclusion does it say that Mann appropriately grafted late-20th century thermometer data onto the tree ring data (while deleting tree ring data not favorable to his case for warming) to give the impression of dramatic, manmade warming during the 20th century? For more on Mann and his hockey stick, check out JunkScience.com’s “Michael Mann: Defamed or defined by ‘Hide the decline’?”
As to Penn State’s “investigation” into Mann’s hijinks, click here to read about that whitewash.
By labeling Cuccinelli’s request for data from a state university a “witch hunt,” the Post is trying to liken the Virginia AG to Sen. Joe McCarthy. In that case, I’m all for such witch hunts, because Sen. McCarthy was correct. The U.S. Government was chock full of Soviet agents, communists, fellow travelers and other security risks during the mid-20th century. These “witches” did real damage to the U.S. and other nations around the world. Similarly, Mann and his ilk have done real damage to science and our educational system, while helping to advance the misanthropic “progressive” (read Marxist-socialist/neo-communist) political agenda.
The Red Menace is back — although it never really went away in the first place. We should all hope that Cuccinelli has the same fortitude, persistence and resilience as McCarthy.
[Note: Readers interested in Joe McCarthy and the supposed communist “witch hunts” should read M. Stanton Evans’ shocker “Blacklisted by History: The Untold Story of Senator joe McCarthy and His Fight Against America’s Enemies.” What you’ll learn is that “McCarthyism” isn’t what Joe McCarthy did to others; it;’s what the communists and their enablers did to him. Ann Coulter called Evans’ book “The greatest book since the Bible.” At this point in our nation’s history, though, I disagree. “Blacklisted by History” is the greatest book ever.]
In an interview with Politico.com about her damn-the-critics approach to greenhouse gas (GHG) regulation, EPA administrator Lisa Jackson said,
“The Clean Air Act is a tool. It’s not the optimal tool. But it can be used. And, in fact, I’m legally obligated now to use it. And so we’ve laid a lot of groundwork on that and we’ll continue.” [Emphasis added]
But EPA is not, in fact, legally obligated to regulate GHGs under the Clean Air Act.
In its March 2007 decision Massachusetts v. EPA, the Supreme Court ruled only that the EPA may — not that it had to — regulate GHGs. And the Bush administration subsequently declined to regulate GHGs.
It wasn’t until December 2009 that the Obama EPA got around to declaring greenhouse gases to be a threat to the public welfare (the so-called “endangerment” finding), an optional pronouncement that enabled the EPA to move toward regulating greenhouse gases.
But just as the EPA opted to make the endangerment finding, it could opt to reverse it, thereby relieving the agency of any obligation to regulate GHGs under the Clean Air Act.
Lisa Jackson knows full well that the EPA does not have to regulate GHGs, yet she plays to the media like her hands are tied to following an economically-suicidal and environmentally-futile course.
By Steve Milloy
The Gazette (Cedar Rapids, IA), October 3, 2010
It’s terrific that Sen. Chuck Grassley wants to help out Iowa’s wind industry, but does he have to sell out the rest of the state in the process?
Last week, Sen. Grassley co-sponsored a bill (S.3813) to establish a national renewable electricity standard (RES), legislation that Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) has indicated he would try to make the consolation prize in this Congress’ final lame duck-clash over global warming regulation.
Despite his co-sponsorship, Sen. Grassley is rightly wary of Sen. Reid’s gambit and told the media that unless more than a handful of Republicans also sign on to the bill, “I’m not going to be a part of one or two Republicans, get 60 votes, so they can have a partisan victory.”
What is RES and why should Sen. Grassley not go down the RES road at all?
An RES would require that electric utilities generate a set percentage of their power from so-called “renewable” power sources, like solar and wind, by a certain date. The disastrous-for-House-Democrats Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill passed in June 2009, for example, would require that utilities generate 20 percent of their power from renewables by the year 2020. S. 3813 would reduce the Waxman-Markey standard to 15 percent.
But even a 15 percent RES would be quite the monumental challenge given that solar and wind power provide less than 2 percent of current electricity generation and require massive subsidies to do so. According to the Department of Energy, solar and wind are each subsidized at a rate 55 times that of coal, 97 times that of natural gas and 15 times that of nuclear power.
Solar panels and windmills aside, it’s only the taxpayer wallet that makes these forms of energy “renewable.”
But even cost is not the main reason for rejecting the arbitrary targets and deadlines of a national RES.
Imagine a utility that generates 100 percent of the electricity it sells by burning coal or natural gas. Impose the S. 3813 RES standard on that utility and, all of a sudden, only a maximum of 85 percent of its electricity can be generated by fossil fuels. In other words, the utility’s use of fossil fuels has been capped — the result would be skyrocketing energy prices.
Since the passage of the Waxman-Markey bill, Americans have been up in arms against cap-and-trade. As Sen. Grassley recently observed “If we pass cap and trade we’d export all of our jobs, manufacturing jobs to China.”
But the same reasons for opposing cap-and-trade can and ought to be applied to RES, which ought to be labeled as calling cap-and-subsidize.
Under cap-and-trade, electric utilities would be compensated for higher generation costs by charging consumers more for electricity and by selling billions of dollars of carbon credits, which they received for free courtesy of taxpayers. Under RES, electric utilities would be similarly compensated for higher generation costs, courtesy of over-charged consumers and untold billions in taxpayer subsidies.
So the difference between RES and cap-and-trade is merely a change in form, not a change in substance of an economy-killing consumer/taxpayer rip-off.
None of this is to dissuade Sen. Grassley from trying to help Iowa’s wind industry, which is the second largest in the U.S. – but that path forward is much different than a job- and economy-killing cap on fossil fuel use.
The first step forward for wind entrepreneurs is to push for tax and regulatory policies that will restart economic growth. A growing economy requires more energy, thus enlarging the opportunities for renewable technologies. Next consumers who value renewable electricity should be allowed — not forced — to purchase it at whatever price the market will bear.
The renewables industry should also be encouraged to look for niches where its technologies are competitive with conventional energy technologies. Finally, like all other business enterprises, the renewable energy businesses should look for efficiencies that make its products more cost competitive.
Many in the renewable energy sector have gotten lazy and have decided that hiring lobbyists is easier than innovating and competing. Sen. Grassley should work to help the latter and to discourage the former.
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).
Sony and Kyocera Mita are no longer listed as sponsors of the violence-advocating 10:10 climate group. (h/t Paul Chesser)
Click here to see the letter we sent the companies last Friday.
In addition to Sony and Kyocera leaving 10:10, Caterpillar, ConocoPhillips, Deere & Co., Xerox and Marsh & McClennan have abandoned the U.S. Climate Action Partnership (USCAP).
Is corporate support for the green agenda melting faster than the Arctic ice cap?
This video from the 10:10 climate activist group speaks for itself. Watch it and pass it around before YouTube pulls it down.
Also, note that Sony and Kyocera Mita, among other corporations, are sponsors of the 10:10.
This video from the 10:10 climate activist group speaks for itself. Watch it and pass it around before YouTube pulls it down.
Also, note that Sony and Kyocera Mita, among other corporations, are sponsors of the 10:10.
By Steve Milloy
September 28, 2010, The Washington Times
Just who are the Republicans against environmental protection? That’s the intriguing question posed by the activist group that calls itself Republicans for Environmental Protection (REP).
At first glance, REP violates in spades former California state Republican Party Chairman Gaylord Parkinson’s Eleventh Commandment, later adopted by Ronald Reagan: “Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican.” REP implicitly and sanctimoniously defames all Republicans – or at least the vast majority who haven’t signed on to its dubious agenda.
REP formed in 1995 when a network of anti-development, nominally Republican activists gelled to fight the new Republican-controlled Congress’ effort at regulatory reform, including the oft-abused Endangered Species Act (ESA).
So as Contract With America Republicans tried to get a meaningful grip on the alphabet soup of laws and regulations empowering federal agencies to be impervious to sound science, cost-benefit-analysis and even common sense, REP was helping Clinton administration EPA chief Carol M. Browner portray the newly empowered congressional Republicans as pillagers of the Earth and threats to the public health.
In that landmark battle of the 104th Congress, REP actions were indistinguishable from those of any radical environmental group. The consequences can be seen today in the greens’ use of the ESA-protected snail darter to block much-needed water from farmers in California’s Central Valley.
Fast-forward to the current 111th Congress, and the REP is again working against the interests of Republicans and America.
REP supported the Waxman-Markey “cap-and-trade” bill, which squeaked by in the House, 219-212. Eight REP-applauded Republicans helped Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi pass the bill, including REP honorary board members Reps. Michael N. Castle of Delaware and Mark Steven Kirk of Illinois. And what did REP say about Republicans who opposed Waxman-Markey?
Reps. Joe Barton of Texas, John Shimkus of Illinois and Fred Upton of Michigan were given “environmental harm demerits” for their supposed “failure to engage constructively in the committee debate about climate legislation.” No word from REP on the “constructiveness” of Mrs. Pelosi inserting a 300-page amendment in the bill at 3 a.m. the day of the final vote.
REP slammed Reps. Mike Pence of Indiana, Michele Bachmann of Minnesota and John A. Boehner of Ohio “for their efforts to poison and polarize the debate on energy and climate legislation.” REP doesn’t just speak ill of fellow Republicans – it demonizes them.
On the Senate side, REP slammed South Carolina’s Jim DeMint for the audacity of trying to bar the Department of the Interior from reducing water allocations to the aforementioned California farmers. Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski was hit for blocking efforts to regulate carbon dioxide because of polar bears. Oklahoma’s Tom Coburn got a demerit for opposing a 2009 Obama administration land grab.
Though Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Susan Collins of Maine earned “environmental leadership credits” for supporting carbon caps, one can only imagine the insults they will get from REP because Mr. Graham single-handedly torpedoed the Kerry-Graham-Lieberman cap-and-trade bill by withdrawing his co-sponsorship, and Mrs. Collins voted to block EPA’s regulation of greenhouse gases. REP honorary board member Sen. John McCain may very well be defrocked for vocally opposing efforts to ram through cap-and-trade.
So it appears that any Republican who dares to oppose the radical environmentalist agenda of total government control over energy use and property is a Republican Against the Environment.
Though REP members probably aren’t the same sort of hard-core Marxist-socialists who make up the radical environmental movement, they appear at the very least to be severely misguided highbrows (honorary board member Theodore Roosevelt IV comes to mind) who think the government ought to protect the natural world from the plundering plebeians – and no taxpayer/consumer expense is too great to bear and no individual freedom or constitutional principle is too sacred to sacrifice in that cause.
Giving REP the benefit of the doubt about Marxist-socialism, perhaps it would consider re-forming as Democrats for Freedom and Capitalism. That would solve several very obvious problemsimmediately, including this one: Because environmental protection is essentially a luxury affordable only by wealthy nations, as the Obamacrats impoverish America with high taxes, outlandish spending and more economy-killing regulations, they also will wind up, ironically, hurting the very environment about which they claim to care so much.
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).
By Steve Milloy
September 27, 2010, Washington Times
Just who are the Republicans against environmental protection? That’s the intriguing question posed by the activist group that calls itself Republicans for Environmental Protection (REP).
At first glance, REP violates in spades former California state Republican Party Chairman Gaylord Parkinson’s Eleventh Commandment, later adopted by Ronald Reagan: “Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican.” REP implicitly and sanctimoniously defames all Republicans – or at least the vast majority who haven’t signed on to its dubious agenda.
REP formed in 1995 when a network of anti-development, nominally Republican activists gelled to fight the new Republican-controlled Congress’ effort at regulatory reform, including the oft-abused Endangered Species Act (ESA).
So as Contract With America Republicans tried to get a meaningful grip on the alphabet soup of laws and regulations empowering federal agencies to be impervious to sound science, cost-benefit-analysis and even common sense, REP was helping Clinton administration EPA chief Carol M. Browner portray the newly empowered congressional Republicans as pillagers of the Earth and threats to the public health.
In that landmark battle of the 104th Congress, REP actions were indistinguishable from those of any radical environmental group. The consequences can be seen today in the greens’ use of the ESA-protected snail darter to block much-needed water from farmers in California’s Central Valley.
Fast-forward to the current 111th Congress, and the REP is again working against the interests of Republicans and America.
REP supported the Waxman-Markey “cap-and-trade” bill, which squeaked by in the House, 219-212. Eight REP-applauded Republicans helped Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi pass the bill, including REP honorary board members Reps. Michael N. Castle of Delaware and Mark Steven Kirk of Illinois. And what did REP say about Republicans who opposed Waxman-Markey?
Reps. Joe Barton of Texas, John Shimkus of Illinois and Fred Upton of Michigan were given “environmental harm demerits” for their supposed “failure to engage constructively in the committee debate about climate legislation.” No word from REP on the “constructiveness” of Mrs. Pelosi inserting a 300-page amendment in the bill at 3 a.m. the day of the final vote.
REP slammed Reps. Mike Pence of Indiana, Michele Bachmann of Minnesota and John A. Boehner of Ohio “for their efforts to poison and polarize the debate on energy and climate legislation.” REP doesn’t just speak ill of fellow Republicans – it demonizes them.
On the Senate side, REP slammed South Carolina’s Jim DeMint for the audacity of trying to bar the Department of the Interior from reducing water allocations to the aforementioned California farmers. Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski was hit for blocking efforts to regulate carbon dioxide because of polar bears. Oklahoma’s Tom Coburn got a demerit for opposing a 2009 Obama administration land grab.
Though Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Susan Collins of Maine earned “environmental leadership credits” for supporting carbon caps, one can only imagine the insults they will get from REP because Mr. Graham single-handedly torpedoed the Kerry-Graham-Lieberman cap-and-trade bill by withdrawing his co-sponsorship, and Mrs. Collins voted to block EPA’s regulation of greenhouse gases. REP honorary board member Sen. John McCain may very well be defrocked for vocally opposing efforts to ram through cap-and-trade.
So it appears that any Republican who dares to oppose the radical environmentalist agenda of total government control over energy use and property is a Republican Against the Environment.
Though REP members probably aren’t the same sort of hard-core Marxist-socialists who make up the radical environmental movement, they appear at the very least to be severely misguided highbrows (honorary board member Theodore Roosevelt IV comes to mind) who think the government ought to protect the natural world from the plundering plebeians – and no taxpayer/consumer expense is too great to bear and no individual freedom or constitutional principle is too sacred to sacrifice in that cause.
Giving REP the benefit of the doubt about Marxist-socialism, perhaps it would consider re-forming as Democrats for Freedom and Capitalism. That would solve several very obvious problemsimmediately, including this one: Because environmental protection is essentially a luxury affordable only by wealthy nations, as the Obamacrats impoverish America with high taxes, outlandish spending and more economy-killing regulations, they also will wind up, ironically, hurting the very environment about which they claim to care so much.
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).
By Steve Milloy
Kiowa County Signal, September 22, 2010
Will Sam Brownback’s last act as a senator be to sellout Kansas and the rest of America on capping greenhouse gas emissions?
Sen. Brownback joined Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) and several other senators earlier this week in introducing a bill to establish a national renewable electricity standard (RES), which Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) has indicated he would try to make the consolation prize in this Congress’ final lame duck-clash over global warming regulation.
Sen. Brownback called RES a common-sense energy policy and said, “the beauty of this is it is not cap and trade.”
What is RES and why should Sen. Brownback not let an RES bill stain his senatorial legacy?
An RES would require that electric utilities generate a set percentage of their power from so-called “renewable” power sources, like solar and wind, by a certain date. The Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill, which was disastrous-for-House-Democrats, passed in June 2009 and would, for example, require that utilities generate 20 percent of their power from renewables by the year 2020. Sen. Bingaman’s bill would reduce the Waxman-Markey standard to 15 percent as per Sen. Brownback’s request.
But even a 15 percent RES would be quite the monumental challenge given that solar and wind power provide less than 2 percent of current electricity generation and require massive subsidies to do even that much. According to the Department of Energy, solar and wind are each subsidized at a rate 55 times that of coal, 97 times that of natural gas and 15 times that of nuclear power. Solar panels and windmills aside, it’s only the taxpayer wallet that makes these forms of energy “renewable.”
But cost is not the main reason for rejecting the arbitrary targets and deadlines of a national RES.
Imagine a utility that generates 100 percent of the electricity it sells by burning coal or natural gas . Impose the Bingaman-Brownback RES standard on that utility and, all of a sudden, only a maximum of 85 percent of its electricity can be generated by fossil fuels. In other words, the utility’s use of fossil fuels has been capped.
Since the passage of the Waxman-Markey bill, Americans have been up in arms against cap-and-trade. But the same reasons for opposing cap-and-trade can, and ought, to be applied to RES, which should be labeled “cap-and-subsidize.”
Under cap-and-trade, electric utilities would be compensated for higher generation costs by charging consumers more for electricity and by selling billions of dollars of carbon credits, received for free courtesy of taxpayers. Under RES, electric utilities would be similarly compensated for higher generation costs, courtesy of over-charged consumers and untold billions in taxpayer subsidies. So the difference between RES and cap-and-trade is merely a change in form, not a change in substance of an economy-killing consumer/taxpayer rip-off.
Sen. Brownback hasn’t yet figured out that the effort to regulate greenhouse gases is not spurred by good faith intentions to protect the environment as much as it is spurred by the left-wing political agenda to increase government control over the U.S. economy through energy rationing.
It is ironic that just as Kansas succeeds in beating back the radical green agenda — witness the likely permitting this year of the controversial Sunflower coal-fired power plant in southwest Kansas — Sen. Brownback would surrender the state and nation to the agenda of the Obama administration’s admitted socialists, energy czar Carol Browner and former green jobs czar Van Jones.
America has rightly rejected cap-and-trade and its associated political agenda. Sen. Brownback should too; and if he returns to Kansas as governor, he needs to leave such bad green ideas in Washington, D.C.
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).
Tell Sen. Brownback that an RES is a bad idea and he’s being played for a sucker by Harry Reid.
The White House released a report entitled “100 Recovery Act Projects That Are Changing America” to counter criticism of the stimulus as a failure. Vice President Joe Biden said,
“With Recovery Act projects like these, we’re starting to turn the page on a decade of failed economic policies and rebuild our economy on a new foundation that creates good middle class jobs for American families.”
And the Vice President is spot on. The Recovery Act has created some great jobs.
The report covers some $7.5 billion spent to create about 27,400 jobs — as best as can be gleaned from the report, including giving the projects the benefit of doubt when the jobs figures are unclear.
That works out to about $273,723 per job.
The top ten egregious projects described in the report are:
Applying the outrageous average cost/job for these 100 projects to the $787 billion stimulus plan means that the Recovery Act should have produced 2.88 million jobs. However since the Recovery Act, we’ve actually lost about 2.5 million jobs.
Recovery Act? Indeed. The nomenclature is reminiscent of Chairman Mao’s own “recovery” program — the Great Leap Forward.
On the bright side, New York Times film critic Neil Genzlinger reviewed the new DDT-malaria documentary “3 Billion and Counting” on the morning of the film’s premier in New York City.
On the less bright side, Genzlinger was decidedly less than impressed by the film’s message:
As for the argument, it’s not exactly new: advocates have been speaking out in support of increased DDT use for a decade, contending that its negative effects were exaggerated or misrepresented when it was banned by the United States in 1972 and that in any case they are outweighed by the millions of deaths caused by malaria.
No, it’s not news that millions of poor Africans (mostly children under 5) continue to die preventable deaths. That’s been going on for decades — ever since the New York Times helped advocate for DDT to be banned in the 1960s. The Times was even warned about the coming “genocide” in 1969 letters-to-the-editor by Thomas H. Jukes.
Then again, the Holocaust isn’t news either, yet when Genzlinger reviewed “Verdict on Auschwitz” in 2007, he found that film to be “emotionally draining.”
AIDS has been around since the early 1980s, but an HBO show about AIDS in Africa was “compelling.” That show’s producer told Genzlinger,
“Hopefully [the show] makes people who are maybe in more fortunate positions try to make a difference in whatever way they can. Even if they just think about [AIDS in Africa], that in itself is a significant thing.”
Apparently, the same consideration is not merited for the millions who have already died and will continue to die from malaria in Africa.
Genzlinger credited CNN’s “Planet in Peril” with being “thought-provoking” for showing how the introduction of the wolf into Yellowstone National Park had affected the ecosystem. But millions of kids allowed to die preventable deaths? Bo-ring.