Wake Up and Smell the Eucalyptus

Every once in a while, it's helpful to take a look at how conservatism (or at least, "not liberalism") is faring outside the U.S. And as we've seen, Europe is having to seriously rethink its whole welfare state thing. And happily, some of the people who speak English (kind of) are reaching similar conclusions.

I speak in this case of Australia, which seems to have begun the rightward shift the mother country apparently still can't manage. Australia's political history has been a rough one for conservatives. There's a strong Labor Party, which means lots of big-government boondoggles--it's more than flirted with socialized medicine and other schemes. And a few years back, Canberra enacted a stringent nationwide gun-control measure, whose "success" has been mixed at best.

But things are changing in the land down under. In national elections this September, the Liberal Party (which is actually fairly right-leaning, because they're funky in their terminology like that) gave Labor the boot, with party leader Tony Abbott taking over as prime minister. A pro-life Catholic, Oxford-educated, with a long history in business and government, Abbott campaigned on a platform of reducing bloated bureaucracy and putting fiscal responsibility ahead of vague international commitments to "go green." Perhaps to the surprise of the political elite, both in the capital and abroad, the new executive proceeded to do just that, boosted by popular dissatisfaction with high taxes (including a hefty carbon tax) and the resulting sluggish economy. Within a few weeks of taking office, Abbott dissolved the so-called Climate Commission and put in motion plans to end funding of the Clean Energy Finance Corporation.

Mind you, the government hasn't flatly turned away from environmentalism. There's still a Department of the Environment which handles such issues, and the CEFC still exists. What Abbott did was to a) streamline the central government, just as he said he would, and b) send the message that renewable energy isn't bad, but it needs to stand on its own two feet. Market-oriented, delivering on his promises, making all the bureaucrats and activists mad....must be nice.

But this past week, the government went even further in the environmental field. With a UN conference on global warming global cooling climate change about to begin, the Australians announced that, while they would honor their previous commitments, whatever new taxation or regulatory proposals came out of the meeting, they would not be taking part. Even more encouraging was the language in which the rejection was issued. The cabinet ministers explicitly stated they would not involve themselves in any kind of "socialism masquerading as environmentalism."

That's kind of a big deal. If the government had simply said it couldn't comply at this time, however much it might agree with the principles, that wouldn't be very attention-getting. But to use the sort of language that gets people over here condemned as Tea Party bomb-throwers says a lot. There's being conservative in your talk and being conservative in your actions, and while the latter is what counts, the former is very reassuring in its own way.

This is, of course, only one of a whole set of issues Abbott and his new government have to deal with. Bringing down taxation is a major point of debate, and the country is having a big debt-control debate of its own. And naturally, the Labor hacks are doing their best to block reform. So it remains to be seen how much progress Aussie conservatives will make. But the signs are good, especially with Abbott's leadership. Socially and fiscally conservative, highly educated, with a winning track record and a proven willingness to take on the Left--it's early, but it's promising thus far.

Which brings me to my last point. If all goes well, should we look into forging some birth records to show that he, too, was born in a Hawaii hospital?

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Popular Science Does Right Thing For Wrong Reason

Popular Science did something interesting the other day. From out of the blue, they announced that they would no longer allow reader comments on their articles. Their reasoning in the big picture sense is that allowing such comments is “bad for science.” I agree with that and with what they’ve done... though they also wrongly and regrettably politicized their decision. Ultimately, I think this will be the beginning of a trend. Here’s why.

What Popular Science said (in a big picture sort of way) was that science requires a certain degree of rigor. It requires the creation of a theory, the advent of some testing procedure that lets you test the theory, and then a peer review process whereby people who actually know what they are talking about examine what has been proposed and offered and render some conclusion... pro or con.

Popular Science views itself as part of this process by disseminating the latest theories and ideas to the public in a readable way. The idea is to educate the public about the current state of science. What is happening in their comments section, however, interferes with that mission. Indeed, what they see happening is that gangs of morons show up in their comment section and attack their articles with lies, ignorance and politicized myths. The result is that people who come to them to be informed leave confused with bad facts, bad theories and wrong beliefs. In effect, the public is de-enlightened.

I also suspect, though they didn’t say this, that they are having a hard time getting people to write articles for the public knowing that no matter what they write, they will be savaged by mouth breathers. That’s bad for science too if scientists withdraw from the public.

So was this a good decision or a bad one? Well, on the one hand, I tend to think that valid theories need to be able to stand up to criticism. That would seem to make this a bad decision. But hold on... “Criticism” implies certain things. For one thing, it implies that the criticism is “informed” rather than ignorant. Ignorant criticism is merely disruptive. It is the equivalent of something screaming “nuh uh”. It makes people waste their time talking about things that are not genuinely in dispute or not even relevant. It also wrongly implies some genuine dispute where there isn’t one.

Moreover, the concept of “criticism” assumes a level of good faith. That good faith at a minimum requires (1) not repeating discredited arguments over and over, (2) admitting when your criticism has been defeated, (3) not making assertions without some basis in fact or logic, and (4) staying on the topic rather than trying to divert the topic.

The problem with the comments at places like Popular Science (and many more) is that the “criticism” doesn’t meet this basic standard. The people making these comments repeat the same discredited arguments over and over, no matter how many times their claims have been debunked. They never provide any evidence to support their claims. They refuse to admit when they are wrong. Rather than addressing the issue at hand, they try to redefine the issue to shift the debate to other areas. And they are hostile, insulting, and they try to shout down their opponents.

In effect, they are hecklers, not critics.

Because of this, I reject the claim that Popular Science is trying to stifle “criticism.” They are trying to stifle propaganda... propaganda that misleads people who don’t know better and who come to the magazine to be informed. I have no problem with that. And make no mistake, these people are doing this to every single topic Popular Science discusses, be it discussions of climate change, evolution, drones, fracking, missile defense, vaccines, etc. – even discussions of space turn into environmental diatribes from the left and attacks on the Islamofication of NASA on the right. Essentially, both fringe left and fringe right have polluted their comment section with utterly politicized nonsense.

Hence, I find myself applauding the move, and I think others will follow suit because this same problem exists all over the web. Articles on films turn into anti-liberal Hollywood diatribes (or personal attacks on actors). Articles on law get filled with attacks on lawyers and utterly false assertions of law. Articles on medicine turn into diatribes for or against Obamacare. Business articles turn into OWS or anti-Fed rants. It’s a mess. And few have found a way to deal with it. Some have tried requiring people to register. Others even require the submission of a credit card to open an account. Some use heavy moderation. But none of those things work very well.

For this reason, I suspect that websites that are dedicated to educating people about topics that require some level of expertise, e.g. legal advice, financial advice, tax advice, science, etc., will gradually eliminate comments and will instead allow reader input only through the submission of letters to the editor or by letting people with counter-ideas submit their own articles for review... both of which can be vetted for what value they add to the debate.

Yeah, it’s elitist, but sadly, it’s necessary.

(Note that this will not stop genuine criticism as genuine critics, i.e. the kind who can actually support their criticism, tend to submit their own articles for publication or run their own websites debunking false science, medicine, law, etc. What this stops are the hecklers who make debate impossible.)

Now, all that said, Popular Science does actually deserve a lot of criticism. Why? Because they politicized themselves. Making the point that the comments were a fountain of idiocy that was misinforming people was a valid reason to do this... but they didn’t stop with that. Instead, they said this:

“A politically motivated, decades-long war on expertise has eroded the popular consensus on a wide variety of scientifically validated topics. Everything, from evolution to the origins of climate change, is mistakenly up for grabs again.”

Uh, wrong. Science is not about “popular consensus”.... science is about theory and proof. In fact, if we were to believe that science is about “popular consensus,” then banning the comments would be the anti-science move since it would prevent people from shaping that “popular consensus.” Moreover, “the origins of climate change” are not subject to a consensus and a magazine dedicated to the state of science should realize that. In fact, this is one of the most disputed topics in science since... well, ever.

Unfortunately, this betrays Popular Science’s real motive. Rather than being a smart decision to protect science from hecklers, this tells us that all they really wanted was to stifle dissent to their politicized theories. That tells me that Popular Science must be viewed as politicized and should not be trusted.

So ultimately, my conclusion is this. In a big picture sense, this is a smart and necessary decision and I think this will spread. But Popular Science’s real motive was despicably political, and for that, they deserve scorn and to lose our trust.

Thoughts?

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Requiem For A Theory

"The science is was settled."
Global Warming, c. 1985-2013

This year will be remembered as the one in which the wheels finally came off AGW. Not scientifically--as you all know, that happened a long time ago--but in terms of the public propping-up it's been relying on. Even its allies are starting to abandon it. Feel free to celebrate.

Again, this collapse has been in the making for a couple of years now. It's been pretty much an open secret for a while that the global temperature rise, whatever consensus it might have had, has been stalled for a decade or more, and an increasing number of scientists have begun to publicly speculate on why reality got the models wrong. Solar activity, fluctuating weather patterns, imperfect predictions--confident as the proponents continued to sound officially, you could tell they were getting worried.

But more recently, the news has gotten even worse. Last week, a leaked report from those high priests of Saving The World (tm), the IPCC, flatly admitted that their forecasts of temperature increase were, to put it politely, flat busted. Not only that, they also conceded that much of the current evidence--such as an increase in Antarctic sea ice--would lead one in the opposite direction. They even acknowledged, for the first time, the so-called Medieval Warm Period, which had high global temperatures without the burning of fossil fuels. Now mind you, they wouldn't come right out and admit they were full of crap. In fact, they claimed they were more certain than ever that global warming was real, that it was man-made, and that it would continue to get worse.

Thing is, a lot of scientists are now coming flat out and saying they don't buy it. One high-ranking climatologist called the report's conclusions "incomprehensible" while another described it as a lesson in how not to use the scientific method. And these weren't even the long-term skeptics. The proponents, displaying their usual penchant for classy and above-board debate, replied to these comments by saying the critics should be murdered by their children to defend the future generation, or something.

Meanwhile, contrary evidence from other sources continues to pile up. Astronomers have noted, after observing sunspots and the like, that solar activity is at a 100-year low, provoking concerns from a few quarters that we might actually be heading into another "Little Ice Age." Incidentally, computer models couldn't even get this right--they had been predicting that 2013 would be a peak year for such activity.

Now, none of this is particularly new or surprising, at least here. But as with the scientists mentioned above, it's worth noting how many of AGW's defenders are now beginning to, if not bail outright, then at least dial back their support for it. Governments in particular are hopping off the bandwagon: the Czech Republic is cutting all stimulus funds for renewable energy from this year's budget, while Germany, despite its continuing to pay official lip service to green power and the like, is quietly closing down a number of its solar and wind plants. Australia, having welcomed a new Conservative government, has gone even further and abolished one of its climate agencies.

I think we're about at the point where we can declare victory in the climate-change battle. It'll be a few years before the IPCC and other green activists realize their defeat (and of course they'll never admit it), but there's really no way they can come back from this, in the sense that they won't be able to advocate further controls on the economy in the name of AGW. It's all but over. So give yourself a high-five.

Just remember, they'll probably come up with something else to push. But until then.

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Logic v. Global Warming

We all know that Global Warming in a hoax. . . well, most of us know. There are some gullible people out there, particularly in Europe. But the rest of us know. Even the left knows, I think, they just keep the theory going because it’s useful. Anyway, that’s not the point... stop distracting me!... the point is that logic tells us the theory is garbage.

Global warming is based on a simple idea: mankind puts carbon in the air when they do things the left doesn’t like, like running a factory, driving a car, or raising flatulent cows.... no, I’m not kidding about the cows. This carbon then sits in the air like a blanket and keeps all the heat from leaving our planet. That causes the planet to become warmer which causes bullying... or something.

To repeat, the theory is simple: carbon causes heat retention.

So riddle me this...

According to “federal scientists” at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Earth has hit a milestone. The amount of carbon in our atmosphere has reached a level it hasn’t been in millions of years – 400 parts per million. But if carbon causes heat retention and we’ve never had more carbon in the air, then why has it been getting colder for a decade now? LOGIC tells us that this disproves the theory doesn’t it?

Not enough? Ok, try this.

The same scientists tell us that the last time the level of carbon was at this level was 2 million years ago during the Pleistocene Era. And back then, “It was much warmer than it is today. There were forests in Greenland. Sea level was higher, between 33 to 66 feet.” Interesting. So it was a lot hotter, but the carbon level was where it is now. Hmm. Doesn’t that disprove the causation as well? After all, shouldn’t causation always cause the same effect... seeing as how it is causation? Apparently not. Apparently causation now means, “kind of like each other around the same times... sometimes.” Interestingly, that used to be called “correlation” and that’s evidence of NOTcausation.

Anyway, I know that many of you are now thinking, “Wait a minute, if it was this carbony warm before and all these species survived from then to now, what’s the danger now?” Well, that’s a good point. In fact, it’s hard to see how all these species will die off if they made it through an ice age that took out Greenland and dropped the water level by between 33 and 66 feet. . . an oh so precise measurement. . . and then turned around and got warm again back to the nice toasty way things used to be in the gold age of Pleistocene. How could a couple degrees hurt anything?

Well, Penn State’s disgraced Climategate participant Michael Mann has an answer. See, animals can indeed adopt to changes in temperature, but not if the change is too fast. “If the carbon dioxide levels go up 100 parts per million over a thousands or millions of years, plants and animals can adapt. But that can’t be done at the speed it is now happening.” Right. Makes total sense. Animals can adapt to a couple degree change every million years or so, but not anything quicker than that. Got it. Oh, by the way, did you know that the average temperature in Colorado during the Winter is 28 degrees. During the summer it’s 65 degrees. That’s a difference of 37 degrees. Strangely, nobody dies off here between the seasons. Nope. I wonder why? Perhaps animals have a mechanism that lets them average their temperatures during the years? Or maybe, just maybe, animals are more adaptive than Mann gives them credit for being?

Anyway, Mann and his Climatecult claim that we are raising temperatures about 2 degrees every hundred years. Seeing as how animals in Colorado can take at least a 37 degree change in temperature, I’ll guess we’ll find out soon enough if Mann is right. . . say, in 2,400 years or so. Maybe in the meantime, Mann and his cult can learn to do science rather than politics?

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Science and Liberalism

Since many of us have just endured another interminable period of very cold weather, I thought this would be a good time to bring up global warming. And no, that's not really fair, but shut up. But also, I want to talk about the way in which the Left "does" science, and why it's so bad.

Where are we on the whole global warming/climate change/dead polar bears crisis? Well, as far as the broad outlines are concerned, there's not a lot I can tell you that you don't already know. It's early April and I'm still shivering in my long-sleeve shirts, so the temperature's not going up and up and up; impartial scientific measurements continue to show a plateau in global temps for the past decade or so; and as far as the public goes, belief in the reality and importance of global warming continues to remain steady or even decline somewhat, depending on who you talk to.

Likewise, although there has been some weakening in a few quarters, I'm sure I don't need to tell you that the general response from the Left to all this has been to double down. In particular, many climatologists and commentators like to claim that a significant cold snap is itself proof of the reality of global warming. As an example, a senior editor from Time, which surprisingly is still in business, explained the cold wave a couple weeks ago by saying that "the Arctic is warming faster than elsewhere" and this is causing a changing "temperature differential" that results in rapid changes of the weather, so it's not just "global warming" but "global weirding."

Uh....okay. First of all, that makes no sense. Second, it is nonetheless possible that changes associated with global warming, assuming it actually is happening, could cause a short-term cooling effect in some areas. (Although not on the ridiculous scale of The Day After Tomorrow.) Third, why am I even talking about this? Isn't it a given by now that liberals will just make up the rules of global warming or whatever they're calling it this week to keep pushing environmentalism? Well, yes it is, because that's liberals for you, but it also has a lot to do with some differing interpretations of science.

Now by "interpretations," I don't mean whether result X should be considered scientific. No, I'm talking about what it means for something to be considered science. There's actually a very deep philosophy about this, which I can't do much justice to, but in summary, there are a couple different schools of thought, generally known as verification and falsification. According to the former, science consists only of that which can be proven true (or verified), while falsification says it only consists of that which can be proven, well, false. I know it sounds like there's no difference between them, but there kinda is, and falsification is the one conservatives should go with.

Again, I can't explain why this is so without making myself fall asleep, but here's the bottom line: Proving something false (or ultimately failing to do so) requires a heck of a lot more rigor than does an effort to prove something true. The most famous example is that of swans. If you go with verification to prove the statement "All swans are white," all you have to do is find some swans, observe that they're all white, extrapolate to the general population, and voila! Statement proven. To prove it through falsification, though, you have to go out and find a swan that isn't white (there are, but they're in Australia or something).

Now what does this have to do with liberals and conservatives? Well, I'm not saying that each group adheres to one side alone, because most people don't actively think about this. But verification, with its looser standards, leaves a lot more room for pseudoscience and circular logic--the sort of thing that the Left specializes in. Consider AGW. At the very least, we can find a lot of data that suggests the earth is getting warmer, right? And that there's a connection between that and rising carbon dioxide levels, right? Boom! Theory verified. And this can apply to lots of theories. Evidence that rich capitalists are exploiting the poor? Boom! Marxism verified!

And the beauty of this approach is that non-evidence or contrary evidence is a lot easier to shoehorn into a verification of sorts. Rather than throw out your favorite theory altogether, you only have to modify it slightly. Thus AGW suddenly becomes responsible for global cooling AND global warming. Evidence of people acting for reasons having nothing to do with economics isn't evidence that Marxism was wrong, it's merely an instance of "false consciousness." And so on.

Now like I said, verification, falsification, etc. aren't terms you run across in everyday life. And most liberals, like most conservatives, probably aren't aware of how all this works. So why bring it up? Well, I think it's important not to underestimate the Left. Although liberal thinking is deeply flawed, there is some structure to it, and to challenge it, we need to understand it. And there's a lot of truth in the charge that radical environmentalism and other "causes" are just updated versions of old-line Marxism. Ideas come and go, but the assumptions that give rise to them haven't. To refute liberals, you can't just disprove individual claims, you have to get at why they came up with them in the first place.

Then again, pointing out it's really freaking cold outside isn't half bad if you're short on time.

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Baby, It’s Cold Outside

Global Warming is failing. Yep. Just as Marxism slammed into human nature without a helmet and got decapitated, Global Warming Enthusiasts are finding that reality can be harder to manipulate than they hoped. And it’s been a bad year or two for them. Observe:

You’d kind of have to be an idiot not to realize that the biggest determinant of the temperature on our planet would be the sun. That is not only the primary source of warmth on our planet. . . it’s the only source. Moreover, we know that the sun does not put out a constant heat. This means that any model that fails to address the effects of the sun on our temperatures is worthless. Yet, the global warming models used by the enthusiasts all ignore the effect of the sun.

This point has been brought home by a leaked report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the lead propagandists for the Enthusiasts' ideology. This report admits (buried in Chapter 11) that the sun is more important than previously acknowledged:

“Results do suggest the possibility of a much larger impact of solar variations on the stratosphere than previously thought, and some studies have suggested that this may lead to significant regional impacts on climate.”

Translation: “yeah, the sun could be causing a lot more warming that we thought it was. Curse you sun!!”

But here’s the kicker. Despite this admission, the models upon with the IPCC report relies in concluding that warming is a a man-made problem do not take the sun into account. How in the world can you legitimately exclude something from your analysis which you admit could be a much larger cause of your problem than you realize? This is nonsense. This is theology, not science.

And don’t forget, this isn’t the first bit of evidence that they are fudging the science and ignoring evidence that blows apart their theories. The biggest example was of course Climategate (and Climategate 2) where they were caught manipulating data and using political pressure to smear opponents. But there’s more. Consider these things we’ve seen from Warming Enthusiasts:

● Climategate exposed the manipulation of data to generate a warming trend where none existed. Specifically, they excluded a warming period in the Middle Ages and they only used certain data to make sure that the present period showed abnormal warming.

● The famous “hockey stick” which shows the supposed warming (the one highlighted by High Priest al Gore) was debunked. It uses a fake formula which will take any sequence of numbers and spit out a hockey stick type result.

● The IPCC relied upon data from flawed weather stations which wrongly created warming.

● The IPCC wrongly used summer data for winter months to generate warming.

● The IPCC claim that global warming will hurt biodiversity was shown to have no basis -- not to mention that the world’s species are at least one million years old and thus have all been through hundreds of climate cycles.

● The IPCC had to retract a completely unsupported statement that the Himalayan glaciers would be gone by 2035.

● The IPCC had to retract unsubstantiated statements about threats to the Amazon rainforests.

● In January 2011, IPCC scientist Osvaldo Canziani was listed as an advisor on a report that overstated warming by 1000%, and which was published unfixed even after this error was pointed out to the study’s authors.

● In January 2010, the IPCC had to retract the part of its report which claimed that Global Warming would cause sea level rises equal to 2.3 meters per century, with 2.7 feet happening this century. This report was retracted because of “mistakes in time intervals and inaccurately applied statistics.” It also turns out this report was based on data collected in a part of Hong Kong that is sinking.

Incidentally, in May of that year, a paleogeophysics/geodynamics professor from Stockholm University in Sweden issued a report that observations from around the world showed NO rising sea levels in the last 40 years. How did Enthusiasts respond? A year later, the University of Colorado’s Sea Level Research Group simply added 0.3 millimeters a year to their sea level figures to create rising sea levels where none exist.

● In June 2011, experts from Finland and the United States were shocked. . . shocked to learn that rising carbon dioxide levels caused forest density to increase: “Global warming, blamed by the U.N. panel of climate experts mainly on human use of fossil fuels, might itself be improving growth conditions for trees in some regions.” That’s right, trees are getting fatter. And the consequence of this is. . . well. . . um. . . it’s “offsetting climate change.” In other words, it’s keeping global warming from happening.

So let me sum this up...... there was supposed to be warming, but there wasn’t... the seas were supposed to rise, but they didn’t... the sun is an “unknown factor” in warming that is much more significant that the models expect but we don’t want to know how much... trees absorb carbon in much greater amounts than we expected. And all of this is based on data that either doesn’t exist or which has been manipulated to exclude contrary data or which is the result of bad collection techniques or which is the result of the fraudulent use of statistics. Nice work, boys.

Now there’s undeniable evidence that the warming ain’t happening. In a truly embarrassing admission, the British agency responsible for pimping Global Warming, the Met Office, admitted on Christmas Eve (to try to bury the story) that there has been no warming for 17 years now, even though all the models predicted significant warming for that period – they attribute this to solar activity, natural variability, and the movement of the oceans.... all things any competent model needs to account for. Anyway, what makes this a particularly humiliating admission is that during this same period, Enthusiasts were claiming that warming was actually accelerating.

Moreover, in 2008-2010, global temperatures dropped sharply enough to cancel out the entire supposed net rise in the 20th century. This is important because global warming theory relies on cumulative increases. Thus, their whole theory has fallen apart. . . again. Enthusiasts tried to blame this on the "unexpected" solar cycle -- an eleven year pattern that has repeated itself consistently throughout history and seems to coincide with scaremongering about new global ice ages or new global warming. Enthusiasts also complained that the oceans reacted in an "unexpected" manner by doing what they've always done rather than changing as the climate models suggested. And then the dirty trees have done the "unexpected" by doing what they've always done and refusing to conform to the models. Are you seeing a pattern? It seems that every time the Earth does what it's always done, it's "unexpected."

The jig seems to be up for the Enthusiasts. When cap and trade failed in the US, that signaled the death of their movement. Obama lost interest and the Democrats haven’t picked it up. Obama then went to Copenhagen with the idea of securing a fake agreement to agree which would get the environmentalists of his back and even that blew up in his face when China, Brazil, India, and South Africa met behind his back and agreed to do nothing to change anything. At this point, there are some stragglers. The UK, for example, remains brainwashed, though I’m reading lots of reports about the huge cost and consequence of trying to reduce their carbon emissions which may make them think twice. Australia’s Labor Government seems intent on imposing a carbon tax. But that’s about it. Everyone else seems to be ready to move on.

It’s never wise to predict the death of a religion, but I think the Cult of Warming’s days are numbered.

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Burning Down The House

If there’s one thing liberals/leftists just can’t get out of their systems, it’s the desire to act like Nazis. They just love the idea of imprisoning and killing those who disagree with them. And no, I’m not kidding. Every single socialist movement the world over has rounded up opponents and even here there are those who openly wish such things. . . people like global warming enthusiast Steve Zwick.

Steve Zwick, for those who don’t know, is a “climate change” alarmist who periodically writes for Forbes magazine. In his most recent article, he pulled a Hitler. Specifically, he said this:

“We know who the active denialists are – not the people who buy the lies, mind you, but the people who create the lies. Let’s start keeping track of them now, and when the famines come, let’s make them pay. Let’s let their houses burn. Let’s swap their safe land for submerged islands. . . They broke the climate. Why should the rest of us have to pay for it?”

Stick in the word “Jews” and this thing comes right out of any speech by Hitler. Note how Zwick suggest the creation of an enemies list. Those people need to be marked, perhaps with a yellow sun on their lapels. They are to be considered subhuman. And when Zwick decides it’s time for his final solution, we are to burn their houses and drown them. They must pay for their treachery, these climate Jews.

And don’t think this is an isolated incident. Earlier this month, University of Oregon “Professor” Kari Norgaard (right) said climate change skeptics are akin to “racists” and should be “treated” (medically) as if they had a mental disorder. Norgaard also wrote a letter to Obama in which she called on Obama to suspend democracy to satisfy her climate-fetish. Norgaard, by the way, is a big supporter of Obama climate advisor John P. Holdren who wrote in 1977 that we should carry out forced abortions, mandatory sterilization procedures and drugging of the water supply to weed out the surplus supply of humans. She has also praised NASA global warming alarmist Dr. James Hansen, who has advocated eco-terrorism, including blowing up damns and demolishing cities in the hopes of returning the planet to an agrarian age.

She’s not alone either in advocating dictatorship. Environmental James Lovelock asserted that “democracy must be put on hold to combat global warming.” (Maybe that’s where Dem. Gov. Bev Perdue got the idea that we should suspend elections until Obama can fix the economy?)

In 2006, environmentalist magazine Grist Magazine wrote that there should be “Nuremberg- style war crimes trials” for the “bastards” who are part of the “denial industry” who oppose the global warming enthusiasts. . . both Al Gore and Bill Moyer have endorsed that magazine.

Nice huh?

Anyway, back to Zwick. Besides advocating the murder of people with whom he disagrees, Zwick also became the point man for trying to defend the climategate scandal. In that defense, he actually argued that the Freedom of Information Act should not apply to requests made by right-wingers.

So there you have it:

● Right wingers should not be allowed information on what the government is doing. The law should only work for liberals.

● Climate change critics should be tracked and their homes burned.

● Obama should suspend democracy to enforce global warming enthusiasts' goals.

● And murder, forced abortion, forced sterilization and eco-terrorism are all valid tools for the government to use in helping the global warming enthusiasts achieve their fetishistic goals.

So much for it only happening in Nazi Germany. Now that I think about it. . . maybe we should start burning their houses down?

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Chevy Volt: Obama’s Folly

There is perhaps no greater example of the stupidity of the left than the Chevy Volt. It is the story of massive government subsidies going to solve a non-existent problem which result in a product no one wants and which doesn’t really work. This thing should become the new mascot of the Democratic party, forget the donkey, the donkey’s a vision of perfection by comparison.

Created by the bailed-out General Motors, the Chevy Volt has been an unmitigated disaster. The car was meant to be an environmentalist dream. It would combat global warming by reducing carbon emissions and would one day free us from our dependence on evil oil. But that’s not quite how it turned out.

To ensure the car could be called a “success,” GM stacked the deck by doing two things. First, they limited the release of the car in 2011 to big liberal cities: Washington, D.C., New York City, Austin, Texas, and California, with subsequent roll outs in other liberal states, and then all fifty-seven states by November 2011. This was meant to make sure that plenty of environmentalists would be on hand to buy the car, so GM could report brisk sales. Further, they limited the initial production run to 10,000 to ensure they would have more demand than supply and could report a sell out.

They even gave it all kinds of incentives. For example, while the car has a suggested retail price of $40,280, buyers get: (1) a $7,500 federal tax credit under the TARP bailout, (2) a $1,500 “state” rebate through the state’s Clean Vehicle Rebate Project (more federal money), (3) a federal tax credit for the purchase and installation of the charging unit, which is listed at costing $490 plus installation, but which Consumer Reports says costs around $2,000. That’s $11,000 in subsidies to buyers.

And that’s on top of the $2.4 billion in direct subsidies given to GM by the federal government, i.e. you, to develop the Volt, not to mention the $27 billion given to keep GM afloat so they could make wonderful cars like the Volt.

That’s a lot of federal help. So how did GM do? After thirteen months of sales, GM has sold only 7,997 cars. . . they couldn’t even sell the full 10,000 they made. To give you a comparison, the Toyota Prius sold 159,000 cars in the same period.

And that’s just the beginning of the morass.

See, it turns out the car ain’t as green as they made it out to be.

The Volt actually includes a gasoline engine. So in that sense, the car is not a true electric car, but is instead a hybrid. And if you calculate the “fuel economy rating” the same way it is calculate for other hybrids, the Volt only gets 48 miles per gallon, making it one of the worst hybrids. So GM objected and argued that it was unfair to treat this car as a hybrid and instead demanded that the car be tested using only the electric engine, i.e. that the EPA pretend the owners can use the gas engine. According to GM, that would result in a fuel economy rating of 230 miles per gallon.

Team Obama, the definition of more-ass, happily agreed to play along with GM’s fraud and tested the car in the new way. But even then it couldn’t come anywhere near GM’s claims of 230 miles per gallon. Instead, they found 93 miles per gallon in electric mode and 37 miles per gallon in gasoline mode, for an overall 60 miles per gallon. By comparison, the EPA rates the Prius at 51 mpg. Also, to get the 93 mpg, you need to drive it at low speeds on the highway.

It gets worse. The EPA also measured the tailpipe emissions and found 84 grams of carbon dioxide per mile using gasoline and “nearly zero” using electricity. But a study in the UK which calculated the emissions from the electricity used to charge the battery resulted in 199 grams per mile for the electric motor. Not only is that more pollution than several other cars, but that means you actually pollute less using the gasoline engine in the Volt than you do using the electric engine. Imagine that.

And then there’s the other problem: it’s a death trap.

See, it turns out that when the Volt gets in an accident, particularly from a side hit, the batteries can be damaged. This leads to a coolant leak which causes the car to catch fire. But it doesn’t happen right away. Instead, the fire can start minutes, hours, days or weeks later. In one instance, the car caught fire three weeks after the collision. GM claims to have fixed this by adding padding to the car, but has had to offer to buy back “a couple dozen” cars from people who are now too scared to own them. A couple dozen is around 5% of the total number sold.

And that’s not the only problem with the batteries. GM put an 8 year warranty on the batteries, but estimates right now are that the battery will need to be replaced every six to eight years. The cost of that replacement? $10,000. In other words, every six to eight years, you need to put in $10,000 to keep this turkey running. Given that the resale value is expected to fall 51% in three years, that means the car is effectively disposable. . . talk about a pollution nightmare!

It’s no wonder no one wants this car.

This is what happens whenever the government gets involved in the subsidy business. No rational business would ever try to make this car. It’s too expensive (GM apparently isn’t even making money on the current prices), it pollutes more than the evil polluting cars it’s meant to replace, it costs too much to own and it’s dangerous.

Moreover, it’s fixing a problem that apparently even Global Warming enthusiasts are starting to admit doesn’t exist – according to data released by the same enthusiasts who brought you climate gate and who have repeatedly said every single year for over two decades “this year was the hottest year on record,” the world stopped warming in 1997 and has been cooling ever since!

In an age when Obama’s folly can be seen in “green tech” companies going down in flames like bankruptcy dominoes after being handed mongo Federal cash, the Volt still stands out at the zenith of stupidity.... and you’ve paid $2.5 billion dollars so far to support that stupidity. Makes you proud, doesn’t it?

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Global Warming Enthusiasts Caught Again

The climate change industry is a disgrace. They’ve been exposed for faking their data, falsifying their formulas, conspiring to keep contrary opinions from being published, and simply making things up -- like the story about the snow vanishing from the Himalayas. Well, they’ve done it again, and you’re not going to believe the audacity this time.

The latest incident involves climate “scientist” Liliana Hisas of the Universal Ecological Fund. Hisas just put out a report that projected a 2.4 degree Celsius increase in temperature during the next decade, which will of course cause massive worldwide food shortages and all kinds of other horrible things. The report in question was published on the American Association for the Advancement of Science website, and was of course, widely covered in the press.

Well, it turns out that the report is wrong. . . very wrong. So wrong, in fact, that the report had to be pulled from the AAAS website.

How wrong was it? It turns out that even if you use the highest estimate for warming, the best you could achieve by 2020 is a 0.2 degree Celsius increase. Thus, the report overstated the maximum amount of warming by ten times. Moreover, according to a climate “scientist” who reviewed the report after this problem arose, the “study. . . confuses ‘equilibrium temperature rise’ with ‘transient temperature rise.’” In other words, the report confuses temporary with permanent.

Ok, embarrassing right? Well, it gets more interesting than that.

Hisas was told about these mistakes before she published the report. So why didn’t she change the report? Well, let’s let climate “scientist” Rey Weymann explain that one:

“The author of the study was told by several of us about this error but she said it was too late to change it.”

Seriously? It was too late to correct the numbers? It was too late to yank the report before she had it published. . . on a website, not in a printed journal? It was too late to include a disclaimer. . . . “this report is spectacularly wrong”? How in the world can it be too late?

At least she’s acknowledging the problem now, right? I mean, she retracted the report, right? Well, no. AAAS yanked the report. But the public relations firm which helped issue the report on her and the Universal Ecological Fund’s behalf has issued a statement standing by the study.

Can you imagine a scientist in a real scientific field knowingly publishing a report they knew to be wrong and not retracting it or correcting it, and then even issuing a statement standing by it once their fraud became widely known? Bigfoot scientists have more scientific integrity than this!

And before you think this was just one disreputable scientist, let me point out that climate “scientist” Osvaldo Canziani was listed as scientific advisor on the project. Who is Canziani? He’s part of the 2007 Nobel Prize winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change -- the United Nations climate group whose figures are being used by all global warming enthusiasts and government policy makers everywhere. So what does he say about his utter failure to catch this fundamental and devastating mistake or about the failure to correct these problems even after they were known?

Nothing. He claims to be ill and unavailable for interviews.

The IPCC, by the way, whose reports are used by governments to set environmental policy, has itself been accused of exaggerating its claims.

So what is the response of global warming enthusiasts? Are they repudiating this “scientist” and her lack of interest in putting out accurate reports? Nope. They’re calling this an “honest mistake” and they stand by her conclusions. . . just 100 years from now instead of 10.

This tells us a lot about the validity of climate science. That such a report could be issued and given publicity when the author and the entire global warming enthusiast community knew the report was wrong is stunning. And this report isn’t just wrong, it’s so spectacularly wrong as to be 1000% off in its conclusion. Yet, they stand by the report and its conclusions. This is borderline fraud, and they’re standing on the wrong side of the border. If a drug company had issued something similarly fraudulent, there would be calls for prison time for all of the participants. Yet, strangely, we’re supposed to overlook the utter fraudulence of the report and still believe its conclusions?

So much for climate "science."


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The Cost of "Fixing" Global Warming

Sometimes I run across information that is too interesting to ignore, especially when the MSM has chosen to ignore it or doesn’t see its real meaning. A week or so ago, several members of the MSM were reporting that. . . well, forget what they were saying because it was all garbage. But what was interesting, was that the data they presented gives us a hint of how our economy would look if we “fixed” global warming.

Here’s the deal: the enviro-left has decided that a reduction of 20% in the amount of carbon emissions will save the planet from the evil humans intent on heating it up. Ignore for a moment the fact that they pulled the 20% figure out of each other’s rear ends (and that some are now suggesting 30%). Ignore also the fact that the warming they are talking about would be a boon to the world, particularly agriculture. Ignore also that the temperature of our planet is controlled by the sun, not carbon emissions. Ignore also the fact that mankind produces only 3% of the carbon in the atmosphere -- the rest comes from volcanoes and decaying “biomass” -- and thus, what we do is entirely irrelevant.

Basically, ignore for the moment that this theory is stupider than the idea that evil spirits cause disease and that bleeding someone with leaches will cure them. Instead, let’s just take them at their silly little words this time.

Ok, now that we know the ground rules, let’s get to the point. At the height of the Great Recession in 2008, economic activity slowed because that’s what happens during recessions. This slowing resulted in a reduction in carbon emissions in Europe and America of approximately one third of the 20% that the left is hoping to achieve. In other words, around 6%. That 6% translated into unemployment of 10% in the United States, with real unemployment drifting just above 17%. It also resulted in a dramatically slowed economy -- a drop of 3.9% of GNP, which brought with it a corresponding drop in tax revenues.

If we assume a straight-line effect, then achieving the goal of a 20% reduction in carbon emissions would mean damage to our economy equal to 3.3 times the effect of the Great Recession. That means, to achieve that 20% goal, unemployment would have gone to 21.5%, with real unemployment going to around 36.5%! The effect on GNP would be at least a drop of 12.9%. And that would be a permanent drop, not a temporary drop.

And there’s more to this, because we really can’t assume a straight line effect. Indeed, it’s always harder to squeeze the last few percentage points out of anything than it is to get the first few. So we should expect these numbers to be higher yet.

Moreover, the effects will be disproportionately felt by poor and middle class people as their food, gas and electricity costs will skyrocket. That means less mobility and less flexibility for finding new jobs. It also means a significantly higher cost to government benefits. And all of those things make the numbers worse again.

I would say that a 25% unemployment rate (40% real) is not out of the question based on these figures.

So the next time they tell you about the promise of green jobs or some such garbage, or they try to sell you the line that going green won’t hurt the economy, think back on 2008 and remember that we were only 1/3 of the way to utopia at that point. Anybody want to finish that journey?


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"Climategate" Explained

Climategate is the most important scandal of our time. For decades now, a small group of scientists have dominated the debate on global warming. Based on their “research,” governments around the world have begun spending billions of dollars and doing trillions of dollars of damage to their economies, all in the name of stopping a problem that this group tells us could destroy our planet. They lied.

Good Science v. Bad Science

Before we delve into the fraud exposed by Climategate, let’s begin with a quick background on how science works. Scientists work by observing facts, creating theories about what causes those facts, and then trying to prove their theories and disprove all alternative theories. The global warming crowd didn’t do that. They created a theory and then set about trying to find facts that fit into that theory. That’s not science, that confirming your prejudices.

Think of it this way. A scientist who sees an elephant standing on a pond and wants to understand why the elephant doesn't sink, would observe relevant facts, like the depth of the water, would create theories, like elephant-buoyancy, and would devise tests to confirm or disprove those theories until they come up with the only possible explanation. The global warming crowd is more like a scientist who assumes elephants can walk on water and then spans the globe looking for evidence to support that theory.

Even worse, they have manufactured evidence where they couldn’t find any and they’ve zealously demonized all who disagree with them. For example, in 2008, NASA’s James Hansen called for trying global warming skeptics for “high crimes against humanity.” Robert F. Kennedy declared of warming skeptics: “This is treason and we need to start treating them as traitors.” He also called for sending coal company CEOs to “jail for all of eternity.” Former Clinton Administration official Joe Romm warned warming skeptics: “An entire generation will soon be ready to strangle you and your kids while you sleep in your beds.” The Nazis had nothing on these creatures.

What is Climategate?

Climategate began when a hacker took computer code and several thousand e-mails from the computers of the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit ("CRU") in England and uploaded them to a Russian website for all the world to see. Those e-mails and comments made in the computer code revealed that researchers at the CRU and other locations have been lying and manipulating data to give the impression that the earth is warming.

Why is the CRU important?

The CRU is important because it is one of a handful of centers around the world that collects and disseminates global temperature data. Indeed, the CRU is the biggest feeder unit for UN climate data used by the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change ("IPCC"), the main UN group addressing “climate change.”

This is an important point because one of the defenses that warmists have raised in response to Climategate is that whatever the CRU may have done, they are just one of thousands of scientists monitoring global warming and, thus, this scandal is irrelevant. But in reality, (1) there are only a handful of sites monitoring temperature data, and problems have now been exposed at other sites as well (NASA, New Zealand and Australia), and (2) most all of these thousands of supposedly independent researchers obtain their warming data from the CRU.

So what was exposed?

Climategate exposed three types of misconduct: (1) the stifling of opposing views, (2) collusion to hide or destroy evidence, and (3) the manipulation or manufacturing of data to create a warming trend.

Misconduct: Stifling Opponents

The first misconduct exposed was the concerted efforts by warmists to stifle dissenting views. Not only did this include a good deal of hateful comments, like CRU director Phil Jones “cheering” the death of a skeptic or talking about being tempted to “beat the crap” out of opponents, but, more importantly, this demonstrated their efforts to keep their opponents from getting published in scientific journals.

Why was this important? Because they would then cite the lack of articles by their opponents as proof that the scientific community unanimously agreed with the warmists' views. They would also attack individual skeptics for not having published any work in such “peer-review” journals.

For example, Michael Mann of Penn State told the New York Times that Stephen McIntyre, founder of the website Climate Audit and one of the most important skeptics, “operate[s] entirely outside of this system [and is] not to be trusted.”

How did they achieve this? First, people like Mann and Jones controlled the peer-review process and would reject any view which did not support their own. At one point, they even changed the rules for publication midstream to prevent opposing views from being published. Climategate e-mails also showed them discussing which scientists could be trusted to sit on the peer-review committees and which should be excluded because they were not “predictable.” And if journals nevertheless considered printing such views, they would blackball the journal.

Who is Mann?

Mann, a climatologist from Penn State, is the warmist who created the infamous hockey stick diagram that Algore used in his movie. The hockey stick diagram purports to show that global temperatures remained flat or declined until 1900, and then began to rise steadily, shooting up most recently. This results in a diagram that looks like a hockey stick turned on its side, with the blade facing upwards in the current years. This graph was used by Algore and others to argue that warming had to be caused by mankind and industrialization.

However, in 2003, Stephen McIntyre pointed out that the hockey stick failed to account for a medieval warming period, which could not have been caused by mankind or industrialization. McIntyre then demolished the hockey stick diagram entirely by showing that the mathematical model Mann used to create it would cause a hockey stick formation to appear no matter what numbers were inserted into the model. This was later backed up by eminent US statistician Professor Edward Wegman.

Misconduct: Colluding To Hide And Destroy Evidence

The second misconduct exposed was the warmists' attempts to prevent anyone they did not trust from verifying their work. This involved attempts to illegal avoid responding to FOIA requests and to destroy incriminating evidence.

For example, in a series of e-mails, Phil Jones of the CRU is caught stating that he has “managed to persuade [East Anglia] to ignore all further FOIA requests if the people have anything to do with Climate Audit.” In another e-mail, David Jones of Australia’s version of the CRU states that they will ignore FOIA requests from known skeptics. In another, Jones asks Mann to delete e-mails between Mann and certain others.

All in all, in these e-mails, various warmists admit deleting data, hiding source code, manipulating data to make it more difficult to use, and flat out refusing to comply with the law whenever skeptics sought information.

In his defense, Jones now admits that “some of the published emails do not read well” but he notes that “some were clearly written in the heat of the moment.” As if that was a valid defense.

The Competitive Enterprise Institute has noted similar problems with NASA, noting that NASA has ignored most of their FOIA requests. NASA claims to be working on their requests. . . for years now.

NASA, by the way, has been caught repeatedly massaging their data. For example, McIntyre caught James Hansen of NASA manipulating his data to increase current temperatures. It has also recently been revealed that NASA was inserting data from warmer months into colder months to raise the temperatures. NASA has even been forced to recalculate its data as a result of criticism.

At one point, CRU “admitted” (claimed) that they had thrown away the raw temperature data upon which their predictions of global warming are based. This would have prevented anyone from verifying their data. But this now appears to have been a lie as they have recently promised to release the data.

This is important because the only data CRU has ever agreed to make available is what they call “value-added data.” What is value-added data? Value-added data is the temperature data they use after it’s been subject to scaling and adjustments by the CRU. Why is that important? Because those adjustments account for more than 80% of the rise in temperatures that the CRU is calling global warming. Read that again: 80% of the case for global warming was added by the CRU as a fudge factor to the temperatures that were actually recorded.

Consider the following. US Historical Climate Network reports for the lower 48 states show a temperature increase of 0.6 degrees Celsius since 1940. But 0.5 of those degrees are the result of adjustments or fudge factors -- only 0.1 of those degrees were actually recorded. This data comes from the NOAA’s own webpage.

Take a look at the following chart (again from the NOAA’s own webpage). The chart shows the difference between the recorded temperature and the “adjusted” temperature by year. Notice that until the 1940s, this data was barely manipulated. Indeed, if anything, the adjustments lowered the temperature. But since then, the warmists have been adding more and more to the adjustments each year.

Misconduct: Manipulation/Manufacturing of Data To Create Warming Trend

The misconduct that has received the most notice involves the manipulation of data to create warming where none otherwise exists. The e-mail that really hit the headlines was one from Jones in which he writes about using the “trick of adding in the real temps” to get the data to show that warming was occurring. Jones tried to claim he did not mean anything deceptive by the word “trick,” that he only meant “a clever way,” but that’s not what really happened, nor is that the only damning evidence.

Once again, we turn to Stephen McIntyre who explains the trick. What Jones was doing was averaging each data point with surrounding data points to create a smooth curve. This makes the data appear more consistent and definite. But when one reaches the end of the data points, there are no further data points that can be used to smooth the curve. The “trick” involved using temperature records to provide additional data that could be used to smooth the curve.

That sound esoteric and seems minor, but McIntyre has been kind enough to show us the effect of this in a series of graphs. Take a look at this first graph. This shows the data as prepared by Jones and crew. The various colored lines represent different ways in which temperature has been measured, e.g. ice core samples or tree ring size. Notice the dramatic upswing. This is similar to the hockey stick graph.


Now take a look at the last few decades in isolation. Pay particular attention to the sudden drops that each of the temperature lines experiences -- see the orange arrow. Notice also, that despite that drop, the temperatures turn around again and shoot up.


That’s the trick. If the trick is removed and the date is simply shown without the trick, the temperatures actually continue to fall. Here is a chart of what the data would have looked like without this supposedly harmless trick:


And that’s not the only evidence to show that CRU was faking its data. Another of Jones’s e-mails reads: “I would like to see the climate change happen so the science could be proved right.” In other words, there is no proof to support their claims, even though they were producing studies that purported to show such proof.

Moreover, an examination of the comments within their software code reveal a system that is either hopelessly dysfunctional and/or was intentionally manipulated to achieve the desired result. Here are some of the comments that were found within the code itself:

• One warmist admits manufacturing the result he wanted: “What the hell is supposed to happen here? Oh yeah -- there is no ‘supposed’, I can make it up. So I have :-)”

• Another complains that the Australian weather reporting stations (among others) are a mess and “this renders the station data meaningless.” He then adds, “of course, it’s too late for me to fix this.” Thus, admitting the use of flawed data.

• Various warmists warn repeatedly not to incorporate data from prior to 1960 because this would create a cooling trend

• Another notes that recent cooling trend data has been removed from the database, but complains that the data will still be too accurate: “NOTE: recent decline in tree-ring density has been ARTIFICIALLY REMOVED to facilitate calibration. THEREFORE, post-1960 values will be much closer to observed temperatures than they should be”

• Another complains: “OH FUCK THIS. It’s Sunday evening, I’ve worked all weekend, and just when I thought it was done I’m hitting yet another problem that’s based on the hopeless state of our databases. There is no uniform data integrity, it’s just a catalogue of issues that continues to grow as they’re found.”

Conclusion

That’s why Climategate matters. It’s shown that the handful of people who created the entire global warming industry have lied, manipulated data, manufactured evidence, suppressed countervailing evidence, and waged a dirty war against anyone who disagreed with them.

This doesn’t necessarily disprove global warming (that’s for another post), but it does show that the evidence upon which it is based is false.

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The Dark Ages (Redux)

A few years back, a group of environmentalists decided to see what would happen if you thrust a country back into the Dark Ages. They chose Britain, possibly because the British were too busy stabbing each other and binge-drinking themselves into a stupor to notice. With nary a hint of protest, the environmentalists set their plan into motion. Now the free range chickens have come home to roost.

Here’s what happened. Beginning in the 1990s, the Labor government started a concerted effort to destroy the British power grid in the name of stopping global warming. . . er climate change. . . er the next ice age.

Noting that coal and nuclear power plants account for about 45% of all power generated in Britain, Labor chose those forms of power as the best place to start. So they made it virtually impossible to build nuclear plants. Then they made it unprofitable to run existing coal-fired plants, and finally they all but forbade the construction of new coal-fired plants. And here is what they’ve achieved:

Britain currently gets around 13% of its electricity from nuclear plants. But most of their nuclear plants are simply too old to carry on. Indeed, half of their existing nuclear plants have already been shut down and the remaining plants will soon follow. The last one should be closed by 2023. New nuclear plants are planned, but the earliest one of those could be up and running is 2017, and that’s probably insanely optimistic.

Britain also gets around 31% of its electricity from coal-fired plants, but this will end soon. EU environmental rules require that coal plants be fit with expensive scrubbers or be shut down. But these scrubbers are too expensive to make economic sense. So owners are finding it cheaper to just shut the plants down. Indeed, right now these plants are operating (in a reduced capacity) under an exception that expires in 2015, after which time they will be shut down.

So by 2015, Britain will lose about 44% of its capacity to generate electricity. Alas, they don’t have the capacity to spare. The chart on the left shows the problem. Beginning in 2015, Britain will not be able to generate enough electricity to meet demand. This gap between supply and demand will continue to grow until around 2030, at which point Britain will be able to meet only half of its demand.

What does this mean? Blackouts.

In the 2007, South Africa experienced blackouts because of a moratorium put in place in the 1990s on the building of new power plants. Consequently, the national power company, Eskom, began rolling blackouts, cutting off power for hours at a time. Initially, these blackouts were announced. But they soon discovered that this attracted thieves to the affected neighborhoods, so they stopped announcing them.

Britain will be heading down the same path. So, if burglary is your thing -- and if you live in Britain, we know it is -- you are about to experience a golden age of crime. It will be glorious!

But wait, in all fairness, I don’t want to overstate the problem. The same idiots who caused the problem have a “solution.” They prayed to the Great Unicorn for magical new technologies that will produce the missing electricity without harming the environment. Here is what they got:

Over the next eleven years (fortunately 2015 is more than 11 years away), they intend to build enough maritime windmills to produce 33 Gig Watts of power. Not bad huh? And while many claim that Britains lacks the resources to produce this many windmills, we should not doubt that they can pull this off. After all, Britain is the world’s biggest producer of wind power. In fact, in 2008, Britain produced a whopping 0.6 GW! See, they're almost there. . . only another 98.2% to go!

But there is a catch with this marvelous plan. The government estimates that it’s about to lose 75 GW of power because of all these plant closures (failures). Thus, even if Plan Quixote works, it will still come up 42 GW short. . . actually, that’s not true. There’s another problem I haven’t mentioned yet. It turns out that windmills don’t work on calm days. I know, knock you over with a feather! Even the government estimates that 25 GW of potential from windmills will only be able to replace 5 GW of fossil-fuel fired power. Thus, to plug the gap with wind, the Brits need to produce 375 GW of wind power -- more than ten times what they’re building. It would seem, the Great Unicorn has failed them?

And this doesn’t even account for the fact that their oil and gas fired plants are running out of fuel as their North Sea reserves run dry (they peaked in 1999).

Yet, there is an out. When the darkness and the cold become unbearable and the number of patients dying in the dark in hospitals increases well beyond its currently high levels, the Brits can start building gas-fired plants. And to fuel those plants, they can call upon old reliable, dependable Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Of course, that will be expensive and will wreak havoc on anyone who pays for their own electricity, partly because the prices will vary dramatically day by day, and partly because Putin loves him some predatory pricing. But it should keep the lights on most of the time. And so what if it makes Britain dependent on Russia. Economic slavery sure beats global warming. . . cooling. . . whatever.

Of course, there is something else they could do. They could burn environmentalists and Labor MPs to keep warm.

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Democrats Bust A Cap In Prosperity’s As~

Friday, Congressional Democrats, with the help of eight “Republican” stooges sold out the United States economy, middle America, and the nation’s poor in the name of not-fixing a non-problem. Here is what you need to know about the euphemistically titled American Clean Energy and Security Act (aka cap and trade).

Why did they do this?

Short answer: they don’t like you. Longer answer: Environmental theologians, like Al Gore the Prophet, believe that carbon dioxide, a heat-trapping "greenhouse" gas, is the primary cause of global warming.

They note that carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of oil, coal, and natural gas constitute about 80% of all man-made greenhouse gasses in the United States. Moreover, they note that man-made carbon emissions have increased worldwide more than 70 percent since 1970, and are now 40-45% higher than they were at the start of the Industrial Revolution. And they want this stopped. The Democrat’s cap and trade system, supposedly, will cut those emission, which will reduce the amount of greenhouse gas in the air, and will therefore prevent global warming.

So will it work?

Many people think it will. Indeed, a full 63% of Americans believe that human activity is the greatest source of carbon-dioxide emissions. But then, a 2006 survey found that 70% of Americans couldn’t find Iraq on the map, despite that whole war thing, and 33% couldn’t find Louisiana, despite that whole Katrina thing.

Perhaps we should ignore uninformed opinion and instead look at some facts? And here is one: human-caused carbon emissions come to a grand total of 3.27% of all carbon emissions. That’s right, 3.27%. The rest are caused by the decay of “biomass” (i.e. dead trees, leaves, etc.) or are released through volcanic activity. Thus, cap and trade will only affect a maximum of 3.27% of the problem.

Can reducing that 3.27% solve this problem? No. Ask yourself, if you are ten feet under water, with an additional foot of water being added every minute by a waterfall and an additional inch of water being added by your friend with a bucket, do you really think you can solve the problem by asking your friend to switch to a smaller bucket?

(For our congressional readers, we have a crayon-ready picture version of this last paragraph available upon request.)

But wait. . . there’s more!

They’re not even trying to fix the full 3.27%. No, indeed. Why? Because the Kyoto treaty, which is what Obama is trying to implement through this cap and trade scam, excluded developing countries (i.e. real polluters) from having to cut back their own emissions. Thus, China and India don’t need to make any cuts at all. Guess which country is the world’s biggest polluter? If you said China, then you’re too smart to be a Congressman. China accounts for 28% of the world’s pollution, and is growing rapidly.

So now we’re not even talking about fixing the 3.27%, we’re talking about fixing some portion of about twenty percent of that 3.27%.

Think of it this way: your neighbors’ cars belch out black smoke all day, but we’re going to “fix” the air quality problem in your neighborhood by making you drive your new Prius 10% slower.

Ok, what’s this going to cost?

The Democrats have been pimping a cost figure produced by the Congressional Budget Office that found that this legislation will cost the average household only $175 a year by 2020. Or as Ed Markey (D-Twilight Zone) claims, this will “cost less than a postage stamp a day.” Of course, that’s a lie.

The CBO study looked only at the cost of operating a trading program, it did not examine “the potential decrease in gross domestic product that could result from the cap.”

In other words, it only counted what the government will spend administering the program, it did not count how the program will affect the rest of us. This is like me claiming that I can reduce your grocery bill to $120 a year if you pay me $10 a month to buy groceries for you with your credit card. See the problem? If not, send me your credit card.

So what will it really cost? The Heritage Foundation estimates that this law would

• cost the economy $9.4 trillion in lost GDP by 2035,
• destroy an average 1.2 million jobs per year,
• increase electricity rates by 90%,
• increase gasoline prices by 58%,
• increase natural gas prices by 55%, and
• will result in an overall cost to the average family of four of $6,800 per year (more than half of what they currently spend on health care).

And if you don’t want to believe the Heritage Foundation, consider that the prior version of this bill, the Lieberman-Warner bill, died after it was determined that bill would

• cost the average family $6,752 per year,
• increase the costs of gasoline 144%,
• increase the price of electricity 129%, and
• eliminate 4 million jobs.

Moreover, the Lieberman bill had significantly lower goals than the current bill (reducing emissions by only 70% instead of 83%). Thus, the Heritage Foundation’s report likely understates the costs.

Won’t this hurt the poor the most?

Sure. These costs will have their greatest impact on food and energy. Thus, the harm from this bill will be highly regressive in nature, meaning that the poor will suffer the most. Also, the poorest parts of the country will be hit hardest by the job loses because those states rely on coal, farming and manufacturing more than the enlightened states. And here I thought the Democrats were the party of the poor?

As an aside, when your liberal friends start complaining about the cost of gas or electricity, tell them that the Republicans offered three amendments to suspend the program if gas hits $5 a gallon, if electricity rates increased by more than 10% in 2009, or if unemployment exceeds 15%. The Democrats defeated each of these, because they care about the poor. . . unlike those job-saving, gas-cheapening Republicans.

But do you know what’s even better?

This bill won’t even work to reduce green house emissions! At least, that’s what Greenpeace says.

The Waxman-Markey bill sets emission reduction targets far lower than science demands, then undermines even those targets with massive offsets.

An offset is like an indulgence. You can sin all you want, you just need to pay over a little something special to the pope and all will be forgiven. Remember your friend with the bucket? If you allowed offsets, he could keep adding water, but he would need to pay some politically connected third-party a rental fee on the bucket. That will solve the problem.

Greenpeace continues. . .

Greenpeace has expressed tremendous concern about the role of offsets in this legislation. Unless strictly controlled, the abuse of offsets could prevent real emission reductions for more than a decade. The decision to move authority over offsets from EPA to the Department of Agriculture further reduces the likelihood that such controls will be maintained and increases the likelihood they will undermine real reductions.

Department of Agriculture? Seriously? The same people who keep the nonsensical ethanol program running because it helps huge industrial farms (science be damned) and who kept the food pyramid upside down for 30 years to please lobbyists? Nice choice. Was the Bureau of Corruption unavailable? How do I get one of these jobs. . . I like suitcases full of cash.

(For our Congressional readers, that’s called sarcasm. . . sarcasm . . . oh look it up, I’m not going to explain it to you.)

So who do we thank for this?

The vote was 219-212. To get the bill through, the Democrats relied on the support of eight useful idiots, as Stalin would have called them. Not only did they not read the bill (300 of the 1200 pages were added, unread, at the last minute), but these eight idiots allowed eight Democrats in vulnerable districts to vote no, to protect their re-election chance. Here are their names:

Chris Smith -- NJ
Dave Riechert, WA
John M. McHugh - NY
Frank A. Lobiondo - NJ
Leonard Lance, NJ
Mark Steven Kirk, Il
Mike Castle, Del
Mary Bono Mack, CA

If you see these “Republicans,” spit on them. . . unless you’re really tall, then replace the p with an h.
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