Amy Ridenour is the president of the National Center for Public Policy Research. She and her husband David, the vice president of the National Center, are the parents of three third graders. David's comments, like those of other National Center staff members, directors, associates and fellows, often appear in this blog.
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Saturday, February 06, 2010
Global Warming at the Ridenour Compound
Yes, I know one snowstorm (or seven) in one location doesn't mean the planet isn't warming, but really, how could I resist posting this shot?
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Video: Stuart Varney Interviews Tom Borelli on New SEC Climate Guidelines
More about the SEC's new climate change regulations here.
Hat tip: Thanks to CEOMonitor for uploading it to YouTube.
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Tom Borelli Talks with Gordon Liddy about New SEC Climate Regulations
Our Free Enterprise Project Director Tom Borelli visited with G. Gordon Liddy the other day to discuss the Securities and Exchange Commission's new rule requiring publicly-held corporations to disclose the risks of global warming -- including the risks to their corporation of stupid laws and regulations Congress and/or the Administration adopt in a futile attempt to control the climate.
The SEC did not use the word "stupid" -- that's mine -- but really, even the backers of this stuff agree it won't change the climate, so what's the point?
Enough editorializing from me. You can listen to Gordon interview Tom here, or go here. (Note: Tom's interview is during the last quarter-hour of the linked podcast file.)
For a quick look at what Tom's talking about, below is our press release on the matter:
Another Blow to Obama's Agenda: New SEC Guidance on Climate Change Disclosure Will Force CEOs Who Lobby for Cap-and-Trade to Expose the Business Risk of Cap-and-Trade Legislation to Shareholders
Washington D.C. - Corporate CEOs who have been actively lobbying for cap-and-trade climate legislation may soon find themselves in an embarrassing position thanks to a new Securities and Exchange Commission regulation, says Tom Borelli, Ph.D., director of the National Center for Public Policy Research's Free Enterprise Project.
The SEC voted January 27 to provide public companies with interpretive guidance that encourages corporations to disclose the possible business and legal impact of climate change to shareholders. Full disclosure will require companies to assess and describe how cap-and-trade legislation can harm company earnings.
"Fully disclosing the business risk of cap-and-trade will embarrass many CEOs who are lobbying for emissions regulations. Shareholders will discover that these CEOs are pursuing legislation that will negatively impact their company," said Borelli.
By issuing interpretive guidance on climate change, the SEC is encouraging companies to fully describe a wide range of business and legal risks posed by climate change on business operations. In these communications with shareholders about business risk, the SEC wants companies to address the following areas: Impact of Legislation and Regulation, Impact of International Accords, Indirect Consequences of Regulation or Business Trends, and Physical Impacts of Climate Change.
"Finally, the SEC is taking a position on the business risk of climate change regulation. Through Congressional testimony and participation at shareholder meetings over the past few years, I've been calling on CEOs to assess and disclose the regulatory impact of cap-and-trade to shareholders. While CEOs find it easy to ignore an individual shareholder, they can't ignore the SEC," said Borelli.
"Shareholders are going to discover that many CEOs have not been forthcoming about the business risk posed by cap-and-trade legislation and that they have failed to exercise their fiduciary responsibility by not assessing and communicating the impact of emissions regulations on their businesses."
Borelli cites Caterpillar CEO Jim Owens as an executive who has arrogantly disregarded the business risk of cap-and-trade. At a shareholder meeting, Owens admitted he did not conduct a cost benefit analysis of cap-and-trade on his business before he joined the United States Climate Action Partnership – a lobbying organization pursuing these carbon dioxide emission limits.
In a subsequent Caterpillar shareholder meeting, when challenged by Borelli, Owens agreed that carbon caps could hurt heavy industry in the U.S., including Caterpillar. When Borelli asked how Owens could be held accountable if his lobbying course backfired on Caterpillar shareholders, Owens told Borelli to sell his stock.
Economic studies on the impact of cap-and-trade consistently report that capping emissions will lead to job losses and slower economic growth -- developments that would negatively impact earnings of large cap corporations.
"Caterpillar currently identifies general economic conditions and the amount of mining and manufacturing activity as key risk factors for its business, yet the company fails to warn investors that cap-and-trade will lead to a reduction in economic growth and a significant decrease in coal mining. Disclosure on climate change regulation will expose the conflict between cap-and-trade and shareholder interests," added Borelli.
"Armed with this information, Caterpillar shareholders will demand to know why Owens is lobbying for a law that will harm their investment. With the new disclosure detailing how cap-and-trade will harm Caterpillar, perhaps shareholders will follow Owens' advice and sell the stock," said Borelli.
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Bizarre Climategate Update #5: Perhaps Our Children's Fourth Grade Class Should Help the IPCC
Maybe the IPCC used a primary school geography book that wasn't peer-reviewed?
Steve McIntyre reports that the last IPCC report (AR4) claimed 55 percent of land on which 60 percent of the Dutch live is below sea level. The true figure is 20 percent.
Over the last few days there has been a dustup between climate scientist Michael Tobis and a number of bloggers and commentators after Tobis questioned whether a woman who had raised nine kids is qualified to question climate scientists (because, as he put it, she hadn't had the time "to think about complicated grownup stuff").
By the time a mom has helped nine kids through their primary school science homework, she might have a pretty good idea about the geography of the Netherlands.
Maybe he should have helped his kids with their homework more often.
Put a mom in charge, I say. Or my kids. At least when fourth graders do a job, someone checks their work.
Addendum, 2/6/10: Michael Tobis ended the conversation about parenthood on a gracious note (here and here).
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Bizarre Climategate Update #4: IPCC Chairman Wishes Painful Death Upon Critics
Question this report, and a top UN official will wish you dead
Under fire for the Glaciergate, Amazongate and Please-Fund-My-Institute-Gate sectors, among others, of the ever-broadening Climategate scandal, Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (and a man who cares so much about global warming, he doesn't use his free electric car because it isn't big enough for his chauffeur), has now all but wished a slow and painful death upon his critics.
In an interview with the Financial Times, Pachauri said:
I don't want to get down to a personal level, but all you need to do is look at [my critics'] backgrounds. They are people who deny the link between smoking and cancer; they are people who say that asbestos is as good as talcum powder - I hope that they apply it to their faces every day - and people who say that the only way to deal with HIV/Aids is to screen the population on a regular basis and isolate those who are infected.
Typical of IPCC research, everything here except, presumably, Pachauri's wish that we would put a carcinogen on our faces daily is an invention, and a strikingly obvious one at that.
The man doesn't even lie well.
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The IPCC's last assessment report (AR4), which contained major errors and dubious sourcing
And based on the excerpts, it's a really bad sexy novel...
...though if your taste runs to novels with 60-something male protagonists who hop in and out of bed a lot, you might forgive the wooden prose.
The rest of us will just have to see the book's existence as a possible explanation for why the IPCC chairman "didn't notice" the many errors and non-peer-reviewed sources in the last IPCC report.
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Bizarre Climategate Update #2: Prince Charles Supports Lawbreaking Science Unit
After the British government's Information Commissioner's Office concluded the Climate Research Center at the University of East Anglia violated Britain's Freedom of Information Act law, Prince Charles visited to show his support...
...that is, he showed support for the Climate Research Unit, not the Information Commissioner (the report starts at 4:16 in the video).
Surprising to me, the prince specifically met with Phil Jones (reported at 5:21 in the video), the head of the unit (on leave since the scandal broke) and the man most under fire for the FOIA violation.
Typically in these bad-PR situations an institution will get rid of problem-causers first, and then bring the bigwigs in for a photo op expressing support for the replacement team. Fresh start, break with the past, that kind of message.
Seems Prince Charles doesn't see a need for a fresh start.
John O'Sullivan on Climategate.com has another detail about the prince's visit. Reportedly, the prince told the Climategate team:
Well done all of you. Many, many congratulations on your work. I wish you great success in the future. Don't get downhearted by these little blips here and there!
Well done? Blips?
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Bizarre Climategate Update #1: Turns out There is No Statute of Limitations on British FOIA Violations
Christopher Booker at the London Telegraph reports the British government office that determined the University of East Anglia violated Britain's Freedom of Information Act was wrong when it claimed it could not prosecute due to a statue of limitations.
I reported the original claim here; more detail on what this may mean can be found on Climategate.com.
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Tom Borelli to Appear on Varney & Co on Fox Business Channel Friday
Tom Borelli, senior fellow at the National Center for Public Policy Research and director of our Free Enterprise Project, will appear on Stuart Varney's "Varney and Co." show on the Fox Business Network Friday morning at 10 AM 10:30 AM Eastern.
Tom will discuss new guidelines issued by the Securities and Exchange Commission that may have an interesting impact on the climate change debate.
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Several people here at the National Center been doing a good bit of talk radio on Climategate lately.
Joe Thomas, the morning host at WCHV in Charlottesville, VA has posted the audio of his interview with me from his show (7:10 - 7:30 AM Tuesday morning) on the WCHV podcast page.
As it happens, Marc Morano of Climate Depot was interviewed by Joe on the same show, but an hour later. Marc also discussed Climategate.
If interested, you can listen to either or both of us by going to the WCHV podcast page here.
...we would have had a deficit of $52 billion in 2009, rather than the $1.44 trillion that we had (see historical tables here).
U.S. carbon emissions were an estimated 5,495 million metric tons in 2009, roughly 9.4% more than they were in 1990 (5,022).
If federal outlays had grown at the same pace, our spending would have been about $1.739 trillion (constant 2000 dollars) last year, while revenue would have been $1.687 trillion. We would had a surplus of $208 billion (Kyoto-Protocol-style 7%-below-1990 levels).
...And yet everybody thinks we've been irresponsible with carbon emissions.
Written by David A. Ridenour, vice president of the National Center for Public Policy Research. Write the author at info@nationalcenter.org. Please note if you prefer that your correspondence be kept private, or only published anonymously.
The IPCC's Compromised 2007 Assessment Report (AR4)
In response to my "Three Steps the IPCC Must Take," which, among other things, urged the IPCC to "adopt an uncompromising transparency policy, which includes the release of all data, all emails, all meeting minutes, all drafts and all other documentation related to the development of assessment reports and all other policy pronouncements, in the past and from this date forward," I received the following communication:
Will your Center also be adhering to this stringent transparency standard?
If so, when will such information from your group be available?
Thanks,
Steven Dolley Managing Editor, Inside NRC Platts Nuclear
I am amazed that a journalist took umbrage at my call for IPCC transparency (which is how I read his response, which I posted in full).
I believe Mr. Dolley misses the point in several ways.
First, (alas!) no nation has ever signed a treaty pledging to undertake actions based on pronouncements made by the National Center for Public Policy Research, as they have for those of the IPCC;
Second, the IPCC is funded by, among others, U.S. taxpayers (we are a tax-exempt institution -- that is, donations to us are tax-deductible; we still pay many taxes -- but we do not accept government funding);
Third, we are not doing peer-reviewed science, though if we did, we would make all the relevant documents public as we urge the IPCC to do;
Fourth, our management is not profiting on the side based on statements made, or conclusions published by, our personnel, as media reports indicate has been going at the IPCC;
Fifth; as we are a tax-exempt institution, like all other such U.S. institutions, our internal documents are not private, as the IRS can request a review of them, including all emails going back three years, at any time, just by asking. No such check exists on the IPCC.
Should at some future date governments around the world start lining up to brag about how strongly they are trying to implement policies based on NCPPR conclusions, I would be happy to suggest to our board of directors that we make all our internal emails, and any other relevant documents, related to the development of those policies, public.
In the meantime, I remain intrigued by the notion of a journalist being opposed to transparency.
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In light of the IPCC/Climategate scandals, the GORE LIED blog says: "Obama must call out the UN IPCC to keep his inaugural pledge to 'restore science to its rightful place.'"
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...ACORN could receive a windfall should the cap-and-trade legislation now making its way through the Senate eventually become law.
In June, the U.S. House passed the American Clean Energy and Security Act -- better known as Waxman-Markey for its sponsors, Henry Waxman of California and Ed Markey of Massachusetts -- ostensibly to alleviate global warming by mandating an 83 percent reduction in U.S. carbon emissions by 2050.
A similar bill, introduced in the Senate by Barbara Boxer of California and John Kerry of Massachusetts, has been approved by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. Buried in both bills are provisions that would allocate vast amounts of federal money to community development organizations such as ACORN.
Members of Congress who played to public outrage by vociferously objecting to ACORN's abuses may now want to take the time to read some of the more obscure provisions of the proposed climate bills.
Section 264 in the Waxman-Markey bill provides up to $300 million in funding for "community development organizations" so they can assist businesses and others in low-income neighborhoods with "conservation strategies, supplies and methods to improve energy efficiency."
Stephen Spruiell and Kevin Williamson, writing in The National Review, help put this funding in perspective: "Think federally subsidized consultants paid $55 an hour to tell businesses to turn down their AC in the summer."
The Kerry-Boxer bill contains similar language...
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In the wake of admissions the IPCC knew all along it was putting bogus science in its 2007 Assessment Report, that the false prediction was included specifically for its "impact on policymakers and politicians," and that this allegedly was covered up as long as it was because the IPCC chairman was raising money for his personal pursuits based on the prediction, the IPCC must immediately take three steps to restore its credibility. If it does not, the Obama Administration should use its influence to have it shut down.
To restore its credibility, the IPCC should:
1) Return its half of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize and replace its current leadership;
2) Adopt and enforce a strict conflict-of-interest policy;
3) Adopt an uncompromising transparency policy, which includes the release of all data, all emails, all meeting minutes, all drafts and all other documentation related to the development of assessment reports and all other policy pronouncements, in the past and from this date forward.
Step one would signal to the world that the IPCC is serious about reform.
Step two would reduce, though not eliminate, the temptation faced by IPCC personnel to tailor conclusions to moneymaking, career or fundraising opportunities for themselves or affiliated businesses or institutions.
Step three would be a constant reminder to IPCC personnel that their work genuinely will be peer-reviewed, in a universal sense, which is as it should be given the gravity of the IPCC's work.
Politicians relying upon IPCC recommendations are considering policies that would limit the access of billions of people to low-cost energy in an effort to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. This is a grave step that should be undertaken only if the alternative is worse. As many have considered the IPCC to be the institution that can answer that question, given the gravity of these circumstances, no level of transparency and ethics can be too high.
Global warming believers and "skeptics" do not often agree, but this is a subject upon which we should be able to reach a true consensus. No one benefits when the IPCC knowingly publishes bogus science.
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News is breaking fast and furiously in the breaking IPCC scandal. We'll have more to say about it shortly, but won't have time for a full roundup of links to news about all the breaking events. For that, I strongly recommend visits to Climate Depot and Tom Nelson.
Don't go to one; go to both.
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Message to IPCC: Time to Return the Nobel Peace Prize
Children in Kenya light candles to illustrate the need for access to energy in their community. Many of the pictured children cannot do homework at home after dark, as they do not have electricity in their homes. Photo by David Ridenour
The relevant scientist at the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has now admitted false information on the alleged aggressive melting of Himalayan was placed in the 2007 IPCC report to "impact policy-makers and politicians," and that he knew the information was not based on a solid scientific foundation.
For this work, the IPCC won half the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 (sharing it with Al Gore, who was awarded half in his own right).
For committing this fraud, the IPCC should voluntarily return the Nobel Peace Prize, and, if they want the IPCC to ever have credibility again, people who believe in the global warming theory should join us in this call. Unless there are severe repercussions -- in the case of the IPCC, mostly embarrassment -- for intentionally committing scientific fraud, we'll get more and more of it. There is money to be made if the global warming theory is proven true, which leads to a lot of temptation that not every scientist or allegedly scientific organization is going to resist.
The stakes are high here: People in developing countries need low-cost access to energy to reach the living standards we in the U.S. mostly take for granted. Policies to combat carbon raise energy prices, retarding that development.
Anti-global warming policies also disproportionately hurt the poor in developed countries.
To be brutally frank, our politicians have enough trouble delivering sound energy policies when they do have access to accurate information; the odds get significantly higher when scientists intentionally feed them lies.
To prove it has learned its lesson (and thus is worthy of being trusted in the future), and to send a strong message to every scientist that deceit will not be tolerated, the IPCC should immediately return its half of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. Furthermore, it should accept the resignation of its chairman and clean house, top-to-bottom, putting a strong error-checking and strict anti-conflict-of-interest system in place.
Addendum: Noel Sheppard of Newsbusters points out that this story was broken by the British press, and chastises the U.S. mainstream media -- quite properly -- for ignoring important global warming-related stories their counterparts abroad cover deeply. For additional developments on this breaking story (and there are plenty of them), visit Climate Depot.
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Note to Project 21 Fans: Glenn Beck Rebroadcast of Most Recent Show Featuring Project 21 Members
The Fox News Channel is rebroadcasting, right this minute, the second of two Beck shows featuring a discussion with black conservatives (including Project 21 members).
If you can't catch it on the Fox News Channel for whatever reason, Booker Rising (a website I often visit, but don't mention as much as I should) has made available the video of the entire show, which is entitled "A Time To Be Heard."
We also posted on this blog the segments of the show featuring Project 21 members. Go here to watch Lisa Fritsch; go here to watch full-time Project 21 Fellow Deneen Borelli on the "A Time To Be Heard" Glenn Beck broadcast.
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Where are the Vice Chairmen, and Other IPCC Questions
See any vice chairmen? Al Gore (l) and the IPCC's Rajendra Pachauri take their bows in Oslo
Acknowledging that there may be even more errors in the Nobel Peace Prize-winning IPCC's 2007 climate report than the "scientific fact" the IPCC partially copied from a thinly-sourced World Wildlife Fund propaganda document, IPCC Chairman Rajendra K. Pachauri seems to be blaming his vice chairmen:
The IPCC's 2007 report, which won it half the Nobel Peace Prize, claimed the probability of Himalayan glaciers "disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high."
But it emerged last week that the forecast was based not on a consensus among climate change experts, but on a media interview with a single Indian glaciologist in 1999.
The IPCC admitted on Thursday that the prediction was "poorly substantiated" in the latest of a series of blows to the panel's credibility.
Dr Pachauri said that the IPCC's report was the responsibility of the panel's Co-Chairs at the time, both of whom have since moved on.
They were Dr Martin Parry, a British scientist now at Imperial College London, and Dr Osvaldo Canziani , an Argentine meteorologist. Neither was immediately available for comment.
"I don't want to blame them, but typically the working group reports are managed by the Co-Chairs," Dr Pachauri said. "Of course the Chair is there to facilitate things, but we have substantial amounts of delegation."
You'll notice from the picture, however, that when it came time to take bows, the vice chairmen were nowhere to be found.
P.S. For fun, here's a quiz on this blog post:
Question: What did we learn from this story? A. Never trust the IPCC. B. The Nobel Peace Prize can be ridiculous. C. Be wary of people who refer to other people as "chairs." D. All of the above.
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Tom Borelli on Climategate; Cap-and-Trade on Varney & Co.
In the category of "in case you missed it," here's video from the debut show this week of the Fox Business Channel's Varney & Co., with host Stuart Verney. In this video clip, our Tom Borelli discusses funding from the "stimulus" bill being granted to the work of a scientist involved in the Climategate scandal, and he also discusses the impact of cap-and-trade on California.
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DeSmogblog's most recent word in our "debate," a Tweet about me (and Rush Limbaugh) from Kevin Grandia's Twitter feed that popped up on my online clip service last night:
I assume he means we are both fat (although Rush Limbaugh has lost a lot of weight this past year), but, based on the pictures he choose, Kevin doesn't know the half of it: My hair color is a lot closer to Rush's now.
But to answer the question, no, superficial (and ideological as well as football) similarities notwithstanding, we were not separated at birth. My parents would never have let Rush go.
But it is time, I think, to let this particular "debate" with DeSmogBlog die its natural death. By the time a conversation hits the "you're fat" level, it's no longer even remotely about public policy. Our priorities here at the National Center right now are to stop economically-ruinous environmental legislation (that won't even help the environment!), put a halt to the Administration's forced march toward the pain, fear, misery and premature death that is the hallmark of government-run health care, promote the free-market reforms that can strengthen our health care and retirement security systems, cut the size of government and promote a strong, secure and free America that is governed according to what our Constitution says and according to the principles of our Founders. Pointing out the ideological weaknesses of the left -- such as the DeSmogBlog tactic of demonizing opponents a la "denier" labelling -- promotes this goal, but dwelling upon a message once the statement has been made, or becoming distracted by debates that have devolved into personal insults, does not.
I'm sure I'll visit DeSmogBlog again at some point in the future, and perhaps comment on something they say related to public policy, but not for some time.
In the meantime, I leave followers of this conversation with two links to policy-oriented critiques of other, but very important, aspects of the DeSmogBlog approach to policy that are (alas!) far better written, and far more entertaining, than anything I have posted in this thread:
DeSoggyBog.com - DeSmogBlog parody site that proves DeSmogBlog's true philosophy is the promotion of totalitarianism, created by Donna Laframboise, a former vice-president of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (also the creator of NOconsensus.org).
"DeSmog Accidentally Vindicates The Skeptics Handbook" -- absolutely hilarious response of science educator and speaker Joanne Nova to DeSmogBlog's futile effort to rebut "The Skeptics Handbook," which she authored.
And now, back to regularly-scheduled public policy programming.
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"Michael Mann Received Stimulus Money: A Case Study in One Job 'Saved'," the Wall Street Journal editorializes this morning on the stimulus funds grant received by Climategate scientist Michael Mann:
As for stimulus jobs - whether "saved" or "created" - we thought readers might be interested to know whose employment they are sustaining. More than $2.4 million is stimulating the career of none other than Penn State climate scientist Michael Mann.
Mr. Mann is the creator of the famous hockey stick graph, which purported to show some 900 years of minor temperature fluctuations, followed by a spike in temperatures over the past century. His work, which became a short-term sensation when seized upon by Al Gore, was later discredited. Mr. Mann made the climate spotlight again last year as a central player in the emails from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit, which showed climatologists massaging data, squelching opposing views, and hiding their work from the public.
Mr. Mann came by his grants via the National Science Foundation, which received $3 billion in stimulus money. Last June, the foundation approved a $541,184 grant to fund work "Toward Improved Projections of the Climate Response to Anthropogenic Forcing," which will contribute "to the understanding of abrupt climate change." Principal investigator? Michael Mann...
We're not quoted in this, but National Center Senior Fellow/Free Enterprise Project director Tom Borelli provided information to the Journal for the piece.
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...by alluding to the fact that Kevin's website refers to it.
You see, I noted in passing that DeSmogBlog has equated disbelief in the man-made global warming theory with denying the Holocaust.
DeSmogBlog does so by using the term "denier," which is well-established in global warming circles as a slur intended to impugn the morality of global warming skeptics by equating them rhetorically with holocaust deniers.
In fact, according to Google, DeSmogBlog has chosen "denier" over the less-loaded term "skeptic" (or any other term) over 2,200 times.
How do we know the DeSmogBlog crew intends the phrase "denier" to imply a link to Holocaust denial?
Here's a screen shot of the text of a DeSmogBlog post by Jim Hoggan of Hoggan and Associates (a PR firm that runs DeSmogBlog, and employs Kevin), aka, the big boss:
Innocuous as what I wrote was ("Kindness is not usually a term one associates with the anti-Holocaustglobal warming denier website DeSmogBlog, but its staff has made an exception today..."), Kevin has complained about it in a post on DeSmogBlog, another on the Huffington Post, another on AlterNet, and yet another on the Daily Kos, saying in part:
I sent an email to Ridenour [sic] assistant [sic], David Almasi, the other night asking for an explanation and also pointing out that in the four years I have been writing on climate issues I have never used a Nazi analogy in an attempt to bolster an argument or discredit an individual. So far they haven't responded and I think they're [sic] silence is telling.
Kevin added:
[Using a Nazi analogy] is a stupid and useless means of making a point that only creates division and hate.
I agree. Maybe now that DeSmogBlog's staff has done this over 2,200 times, they might consider cutting it out.
Now that everyone's been reminded that DeSmogBlog explicitly linked "denier" to "Holocaust" (as have others in the global warming alarmist community and mainstream press), if the DeSmogBlog staff continues to use the term "denier," we'll know they mean it double.
P.S. Kevin's co-worker at both DeSmogBlog and Jim Hoggan and Associates, Richard Littlemore, chimed in on DeSmogBlog (curiously, Richard commented on Jan. 16 to a post by Kevin apparently published on Jan. 18 -- perhaps Richard knew two days in advance what Kevin would post the same way he knows 100 years in advance what the climate will be?) with the defense that the word "holocaust" has never appeared in a DeSmogBlog post.
I guess what Richard means is that the word "holocaust" didn't appear except when it did, or...
...he's referring to the fact that someone at DeSmogBlog went back to Jim Hoggan's post, about a year after the denier-is-meant-to-refer-to-Holocaust-deniers phrase was posted, and snipped that politically-incorrect Holocaust reference right out of there.
(Background: Some months after the post was published, a contretemps emerged in several media outlets and websites about the use of the term "denier" being a de facto Holocaust-referencing slur (for instance, in this instance, and in another high-profile but later example, here), and Jim Hoggan's post was being referred to in public by skeptics as proof that the Holocaust reference absolutely, positively was intended.
So Jim's honesty was a but inconvenient for the global warming alarmists who were claiming the Holocaust implication was just something the paranoid "deniers" thought up on their own.
Coincidence or not, they snipped it out.)
P.P.S. DeSmogBlog's Richard Littlemore also says DeSmogBlog does not accuse people of being corporate whores. He says they phrase it differently. Whatever.
Finally (I hope!), Richard says he doubts my word that the National Center for Public Policy Research has 100,000 donors. Mea culpa -- I should have said over 100,000 recent donors (defined as within the last 18 months). If Richard genuinely doubts this as he says, he might familiarize himself with the way a great many, if not a strong majority, of U.S. conservative/free-market non-profits are financed (also he might acquaint himself with something called the "public support test" in U.S. tax law). Ordinarily I would not expect an employee of a Canadian PR firm to know much about public financial support for the U.S. conservative movement, but as Richard has written for years for a website that routinely accuses people in the movement (and many, many others) of doing the bidding of corporate paymasters (please note, Richard, I did not put that phrase in quotes), this is a subject he should have mastered long ago.
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Project 21's Deneen Borelli Talks Green Jobs on Glenn Beck
In case you missed it from Friday...
Project 21 full-time fellow Deneen Borelli talks about the fantasy of economic empowerment through radical environmental policies on the January 14, 2010 broadcast of the Glenn Beck program on the Fox News Channel.
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Tom Borelli to Join Fox Business Channel 's Stuart Varney on "Varney & Co" Debut Monday
National Center for Public Policy Research Senior Fellow and Free Enterprise Project Director Tom Borelli, Ph.D., will be a guest Monday, January 18 on the debut of Stuart Varney's new show, "Varney and Co." on the Fox Business Channel.
Tom will be discussing companies that are lobbying heavily for -- and betting heavily on -- the adoption of cap-and-trade and other energy-limiting regulations, and other ways proponents of energy regulation are scheming to profit from anti-global warming regulations.
And here we thought the cap-and-trade lobbyists were concerned for the fate of the Earth...
"Varney and Co." debuts at 9:30 AM Eastern on the Fox Business Channel; Tom is scheduled to appear at 10:30 AM Eastern. Editor's note: After this was posted, Tom's interview was moved to 10:20.
For those of you who missed it, here's Tom talking with Stuart Varney last week on the topic of Climategate scientist Michael Mann receiving a grant from federal stimulus funds.
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The commercial, directed personally by Al Gore, asked viewers to visit one of the websites of Gore's Alliance for Climate Protection, where, among other things, they would be asked to sign a petition calling for a global climate treaty.
I am not a regular viewer of Robertson's CBN show, The 700 Club, but I had not previously presupposed it to be a support network for global governance.
Possibly CBN personnel were similarly mystified. In an article David linked to in his post, a CBN spokesman tries to say Robertson doesn't have a "firm position" on global warming:
Maybe he didn't, but as the video on Greg's post shows, the commercial encouraged viewers to visit Gore's website wecansolveit.org, which, at the time of the commercials, greeted viewers with these words...
...and then urged people to sign Gore's petition for a global climate treaty.
Robertson, by the way, wasn't the only person on the right to film a commercial asking people to visit Gore's website, and be asked to sign the global climate treaty petition:
The global climate treaty Al Gore has been pushing for is run through the United Nations. Even if Robertson and Gingrich choose to believe in the global warming theory -- in fact, especially if they believe in the global warming theory -- why would they want to address the issue through the useless and corrupt United Nations?
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Rebuttal to Huffington Post's "Right Wing Attacks Climate Scientist with Outrageous Spindoctoring"
Kevin Grandia, managing editor of the left-wing anti-global warming skeptic website DeSmogBlog, has posted an article on the Huffington Post about our exposure (along with that of others) of Michael Mann's $541,184 grant from federal stimulus funds.
Kevin must have known the article was fundamentally incorrect when he submitted it to the Huffington Post.
The post, entitled "Right wing attacks climate scientist with outrageous spindoctoring," can be read here. It was actually written by one of Kevin's DeSmogBlog writers, Mitchell Anderson, and appeared on DeSmogBlog at http://tinyurl.com/desmogblog on Friday.
Because the Huffington Post is one of the most highly-trafficked websites in the world, and Kevin/Mitchell's article there was so off-the-wall wrong, I posted a comment on the Huffington Post correcting the basic facts. The comment, which makes the most sense if you read the Huffington Post piece first, is:
Kevin Grandia and Mitchell Anderson embarrass themselves with lines such as "How they arrived at this $450,000 error is unknown - it is puzzling when such free market capitalists clearly can't operate a calculator..."
Mitchell and Kevin are talking about the wrong grant, and Kevin, at minimum, must have known this before he posted this here. Their article here links to the National Center for Public Policy Research (which employs me) press release (partially reprinted by Friskaliberal.com, also linked to here), which calls for a return of a grant of $541,184.
Kevin wrote us Thursday to ask about the grant. We IDed the grant for him as National Science Foundation award #0902133, which is for $541,184.
So Kevin knew, before posting this here, that "the climate denial echo chamber" (as he so charmingy calls us) wasn't talking about an entirely different, $770,000 grant to Penn State/ U of HI, of which Mann received a small portion.
The real story: in June 2009, Penn State accepted a $541,184 grant, to cover three years, to Michael Mann's work. Climategate then exploded. Apparently believing Climategate to be serious, Penn State opened an investigation into Mann's work. Our position is that under these circumstances, the grant should be returned to the National Science Foundation, so the funds can be awarded to another scientist.
Kevin and Mitchell seem to think this would be awful. I'm not sure why. Maybe just because we're the ones who suggested it.
Addendum, 1/17/10: Apparently AlterNet has posted this as well. Why aren't these very major websites doing even superficial fact-checking before they publish pieces? E-mail comments to info@nationalcenter.org. | Subscribe to feed. | Follow the National Center for Public Policy Research on Twitter. | DownloadShattered Lives: 100 Victims of Government Health Care.
Tom Borelli Discusses Climategate, Greening of California on Glenn Beck
Tom Borelli, Ph.D., director of our Free Enterprise Project, was on the Glenn Beck Show Friday with Eric Bolling, guest host, discussing both the granting of economic stimulus funds to Climategate scientist Michael Mann and also Arnold Schwartzenegger's efforts to "green" California.
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Climategate Stimulus Grant Covered by Fox, Limbaugh, Many Others
Our press release revealing that over half a million dollars in federal stimulus money is funding the work of a key Climategate scientist, Penn State's Michael Mann, has been receiving a lot of attention.
Stuart Varney of the Fox Business Channel interviews Tom Borelli, director of the National Center for Public Policy Research's Free Enterprise Project
Rush Limbaugh reads and comments upon our press release about a half hour into his show
Here's how the story was covered on Rush Limbaugh.com:
Story #3: Climate Hoaxer Mann Gets Porkulus Slush Fund Grant
RUSH: From the National Center for Public Policy Research: "In the face of rising unemployment and record-breaking deficits, policy experts at the National Center for Public Policy Research are criticizing the Obama Administration for awarding a half million dollar grant from the economic stimulus package to Penn State Professor Michael Mann, a key figure in the Climategate controversy." Michael Mann is one of the guys doctoring all the data at the Hadley Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in the UK. You was one of the guys "hiding the decline" in global temperatures. He got a half a million dollars in stimulus money -- once again, illustrating that it is a slush fund. It is not an economic stimulus package, and it was never intended to be one except in your mind.
The Washington Examiner covered the story in a "The Daily Outrage: Mann Money" story. The Examiner wants people to call the office of Vice President Joe Biden about this. To find out why, click here.
Noel Sheppard on Newsbusters wrote a post with news about another climate change-related grant Penn State has recently received that is funded with federal stimulus money.
Said Noel:
...Potentially adding insult to injury, Penn State received additional stimulus funds to investigate the impact of climate change last week:
A nearly $1.9 million grant from the National Science Foundation is enabling a Penn State-led group of researchers to continue studies on the potential effects of climate change on the spread of infectious diseases, such as malaria and dengue. The grant is part of federal stimulus funding authorized under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
This grant appears to have nothing to do with Mann's department. However, given the high-profile the university is currently under as a result of his involvement in ClimateGate, it seems absurd that any federal funds involving climate change would be going to this school while it is investigating its chief proponent of this myth.
Maybe more importantly, why are economic stimulus funds being given to a university for scientific research in the first place, especially one with such political overtones?...
...I'm sure now that NCPPR has exposed this hypocrisy, press outlets across the fruited plain will be aggressively investigating economic stimulus grants to Mann and others involved in the ClimateGate scandal in order to inform the public about how their tax dollars are being spent.
Of course, I'm not holding my breath.
In a post early Thursday morning, Gateway Pundit provided background information on the hockey stick itself, as well as Climategate, before discussing this grant.
Media Matters attacked us for saying anything about this; according to them, the activities that make up the scandal known as Climategate are business-as-usual, and therefore, not worthy of note. If you say so, guys!
FoxNation covered it here (thanks for telling us about this, Media Matters!).
If your blog covered our press release and I missed it, I apologize. I also know that we had a lot of calls and bookings from talk radio shows today, but, regrettably, I don't have a list available at present.
If the mainstream press is covering it, I'm at this point unaware of any examples.
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Re: Climategate, Left-Wing DeSmogBlog Website Asks Us for Research Help
Kindness is not usually a term one associates with the anti-Holocaustglobal warming denier website DeSmogBlog, but its staff has made an exception today.
It's really very kind of Kevin, especially when you consider that DeSmogBlog is a Canadian website, run by a for-profit public relations firm. How many Canadian for-profits worry about U.S. taxpayers being shafted? And after normal working hours, too!
From: Kevin Grandia Date: January 14, 2010 9:52:52 PM EST To: dalmasi@nationalcenter.org Subject: Mann claim
Hi David,
I am looking for your evidence backing your claim that Mann received stimulus money. I cannot find anything in your press release or on your blog. I also searched the Recovery.gov datbase and cannot find it. Obviously, it is imperative that such a claim is backed by solid sources and research so I would appreciate you sending this on to me as soon as possible.
DeSmogBlog's much anticipated book, "Climate Cover Up: the crusade to deny global warming" is now available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble - get your copy today! http://www.desmogblog.com/climate-cover-up
And thank you, too, Kevin, for telling us about DeSmogBlog's book highlighting the important work of many of us in the U.S. skeptic community (polite people don't call us "deniers," Kevin) who don't want to disproportionately hurt poor people by raising energy prices based on models that disagree with one another or on an injudicious analysis of the rings of a small number of carefully-selected trees. As it is always interesting to see what the neighbors next door have to say about one, Kevin, I'd be happy to read your boss's new book if you send me a free copy. You might be interested also in my book, which describes in sad detail the way the Canadian left has screwed up your health care system. You can get a free copy of it here. Be warned, though, since you live in Canada, it might come across as kind of terrifying. I regret that, but some leftist Americans want to do to us what yours did to you, and we really have to warn people.
Back to the Michael Mann grant. I can tell from your email, Kevin, that looking in three places on the Internet for information on the grant before giving up has kind of tired you out. Really, I don't blame DeSmogBlog for this, as you are PR professionals, not researchers. I'm sure if we were talking about the best way to market a new brand of laundry detergent, you'd know lots more than we would, so why should I expect you to know a lot about government? Or climate?
So I will help you out a little. The $541,184 grant from our taxpayers to Climategate scientist Michael Mann is National Science Foundation grant award #0902133. Is documentation about it online? Maybe, Kevin, but how would you learn to do research if we did all your work for you? And besides, if you want to claim we made it up, isn't it your job to prove it?
P.S. I know DeSmogBlog -- amusingly, for a PR agency website -- is in the habit of painting anyone with a differing point of view as a corporate whore, so be aware that the total funding we receive from all corporate sources combined amounts to about one-half of one percent of our total income. About 98 percent of our income comes from small gifts from over 100,000 people who are darned worried about the job-killing, price-raising and liberty-restricting agenda of people like you. Should you write about us, I doubt you'll be able to resist claiming we're corporate funded, but you won't be able to claim we didn't tell you by how much.
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Tom Borelli to Discuss Climategate Scientist Stimulus Grant on Fox Business Network
National Center for Public Policy Free Enterprise Project Director Tom Borelli, Ph.D., will be a guest at 1 PM Eastern on Stuart Varney's show on the Fox Business Channel.
SCHEDULING UPDATE: The interview time has been changed to 1:40 PM Eastern.
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Does Spokesman for Global Warming Alarmists Have Inside Line to Satan?
Old pal?
Pat Robertson says the earthquake in Haiti is a consequence of Haiti's pact with the devil dating back to the late 18th Century.
Of course, no one can rule out the possibility that God might visit his wrath on any nation for its sinful ways, but Robertson went much, much beyond that.
On his 700 Club program, Robertson didn't just assert that Haitians had pledged their devotion to the devil if he freed them from their French occupiers, but said "the devil said okay, it's a deal..."
I'd love to see the footnote on that one. Perhaps it was the same source he used in determining the high correlation between hurricanes and sinfulness. Or perhaps he and Beelzebub are old pals.
Pat Robertson's statement puts his position on global warming in perspective, doesn't it? For anyone who doesn't know, he believes anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions are causing catastrophic warming of the planet.
His statement says something about the global warming alarmist movement to which he now belongs, too.
Ordinarily, a global warming Chicken Little spouting off something nutty would be completely unremarkable. In fact, I expect it. But Robertson is no ordinary clucker. He's been a spokesman for Al Gore's "Alliance for Climate Protection," appearing in the group's "We Can Solve it" advertisements urging action on climate change.
So Al Gore looked around and thought to himself, "Pat Robertson... now there's a credible guy. He's just who we need to reassure the public that we aren't a bunch of crackpots."
Oh, did I mention that Robertson appeared in Gore's ads with the Reverend Al Sharpton?
Written by David A. Ridenour, vice president of the National Center for Public Policy Research. Write the author at info@nationalcenter.org. As we occasionally reprint letters on the blog, please note if you prefer that your correspondence be kept private, or only published anonymously.
If Carbon Dioxide is Expended by Nancy Pelosi, Does It Still Cause Global Warming?
CBS's Sharyl Attkisson revealed Monday (see a post by Noel Sheppard on Newsbusters for video) that "101 Congress-related" people flew to the Copenhagen climate summit last month, at tremendous cost to taxpayers.
But although Attkisson ended the piece with a brief nod to the environmental impact of the huge Nancy Pelosi-approved delegation, her otherwise excellent report told only part of the story. That is, when Speaker Nancy Pelosi approved a Congressional delegation to Copenhagen almost a quarter of the size of the entire Congress, she approved an enormous carbon footprint -- and she did it just a few months after twisting arms (brutally) to get Congress to pass the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill.
Using a calculator and some information available to anyone with internet access, my husband David worked out some quick facts regarding the carbon footprint of Nancy Pelosi's delegation. According to David:
Pelosi's delegation expended the same amount of carbon as 1,300 people combined in Bangladesh expend in an entire year;
the Pelosi delegation expended at least 378 metric tons of CO2 and probably considerably more;
Americans presently expend nearly 20 tons of carbon per capita, per year. Each member of the Pelosi delegation, on average, expended 19 percent of that annual amount -- but in just two days.
It is important to cover the way politicians misspend our money. But much of the mainstream press professes concern about CO2 emissions leading to dangerous global warming, so I have just one question: Why aren't reporters covering this part of the story?
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Borelli Questions Use of Intelligence Assets on Fox
Here's a video of Project 21 full-time fellow Deneen Borelli on Fox and Friends this morning, discussing the diversion of national security intelligence resources to climate research.
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Media Matters is attacking us again. This time, it claims our assertion that "the Obama Administration is tasking some of our nation's most elite intelligence-gathering agencies to divert their resources to environmental scientists researching global warming" is wrong because "the program... 'has little or no impact on regular intelligence gathering.'"
Two months before the Christmas Day would-be bomber flew over U.S. airspace in what President Obama himself reportedly called an intelligence "screw-up," U.S. intelligence officials were, according to William J. Broad of the New York Times, "collaborating on an effort to use the federal government's intelligence assets -- including spy satellites and other classified sensors -- to assess the hidden complexities of environmental change..."
In light of the Christmas Day Underwear Bomber incident and other threats, and the fact that the U.S. military is currently engaged in two wars, this is one American who is not comfortable having our apparently-overburdened intelligence officials focusing on climate change -- even part of the time.
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Project 21's Deneen Borelli on Fox News "Special Report" and Throughout the Day Thursday to Talk About Iceberg Spy Games
Project 21 Fellow Deneen Borelli is being interviewed for a segment set to air on the Fox News Channel's "Special Report with Bret Baier" program at 6:00 PM Eastern on Thursday, January 7. She will be speaking about the Obama Administration's diversion of our nation's intelligence resources to assist climate scientists.
In a National Center press release published yesterday, Deneen criticized a government program that will allow climate scientists to access classified intelligence data to help them study global warming. In the release, Deneen said:
"Given the very real threat posed by terrorists, it is ridiculous and downright dangerous to divert any intelligence resources to monitoring polar ice. Its said this won't hinder regular intelligence-gathering, but it's also clear that agencies can't yet share data and track a terrorism suspect who was identified by his own father. It's unwise to further distract our intelligence network by forcing it to consult with scientists about icebergs, polar bears and sea lions. The Obama Administration appears to be putting a left-wing political agenda before the safety and security of our nation.
In addition to the segment on "Special Report," shorter versions of the interview are supposed to air throughout the day. "Special Report" will also be rebroadcast at 4:00 AM Eastern.
Check your local listings for Fox News Channel on cable. Fox News is available on channel 118 on Fios, channel 205 on Dish Network and channel 360 on DirecTV.
Addendum, 1/8/10: Note from Amy Ridenour: We apologize to those of you who tuned in to see Deneen, as the Special Report interview with Deneen was cancelled by Fox at the last minute. We'll try to post notices of that sort before shows in the future, when cancellations occur.
This post was written by David Almasi, executive director of the National Center for Public Policy Research. Write the author at info@nationalcenter.org.
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Tom Borelli, director of the National Center for Public Policy Research's Free Enterprise Project, will be a guest today, December 29, on the Fox New Channel's Glenn Beck Show.
Tom will be discussing the relationship between GE, President Obama and climate change policies.
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A global warming activist at the UN's COP-15 climate conference is asked by David Ridenour about Climategate, and whether it is ever proper for scientists to destroy their raw data.
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Copenhagen, Denmark - The climate change conference in Copenhagen adopted a new, bold, historic agreement...
... to continue to talk. Wow, and accomplished in just two weeks!
The last-minute deal, helped along by our deal-closer-in-chief Barack Obama, was three-pages long (not counting appendices) and included a number of non-binding commitments, including...
* The U.S. and other developed countries will help raise $100 billion per year by 2020 to help developing nations with climate change mitigation and adaptation. In return, these nations agreed to accept the cash. The cash specifies on that "[m]itigation actions... be subject to... domestic measurement, reporting and verification."
* Developed nations also agreed to provide some $30 billion in aid between 2010 and 2012, with the U.S. pledging $3.6 billion of that amount.
* China and other developing countries agreed to what is being widely reported as international verification of their action to address climate change, but they agreed to do nothing of the kind. The agreement calls for the establishment of "guidelines" for international "consultations and analysis," but significantly, no international verification. And, lest there be any doubt that China won't tolerate such verification, the agreement specifies the guidelines it issues "will ensure that national sovereignty is respected."
* China, now the world's largest emitter of carbon, agreed to cut its "carbon intensity" by between 40% and 45% by 2020. Sounds good, doesn't it? But there's a difference between reducing carbon intensity (the amount of carbon emitted per dollar of GDP) and overall carbon reduction, which the U.S., EU and other large emitters committed to undertaking. India, too, vowed only to reduce its carbon intensity by between 20% and 25% by 2020. Both countries could meet these targets and still see their emissions grow substantially.
* State parties agreed to a goal of limiting global warming by 2 degrees Celsius, but as the above makes plain, they didn't establish a blue print – certainly not one that is binding to achieve this goal.
Obama hasn't had such a stunning success in Copenhagen since he closed the deal for Chicago to host the next Olympic games. Oh right - scratch that.
Though the climate summit was a spectacular failure for President Obama, it was a great victory for the American people.
The Heritage Foundation estimates that the imposition of the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade regime, the type of system most likely to be imposed to ensure the U.S. meets its carbon reduction targets under a binding treaty, would destroy an average of 1.15 million jobs every year between 2012 and 2030. So President Obama's failure to deliver a treaty may have been his single biggest contribution to fighting unemployment in the United States.
Even if he didn't mean to do it.
Written by David A. Ridenour, vice president of the National Center for Public Policy Research. Write the author at info@nationalcenter.org. As we occasionally reprint letters on the blog, please note if you prefer that your correspondence be kept private, or only published anonymously.
COP-15: A Chance to See What Life Would Be Like...
Copenhagen, Denmark - COP-15 has provided a glimpse of what life might be like under a global climate change agreement... and it isn't "A Wonderful Life." It's been a real Frank Capra moment, only in reverse.
I've already reported that some 45,000 people representing accredited non-governmental organizations (NGOs) had registered to participate in the conference and that some 38,000 of that number were turned away the first few days of this week. Many had flown thousands of miles to participate at great expense and were forced to wait up to 10 hours in the cold before being told they wouldn't be admitted.
As my colleague Tom Borelli noted, "It was easier to get out of Casa Blanca than to get into the Bella Center."
On Monday, one person standing in line ahead of us collapsed.
This was completely unnecessary. The UNFCCC knew that they weren't going to allow additional people in for at least hours before announcing their decision. One Canadian NGO representative told me that she'd learned from one government delegate that the decision had been made before the conference began.
But the UNFCCC wanted to break the spirit of those gathered so that they would go away -- not just for this COP meeting but future ones.
Decisions by the UNFCCC were arbitrary, subject to constant change and it provided no information to those left in the cold and no mechanism for redress of legitimate grievances.
UNFCCC staff did offer a telephone number to those in line on Tuesday morning that instantly went to voice mail, which NGOs were told to expect. I called the number and left messages numerous times before an UNFCCC staffer -- apparently in error -- answered. Here's how my conversation went.
Me: Hello. I'm calling because we're having a problem registering for COP-15 because we need a secondary pass to enter the building. How can I obtain one?
UNFCCC staff: We don't do that here.
Me: Isn't this the UNFCCC?
UNFCCC staff: Yes. I said we don't do that here.
Me: Okay. Can you provide me with the right telephone number?
UNFCCC staff: No.
Me: But if you work for the UNFCCC, why can't you?
UNFCCC staff: Click.
None of my messages were ever answered.
Then on Wednesday night, the UNFCCC Secretariat decided -- or so they said that's when they decided -- to restrict the number of NGO representatives to 300 (about 0.6 % of those who showed up).
Speaking at a meeting of Research and Independent Non-Governmental Organizations (RINGO), RINGO's Marilyn Averill reported that the UNFCCC had obtained emails in which some of the more radical environmental organizations detailed plans to hide in the Bella Center throughout the night and then take over the building by opening the door to all their activists on the outside. This is what the secretariat said prompted the decision to so severely restrict access.
I'm no fan of the environmental left. But how is it that the UNFCCC intercepted these emails -- through infiltration of these groups or by reading private emails sent through the center's "free" WiFi?
Either way, it should frighten all civil libertarians.
The environmental left created a monster and that monster -- as conservatives and libertarians could have told them -- has now turned on them.
Having provided the political pressure needed to create this treaty process, the environmental serfs have now been instructed to return to the manor while the nobility divvy up the spoils.
Since the Magna Carta was forced upon King John in 1215, political and economic power has been on a more or less steady path toward decentralization.
That could be all about to change.
Global climate change regulation is about returning to the old economic and social order.
Regulation of fossil fuels -- and thus power -- is about political power. The preservation of our right to keep and bear fossil fuels is every bit as important to the preservation of our liberty as the preservation of our right to keep and bear arms.
Our liberty is inextricably linked to our economic well-being as well as our ability to move freely to wherever we choose. An energy-restricted world will mean greater dependence on government for our transportation and such dependence increases the ability of governments to control us.
What government gives, it can easily take away.
The COP-15 meeting gave us a taste of what could be in store for all of us. When the UNFCCC wanted to stop political protests, they had the Metro station at the Bella Center closed down. They could have closed down the entire government-run transportation system upon which so many hapless Danish citizens now depend.
The UN body did everything in its power to limit participation of anyone not part of a government delegation while limiting press access to heads of state so the citizens of the world saw exactly what they wanted them to see.
There was no transparency and no accountability. Even environmentalists now recognize this. Two Canadian environmentalists to whom I spoke very early on Thursday morning suggested that it was time to abandon the UN process in favor of more productive uses of their time.
I agree.
It's time to return power to the people... in more ways than one.
Written by David A. Ridenour, vice president of the National Center for Public Policy Research. Write the author at info@nationalcenter.org. As we occasionally reprint letters on the blog, please note if you prefer that your correspondence be kept private, or only published anonymously.
David Ridenour asks some global warming activists at the COP-15 climate conference about their use of fossil fuels to travel to the conference, and offers them some Hypocrisy Offsets.
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David Ridenour e-mailed me a final copy of the so-called Copenhagen Accord; you can download a PDF of it here if you are interested.
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At least one member of the National Center's delegation to the COP-15 climate conference figures this is what the area around their hotel -- the Mayfair, at 4 Adelgatan in Malmo, Sweden -- will soon look like if the anti-energy global warming activists get their way.
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Offsets Help Environmentalists With Feelings of Guilt
Open Hypocrisy Offset in a new window or tab to see full size
The National Center for Public Policy Research is showcasing the hypocrisy of the carbon-emitting travels of global warming activists at COP-15 in Copenhagen by offering conscience-clearing "hypocrisy offsets" (as a humanitarian act) to attendees.
The hypocrisy offsets parody carbon offsets sold and traded allegedly to allow people to live carbon-neutral lives. The hypocrisy offsets also highlight the insincerity of world-traveling, energy-guzzling COP-15 delegates.
In a press release we issued about the offsets, David Ridenour, who has personally distributed the offsets in Copenhagen, explained, "Many of those in attendance to press for additional commitments for carbon reductions traveled thousands of miles and used substantial amounts of carbon-emitting jet-fuel just to get to the conference. We are exposing the hypocrisy by offering them 'hypocrisy offsets' to alleviate their green guilt. As one who is skeptical of the necessity of draconian carbon cuts, I plan to do my part to ensure plenty of hypocrisy offsets are available. I'll refrain from reducing my own personal carbon footprint."
Environmentalists are in Copenhagen demanding global limits on emissions, but they don't want to follow the very rules they are proposing for the rest of the world. Their participation may earn them some media coverage, but it is having no effect on an agreement. In fact, the United Nations mostly banned them from even entering the conference, so their voluntary contribution to carbon emissions -- emissions they insist imperil the planet -- from this unnecessary travel is a stunning act of hypocrisy.
Because we know they must be feeling very guilty about what they've done, and in most cases intend to continue doing indefinitely, we invented hypocrisy offsets as a humanitarian act.
Aren't we nice?
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Green Activist: "We're Going to Stay Until We Can't Stay Anymore"
The National Center's David Ridenour talked to some protesters at the COP-15 climate conference in Copenhagen. The protesters were carrying signs announcing their sit-in protest: "We will stay until you reach a fair, ambitious and legally binding agreement."
David asked them what they planned to do if conference officials clear the building.
Turns out, they're protesting until they're asked to leave.
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A model of Copenhagen during medieval times. Note the sandbags around the perimeter. Green activists had planned to flood the area with water to show the devastating consequences of failing to take action on global warming now.
Note that the area isn't flooded. It seems the model -- like the greens' dire predictions -- doesn't hold water.
Written by David A. Ridenour, vice president of the National Center for Public Policy Research. Write the author at info@nationalcenter.org. As we occasionally reprint letters on the blog, please note if you prefer that your correspondence be kept private, or only published anonymously.
Al Gore is testing out a new strategy to incite fear of catastrophic global warming. Not content to be a seer limited to prophecies in prose, Gore has treated us to a rare glimpse of his more sensitive, artistic side.
Yes, Al Gore has penned a poem (included in his most recent book, "Our Choice - A plan to solve the climate crisis"), detailing his apocalyptic forecast for a planet subjected to human progress based in carbon consumption.
One thin September soon A floating continent disappears In midnight sun Vapors rise as Fever settles on an acid sea Neptune's bones dissolve Snow glides from the mountain Ice fathers floods for a season A hard rain comes quickly Then dirt is parched Kindling is placed in the forest For the lightning's celebration Unknown creatures Take their leave, unmourned Horsemen ready their stirrups Passion seeks heroes and friends The bell of the city On the hill is rung The shepherd cries The hour of choosing has arrived Here are your tools
In celebration of America's most recent climatological poet laureate, I too have penned a poem -- albeit a short and quick limerick (...but praise is in order for the self-restraint I marshaled to keep such a notoriously obscene style of poetry clean) and I encourage anyone with a moment of artistic inspiration to take a dive into this new world of Algoretry - poetry pertaining to, addressed to, or by the great Al Gore and his hypocritical liberty-hampering plans for we plebs.
Al Gore's Motivation
by Caroline May
There once was a huckster named Gore Whose speeches were oh such a bore He spoke nothing but lies And filled us with "whys?" Seems his green eyes just wanted more!
Written by Caroline May, policy analyst at the National Center for Public Policy Research. Write the author at info@nationalcenter.org. As we occasionally reprint letters on the blog, please note if you prefer that your correspondence be kept private, or only published anonymously.
Climate Justice Action vowed Wednesday to take over the COP-15 meeting in Copenhagen, Denmark to convene a "people's assembly." Hundreds of people who'd been denied badges to attend Wednesday's events reportedly met at nearby Oredstad and Sundby metro stations, the two closest metro stations to the Bella Center (the Bella Center station had been closed by police), to converge on the center.
They were met by heavily fortified Danish police. So many police converged on the area that the police had to convert rental cars into police cars.
An estimated 250-300 people were arrested.
The protestors were joined by delegates and NGO representatives who'd already gained admittance to the conference. The UNFCCC responded by not permitting them to return to the Center.
Evidence of this can be seen throughout the Bella Center as booths set up by environmental groups remain empty (see pictures below).
Many side events at the conference had to be canceled.
Written by David A. Ridenour, vice president of the National Center for Public Policy Research. Write the author at info@nationalcenter.org. As we occasionally reprint letters on the blog, please note if you prefer that your correspondence be kept private, or only published anonymously.
They even have an anthem, which you can hear on the video if you can stand to watch it to the end.
(Video shot at the COP-15 conference on December 16 by David Ridenour)
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Non-Governmental Organizations Kicked Out of Global Warming Conference - Again
The UNFCC Secretariat decided late tonight to kick out most participants from non-governmental organizations, claiming the action is necessary due to security concerns.
After spending most of the day waiting for details on how I could obtain one of the prized 1,000 passes to enter the Bella Center for the Thursday session (down from 7,000 passes awarded today), the UNFCCC once again broke its word by reducing the number of passes it will award tomorrow from 1,000 to 300.
I attended a meeting of the Research and Independent Non-Governmental Organizations (RINGOs) group (of which the National Center for Public Policy Research is a member), which is tasked with distributing passes to groups such as ours. RINGO was given 20% of the passes.
Attached is video in which Marilyn Averill of RINGO describes how its 60 slots will be divied up. Twelve passes were to be used by leaders of RINGO, 40 would be given by lottery to RINGO groups that attended the group's meetings this session, and just eight would be distributed by lottery to those that are on the RINGO membership list, including those that attended the group's meetings.
Special consideration was given to groups that participated in RINGO's meetings because RINGO wanted to encourage greater participation – something that should have been irrelevant to the decision.
Significantly, due to the utter incompetence of the UNFCCC (or perhaps feigned incompetence), many members of RINGO (including yours truly) were unable to participate in the meetings because they were standing outside the Bella Center trying to gain entry.
The RINGOs lottery was clearly a sham. The Pew Center, Stanford University, U of California Santa B and others advocating action on climate change received more than one pass – statistically, a rather unusual result. Not a single one of the 60 passes went to an organization from the right.
(Please note: Marilyn Averill appears on my video because she announced the decisions of the RINGOs management, but she is not responsible for what it decided.)
The security concern cited was the growing violence from environmental organizations, including the environmental organizations' vow to take over the Bella center.
If that was the case, why did they restrict the number of passes available to RINGOs, and not just put a limit on those awarded to environmental activist groups?
A response to a question I posed is illuminating.
The sharp limits on participation weren't about ensuring security. They were about stifling voices.
And that may be the best reason of all to stop this treaty dead in its tracks.
Written by David A. Ridenour, vice president of the National Center for Public Policy Research. Write the author at info@nationalcenter.org. As we occasionally reprint letters on the blog, please note if you prefer that your correspondence be kept private, or only published anonymously.
Agreement Reached in Copenhagen... The U.N. Shouldn't Be in Charge of Climate Change Policy
After waiting hours in the cold with intermittent periods of snow on Monday and Tuesday in unsuccessful bids to get into the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP-15) of the United Nations Conference on Climate Change, many of those who have long-supported a strong global response to the threat of global warming began questioning the wisdom of leaving these decisions to the United Nations.
The venue for the conference, the Bella Center in Copenhagen, has a maximum occupancy of 15,000, yet the U.N. organizers permitted some 45,000-50,000 people to register.
If they can't get something as simple as math correct, why should be expect them o get anything as complicated as climate science correct?
To resolve the problem, the organizers decided to scale back the size of delegations by cutting their size by - according to some reports - up to 80% after they'd already travelled vast distances at great expense to be here by requiring them to obtain highly-rationed "secondary passes." To say Non-Governmental Organizations were angry about the cuts would be an understatement.
On Monday, those who'd waited for up to 10 hours before being turned away began chanting "Shame on You U.N.," while others yelled "the U.N. Sucks."
Hmm... People angered about rationing... an 80% cut... something sounds very familiar about that figure.
One woman from the World Business Council on Sustainable Development, a group that has long supported climate change action, told me that if the U.N. can't handle something as simple as a conference, how can we trust them to set the right emissions levels and enforce compliance.
Quite.
She, like other environmental activists, was also concerned about accountability. There seemed to be no one to which they could address their grievances.
When some tried to find out, they were hauled away by security.
Last night, one man, one of the last to get into the Bella Center to receive his credentials, was turned away when his name did not appear on the UNFCCC's list of registrants.
The UNFCCC has a policy of not acknowledging receipt of delegation lists, increasing the possibility of problems.
When officials told the man he would have to leave, he asked for the UNFCCC official's name and was told, "I'm not allowed." When the man pressed further explaining calmly that he needed it because he intended to file a complaint, the official summoned security and had him thrown out.
Another climate change conference like this, and the entire world will be filled with skeptics.
Written by David A. Ridenour, vice president of the National Center for Public Policy Research. Write the author at info@nationalcenter.org. As we occasionally reprint letters on the blog, please note if you prefer that your correspondence be kept private, or only published anonymously.
The National Center for Public Policy Research is warning of the dangers of creating a new "carbon bubble" based on an artificial market in carbon credits by distributing bubble gum balls bearing the warning: "Carbon Credit Gum: World's Biggest Bubble."
The Bubble gum is being distributed at the COP-15 climate meeting in Copenhagen by Project 21 Fellow Deneen Borelli (seen in video, above), National Center Vice President David Ridenour, and National Center Free Enterprise Project Director Tom Borelli.
Distributing candy is a light approach to a serious policy question, but bubbles are bubbles. If our government creates an allegedly-tradable product in carbon allowances, it will be creating an artificial market that eventually will burst. Seasoned policy pros such as Al Gore presumably will leave the market long before that, their money made, but what will be the impact on regular folks? As we saw with the mortgage bubble, regular folks get hurt -- including very many who never profited from the original bubble.
We already know an artificial carbon market won't make a measurable difference in the planet's temperature -- even if all the dire but often contradictory warnings by global warming theory believers somehow turned out to be true. It very likely would not make even an unmeasurable difference. All a carbon market would do is move money around. I understand why designated recipients and profiteers are in favor of this, but that doesn't make it a good idea.
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It is a lie that the United Nations wants to maintain religious neutrality at COP-15. No, Global Warming is the established religion at this international event.
This was made especially clear when, days before the event's commencement, the Denmark Foreign Ministry rejected a donated delivery of Christmas fir trees. "We have to remember that this is a U.N. conference and, as the [Bella] center then becomes U.N. territory, there can be no Christmas trees in the decor, because the U.N. wishes to maintain neutrality," explained Ministry official Svend Olling.
Religious objectivity, however, is impossible at a conference explicitly engaged in blind adherence to an unproven premise - a faith in the veracity of global warming. For though the science is not settled, participants have convened to devise strategies for what they believe will be the world's environmental salvation, the capping of carbon dioxide emissions.
Global Warming devotees' religious fervor commands action, even if their deliverance comes at the expense of economic devastation. American disciples such as Al Gore and President Barack Obama are more than willing to sacrifice economic stability at the altar of Global Warming.
The faith dictates absolute advocacy for draconian carbon dioxide regulations such as the cap-and-trade scheme detailed in the House-passed "American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009." To Warming enthusiasts, the $9.4 trillion reduction in aggregate GDP, increase in annual unemployment by 2.5 million jobs, and increase in inflation-adjusted electricity prices by 90 percent, gasoline prices by 58 percent, and residential natural gas prices by 55 percent, all estimated to occur within the first 24 years under such a cap and trade scheme, are merely an afterthought.
Though economists have highlighted the dire financial implications of energy restriction ad nauseam and questions remain about the actual science behind the Global Warming Theory, adherents are steadfast in their belief. Ironically, it seems that most of these Warmers - many of whom are often quick to proclaim creationists as backward - stick to their faith with the unbending will of a St. Paul.
Even in the wake of Climategate and new peer-reviewed studies (which give lie to the notion that apocalyptic climate forecasts are supported by consensus) by such renowned scientists as Brookhaven National Laboratory's Dr. Stephen E. Schwartz, MIT's Dr. Richard Lindzen, and the University of Auckland's Dr. Chris de Freitas, Warming adherents remain loyally convinced that man's evil energy usage is destroying Mother Earth.
Faith is belief without verifiable evidence. The unquestioned adherence to the theory of Global Warming bears all the markings of what traditionally would be recognized as a religion. Complete with sin (the emitting of carbon dioxide), scriptures (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment reports), commandments (drive a Prius, use Compact Florescent Light bulbs, do not eat meat, etc.), indulgences (carbon offsets), proselytism and prophets (Al Gore), priests (scientists), prophecy and apocalypse (floods, hurricanes, dead polar bears), infidels (Warming skeptics), and salvation (the halting of carbon-emitting industrial progress), the religion of Global Warming fits the mold.
Great Britain has already recognized belief in anthropogenic Global Warming as a religion. In November, in a landmark case brought before the UK Employment Appeal Tribunal, the court found that under the "2003 Religion and Belief Regulations," "belief in man-made climate change, and the alleged resulting moral imperatives" qualified for the same employment discrimination protections as a traditional religion.
Though we have yet to see Al Gore or James Hansen walk on water, COP-15 is far from religiously-neutral. Instead, participants are expected to adhere to their one true faith: Global Warming.
Consequently, it makes sense that Christmas trees are welcome at the Church of Global Warming. When was the last time you saw a menorah in a Cathedral?
Written by Caroline May, policy analyst at the National Center for Public Policy Research. Write the author at info@nationalcenter.org. As we occasionally reprint letters on the blog, please note if you prefer that your correspondence be kept private, or only published anonymously.
If the United Nations can't run a climate conference, how could it possibly run climate policy? This video of the waiting line outside the COP-15 UN climate conference in Copenhagen on 12/15/09 shows the United Nations is equipped for neither task.
As David Ridenour notes in the video, which he shot, this may look like a waiting line for health care in a country with government-run medicine, but it's actually a waiting line for a conference attempting to establish a world government-run energy rationing scheme.
This liberal scheme is so badly thought-out, even the left is walking out on it.
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Environmental non-governmental organizations staged a walk-out of the COP-15 climate conference in Copenhagen today, protesting the fact that so many of their properly-registered fellow NGO delegates were banned from entering the conference.
I wonder if some of these individuals and organizations are beginning to re-think their desire to have the world run by the United Nations.
Video shot by David Ridenour
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Kookookaburras Advocating that Australia Abandon Coal
David Ridenour shot this video of a group of Australians at the COP-15 climate conference protesting Australia's use and sale of coal. Coal is very important to Australia's economy, and, I believe, is that country's largest energy source.
I can't improve on commentary someone going by "Noodles691" posted on YouTube about this video: "How much CO2 did it take to fly these 4 idiots from Australia to Copenhagen to put on this pathetic display?"
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''The Struggle Does Not Stop Here,'' Say Witnesses, Apparently Seriously
The propaganda in this reminds me of the fictional Nobel Peace Prize-winning left-wing "biography" I, Rigoberto Menchu.
People often believe dumb stuff because they want to believe it. Whether it is accurate is of no account to them.
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Although I still have every sympathy for members of environmental groups that had to stand outside in the cold for eight hours outside the COP-15 climate conference in Copenhagen yesterday, only to be turned away at the end of the day anyway, I am still going to post two short videos my husband David shot on the scene.
Apparently, when a green group says it wants to clean up the planet, it doesn't intend to be taken literally.
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Thanks to CNSNews.com (and many bloggers) for covering the story of the National Center for Public Policy Research's efforts, and the efforts of very many thousands of accredited NGO delegates, to gain admittance to the COP-15 climate conference.
Thanks also to those of you who wrote us to express support.
I am pleased to report that the National Center for Public Policy Research delegation of David Ridenour, Deneen Borelli and Tom Borelli did (finally!) gain admittance to the COP-15 Bella conference center at about 5:45 PM Copenhagen time Tuesday. They also apparently had the opportunity to distribute educational materials (about which, more later) earlier in the day to relevant parties as those officials and media representatives entered the building.
Unfortunately, the news is not so good for all accredited organizations. Although others got in, still others did not.
I had not realized this yesterday, but I learned today that the many thousands of NGO delegates forced to stand in line for eight hours yesterday in 32 degree F cold before being turned away at nightfall also had one other indignity to deal with: if they left the line to use one of the outdoor portable toilets, they lost their spot in line.
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Video: United Nations Rep Tells NGOs They Are Out of COP-15 Climate Conference
American conservatives aren't the only ones booing the United Nations. Here's a group of (mostly) liberal environmentalists doing it.
This is video of the announcement Monday at the COP-15 climate conference that non-governmental organization (NGO) delegates who had not yet been admitted to the conference would not be admitted for the rest of the week.
Crowd members booing are accredited NGO delegates who had waited eight hours in line in 32 degree F cold to get into the conference and (mostly) travelled long distances to be there. To be accredited, they would have applied for and received credentials more than a month ago.
The U.N. later announced it would permit each accredited NGO to have four members attend the conference, and said it would send an email to each NGO with the new credentials, without which, they cannot get in.
This is welcome news, but it may well not be true. We are an accredited NGO and our delegation stood out in the cold for eight hours Monday, but we have received no email from the United Nations containing the new credentials needed to get in on Tuesday. My inquiry to the United Nations has met with no reply, and the conference starts in less than an hour.
(Video shot by David Ridenour)
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United Nations Kicks NGOs Out of COP-15 Climate Conference
Here's a press release on the COP-15 climate conference we are putting out about now...
United Nations Kicks NGOs Out of COP-15 Climate Conference
Washington DC: The United Nations announced today it is permanently banning thousands of accredited non-governmental organizations* from the COP-15 climate conference in Copenhagen.
The restriction was announced today outside the Copenhagen conference center after several thousand accredited NGO conference delegates, including three from the National Center for Public Policy Research, waited outside for eight hours or longer in 32-degree F temperatures for admission.
NGOs apparently are being banned because the United Nations accredited 45,000 people for a building with a capacity of 15,000, although the stated reason was "security concerns." The "security concerns" may be related to the fact that, after waiting several hours in the cold, delegations began to chant, "Let us in! Let us in!"
"To be an "accredited" or "admitted" NGO to a COP conference, NGOs must apply months in advance, and typically only make travel plans to attend after receiving complete credentials from the United Nations," said Amy Ridenour, president of the National Center for Public Policy Research, an accredited COP-15 NGO organization that is as of now banned from the conference. "To give credentials to 45,000 people while choosing a building that holds 15,000 people is insane, though the United Nations, to be fair, has never been known for competence."
"What makes this an even greater travesty," said Ridenour, " is the COP-15 conference ostensibly is trying to find ways to reduce the burning of fossil fuels. If 30,000 people fly to Copenhagen for no reason, doesn't that put unnecessary greenhouse gases into the atmosphere?"
Ridenour has formally asked the U.N., which is permitting some NGOs to have many delegates inside while others are permitted none, to limit each NGO to one representative as long as space limitations remain a concern.
"Some of these NGO delegations are from rich countries like our own," said Ridenour, "but for some NGOs, raising the funds to attend a conference in Copenhagen is a real financial hardship. The least the U.N. can do is let in at least one member of these delegations so all of their money won't be wasted."
* Non-governmental organizations, or NGOs, are usually referred to as "non-profit organizations" in the United States.
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COP-15 Observation: So These Are The People We're Going to Let Run the World Economy?
Waiting line to get into COP-15 conference at about 4 PM Copenhagen time
I heard this morning from the National Center for Public Policy Research's delegation to the COP-15 climate conference in Copenhagen. Seems they've been standing in line outside the conference (in 32 degree F weather!) for nearly six hours (so far) in a so-far fruitless effort to get insie.
No, they didn't forget to get credentials. It seems the geniuses at the United Nations selected a building site for the conference that holds 15,000 people, and then gave credentials to 45,000 people. So, naturally, at any given time, two-thirds of the people (almost all of whom used carbon-intensive energy to travel to Copenhagen) are unable to participate.
Such incompetence highlights the idiocy of the entire enterprise. Climate science, especially when done honestly, is immensely complicated -- so complicated, anyone who tells you that humanity understands how the climate works is either deluded or lying to you. Likewise, every proposed "solution" to global warming is complicated -- far more complicated than figuring out that 45,000 people cannot fit into a building designed for 15,000.
If the United Nations can't manage the simple conference logistic of making sure the building facility is large enough to handle the number of people to whom it handed out credentials, why should we assume it can handle correctly interpreting the nuances of climate science and the regulation of a significant portion of the world economy?
The U.N.'s COP-15 climate conference organizers may face the irony of having global warming conference attendees hospitalized for exposure -- assuming that hasn't happened already. Six hours is a long time to stand outside in 32 degree weather, and many of the people forced to wait outdoors presumably dressed for the commute to the conference, not for a day standing outside.
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As John Hinderaker reports on Powerline, longtime global warming alarmist Stephen Schneider spoke at a press conference at the COP-15 climate conference in Copenhagen.
When journalist Phelim McAleer asked a polite question about Climategate, Schneider's staff called in security to shut down the questioning. A United Nations security officer actually tells the journalist, "If you don't shut that [the camera] off, I'm going to take it away from you." (How typical of the corrupt United Nations!)
Stephen Schneider is too scared to answer a simple question, which tells you all you need to know about Climategate: If it wasn't a big deal, the global warming alarmists wouldn't be so afraid of it.
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Media Matters Tries to Blame Climategate on Exxon Mobil, Fails Utterly
The Media Matters Action Network has a page up claiming we at the National Center for Public Policy Research are "doing everything in [our] power" to draw "attention to the so-called 'Climategate' scandal" and implying that the fact that Exxon Mobil has donated to us is the reason.
What dishonest dopes. We've barely touched on Climategate. A few sentences here and there. In fact, given the gravity of the scandal, we really should have done more.
Media Matters is trying to claim it is relevant that handful of groups that have in the past received funding from Exxon Mobil have mentioned Climategate, which is a huge, major story (not broken by any of these groups, incidentally) repeatedly covered by every major newspaper in the English-speaking world and in many many newspapers and other media elsewhere. Hello? Are all the major papers in Britain, including the openly left-wing Guardian and its most famous ultra-green columnist (who takes Climategate very seriously indeed), in the pockets of Exxon Mobil?
Sorry, Media Matters, your desperate ploy won't work. Climategate has shown the unreliability and unprofessionalism of some Ph.Ds the U.N.'s IPCC and other organizations -- including yours, Media Matters -- have relied on for many years to help prove to the world that massive job-killing, government-growing treaties and policies are necessary. This is YOUR scandal, not ours, and even if you put a nice pretty red bow on it, we aren't going to accept it from you as a gift.
Yes, Exxon Mobil has contributed to us and we appreciate its support as we do the support we receive from any of our 100,000+ supporters. (Without Exxon Mobil, the whopping approximately 1.5 percent of our annual revenue that comes from corporate sources would be a little smaller. How much corporate support do you get, Media Matters?)
But Exxon Mobil's funding does not specifically support our work on climate nor has the corporation suggested in any way, shape or form that we mention, promote, acknowledge or otherwise notice Climategate, a scandal that is getting worldwide attention because it is newsworthy.
And we remind Media Matters that the only reason Media Matters knows about Exxon Mobil's gifts to public policy institutions is because Exxon Mobil and many of the recipient foundations (including us) freely and voluntarily disclose this information. (Does Media Matters CEO David Brock voluntarily disclose which corporations and special interests help pay for his nearly $300,000 salary?)
Which reminds me. Media Matters found eight public policy groups that have received at least one contribution from Exxon Mobil since 2001 that either have mentioned Climategate or, in the case of one, are affiliated with an individual who wrote a story about Climategate in an unaffiliated opinion journal (wow, there's a smoking gun for you). Here's a seven-page list of all the public policy institutions that received gifts from Exxon Mobil in 2008 alone. Over 130 institutions, some of them very liberal, are listed, and yet Media Matters could only find eight public policy groups receiving such gifts since 2001 that have mentioned Climategate or work with someone who has? Only eight?
P.S. to Media Matters: Have you guys apologized yet for promoting environmentally-useless climate policies that can hurt people based on unverifiable information? People really do rely on the jobs you want to kill, you know.
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"The Washington Post learns an odd lesson from [Climategate]: 'Climate scientists should not let themselves be goaded by the irresponsibility of the deniers into overstating the certainties of complex science or, worse, censoring discussion of them.' These scientists overstated and censored because they were 'goaded' by skepticism?
Were their science as unassailable as they insist it is, and were the consensus as broad as they say it is, and were they as brave as they claim to be, they would not be 'goaded' into intellectual corruption."
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Sadly for COP15 attendees willing to shell out 5,999 Danish Kroner ($1,209) to shake hands and get their picture taken with the illustrious Al Gore, the profiting prophet's expensive VIP appearance in Copenhagen has been cancelled.
Berlanski Media, the event's Danish coordinators, announced Thursday that, despite enthusiasm and high ticket sales, the affair will no longer take place due to complications with the monotonous mountebank's Copenhagen schedule (but for my money, the real reason is the potential for questions by/confrontations with rogue attendees about Climategate).
Though they can no longer pay to meet their hefty hero at the Climate Conference, there is still a conciliation prize awaiting devastated Gore acolytes needing stimulation in Copenhagen...
It seems that actual prostitutes have taken up where Gore left off... only these ladies are offering more than a handshake to attendees of the U.N. Climate Summit. And, unlike Gore, the women are providing their time and services gratis.
The "working girls" of Copenhagen are offering this... well... carbon-negligible activity for free in order to protest admonitions from the Copenhagen city government that COP15 attendees should "Be sustainable - don't buy sex."
The mayor and city council have especially focused on urging hotels in the area "not to arrange contacts between hotel guests and prostitutes," even going so far as to send out postcards with the anti-brothel message. The women have responded in kind by offering any delegate with an official COP15 tag and one of the cautionary postcards an evening that will perhaps make up for a Copenhagen fortnight without Gore for far less than $1,209 -- for free, in fact.
So there it is... along with all the other nicknames for the events in Copenhagen, such as Hopenhagen, Nopenhagen, and Dopenhagen, we now have... GROPENHAGEN.
Fabulous.
Written by Caroline May, policy analyst at the National Center for Public Policy Research. Write the author at info@nationalcenter.org. As we occasionally reprint letters on the blog, please note if you prefer that your correspondence be kept private, or only published anonymously.
Climategate Should Put a Halt to Duke Energy's Lobbying for Cap-and-Trade
The National Center's Free Enterprise Project has called on Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers to cease lobbying for cap-and-trade in the wake of revelations regarding the integrity of processes underpinning the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s climate conclusions.
In the Climategate scandal, released documents from a British university reveal what appear to be efforts to manipulate data to support the preexisting views of leading climate researchers.
Raw data without which it is impossible to confirm the accuracy of IPCC findings also has been destroyed.
Duke Energy has said the company's decision to lobby for cap-and-trade is based on the very IPCC report whose conclusions have now been called into question. A company report says: "...our policy positions are driven by the IPCC peer-reviewed science and by our judgment that this science is not only credible, but that it is accepted by the vast majority of public policymakers who will shape U.S. climate legislation in the years to come."
"Rogers must exercise his fiduciary responsibility to shareholders by carefully assessing whether he has been duped by a group of rogue climate change scientists," said Tom Borelli, Ph.D., director of the Free Enterprise Project. "The burden of proof is now on Rogers to show his global warming policy is sound and Duke Energy's board of directors must hold him accountable."
Rogers has taken a high-profile role in lobbying for cap-and-trade, including testifying in Congress and appearing in advertising.
"If climate change is proven to be a fraud, the billions of dollars of carbon credits Rogers is seeking from cap-and-trade legislation will be worthless. There is no secondary market for a government contrived commodity such as carbon dioxide," added Borelli.
Go here for a Free Enterprise Project press release.
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A column by Jonathan Foreman in Britain's Times excoriates celebrities who tell ordinary folk to do without in the name of environmental protection while living a very wasteful lifestyle themselves.
My favorite hypocrisy example is the famous actress who boasted of brushing her teeth in the shower to help the environment, but who flew her personal hairdresser to Europe rather than make do with the stylists there.
To find out which actress this was, and read other hypocrisy stories, go here.
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The United Nations Climate Summit in Copenhagen is fast approaching, and with cap and trade legislation languishing in Congress, developing nations averse to binding regulations, and the public preoccupied with a faltering economy, hopes by climate treaty advocates that a climate agreement will be reached this December are diminishing. Nevertheless, advocates for a sovereignty-usurping, economically-devastating, wealth-redistributing and environmentally-fraudulent treaty are tirelessly churning out materials meant to sway the public and assert pressure on leaders to reach an enforceable agreement.
The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) provides an example. Agitating for a "green industrial revolution," the WWF is a vociferous advocate for global warming legislation and environmental activism - regardless of the practical consequences. Last month, for example, the outfit came out with the breathless pronouncement that the world has less than five years to drastically cut carbon emissions or, it claims, climate catastrophe will be inevitable. (To be fair, this was less absurd than British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's October 19 prediction that the global community had only 50 days to avert disaster.)
Several days ago the WWF crossed a line, releasing a propagandistic video of children of WWF staffers parroting the illogical doomsday scenarios the group works to propagate. The WWF explained the video's objective:
"To urge the President to lead us in Copenhagen and outline what we'd like to see in the agreement, we invited children of WWF staffers to tape a personal message to the President asking for his support... We hope you'll be inspired to send an email or write a letter to the White House that tells President Obama that you want him to go to Copenhagen to protect our planet."
Child welfare officials have investigated the now infamous parents of "Balloon Boy" for allegedly coaching him to lie in a publicity scheme. These WWF parents coerced their children for political influence, and, should their efforts succeed, a thoroughly destructive climate treaty.
Which is worse?
Written by Caroline May, policy analyst at the National Center for Public Policy Research. Write the author at info@nationalcenter.org. Please note if you prefer that your correspondence be kept private.
Hear the Borellis Speak on Cap-and-Trade at Harrisburg Tea Party Event This Saturday
Free Enterprise Project Director Tom Borelli and Project 21 Fellow Deneen Borelli are both featured speakers at a rally to be held in conjunction with the "March on Harrisburg, PA" on Saturday, November 14. The march and rally is sponsored by the Philadelphia Tea Party Patriots.
The rally will be held on the steps of the Pennsylvania State Capitol and is scheduled to begin at 2:30 PM eastern. Prior to the rally, people will gather in the parking lot of nearby City Island for a march across the Susquehanna River that is scheduled to begin at 2:00 PM eastern.
Tom and Deneen will both speak on the economic consequences of the "cap-and-trade" energy tax proposal supported by the Obama Administration and the liberal leadership of the House and Senate in Washington. The keynote speaker will be former House Majority Leader Dick Armey.
This post was written by David Almasi, executive director of the National Center for Public Policy Research. Write the author at info@nationalcenter.org. As we occasionally reprint letters on the blog, please note if you prefer that your correspondence be kept private, or only published anonymously.
Concerned that the increasingly shrill warnings by environmentalists on the dangers of global warming are beginning to undermine the credibility of everyone calling for cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, some scientists are calling for them to... um... cool it.
One of these scientists is Vicky Pope, head of the climate change branch at the MET Office (the UK's national weather service), who told the Times of London, "It isn't helpful to anybody to exaggerate the situation. It's scary enough as it is."
But Vicky hasn't been beyond a bit of scare-mongering of her own. Here's part of my report on her presentation at a United Nations Convention on Climate Change 12th Conference of the Parties (COP-12) event in Nairobi Kenya three years ago:
Vicky Pope, head of the Hadley Centre's Climate Prediction Program, offered some very scary scenarios for Africa and the rest of the world. Using the Palmer Drought Severity Index, which uses temperature data (to estimate evaporation) and rainfall data to determine drought severity (as opposed to measuring soil moisture), her Centre has found that incidence of drought has increased sharply since the 1980s. Moderate droughts, says Pope, affected 10-15 percent of the landmass in the 1980s, but today they affect closer to 25 percent of the land. By 2100, the Hadley Centre projects that this figure will double to 50 percent. What's more, Pope says, this climate change-induced drought will result in a "profound injustice" by hitting poor nations the hardest.
To underscore this point, Pope showed a series of color-coded world maps -- one for the period 1950-1969, one for 1970-1989 and one for 1990 to today -- which show significant and increasing drought in Africa, South America and parts of Asia but negligible drought in North America and Western Europe.
The starting point for these maps struck me as peculiar. North America experienced severe drought in the 1930s and, if memory serves (I don't have access to research materials here in Nairobi), 1936 still has the record for being North America's hottest year in the 20th Century. Including this information, of course, would significantly undercut Pope's argument that drought disproportionately harms the developing world. Perhaps it even undermines her assertion that drought and temperature increases coincide.
When I asked her why this information wasn't included, Pope said it wasn't included because their objective was to provide a global drought picture and reliable temperature readings were not uniformly available before 1950. (More here.)
Pope goes on to tell the Times, "People pick up whatever makes their argument, but this works both ways. It's the long-term trend that counts..."
I may have gotten through to her after all.
Written by David A. Ridenour, vice president of the National Center for Public Policy Research. Write the author at info@nationalcenter.org. As we occasionally reprint letters on the blog, please note if you prefer that your correspondence be kept private, or only published anonymously.
"California's Going to Make Out Like a Bandit With This Legislation"
...so says Ohio Senator George Voinovich (R-OH) regarding the Kerry-Boxer cap-and-trade bill, referring to $385 billion in transfers the bill requires some states (including Ohio) send to others (such as California).
Senator Voinovich's presentation includes a map comparing the states slated to receive funds with the votes cast in the House in favor of the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill. (Let's just say he finds some similarities.)
During his presentation, Senator Voinovich asks Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman Barbara "Don't Call Me Ma'am" Boxer (D-CA), "Does your definition of bipartisan mean someone who agrees with you?"
The video clip above includes Senator (please note, Senator) Boxer's response.
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Obama says the damage from Katrina was caused in part by a "breakdown of government." If gov't came make a hurricane worse, why would we want it to run health care?
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Stop the presses! Stop the presses! The London School of Economics has discovered the solution to global warming: Condoms!
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, birth control will save us all from the hypothesized temperature increase, sea level rise, polar bear demise, and the need for extra interns at the World Meteorological Organization (which is tasked with finding unique names for hurricanes) resulting from greenhouse gas emissions.
Last month the School released a study sponsored by the Optimum Population Trust (OPT) titled, "Fewer Emitters, Lower Emissions, Less Cost." Its report concluded that "family planning methods should be a primary tool in the optimum strategy for reducing carbon emissions." The authors' reasoning is sound - if not ominously Malthusian - namely, they argue that the more children mankind produces, the more people there are to engage in carbon emitting activities. Further, using condoms is an easier and cheaper method of carbon abstention than, say, using solar-powered vehicles.
The chairman of OPT, Roger Martin, was thrilled the study validated his think tank's mission: to save the planet via a decrease in the human population "It's always been obvious that total emissions depend on the number of emitters as well as their individual emissions – the carbon tonnage can't shoot down, as we want, while the population keeps shooting up." He and his group have since called on international leaders to include population control mechanisms as part of the negotiations at the Copenhagen climate change summit in December.
While it is amusing to poke fun at the premise's simplicity and overt sexual overtones, the London School's conclusions are profoundly disturbing. They highlight the truly ant-ihuman approach to environmental policies some anthropogenic global warming crusaders advocate. Indeed, if a catastrophe caused by manmade global warming is truly imminent, using their logic, the most effective remedy would be the mass extinction of that evil, omnivorous, environment altering, CO2 breathing species: humanity.
Ironically, quite chilling.
Written by Caroline May, policy analyst at the National Center for Public Policy Research. Write the author at info@nationalcenter.org. As we occasionally reprint letters on the blog, please note if you prefer that your correspondence be kept private, or only published anonymously.
Boxer-Kerry Cap-and Trade Bill Puts Corporate Interests Over National Interest
Free Enterprise Project Director Tom Borelli has been closely monitoring the corporations who lobby for cap-and-trade.
Tom issued a statement Friday on the ways the new Boxer-Kerry cap-and-trade bill (or perhaps I should say, bill framework, because it appears to be out of fashion these days for legislators to actually finish drafting their proposed bills before introducing them):
Senate Cap-and-Trade Bill Favors Corporate interests Over National Interest
The "Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act" introduced by Senators Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and John Kerry (D-MA) favors corporate interests over our national interest, says the Free Enterprise Project of the National Center for Public Policy Research. The bill calls for a 20% reduction in emissions, exceeding the 17% target in the House Waxman-Markey legislation passed in May.
Boxer-Kerry lacks many important details, including a disclosure of which industries will benefit from free emissions credits.
"In the rush to legislate, the Boxer-Kerry bill is silent on key elements, such as how the government will hand out free emissions allowances that are worth billions of dollars. With that amount of money left on the table it opens the door for a behind-the-scenes lobbying fest that will reward well connected companies while looting taxpayers," said Tom Borelli, PhD, director of the Free Enterprise Project.
Waxman-Markey awards most of the estimated $777.6 billion of free allowances to industry between 2012-2020. Utilities were the biggest winner in the "House bill lottery," receiving 35% of allowances.
President Obama originally wanted to auction all the emission credits with the revenue going to reduce the budget deficit.
In addition to the allowance windfall, a few select companies will benefit from specific provisions. Caterpillar would gain from sales of its newly-developed hybrid bulldozer, because the bill empowers the EPA to issue new emissions standards for "new heavy-duty vehicles and engines and for nonroad vehicles and engines."
The Caterpillar hybrid bulldozer is priced about $100,000 more than conventional bulldozers – an added cost that will be passed on to construction projects.
The Boxer gift to Caterpillar may be a reward for CEO Jim Owens. Under Owens, Caterpillar is a member of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership (USCAP) – a coalition of corporate and environmental special interest groups lobbying for cap-and-trade. Owens is a member of President Obama's Economic Recovery Advisory Board.
"Owens is putting his personal short-term interest over our national interest. He has previously acknowledged that cap-and-trade can harm the competitiveness of our manufacturing industries, yet he remains a member of USCAP," added Borelli. "Owens' thirty pieces of silver is a hybrid bulldozer."
"It's clear the only winners with cap-and-trade will be the lobbyists, CEOs and their environmental allies. The bill represents a huge transfer of wealth in the amount of hundreds of billions of dollars to industry. While the Washington elite benefit, the rest of America will end up paying the cost through higher energy prices, slower economic growth and sending jobs overseas," said Borelli.
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If you are in the Baltimore/DC area or on your computer now, you you can tune in to WBAL 1090 AM to hear David Ridenour discussing his latest paper, which is on how 820,000 people a year will lose health insurance if the Obama-supported Waxman-Markey cap and trade bill goes through.
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Steve Milloy on O'Reilly Factor Discussing Relationship Between GE, NBC and White House
Steve Milloy, author of the 2009 book Green Hell, proprietor of the Green Hell and Junk Science websites and co-director of the National Center for Public Policy Research's Free Enterprise Project, was the first guest on the O'Reilly Factor Monday evening.
The topic: The mutual support system between General Electric, NBC News, the left-wing environmental movement and the Obama Administration.
The discussion included an August 19 email by a GE vice chairman saying "The intersection between GE's interests and government action is clearer than ever," among other things. The e-mail made it clear GE supports climate legislation for its own financial benefit, and is working hard to see it enacted.
The August 19 email also makes clear that the company is making campaign contributions as part of its strategy to see the enactment of legislation from which it can benefit financially.
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Tom Blumer: "How crazy is it that Ford has to 'negotiate' a new contract with the United Auto Workers union, even though the union has ownership interests in two of its principal competitors...?
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On the way in to work this morning, I saw a vehicle with a bumper sticker "Buy Fresh, Buy Local" and various other green bumper stickers. Presumably, the point was that by buying local, you avoid extra greenhouse emissions from transportation.
The vehicle was a Subaru Forester... one of the few Subarus with 0% domestic content.
This post was written by David Ridenour, vice president of the National Center for Public Policy Research. Write the author at info@nationalcenter.org. As we occasionally reprint letters, please note if you prefer that correspondence be kept private, or only published anonymously.
Climate change is very real. Global warming creates volatility and I feel it when I'm flying. The storms are more volatile.
Few readers of this blog would be caught dead saying something this stupid:
...this legislation is paid for by the polluters who currently emit the dangerous carbon emissions that contaminate the water we drink and pollute the air that we breathe.
It is, a disgrace that people run for high office without caring enough to familiarize themselves with multi-billion-dollar issues (the official price tag for the ghastly Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill alone nears a trillion dollars). Although I can think of a couple of exceptions, on the whole, the American people do not deserve to be governed by ignoramuses.
So please, elected officials: crack a book once in a while, okay?
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Washington Independent: Cash for Clunkers "steals its funding from a Department of Energy program encouraging the development of renewable energy technologies." Someone thought this bill was about the environment?
John McCain calls Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill "a farce," saying "they bought every industry off - steel mills, agriculture, utilities." More welfare for the rich.
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10 reasons the government should take over health care (NOT).
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Paul Mirengoff says Walter Cronkite "didn't represent the victory of substance over style, but rather the victory of a style that implied substance over substance itself." I agree.
Struggling for purpose in light of the election of the first black president, the NAACP moves in the wrong direction, says a group of black conservatives, when it endorses a climate policy in tandem with the World Wildlife Federation that is opposed by a majority of black Americans.
"I'm all in favor of the nation's oldest civil rights group redefining its mission and agenda; however this indicates that the NAACP continues to struggle with current realities that face the nation's black communities by promoting policies they are opposed to," said Project 21’s Joe Hicks, who is also a PajamasTV commentator. "If this group simply wants to be defined as another left-wing organization touting the weak science on climate change, then it is destined to face ever-growing irrelevancy."
Project 21 Fellow Deneen Borelli added: "It's outrageous for the NAACP to place liberal ideology over the welfare of the nation. By aligning with the environmental activist lobby, the NAACP is now an official member of 'Club Green' - the exclusive club of elites waging war against fossil fuels. Tragically, the cover charge for their membership - job losses, reduced standard of living and high energy costs - will be borne disproportionately by the very people the NAACP claims to represent."
The NAACP's zeal for regulation is opposed by most black Americans. A recent poll of 800 black Americans found 76 percent believe Congress should make economic recovery, not climate change, its top priority. 56 percent believe policymakers do not adequately consider the quality of life of black Americans when addressing climate policy. When asked how much they would pay for gas and electricity to reduce greenhouse emissions, 76 percent said they would be unwilling to pay more than $50 a year while 52 percent were unwilling to pay anything at all.
Hicks added: "The NAACP shows how out of touch it has become by advocating Obama Administration policies on so-called climate change that impact the very population that claim to represent - poor, black Americans. Adding an increased burden of higher coast for essential things like gasoline and electricity at a time of economic hardship demonstrates that they have no independent course of leadership, but instead is blindly following this administration's disastrous lead."
Carol Browner's Hijinks: They Call This Open Government?
Mark Tapscott is on the case of White House "climate czar" Carol Browner, who appears to be continuing her wily Clinton Administration pattern of dodging and weaving whenever legal niceties interfere with her left-wing agenda.
Carol Browner, former Clinton administration EPA head and current Obama White House climate czar, instructed auto industry execs "to put nothing in writing, ever" regarding secret negotiations she orchestrated regarding a deal to increase federal Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards.
Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-WI, is demanding a congressional investigation of Browner's conduct in the CAFE talks, saying in a letter to Rep. Henry Waxman, D-CA, that Browner "intended to leave little or no documentation of the deliberations that lead to stringent new CAFE standards."
Federal law requires officials to preserve documents concerning significant policy decisions, so instructing participants in a policy negotation concerning a major federal policy change could be viewed as a criminal act...
Browner should answer these charges and very specifically, too, but President Obama must be held to account as well. It's not as though he didn't know what he was getting when he appointed Browner. As my husband David Ridenour pointed out in an op-ed published around the U.S. early this year, when Browner was head of the Environmental Protection Agency during the Clinton Administration, it made a practice of skirting the law.
Throughout [Carol Browner's] years as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency in the Clinton administration, EPA officials routinely violated the Anti-Lobbying Act - a law prohibiting federal employees from using agency money for 'telephone, letter, printed or written matter, or other device intended or designed to influence in any manner a Member of Congress.'
In 1995, the EPA flagrantly violated that law when it lobbied against the Job Creation and Wage Enhancement Act, a bill that would have curbed some of the EPA's worst abuses.
As James Hinchman, comptroller general of the United States, noted, EPA officials 'distributed EPA fact sheets to various organizations' and 'directly lobbied the Congress.' Not only that, but an EPA regional administrator wrote a strong op-ed designed to stop the bill's passage.
Four years later, Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., accused the EPA of violating the Anti-Lobbying Act again. Byrd - who has made a career of steering pork to his state - complained that the EPA's Transportation Partners Program was coordinating and funding anti-road lobbyists against the law and his state's interests. Browner was forced to terminate the program. The following year, Browner was at it yet again. This time, her agency was accused of allowing special interests to improperly influence last-minute - so-called midnight - environmental regulations.
U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth ordered the EPA to preserve communications with such groups. Instead, Browner had her computer hard drive re-initialized, wiping it clean. Lamberth then held the EPA in contempt for 'contumacious conduct.' As little respect as she's shown for the law, Browner has shown even less for science. During her years at the EPA, agency scientists who didn't toe the party line were subjected to relentless harassment.
David Lewis, an EPA Science Achievement Award recipient, publicly criticized the quality of science used in crafting regulations. In response, the EPA charged Lewis with ethics violations and repeatedly denied him promotion. Although he won whistle-blower judgments against the EPA, he was eventually forced into retirement.
National Center Senior Fellow Bonner Cohen has an op-ed running in newspapers nationwide saying President Obama is playing "Russian roulette" with our energy future.
The piece begins:
President Barack Obama is playing Russian roulette with America's quest for energy independence by rushing to replace fossil fuels with unreliable and expensive renewable energy.
The global balance of power is already shifting away from the United States toward China and Russia in the critical area of strategic natural resources...
You can read the full piece on the website of the McClatchy-Tribune News Service, which distributed the piece nationally, on the Baltimore Sun website, or find it elsewhere via search engines.
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Thanks to a head's up from Climate Depot, I read with interest the following on the weakness of the computer models used to predict climate from the Britsh Number Watch website:
Most computer models are nonsense. This does not include those used by engineers in designing airplanes, bridges etc., which are based on detailed experiments on the systems involved and tested in a variety of real conditions before being used.
The reason they are nonsense is that they tend to be based on guesses of the value of coefficients assumed, particularly and disastrously feedback coefficients. There are few, however, that are quite as bad as climate models, where the physics of the interactions between variables and parameters is virtually unknown to mankind.
...Imagine you settled down in your seat in a jumbo jet and noticed a plaque on the back of the seat in front which reads 'This machine was designed with the aid of a super-computer. We did not know the values of all the parameters, so had to guess most of them.' You would get off in a hurry. Yet the world's political and media establishment are asking you to gamble the economic future of yourself and your descendants on just such a proposition.
Yes, that really is what the global warming debate comes down to. Shall we believe computer models that are at best based on educated guesses (and which disagree with one another), and enact policies that significantly harm the economy based upon them, even knowing that the policies themselves wouldn't affect the climate noticeably?
I say no; it's wrong to hurt people based on a theory you have no idea is correct, especially if you know the solution won't fix the problem even if your theory IS correct.
You've heard of "no pain, no gain" with regard to weight training? The cap-and-trade climate debate is the reverse: "no gain, no pain." That is, as there isn't going to be any noticeable gain from Waxman-Markey and its ilk, why inflict the pain?
Naughty Conservatives Shouldn't Mind Votes for Waxman-Markey (Or So We're Told)
In an error-riddled column posted Wednesday on TownHall.com, the supposedly conservative Michael Gerson has a novel take on the Republican Congressmen who voted for the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill: He blames conservatives for minding.
One of his reasons: "It is typical that we praise independent judgment and political nerve in our elected officials -- until they actually show those qualities."
If any conservatives and/or others dedicated to limiting government called on our elected representatives to show "independent judgement and political nerve" in service of anything other than principle, they were wrong to do so.
Gerson doesn't quote anybody, though, and I can see why: There are a lot more quotes available of conservatives calling upon their elected representatives to govern conservatively.
Gerson's try to tar the conservative movement with a hypocrisy tag doesn't work.
Gerson is honest, though, in saying he likes the bill (I find it difficult to believe this man is a conservative).
He likes it because, he says, the global warming theory is the dominant view of the "scientific community" (a brush broad enough to include gynecologists), because "some scientists" warn of "possible 'tipping points'," and because, supposedly, mankind's carbon dioxide emissions have reduced crop yields and driven some species to extinction. How he could possibly know this is not mentioned, possibly because what he claims is beyond the current ability of modern science to prove or disprove.
Gerson says "global warming since the 19th century is undeniable," which is another way of saying the planet warmed as the Little Ice Age ended, though Gerson does not mention that there even was a Little Ice Age (and before it, warmer temperatures, though no SUVs).
Gerson doesn't mention, either, that if concern for crop yields is paramount, a little more CO2 in the atmosphere might be just the thing.
And then there's his comment that warming since the end of the Little Ice Age is "closely correlated with increases in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide," which by itself would prove nothing if it were true, but it isn't.
There's more, such as Gerson's ludicrious comment that in failing to appreciate cap-and-trade, "conservatives seem strangely intent on ignoring the power of markets to encourage... innovation," as if Waxman-Markey had anything whatsoever to do with free markets (oops, Gerson left the word "free" out, so there goes the innovation).
I could go on, but there's really no need. I linked to the version of this column on TownHall with comments. The column is impossible to appreciate, but some of the comments are superlative.
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Several people here at the National Center been doing a good bit of talk radio on Climategate lately.
...we would have had a deficit of $52 billion in 2009, rather than the $1.44 trillion that we had (see historical tables 
In the wake of admissions 
News is breaking fast and furiously in the breaking IPCC scandal. We'll have more to say about it shortly, but won't have time for a full roundup of links to news about all the breaking events. For that, I strongly recommend visits to 
Michael Mann Received Stimulus Money: A Case Study in One Job 'Saved'," the Wall Street Journal editorializes this morning on the stimulus funds grant received by Climategate scientist Michael Mann: 
Ever heard the definition of chutzpah? It's the man who murders his parents and asks for the mercy of the court because he's an orphan.
National Center for Public Policy Free Enterprise Project Director Tom Borelli, Ph.D., will be a guest at 1 PM Eastern on Stuart Varney's show on the Fox Business Channel.
CBS's Sharyl Attkisson revealed Monday (
Media Matters 
Project 21 Fellow Deneen Borelli is being interviewed for a segment set to air on the Fox News Channel's "Special Report with Bret Baier" program at 6:00 PM Eastern on Thursday, January 7. She will be speaking about the Obama Administration's diversion of our nation's intelligence resources to assist climate scientists.
Copenhagen, Denmark - COP-15 has provided a glimpse of what life might be like under a global climate change agreement... and it isn't "A Wonderful Life." It's been a real Frank Capra moment, only in reverse.
The Media Matters Action Network has a page up 
Sadly for COP15 attendees willing to shell out 5,999 Danish Kroner ($1,209) to 
