By Alan Caruba

What is it with the “warmists”, Al Gore and his clones who keep insisting the Earth is warming, that too much carbon dioxide (CO2) will be the death of us, and that we have to immediately stop burning “fossil fuels” if we are to save the planet? They are the most relentless liars on the face of the planet.

They want us to cover the surface of the U.S. with solar panels and the mountains with wind turbines to generate the energy needed for everything we do. These Green energy alternatives are so wonderful they are producing a mere three percent of our current needs, require government subsidies and loan guarantees to exist, and tend not to be all that great when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing.

So why are we still hearing from this discredited and disgraced bunch of charlatans and buffoons? In early May, The New York Times published “Game Over for the Climate” by a major offender of the truth, Dr. James Hansen, who for some reason is still the director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), despite having pocketed big bucks beyond his humble government salary. In 2007 he split a million dollar Dan Davis Prize with someone else and in 2001, received a $250,000 Heinz Award. Former GISS employees want him fired.

As debased as The Times is, in 2006 the American Association for the Advancement of Science selected Hansen to receive their Award for Scientific Freedom and Responsibility. I cite this as a warning that even a Pulitzer Prize winning newspaper and formerly respected science organization have long since gone over to the dark side when it comes to global warming. Nothing they have to say on the subject should be regarded as more than pure propaganda.

Suffice to say that Dr. Hansen’s opinion article cited every global warming lie we have been hearing since 1988 when he first gained famed testifying before a congressional committee that we were doomed. In his Times article, he predicted that the “semi-permanent drought” would turn the Midwest into “a dust bowl.” Like every other global warming prediction (that hasn’t come true) this will happen “over the next several decades.” Time enough for Dr. Hansen to pick up a few more awards and fatten his bank account.

The face of the global warming hoax, Al Gore, will not shut up. He made news in August 2011 when he totally lost it while speaking at the Aspen Institute. Anyone, noted climatologists, meteorologists, and mere science writers like myself were the target of his rant for actually citing things such as the fact that the Earth has been in a natural COOLING cycle since 1998 and other inconvenient facts about the climate.

“And some of the exact same people” said Gore, frothing at the mouth, “I can go down a list of their names—are involved in this. And so what do they do? They pay pseudo-scientists to pretend to be scientists to put out the message. ‘This climate thing, it’s nonsense. Man-made CO2 doesn’t trap heat. It may be volcanoes’ Bullshit! ‘It may be sun spots.’ Bullshit! ‘It’s not getting warmer.’ Bullshit!”

The climate is not cooperating. The Church of Global Warming is crumbling around them. People are making fun of them. Parents are objecting to their scaring children with their lies. People actually want to warm their homes in winter and cool them in the summer. Meanwhile, using the global warming lies, the Environmental Protection Agency is trying to shut down the entire U.S. coal mining industry and attacking “fracking” to access natural gas. The Department of the Interior has virtually shut down all oil drilling on federal land and offshore. How crazed is all this?

Gleick

One of their number, Dr. Peter Gleick, formerly of the American Geophysical Union’s Task Force on Scientific Ethics—the irony is too delicious—perpetrated a fraud against The Heartland Institute earlier this year, pretending to be a member of its board in order to secure a list of its donors and allegedly authoring a memo about a scheme to invade the nation’s schoolrooms with a program to dispute global warming. After confessing to the former, he resigned from the task force. An FBI probe is underway to determine if he broke any laws. Heartland has dubbed it “Fakegate.”

The Institute, by the way, is sponsoring its 7th annual conference on climate change, May 21-23, in Chicago, immediately following the NATO conference that will be held in the windy city where it is headquartered. Its theme this year is “Real Science, Real Choices.” Among the speakers will be Czech President Vaclav Klaus, Rep. James Sensenbrenner, vice chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, and two former NASA astronauts.

The lesson we can draw from the last few decades is that the entire environmental movement, of which the global warming hoax is one part, is an extension of what Dr. Robert Zubin, a Senior Fellow with the Center for Security Policy, addressed in his new book, “Merchants of Despair: Radical Environmentalism, Criminal Pseudo-Scientists, and the Fatal Cult of Antihumanism.”

Antihumanism has been around a long time. As Dr. Zubin points out, it has taken the form of “Darwinism, eugenics, German militarism, Nazism, xenophobia, the population control movement, environmentalism, technophobia, and most recently, the incredibly demented climatophobic movement, which seeks to justify mass human sacrifice for the purpose of weather control.”

Al Gore, James Hansen, and even President Obama’s science adviser, John Holdren, are card-carrying members of this cult. In 1971 Holdren co-authored “Global Ecology” with Paul Ehrlich, famed for his 1968 book, “The Population Bomb.” They wrote “when a population of organisms grows in a finite environment, sooner or later, it will encounter a resource limit. This phenomenon, described by ecologists as reaching the ‘carrying capacity’ of the environment, applies to bacteria on a culture dish, to fruit flies in a jar of agar, and to buffalo on a prairie. It must also apply to man on this finite planet.”

So you need to understand that you are no better than a fruit fly and you need to die in order to avoid depleting the planet’s supply of food and its energy resources.

God knows I would like to ignore or—better still—never have to hear from these climate Nazis, but that is not going to happen so long as The New York Times, the United Nations, and a host of others keep repeating their lethal lies.

© Alan Caruba. 2012

James Hansen who directs the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies has pulled out all the stops in a (hopefully) last ditch effort to convince Gai worshipers that humans must drastically reduce their lifestyles to support his failed theory.

In his New York Times scare mongering piece he claims our very civilization is at risk.

“If we were to fully exploit this new oil source, and continue to burn our conventional oil, gas and coal supplies, concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere eventually would reach levels higher than in the Pliocene era, more than 2.5 million years ago, when sea level was at least 50 feet higher than it is now. That level of heat-trapping gases would assure that the disintegration of the ice sheets would accelerate out of control. Sea levels would rise and destroy coastal cities. Global temperatures would become intolerable. Twenty to 50 percent of the planet’s species would be driven to extinction. Civilization would be at risk”

The seas will rise, the animals will die, the earth will burn up and we’ll all drown from fifty foot higher seas. Haven’t we heard all this before? Isn’t this the same wacko who predicted a coming global ice age in the 1970′s?

Hasn’t he read about the GROWING glaciers? Hasn’t he read about the falsified graphs, suppressed dissent and outright lies by his fellow warmists? Even a NASA study has shown that Hansen’s models showing warming have serious flaws.

“Data from NASA’s Terra satellite shows that when the climate warms, Earth’s atmosphere is apparently more efficient at releasing energy to space than models used to forecast climate change have been programmed to “believe.”

The result is climate forecasts that are warming substantially faster than the atmosphere, says Dr. Roy Spencer, a principal research scientist in the Earth System Science Center at The University of Alabama in Huntsville.”

Hansen profits handsomely from his global warming hysteria.  As Alan Caruba noted in a previous usACTIONnews article “Will Warmists Face Justice for their Deceptions?“:

“It turns out that in 2010 alone he received “between 236,000 and $1,232.500 in outside income”! When you add in all the awards and speech fees Dr. Hansen has received over the years it is a tidy sum while he exploited his taxpayer-funded position.”

James Delingpole is a bestselling British author and blogger who helped expose the Climategate scandal back in 2009. Reason.tv caught up with Delingpole in Los Angeles recently to learn more about his entertaining and provocative new book Watermelons: The Green Movement’s True Colors. At its very roots, argues Delingpole, climate change is an ideological battle, not a scientific one. In other words, it’s green on the outside and red on the inside. At the end of the day, according to Delingpole, the “watermelons” of the modern environmental movement do not want to save the world. They want to rule it. – Reason TV

In fact there has been no global warming for the last 15 years. Where has Hansen been? Record cold has occurred in many parts of the world.

The British Met Office recently warned of a mini ice age coming. David Rose reported in the Mail Online:

“The supposed ‘consensus’ on man-made global warming is facing an inconvenient challenge after the release of new temperature data showing the planet has not warmed for the past 15 years.

The figures suggest that we could even be heading for a mini ice age to rival the 70-year temperature drop that saw frost fairs held on the Thames in the 17th Century.

Based on readings from more than 30,000 measuring stations, the data was issued last week without fanfare by the Met Office and the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit. It confirms that the rising trend in world temperatures ended in 1997.”

Oops! How are the seas going to rise, the animals die, the earth burn up and all of us drown from fifty foot higher seas? It looks like we’re more likely to freeze to death or die of starvation from shorter growing seasons.

Rose goes on to explain that a NASA study has shown that the sun seems to be the big factor in the earth cooling off:

“We are now at what should be the peak of what scientists call ‘Cycle 24’ – which is why last week’s solar storm resulted in sightings of the aurora borealis further south than usual. But sunspot numbers are running at less than half those seen during cycle peaks in the 20th Century.

Analysis by experts at NASA and the University of Arizona – derived from magnetic-field measurements 120,000 miles beneath the sun’s surface – suggest that Cycle 25, whose peak is due in 2022, will be a great deal weaker still.

According to a paper issued last week by the Met Office, there is a 92 per cent chance that both Cycle 25 and those taking place in the following decades will be as weak as, or weaker than, the ‘Dalton minimum’ of 1790 to 1830. In this period, named after the meteorologist John Dalton, average temperatures in parts of Europe fell by 2C.

 

However, it is also possible that the new solar energy slump could be as deep as the ‘Maunder minimum’ (after astronomer Edward Maunder), between 1645 and 1715 in the coldest part of the ‘Little Ice Age’ when, as well as the Thames frost fairs, the canals of Holland froze solid.”

But enough of the coming ice age. The real reason Hansen and his fellow AlGoreaholics continue their hysterical claims in the face of the facts comes down to money. Hansen boldly suggests a carbon tax that would drive up the cost of everything. He sweetens the idea by saying most people would get back more than they paid. This is essentially what Obama and the Democrats tried with cap-and-trade legislation that failed to pass the Democrat controlled congress. Hansen says:

“We should impose a gradually rising carbon fee, collected from fossil fuel companies, then distribute 100 percent of the collections to all Americans on a per-capita basis every month. The government would not get a penny. This market-based approach would stimulate innovation, jobs and economic growth, avoid enlarging government or having it pick winners or losers. Most Americans, except the heaviest energy users, would get more back than they paid in increased prices.” [emphasis added]

Everything has an energy component. This type of tax would stifle innovation, jobs and growth by driving up the cost of all goods and services.

Hansen is not the first to admit that the global warming scam is really about wealth redistribution. We’ve been warning you that this is all about money and a political agenda not about the environment. Now we have confirmation from the IPCC itself.

A Professor of the ‘Economics of Climate Change’, Edenhofer is Co-Chair of Working Group III of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) whose climate report is the political cover for almost all government action on global warming.

In an interview with Germany’s NZZ Online Edenhofer exposed the real purpose behind the climate change scam [red emphasis added]:

NZZ am Sonntag: The new thing about your proposal for a Global Deal is the stress on the importance of development policy for climate policy. Until now, many think of aid when they hear development policies.

Edenhofer: That will change immediately if global emission rights are distributed. If this happens, on a per capita basis, then Africa will be the big winner, and huge amounts of money will flow there. This will have enormous implications for development policy. And it will raise the question if these countries can deal responsibly with so much money at all.

That does not sound anymore like the climate policy that we know.

Edenhofer: Basically it’s a big mistake to discuss climate policy separately from the major themes of globalization. The climate summit in Cancun at the end of the month is not a climate conference, but one of the largest economic conferences since the Second World War. Why? Because we have 11,000 gigatons of carbon in the coal reserves in the soil under our feet – and we must emit only 400 gigatons in the atmosphere if we want to keep the 2-degree target. 11 000 to 400 – there is no getting around the fact that most of the fossil reserves must remain in the soil.

De facto, this means an expropriation of the countries with natural resources. This leads to a very different development from that which has been triggered by development policy.

Edenhofer: First of all, developed countries have basically expropriated the atmosphere of the world community. But one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy. Obviously, the owners of coal and oil will not be enthusiastic about this. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole.

But unlike the financial crisis, in climate policy a country benefits if it does not join in.

The financial crisis was an emergency operation – in the face of danger we behave more cooperatively. Such a thing will not happen in climate policy, because it will always remain questionable whether a specific event like a flood is a climate phenomenon. But there is always the risk that individual rationality leads to collective stupidity. Therefore, one cannot solve the climate problem alone, but it has to be linked to other problems. There must be penalties and incentives: global CO 2-tariffs and technology transfer.

We have had the Director of the White House National Economic Council for President Barack Obama teaming up with George Soros to call for global carbon taxes. We had Obama endorsing global taxes on the eve of a UN summit and as a Senator he introduced a bill, the Global Poverty Act (S 2433), to force U.S. compliance with the UN’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) which commits the nations of the world to supporting “innovative financing mechanisms” (global taxes) to supplement foreign aid spending. Obama ally and supporter Richard Trumka the AFL-CIO president is working with European socialists to enact a global financial transaction tax.

Five subcommittee chairman in the US House of Representatives sent a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urging her to support the global climate tax to be proposed in the upcoming United Nations climate summit in Cancun Mexico.  The Hill reports that the letter stated:

“A new global climate fund designed within the [United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change] with the expertise, independence, and mandate to support developing countries in their efforts to build resilience to climate change and reduce greenhouse gas emissions is a crucial component of addressing the global problem,” it states.

[The] letter from Reps. Eni F.H. Faleomavaega (American Samoa), Brad Sherman (Calif.), Gary Ackerman (N.Y.), Donald Payne (N.J.) and Eliot Engel (N.Y.).

And they don’t really even need congress to make it happen. As we pointed out in a previous editorial the framework for global carbon trading and associated ‘fees’ is already passed in the financial reform monstrosity known as the Dodd-Frank bill:

On page 1,012 Section 750 ‘STUDY ON OVERSIGHT OF CARBON MARKETS’ the bill establishes an ‘INTERAGENCY WORKING GROUP’ which includes the Chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission as Chairman of the group, Secretary of Agriculture, Secretary of Treasury, Chairman of the SEC, Administrator of the EPA, Chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, Commissioner of the FTC, and the Administrator of the Energy Information Administration.

The group ‘ shall conduct a study on the oversight of existing and prospective carbon markets to ensure an efficient, secure and transparent carbon market‘.

Section 751 creates the ‘ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENTAL MARKETS ADVISORY COMMITTEE’ and makes said committee not subject to the Federal Advisory Committee Act which says ‘the function of advisory committees should be advisory only, and that all matters under their consideration should be determined, in accordance with law, by the official, agency, or officer involved’ and includes other public safe guards which can be ignored by this committee.

Global regulation and ‘fees’ are also set up in the bill. Section 752 ‘INTERNATIONAL HARMONIZATION’ requires the the Commodity Futures Trading commission, the SEC, and the prudential regulators (as that term is defined in section 1a(39) of the Commodity
Exchange Act) to ‘consult and coordinate with foreign regulatory authorities on the establishment of consistent international standards with respect to the regulation (including fees) of swaps, security-based swaps, swap entities, and security-based swap entities and may agree to such information-sharing arrangements as may be deemed to be necessary or appropriate’.

Read the bill here

In an earlier usACTIONnews article Phyllis Schlafly exposed the UN plans to redistribute wealth globally:

“UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, speaking in Bangladesh on November 14 [2011], urged world leaders to finalize financing for a multibillion-dollar fund to fight the effects of climate change. He is urging the UN climate-change conference that opens November 28 in Durban, South Africa, to raise $100 billion a year for a Green Climate Fund to help poor countries cope with global warming.

Americans should recognize this language as UN gobbledegook to transfer U.S. wealth to foreign countries run by corrupt dictators. The 190 countries expected to attend the Durban conference would probably think that is a nifty idea.

Ban Ki-moon started his drive for a huge UN climate change fund by making a tear-jerking plea, about a melting North Pole glacier, at the Copenhagen UN conference in December 2009. But despite President Obama’s attendance, designed to encourage UN wishful thinking, Copenhagen results were zero.”

In another article Michael T. Snyder warned about the U.N. also:

In this new UN report, we find the following statement….

Achieving sustainability requires us to transform the global economy. Tinkering on the margins will not do the job.

This is absolutely crucial to understand.

The folks over at the UN don’t just want to change things a little.

Their goal is a radical transformation of the entire world.

According to the United Nations, if we don’t implement their recommendations the consequences will be absolutely disastrous….

But what, then, is to be done if we are to make a real difference for the world’s people and the planet? We must grasp the dimensions of the challenge. We must recognize that the drivers of that challenge include unsustainable lifestyles, production and consumption patterns and the impact of population growth. As the global population grows from 7 billion to almost 9 billion by 2040, and the number of middle-class consumers increases by 3 billion over the next 20 years, the demand for resources will rise exponentially. By 2030, the world will need at least 50 percent more food, 45 percent more energy and 30 percent more water — all at a time when environmental boundaries are throwing up new limits to supply. This is true not least for climate change, which affects all aspects of human and planetary health.

So what changes are needed in order for us to achieve a “sustainable” global economy?

Well, the following are some of the disturbing recommendations that we find in the new UN report….

Raise Prices

According to the United Nations, we need to start significantly raising the prices of things that are made in an “unsustainable” way so that they reflect the “true cost” of their production….

Most goods and services sold today fail to bear the full environmental and social cost of production and consumption. Based on the science, we need to reach consensus, over time, on methodologies to price them properly. Costing environmental externalities could open new opportunities for green growth and green jobs

That means that you and I would start paying a lot more for the basic things that we need every day – food, gasoline, etc.

Carbon Taxes

The UN report also discusses the need to use regulations and taxation as tools to penalize economic activities that are not “sustainable”….

Establish natural resource and externality pricing instruments, including carbon pricing, through mechanisms such as taxation, regulation or emissions trading systems, by 2020

This is one of the favorite things that social engineers like to do.  They love to use taxation and regulations as weapons to get people to do the things they want.

So be prepared for more money to be taken from the American people with or without congressional approval.

There are many, many people like James Hansen and Professor of  ‘Economics of Climate Change’ Edenhofer who have their whole sustenance, purpose and being wrapped up in the climate scam. There are trillions of dollars at stake and thousands of people want a piece of the action.

Hold on to you wallet.

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By Joel Kotkin at City Journal

EXCERPTS:

… income among families in the 10th percentile of earners plunged 21 percent. Nationwide, the figure was 14 percent. In the much wealthier 90th percentile of California earners, income fell far less sharply: 5 percent …

One reason for California’s widening class divide is that, for a decade or longer, the state’s progressives have fostered a tax environment that slows job creation …

Still more troubling to California employers is the state’s regulatory environment …. among the most complex in the nation.

The list of companies leaving the state or shifting jobs elsewhere is extensive.

Radical environmentalism has been particularly responsible for driving wedges between California’s classes. …. today’s progressives regard with suspicion any growth that requires the use of land and natural resources. …. the new green movement advocates a reduced human “footprint” and opposes cars, “sprawl,” and even human reproduction.

FULL ARTICLE

by Marian L. Tupy at Cato @ Liberty

In 1972, the Club of Rome published an extremely popular and influential neo-Malthusian tract called The Limits to Growth. This apocalyptic warning about over-population, over-consumption, and environmental destruction sold some 12 million copies and was translated into 37 languages. According to the authors of The Limits to Growth, “Serious stresses involving population, resources, and environment are clearly visible ahead. Despite greater material output, the world’s people will be poorer in many ways than they are today.”

How accurate were those predictions? As I wrote on May 4 in the Washington Times, since the late 1960s,

 [The] world population has doubled from 3.5 billion to 7 billion, inflation-adjusted average annual income per person has risen from $3,147 to $5,997, and life expectancy at birth has increased from 59 years to 69 years.

The world’s daily caloric intake per person rose from an average of 2,610 in 1990 to 2,790 in 2006…. In sub-Saharan Africa, the caloric intake increased from 2,290 to 2,420 in just 16 years. To put these figures in perspective, the U.S. Department of Agriculture recommends that adult men eat between 2,000 and 2,500 calories a day and women between 1,800 and 2,300 calories a day.

Often seen as hopeless, Africa has made other significant gains. In spite of wars, massive economic mismanagement and the ravages of AIDS, the continent’s population has more than trebled — from 280 million to 854 million — since 1968, and life expectancy has increased from 44 years to 54 years.

According to the latest World Bank research, global poverty is declining rapidly. In 1981, 70 percent of people in poor countries lived on less than $2 a day, while 42 percent survived on less than $1 a day. Today, 43 percent live on less than $2 a day, while 14 percent survive on less than $1.

The world is not a perfect place, but the last four decades have not been too shabby as far as growth and human progress are concerned. Bearing that in mind, a bit of soul-searching at the Club of Rome’s HQ in Winterthur, Switzerland, would have been in order.

Instead, the Club of Rome’s latest offering 2052: A Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years, “raises the possibility that humankind might not survive on the planet if it continues on its path of over-consumption and short-termism.” Released on May 7, the report states that “We already live in a manner that cannot be continued for generations without major change. Humanity has overshot the earth’s resources, and in some cases we will see local collapse before 2052.”

Niels Bohr, the famous Danish physicist, is supposed to have said that “prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future.” True, no one has a crystal ball, but human experience points to growing abundance, not looming disaster. It is a pity that the Club of Rome has learned so little from The Limits to Growth fiasco.

Editor’s note:

Keeping the public  afraid is the way to strip them of reason and wealth. Just check out what the fear about climate was in this 1970′s magazine article on the coming ice age:

From IBD Editorials

EXCERPTS:

Since entering office, President Obama has presided over the worst recovery since the Great Depression. While the recovery began just four months after Obama took office, since then GDP growth has averaged just 2.4% at a yearly rate. Pathetic.

At a less-than-3% growth rate, the economy won’t even create enough jobs to sop up the 130,000 or so people who enter the workforce each month, much less the 14 million or so who are officially unemployed.

Obama’s policies have created a massive growth deficit.

… lost jobs, lost growth, lost income, lost opportunity. This is the legacy of Obamanomics.

FULL ARTICLE

Here is the coming ice age scare from my generation:

By Alan Caruba

As Earth Day 2012 occurs on Sunday,  April 22, I offer a selection of quotes from leading figures in the environmental movement that are worth reading so that you can draw your own conclusions.

In 1970, the first Earth Day generated the following quotes:

“Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.” – George Wald, Harvard Biologist

“We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation.” – Barry Commoner, Washington University biologist

“Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction.” – New York Times editorial, the day after the first Earth Day

“Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make. The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.” – Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist

“It is already too late to avoid mass starvation.” – Denis Hayes, chief organizer for Earth Day in 1970.

Truth meant (and means) little to environmentalists.

“What we’ve got to do in energy conservation is try to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, to have approached global warming as if it is real means energy conservation, so we will be doing the right thing anyway in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.” – Timothy Wirth, former U.S. Senator (D-CO)

“It doesn’t matter what is true, it only matters what people believe is true.” – Paul Watson, co-founder of Greenpeace.

Many of the environmental movement’s leaders harbored genocidal dreams as the best way to “save the Earth.”

“We have wished, we eco-freaks, for a disaster or for a social change to come and bomb us into Stone Age, where we might live like Indians in our valley, with our localism, our appropriate technology, our gardens, our homemade religion—guilt-free at last!” – Steward Brand, writing in the Earth Catalog.

“Phasing out the human race will solve every problem on earth, social and environmental.” – Dave Forman, founder of Earth First

“I suspect that eradicating smallpox was wrong. It played an important part in balancing ecosystems.” – John Davis, editor of the Earth First Journal

“The extinction of the human species may not only be inevitable but a good thing….This is not to say that the rise of human civilization is insignificant, but there is no way of showing that it will be much help to the world in the long run.” – An editorial in The Economist.

Al Gore

One could devote an entire column to quotes by former Vice President, Al Gore, but one of my favorites is from his 1993 book, Earth in the Balance. “It ought to be possible to establish a coordinated global program to accomplish the strategic goal of completely eliminating the internal combustion engine over, say, a twenty-five year period.”

He was talking about the engine in every car, every truck, every tractor, every motorcycle, and every airplane, among other uses. Gore won a Nobel Peace Prize, shared with the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and an Oscar for his apocalyptic documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth.”

There are, of course, voices of reason who have sought to warn us against the true agenda of environmentalism.

“The study of history is a powerful antidote to contemporary arrogance. It is humbling to discover how many of our glib assumptions, which seem to us novel and plausible, have been tested before, not once but many times and in innumerable guises; and discovered to be, at great human cost, wholly false.” –Paul Johnson, historian

And, finally, this warning from the President of the Czech Republic, Vaclac Klaus: “They hate us, the humans, they consider us selfish and sinful creatures who must be controlled by them. I used to live in a similar world—called communism—and I know that it led to the worst environmental damage the world has ever experienced.”

Sources:
1970 Earth Day Quotes:  http://www.blogger.com/goog_453635155

Green Quotes:  http://www.blogger.com/goog_453635158

More Green Quotes:
http://redneckusa.wordpress.com/2012/04/16/in-their-own-words-the-truth-about-their-real-motivations/

© Alan Caruba, 2012

Previously from usACTIONnews.com:

Frightening Quotes from Environmentalists

By EconMatters

Brent crude ended trading above $120 a barrel on Friday, April 13, while WTI crude on NYMEX for May delivery settled at $102.83 a barrel.  Oil has traded above $100 for all but a couple of days in the past year (see chart below).  This persistent high oil price has many concerned to start threatening a nascent recovery of the global economy.

Studies show that historically, around 90% of US recessions post World War II were preceded by oil price shocks.  The most recent occurrence took place when oil more than doubled in price from January 2007 to July 2008 due to a sharp increase in Chinese demand.  The pullback of US consumer and corporate spending already put a drag on economic growth before the subprime-induced financial crisis closed the deal on the Great Recession.

Analysts generally see the $120-130 level as a price that would prompt consumer and corporate to cut back on spending sharply, and hurt the recovery and growth of key economic sectors. A recent Reuters survey of 20 equity strategists put $125 a barrel as the point economy and stock markets could start to suffer.

The most recent study on the link between oil price and economic recession came from energy industry consultancy Wood Mackenzie (WoodMac) published earlier this month.  The chart below from WoodMac illustrates “the mechanism” of how an oil price shock would derail the global economy.

According to WoodMac’s model,

“…. the US will fall into recession within 12 months if WTI increases to $130 per barrel and the price remains elevated. If WTI reaches $150 per barrel and remains elevated, recession will be more pronounced with US GDP estimated to contract 0.4% in 2013.”

U.S. domestic petroleum products are priced off of Brent since WTI has become a less relevant oil price marker due to the inventory glut at pipeline-capacity-challenged Cushing, OK depressing the WTI price.  So using the current spread between WTI and Brent of around $15-$20, WTI $130 would suggest Brent at about $150 range.  Brent futures already hit $128.40 a barrel, the highest since 2008, in early March, but has since given back some of the gains..

However, the difference between now and 2008 is that when oil spiked to almost $150 in 2008, there was a strong demand from China and a real shortage of supply, whereas the current world oil market is a lot more balanced than the current Brent oil price suggests.

IEA (International Energy Agency) said in its monthly report that there had potentially been a rise in global oil stocks of 1 million barrels per day (bpd) over the last quarter, and the impact on prices had not yet been fully realised.  Reuters quoted the IEA that:

“Easing first quarter 2012 fundamentals have seen prices recently lose most of the $5 per barrel they gained in March. The muted impact so far is partly because much of this extra supply has been stockpiled on land or at sea.”

Rather than reflecting market fundamentals, dollar prices for Brent crude, up more than 15% this year, has been pushed up mainly by fears about Iran, and the loss of supply from three relatively small oil producing countries–Syria, Yemen and South Sudan–adding to the supply worries.  In other words, the oil price is bid up primarily by trading actions on the geopolitical factors (chiefly Iran).

Meanwhile, Saudi Oil Minister Ali Al Naimi said on Friday, April 13 in a statement during a visit to Seoul that

“We are seeing a prolonged period of high oil prices. We are not happy about it. (The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia) is determined to see a lower price and is working towards that goal.”

“Fundamentally the market remains balanced — there is no lack of supply.  Saudi Arabia has invested a great deal to sustain its capacity, and it will use spare production capacity to supply the oil market with any additional required volumes.”

Naimi earlier this year indicated $100 a barrel as an ideal price for producers and consumers earlier this year.

Typically, oil price shock occurs when price goes out of the normal range.  Currently, oil is not trading at an unprecedented level as in the case of 2008, which is hard to hit given the projection of a subdued global GDP, weak oil demand outlook, and an eventual resolution of the Iran situation.

Thus we believe oil has gotten way ahead of itself, and could experience a correction later this year and in the next three years or so.  End user behavior change is starting to manifest, and the latest CFTC trading position reports already showed that money managers cut their net-long position roughly 12% in light, sweet crude-oil futures and options (see chart above).  (Brent already went down to $118.57 on Monday, April 16.)

So no, unless something totally unexpected shocks the oil price into no man’s land, WTI and Brent are unlikely to hit the levels that could possibly bring about a global recession any time soon.  In fact, among the major possible drivers of a global recession, European economic and debt crisis looks to be the greater risk than an oil price shock.

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This is the same “scientist” that whose computer models predicted a coming global ICE AGE in 1971. so was he right then or is he right now? Probably neither. It’s all about scaring people enough to get them to part with their money willingly. Hansen is calling for a global carbon tax.

“It can’t be fixed by individual specific changes; it has to be an across-the-board rising fee on carbon emissions,” said Hansen. “We can’t simply say that there’s a climate problem, and leave it to the politicians.” [The Guardian]

Previously we warned about this scam for the global redistribution of wealth:

We’ve been warning you that this is all about money and a political agenda not about the environment. Now we get confirmation from the IPCC itself.

A Professor of the ‘Economics of Climate Change’, Edenhofer is Co-Chair of Working Group III of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) whose climate report is the political cover for almost all government action on global warming.

Just a year ago the disclosure of  thousands of emails known as climategate showed that the information used for the IPCC’s climate report was fraudulent and manipulated to push the unproven theory of man made global warming.

Continuing disclosures of underlying ’studies’ showed that the IPCC did not use peer reviewed scientific studies as it claimed but instead sought and referenced anything supporting its predetermined conclusion. One such ’study’ even turned out to be an opinion article by an environmental activist with no data whatsoever.

In an interview with Germany’s NZZ Online Edenhofer exposed the real purpose behind the climate change scam [red emphasis added]:

NZZ am Sonntag: The new thing about your proposal for a Global Deal is the stress on the importance of development policy for climate policy. Until now, many think of aid when they hear development policies.

Edenhofer: That will change immediately if global emission rights are distributed. If this happens, on a per capita basis, then Africa will be the big winner, and huge amounts of money will flow there. This will have enormous implications for development policy. And it will raise the question if these countries can deal responsibly with so much money at all.

That does not sound anymore like the climate policy that we know.

Edenhofer: Basically it’s a big mistake to discuss climate policy separately from the major themes of globalization. The climate summit in Cancun at the end of the month is not a climate conference, but one of the largest economic conferences since the Second World War. Why? Because we have 11,000 gigatons of carbon in the coal reserves in the soil under our feet – and we must emit only 400 gigatons in the atmosphere if we want to keep the 2-degree target. 11 000 to 400 – there is no getting around the fact that most of the fossil reserves must remain in the soil.

De facto, this means an expropriation of the countries with natural resources. This leads to a very different development from that which has been triggered by development policy.

Edenhofer: First of all, developed countries have basically expropriated the atmosphere of the world community. But one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy. Obviously, the owners of coal and oil will not be enthusiastic about this. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole.

But unlike the financial crisis, in climate policy a country benefits if it does not join in.

The financial crisis was an emergency operation – in the face of danger we behave more cooperatively. Such a thing will not happen in climate policy, because it will always remain questionable whether a specific event like a flood is a climate phenomenon. But there is always the risk that individual rationality leads to collective stupidity. Therefore, one cannot solve the climate problem alone, but it has to be linked to other problems. There must be penalties and incentives: global CO 2-tariffs and technology transfer.

Just recently we have had the Director of the White House National Economic Council for President Barack Obama teaming up with George Soros to call for global carbon taxes. We had Obama endorsing global taxes on the eve of a UN summit and as a Senator he introduced a bill, the Global Poverty Act (S 2433), to force U.S. compliance with the UN’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) which commits the nations of the world to supporting “innovative financing mechanisms” (global taxes) to supplement foreign aid spending. Obama ally and supporter Richard Trumka the AFL-CIO president is working with European socialists to enact a global financial transaction tax.

Five subcommittee chairman in the US House of Representatives sent a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urging her to support the global climate tax to be proposed in the upcoming United Nations climate summit in Cancun Mexico.  The Hill reports that the letter stated:

“A new global climate fund designed within the [United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change] with the expertise, independence, and mandate to support developing countries in their efforts to build resilience to climate change and reduce greenhouse gas emissions is a crucial component of addressing the global problem,” it states.

[The] letter from Reps. Eni F.H. Faleomavaega (American Samoa), Brad Sherman (Calif.), Gary Ackerman (N.Y.), Donald Payne (N.J.) and Eliot Engel (N.Y.).

And they don’t really even need congress to make it happen. As we pointed out in a previous editorial the framework for global carbon trading and associated ‘fees’ is already passed in the financial reform monstrosity known as the Dodd-Frank bill:

On page 1,012 Section 750 ‘STUDY ON OVERSIGHT OF CARBON MARKETS’ the bill establishes an ‘INTERAGENCY WORKING GROUP’ which includes the Chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission as Chairman of the group, Secretary of Agriculture, Secretary of Treasury, Chairman of the SEC, Administrator of the EPA, Chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, Commissioner of the FTC, and the Administrator of the Energy Information Administration.

The group ‘ shall conduct a study on the oversight of existing and prospective carbon markets to ensure an efficient, secure and transparent carbon market‘.

Section 751 creates the ‘ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENTAL MARKETS ADVISORY COMMITTEE’ and makes said committee not subject to the Federal Advisory Committee Act which says ‘the function of advisory committees should be advisory only, and that all matters under their consideration should be determined, in accordance with law, by the official, agency, or officer involved’ and includes other public safe guards which can be ignored by this committee.

Global regulation and ‘fees’ are also set up in the bill. Section 752 ‘INTERNATIONAL HARMONIZATION’ requires the the Commodity Futures Trading commission, the SEC, and the prudential regulators (as that term is defined in section 1a(39) of the Commodity
Exchange Act) to ‘consult and coordinate with foreign regulatory authorities on the establishment of consistent international standards with respect to the regulation (including fees) of swaps, security-based swaps, swap entities, and security-based swap entities and may agree to such information-sharing arrangements as may be deemed to be necessary or appropriate’.

Read the bill here

So be prepared for more money to be taken from the American people with or without congressional approval.

There are many, many people like Professor of  ‘Economics of Climate Change’ Edenhofer and Prof. Jim Hansen who have their whole sustenance, purpose and being wrapped up in the climate scam. There are trillions of dollars at stake and thousands of people want a piece of the action.

By Michael Whipple, Editor usACTIONnews.com

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