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“Fakegate” Blows Up in Warmist Faces

February 21, 2012 By 2 Comments

By Alan Caruba

On February 16, I published “Anatomy of a Global Warming Hoax” concerning the theft of the private records of The Heartland Institute’s board meeting and the creation of an alleged forged document intended to harm its reputation as a long time advocate of the real, not fake, science that has been the basis of the global warming—now called “climate change”—hoax.

The Feb 21 issue of The Wall Street Journal published an editorial, “The Not-So-Vast Conspiracy” noting that “As for ‘the largest international science conference of skeptics’ Heartland will, according to the documents, spend all of $380,000 this year on the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change. That’s against the $6.5 million that the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) costs Western taxpayers annually, and the $2.6 billion the White House wants to spend next year on research into ‘global changes that have resulted primarily from global over-dependence on fossil fuels.’” (Emphasis added)

The global warming hoax has cost taxpayers billions since it was initiated and earned the purveyors of “carbon credits” millions as industry and others paid for the privilege of emitting “greenhouse gas”—primarily carbon dioxide—as part of doing business. Currently the European Union is trying to shake down the airline industry by charging them a surtax on their emissions as they fly tourists and businessmen to that beknighted continent. Most of the exchanges that sold the credits have since closed.

The infamous “Cap-and-Trade” legislation that thankfully died in Congress was part of this scam.

We now know that the document theft was either perpetrated or abetted by Dr. Peter E. Gleick, a water and climate analyst, and founder of the Pacific Institute. A contributor to Huffington Post and prolific castigator of global warming “skeptics” and “deniers”, Dr. Gleick has admitted his part in the effort to depict The Heartland Institute, its board and its donors as part of the worldwide conspiracy to debunk the hoax.

Since 2008 Heartland has sponsored six conferences that brought together scientists and others who presented ample evidence of the absurdity that carbon dioxide and other “greenhouse gases” was causing the Earth to heat up. Unfortunately for the real IPCC conspirators, the Earth entered a natural cooling cycle in 1998 and, in 2009, thousands of email exchanges between the IPCC scientists were posted to the Internet revealing their growing panic over the failure of Mother Nature to cooperate with their lies, most if not all of which were based on bogus computer models.

Even The New York Times that had trumpeted the false allegations based on the purloined documents, published a Feb. 20 article, “Activist Says He Lied to Obtain Climate Papers” reporting that “Dr. Gleick distributed the documents to several well-known bloggers and activists who support the work of mainstream climate scientists and who have documented the Heartland Institute as a center of climate change denial.”

The Times is incapable to not slandering organizations and individuals who have fought long and hard to rip the mask of respectability from the perpetrators of the hoax. The “mainstream scientists” to whom it refers are, of course, the IPCC scientists behind the hoax. “Climate change denial” is nothing less than the propagation of the truth about the hoax.

For me, the most interesting aspect of all this has been the way The Heartland Institute has responded to Dr. Glieck’s chicanery. From the moment that documents, real, altered and fake, were posted on sites like DeSmogBlog.com and others, Heartland’s president, Joe Bast, went after the then-unknown identity of the person who secured the documents threatening legal action.

When Dr. Glieck publicly admitted his part in a Huffington Post statement, Bast released a statement saying, “Gleick’s crime was a serious one. The documents he admits stealing contained personal information about Heartland’s staff members, donors, and allies, the release of which has violated their privacy and endangered their personal safety.”

The key word in Bast’s statement is “crime.” As John Sullivan, a British-based attorney and an active “denier”, author and blogger, noted, Bast said “A mere apology is not enough to undo the damage”, adding that Dr. Gleick faces being financially ruined by a civil prosecution and “is also liable to a criminal investigation as such falsification of documents is a well-known brand of white collar crime.”

Some time ago I wrote a commentary saying that some of the global warming conspirators needed to go to jail for their crimes. As events unfold, that yet may occur insofar as they were the recipients of public funding and United Nations support as the IPCC published their false “science” amidst alarmist global warming claims.

Perhaps their greatest crime was the debasement of meteorological and climate science. Beyond that, their attacks on the reputation of the brave scientists who stepped forward to refute them is the very definition of slander and liable. The New York Times, Newsweek, Time, the National Geographic, and other “mainstream” news publications will unfortunately be given a pass for advancing their lies even to this day.

The Heartland director’s meeting was devoted to a program to deal with the torrent of false teaching in our nation’s schools intended to warp the perceptions and knowledge of students regarding global warming. That, too, is part of the crime committed against a national and worldwide population that was deliberately misled.

The warmists are in retreat and for that everyone owes a great debt of gratitude to The Heartland Institute and all the others who joined in the effort to refute the greatest hoax of the modern era.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

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Why Pay to Read Lies? Newspapers in Decline

February 19, 2012 By Leave a Comment

By Alan Caruba

The job I loved most in my long career as a writer was as a journalist, first on weekly newspapers and then on a daily. I loved breaking news, the deadlines, and the thrill of seeing my words in print. Old enough to remember Linotype, I even would set pages with the newly minted metal strips of text.

The day The New York Times Jersey edition published a piece I wrote, I thought I had reached some magical place amongst my fellow journalists. What I had unknowingly reached was being published a newspaper with a long history of printing lies and doing everything in its power to influence events through its news columns. That’s a no-no.

In a long career as a public relations counselor I have counted many reporters and editors among my friends and still do. I have been a member of the Society of Professional Journalists since the 1970s.

Sadly, journalism never did and probably still doesn’t pay salaries commensurate with the economy. So, in the words of Mae West, “I used to be Snow White, but I drifted.”

In 1984, I founded The National Anxiety Center as a clearinghouse for information about scare campaigns that were designed to influence public opinion and policy. My primary concern was all the lies being told by self-identified environmentalists. Simply stated, if some Green group tells you something, get a second and third opinion. They are lying.

The worst of it that the media has taken their lies at face value and continue to pass them along to a public that is easily fooled and easily scared. This is especially true of “official” sources such as the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Energy, and others. All governments lie to their citizens and ours is no exception.

The damage that Green lies do can get people killed. Since the publication of Rachel Carson’s “The Silent Spring” millions, particularly in Africa and subtropical nations have died from malaria because DDT was banned as the result of her book. Similarly, the least reported, but most current story is the deep freeze that has affected much of Europe and which has caused several hundred deaths.

Like a biblical punishment, newspapers are feeling the brunt of the changes the Internet has brought about. With search engines at our fingertips, anyone can research any topic of interest, often finding that what the daily newspaper or news magazine had to say about it is replete with omissions of critical facts or the deliberate dissemination of falsehoods.

Then there’s the way the newspapers and other news media tend to focus on stories like the death and funeral of Whitney Houston or some local tragedy that briefly attracts national attention. Wars are usually reported in terms of casualties. Political campaigns are reduced to horse races. Religious and moral issues barely tolerated.

Almost anything published about Islam must be read through the thin gauze of political correctness that ignores the menace of Islam to those living in Muslim nations and in nations where they gain a population foothold. It is a religion that sanctions stoning women to death, decapitating “infidels”, and even sending children into mine fields to clear them. It is pure barbarism and has zero tolerance for freedom of speech, the press, other religions, or independent thought.

All of this has much to do with the decline of newspapers nationwide. In January, on the website of Editor& Publisher, Alan D. Mutter, a former editor who blogs at Newsosaur, wrote the “Daily Paper Going the Way of the Milkman.” That caught my eye because I am old enough to remember a horse-drawn milk wagon (it was during WWII) pulling up at the driveway of my home to make deliveries.

The thought that newspaper delivery will cease in many cities around the nation is disquieting, but circulation is plunging.

The result is that reductions of newsroom staffs, reporters and editors, have been surging, with jobs eliminated in 2011 reaching nearly 30% more than the prior year. There have been five years of revenue declines. One blogger, Erica Smith, who follows the trends, estimated that 3,775+ newspaper jobs were eliminated in 2011.

According to an annual survey by the American Society of News Editors, nearly one in three newsroom jobs have been eliminated since the number of journalists peaked at 56,900 in 1989. By the end of 2010, there were only 41,600 ink-stained wretches left on the industry’s payrolls.

In recent weeks The Wall Street Journal reported “Gannett’s Profit Drops 33%” and “Thompson Reuters Posts Loss.”

Putting aside why advertisers are seeking greener pastures and platforms to sell their goods, let me suggest that an underlying and largely unexplored reason for the declines being felt throughout traditional print journalism outlets is that people simply do not want to pay for lies every day between the horoscope, the crossword puzzle, and the obituary page.

Lies? The print media and its broadcast counterpart fell totally in love with Barack Obama in 2008 and we ended up with a completely unknown and largely unvetted former Senator who hadn’t even served a full term there. People remember stuff like that.

They remember years of unmitigated lies about “global warming” when there wasn’t any threat at all.

They remember being told that coffee was bad for you followed by stories that coffee is good for you.

There are many factors at play in the decline of newspapers, but I think one factor is the general disenchantment with the product—the news—that too often tends to turn out to be false.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

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The Anatomy of a Global Warming Smear

February 16, 2012 By Leave a Comment

By Alan Caruba

Full disclosure: Years ago I received a small stipend from The Heartland Institute to help cover the costs of writing articles regarding the global warming hoax, well before it was exposed in 2009 when emails between its perpetrators—the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change—revealed the total lack of real science involved. I have continued to expose the hoax without any support from Heartland or any other entity.

A total of six conferences on climate change have been sponsored by The Heartland Institute. I attended the first conference in New York City in 2008 and my initial observation was that virtually no one from the press was there and the meager coverage it received disparaged it.

This week, a major smear campaign against the Institute erupted as the result of an act of deception and thievery that may well result in criminal charges against its as yet unknown perpetrator.

The President of the Institute, Joe Bast, immediately informed its supporters, directors, donors and friends that someone pretending to be a board member had sent Heartland an email claiming to be a director and asking that documents regarding a January board meeting be re-sent.

A clever ruse, but the result was that elements of the confidential documents were then posted on a number of so-called climate blogs and from there to various members of the media who, with the exception of The Guardian, took no steps whatever to verify the authenticity of the documents, some of which Heartland says were either a concoction of lies or altered to convey inaccurate information.

The leading disseminator of the global warming hoax, The New York Times, published its version on Wednesday, February 15th, titled “Leak Offers Glimpse of Campaign Against Climate Science.”

Suffice to say, the “climate science” served up by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has been a pack of lies from the day it first convened. Its “science” was based on computer models rigged by co-conspirators that include Michael Mann of Penn State University and Phil Jones of the University of East Anglia.

The original leak of their emails in November 2009 instantly revealed the extent of their efforts to spread the hoax and to suppress any expression of doubt regarding it. A second release in 2011 confirmed what anyone paying any attention already knew.

The “warmists”, a name applied to global warming hoaxers, launched into a paroxysm of denial that has not stopped to this day. Their respective universities have since engaged in every possible way to hide the documentation they claimed supported their claims. Suffice to say, the global warming hoax was the golden goose for everyone who received literally billions in public and private funding.

We have reached the point where the warmists have been claiming that global warming causes global cooling! Along the way the bogus warming has been blamed for thousands of utterly absurd events and trends. What really worried the perpetrators was the fact that the planet had entered a cooling cycle in 1998.

At the heart of the hoax was the claim that carbon dioxide (CO2) was causing the Earth to heat and that CO2 emissions must be reduced to save the Earth. Next to oxygen, CO2 is vital to all life on Earth as it sustains all vegetation which in turn sustains every creature that depends on it as a source of food. It represents a mere 0.033% of the Earth’s atmosphere and is referred to by warmists as a “greenhouse gas.” It is, as any meteorologist or climatologist will tell you, the atmosphere that protects the Earth from becoming a dissociated planet like Mars.

The New York Times article is a case study in bad journalism and bias on a scale for which this failing newspaper is renowned. The Times reported that “Leaked documents suggest that an organization known for attacking climate science is planning a new push to undermine the teaching of global warming in public schools, the latest indication that climate change is becoming part of the nation’s culture wars.”

Wrong, so wrong. Polls have demonstrated that global warming is last on a list of concerns by the public. It barely registers because the public has concluded that it is either a hoax or just not happening. Teaching global warming in the nation’s schools constitutes a crime against the truth and the students.

The Times article makes much of the amounts some donors to Heartland have contributed, but in each cited case, with one exception, the donations had nothing to do with its rebuttal of global warming science.

“It is in fact not a scientific controversy”, said the Times article. “The majority of climate scientists say that emissions generated by human beings are changing the climate and putting the planet at long-term risk, although they are uncertain about the exact magnitude of that risk.”

The exact magnitude is zero. Thousands of scientists have signed petitions denouncing global warming as a hoax. The Times lies.

A post at The Daily Bayonet on February 14th said it well, “What the Heartland documents show is how badly warmists have been beaten by those with a fraction of the resources they’ve enjoyed. Al Gore spent $300 million advertising the global warming hoax. Greenpeace, the WWF (World Wildlife Fund), the Sierra Club, the National Resources Defense Council, NASA, NOAA, the UN and nation states have collectively poured billions into climate research, alternative energies, and propaganda, supported along the way by most of the broadcast and print media.

The Times will continue to publish lies about global warming, as will others like Time and Newsweek magazines. The attacks on Heartland and the many scientists and others like myself who debunk this fraud will continue, but their efforts are just the dying gasp of the greatest hoax of the modern era.

There’s a reason the theme of Heartland’s sixth conference in 2011 was “Restoring the Scientific Method.” Real science does not depend on declaring “a consensus” before the hypothesis has been thoroughly tested, a process that often involves years of effort. Meanwhile, the planet continues to cool.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

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U.S. Hostages Plus High Gas Prices–It’s Jimmy Carter Redux

February 15, 2012 By Leave a Comment

By Alan Caruba

A lot of things that a President cannot control can gravely affect his chances of being reelected. In 1979, the combination of an oil embargo and the Iranians taking U.S. diplomats hostage ended any hope of a second term for Jimmy Carter.

As this is written, there are 19 U.S. citizens being held hostage in Egypt, but you are hearing little to nothing about that in the mainstream media.

The economy is going to affect President Obama’s odds of being reelected this year and Americans who are notorious for gaging the impact of inflation by watching the cost of gasoline at the pump rise are going to blame Obama. An attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities and a possible conflict will drive prices through the roof.

When Obama took office, the average price of a gallon of gasoline was $1.61.Averaging $3.50 at present, the price of a gallon of gas is predicted to rise to $4 and even $5 by summertime.

If the U.S. was not dependent on imported oil, we could control our own fate, but for decades every effort possible has been made to drive up the cost of automobiles and gasoline, led by environmental organizations like Friends of the Earth and the Sierra Club, two notorious anti-energy foes, in combination with the Environmental Protection Agency.

Little wonder they are in a full war against the Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada or that the Obama administration has been trying to convince Americans it favors opening access to existing and new oil reserves.

Dan Kish, vice president of the American Energy Alliance, recently took note of the political maneuverings over the American Energy and Infrastructure Act of 2012, saying “At the end of the day, the American people don’t care whether federal lands are opened in one large piece of legislation or in separate smaller pieces.”

“The bottom line is that the Federal government currently leases approximately 2.4 percent of the land owned by U.S. citizens, while lands equaling ten times the State of Texas are kept off limits by Federal regulators. With reports coming out that gasoline could approach five dollars a gallon by this summer, we cannot wait any longer to begin tapping these resources.”

If the Obama administration really wanted to create jobs and improve the economy, it would “lift the embargo on American energy,” said Kish, “and open our onshore and offshore resources for robust exploration and development.”

“The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that the nation has six times the proven oil reserves of Saudi Arabia”

In 2010, while oil, natural gas and coal accounted for 78 percent of U.S. energy production, its producers received 11 percent of all federal energy subsidies. By contrast, subsidies to the wind industry increased 10-fold, from $467 million in 2007 to $4.9 billion in 2010.

Closer to the pump for Americans was the deal the Obama administration struck with thirteen auto manufacturers in July 2011 to boost new car fuel economy standards from 35.5 miles per gallon (mpg) in 2016 to 54.5 mpg in 2025.

The claim made was that it would save Americans $1.7 trillion over the lifetime of vehicles and $8,000 per vehicle by 2025. Higher gas prices as the result of increased costs of imported oil and higher automobile prices that will result from this deal will cancel out any alleged savings.

Who wants to be fooled again by this administration?

And what business is it of the federal government how much mileage an auto gets?

The U.S. government has been messing around with the fuel economy program—believe it or not—for forty years. The result was the rise in sales of Japanese auto companies and European imports while Detroit saw General Motors and Chrysler come so close to collapse they had to be bailed out with billions of taxpayer dollars.

The culprit has been the Corporate Average Fuel Economy program and Marlo Lewis of the Competitive Enterprise Institute calls it “a case study of unintended consequences. If the fuel-saving technologies requisite to meet the new standards are such a great bargain, why do we need a law forcing automakers to adopt them?” Good question!

Both the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Transportation crowed that “Today’s announcement is the latest in a series of executive actions the Obama administration is taking to strengthen the economy and move the country forward because we can’t wait for Congressional Republicans to act.” That’s right, they blamed by-passing Congress and the deal on Republicans!

Meanwhile, the only thing CAFE standards accomplish is an increase in the cost of automobiles and a decrease in the safety of their occupants as cars are forced to be lighter and more vulnerable in a crash.

In a February 2nd opinion published in The Wall Street Journal, Alaska Governor Sean Parnell welcomed news that Congress might finally be moving in the direction to permit Americans benefit from access to their own oil.

Opening the Artic National Wildlife Reserve (ANWR) to oil exploration and production would have obvious benefits. “This legislation opens 400,000 acres of the ANWR coastal plain’s 1.5 million acres” that represent “less than three percent of ANWR’s 19 million total acres.”

The other way Americans have been forced to pay more at the pump have been the mandates for the mix of ethanol in every gallon of gasoline. Why? Because its advocates claimed that this would reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, but in fact ethanol increases CO2 emissions while at the same time reducing the mileage of every gallon of gasoline. And there is absolutely no scientific justification for reducing CO2 emissions because the mandate is based on the totally debunked global warming hoax.

The cost of building new oil refineries in America was increased exponentially by the Clean Air Act of 1970. There have been no new refineries since 1976. There are currently 149 refineries in the U.S. Requiring them to make different blends for different regions of the nation has done little more than to drive up the cost at the pump. The taxes on gasoline have been a bonanza for the federal government and the states.

The good news is that two new refineries are being developed, one in Yuma, Arizona, and one in Union County, South Dakota. The bad news is that Sunoco Inc has just announced it will continue to exit the refining business due to the lack of profitability. In business for 117 years, Sunoco has been gradually shifting out of refining, reducing its capacity 43 percent since 2009.

Come November, if drivers of cars are shelling out $5 a gallon at the pump, a lot of voters are going to be very unhappy. If our citizens are still being held hostage in Egypt they will be even less happy.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

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The Global Warming Hoax is Now Killing People

February 13, 2012 By Leave a Comment

By Alan Caruba

By Friday, February 10th, an estimated 500 Europeans had died from the freezing weather gripping the continent. This is the price they and British citizens are paying for embracing the global warming hoax, spending billions for wind power when they should have been building coal-fired and other sources of energy to heat their homes and businesses.

As the British daily, The Telegraph, reported on Friday, “Serbia has started implementing power cuts in a desperate bid to stave off the collapse of its national grid as the country suffers the effects of days of freezing temperatures.”

I and others have been warning for years that the Earth has been cooling since 1998 and that the planet is on the cusp of a new ice age because the average length of an interglacial period of warmth between such ages is now coming to an end after the passage of some 11,500 years.

All aspects of global warming legislation and spending programs must be utterly reversed if we are not going to see huge losses of life and the disruption of entire economies.

The Ottawa Citizen published an Agence France Presse article on Friday reporting that “Thick ice closed vast swaths of the Danube on Thursday, crippling shipping on Europe’s busiest waterway, as the death toll from bitter cold across the continent rose…as it has every day for nearly two weeks.” The report noted that “Navigation was impossible or restricted in Serbia, Croatia, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Austria, as ice covered the river or formed dangerous floes in shipping lanes.”

No shipping means no delivery of coal and oil and no shipping of food and other necessities. Europe is freezing over as the United States has been experiencing an unusually mild winter thus far. That, too, is likely to yield to the increased cooling of the planet and then, maybe, Americans will realize the threat to their lives that the closing of coal-fired plants, instigated by the Environmental Protection Agency, really means.

In England, the Mail, reported on Sunday, February 12th, that large numbers of its elderly citizens are being “frozen to death as fuel bills soar: hypothermia cases among the elderly double in five years.” England, now gripped by foolish green notions of renewable energy, has covered itself with wind turbines, despoiling its countryside and coasts while proving unreliable and incapable of meeting its energy needs.

Figures showed that “1,876 patients were treated in hospital for hypothermia in 2010-2011, up from 950 in 2006-2007” reported the Mail. “Three-quarters of victims were pensioners, with cases soaring among the over-60s more than any other age group.”

In Europe, other news organizations reported that “Many of the dead were homeless people, who literally froze to death as the temperatures dropped to minus 50 degrees in some parts of the continent. Their bodies were found in the streets buried under snow, in rivers, and in doorways. Dozens of people were also killed in weather-related accidents.”

Writing in a Turkish newspaper, the Hurriyet Daily News, Sophie Quintin Adali, an analyst for a project of the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, said, “As if the debt crisis weren’t bad enough news, the climate freeze sweeping across Europe is wreaking havoc by severely disrupting travel, business and people’s lives. Local authorities, indeed whole countries, are caught poorly prepared.” Turkey is experiencing record snowfall and low temperatures.

“The lack of readiness should come as no surprise because for decades the sensationalist message of global warming has dominated the public area,” said Ms. Adali.

“Politicians and decades of political environmentalism have a lot to answer for,” said Ms. Adali. “The man-made climate theory…is still supported by a mighty European Union bureaucracy and a green network addicted to public funds.” Even now, the Green Climate Fund “through which millions of taxpayer’s money will still be disbursed” is threatening the lives and the economy of people worldwide.

The current freeze is not just affecting Europe, but reaching across the Mediterranean to North African nations. And at some point America will feel it too.

We have not built a single new nuclear plant in America since 1978. EPA rules are forcing the closure of coal-fired plants throughout the nation. The national grid for the distribution of electricity is in need of upgrades.

The nation’s policies are controlled by the most environmentally insane administration in its history, wasting billions on so-called green energy. Its new budget raises taxes and proposes a trillion-dollar deficit without any significant effort to cut the spending that has left this and future generations in debt while the price of gas soars to new heights.

America and the rest of the world have been horribly deceived by the United Nations Intergovernmental Climate Change Panel that continues to drive the global warming hoax. The lying scientists who got on the global warming gravy train, the politicians that embraced it, and the media that misled millions are all culpable, all responsible.

They should be driven from office, defunded, and chased through the streets like villagers in pursuit of Frankenstein.

People are freezing to death in their homes and in the streets. What will it take to drive a stake into the heart of the global warming monster?

© Alan Caruba, 2012

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America’s Green Enemies

February 11, 2012 By 1 Comment

By Alan Caruba

It was good news that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved the nation’s first nuclear power plants on February 9th, clearing the way for the construction of two reactors by Southern Company at its Plant Vogtle site near Atlanta, Georgia. The bad news is that these are the first new nuclear plants since 1978!

In a nation with a growing population and increasing need for electricity to power homes and businesses, it is nothing less than insane to not include nuclear energy in the mix of providers. Environmentalists immediately attacked the announcement using the usual scare campaigns.

Equally insane is the failure to provide the means to safely store the radioactive materials that result. Highly contested by environmentalists, the Nevada-based Yucca Mountain deep geological repository storage facility for spent reactor fuel was cancelled in 2009. Nevada’s Senator Harry Reid, Majority Leader in the Senate, played a major role in this disgraceful decision. The Obama administration terminated funding for the development of the site in 2011, leaving the nation with no long-term storage site.

In a similar fashion, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has waged a long war on the provision of energy; most recently with the imposition of its Utility MACT rule on plant carbon dioxide (CO2) and mercury emissions, neither of which pose any threat. Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), ranking member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, decried the rule as one “intended to undermine the viability of coal, one of our country’s most abundant and reliable energy sources.”

Despite having spent billions to meet the demand for upgrades of the technology to trap such emissions, coal-fired plants all over the nation are in the process of being closed as a result of the MACT rule. These “greenhouse gas” rules are baseless insofar as CO2 is not a pollutant and is vital to the growth of all vegetation on the planet. There is no proof that minor mercury emissions represent any threat to public health.

The EPA use of bogus “computer models” to support wild health claims argues for an end to this agency and the return of its responsibilities to state environmental agencies.

In January, the American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC), the leading authority, warned that “environmental regulations are shown to be the number one risk to reliability over the next one to five years.”

The Institute for Energy Research has stated that “Beyond the 38 gigawatts of electricity capacity that has already been announced to retire, NERC estimates that another 36 to 59 gigawatts of capacity will come off-line by 2018, depending on the ‘scope and timing’ of EPA regulations. Together, nearly a quarter of our coal-fired capacity could be off-line by 2018, marking the first time in energy history that installed coal-fired capacity has declined.”

This is a threat to the viability and security of a nation that sits atop the largest deposits of coal in the world! It is a nation in which coal provides 50% of its electricity.

In a similar fashion, environmentalists, after a long propaganda war against coal, have launched an equally massive campaign against natural gas, attacking the use of “fracking”, a technology that has been safely used for the last fifty years or more to access equally vast reserves of natural gas.

Likewise the cost of automobiles has been systematically driven up by the wholly false EPA assertion that their CO2 emissions represent a threat to clean air. The imposition of a mandate to mix gasoline with ethanol has resulted in greater CO2 emissions while, at the same time, reducing the mileage of cars. In addition, the use of food crops like corn for the production of ethanol, have driven up food prices.

Anyone who has lost electricity due to a blizzard or a hurricane knows how totally dependent the nation is on reliable and affordable electricity, and knows how totally dependent they are on is provision.

The simple fact is that the present and prior administration’s EPA, the Department of Transportation, and others have been lying to Congress and the American public for years regarding their claims about air pollution and energy provision. The Interior Department just put uranium-rich acres of land off-limits to mining.

Environmental organizations and special interest groups like the American lung Association are a fifth column of enemies within the nation.

The global warming hoax—now called climate change—is on its last legs. Nations around the world that have wasted billions on the claims made for “renewable” energy, solar and wind, are pulling back from further support. The “science” behind these claims has been totally and utterly refuted.

Even the United Nations, the source of the global warming hoax, is now switching its debased claims to a new hoax based on so-called endangered species.

The loss of tens of thousands of jobs in the energy and transportation sectors, as well as energy-intensive industries, is incalculable. EPA demands and mandates are deliberately undermining the nation’s economy.

The lives and safety of Americans are under attack by environmental organizations and, if they are successful, the only outcome would be the deaths of millions here and around the world from hunger and the lack of power to turn on the lights, heat and cool homes, and power industries.

The planet is not running out of oil, coal, or natural gas. It can use more nuclear power, not less.

We are witnessing an environmental attack on American energy and, ultimately, on America.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

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The Looney Tunes Version of the GOP Campaigns

February 4, 2012 By Leave a Comment

By Alan Caruba

I have begun to think of the Republican campaign as a series of Looney Tunes cartoons being replayed again and again. There are filled with a combination of laughs and the fantastical, self-defeating violence of Wily Coyote trying to catch the Roadrunner

As the primary season moves along, I sometimes think that far too many Republicans have temporarily lost their minds. Three years of Barack Obama will do that to you.

My response to the campaign thus far may have something to do with the fact that, like Reagan and others, I was once a Democrat and, to borrow a phrase from Paul, First Corinthians, “When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.”

These days, a lot of Republicans sound like a kid who sent Santa a list of toys he wanted and, even though he got most of them, he feels compelled to write and ask why he didn’t get all of them.

Granted that Republicans don’t have the most scintillating field of candidates, but most, including Donald Trump, have concluded that a guy that made millions as a successful venture capitalist, gave a couple of million away in charity just last year, has been a Governor, and hasn’t had a single hint of scandal in his life, might not be such a bad choice.

His opponents at this point include a guy who wants to start a Moon colony, is married to his third wife, left the Speaker’s position under a cloud of ethics impropriety, is given to saying genuinely bizarre and extremely nasty things with regularity, and would make the pathological narcissist in the White House look like a Boy Scout.

Another opponent—one whom nobody including himself—thinks could get elected seems to be in the race for the purpose of having one last hurrah, beating the drum for a few good ideas and a lot of really bad ones. Ron Paul has been in Congress since shortly after the last Ice Age ended and has sponsored only one bill that passed.

And, finally, there is Rick Santorum who is so infused with religious commitment that he reminds me of someone who was touted in a similar fashion, a former Sunday school teacher named Jimmy Carter. All the religion in the world cannot substitute for the steely-eyed realism a President requires in a world filled with evil counterparts.

It’s the voters, however, about whom I worry. New Hampshire was expected to endorse Romney, but in South Carolina Republicans there gave the nod to Gingrich. The Floridians came through with the unmistakable choice, based I am inclined to think on the many older and wiser citizens that live there though, in fact, he won all the demographic groups.

Ron Paul may be mildly amusing to some, but he cannot win. Santorum is a nice guy and, as the saying goes, nice guys finish last. And Newt Gingrich is like one of the Loony Tunes characters, the Tasmanian devil, going around wrecking the place and throwing bombshells that do nothing to advance the Republican and/or conservative agenda.

Too many Republicans appear to be waiting for a candidate who is perfection in every respect, political and personal, and in the real world few fit that description. America has had its shot at electing a “messiah” and it has turned out very badly.

As the rest of the primaries unwind, I anticipate that Mitt Romney will emerge as the party’s choice. I also expect a lot of pure nonsense about his being a Mormon, about the fact that he has not always hewed perfectly to conservative principles, and that he has—God forbid—actually changed his mind more than once or twice in the past.

Lost in all this blather is the fact that he is ideally prepared for the toughest job in the world and appears to have both feet planted firmly on the ground. I actually like the idea that he occasionally misspeaks, admits it, and then apologies.

I hope that between now and the convention in Tampa, Republicans will regain their senses, their optimism, and their fighting spirit.

Rolling over for the worst President of the modern era because our candidate is not “perfect” is not an option.

Voting for a third party candidate is not an option.

Staying home on Election Day because “your guy” didn’t get the nomination is not an option.

The Republican compass has to point in only one direction and that is the resounding defeat of Barack Obama.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

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Signing Global Warming’s Certificate of Death

January 31, 2012 By Leave a Comment

By Alan Caruba

The sixteen names of the scientists who jointly signed the article in The Wall Street Journal, “No Need to Panic About Global Warming” on January 27th are mostly unknown to the general public. Perhaps the best known would be Harrison H. Schmidt, a former Apollo 17 astronaut and U.S. Senator. Others might recognize Burt Rutan, an aerospace engineer and designer of Voyager and SpaceShip One.

Moreover, not only were the signers distinguished scientists, but they came from places like Paris, France and Cambridge, England, Jerusalem, Israel, and Geneva, Switzerland. Mostly climatologists and meteorologists, some were physicists and astrophysicists. Antonio Zichichi, one signer, is president of the World Federation of Scientists. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the combined credentials of these men represent some of the best minds on planet Earth in their respective fields.

What brought them together? On the surface it was just another of the countless articles that have been published over the years as scientists of real merit and courage took on the juggernaut of those for whom global warming had become a vast flow of government and foundation funding.

The effort was to “prove” that carbon dioxide (CO2) was building up in the atmosphere and would soon incinerate Earth by trapping the heat from the sun. It had not done that in the 5.4 billion years of the Earth’s existence, but the “warmists” claims came day after day and year after year. They permeated every aspect of society and you can go into any school in America and find textbooks still selling this garbage.

Until, that is, 2009 when thousands of emails between the small clique of scientists working for the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change were leaked on the Internet and it became clear that even they knew the Earth had entered a cooling cycle around 1998. The challenges to their bogus computer “models” were coming like cannon balls against their academic castles in America and England.

Starting in 2008, The Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based 27-year-old, non-profit research organization, sponsored four international conferences on climate change, attracting the top scientists and world leaders courageous enough to speak out against the global warming hoax. The momentum of opposition began to build against those who, from the late 1980s had warned that, in Al Gore’s words, “the world has caught a fever.”

The Wall Street Journal article said, in the plainest language, that candidates for public office “in any contemporary democracy…should understand that the oft-repeated claim that nearly all scientists demand that something dramatic be done to stop global warming is not true.”

In fact, scientists had been signing petitions opposing the global warming hoax for a very long time. The problem was that the mainstream media either paid them no attention or dismissed them as “skeptics” and “deniers”.

With a light touch, the Wall Street Journal article noted that “Perhaps the most inconvenient fact is the lack of global warming for well over ten years now.” It wasn’t as if the warmists did not know it. It was more like they regarded it as a problem to be solved by changing references to global warming to “climate change.”

Their current dying gasps have to do with warnings about “extreme climate events” that have been occurring for eons; tornadoes, hurricanes, blizzards, floods and earthquakes; now all routinely attributed to too much carbon dioxide.

The article calmly said, “The fact is that CO2 is not a pollutant.” Indeed, more CO2 in the atmosphere is a good thing, aiding increasing crop growth and healthier forests and jungles worldwide.

Someone needs to tell that to the Environmental Protection Agency that is striving mightily to shut down coal-fired energy plants for emitting CO2. Add their efforts to do the same to a wide swatch of American industry and you get an agency that is in great need of being abolished.

“There is no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to ‘decarbonize’ the world’s economy.

In time, historians may look back and conclude that the January 27th article was, in fact, global warming’s death certificate, signed by an international group of scientists who could not be disputed no matter how many times the warmists jump up and down and cry that the sky is falling.

It has taken a very long time for most of the public to come to the conclusion that they have been the object of an elaborate hoax. In America polls demonstrate that global warming is at the very bottom of their concerns these days. In time, wind and solar power, electric cars, biofuels, and other environmental delusions will join that list.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

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Does Obama Want to Lose? Yes!

January 25, 2012 By Leave a Comment

By Alan Caruba

It seems like a bizarre notion, but does Barack Obama want to lose the election in November?

I think he does!

One is struck by the way Obama has visibly aged in the job. He may well have grown weary being POTUS.

By any rational standard, one would say he wants a second term, but Obama has always operated in a fantasy world where mere words are supposed to translate into reality. And he has repeatedly talked about being a one-term president.

He is, after all, his own invention; the author of two memoirs of a life that had little achievement to point to other than getting elected first to the Illinois legislature and then to the Senate where he lingered a bare two years before running for president.

I raise the question because Obama seems to be deliberately irritating the very people who are supposed to be his “base”; the hard core liberals, the Hollywood crowd, youth, and unions, among others. His partisanship has put Congress into total gridlock.

When members of the Occupy movement showed up in Washington, D.C., one of them threw a smoke bomb onto the White House lawn. Others who have been camped out in a park there are likely to be tossed out if for no other reason than the place is overrun with rats and has become a public health hazard.

The decision to stop the Keystone pipeline is a deliberate offense to the unions that have contributed millions to his campaign. Why? It pleased the environmental groups like the Sierra Club and Friends of the Earth. Americans, however, understand the pipeline represented both jobs and oil, two things they deem worth having.

Then there are all the vacations Obama and his family takes. They have one thing in common. They are ostentatiously expensive. Obama or Michelle always seem to be going on vacation or returning from one. The characterization may be unfair, but perception is everything.

Americans are very keen on their military and, of all the government programs Obama could have chosen to trim, he’s had the knives out for the Pentagon since he took office. While a war-weary public was likely pleased when he withdrew troops from Iraq (neither Bush, nor Obama had a choice as the Iraqis made it clear they wanted U.S. troops out), the fact remains that the main news out of Iraq these days are bombings as the Sunni versus Shiite conflict has returned. Afghanistan remains a millstone.

Even in the face of a clear threat, it is unlikely that Obama would respond militarily between now and Election Day. The most likely scenario, however, would be an Israeli decision to strike at Iran before it becomes a full-fledged nuclear threat. It must be said, however, that Obama and other NATO nations have positioned some military assets in the Persian Gulf, but would he pull the trigger? It’s doubtful.

The most obvious problem Obama faces is unemployment. It’s variously set at anywhere from 11% to 20% depending on the part of the nation you’re discussing. It still is far too high everywhere and he gives every impression of being, if not indifferent to it, at least in no hurry to address it. Most certainly none of his programs have reduced it. His alleged “stimulus” was little more than a political slush fund that added billions to the national debt and failed.

Every President is subject to “events” and the likely default of Greece and financial troubles of several European nations are likely to impact the national election as Americans try to sort out what effect it will have here. Obama has already presided over the first downgrade of America’s debt rating and we shall surely be reminded of that in the months ahead.

The other event will be the Supreme Court hearing of the case against Obamacare in March. They may not issue a decision right away or they might issue one just before November 6th.

There are two lines of thought about the forthcoming national election. Past Presidents were relieved to leave office despite its power and prestige. (1) Obama may not like being President and (2) he has concluded that he will be defeated. He gives the impression of not caring about public opinion anymore.

The only people publicly defending him seem to have Attention Deficit Disorder. Either they haven’t paid attention to what a disaster his term has been thus far or they just don’t think it’s his fault.

I think he will go through the motions, but I also think a majority of voters no longer believe a word he says anymore.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

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Liberal Lunacy

January 23, 2012 By 1 Comment

By Alan Caruba

Conservative commentators read what liberals have to say if only to get a glimpse into their current memes on various topics. It is always daunting because one cannot do this without coming away convinced that they are lunatics, devoid of any sense of history or reality, both of which they routinely invent to defend their opinions.

A recent case in point is New York Times columnist, Maureen Dowd, whose January 22nd, Sunday commentary was titled “Showtime at the Apollo.” Ms. Dowd has been disappointed with Barack Obama for a long time, but she still struggles to find something laudatory while at the same time revealing just how defective he is.

Call it schizophrenic journalism; a liberal writer for a liberal newspaper who is torn between the party line and what she is forced to witness.

“For eight seconds, we saw the president we had craved for three years: cool, joyous, funny, connected.” Eight seconds out of three years is not much to cheer. Dowd was referring to Obama’s “seductive imitation” of singer Al Green and a song that begins “I, I’m so in love with you.” Oh, please!

The event was a fund-raiser at the Apollo Theatre in New York’s Harlem. Dowd noted, however, that “Times have been bad and sad, and The One did not turn out to be a messiah, just a mortal politician.” Surely a columnist who has written about politics for so many years had to know that, but the liberal media was and is too busy spinning fantasies about him.

Blame Bush Syndrome

“The man who came to Washington on a wave of euphoria has had a presidency with all the joy of a root canal”, opined Dowd and then immediately destroyed what little credibility she has by saying Obama had been “dragged down by W’s recklessness.”

One might think we were passed the Blame Bush mantra, but what is spectacular is the way Dowd and other liberals ignore the fact that Democrats had been in control of the 103rd Congress since January 3, 2007.

Liberals hate facts. For example, on January 3, 2007, the Dow Jones closed at 12,621.77. The GDP growth for the previous quarter was 3.5%. The unemployment rate was 4.6%. Bush’s economic policies had set a record of 52 straight weeks of job creation.

Dowd might well have been unaware that George W. Bush had, on seventeen occasions, asked Congress to stop the recklessness of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that would cause the September 2008 financial collapse based on trillions in “sub-prime mortgages” the two “government sponsored entities” had pressured banks to make. Then they purchased and bundled them into what would become known as “toxic assets” that nearly destroyed the nation’s banking system.

Dowd quoted Obama’s view of the critiques he’s received, when he said that he didn’t go to a lot of Washington parties and that the Washington press corps “just doesn’t feel like I’m in the mix with enough with them”, blaming him for being “cold and aloof.” Obama is cold and aloof. He and the press mix all the time at various White House and other events, but Obama claimed he couldn’t do more because “I’ve got a 13-year-old and 10-year-old daughter.” How lame an excuse is that?

Truman had Margaret. Clinton had Chelsea. The Bush-43 had twin girls. Come on!

Anyone with any memory of Obama’s early press conferences can recall what disasters they were the minute he stopped reading from his TelePrompter and tried to answer their questions. He virtually stopped engaging in press conferences after two years.

Referencing a fellow New York Times reporter’s new book, Jodi Kantor’s “The Obamas”, Dowd concludes that the president disdains “the irrational nature of politics.” Well, yes, the failures of Congress are irrational insofar, as a recent report concluded, “Congress ended its least-productive year in modern history after passing 80 bills—fewer than during any other session since year-end records began being kept in 1947.”

Kantor’s book suggests that “they (Barack and Michelle) feel over-assaulted and under-appreciated.”

The obvious conclusion, said Dowd, was that “We disappointed them.” I assume this is irony.

To her credit, Dowd pointed out that “They’ve forgotten Rule No. 1 of politics. No one sheds tears for anyone lucky enough to live at the White House,” adding that “The Obamas truly feel like victims.”

No, Maureen. The real victims are the millions of Americans out of work, some with mortgages that cost more than their homes are worth, while the price of gas and everything else rises, and their president cannot come up with a better campaign theme than “economic fairness.”

I’d feel sorry for Maureen Dowd and all the other liberal loonies except that it is their political philosophy and programs that have gotten us into this mess.

Feeling sorry for the Obamas is not at the top of my list of political priorities. Listening to them feel sorry for themselves while dining on steak and lobster, vacationing in expensive and exotic places, and demanding that “millionaires and billionaires” should pay more taxes is as pathetic as it gets.

I don’t expect Maureen Dowd and her fellow liberal pundits to stop desperately making excuses for the worst president in the history of the nation. It just reinforces my belief that they are all mentally defective.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

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