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The Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act Before the general public catches the clue bus and realizes that there is no "global warming" problem to solve, and no practical action to take, the US Congress is urgently trying to use global warming as the latest excuse to expand the size and strnegth of the federal government. Having almost exhausted the public relations value of the previous bogeyman, "terrorism", Uncle Sam needs a new gimmick, and global warming is it. The hapless news media are playing along as usual and not asking any questions. The Big Chill: The core of the Boxer-Lieberman-Warner legislation is that an expanded government, not the market economy, must control our society. … The bill does focus on some global warming objectives — although it is an America-only program estimated to lower global CO2 emissions only by about 1.4% — but it is less about that and more a step towards traditional socialism. The government would take control of our economy and regulate everything from electricity, oil and gas to imported shoes, our food, how high we may set our thermostats, and what kinds of light bulbs we may use. Contrary to Gore, sky's not falling. This isn't an energy bill. It's a hidden tax bill. It's estimated by Lieberman that emissions permits will have a market value of $7 trillion by 2050. In other words, a ton of money will pour into Washington to be spent on "many things." McCain and Obama support legislation at least as horrendous. Only the people can stop it, just as they stopped the comprehensive immigration bill of recent memory. Detractors say anti-pollution bill before Senate could lead to $8 gas. Depending on who's talking, the bill could either help save the planet or help bankrupt the country. Effect of the Lieberman-Warner Global Warming Legislation on States: The Senate's leading climate-change bill, while aiming to combat global warming by reducing carbon dioxide in the air, actually poses "extraordinary perils" for Americans and the economy, according to a new study from The Heritage Foundation. The study, produced by Heritage's Center for Data Analysis (CDA), forecasts severe consequences — including crushing energy costs, millions of jobs lost and falling household income — if Congress enacts the so-called Lieberman-Warner bill. Hurricane Lieberman-Warner: Liberal Democrats and "green" Republicans are proposing a massive reorganization of the American economy to fight so-called global warming. Worse yet, proponents of this bill are attempting to sell this eco-socialism as a "market-based" policy, and their allies in the national media are going along with the charade. The Climate Security Act: Reject this nonsense. The idea behind the bill is to reduce carbon dioxide, supposedly one of the major "greenhouse gases" that are, again supposedly, leading to a dire warming of our planet. Never mind that the "settled science" of global warming hardly is — and never mind the scientific evidence of cooling — the Climate Security Act stands to do serious, if not irreparable, harm to an already struggling economy. We Don't Need a Climate Tax on the Poor. With average gas prices across the country approaching $4 a gallon, it may be hard to believe, but the U.S. Senate is considering legislation this week that will further drive up the cost at the pump. The Senate is debating a global warming bill that will create the largest expansion of the federal government since FDR's New Deal, complete with a brand new, unelected bureaucracy. About That Global Warming Bill... On June 2, the United States Senate will begin debate on America's Climate Security Act (S. 2191), sponsored by Senators Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) and John Warner (R-VA). The Lieberman-Warner bill (LW) would restrict energy use to combat global warming. Like global warming itself, the bill has been the subject of considerable hype and little hard-nosed analysis. For this reason, there are several myths about it that need to be dispelled. Cap and Destroy: The heart of Lieberman-Warner is a cap and trade system that would turn decisions on how much and what kind of energy to use in the private sector over to government. This is the approach, you'll recall, that worked so well in the Soviet Union that that dismal country's first five-year plan lasted 74 years before the whole sorry business caved-in on [itself]. If adopted, this would be the most fundamental change in the nature of this country in the country's history. Lieberman-Warner: A State-by-State Snapshot. Well, isn't it just like Congress to take the latest fad — in this case, "global warming" — and use it to try to usher in yet more government control of your life? The "Lieberman-Warner" bill is based on unproven "science," represents massive government intrusion, and oh, yes, it could cripple the economy. Senate action on climate bill seems doomed. [The 492-page bill] would require power plants, refineries and factories to reduce their carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases by about 19 percent by 2020 and by 71 percent by midcentury. Along with capping emissions, it would establish a pollution allowance trading system to ease the transition from fossil fuel use and help people pay energy bills. Senate Democrats May Pull Climate Bill. If this week's Senate debate on a proposed cap-and-trade system for greenhouse gases was supposed to be a dress rehearsal for climate legislation, things are not looking too good for opening night. The week has been marked by parliamentary maneuvers and bitter accusations over divergent estimates of the bill's future costs. On Wednesday [6/4/2008], a group of GOP senators asked that the clerk of the Senate read the entire 491-page bill aloud, an extremely rare request. That took more than 10 hours. The Houston Chronicle is sad to report... Republican senators block global warming bill. Senate Republicans today blocked a global warming bill that would have required major reductions in greenhouse gases, after a bitter debate over its economic costs and whether it would substantially raise gasoline and other energy prices. Democratic leaders fell a dozen votes short of getting the 60 needed to end a Republican filibuster on the measure and bring the bill up for a vote. The 48-36 vote failed to reach even a majority, a disappointment to the bill's supporters. The Washington Post is similarly crestfallen... Senate Leaders Pull Measure on Climate. Although the bill — sponsored by Sens. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) and John W. Warner (R-Va.) — enjoyed bipartisan support, the week-long floor debate devolved into partisan bickering over which party was most responsive to the plight of Americans trying to cope with rising gas prices. Congress Fiddled With Warming While Earth Cooled. Last week Democrats tried to kill the economy in the name of solving a problem that doesn't exist. Republicans should hang this bill around their necks in every district where an incumbent voted for the woefully misnamed and deservedly DOA Climate Security Act, technically S.3036. Asking Americans to pony up even more at the pump with already record gasoline prices creeping higher almost daily seems offensive enough. But compelling such burden under the guise of moral imperative to curb global warming at a time when the planet is actually cooling rings downright obscene. "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed – and hence clamourous to be led to safety – by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." Rash, unwise policy and unmitigated political opportunism Global Cooling Alert. I suspect that many global warming alarmists are well aware that time is running out for them. If nothing is done and global temperatures decline in coming years — as they inevitably will, the only question is when — the alarmists will have been refuted. On the other hand, if they succeed in pushing through industry-destroying caps on carbon emissions around the world, and especially here in the U.S., they will take credit for the cooling when it comes, claiming it as vindication of their theories. The Climate Alarmist Manifesto: Just as class struggle forms the nucleus of Marxism, so does it sit at the very core of the Left's climate alarmism. At a glance, the regressive nature of fiscal Carbon control schemes, be they taxation or cap-and-trade, would appear to be antithetical to liberal thinking. But beneath the veneer of both the domestic and international green agenda lies a devious wealth-redistribution plan compared to which all predecessors pale. When green was easy: Now that the Soviet Union has collapsed and socialism in general has miserably failed, the left has been reenergized by New Age environmentalism, like Marxism a quasireligion that provides an even more comprehensive justification for restricting individual freedom and its economic expression in the form of market capitalism. The leftist project of replacing socialism with environmentalism as an ideological organizing principle has culminated with global warming theory, an apocalyptic scenario that has proved much more salable than anything Karl Marx could come up with. Globalists Love Global Warming. A common charge leveled against those who question the official orthodoxy of the global warming religion is that they are acting as stooges for the western establishment and big business interests. If this is the case, then why do the high priests of the elite and kingpin oil men continue to fan the flames of global warming hysteria? Cap and Burn: For months, Democrats and the environmental lobby promoted last week's Senate global-warming debate as a political watershed. It was going to be the historic turning point in U.S. climate change policy. In the event, their bill collapsed in a little more than three days. … By [Friday morning 6/6/2008], Majority Leader Harry Reid had already made it plain that he wanted the bill off the floor as quickly as possible — despite calling climate change "the most critical issue of our time." A Heat Wave, But ... Even the U.S. government, courtesy of NASA, has admitted that the Earth is now a decade into a cooling cycle and it is likely to last at least two or three more decades. [So] Why do both candidates for President keep talking about global warming? Global Warming Replaces 9/11 As Justification To Do Anything. What is more dangerous? A temperature fluctuation that has been mirrored and exceeded ten times in the last thousand years alone without any lasting impact on the eco-system, or an excuse for western governments to tighten the shackles of fascism around our ankles in the name of saving the planet? How the world was misled about global warming and now climate change: Once you realize humans are not causing global warming and/or climate change, then you need an explanation for how and why so many people appear to think they are. In two previous articles … we examined the philosophical and historical context of climate change and specifically the focus on humans as the cause. … Now we need to examine how politics took over climate science through exploitation of public fear and lack of knowledge. McCain and Climate Change: Sci-Fi as Policy. Without amazing breakthroughs, to even come close to such goals as reducing carbon emissions to 80 percent of 1990 levels by 2050 — when, keep in mind, the economy could be four times as large as it was a decade and a half ago — would require draconian decreases in economic growth tantamount to a global depression. Wrecking economies for no good reason. Following Al Gore's Academy Award and Nobel Prize, the popular culture is consumed with concern over global warming and any contribution to the same by human emissions of carbon dioxide. How realistic are these fears? The answer is "not very." Global Warming Madness and How to Stop It. Public policies being proposed at the international, national, and state levels in the name of "stopping global warming" would result in a massive increase in the size and power of the state. To reduce emissions, governments must raise energy costs directly, with taxes, or indirectly, with mandates and subsidies. Either way, hundreds of billions of dollars a year in wealth or economic activity will be sucked up and redistributed by governments. For advocates of limited government, the debate over global warming is one of the preeminent issues of our time. The gift that keeps on giving. "Every generation needs a holier-than-thou, ideological mantra … to wrap themselves virtuously." Global warming is the gift that keeps on giving to climate hysterics. For those already pre-disposed to being anti-western, anti-development, anti-growth, anti-capitalist and most of all, anti-U.S., it's the perfect propaganda tool. If You Think Taxes Are High Now... Just Wait Until Congress Tries to 'Fix' Global Warming. As millions of American taxpayers face this year's looming tax filing deadline, the free-market grassroots group Americans for Prosperity today warned that families stand to take a huge hit if proposed so-called "global warming solutions" are implemented — without having any significant impact on global temperatures. Bill Clinton: "We Just Have to Slow Down Our Economy" to Fight Global Warming. Former President Bill Clinton was in Denver, Colorado, stumping for his wife yesterday [1/30/2008]. In a long … speech, he characterized what the U.S. and other industrialized nations need to do to combat global warming this way: "We just have to slow down our economy and cut back our greenhouse gas emissions 'cause we have to save the planet for our grandchildren." Slow The Economy? Chill, Bill. In a typically verbose speech, [Bill Clinton] put forth his idea of what the U.S. and other industrialized nations need to do: "We just have to slow down our economy and cut back our greenhouse gas emissions 'cause we have to save our planet for our grandchildren." Sounds like he should cut back on his own. We've been among those who have warned that something along the lines of the Kyoto Protocol would derail the U.S. economy and be a recipe for global poverty. We've never heard anyone advocate an economic slowdown or claiming such an event would actually create jobs. The Editor says... Apparently Bill Clinton believes that if less money changes hands, the earth will cool down. The Real Cost of Tackling Climate Change: We all ought to reflect on what an 80% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by the year 2050 really means. … These targets would send us back to emissions levels last witnessed when the cotton gin was in daily use. Spanish court prohibits ski station because of global warming. A Spanish court has prohibited the construction of a ski station partially because global warming would make it economically unviable, media reported Wednesday [4/2/2008]. The court accepted the arguments of ecologists who opposed the construction of a ski station in the San Glorio mountain pass in northern Leon province for environmental reasons. The station would have been partly located in a nature park housing a bear population. The court also justified its decision with the unprecedented argument that global warming would make the ski station economically unviable. 'Global Warming' as Pathological Science. Today's Global Warming campaign is endangering real, honest science. Global Warming superstition has become an international power grab, and good science suffers as a result. Global Warming: The All-Purpose Farce to Control Your Life. Everything you do has a carbon footprint and could be regulated by the government. If the Democrats have their way, you could face new limits on what you eat for breakfast, the way you travel to work, … the medicines you take, the clothes you wear, the DVDs you watch, everything — everything! "Carbon footprint" is code for limitless government intrusion into every detail of your life. Greenhouse cuts would land us in the Middle Ages, says Labor sceptic. [Peter] Walsh, who was at the forefront of Labor's conversion to economic rationalism in the 1980s … points out that the Romans grew grapes in northern England in the first millennium and the Vikings grew cereals in Greenland in the second millennium. "Those much warmer periods cannot reasonably be attributed to anthropogenic greenhouse gases," he says. He also says the temperature on Mars has risen in a similar way to that on Earth. Rep. John Dingell wants his colleagues to be honest about the costs of tackling global warming. His position arguably makes [Rep. John] Dingell the lone honest broker in the global warming debate. But it also makes him a headache for all his Democratic friends, who'd prefer he just play political nice. … He talks about the immense pressure he was under earlier this year to write a quick energy bill that included everything from new standards for light bulbs to a massive new system for regulating CO2. Global Warming Is No Match for Capitalism. The theory that human activities are adversely affecting the global climate has attracted many supporters — not because of the soundness of the science, which few people are competent to judge, but because acting to stop this supposed threat would benefit their particular interests. Fighting Climate Change, Gun Control and Income Tax Laws: In the past 65 million years, the Earth's temperature has increased and decreased with no help from mankind. My questions to the anti-climate change warriors are: Can mankind really stop climate change, and what is the "correct" Earth temperature? Global Warming: Just Another Liberal Orthodoxy. So much of today's "conventional wisdom" represents neither convention nor wisdom, but instead results from a fundamentally leftist worldview, combined with a truly juvenile dosage of wishful thinking. Consider a few such pillars of the liberal faith, and more specifically how fragile they quickly become when placed under the hot lights of honest scrutiny. 10 More Differences Between Liberals And Conservatives. Conservatives have kept an open mind about global warming, but we have seen little hard proof that mankind is responsible for the small, roughly 1° global temperature increase over the last century. Saying that it is "scientific consensus" that mankind is causing global warming means little when more than 17,100 American scientists disagree. Book review: The Satanic Gases. Michaels and Balling examine the role played by politics, the media, and science in the creation of our present perceptions of humanity's effect on climate, particularly global warming. Their main thesis is that politicians and the media have blown this issue out of proportion, manipulating currently known information in order to fulfill their own objectives. The authors also assert that the current scientific paradigm accepts as fact both global warming and humankind's contributions to its acceleration. Scientists therefore tend to ignore contradictory data. States Suing EPA Over Global Warming. In a petition filed Wednesday [4/2/2008], the plaintiffs said the 5-4 ruling in April 2007 required the Environmental Protection Agency to decide whether to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, including carbon dioxide, from motor vehicles. The EPA has instead done nothing, they said. "The EPA's failure to act in the face of these incontestable dangers is a shameful dereliction of duty," Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley said. The Editor says... There are no "incontestable dangers" in this case. Lots of people are skeptical, not just me. Global warming: 21st century eugenics. In the end, the truth will prevail. If it takes a century for the global warming theory to collapse, the bodies of people who were denied electricity — and the heat, clean water and refrigeration it can provide — will weigh more heavily than the Holocaust upon a society that should have learned from its mistaken belief in eugenics. Global Warming: A Verdict in Search of Evidence. Despite the shrill cries of doom, the NAS report is not cause for alarm. It introduces no new science to the debate, and actually reinforces the fact that there is a great deal we don't know about climate — especially whether or not human activities are having any impact. Environmental special interests, the media, certain politicians, and international bureaucrats all want to distort perceptions of global warming to serve their own agendas. The next time you hear claims that global warming has been "proven", be sure to read the fine print. Vanities of the Warmist: The conceit that scientists and bureaucrats can use the power the state to manage nature has lead to disaster in the past, and will again if the global warmists keep getting their way. … Like our ancestors of yore, today's environmentalists believe the government can control the environment better than Mother Nature can. Are we to suppose that the people who give us the DMV and the IRS are going to "manage" the globe in the same efficient and benevolent manner? The Emperor's New Climate, Part Two. Patrick J. Michaels — a climatologist, professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia, says: "No one in Washington gets large grants by saying something isn't a problem. Meanwhile, the $10 billion thrown at climate modeling research in the last 15 years was wasted." The Emperor's New Climate, Part Three: The UN and European Union (EU) support the Kyoto treaty because it establishes their authority to set CO2 standards, collect fees, and regulate transportation. For the EU, there's also the chance to entangle the powerful U.S. economy in a web of regulation sufficient to bring it to the 17th-century level of innovation and efficiency that Europe now enjoys. The Emperor's New Climate, Part Four: Disaster Does Not Loom. Feeding the horses and donkeys formerly needed for transportation and farming tied up twice the acreage used today by all our roads and highways, oil pipelines, refineries, and wells. Much of that extra acreage has reverted to trees. Excellent! The Misuse of Science in Environmental Management: Includes three sections, covering the debates over air pollution, stratospheric ozone, and global warming. Earth First! (People Later). The "science" of global warming is nothing more than a cover for their irrational emotional needs. It's religion for people who are too cool to go to church. All that yearning, the need for something bigger, transcendent: Hey the planet's heating up and I've been placed here to save it! When Al Gore says, "The Earth has a fever," no one calls him on his cartoon personification — as if the Earth has a temperature it prefers. Global Warming's Trillion-Dollar Turkey: Is it really worth trillions of taxpayer dollars over 90 years to perhaps reduce global temperatures by 0.13-0.18° Celsius? If you can't answer that question, consider this. Under the no-action scenario, average global temperature might be 1.2° Celsius higher in 2095 than it is today, once again using conservative IPCC assumptions and formulas. Under the maximum-regulation scenario, average global temperature might be 1.03° Celsius higher than today. (For reference purposes, the estimated total increase in average global temperature for the 20th century was about 0.50° Celsius.) Baby Steps On the Road to Serfdom: President Bush has crafted a political compromise on global warming designed to placate Europeans and greens fretting over the effects of CO2 emissions on climate change. Bush Administration Speaks with Forked Tongue on Global Warming: What is the president's policy on global warming? Bush Must Withdraw Global Warming Report: How this bull's eye was painted on the President's back is a dismaying story because it reveals the White House's continuing political incompetence in dealing with environmental issues and its continuing toleration of opponents of the President's policies inside his administration. EPA Global Warming Report Violates White House Agreement To Settle Lawsuit: As a result of the lawsuit filed in October 2000, the Bush Administration ultimately agreed in September 2001 to withdraw the National Assessment and stated that its unlawfully produced conclusions are "not policy positions or official statements of the U.S. government." EPA has ignored this agreement in issuing its report to the United Nations. Global Warming Hot Air Courtesy of the U.N. The Truth on Global Warming: The new Bush Administration seems to be schizophrenic on the issue. Bush himself clearly understands the science and the economics, but want to appear conciliatory. He is pressured by members of his cabinet, most specifically EPA Administrator Christie Todd Whitman, whose understanding of the issue is deficient at best. Beach bonfires may be banned. [Seattle Parks and Recreation] staff is recommending reducing bonfires at the two beaches this summer and possibly banning them altogether next year. … According to a memo to the park board from the staff released Thursday [6/5/2008], "The overall policy question for the Board is whether it is good policy for Seattle Parks to continue public beach fires when the carbon … emissions produced by thousands of beach fires per year contributes to global warming." The Editor has a few... Questions for the Seattle Parks and Recreation Department: Do you really think that a bonfire on the beach — or a million bonfires on the beach — would measurably increase the temperature all over the world? Do you know what "a drop in a bucket" means? The alarmists' irrational zeal Global warmists seem to take Al Gore so seriously that many of them exhibit a diminished capacity for critical thinking. In fact, many people on the political left have seem to make decisions based on bumper stickers, three-second TV "sound bites" and other people's emotional outbursts rather than sound reasoning. Return of the Warm-Monger: People who do not believe in a Creator are living in a world defined entirely by chance. As easily as it emerged in randomness, it could disintegrate into chaos. Their lives are fragile tendrils clinging for support to the slender reed of a world governed by habit rather than purpose. They are only too easily gulled by the soothsayers, the naysayers, the doomsayers. Zealotry over global warming could damage our Earth far more than climate change. Given that nowadays pretty well every adverse development in the natural world is automatically attributed to global warming, perhaps the most surprising fact about it is that it is not, in fact, happening at all. The truth is that there has so far been no recorded global warming at all this century. Warming warnings get overheated. Much of the global warming debate is perhaps best described as a constant outbidding by frantic campaigners, producing a barrage of ever-more scary scenarios in an attempt to get the public to accept their civilisation-changing proposals. Unfortunately, the general public — while concerned about the environment — is distinctly unwilling to support questionable solutions with costs running into tens of trillions of pounds. Predictably, this makes the campaigners reach for even more outlandish scares. Global Warming Alarmists Use Carbon Copy Responses. The author of "Oil companies could find better uses for record profits" protests that an oil producer donates money to global warming "denier" groups like The Heartland Institute. Automobiles don't run on wind, geothermal, solar or biomass power. Nor will they ever. I would like to see the letter-writer's reaction if she woke up tomorrow and there was no gas available for her car. Help for Americans. Hardly a day goes by without some kind of warning that mankind's use of fossil fuels, especially in the U.S., is causing global warming. [John] Stossel looks at the numbers. Half of this century's global warming happened between 1900 and 1945. Stossel asks, "If man is responsible, why wasn't there much more warming in the second half of the century? We burned much more fuel during that time." The gods of global warming. On American campuses, belief in global warming and man's contribution to it approaches the theological. Actual meteorologists take a more nuanced approach. "When it gets cold, they call it climate change," meteorologist Joe Bastardi told Fox-TV's Bill O'Reilly. "When it goes the other way, they call it global warming." Stop the Extremists on Global Warming— An open letter to ExxonMobil shareholders. Environmentalists Erroneously Cite Pork-Barrel Spending as Evidence of Global Warming. Environmentalists continue to use every means of measuring the temperature of the planet except a thermometer. A case in point is the recent claim that the rising number of presidential disaster declarations — often used as a means of dishing out government pork rather than helping the needy — is a sign that the planet is warming. The Truth on Global Warming: The subject of global warming has become an international political issue, often with its staunchest supporters using the supposed evidence of warming as a weapon to attack the American economy. Global Warming: Calls for dramatic emissions reductions are usually accompanied by lurid rhetoric about weather and climate disasters. The purpose of this document is to provide the facts that counter such emotional appeals. Hot and Bothered: The plural of anecdote is not data. It is all too easy to remember the unusual and forget the typical. That is why interesting stories require justification with scientific data. Thoughts on Global Warming: The facts don't seem to matter much when it comes to going after industry: invent a nice problem (it helps if it will end civilization as we know it) and then find a convenient scapegoat (industry being generally available for this purpose). Bingo: all kinds of money comes your way to do studies on "the problem", etc. etc. You can make a nice living this way! Science for Sale: The Global Warming Scam: Alaska is melting, at least according to the New York Times. Forests are dying, thawing permafrost is causing pavements to buckle, and Native American villages are crumbling. Times reporter Timothy Egan broke this sensational story in the June 16 Sunday edition, complete with color pictures of the buckling highways and eroding shorelines. |
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Document location http://www.akdart.com/warming16.html Updated August 17, 2008. Page design by Andrew K. Dart ©2008 |