Stories You Won’t Hear About Global Warming

Among the many lies told by the Left, one of the biggest is the myth of man-made global warming.

You may have heard recently that the Arctic ice cap is melting more than at any time in the past 30 years, or that man-made global warming is causing an increase in “extreme” weather.

What you aren’t likely to hear is that the Antarctic ice cap is thicker than at any time in decades and continues to grow.

Read the rest of the story here.

Freakonomics: The Cost of Environmental Regulations

From the Freakonomics blog:

The environment has taken a back seat to the economy this election season. But timely new research looks at the intersection of politics, economics and the environment: the actual cost of environmental regulations.

Read the rest of the post and let us know what you think.

PBS Attacked for Allowing Global Warming Skeptic to Speak

You'll want to read more about this, click here for the whole story, complete with video.

WSJ: Puff, the Magic Drag on the Economy

Time to let the pernicious production tax credit for wind power blow away.

By Lamar Alexander And Mike Pompeo - In the WSJ on Wednesday.

As Congress works to reduce spending and avert a debt crisis, lawmakers will have to decide which government projects are truly national priorities, and which are wasteful. A prime example of the latter is the production tax credit for wind power. It is set to expire on Dec. 31—but may be extended yet again, for the seventh time.

This special provision in the tax code was first enacted in 1992 as a temporary subsidy to enable a struggling industry to become competitive. Today the provision provides a credit against taxes of $22 per megawatt hour of wind energy generated.

 

From 2009 to 2013, federal revenues lost to wind-power developers are estimated to be $14 billion—$6 billion from the production tax credit, plus $8 billion courtesy of an alternative-energy subsidy in the stimulus package—according to the Joint Committee on Taxation and the Treasury Department. If Congress were to extend the production tax credit, it would mean an additional $12 billion cost to taxpayers over the next 10 years.

There are many reasons to let this giveaway expire, including wind energy's inherent unreliability and its inability to stand on its own two feet after 20 years. But one of the most compelling reasons is provided in a study released Sept. 14 by the NorthBridge Group, an energy consultancy. The study discusses a government-created economic distortion called "negative pricing.

 

"This is how it works. Coal- and nuclear-fired plants provide a reliable supply of electricity when the demand is high, as on a hot summer day. They generate at lower levels when the demand is low, such as at night.

But wind producers collect a tax credit for every kilowatt hour they generate, whether utilities need the electricity or not. If the wind is blowing, they keep cranking the windmills.

Why? The NorthBridge Group's report ("Negative Electricity Prices and the Production Tax Credit") finds that government largess is so great that wind producers can actually pay the electrical grid to take their power when demand is low and still turn a profit by collecting the credit—and they are increasingly doing so. The wind pretax subsidy is actually higher than the average price for electricity in many of the wholesale markets tracked by the Energy Information Administration.

This practice drives the price of electricity down in the short run. Wind-energy supporters say that's a good thing. But it is hazardous to the economy's health in the long run.

Temporarily lower energy prices driven by wind-power's negative pricing will cripple clean-coal and nuclear-power companies. But running coal and nuclear out of business is not good for the U.S. economy. There is no way a country like this one—which uses 20% to 25% of all the electricity in the world—can operate with generators that turn only when the wind blows.

The Obama administration and other advocates of wind power argue that the subsidy provided by the tax credit allows the wind industry to sustain American jobs. But they are jobs that exist only because of the subsidy. Keeping a weak technology alive that can't make it on its own won't create nearly as many jobs as the private sector could create if it had the kind of low-cost, reliable, clean electricity that wind power simply can't generate.

While the cost of renewable energy has declined over the years, it is still far more expensive than conventional sources. And even the administration's secretary of energy, Steven Chu, calls wind "a mature technology," which should mean it is sufficiently advanced to compete in a free market without government subsidies. If wind power cannot compete on its own after 20 years without costly special privileges, it never will.

 

Mr. Alexander is a Republican senator from Tennessee. Mr. Pompeo is a Republican congressman from Kansas.

 

A version of this article appeared September 19, 2012, on page A13 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Puff, the Magic Drag on the Economy.

Antarctic Sea Ice Sets Another Record

From Forbes:

Antarctic sea ice set another record this past week, with the most amount of ice ever recorded on day 256 of the calendar year (September 12 of this leap year). Please, nobody tell the mainstream media or they might have to retract some stories and admit they are misrepresenting scientific data.

National Public Radio (NPR) published an article on its website last month claiming, “Ten years ago, a piece of ice the size of Rhode Island disintegrated and melted in the waters off Antarctica. Two other massive ice shelves along the Antarctic Peninsula had suffered similar fates a few years before. The events became poster children for the effects of global warming. … There’s no question that unusually warm air triggered the final demise of these huge chunks of ice.”

NPR failed to mention anywhere in its article that Antarctic sea ice has been growing since satellites first began measuring the ice 33 years ago and the sea ice has been above the 33-year average throughout 2012.

Read the rest of the article here.

Fracks of life – & death – for NY pol

From the New York Post (editor comments in green):

One of the state Legislature’s leading backers of “hydrofracking’’ for natural gas has received death threats from what he believes are environmental radicals opposed to the controversial drilling technique, The Post has learned.

“There have been repeated threats to me of bodily harm,’’ Deputy Senate Majority Leader Thomas Libous (R-Binghamton) angrily told The Post.

“There have been calls saying, ‘We know where you live,’ ‘We’ll come to your house’ — that kind of stuff,’’ Libous continued.

Libous said he had notified law enforcement of the threats. (surely they'll get right on this)

Libous also alleged that environmental activists have been making personal and political threats against local officials throughout the Southern Tier region along the Pennsylvania border, where huge deposits of natural gas are located.

Gov. Cuomo signaled while running for office two years ago that he favored fracking, as long as the process can be conducted safely.

Cuomo administration insiders say a final decision may not come until after the November election. (conveniently enough)

Just because this is reported, does not make it true. However, this is how the radical wing of the environmental often operate, look at the Occupy Wall Street crowd for exhibit A. This is why conservatives need to be in this debate, because the debate has been controlled by the far left for far too long.

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Climate Change Is A Hoax, Obama, Like Your Presidency

This scathing piece by Investor's Business Daily is worth reading in its entirety.

In Charlotte, N.C., the president noted that we have "a hundred-year supply of natural gas that's right beneath our feet." He did not say the Environmental Protection Agency and environmentalists have opposed fracking and the natural gas boom is being led by private companies on private or state-owned land. 

Climate change is a hoax, and so is the president's energy policy. China has passed us as the world's largest carbon emitter and builds the equivalent of a coal-fired power plant big enough to power a city the size of San Diego every seven to 10 days.

Read the rest of the column here.

We Must Stop Subsidizing Wind Energy

By Wayne Brough

Read the entire column here. But, here are a few key points:

"America needs an energy policy that embraces all of the nation’s abundant natural resources. Yet the government continues to push wind energy, which has done little to create more affordable or reliable energy. After 20 years of government subsidies for the wind industry spearheaded by the Production Tax Credit (PTC), wind energy remains unreliable, economically disastrous, and harmful to the environment."

- - - -

"Wind energy has also proved itself to be economically disastrous."

- - - -

"An American energy policy that caters to misguided environmental interest groups, wind industry lobbyists, and special interest politicians is flat out wrong. Americans deserve an energy policy that embraces reliable, economically viable, and environmental friendly resources. Wind energy is sadly none of these things. An extension of the PTC will simply continue the use of unreliable, costly, and environmental dangerous resources while benefiting special interest groups rather than the nation as a whole. PTC wind subsidies must end."

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Today's Read

GLOBAL WARMING DEBUNKED? ACCORDING TO TREE’S FROM 2000 YEARS AGO WE ARE IN A GLOBAL COOLING

Today's Read: Common Sense Environmental Policy

By Wesley Coopersmith

The importance of keeping our environment clean and safe is an issue agreed upon by most Americans. We want a clean environment that is not going to pose a threat for us or for future generations. The importance of not only a healthy environment, but a healthy economy is also shared amongst most if not all Americans. Both of these issues, the environment and the economy, need to be considered when evaluating EPA regulatory decisions. Despite the claims of the Obama administration that the EPA is taking common sense approaches to regulatory decisions, both their words and actions suggest otherwise.

Read the rest of the column here.

From CATO: The Miracle that Is the iPhone (or How Capitalism Can Be Good for the Environment)

By Marian L. Tupy

Last week I asked a friend of mine if he could recommend a good white noise machine. “Why don’t you,” he responded, “download an iPhone app instead?” I did and the app works just fine. That got me thinking: what other gadgets do I no longer have or could do without thanks to my iPhone? I put together a short list and asked Lauren Kessler from Cato’s art department to create the lovely graphic below. Of course, “dematerialization,” or using less material and energy to produce more goods, is not new.

Read the rest of the article here.

From the Toronto Sun: Green ‘drivel’ exposed

The godfather of global warming lowers the boom on climate change hysteria

Read the column here.

Interesting in Today's London Telegraph

Global warming: second thoughts of an environmentalist

Fritz Vahrenholt, one of Germany's earliest green energy investors, is not convinced that humanity is causing catastrophic global warming.

From the UK: The Committee on Climate Change should be abolished

The Committee on Climate Change has its offices in Holbein Place just off Sloane Square and has a budget of £4.4 million all from the taxpayer (up from £4.3 million under Labour when Ed Miliband was Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change.) It has a board of veteran Quangocrats.

Judging by their latest report this is a ludicrous waste of public money. It is banal document urging local authorities to try harder to meet carbon emission targets.

Read the rest here.

Move Earth Day To Dec. 7 To Highlight The EPA's Victory Over Liberty

This op-ed appeared in today's Investor's Business Daily:

By BILL WILSON
Posted 04/19/2012 06:29 PM ET

Like the day Pearl Harbor was bombed by the Japanese, Dec. 7, 2009, might too be recalled by history as a day that shall live in infamy.

That was the day Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson issued the carbon endangerment finding, a rule defining carbon dioxide, a gas necessary for the existence of life itself, as a harmful pollutant under the terms of the Clean Air Act.

While Earth Day marks the April 22 celebration worldwide of the radical environmentalist agenda, Dec. 7, 2009, was the day the greens scored their most significant victory to date over free markets and, indeed, over liberty itself. As a result, it would only be fitting if Earth Day were moved to Dec. 7.

The nation has to hope a future Congress and president will undo this rule, because the alarmist decision greatly understates the impact of restricting CO2 emissions on global population sustainability and economic growth.

The fact is, the modern world depends on petroleum, gasoline, diesel, coal and natural gas to do just about everything, including getting to work, delivering goods and services, heating and cooling homes, and providing hot water.

But it goes deeper than that.

The population explosion over the past 200 years has been entirely predicated on the Industrial Revolution that was fueled in large part by increased energy output. The necessary consequence of dramatically reducing energy consumption — and the food production, medical advancement and economic expansion that depends on it — will be a commensurate, significant decrease in the human population.

Really, it all depends on just how draconian the agency's restrictions of carbon emissions are. How much of a price will be placed on CO2 emissions? If it's too high, the impact could be devastating, resulting in the means of sustaining the world's population being suddenly restricted or gradually reduced. Either way, people will die.

Ironically, in its finding, the agency claimed that it was the increased concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and not government regulation, that "threaten(s) the public health and welfare of current and future generations" if carbon emissions were not reduced.

It promised increased heat waves, more intense hurricanes, floods, storm surges, rising sea levels, erosion, wildfires, drought and even allergens and pathogens. The EPA also predicts the displacement of indigenous populations, the eventual decrease of food production and agriculture, and the reduction of forest productivity if we do not commit to their economic suicide pact.

With predictions that dire, one expects that the finding will soon become the foundation for the EPA to incrementally regulate, restrict, and eventually prohibit every aspect of modern life. Emissions of carbon dioxide by motor vehicles and industry will just be the beginning.

Perhaps, if the people are very lucky, the air we all exhale shall remain unregulated, although given the broad nature of the finding, unless things change in Washington, D.C., there certainly would be nothing to stop regulation in that arena.

Making matters worse, in its finding the EPA disregarded the downward trend in global temperatures over the past decade despite higher CO2 emissions, as documented by APS Physics' Christopher Monckton of Brenchley.

It ignored the failed projections of increased temperatures by the International Panel on Climate Change and other proponents of the man-made global warming hypothesis. It suppressed internal dissent at the agency, as when Dr. Alan Carlin submitted comments against the EPA's finding.

The EPA even overlooked the impact of the Climategate scandal where it was revealed that global temperature data were manipulated and exaggerated by climatologists.

That alone should be cause for Congress to rescind the EPA's endangerment finding, but Congress won't act unless the people demand it.

In the end, the finding — and whatever tyrannical restrictions on energy use result from it — will ultimately prove more dangerous than man-made global warming ever could have been. As Lord Monckton wrote, "The correct policy approach to a non-problem is to have the courage to do nothing."

But that does not mean the country should sit by idly now. That is why Americans for Limited Government is launching FreeMarketAmerica.org on the 42nd anniversary of Earth Day to combat this and other incursions by the radical environmentalist agenda.

The EPA and its environmental extremist cohorts are serious in their attack on our capitalist system. The question is will they be allowed to hide their agenda behind green eyeshades? For the sake of our nation, let's hope not.

• Wilson is the president of Americans for Limited Government

EDITORIAL: Abrupt climate-change reversal

New U.N. report blows cold on human causes for weather extremes

"The injection of politics into the global-warming hypothesis has made it difficult to know where facts end and falsehoods begin. While alarmists have been blaming their fellow man for every hurricane, tornado and other ill wind whipped up by Mother Nature, science is now concluding that the cause of these damaging storms has nothing to do with human activity."

Read the rest of the Washington Times editorial here.

From Forbes, A Must Read

How To Achieve Sustainable Capitalism

How Green Became Obama's Albatross

A must read article from the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday:

The president is trapped by his own rhetoric amid America's energy boom.
by Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.

Barack Obama may believe a lot of things, but he probably doesn't believe the Sierra Club is key to his re-election. His decision to nix the Keystone XL pipeline will cost him votes but he did it anyway.

We'll admit that Mr. Obama's global warming talk has often seemed to us perfunctory. Perhaps we mistook his lack of heat for a lack of conviction. He just released his first 2012 campaign ad and it's a paean to green energy. Maybe he's no less a believer than Al Gore, for all the problems this might seem to pose for what we thought we knew about our president.

For one thing, he's not given to unrealistic goals. He knows China and India are opening a new coal plant every week. He knows the huge amounts of fossil energy lying at humanity's feet won't be abandoned just because an American president says so. He can't fail to notice that Canada's oil sands won't remain undeveloped; the oil will go to the Far East.

Mr. Obama also seems enough of a free thinker to entertain the possibility at least that global warming theory may be wrong. In a telling exchange with interviewer Charlie Rose a few years ago, Al Gore was asked to describe the evidence of man's role in climate change. Each time Mr. Gore recurred to some version of a "consensus of scientists" or "the most respected scientists whose judgment I think is the best."

The truth is, the theory may be popular, but the evidence has thus far eluded the tens of billions spent on climate science. The temperature data are so noisy that they reveal no pattern connecting rising CO2 in the industrial age with temperature trends. Some say because CO2 is a "greenhouse" gas, shut up, case closed. But the known relationship between carbon and climate doesn't actually indicate a big reason to worry.

To produce worrisome scenarios, climate models must posit "feedbacks" that magnify the impact of CO2 by 300% to 500%. A cynic notices that these models became especially popular in the '90s, when measured warming exceeded what could be attributed to CO2, so new fudge was needed to preserve CO2 as the culprit.

Mr. Gore is not smart (no matter what the Nobel committee thinks) whereas Mr. Obama is smart and all these things have likely occurred to him. But he's also a political operator and an acolyte of radical theorist Saul Alinksy. He understands politics as a matter of power, and democratic politics as a matter of powerful coalitions cultivated and maintained with self-interest (aka money, money, money).

Oil, in Mr. Obama's world, is a "Republican" interest group; anything that's good for the oil industry is bad for the alternate power structure he's been trying to build with handouts and mandates for green energy.

Mr. Obama's relationship with global warming may indeed be perfunctory, but he understands the necessity of shibboleths to rationalize and justify the "investments" he's dishing out to manufacture a support base whose need for subsidies and regulatory favors jibes with the Democratic Party's need for donations. Oil sands are the "dirtiest" fossil energy, requiring great releases of CO2. To approve Keystone, then, not only would undermine his side's crucial shibboleths. It would compromise his own credibility as a leader who can be trusted to deny advantage to "Republican" industries and deliver it to "Democratic" ones.

Not for nothing did Canadian Resources Minister Joe Oliver, after Mr. Obama's Keystone decision, gripe about the influence of "billionaire socialists from the United States." Not for nothing did Mr. Obama's own supporters crow about Mr. Obama's ruling as a triumph over the industrialist Koch brothers, an allusion to whom even opens the new Obama campaign spot.

Presidents make traps for themselves: Signature initiatives cannot fail; they can only be doubled down on, as Mr. Obama was expected to do in Tuesday's State of the Union even as he also tried to make peace with the natural-gas fracking boom. Only fresh waves of rhetoric praising electric cars will suffice when taxpayers are figuring out that Obama policy has them subsidizing electric playthings for the affluent. Solyndra must be defended all the more fiercely now that solar is collapsing globally as countries repent of foolish subsidies. Green energy must be hugged to Mr. Obama's breast all the more tightly as the shale revolution renders hopeless any chance of wind and solar becoming cost-competitive with fossil fuels.

Mr. Obama is engaged in a "long game," says Andrew Sullivan, writing in Newsweek, making a point that no one doubted. But there's a difference between playing the long game and playing it well. The Obama long game is exactly how green energy metamorphosed from a policy notion into a political strategy and then into a dead weight his campaign must lug to November.

Still, let us admire the high-rolling political risk Mr. Obama takes in spurning affordable, strategically convenient energy from Canada. That risk includes, between now and Election Day, looking like a chump if oil prices surge because of the world's vulnerability to the narrowness of the Strait of Hormuz.

Today's Reading

Please, Global Warming Alarmists, Stop Denying Climate Change - And Science