I was recently forwarded this email from Al Gore’s WE Repower America website. They have a call to action based on their belief that a majority of Americans support carbon “cap and trade”, even though recent Gallup polls suggest Americans are otherwise preoccupied with things like their own economic survival.
WE suggests writing a letter to the editor of your local newspaper to counter what they say: “misleading statements were repeated on TV and in newspapers across the country.”
Gosh.
Read the letter below.
I agree, WUWT readers should make their opinions known (pro and con as we have both here) about carbon cap and trade. I suggest using the handy dandy link from the WE email above (or here) to let your local newspaper editors know just what you think about it.
The letter link has a handy dandy 3 step wizard where you can use forms to write a letter to your local newspaper, complete with an automated sender to the letters to the editor section of every newspaper in the USA. They’ve kindly included shrink wrapped talking points ready to cut and paste so you don’t have to think for yourself. All you have to remember is your ZIP code.
Bear in mind, short letters of 150 words or less usually get preference, although some newspapers will allow up to 250 words. Also, letters “usually” must be your original work, as newspaper editors have a way to detect email campaigns where common phrases are repeated. And, I suggest that you don’t post your letters here in comments, this should remain your individual communication, should you choose to participate.
Thank goodness we live in a Democracy where free speech is allowed. Exercise it today. We can do it!
Bah. Now I have to copy the “denial” comments up here.
After a while.
My fingers keep doing a funny thing. I think “denial”, fingers type either “denile” (which I am afraid to visit but would like to) or “denali” which I would dearly love to visit again.
‘They’ve kindly included shrink wrapped talking points ready to cut and paste so you don’t have to think for yourself. All you have to remember is your ZIP code.’
‘so you don’t have to think for yourself.’
Sounds like something Madoff would say to get you to invest with him.
“In one case, opponents of clean energy misquoted an MIT study so badly that the author wrote to them”……
Hmmmm, sounds familiar.
Frist there was a BTU tax. Then came a CO2 (tax) Cap and trade. How it’s been renamed again.
The new and improved term.
Carbon cap and trade.
How’s that, Matt? Was your MIT study so badly misquoted that you had to write to “them”?
Well you couldn’t just have the entire country powered by wind for example unless you want every square mile of every remaining natural vista, national forest, and national park covered in windmills and half of them breaking down in a year. Better have those little windmills in development that can go on rooftops, plenty of room in cities and plenty of wind tunnel effects between buildings.
This country has well over 100 years of coal left, while burning the coal and letting the plants enjoy the extra CO2, that’s 100 years to figure out how to power America when the coal runs out.
Matt B – What does clean energy have to do with CO2’s influence or non-influence on the earth’s temperature?
Absolutely brilliant!
Recycle nuclear waste, we have thousands of years of energy available without generating CO2 if we want using existing technology. We don’t need additional economic hardship in these tough economic times. We already have the technology to generate gigawatts of emission-free power.
Heh, and I just got the confirmation message from my local paper that my letter had been forwarded. Absolutely stellar.
I see a phone number is required.
Don’t you think using their form to send your email to the newspapers in your area will end up putting you on several of their related call lists?
Better off doing it directly yourself.
Reply: (321) 555-1234 seems to work, however most newspapers require a working phone number (in case they wish to confirm you as real) and to my knowledge the news department never shares phone numbers with circulation. – Anthony
Matt B – the human race exhales over 3 Billion lbs of CO2 per day.
Is this clean energy?
People really should read this PDF. It explains it in language most can understand.
Wow,
I sent emails to lots and lots of papers. I just got a confirmation from the L A Times! Even Matt Howes, of The We Campaign, thanked me for sending my email to those papers! I hope my letter is printed in every single newspaper and the people of America slam cap and trade!
Thank you, Al Gore for helping me express myself.
Mike Bryant
I just “tweeted” (is that a word?) this. Hope you get a lot of response.
thanks for the tip Anthony. I did send an email and was nice. I even used my spell checker to insure they wouldn’t get the wrong impression of this old boy from Alabama. I do hope to hear from some of them. I do expect to start to get emails from mr. gore. Perhaps I will answer him also.
Again thanks,
Bill Derryberry
REPLY: thanks Bill
Reply 2: That should be ensure, not insure ~ charles the (I only did it cuz you mentioned the spell checker) moderator and part time grammar nazi.
Splendid :). I enjoyed using The Alliance for Climate Protection’s form to push nuclear fission and fusion as the only logical and reliable source of clean energy. Made me feel good, that did – even more so when I got a confirmation email from The We Campaign thanking me.
I shall sleep well tonight… ;).
This country has well over 100 years of coal left
And in 100 years, we’ll probably have 500 years of coal left. Assuming we’re still using the stuff. That’s how it works. (That’s how the Club of Rome screwed it up so badly.)
Thanks for the opportunity to express myself to so many locations using the letterhead of “Repower America.” I hope it backfires on them, but it probably won’t.
REPLY: Actually, given this Alexa analysis, I think we have a pretty good chance of getting a message out: click to see comparison – Anthony
I’ll take the opportunity to write my letter as well, but here’s a couple thoughts. The Internet is a wonderful thing, for example allow us to express our views here. On the other hand, well funded propaganda machines like this one can really control the agenda. Kind of scary.
Joe,
“the human race exhales over 3 Billion lbs of CO2 per day”…
And if you think that’s got the SLIGHTEST thing to do with why excess fossil carbon is such a danger then you have a truckload of reading to do to get yourself up to speed.
All our emissions combined form only a small fraction of the carbon that is transferred throughout the cycle annually. Now, try finding out WHY that extra (minus the half that nature absorbs for us) is of critical importance. You can do it.
It is amazing how this Gore groups try to present the media as being biased against them… If indeed it was true why would blogs such as WUWT and Climateaudit be revered as some of the best source of information? We would just open our newspaper…
Just sent my letter in. I was compelled to use some of their talking points, but with phrasing they probably did not intend.
This part, in particular, is the fully political art of this issue. This campaign of Mr. Gore was not taken on to test their strength against the opposition. It was to assure that the right message gets out. Count on a biblical flood of letters organized by supporters and sympathetic newspapers confirming public concensus in support of Al Gore’s CO2 or Carbon, or “anything I say” tax. Any thoughts of influencing this poll is folly.
Instead, write a letter a month directly to your local papers. Bring up new debunks each time. Put this sight, Climate Audit, and others in your posts, make it factual and witty, catch their attention. Get to know the editor of the opinion page. Make him/her your freind.
Don’t make your concern part of a protest or an organized movement, make it personal. Show the impacts on the average family, on farming, on local industries, on future generations. Point out the vast divergence between the predictions of alarmists and the weather outside, between the computer games in NASA and this year’s Arctic Ice. Point them, for God’s sake, to the freak show called the Catlin Expedition, to Surface Station’s pictures of Temperature measuring devices on roof tops, airports, sewage treatment plant and on and on. Tell them how (with references) food prices in poor nations have been hiked by “Biofuels”. The list of topics are endless.
I had an interesting conversation with a local Alarmist at a “Community Conversation” sponsored by my local newspaper, the Tri-City Herald in Pasco/Kennewick/Richland WA. My antagonist on the paper’s blog for more than a year confessed that AGW “Scientists” fare poorly in public debate, noting a well known Alarmist “Scientist’s” debate with a “Hack Denier” where the post audit audience shifted significantly towards the “Denier” argument. His rationalization was that the public is notably lazy and quick to take the “Easy Way Out”. When was the last time James Hansen accepted a questioin at a press conference, much less stand for a debate?
Get involved, not as part of a movement, but as a real live human capable of thinking on your own and judging arguments on their substance, not their style.
Funny how the Goroupies are starting to bite the hands that fed them. They will learn that if you start attacking the press, they will turn much faster against you. This is the kind of journalism we have today!
I think I created a very good letter. Since I live in the land of Eco-zealotry (the NW), I chose a message I think anyone can embrace. Like you, Anthony, I love the technology behind solar and wind energies, because I like gadgets and independence… not for reasons related to C02 fantasies. I’m just not going to pay 40k for a system to take myself halfway off the grid.
Thanks Al!