This video from C-Span of Ralph Nader is a surprising admission that really says it all. No matter how much whining and wailing there is about my appearance on PBS, there was one statement in that story that rings especially true, and Ralph Nader just confirmed it.
“Stanford University professor of communication and political science Jon Krosnick, who has polling on climate change for 15 years, thinks the skeptics are winning in Washington.”
Nader said today at the Environmental Policies of U.S. Presidents seminar:
They’re running away from the issue [of global warming]. They’re not even criticizing nuclear power the way some of them were.
9:36 am ET Approx. 1 hr. 3 min. Worldwatch Institute LIVE Environmental Policies of U.S. Presidents Environmentalists talked about their criteria for and the results of their ranking the environment legacies of U.S. presidents.
Here’s the higlights transcript of this shorter C-SPAN clip where Nader speaks:
| 00:00:03 | GROUP ON NANO TECHNOLOGY. |
| 00:00:06 | THIS IS AN ENORMOUS DECLINE IN CIVIC INFRASTRUCTURE, KEEPING UP WITH THE CHALLENGES. |
| 00:00:10 | AND THE THIRD OUTCRY HAS GOT TO BE LOCAL, STATE, AND NATIONAL POLITICAL CANDIDATES WHO WILL RUN ON THESE ISSUES INSTEAD OF RUN AWAY FROM THESE ISSUES. |
| 00:00:22 | AND I’LL GIVE YOU AN EXAMPLE THAT WILL FIT YOUR PUBLICATION. |
| 00:00:30 | WHEN THE DURBIN CONFERENCE WAS UNDER WAY, SENATOR JAMES INHOFF, WHO CALLED GLOBAL WARMING ONE OF MODERN HISTORY’S GREATEST HOAXES, SAID THAT HE’S THE ONLY ONE TALKING ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING IN WASHINGTON. |
| 00:00:43 | AND SO I CALLED HIM UP AND I SAID SENATOR, YOU KNOW, THIS IS QUITE AMAZING. |
| 00:00:49 | DON’T THE DEMOCRATS TALK ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING? |
| 00:00:53 | HE SAID NO MORE. |
| 00:00:55 | I SAID WOULD YOU BE WILLING TO DEBATE A PROMINENT GLOBAL WARMING — ANTI-GLOBAL WARMING ABSOLUTELY. |
| 00:01:04 | ADVOCATE IN THE CONGRESS? |
| 00:01:06 | HOW ABOUT YESTERDAY, HE SAID? |
| 00:01:13 | SO I CALLED CONGRESSMAN ED MARKEY. |
| 00:01:16 | THIS IS A YEAR AGO. |
| 00:01:20 | I SAID CONGRESSMAN MARKEY, WOULD INHOFF? |
| 00:01:26 | YOU BE WILLING TO DEBATE SENATOR SOMEHOW THEY COULD NEVER FIND A TIME TO DEBATE IN FRONT OF THE SENATE OR HOUSE AND OF COURSE, THERE COULDN’T COMMITTEE ROOM THIS ISSUE. |
| 00:01:41 | HAVE BEEN A MORE DEFENSIVE STATEMENT BY PRESIDENT OBAMA THAN TO SAY FINALLY — HE DIDN’T MENTION IT IN TWO STATE OF THE UNION SPEECHES, CLIMATE CHANGE IS NOT A HOAX. |
| 00:01:54 | THAT WOULD HAVE MADE TEDDY ROOSEVELT PROUD AND JIMMY CARTER AND SO FORTH. |
| 00:02:02 | SO YOU DON’T HAVE A POLITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE ON CAPITOL HILL AND IN MANY STATE LEGISLATURES. |
| 00:02:10 | ISSUE. |
| 00:02:10 | THEY’RE RUNNING AWAY FROM THE THEY’RE RUNNING AWAY FROM THE ISSUE. |
| 00:02:15 | THEY’RE NOT EVEN CRITICIZING NUCLEAR POWER THE WAY SOME OF THEM WERE. |
| 00:02:19 | THEY’RE CUTTING QUID PRO QUO |
As soon as the opposing side threatens, insults, demands sensoring, you know you have won. Keep up the fantastic work Anthony! We are slowly winning.
It would be nice if Mr. Nader respected Senator INHOFE enough to spell his name right.
Ralph is an old hand at faking data in order to inflame the public – his claims that the Chevrolet Corvair was a flipping machine killed a really good (and now collectible) car, which was also
very fuel efficient, something Nader pushed later on. GM demoed the Corvair to automotive
magazine testers and proved to them it had no tendency to flip (unlike the VW Beetle, which Nader
never mentioned). GM execs then made their usual series of dumb mistakes and killed the car.
What they should have done was to ignore Nader and produce data to prove that
Nader’s charges were nonsensical, like the man himself (Nader never drove a car in his life).
I believe Nader pushed anti-lock brakes as Godsends. Last data I saw indicated anti-lock brakes have zero effects with respect to safety. Nader’s past actions certainly deserve to be investigated.
Would this be the same Ralph Nader who was protecting us from the evil automakers out to kill us with those flimsy cars? Isn’t he promoting those now? Or protecting us from evil nuclear things except those associated with wind power and anything else “green”? Maybe the people in Washington just cannot keep up with the changing playbook and are afraid to jump in for fear tomorrow their “green” idea will be vilified. As for discussing climate change, again, who knows what playbook is out on the table currently? Even politicians aren’t as flexible as climate change promoters.
If I may make one more comment on the Corvair…..
The original Corvair with a swing-axle rear suspension did have handling problems. This is the car that made Nader (in)famous. In the meantime, GM engineers finally prevailed over the bean-counters and installed a proper independent rear suspension, making the Corvair a good-handling machine at last. But GM buckled to Nader and dropped the Corvair completely.
IanM
SasjaL says:
September 19, 2012 at 12:55 am
SENATOR JAMES INHOFF, WHO CALLED GLOBAL WARMING ONE OF MODERN HISTORY’S GREATEST HOAXES, …
“If only in modern time, what is bigger then …?”
The world is flat regime instituted death to all opposition to then theological might.
“It’s no time to get cocky – we haven’t won – when the powers that be aren’t speaking openly about something, it just means that they have gone covert.”
“They are waiting until after the election: if obama wins, then the environmental issues that seem to have gone dormant will resurface with a vengeance, and the jackbooted greenshirts will be kicking down our doors some krystallnacht soon, looking for skeptics.”
Control schemes. Example: Installation of two way communication from your home thermostat. A scheme to shut your power off to sell high priced energy to the highest bidder while you freeze or sweat. Example: Transponders in your vehicle to tax and track your activity. Example: Our education system owned and operated by progressivenistas to brain wash our youth into their collective culture. Individually the control mechanisms seem miniscule, but in whole are mighty.
Global warming scare? An attempt at control expansion.
Ian L. McQueen says:
September 19, 2012 at 8:08 am
If I may make one more comment on the Corvair…..
The original Corvair with a swing-axle rear suspension did have handling problems. This is the car that made Nader (in)famous. In the meantime, GM engineers finally prevailed over the bean-counters and installed a proper independent rear suspension, making the Corvair a good-handling machine at last. But GM buckled to Nader and dropped the Corvair completely.
IanM
The stifling of innovation. I recall the Corvair as being misunderstood. Air cooled engines are not well understood in the minds of those who just want to turn the key and go without much thought to temperature conditions.
James Sexton says (September 18, 10:36 pm)
(…) They’d like the ozone to fall back on, but they’re too scared to run it up again.
Afraid I have bad news for you, James. They’re warming up the corpse as we speak.
EPA won in court, legislators don’t even have to touch this hot potato anymore.
@accordionsrule: Absolutely correct. The EPA has taken the debate out of the legislative arena. The executive branch has control of the agenda. Politicians in congress can now just (and will) say words to the effect that “it’s out of our hands”. I agree with many others that Ralph Nader is irrelevant but the EPA makes his influence (if he has any) unnecessary anyway.
Mark and two Cats says:
September 18, 2012 at 11:48 pm
“…It’s no time to get cocky – we haven’t won – when the powers that be aren’t speaking openly about something, it just means that they have gone covert.
“They are waiting until after the election: if obama wins, then the environmental issues that seem to have gone dormant will resurface with a vengeance, and the jackbooted greenshirts will be kicking down our doors some krystallnacht soon, looking for skeptics.”
*
Totally agree with you, Mark. Obama shut up about global warming because he recognizes it as a vote loser. He recognizes that people aren’t happy with green policy. He wants to win votes. If he gets back in, it wouldn’t surprise me to see it all spring back into being until, of course, it’s time for the next election when he will seem to back off once more to go (again) through the motions of caring.
These people are certainly not above lying. Here in Australia, Gillard has proven that. Don’t trust any of these green politicians. Don’t trust them on anything. They will tell you whatever they need to tell you to get that all important vote, then they’ll do what they want. Same as always.
That said, I do think politicians the world over are recognizing that green is not working and that the economy needs help. The smart ones will be tiptoeing (running?) away from anything green. It’s just that you won’t know who means it until after the election, and possibly not even then (depending on who is not in power but whispering “vote me, vote me next time, I’ll be good to you, I care, I promise”).
Just saw the following on Tom Nelson:
Wonder why he wouldn’t commit? My guess is that Markey is so full of compassion and tolerance that he didn’t want to make Inhofe look bad from the bashing Inhofe would have gotten from the ‘solid’ climate change science.
David in Michigan says:
September 19, 2012 at 10:09 am
@accordionsrule: Absolutely correct. The EPA has taken the debate out of the legislative arena. The executive branch has control of the agenda. Politicians in congress can now just (and will) say words to the effect that “it’s out of our hands”. I agree with many others that Ralph Nader is irrelevant but the EPA makes his influence (if he has any) unnecessary anyway.
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The strength of a totalitarian regime isn’t really in it’s army, it’s in it’s bureaucracy. Form and control a bureaucracy and you’ve got “the little guy” under your thumb.
I should add, “and give that bureaucracy an agenda” before “and you’ve got “the little guy” under your thumb.”
Okay Ralph, we got seat belts. That’s enough for one lifetime. Note the physiology of activist science. In the beginning there are scientists and they propound and start getting evermore massive grants of cash as politicians begin to smell a way to raise massive taxes. Then on the fringes the me-too biologists see a way to raise lumps of grant cash, then the social scientists join the cash-crazed crowd, estimating the social costs of this terrible development and proposing policy, laws, regulations, controls; by now some opposition starts to realize this is more serious than they thought and they finally start examining the science and the tide starts to turn, then panic sets in when treasured theories begin to be trashed, governments hurry in taxes and legislation before it’s too late, then the activists stop their crippled science and revert to ugly attacks, then psychologists and psychiatrists, who thought they had missed the boat jump in and develop new psychoses to cover the behaviour of the opposition to the settled science. Then it turns cold and Ehrlich, who was a hero of the coming Ice Age 40 years ago before he switched horses, says, I told you so.
I agree, it’s an election year, anything goes. My thinkolator says nothing changes in the long run. What if they are only following the pulls of the 1 percent who hold the strings?
What if big money has an office where all the biggest money is?
http://m.edf.org/offices/bentonville-arkansas
What if they can easily hide political contributions with nonprofit 501 (c) (4) organizations?
http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2012/08/capital-eye-opener-august-14.html
http://m.townhall.com/columnists/judgeandrewnapolitano/2012/09/13/what_if_november_changes_nothing
Judge Andrew Napolitano
What If November Changes Nothing?
What If November Changes Nothing? Sep 13, 2012 What if the principal parties’ candidates for president really agree more than they disagree?
What if they both support the authority of the federal government to spy on Americans without search warrants? What if they both support confining foreigners, and untried, in Guantanamo Bay? What if they both believe the president can arrest without charge and confine without trial any American he hates or fears?
What if they both believe in secret courts — kept away from the public and the press — that can take away the rights of Americans? What if they both think the president can disregard the Constitution when it comes to the rights of those the government has confined to speedy trials, to confront witnesses and evidence against them, and to counsel of their choosing? What if they both believe the government can use evidence obtained under torture at trials in American courts? What if they both think the president can incarcerate those he once prosecuted, even after acquittal?
What if both major presidential candidates believe they can fight any war, assassinate any foe or assault any country using the military or the CIA, and they need not ask Congress for a declaration of war as the Constitution requires, nor account to Congress or the public as the law requires? What if they both want American troops to remain in Afghanistan, even though no foreign country in history has successfully done so, and even though the culture in Afghanistan is as lawless, as vicious to women and children, and as harmless to America today as it was when President Bush invaded it in 2001?
What if they both think this costly and fruitless war — the longest in American history — is somehow good for American freedom and security, even though most Americans do not? What if they both refuse to understand that the longer we are killing people in foreign lands who can cause us no real harm the more likely will people from those lands come here and bring us real harm?
What if they both believe in adding to the government’s $16 trillion debt and letting future generations deal with paying it back? What if they both want to have the feds spend more money next year than the feds are spending this year? What if they both accept FDR- and LBJ-style entitlements, even though they are nowhere authorized by the Constitution and there are not enough present-day workers to tax in order to pay for them?
What if President Obama wants to raise taxes by increasing some tax rates on the rich? What if Gov. Romney wants to raise taxes by eliminating some tax deductions available to the rich? What if raising taxes on anyone in a recession will cause higher unemployment?
What if they both believe in borrowing newly printed money from the Federal Reserve in order to fund the government? What if Obama is of the view that the federal government can tell you how to live and keep you from becoming too rich? What if Romney wants to make the same federal government more effective and efficient at what it does?
What if Obama is really a Marxist who rejects personal freedom, natural rights and private property? What if Romney is really an empty suit who doesn’t know or won’t say what he believes? What if Obama really wants all health care providers to work for the federal government? What if Romney spent the entire presidential primary season condemning Obamacare, only to say this past weekend that there are parts of it he really likes and will endeavor to retain?
What if Obama wants federal bureaucrats to ration health care and decide who lives and who dies? What if Romney spent the entire presidential primary season running against conservative and libertarian opponents and arguing that only the free market or the states should address health care, but earlier this week accepted a major federal role in its management?
What if Obama will have the feds tell you what doctor to see and tell the doctor what procedures to administer? What if Romney consistently blasted the concept that Congress can constitutionally force you to buy health care coverage you don’t want to buy, but now accepts the concept that Congress can constitutionally force insurance companies to sell you health care coverage they don’t want to sell?
What if the system is fixed? What do we do about it?
Now we get to wildly speculate?
These remarks by Ralph Nader are quite revealing.
CAGW is dying as a political issue in the United States.
Barack Obama felt obliged to mention CAGW once at the Democratic National Convention. That was to remind the faithful that he hasn’t forsaken them. His campaign speeches haven’t been featuring it.
Of course, should Obama get reelected, he will still push environmental suppressive measures. Not by trying to Congress to pass any. By getting his EPA administrator to issue them by fiat.
I think he likes the whole idea of suppressive measures. He certainly likes being able to reward his bundlers with “green” subsidies.
Ralph Nader should be prosecuted for hundreds of unecessary deaths, and practicing engineering without a licence.
Nader is a lawyer with little scientific training, but in his simple addle-pated mind, if a little air bag is good, a bigger, more powerful one would be better. If right sized air bags need a seatbelt, then in his simple minded way, he thought super powered airbags would not need seatbelts to be used.
I saw a GM engineer testify to congress, get crucified for pointing out that little old ladies and children sitting too close would die when these over-powered airbags deployed. I understand he was so humiliated and decried as a tool and enemy of the people for opposing such a brilliant idea, that he subsequently committed suicide.
Meanwhile old Ralphie and his sidekick the “lady in tennis shoes” forced the use of the over-powered airbags. But only in the USA where Nader’s writ, controlled NHTSA and the Congress.
Soon, as predicted, people started dying, and the Congress and Ralphies pet agency the NHTSA demanded that the automakers stop using overpowered airbags and “killing women and children”.
Only in the USA were these ever used, and the engineers knew what would happen, so they designed the airbag inflaters to accept a replaceable cartridge. All airbags in the world used the proper and lower powered and safe cartridges; and only in Ralphie’s’ America did the cartridges contain an oversupply of inflation propellent. The unsafe and overpowered cartridges weer soon replaced with proper ones, that should have been specified from the outset.
Of course Mr. Public Citizen, was never questioned, or indicted for his criminal practices. Public Citizen with all their lawyers, intimidated all the tort attorneys from suing Ralph for civil liability in the hundreds of wrongful deaths.
Skeptics are not winning. Science and common sense are winning. In the end when we see all sorts of new LOW record temperatures and only a few HIGH record temperatures (which the unbiased /sarc) media touts as evidence of CAGW; the public begins to realize it is being duped and starts looking at what their parents and grand parent and great grand parents told them, and pretty soon we realize we bin there, done that before. No science is needed. Just the ability to read. And differentiate between “massaged” reading material and original material. Course, original material has some pretty poor information in it too. Timeline biases. I have a book of my great grandmothers from the 1800’s when she was in India with local medicinal remedies and how to treat the locals. Reading it today would make your hair curl given what we know today about drugs and human nature. And I am sure someone reading our current climate science 200 years from now will have equal unbelief in our ignorance.