They are putting our energy, economy, jobs, living standards, health and welfare at grave risk
Guest post by Paul Driessen
Climate alarmists are meeting in Doha, Qatar, to hammer out a new international treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol that expires this year. The US Environmental Protection Agency is poised to unleash its first wave of carbon dioxide regulations. And Congress is teaming up with the White House to legislate taxes on hydrocarbon use and CO2 emissions, on top of pending tax hike on “the rich.”
This serious triple threat to our energy, economy, jobs, living standards, health and welfare is justified by assertions that the actions will stabilize Earth’s climate and prevent a litany of global warming horrors.
Our planet’s climate has never been stable, and never will be. There is no empirical evidence that carbon dioxide drives climate change, or that greenhouse gases have supplanted the complex and interrelated natural forces that have produced big and little ice ages, floods and droughts, stormy and quiescent periods throughout the ages.
Even as atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have risen from 280 parts per million before 1880 to 391 ppm (0.0391%) today, average global temperatures have flat-lined for 16 years;hurricane and tornado frequency and intensity have fallen to new lows; Antarctic sea ice continues to expand, while Arctic ice caps were reduced, not by warming, but by huge storms; and the rate of sea level rise remains steady.
While alarmists insist that Hurricane Sandy was “unprecedented” and proof that “climate change is real,” it is just one of many major storms that have battered New York and eastern Canada over the years.
Moreover, every ton of painful, economy-crippling US carbon dioxide reductions would be offset by 100 tons from India, China and elsewhere, and atmospheric CO2 concentrations would continue to climb.
But these inconvenient truths are irrelevant to climate campaigners, who are using “dangerous manmade climate change” as the best pretext ever devised to control energy use and economies. They simply hypothesize, model and assert that every observed weather and climate phenomenon is due to human CO2 emissions. Warmer or colder, wetter or drier, more ice or less, more storms, fewer storms, occasional big storms – if not now, someday, sooner or later. It’s exactly what climate alarmists predicted.
This is not science. It is political science, rooted in a loathing of hydrocarbons, economic growth and humanity. It’s ideological, religious – the only state-sanctioned, state-supported religion permitted today.
If Eisenhower’s military-industrial complex was bad, what are we to make of today’s political-scientific-university-bureaucratic-military-industrial-media-environmentalist complex? Funded and driven by tens of billions of dollars annually for research grants, renewable energy programs and regulatory regimes, it has far too much at stake to forsake adherence to Mann-made global warming cataclysm hypotheses.
According to Government Accountability Institute president Peter Schweizer, well-connected political cronies take hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars for “green energy” and “global warming prevention” programs, funnel it to soon-to-be-bankrupt companies, keep a few million for themselves, and launder a few hundred thousand back to the politicians who brokered the deals. Obama campaign bundlers, says Schweizer, received more than $21,000 of corporate welfare for each dollar they donated to the Obama reelection campaign. Big Green environmentalist groups also garner countless millions in taxpayer lucre.
The consequences for average workers and families are dire. If even one of these swords of Damocles falls – Doha, EPA or the carbon tax – the effects will be disastrous. If all three are imposed (or all three in conjunction with tax hikes on job and wealth creators), the impacts will be utterly devastating.
Ignoring these facts, extensive other evidence for natural climate change, and the numerous scientists who reject their manmade climate catastrophe claims, advocates of a new Doha climate treaty, EPA “CO2 endangerment” rules, and “carbon taxes” insist these actions are needed to avoid ecological calamities.
They are adamant in contending that carbon taxes will somehow benefit the economy, create jobs and balance out-of-control spending. One is reminded of Will Rogers insightful quip: “Suppose you were an idiot – and suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.”
Every one of these actions is intended to increase the cost of the hydrocarbon energy that powers our economy. But raising the cost of transportation fuels, electricity, lighting, heating, air conditioning, and thus of food, materials and equipment will severely impact the bottom line for factories, utilities, offices, farms, shops, airlines, shippers, hospitals, schools, churches, charities and government offices.
The poorest families may get rebates for their increased energy costs. These institutions will not. They will be forced to reduce wages and benefits, hire fewer full-time employees, lay people off, outsource operations to countries where energy costs are lower, or even close their doors.
Taxes paid by companies and employees will dwindle. Instead of paying taxes, newly jobless workers will collect unemployment and welfare – from shrinking government coffers. Charities will have much less money, even if deductions for donations remain in the tax code.
Unemployment will bring reduced nutrition, increased stress, and higher rates of heart attacks and strokes, spousal and child abuse, alcohol and drug abuse, suicide and premature death. The social, economic and healthcare costs will further “fundamentally transform” America, as President Obama is determined to do.
Even if Congress legislates carbon taxes, nothing suggests that Lisa Jackson will refrain from imposing EPA’s anti-hydrocarbon CO2 rules on top of them, or that the White House will reject any Doha treaty. There is no hint that the Interior Department will cease using the Endangered Species Act and other laws to shut down oil and gas drilling, while ignoring the ESA and growing slaughter of eagles and whooping cranes by wind turbines – or that the Energy and Defense Departments, EPA and Congress will stop spending more in borrowed funds to subsidize corn ethanol and Navy biofuel schemes.
These anti-hydrocarbon policies also mean the US Treasury will be deprived of hundreds of billions in lease bonuses, royalties, taxes and other revenues that it would realize from the development of our nation’s vast oil, natural gas and coal deposits. Instead, the United States will be forced to pay billions more for imported oil, often from dictatorial, unethical, environmentally reckless countries.
New hydrocarbon energy restrictions and green energy demands will deprive Third World families and communities of abundant, reliable, affordable energy, obstruct human rights progress, and keep entire nations impoverished. They will kill millions more from lung infections (from burning wood and dung), intestinal diseases (from contaminated water), malaria and other diseases of poverty and eco-imperialism.
Those countries will receive far less foreign aid from increasingly cash-strapped Western nations – and little of the Green Climate Fund cash that industrialized nations will supposedly transfer to kleptocratic ruling elites in poor countries, as reparations for supposedly causing climate change.
For every nation, this coerced energy and economic deprivation will make it increasingly difficult to adapt to future climate changes that nature will inevitably bring our way – in an era when mankind ought to have the wealth and technology to adapt far more easily than our ancestors were able to do.
The Climate Change Complex will do everything in its power to avoid discussing these issues, and vilify anyone who brings them up. However, we need to have this debate, and we need to have it now – in Doha, Congress, the courts and our state legislatures – before our fate is sealed for us.
__________
Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power – Black death
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What’s Kyoto ? Here in Nevada we have no Kyoto, heck we hardly have a California, but due suffer a Harry Reid on the national stage. Sorry!
This is not science. It is political science, rooted in a loathing of hydrocarbons, economic growth and humanity. It’s ideological, religious – the only state-sanctioned, state-supported religion permitted today.
It’s not even political science. It is called systems thinking and it is the Collectivist political Theory pushed from the 1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment on and seen in the Meadows Limits to Growth work they did for the Club of Rome in the 70s. It never goes away because its purpose is to take out the Enlightenment view of man and science and replace it with new ways of thinking that are relational. http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/using-systems-thinking-to-retie-the-psychological-umbilical-cord-to-our-environment/ is a good overview of this type of Systems thinking. And Peter Senge’s work is now dominating what educators and Fortune 500 execs are all being told.
It is a useful political theory if you want economic control and control over individual behavior without admitting that is what’s up. Since such central planning has a bad rep it has to seem necessary for other reasons than greed and power-lust.
This matters acutely for this discussion because the EPA put out a report last week called “The Road Ahead” that explicitly adopted this Meadows/Senge/Lasczlo/Bertalanffy systems thinking as a policy making device. To help in its modelling to supposedly better protect public health.
So a collectivist political theory grounded in the Marxist theory of environmental and socio-cultural influence on people and their beliefs is being used to justify a centrally planned economy and regulation of personal behavior.
Oh and its also the basis for all the education “reforms”, K-12 and higher ed, going on all over the world, especially in the US. All coming ultimately out of the UN.
Doha’s just a party to celebrate control of the relevant regulatory agencies.
Oh dear here we go again – NeilT is dazzled by the politics and blind to the science.
Robuk 3.49
Kennedy ex-World Bank and enthusiastically supported by Tim ‘multi director’ Yeo. Thank goodness Cameron had the sense to block his appointment.
polistra said:
December 3, 2012 at 2:31 am
Stop blaming Obama.
[snippage]
Bush happily signed more enviro laws than Obama. (so far!)
———————————————
obama does not need enviro laws – he has EPA institute regulations instead.
And I will stop blaming obama when he stops blaming Bush. Actually, I blame Bush too: for making it possible for obama to be elected. Unforgivable.
A world governance body that would use bogus data and paid politicians and scientists to control the world’s population is evil incarnate. Begging Einstein’s forgiveness: “Two things are infinite: voter’s stupidity and the desire of the ruling class for power and wealth, and I’m pretty sure about both of them.”
You feel that political action to attempt to lessen or prevent CAGW is a socialist/plutocracy/ conspiracy that will strip you of your freedom and bankrupt the masses, based on what exactly? Yet you dismiss papers which support the theory of CAGW as “dooms day” alarmists?
Certainly there are extremes on both sides of the issue that are “alarmists”, the issue is that it is hard to identify on “alarmist” when they are on your side of the debate. Let me help you – this article is a great example of “alarmism” from the skeptic side of CAGW.
Below are a few quotes from the article, try to think that these are referring to what someone believes will be the effects of CAGW, who would you react to them then?
“The consequences for average workers and families are dire”
“…will deprive Third World families and communities of abundant, reliable, affordable energy, obstruct human rights progress, and keep entire nations impoverished. They will kill millions more…”
Now, this is not to say that implementing measures to deter CO2 emmissions will not have an economic and societal impact but to say that it will lead to some dystopic society, without referring to any study or report, is just as bad as some of the CAGW alarmism.
The study of economic and societal implications of Environmental Tax Reforms is an area of focus for researchers. I suggest doing a google search and reading a few papers (or at least the abstracts) before predicting the economic end-of-days.
A few places to start are:
– Competitiveness Effects of Environmental Tax Reforms (COMETR)
– Europe’s Experience with Carbon-Energy Taxation (Andersen)
– Environmental Tax Reform in Europe: Implications for Income Distribution
Again, I’m not stating that ETR will have no impact, a positive impact or a negative impact. What I’m saying is that there is a lot of research going into this area that suggests the effects will be moderate (some say on the negative side, others on the positive side).
Skeptics pride themselves on drawing conclusions on evidence, not emotion. This article is a fine example of doing the latter.
How is it possible for the Congress, EPA, and Doha to ever pass such mortifying laws? Most people who comment here would never think it possible. Well, it is both possible and now very probable, considering how the process works:
Just a Shotgun
You’re sound asleep when you hear a thump outside your bedroom door.
Half-awake, and nearly paralyzed with fear, you hear muffled whispers. At least two people have broken into your house and are moving your way.
With your heart pumping, you reach down beside your bed and pick up your shotgun.
You rack a shell into the chamber, then inch toward the door and open it.
In the darkness, you make out two shadows. One holds something that looks like a crowbar. When the intruder brandishes it as if to strike, you raise the shotgun and fire.
The blast knocks both thugs to the floor. One writhes and screams while the second man crawls to the front door and lurches outside.
As you pick up the telephone to call police, you know you’re in trouble. In your country, most guns were outlawed years before, and the few that are privately owned are so stringently regulated as to make them useless. Yours was never registered.
Police arrive and inform you that the second burglar has died. They arrest you for First Degree Murder and Illegal Possession of a Firearm.
When you talk to your attorney, he tells you not to worry: authorities will probably plea the case down to manslaughter. “What kind of sentence will I get?” you ask. “Only ten-to-twelve years,” he replies, as if that’s nothing. “Behave yourself, and you’ll be out in seven.”
The next day, the shooting is the lead story in the local newspaper. Somehow, you’re portrayed as an eccentric vigilante while the two men you shot are represented as choirboys.
Their friends and relatives can’t find an unkind word to say about them. Buried deep down in the article, authorities acknowledge that both “victims” have been arrested numerous times.
But the next day’s headline says it all: “Lovable Rogue Son Didn’t Deserve to Die.”
The thieves have been transformed from career criminals into Robin Hood-type pranksters. As the days wear on, the story takes wings. The national media picks it up, then the international media. The surviving burglar has become a folk hero.
Your attorney says the thief is preparing to sue you, and he’ll probably win. The media publishes reports that your home has been burglarized several times in the past and that you’ve been critical of local police for their lack of effort in apprehending the suspects.
After the last break-in, you told your neighbor that you would be prepared next time.
The District Attorney uses this to allege that you were lying in wait for the burglars.
A few months later, you go to trial. The charges haven’t been reduced, as your lawyer had so confidently predicted. When you take the stand, your anger at the injustice of it all works against you. Prosecutors paint a picture of you as a mean, vengeful man.
It doesn’t take long for the jury to convict you of all charges. The judge sentences you to life in prison!
This case really happened.
On August 22, 1999, Tony Martin of Emneth, Norfolk, England, killed one burglar and wounded a second. In April, 2000, he was convicted and is now serving a life term.
How did it become a crime to defend one’s own life in the once great British Empire?
It started with the Pistols Act of 1903. This seemingly reasonable law forbade selling pistols to minors or felons and established that handgun sales were to be made only to those who had a license.
The Firearms Act of 1920 expanded licensing to include not only handguns but all firearms except shotguns.
Later laws passed in 1953 and 1967 outlawed the carrying of any weapon by private citizens and mandated the registration of all shotguns. Momentum for total handgun confiscation began in earnest after the Hungerford mass shooting in 1987.
Michael Ryan, a mentally disturbed man with a Kalashnikov rifle, walked down the streets shooting everyone he saw. When the smoke cleared, 17 people were dead.
The British public, already de-sensitized by eighty years of “gun control”, demanded even tougher restrictions. (The seizure of all privately owned handguns was the objective even though Ryan used a rifle.)
Nine years later, at Dunblane, Scotland, Thomas Hamilton used a semi-automatic weapon to murder 16 children and a teacher at a public school.
For many years, the media had portrayed all gun owners as mentally unstable or worse, criminals. Now the press had a real kook with which to beat up law-abiding gun owners.
Day after day, week after week, the media gave up all pretense of objectivity and demanded a total ban on all handguns. The Dunblane Inquiry, a few months later, sealed the fate of the few side arms still owned by private citizens.
During the years in which the British government incrementally took away most gun rights, the notion that a citizen had the right to armed self-defense came to be seen as vigilantism.
Authorities refused to grant gun licenses to people who were threatened, claiming that self-defense was no longer considered a reason to own a gun. Citizens who shot burglars or robbers or rapists were charged while the real criminals were released.
Indeed, after the Martin shooting, a police spokesman was quoted as saying, “We cannot have people take the law into their own hands.”
All of Martin’s neighbors had been robbed numerous times, and several elderly people were severely injured in beatings by young thugs who had no fear of the consequences.
Martin himself, a collector of antiques, had seen most of his collection trashed or stolen by burglars.
When the Dunblane Inquiry ended, citizens who owned handguns were given three months to turn them over to local authorities. Being good British subjects, most people obeyed the law. The few who didn’t were visited by police and threatened with ten-year prison sentences if they didn’t comply.
Police later bragged that they’d taken nearly 200,000 handguns from private citizens.
How did the authorities know who had handguns? The guns had been registered and licensed.
Sound familiar?
Dr T G Watkins says:
December 3, 2012 at 8:07 am
I think Tim Yeo was mis-quoted in the Grauniad; apparently he said:
“I am extremely disappointed that the appointment of such a well qualified placeman has apparently been blocked.”
NeilT says: “Then you will, eventually, be held to account for your words and actions.”
This is the typical threat of the fanatic towards anyone who writes something they disagree with. NeilT is fond of quoting Churchill who stood against another form of tyranny. Here is a quote from Churchill’s opposite number which more appropriately applies to the NeilTs of this world and their blind acceptance of self-righteous CAGW dogma:
“All propaganda must be popular and its intellectual level must be adjusted to the most limited intelligence among those it is addressed to.”
Random thought: for biological sources of materials and energy to become economical viable (ie. sustainable), we probably need to release as much carbon (particularly CO2) into the atmosphere and soil as possible.
polistra says:
December 3, 2012 at 2:31 am
Stop blaming Obama…..
It’s not the Dems, its EVERY SINGLE BLOODY POLITICIAN EXCEPT JAMES INHOFE.
___________________________________________
You have got that right!
Follow the dotted lines.
1. Harry Dexter White worked at the U.S. Treasury Department from 1934 to 1946. He was the chief force behind the post-World War II Bretton Woods arrangements, which created the World Bank and the IMF. He was, therefore, a principal architect of the Cold War-era global capitalist economy. Most important, White was the highest-ranking American government official ever to have been reliably accused of being a Soviet spy.
So the World Bank and IMF were the results of the work by a TRAITOR.
# 2. World Bank’s Influence at IPCC, straight from good old Patchy himself.
Extended Interview:
Climate Science Leader Rajendra K. Pachauri : Why, the people will see it. After all, let’s face it, my predecessor [at IPCC, Robert Watson] was working with the World Bank and he was getting a salary from the World Bank while he was essentially working for the IPCC. You could say that he was serving the interest of the World Bank, which a lot of people would criticize.
# 3. Thanks to whistle blowers the World Bank does not succeed in its plans at Copenhagen
This sounds a lot like the World Bank/IMF much hated Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs)
Please note this is the end result of the bankruptcy of any country. The World bank/IMF moves in and take control of a country’s economic policies. This is the direction our politicians are driving the EU, USA and Australia towards. (Is U.S. already ‘bankrupt’?) The word traitor again comes to mind.
The World Bank and Economic Growth: 50 Years of Failure: The data show that most long-term recipients of World Bank money are no better off today then they were when they received their first loan. Many are actually worse off. And based on this track record we are going to hand them the control of the carbon funds???
#4. IPCC is left out of the current talks and a World Bank report is used instead. See WUWT
#5 yet as the World Bank is clubing politicians at DOHA over the head with a 4-5C castrophic warming they have INCREASED loans for Coal plant construction from 100 Million in 2050 to $4270 million in 2010! The US finances these loans at between 12% and 20% Between FY 1993 & 1995, the U.S. contributed an average of $1.2 billion/year to the World Bank.
#6 And just in case you wondered about what would happen to all that US coal, Just like in Australia, Coal’s not dying — it’s just getting shipped abroad
And remember all the flak in the USA about the Canadian oil pipline? Well Canada is signing a one-sided Canada-China trade deal – Ottawa capitulated to China on everything.
The killer confession:
And as a footnote:
Watch Out: The World Bank Is Quietly Funding a Massive Corporate Water Grab
Gamecock says:
December 3, 2012 at 3:39 am
Decadence destroyed the Romans; decadence is destroying us.
We are being failed by our free press. Rather than informing, they are cheer leading.
____________________________________
The press is not ‘FREE’ it is owned by the owner of the press and that owner is the banks.
If you go back to the U.S. Congressional Record February 9, 1917, page 2947 you find J. P. Morgan bought controlling interest of the press. Nothing much has changed since then.
GE owns 49% of MSNBC (a left-leaning news station) and J.P. Morgan was lead financial advisor to GE with Goldman Sachs and Citi acting as co-advisors
The Banks own the press and as I showed above they also own Congress.
Representative government??? Don’t make me laugh.
NeilT says:
December 3, 2012 at 3:46 am
Fine then leave the USA out of the race
Mike Haseler says:
December 3, 2012 at 6:49 am
The idea that Doha is a serious threat to anyone is laughable…
Why have so few sceptics noticed that it really is the end of this climate madness?
____________________________________
It is not Doha that is the problem it is Obama and a lame duck session of Congress. Despite a bitter fight for several years over the Food Safety act, it was passed during the lame duck session. Now we hear Republicans are thinking a carbon tax could be a great way to “Finding” more money.
I keep remembering Paul Warburg’s statement about the Federal Reserve Act, “Relax fellas, don’t you get it? Our object is to get the bill passed. We can fix it up later.”
Once the camel gets its nose in the tent the entire beast is sure to follow. Can you remember any bureaucracy that was dismantled without a war?
watch every large company reliant on fossil fuels leave the countries that sign up to this bilge. You will have an elite of green activists sitting on a pile of nothing, they will seal their own fate, perhaps it is better to speed up their wishes and watch the publics absolute hatred for these people grow, eventually they will be the ones who have to leave town.
For an idea of what will happen just look at California.
RCon says:
December 3, 2012 at 9:57 am
You feel that political action to attempt to lessen or prevent CAGW is a socialist/plutocracy/ conspiracy that will strip you of your freedom and bankrupt the masses, based on what exactly?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I am not going to repeat it. The environmental consequences I detailed HERE
The human cost HERE
and who benefits HERE.
Go read it. You might learn who your masters are.
re: robert barclay’s comment above about surface tension as a blocker of heat transfer.
Robert, Please conduct the following experiment. Fill a cooler with ice water. Insulate the sides and bottom of the cooler as thoroughly as you’d like. Put it in a dark room. Tell us how long it takes the water to reach room temperature.
Your theory predicts an answer just short of infinity. (Okay, not really since the R-factor of the cooler bottom is limited. But your theory does predict a very, very long time.)
To be sure that you are controlling for everything except the top surface of the water, try different shapes of coolers – some thermos-shaped (tall w/ narrow opening), some more cookie-sheet-shaped (lots of surface area) and some conventional cube-shaped coolers.
Your theory predicts that all will heat at the same rate because of the R-factor of the cooler walls and bottom. My prediction is that the cookie-sheet will warm much more quickly than the thermos.
The biggest threat worldwide are the environment agencies. They have more power to legislate than the government who appoints them and for good reason. As OBlarny said “there’s more than one way to skin a nation. He should know being born in a dictatorship.
The EPA regs are already in place, and projects have already been cancelled. Each year the restrictions will tighten. Why does this article talk like the EPA regs aren’t in place yet?
NeilT says:
December 3, 2012 at 3:46 am
Cue long, anti-U.S. anti-fossil fuel spittle-flecked rant with a reality basis of zero. You far-left greenie whackos are a disgrace to human society. Fortunately, your alarmist anti-human ideology is crumbling as we speak. Thinking people can see through it.
@Bruce Cobb says:
December 3, 2012 at 5:48 am
@H.R. says:
December 3, 2012 at 2:20 am
To which Bruce replied in part:
“The last election was more a failure of the GOP than an endorsement of Obama.”
Understood, but the people who stand to be hurt most by higher energy prices and higher costs of goods are those in the lower income brackets who voted to “tax the rich,” voted for Obama phones and free condoms, i.e. vote for Obama, and didn’t think through the total package. Inflationary measures low economic growth hurt everyone but the lower your income, the sooner you feel it.
I agree with your analysis. Not many voted for Romney even though they voted for Romney. I’m just saying I don’t want to hear any whining when the consequences of the election kick in. Of course we’ll hear whining, but I reserve the right to say “Told ya’ so” as needed.
RCon,
How do German and Danish electricity rates compare to France? What do you think the Danish rates would be if they didn’t have a small population and access to significant amounts of hydro power from Norway and Sweden? Do you believe that the net effects are beneficial?
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
–H. L. Mencken