I’m amazed this made it into the Washington Post – Anthony
The economy stagnates. Syria burns . Scandals lap at his feet. China and Russia mock him , even as a “29-year-old hacker” revealed his nation’s spy secrets to the world. How does President Obama respond? With a grandiloquent speech on climate change .
Climate change? It lies at the very bottom of a list of Americans’ concerns (last of 21 — Pew poll). Which means that Obama’s declaration of unilateral American war on global warming, whatever the cost — and it will be heavy — is either highly visionary or hopelessly solipsistic. You decide:
Global temperatures have been flat for 16 years — a curious time to unveil a grand, hugely costly, socially disruptive anti-warming program.
Now, this inconvenient finding is not dispositive. It doesn’t mean there is no global warming. But it is something that the very complex global warming models that Obama naively claims represent settled science have trouble explaining. It therefore highlights the president’s presumption in dismissing skeptics as flat-earth know-nothings.
On the contrary. It’s flat-earthers like Obama who refuse to acknowledge the problematic nature of contradictory data. It’s flat-earthers like Obama who cite a recent Alaskan heat wave — a freak event in one place at one time — as presumptive evidence of planetary climate change. It’s flat-earthers like Obama who cite perennial phenomena such as droughts as cosmic retribution for environmental sinfulness.
For the sake of argument, nonetheless, let’s concede that global warming is precisely what Obama thinks it is. Then answer this: What in God’s name is his massive new regulatory and spending program — which begins with a war on coal and ends with billions in more subsidies for new Solyndras — going to do about it?
The United States has already radically cut carbon dioxide emissions — more than any country on earth since 2006, according to the International Energy Agency. Emissions today are back down to 1992 levels.
And yet, at the same time, global emissions have gone up. That’s because — surprise! — we don’t control the energy use of the other 96?percent of humankind.
At the heart of Obama’s program are EPA regulations that will make it impossible to open any new coal plant and will systematically shut down existing plants. “Politically, the White House is hesitant to say they’re having a war on coal,” explained one of Obama’s climate advisers. “On the other hand, a war on coal is exactly what’s needed.”
Net effect: tens of thousands of jobs killed, entire states impoverished. This at a time of chronically and crushingly high unemployment, slow growth, jittery markets and deep economic uncertainty.
But that’s not the worst of it. This massive self-sacrifice might be worthwhile if it did actually stop global warming and save the planet. What makes the whole idea nuts is that it won’t. This massive self-inflicted economic wound will have no effect on climate change.
The have-nots are rapidly industrializing. As we speak, China and India together are opening one new coal plant every week. We can kill U.S. coal and devastate coal country all we want, but the industrializing Third World will more than make up for it. The net effect of the Obama plan will simply be dismantling the U.S. coal industry for shipping abroad.
To think we will get these countries to cooperate is sheer fantasy. We’ve been negotiating climate treaties for 20 years and gotten exactly nowhere. China, India and the other rising and modernizing countries point out that the West had a 150-year industrial head start that made it rich. They are still poor. And now, just as they are beginning to get rich, we’re telling them to stop dead in their tracks?
Fat chance. Obama imagines he’s going to cajole China into a greenhouse-gas emissions reduction that will slow its economy, increase energy costs, derail industrialization and risk enormous social unrest. This from a president who couldn’t even get China to turn over one Edward Snowden to U.S. custody.
I’m not against a global pact to reduce CO2. Indeed, I favor it. But in the absence of one — and there is no chance of getting one in the foreseeable future — there is no point in America committing economic suicide to no effect on climate change, the reversing of which, after all, is the alleged point of the exercise.
For a president to propose this with such aggressive certainty is incomprehensible. It is the starkest of examples of belief that is impervious to evidence. And the word for that is faith, not science.
Source: Washington Post
Even with this scathing article he buys the B.S.
“I’m not against a global pact to reduce CO2. Indeed, I favor it. But in the absence of one — and there is no chance of getting one in the foreseeable future — there is no point in America committing economic suicide to no effect on climate change, the reversing of which, after all, is the alleged point of the exercise.”
It’s not faith if core tenets have been disproven. It’s superstition.
So, he’s against unilateral economc suicide, but “indeed”, he favors it if it’s global?
follow the $$$$$$
As more and more years pass with no sign of a return to the halcyon days of rapid global warming typical of the end of the the 20th century, more and more people of the 21st century are turning away from the fear mongery of the AGW alarmism movement.
But politicians seem to be a bit slow at the best of times, and it will take another lustrum, or maybe even two, of no warming before the panic stricken carbon strangulation policies we see today are finally reversed.
Guess which journalist just rose to the top of the IRS audit list.
I wondered what Joe Romm at Climate Progress was whining about:
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/07/06/2252281/media-still-overlooks-90-of-global-warming-washington-post-still-wont-fact-check-colummnists/
His response was to cross post Nuccitelli nonsense.
Nice summary: It is the starkest of examples of belief that is impervious to evidence. And the word for that is faith, not science.”
The war on climate is a diversion away from the concerns of most Americans. You could say it’s deliberate. The problem is most American don’t care about slight warmth, the greening of the biosphere.
‘the other 96 percent of humankind’
If he’d said 97%, he’d have gotten more attention.
Well said Dr. Krauthammer. And we’re turning over this job killing, economy busting “carbon pollution” end run over to the fake-e-mail-sue-and-settle-cozy-up-to-Big-Green EPA? Come on America, stand your ground and fight!
GlynnMhor @ July 7, 2013 at 9:34 am
It’s not hard to understand the politicians. They smell a revenue stream. The same is true of the bureaucrats at the (dis)United Nations. After all: “Climate is de facto how we redistribute wealth.” (Ottmar Edenhofer, UN, IPCC) Surely they can take some “off the top” in the process.
Wow! Imagine what Krauthammer will write when he finally realizes that human CO2 has a ZERO measurable affect on earth’s temperature?
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/352591/inhospitable-earth-jonah-goldberg
Another mainstream pundit takes down Weepy Bill.
Syria? If he keeps you guys out of another Iraq, Afghanistan or Vietnam he will have been one of your best Presidents ever and will have saved countless lives of young Americans. This site may hate his politics with a vengeance, but you could have done with him in the run up to the pointless wars both our countries have become enmeshed in. Don’t focus on Syria Mr.President, just stay out of it. If climate change distracts you so much the better, it may be expensive, but not as expensive in money and wasted lives as war. I”l go and get my tin hat.
Gareth Phillips says:
July 7, 2013 at 9:53 am
A two-fer: so simplistic as to be meaningless, as well as wildly off-topic.
The article fails to point out that the biggest democratic party campaign donors and the powerful are all on the green gravy train (Goldman Sachs etc etc). All Obama cares about is money and votes and a great job upon retirement, It has nothing to do with doing the right thing for America.
I’m liking that this reporter is using the more honest term global warming instead of the catch-all, meaningless climate change (climate disruption seems to have never got off the ground – it was too stupid of the US government to think the general public would embrace such a term).
Whatever this journalist’s general beliefs – e.g. that the whole planet would benefit from reducing CO2 plant food – I nevertheless salute his honesty. The debate is not over climate change, it is over global warming.
In my local paper, The Waterbury Republican-American, the OP-ED page regularly features columns from James Barrante, a local college chemistry professor, dismantling various AGW arguments.
http://www.rep-am.com/shared-content/search/index.php?search=go&o=0&l=25&s=&r=&d1=&d2=&q=barrante
Gareth Phillips says:
July 7, 2013 at 9:53 am
“Syria? If he keeps you guys out of another Iraq, Afghanistan or Vietnam he will have been one of your best Presidents ever and will have saved countless lives of young Americans. This site may hate his politics with a vengeance, but you could have done with him in the run up to the pointless wars both our countries have become enmeshed in.”
What war did Obama stop? See, Gareth, the drone strikes in Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, etc go on. The “most transparent administration in history” only has a while back declared that they won’t be reported any more. Oh you didn’t know that? maybe got your information from MSM? Yeah ok, crawl back under your rock then.
Gareth: If Chamberlain were alive today he could well have written your post.
Ask Iraqis and Kuwaitis if they think the Gulf War was pointless. While America cannot police the world we can pick our battles carefully. Where fanaticism is in play it is folly to now think we can cover our eyes. Isolationism delays the inevitable conflicts or trades the liberty of Western Societies for the liberty of others. It is a trade our leaders are usually unwilling to make – at least those who know their history.
If your point is to keep your head down until the fight is at your door, I can at least understand that. If your point is that you keep your head down thinking the fight will never come to your door – I hope the tin foil hat protects you.
I see no mystery here.
It’s worse than faith or superstition. If the perpetrators were merely pretending it was their faith it would be less offensive and not so dastardly.
However we are witness political chicanery of the worst kind commingled with and exacerbated by the many interests and causes benefiting directly and indirectly from institutionalized advocacy by and for government influence, revenue and control .
Obama is mendaciously attempting to firm up this mega global warming mission in order to stabilize and preserve the countless other parasitic causes, influence and revenue streams.
Even from cold blooded party interests the Democrats cannot afford the calamitous embarrassment and systemic implosion from a AGW collapse.
If AGW collapses they and many other interdependent groups will not be able to avoid being branded as fraudsters and shamed by millions. They will lose their credibility, their donors and their votes.
There is no level of massive self-inflicted economic wound they will NOT view as preferable to their own demise.
This is the most expansive and corrupted self interest story in the history of human kind.
It has infected government and academia at every level in every location.
Without some miraculous cure the parasitic perpetrators will choose to suffocate the human experience before surrendering.
War is hell. For mankind this is worse.
Anthony, why are you surprised that Krauthammer’s essay got published in WaPo?
WaPo’s adoring liberal readers have been starved for red-meat with all the attention being given to Obama scandals with the NSA, IRS, DOJ, HHS, and other three-letter government words that garner four-letter words from the American public, both left and right. Judging from the reader response, the WaPo alarmists got exactly what they wanted, short of publishing an article by Anthony Watts. They got fresh meat to devour.
Can’t say I agree with all that Krauthammer said in the article, especially with respect to “not opposing a CO2 pact. . .” I reckon he needed to make that statement so that he could still attend Washington cocktail parties and so that Steve Zwick followers don’t burn down his house. Considering the climate in Washington–which needs changing badly–this is an understandable caveat.
Members of Congress and their staffers read WaPo paper edition–it is important that they periodically see articles opposed to the current regulatory proposals. These are being “fast-tracked” for a September 20, 2013 EPA rule revision. I’ll guarantee that EPA, OMB, and OIRA review of these regulatory changes will have as much transparency as FISA, NSA, ObamaCare, and ObamaCare combined. Since the new regs will fall under the Clean Air Act duly passed and amended by Congress, I would think that Congress needs to be aware of how the Act is being administered.
WUWT is read by many smart people. Maybe some of these smart readers can help me with a few questions:
1. What provisions in the CAA allow Presidential authority to modify emission standards for existing power generation plants?
2. What processes must the EPA undertake to get new rules approved in a manner that has reasonable Benefit/Cost ratios.
3. What scientific proof must the EPA provide that CO2 must be regulated?
I thank anybody in advance for their kind assistance.
I let out a cheer that astonished my cat, when I read, “It is flat-earthers like Obama,” but then let out a sigh when he temporized with, “For the sake of argument, nonetheless, let’s concede that global warming is precisely what Obama thinks it is.”
For the sake of argument? We have been arguing this over and over for fifteen years! It’s fifteen years since Mann produced his “hockey stick.” It has been debunked over and over and over, up, down and sideways. For the sake of argument? I’m sorry, but the argument is over. Briffa’s recent graph was just one more nail in the coffin. What do we have to do to bury the darn thing? A stake through it’s heart?
The net effect of the Obama plan will simply be dismantling the U.S. coal industry for shipping abroad.
For a president to propose this with such aggressive certainty is incomprehensible.
Unless the aim is the destruction of US industry and nothing to do with ‘global warming’.
Global temperatures have been flat for 16 years…….
I’m not against a global pact to reduce CO2. Indeed, I favor it.
and there is no chance of getting one in the foreseeable future —
====
what is it with these loons….that they feel they have to placate
That country is famous for religious cult suicides… I guess this fall in the same category?
What is CO2, a natural component of the atmosphere and a harmless trace gas and plant food. There is no real evidence it does or indeed can influence the climate in the way and to the degree the alarmist eco corporate side asserts, its is a political tool to forcibly reduce consumption and manipulate demand for fossil fuels. The alarmist side has been very successful in falsely accusing CO2 and it has since been accepted as true in the collective mind of the MSM.
That and only that is the real reason why CO2 has been systematically demonized and set up as a pollutant by a political class genetically unable to tell the truth. The only viable method of weaning ourselves off fossil fuels would be to exploit them to the fullest while new technology driven by a vibrant free enterprise economy moves forward to exploit new technologies and methods of energy production.
My understanding is that CO2 emissions are a boon to mankind. As we increase our emissions, mankind will benefit ever more. CO2 is one of the currencies of one of our planet’s life-cycles.
People surprised that a politician will actually go ahead and destroy the economies of entire states aren’t looking at the precedent for all of this: the Northern Spotted Owl decision, and the destruction that rained on certain logging communities in the Pacific Northwest.
This led directly to the suicide cult of Curt Cobane, who was from the post-spotted owl town of Aberdeen, WA. Aberdeen is still a rusty dump, 2500 miles from the midwestern ‘rust belt’. It’s a has-been hole that’s never coming back. It’s an eyesore for Seattlites on their way to the ocean resorts.
West Virginia, I’ve seen your future, and it looks like Aberdeen. Brought to you by Environmentalism, Inc.
And when the United States impoverishes itself this WILL ruin national defense. Our natural resources will still be there ready to be exploited and other countries will want those abundant resources. An self-impoverished United Stated is a vulnerable United States. By hook or crook other countries will swoop in like birds of prey or like vultures.
What Obama is doing is terrible for prosperity and our national defense, too.
‘I’m not against a global pact to reduce CO2. Indeed, I favor it.’
I’m not sorry to say that Krauthammer completely loses me with that statement. A conservative supporting international governance in energy rationing? Wow!
Why don’t you want America to commit economic suicide just like us Brits?! We’ve just opened a £1.9 billion offshore 175 turbine windfarm near the Thames estuary that produces – wait for it – 630 Megawatts when the wind is blowing! Suicide is painless; come on in, the water’s lovely.
Reblogged this on If You Voted For It — You Own It and commented:
Charles Krauthammer is one of my favorite pundits for giving his readers significant insight into the political problems of the day, and potential solutions. He has not disappointed me on global-warming, but I do not understand why he supports CO2 reduction when it so important to plant growth and increased productivity.
“is either highly visionary or hopelessly solipsistic”
How about simply assinine and narsissitic? He can vote present for this,but not Syria,Egypt,Somalia,etc. So’s how that 100 mil for his vacation working out? This guy isn’t even a politician.A blatant psycho out for himself,and his following Agenda 21.
Actually the Wash Post includes Krauthammer’s column, once a week. They can’t be too happy about the things he says in it, though.
Solipsistic: What a great word.
“Which means that Obama’s declaration of unilateral American war on global warming, whatever the cost — and it will be heavy — is either highly visionary or hopelessly solipsistic. You decide:”
Neither, he is being intensionally destructive of a country, economic system and culture which he intensely dislikes. It is obvious from his personal history, past associations and most of the actions he takes as president.
What [are] billions in more subsidies for new Solyndras — going to do about it?
—————————————————-
It will syphon off money for his friends. They erect Potemkin-village factories, call them “green”, apply for and get gov’t funding, then declare bankruptcy and evaporate with the money.
Tom J says:
July 7, 2013 at 10:43 am
“‘I’m not against a global pact to reduce CO2. Indeed, I favor it.’
I’m not sorry to say that Krauthammer completely loses me with that statement. A conservative supporting international governance in energy rationing? Wow!”
Being right on some things does not preclude being an idiot on others. Not sure if he has any scientific education but, after all, there are plenty of supposed scientists who would agree with him about CO2, that 0.039% of our atmosphere without which the Earth would be a dead planet.
Charles Krauthammer is a featured columnist for the Washington Post. He is their pet conservative, so he has to temper his comments, or they will get someone more malleable.
I don’t think Krauthammer is doing anything more than throwing a sop to the newspaper with his ‘global warming’ comments. His main thrust in this article was not over global warming, it was at the ineptitude of the Obama Administration, and Krauthammer is right on target.
As for global warming, readers here know where the planet is, where it has been, and where it is likely to be again — all despite any input from human activity, which is so minuscule that its effect cannot even be measured.
The central problem is having a president who has never held a real job, or met a payroll, and who has had everything handed to him on a silver platter. Someone like that cannot help but make serial bad decisions, because he has been protected from the repercussions of life experiences that the rest of us have had. Obama has never been made to pay for his mistakes.
I wonder why no reporter has ever investigated Obama’s shady background? No one at Columbia can even remember him being a student there. No one! And how did he get into Harvard? What about questions surrounding his Social Security number, and his obviously fabricated birth certificate? Why did he Abstain from almost every vote in Congress? Where has he ever worked in the private sector? And what law authorized him to spend $200 million of taxpayers’ money on an African trip — only the latest jaunt, out of his continuous foreign travels, in which he takes along his extended family members and various free riders, all expenses paid by the taxpayers — people who hold no official positions in government?
And no one investigates how his Administration got to Chief Justice John Roberts — the one solid vote that everyone knew would go down against Obamacare? They flipped Roberts, it is glaringly obvious. Roberts consistently gave clear messages that he believed Obamacare was unconstitutional, even during oral arguments. His flip-flop was a total surprise to everyone. They got to Petraeus, and they got to Roberts, no question. The only question is: how?
There is a wealth of opportunity for any investigative reporter worth his salt. Someone could make a real name for themself; become a household name world-wide. So why has no one — no one at all — taken on that challenge? There is a huge story there, for anyone who wants to be the next Woodward/Bernstein. Have they all been intimidated?
Inquiring minds want to know.
I check to see what Krauthammer has to say every day. Stop by WUWT as often.
dbstealey says:
July 7, 2013 at 11:17 am
Stanley Kurtz wrote “Radical-In-Chief” about Obama’s history – extremely well-researched. Otherwise, the Left has a hammer-lock on our media, the public sector and the academy.
===================================================================
I had to look it up. Yes, it is a great word to describe the CAGWers.
I can understand the “For the sake of argument” approach but I don’t understand his welcoming a Global solution to solve a problem which does not exist.
I hope that when he said he favored CO2 reduction was still in “For the sake argument” mode but wrote it poorly or, perhaps, someone edited his text.
Jim G says:
July 7, 2013 at 11:13 am
‘Being right on some things does not preclude being an idiot on others. Not sure if he has any scientific education…’
Charles Krauthammer is trained a a psychiatrist. That’s not quite the same as a scientific education but he should have a technical medical knowledge. So I would think he would have at least a rudimentary knowledge or awareness of CO2 in nature’s life cycles.
Thanks for your insight.
“I’m amazed this made it into the Washington Post – Anthony”
I get your point, Anthony. Krauthammer is the best analyst among the few conservative journalists that remain and he continues to have a lot of clout. That is why the article was published. That said, the Washington Post does offer some regular conservative voices that are first-rate, including Jennifer Rubin and George Will.
If O’Bama buys it then it’s nothing less than the foundation of a war with China seeing as they are on a coal-firing plant-opening tare that will bring about our demise. And as for bringing to a halt the developmental aspirations of the 3rd world; when they ask “hey, what about us”, we can answer, as maybe once heard at a Navajo breakfast..”piss on the fire, we’ve made out toast!”
As far as being genuinely conservative you never can really trust Krauthammer. Like in August 2009 he said he was “shocked” by the Tea Party protests and that there would certainly be a backlash. Or worse I think, during the gas price spike of 2008 he came out for a national 55mph speed limit. That, Jimmy Carter’s prime achievement, was horrible. By the time of repeal even the Democrats were mostly on board.
I don’t mind a soft conservative. But Krauthammer’s positions are just too erratic or unpredictable. There’s plenty of better and more reliable talking heads that Fox could put on. And he’s obviously on board with Chris Christie and Jon Huntsman in believing the leftist global warming scam. No, we don’t want an international agreement to limit CO2. That’s the whole point of what we are fighting. Geez. That’s exactly the globalization of govt and the curtailment of industrial society that the warmist loons want. Krauthammer should be ashamed, and perhaps should be off the air.
Just Steve: Thanks for the link. That was an enjoyable read.
“I’m not against a global pact to reduce CO2. Indeed, I favor it.”
Uh, why?
If our CO2 emissions aren’t causing a detectable problem, why worry?
“I’m not against a global pact to reduce CO2. Indeed, I favor it. But….”
being a psychiatrist, perhaps he is using rhetoric here to placate (by establishing common ground) and persuade his audience (AGW crowd) to his arguments.
also, the word “but” negates all that has been said before it.
Obama was very late coming to the climate party and arrives just as the key players finish their idle talk, put on their coats and leave to go home.
tonyb
Krauthammer shows a serious problem that civilized man has. He “knows” that CO2 causes the global temperature to rise, just as he once knew that the Earth was the center of the Universe. We have been told that so often that it is a part of most cultures. It is going to be very hard to eradicate, although a lot of evidence says otherwise. It would be interesting to take a poll of the entire population of the United States: How many people don’t believe it to be true?
There is a host of self-centred and greedy ulterior motives different people have for supporting the CAGW paradigm.
1- For researchers, once a paradigm becomes popular and dominant, it is career limiting to oppose it.
2- If the climate is presented as something about which governments can make policies, then government money will flow for research. If climate is something that we cannot affect, funding is not going to be as forthcoming.
3- Plus of course it gives researchers a good feeling to imagine that they’re working to ‘save the world’ instead of, say, developing a new scent for feminine hygiene products.
4- Environmentalists see carbon emission control as a means to reduce real pollutants like NOx, SO2, Hg, etc. as a side effect.
5- Luddites see carbon strangulation as a way of dismantling the industrial economies to force everyone to a much reduced subsistence.
6- ‘Personal isolationists’ try to use AGW as a way to eliminate big utility companies, with power generated at home from wind, solar, or even car batteries, and even sold to the local grid at retail (or higher) rates.
7- EU trade isolationists see carbon regulation as a way of increasing the energy cost, and thus decreasing the competitiveness, of North American economies _vis a vis_ EU ones.
8- Opportunities to use carbon emissions as pretexts to block or heavily tariff imports abound, thus degrading international trade even further.
9- Local trade isolationists like the idea of overseas products becoming more expensive, and if they can’t do that by punitive tariffs and quotas, they hope to do so by artificially driving up shipping costs.
10- Various people see Kyoto-type agreements as a way of transferring wealth from developed economies to lesser ones, as the one-time Canadian Liberal Party cabinet minister Stewart once claimed.
11- Some also envision carbon strangulation as a pretext for involving governments deeply into the economy, via direct and indirect subsidies for energy alternatives that can claim to be ‘green’. Naturally, those who are involved and invested in such industries have their own greed factor.
12- Believers in Big Government also love the idea of sending governments even more of our money under any pretext, and use carbon taxes as a way to transfer even more money to people in lower income levels.
13- Some politicians see taking ‘the west’ off oil as a means of removing the dependence the US in particular has on politically uncertain sources.
14- Other politicans see ‘cap & trade’ or other quota management as a way to direct corruption to their buddies and relatives.
15- Nuclear energy proponents see carbon strangulation as a way to promote nuclear power.
16- Some people imagine that energy cost reductions will magically pay for, and even squeeze profit from, expensive carbon control technologies whose payback times are actually measured (when they aren’t just dead costs) in decades.
17- Opportunistic “businessmen” see the panic of the masses as an opportunity to solicit donations to so-called “non-profit” organizations or to operate carbon credit companies in order to enrich themselves financially.
18- Financial trading corporations like Goldman Sachs see carbon trading as an opportunity to generate a new financial bubble out of an inexistant commodity (carbon credits) with which to justify huge profits and staggering executive bonuses.
19- In politics it is generally held far more important to be consistent than it is to be right. Lies and errors about warming are thus propagated further, instead of being squelched, in order to bolster the political optics.
20- Some people propose deliberately crushing economic growth to be an improvement over what they think will happen if we let growth proceed naturally.
21- The UN sees carbon credits as an opportunity to create a tax base for itself and a steady income.
22- And there are some who are actually sincere, who desperately want to believe that they can by sacrificing (or by forcing the rest of us to sacrifice) contribute to saving the world. But just because you make a sacrifice to superstition doesn’t mean that your AGW deity is going to come through for you.
Charles Krauthammer is my favorite analyst on TV. I always try to listen to his opinions and it is one of the reasons I watch “Special Report” on Fox News at 6 PM to get his take on important issues of the day. He is generally on the panel of the program and he is always eloquent, full of insight, and generally factual (in my opinion) although I don’t always agree with his points. The downside of the program, since Fox is fair and balanced, Juan Williams is also normally on the panel and his role in life is to support the administration regardless of how wrong and lacking facts his opinion happens to be.
I agree with others and am disappointed in his comment regarding the desire for global reduction of CO2 emissions. His point is accurate however that the developing nations are not going to accept CO2 emission reductions since they know burning carbon this is the key to getting out of “poverty” and developing industry.
I wish the Administration shared this wisdom.
As Charles put it ” To think we will get these countries to cooperate is sheer fantasy.”
Does anyone with a brain think otherwise? Well maybe Juan will repeat it anyway.
What Dr Krauthammer doesn’t mention (but I’m sure he understands) is that this President doesn’t need to DO anything about an issue (except stall, delay and deny) as long he is on the side of his political fanatics (greens, Hollywood) and political funders (Goldman Sachs, Warren Buffet el al).
“You don’t have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind blows”.
Doesn’t that phrase just sum it up on so many levels!
Mark and two Cats says:
July 7, 2013 at 11:06 am
“. . . then declare bankruptcy and evaporate with the money.”
It is a bit more sophisticated than your statement implies. Neither the money nor the major investors “evaporate.” Usually there has been a very direct transfer of wealth from tax payers to someone (or several) that invested some amount to create an operation that was then leveraged into a source of funds that could make a payday. After bankruptcy there are assets that need to be liquidated at cents on the dollar. Who better to take these assets off the market than someone very close to the operation? Then there are capital losses that sometimes can be transferred and carried forward for the new (old) investors. The big headline (Bankrupt!) is reported. The next news cycle happens and the story evaporates but the scurrying for the underlying wealth goes on. And on.
Mike Kelter, you bring up a few good questions, and the answers are a bit upsetting.
The EPA can regulate any air pollutant as they see fit, and is not bound by a cost/benefit analysis. The SCOTUS has determined that CO2 is an air pollutant, and the EPA determined that it endangers human health, therefore they can regulate it. Congress has given them far more authority than they should have, and until that authority is modified, they are free to destroy the economy as they see fit. The zealots at EPA are drooling over the wealth they now have the power to redistribute.
When you think about the relative needs of the two types of life on Earth — plants and animals — you have to realize we’re pretty lucky. Or blessed.
Plants only need around 250 ppm of CO2 to thrive. They’ll do better with more, of course, and I don’t know what a plant optimum would be. The CO2 levels they love have absolutely no effect on our aspiration. On the other hand, we need O2 levels of around 200,000 ppm to thrive. More might be better, but we definitely have a high limit after which oxygen does Bad Things.
How lucky we are that the plants which produce the relatively high level of oxygen we need to live are unaffected by that oxygen, while the CO2 they need leaves us just as unaffected.
If that’s not a symbiosis, I don’t know what is.
Here’s an article I wrote for our paper, the Evansville Courier and Press:
http://www.courierpress.com/news/2013/may/30/co2-overhyped-as-air-pollution-threat/
My objective was to present this issue from a unique perspective that might sneak some legit facts into some closed minds. The bias on this issue and the internet still having countless sources that reinforce the junk science hypnosis make that challenging.
Most people, after deciding they know something, interpret new information differently than before. If it confirms what they know, it gets stored as knowledge. If it contradicts what they know, it gets rejected.
Evidence of this can be seen from the 64 comments to my article. I was chief meteorologist on one of our local tv stations from 1982-93, with many of the readers aware of this. SInce that time, the paper has always been thrilled to print the 25 or so articles that I sent them.
This is another one from last month, that discusses tornado’s.
http://www.courierpress.com/news/2013/jun/16/modern-technology-lessens-threat-from-tornadoes/
“Fortunately, the warming of higher latitudes in the 1980s and 1990s decreased the meridional temperature contrast that provides the energy for these type of tornadoes. As a result, over the past 40 years, strong and violent tornadoes have decreased. From 1954 to 1974, with modest global cooling, the United States had 7 years with 70 or more strong to violent tornadoes. Since 1974, there has only been one year, 2011 with that many of the most destructive and deadly tornadoes”
Gareth Phillips says: @ July 7, 2013 at 9:53 am
Syria? If he keeps you guys out of another Iraq, Afghanistan or Vietnam he will have been one of your best Presidents ever and will have saved countless lives of young Americans. This site may hate his politics with a vengeance, but you could have done with him in the run up to the pointless wars both our countries have become enmeshed in….
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AFGHANISTAN: After the August 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings President Bill Clinton ordered missile strikes on militant training camps in Afghanistan….
VIETNAM Eisenhower sent military advisers to train the Army of the Republic of Vietnam on November 1, 1955 before French troops left the country. In May 1961 President Kennedy (D) sent 400 United States Army Special Forces personnel to South Vietnam and in October Robert S. McNamara recommends sending six divisions (200,000 men) to Vietnam and in 1962 President Kennedy signs the Foreign Assistance Act of 1962, which provides “…military assistance to countries which are on the rim of the Communist world and under direct attack.” by November of 1963 Kennedy had increased the number of Americans in Vietnam to 16,000. President Johnson (D) after Kennedy’s assassination appointed General Westmoreland who expanded the number of US troops after the Gulf of Tonkin Incident on August 2, 1964. American forces rose from 16,000 during 1964 to more than 553,000 by 1969. It was Nixon (R) who laid the groundwork for the departure of U.S. troops in 1973.
IRAQ You could go back to President Carter(D) not supporting the Shah of Iraq in 1979 or further back to President Eisenhower’s interference to bring the Shah back to the throne or even further back to the imperial UK. Either way there was a backlash to the Shah’s attempt to drag his country into the 20th Century setting the stage for Bush (R) to attack after the 9/11 attack on the towers.
And you forgot OBAMA’S military intervention in Libya in 2011.
To say “The Democrats” or to say “The Republicans” got us into a war is to show massive ignorance of history and politics.
It is why CONGRESS has to approve a declaration of War BTW Article I Section 8 of the Constitution explicitly gives Congress the power to declare War. Officially, this power has only been used by Congress for five conflicts. It has been nearly 70 years since the last time Congress has declared war. It is worth reading the whole article. Seems Congress has sued the Admin. for exceeding its powers on several occasions including suing Obama, Bush, Clinton, Reagan and Carter. In all cases the judiciary turned tail and fled the fight.
What we need are a couple of distinctly cool years. That will give the hidden skeptics in the mainstream the cover they need to come out with their doubts.
“EPA Finds Greenhouse Gases Pose Threat to Public Health, Welfare / Proposed Finding Comes in Response to 2007 Supreme Court Ruling”
http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/0/0ef7df675805295d8525759b00566924
The Supreme court ruling was a split decision. All the liberal judges went one way and conservatives the other. As Downdraft stated, the EPA can now regulate CO2 any way it deems fit.
In fact, they already have. Any new power plants built must have a carbon capture technology that has not been invented yet……….meaning that, no new power plants can be built that will use coal……..period.
http://www.usclimatenetwork.org/resource-database/carbon-pollution-standards-faqs/
I did take him to task on that ( co2 nonsense) as he is a fellow blogger at the Patriot Post
Mike Kelter says: @ July 7, 2013 at 10:27 am
…WUWT is read by many smart people. Maybe some of these smart readers can help me with a few questions….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
From the fight over Animal ID (NAIS) I can tell you that the EPA, USDA, FDA et al can make laws without Congressional approval. It did go before the Supreme Court who said as long as the proposed regulations were posted in the Federal Register for a comment period by the public the regulations would stand as laws without going through Congress. (Yeah I know GRRRrrr)
This means someone (Heartland, CFact, Competitive Enterprise Institute or whoever) has to wade through the Federal Register EVERY DAY to see when the comment period is open and then broadcast it to skeptics. You may be sure the Astroturf Greenie movements have a direct line into the EPA. Think the EPA’s secret email alias of “Richard Windsor”
This is a starting place https://www.federalregister.gov/environment
Whether we out number the mindless green drones remains to be seen. Also the bureaucrats DO NOT GIVE UP. After several tries and a HE!! NO! response from the public each time we still got Animal ID we just delayed it by five years. This was trumpeted as “Listening to our objections and devising a compromise” It was started under Clinton still pursued under Bush and finally implemented under Obama. The political party ‘In Power’ didn’t mean a hill of beans in the pressure to implement the program. Farmers though Obama would support them but no such luck.
Just 25% of voters think the federal government today has their consent and more Americans than ever (63%) think a government that is too powerful is a bigger danger in the world today than one that is not powerful enough. Also from Rasmussen polls Just seven percent (7%) of voters think Congress is doing a good or excellent job, talk about a vote of no confidence! 51% of voters think all EPA regulations should require congressional approval before they can be implemented. That’s up eight points from 43% in late December.
Neil,Dirk and CKD, thanks for the responses. Uncomfortable stuff eh? I take the point about the drones though. By the way, the response is only off topic if you discount the original post. Cheers G
ckb says:
July 7, 2013 at 10:21 am
Gareth: If Chamberlain were alive today he could well have written your post.
Ask Iraqis and Kuwaitis if they think the Gulf War was pointless. While America cannot police the world we can pick our battles carefully. Where fanaticism is in play it is folly to now think we can cover our eyes. Isolationism delays the inevitable conflicts or trades the liberty of Western Societies for the liberty of others. It is a trade our leaders are usually unwilling to make – at least those who know their history.
If your point is to keep your head down until the fight is at your door, I can at least understand that. If your point is that you keep your head down thinking the fight will never come to your door – I hope the tin foil hat protects you.
Gareth responds,
Hey, get it right, it’s a tin hat! I take your point though, some wars have to be fought, but it does not mean we should go out looking for them, especially when we are counting every penny.
@ Gail Combs says:
July 7, 2013 at 2:47 pm
It is why CONGRESS has to approve a declaration of War BTW Article I Section 8 of the Constitution explicitly gives Congress the power to declare War. Officially, this power has only been used by Congress for five conflicts. It has been nearly 70 years since the last time Congress has declared war. It is worth reading the whole article. Seems Congress has sued the Admin. for exceeding its powers on several occasions including suing Obama, Bush, Clinton, Reagan and Carter. In all cases the judiciary turned tail and fled the fight.
Thanks Gail, good analysis of the complexities and how easy it is to slide into these things without Parliamentary or Congressional approval. In comparison Climate issues may waste money, but they don’t waste lives.
Thanks Anthony, good reporting. Charles Krauthammer is a regular opinion writer at the Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/charles-krauthammer/2011/02/24/ADJkW7B_page.html). He does not appear to have gone much into the CO2 climate sensitivity controversy and accepts the IPCC view.
But, he sees the distraction and the damage from the “war on carbon”.
Indeed. Gareth is one of the last remaining members of Hussein’s Iraqi Republican Guard, reduced to the silly crying girl saying ‘You should’a left Saddam alone, he wasn’t hurting anybody except Arabs‘. How shocking to hear such pompousness from westerners blogging from their comfortable chairs on their iPads and laptops. Does he not know that they have much more free elections and independent news media now ( quite possibly freer and more independent than ours here in the USA )? Clearly there is nothing stopping him now from going to Baghdad and leading a movement to return the nation to the good old days of Ba’ath tyranny. He could lead a march, a demonstration, and carry signs or something.
He rarely mentions it but Gareth is a comfortable UK resident lecturing others from afar, like us in the USA on why our Socialist neo-Communist masters are so good for ‘the many’ at the expense of ‘the few’ ( quite curious definition of ‘few’ btw ). So in the spirit of reciprocation let’s all return the favor and suggest our UK brothers and sisters dump the pound, accept the Euro, dissolve parliament and relocate to Brussels, and while they’re at it toss English and adopt French and German as official languages. Wait, what? He might not reject any of those proposals?! Right then, support UKIP, ban all things Euro and outlaw the Socialists. 🙂
It is quite reasonable and logical to implement carbon capture and taxes if the purpose is NOT control of climate, but rather control of who gets the money.
The goal is to assure a nice fat flow of cash to “the right people” and “income redistribution”. Nothing more. Once you realize that; and that much of the rest of the “narrative” is just to give a plausible “story” to the “useful idiots”; then it all makes much more sense…
The profound lack of “logic and reason” is simply testimony to the fact that it isn’t about climate.
The picture below is worth more than 1,000 words. It clearly shows the wasted billions of tax payer dollars to fund these models based on theorized physics represented by using mathematical equations that my 6 year old grand daughter can tell you are wrong by looking at this picture and playing the Sesame Street game: “Which one of these things is not like the others”
The many lines above represent the numerous ensembles of global climate model predictions for temperatures. The dark red and blue lines, all below are real world temperatures based on actual measurements. The models are becoming more and more divergent with reality.
These models are being used to formulate our governments policies, including those outlined in President Obama’s speech last month. Those policies will end up costing us trillions by the time our children are grown up.
Oh, by the way, my grand daughter goes to one of the best schools in Indiana. In her first grade science book this year, she learned that carbon dioxide is pollution and is causing the earth to get too warm and we need to take actions to stop it because it is harming the planet in many ways.
Too bad they don’t teach about the proven law of photosynthesis anymore. At least not regarding the key role that Carbon Dioxide plays and how the increase in CO2 the last 100 years is causing all plants and food crops to grow much bigger.
Mr. Obama stated “And someday, our children, and our children’s children, will look at us in the eye and they’ll ask us, did we do all that we could when we had the chance to deal with this problem and leave them a cleaner, safer, more stable world?”
Since there has been no warming for 15 years and CO2 has provided mostly benefits and is not causing climate change, I contend they will instead look back at this time frame and ask how we let legit science get hijacked by those with political agenda’s and use it to brainwash them and their generation with junk science based on theories that you can see for yourself below, have already been proven dead wrong.
The truth is in this picture/graph.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2013/04/global-warming-slowdown-the-view-from-space/
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2013/06/still-epic-fail-73-climate-models-vs-measurements-running-5-year-means/
Ian W says:
July 7, 2013 at 10:28 am
….For a president to propose this with such aggressive certainty is incomprehensible.
Unless the aim is the destruction of US industry and nothing to do with ‘global warming’.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Of course the aim is to destroy the USA. They came right out and said for gosh sakes!
Obviously this is Obama’s real goal. It is also restated by Pascal Lamy Director General of the World Trade Organization.
I think that Scott Rasmussen nailed it.
In other words the politicians view us as cattle in the same way that the old Aristocracy viewed their serfs. This is why we get nothing but lies and subterfuge. Why over the years we have seen a gradual morphing of our government until we find our lives are ruled by a vast unelected bureaucracy where we do not even have a recourse to the court system for an impartial review. More on the trashing of the USA court system link 1 and link 2
and
China, India and the other rising and modernizing countries point out that the West had a 150-year industrial head start that made it rich. They are still poor. And now, just as they are beginning to get rich, we’re telling them to stop dead in their tracks?
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I believe China and India had a 5000 year head start.
cn
GlynnMhor says:
July 7, 2013 at 9:34 am………………………….
But politicians seem to be a bit slow at the best of times, and it will take another lustrum, or maybe even two, of no warming before the panic stricken carbon strangulation policies we see today are finally reversed.
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Politicians will wait and see how Obama’s policies are received.
A trial balloon. Hell, it’s always election season.
cn
Tom Jones says: @ July 7, 2013 at 1:12 pm
…. It would be interesting to take a poll of the entire population of the United States: How many people don’t believe it to be true?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I like Rasmussen because he actually gives a link to the survey questions HERE Note they are questions and not multiple choice or yes/no.
Planetary surface temperatures have very little to do with incident radiation. At the base of the theoretical troposphere of Uranus it is about 320K but virtually no Solar radiation reaches down through 350Km of its atmosphere to that altitude.
The Sun cannot heat the surfaces of planets like Earth and Venus to the observed temperatures with direct radiation. So it doesn’t matter how much the atmosphere slows cooling if we can’t explain how the temperature gets to 288K on Earth or 730K on Venus before any such cooling begins.
In fact it is energy from the Sun which does the warming by first heating the atmosphere with incident radiation. That absorbed energy then disturbs the thermodynamic equilibrium and this leads to convective heat transfer down towards the surface. In physics “convective heat transfer” can comprise diffusion as well as advection, but advection is not necessary. We don’t need to explain such heat transfer by imagining air moving up or down. We need to understand the process described in the Second Law of Thermodynamics, as in Sections 4 to 9 of the paper “Planetary Core and Surface Temperatures” easily found in a search.
amazed this got in The Australian:
8 July: Australian: Harry Edwards: Protests stop wind farm plan
A LARGE wind farm proposed for near Goulburn in NSW has been shelved after protests from local landholders including Maurice Newman, the former head of the Australian Securities Exchange who has been anointed to chair a new business advisory council if the Coalition wins this year’s federal election…
Mr Newman, who opposes wind farms and has pledged to lobby against subsidies for them, argues that fluctuations in output from renewable energy sources have increased power costs for consumers by requiring the construction of expensive backup generators…
In January Tony Abbott announced that Mr Newman — appointed by the Howard government to chair the ABC — was his choice to head a new business advisory council for a Coalition government…
“The cost of energy was a comparative advantage for Australia, which offset the relatively higher wage rates of our population,” Mr Newman told The Australian yesterday. “That benefit has been squandered and you can’t underestimate the role of renewable energy behind that lack of competitiveness.
“What the present government has done is decide we should make Australia less competitive by lifting the price of electricity.
“Therefore, if there is a change of government, I’m sure that any business council that I chair will be of a mind to restore Australia’s international competitiveness.”
Labor’s Renewable Energy Target aims to have 20 per cent of electricity generated from renewable sources by 2020. The Coalition intends to review the RET next year if it wins the election, and could rely on Mr Newman’s advice to scrap the target…
Local councillor Malcolm Barlow said Wind Prospect CWP was concerned that a Coalition government would make wind farms uneconomic. “I think the reason (the application) has lapsed, given the upcoming election, is the Coalition is going to review the renewable energy target system and carbon tax,” Mr Barlow said.
He said he strongly opposed wind farms because they were uneconomic, relying on a subsidy of up to $3 million a year per turbine.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/climate/protests-stop-wind-farm-plan/story-e6frg6xf-1226675644019
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Mike Kelter asks 3 very good questions, and I can tell you that the very same answer applies to all three, as far as this administration is concerned. You may think I’m being flippant, but I guarantee you, this is what this administration thinks and this is the only answer you will ever get.
“1. What provisions in the CAA allow Presidential authority to modify emission standards for existing power generation plants?
2. What processes must the EPA undertake to get new rules approved in a manner that has reasonable Benefit/Cost ratios.
3. What scientific proof must the EPA provide that CO2 must be regulated?”
Eff You, That’s what. That’s the only answer you’ll ever get.
I don’t understand how Krauthammer can see right through the nonsense of evolution-rejecters and fall for the equally-dubious claims of climate reality rejecters.
Gareth Phillips says: @ July 7, 2013 at 3:42 pm
….Thanks Gail, good analysis of the complexities and how easy it is to slide into these things without Parliamentary or Congressional approval. In comparison Climate issues may waste money, but they don’t waste lives.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
You are welcome.
How ever the climate issues DO WASTE LIVES.
The simplest example is the fuel poverty deaths.
28 February 2012 Fuel poverty deaths three times higher than government estimates… Some 7,800 people die during winter because they can’t afford to heat their homes properly….
23 March 2013 UK’s coldest spring since 1963 claims 5,000 lives: Pensioners worst affected – and experts say final toll could be ‘horrendous’: Freezing Britain’s unusually harsh winter could have cost thousands of pensioners their lives….. About 2,000 extra deaths were registered in just the first two weeks of March compared with the average for the same period over the past five years.
What ever the true number of people in the UK who are dying from the cold because they can not afford to heat their homes, you still have:
6 Jul 2011 A quarter of Brits are living in fuel poverty as energy bills rocket: As energy prices go through the roof, shocking figures reveal one in four families has been plunged into fuel poverty.
The death by starvation is a heck of a lot more complicated
It goes all the way back to the World Trade Organization and Dan Amstutz who wrote the Agreement on Agriculture in 1995 and The Freedom to Farm (Fail) act of 1996. Congressional Record March 28, 2000: …family farm income has decreased 43 percent since 1996 and more than 25 percent of the remaining farms may not cover expenses for 2000. Every month more and more family farmers are being forced to give up their life’s work, their homes, and their communities. Amstutz was VP of Cargill (grain traders) and later of Goldman Sachs. He was the architect of a lot of the unwilling transfer of farmland from families and peasants to the corporate elite.
For example Mexico lost 75% of her farmers and Portugal lost 60%. Poland is slated to lose around one million farmers. “The European Union is simply not interested in small farms”
Three decades later we have this from the International Monetary Fund:
Transfer the land, the source of most third world wealth from the peasants to the corporations and of course “In many countries the distribution of income has become more unequal…”
Then there is all the other game playing:
How Goldman Gambled on Starvation
ADM profits soar 550 percent as ethanol margins improve
Monsanto Profit Up 23% on Corn-Based Ethanol Demand
Monsanto Net Rises 23% on Corn Seeds
Given the politics surrounding CAGW, I have no doubt at all that those in power are well aware that we are headed into a Minimum with the accompanying famines. If they are not aware of it they are very much trying to force a famine in the near future anyway. However you look at it politicians are aware of the prospect of a coming famine and making sure their corporate buddies reap the full benefit: All you have to do is look at the 25x’25 Renewable Energy Initiative
Here is the Media Hype:
25x’25 Vision: By 2025, America’s farms, forests and ranches will provide 25 percent of the total energy consumed in the United States, while continuing to produce safe, abundant, and affordable food, feed and fiber.
The resolution passed both houses. WUWT has the newest iteration here.
Here is the the actual reality of the situation.
In six of the last seven years, total world grain production has fallen short of use. As a result, world carryover stocks of grain have been drawn down to 57 days of consumption, the lowest level in 34 years. Briefing before U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Chair, June 13, 2007
A study published in 2007 by two US scholars, Ford Runge and Benjamin Senauer, calculated that biofuel production will cause the doubling of starvation figures in the world: by 2025. They estimate there will be 1.2 billion people starving. In 2008: “We were criticized for being alarmist at the time,” Mr. Runge said. “I think our views, looking back a year, were probably too conservative.”
With one-third of world population lacking food security now, FAO estimates that world food production would have to double to provide food security for the 8 billion people projected as world population in 2025.
About half of the world’s maize (corn) is grown in the United States link yet Congress has signed a resolution requiring 25% of US energy needs to be supplied by our “Working land” (bio-fuels)
An interesting letter to president Bush from Dan Amstutz Grain Trading buddies (They created an award in his honor.)
And here is the actual reason for the letter:
It also explains the massive land grab now going on. You can start with NAFTA removing about 75% of the farmers in Mexico as setting the precedence.
More info: http://prospectjournal.ucsd.edu/index.php/2010/04/nafta-and-u-s-corn-subsidies-explaining-the-displacement-of-mexicos-corn-farmers/
Study on NAFTA by Tufts Univ. http://www.ase.tufts.edu/gdae/Pubs/rp/NAFTAsUntoldStoriesJune03TW.pdf
The World Trade Organization is NAFTA taken to a worldwide scale. Clinton ratified both treaties. The result was the bankrupting of third world countries’ farmers. 8 million people in India have quit farming, and the spate of farm suicides – the largest sustained wave recorded in history – causes a farmer to suicide every 30 minutes. link
Two years later another Mia Culpa from the world leaders. Note how they think we forgot all about the first time and the fact they had been warned of the coming problems in 2007, well, actually as early as 1974
After you boot the peasants off the land and brought their governments to near bankruptcy, it is time to move in for the kill….
First world farmers are not immune to political backstabbing either.
Now the international elite are gunning for US farmland and Congress just passed the weapon, the Food Safety Modernization Act. They even wrote an investment guide An Introduction to Agricultural Land and Farmland as an Alternative Asset Class
Also see the study: Agriculture and Monopoly Capital
As Henry Kissinger said: “Who controls the food supply controls the people; who controls the energy can control whole continents; who controls money can control the world.”
Ryan says:
July 7, 2013 at 6:10 pm
I don’t understand how Krauthammer can see right through the nonsense of evolution-rejecters and fall for the equally-dubious claims of climate reality rejecters.
>>>>>
It’s probably a conspiracy to confuse the “acceptors” even more, so that they will continue to believe in whatever fairy-tale comes down the pike….
Catcracking:
Juan Williams is also normally on the panel and his role in life is to support the administration regardless of how wrong and lacking facts his opinion happens to be.
I dunno, Cat. If that were true, he’d still be working for NPR.
Ryan says:
July 7, 2013 at 6:10 pm
I don’t understand how Krauthammer can see right through the nonsense of evolution-rejecters and fall for the equally-dubious claims of climate reality rejecters.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Maybe because he saw this graph and realizes we are at the end of the Holocene. Or maybe he read this recent peer-reviewed paper Can we predict the duration of an interglacial? (links at bottom of explanation)
Maybe he is aware of the fact the climate seems to be bi-stable and the real controversy is at what point does the climate flip to the Ice Box mode and how unstable is the climate when it nears the threshold insolation.
Perhaps more importantly he has read Sole, Turiel and Llebot writing in Physics Letters where they identified three classes of D-O (Dansgaard-Oeshger )oscillations in the Greenland GISP2 ice cores. A (brief), B (medium) and C (long), reflecting the speed at which the warming relaxes back to the cold glacial state:
It isn’t that CO2 causes warming, it seems it ameliorates the relaxation back to the glacial state. This agrees with the first graph I showed.
Back to when glacial inception may occur:
Last December, snow cover in the northern hemisphere was at the highest level since record keeping began in 1966. The UK experienced the coldest March of the last fifty years and there was snow in the UK on Easter. More worrying the oldest temperature record in England (CET) is showing a temperature drop of 1.5degC in the winter season (December to February inclusive) since 2000. This March northeastern Germany is the coldest in 130 years, and could be the coldest since records began. In northern Germany, the winter that broke all records for its lack of sunshine — with just 91.2 hours of sunshine, total, from the beginning of December to the end of February. (A listing of cold events not seen in the MSM: http://iceagenow.info/ )
Even Woods Hole Observatory warned about wide temperature swings a few years ago and that politicians maybe barking up the wrong tree.
So new research shows the violent weather swings that occur during the descent into an ice age can occur within a decade. This is weather that could happen NOW not thousands of years from now.
Gail Combs:
I don’t know if you noticed, but the Shah was in IRAN not IRAQ. So had no impact on past US conflicts unless one follows the trail from FALL of SHAH –> RISE of CLERICS –> IRAN-IRAQ WAR –> KUWAIT ASKS US HELP –> WAR ENDS –> IRAQ INVADES KUWAIT –> GULF WAR, which is quite a convoluted path worthy of the old Connections TV series.
juan slayton says:
July 7, 2013 at 6:55 pm
Catcracking:
Juan Williams is also normally on the panel and his role in life is to support the administration regardless of how wrong and lacking facts his opinion happens to be.
I dunno, Cat. If that were true, he’d still be working for NPR.
Juan,
He did work for NPR, but got fired because he made one mistake of not towing their propaganda 100% during a weak moment when he said:
“Williams responded: “Look, Bill, I’m not a bigot. You know the kind of books I’ve written about the civil rights movement in this country. But when I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous.”
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130712737
Sigh.
Why bother to whip up such a rhetorical firestorm if you are just going to extinguish it? All of Krauthammer’s comments come down to this contradiction. In one breath he says, “This massive self-inflicted economic wound will have no effect on climate change.” and in the next, he adds, “I’m not against a global pact to reduce CO2. Indeed I favor it.” He does not explain why.
This isn’t smart rhetoric. Maybe it hedges his bets against vituperative readers and commercial sponsors. But he loses in the last paragraphs whatever respect he earned in the first several. If he has to perform such kowtowing for anyone else, this is just a wash.
The United States is a corporation, it might as well has been named “The Big Peanut Butter Sandwich” or “the defense corporation of America”. It is not a country, it is a corporation which has been granted land, and it draws it’s legitimacy from an alleged need to defend the unites states of America in times of war. And there there are no wars, they make some up, like the war on drugs, and now, the war on climate.
ha ha ha the American Presidents…A War on…
Drugs: privatize the prisons and bloat a diversified police presence,
Terrorism: privatize and bloat a diversified military presence,
Climate: ?
Krauthammer is pretty good, but has residual brain damage from his education as a psychiatrist.
Blade says:
July 7, 2013 at 3:57 pm
” like us in the USA on why our Socialist neo-Communist masters are so good for ‘the many’ at the expense of ‘the few’ ”
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Really? Well your “socialist neo-Communist masters” are totally incompetent at effecting socialist paradigms:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-17/corporate-profits-soar-as-executives-attack-obama-policy.html
Let alone communist ideals…
True unemployment figures at around 16.8 % (likely higher, look around does it seem like 93% of your neighbors are employed?) with youth unemployment at around 25%. Perhaps you need to be reminded that communism strives for FULL employment.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/economy-watch/2009/09/actual_unemployment_rate_hits.html
Then there is the growing “lifestyle camping trips” so many americans are enjoying…
http://www.povertyliving.com/2013/03/homeless-statistics-in-the-united-states/
Maybe you should go back to school and learn some of these terms, err, maybe not…
never mind.
You must be a sharp blade, because on reflection this so and so (please insert derisive label here) i do recall driving through Michigan, Milwaukee, New Jersey, and Louisiana and thinking to myself, “wow what a communist/socialist utopia the Americans have constructed; albeit i never got out of, or stopped the car.
The view of MEP Holger Krahmer is in this context relevant. See the German website http://www.achgut.com/dadgdx/index.php/dadgd/article/obamas_grosser_klima_bluff.
The U.S. president is back in climate policy. The American CO2 emissions are to be reduced by 2030 by about half. (…) A closer look at the U.S. energy reality soon makes it clear: Obama’s challenge is a bluff. Because the announced efforts are in truth no efforts and the reduction of CO2 emissions for the United States can be achieved at no extra cost. The American CO2 emissions are reducing for years without the assistance of the government – since low-priced gas from unconventional reservoirs (shale gas) replaced coal as an energy source. (…)
As a consequence, the US CO2 emissions are reducing. A look at the numbers underpins this: The share of coal in the energy mix in the U.S. has been falling steadily from 48.9% in 2007 to 37.4% in 2012. In contrast, the share of gas rose from 21.7% to 30.4% over the same period. For the sake of completeness it should be mentioned that the share of renewable energies in the same period has risen from 2.6 percent to 6.7 percent but remained insignificant.
The U.S. CO2 emissions have fallen by 13.5 percent in the same period. (…) In other words, CO2 emissions are based on the luck of the availability of new, huge gas resources and costs the U.S. nothing.
European politicians, (…) applauded Obama prematurely. Instead, they should not fall for this bluff. The U.S. has such huge gas resources that the question of whether to export the gas in the near future is less relevant than the question of what the U.S. do with the coal that they themselves need no longer. The answer is obvious: the coal is exported. In 2012, the U.S. exported 125.7 million tons of coal. In 2007 the export amounted to 59.1 million tons. The U.S. has thus experienced a doubling of its coal exports within five years. Thankfully buyers of U.S. coal is of all the self-proclaimed climate stronghold Europe, where half of the total U.S. coal exports have gone in 2012.
So, Obama allots him self a green aureole as a consequence of economical reasons while other countries are giving more weight to the inexpensive coal. The contradiction between the inland bluff and the reality in foreign countries cannot be more flagrant.
“The war on climate is a diversion away from the concerns of most Americans. You could say it’s deliberate. The problem is most American don’t care about slight warmth, the greening of the biosphere.”
Maybee Obama has so many problems now that he needs a war to distract the U.S.A.?
A war on highly hypothetical catastrophic global warming?
The next IPCC report might be the last one and they will do anything to get their birth of the Global Government trough a climate treaty? Or international Marxism as I see it.
Blade says:
July 7, 2013 at 3:57 pm
Gareth Phillips [July 7, 2013 at 9:53 am] says:
Syria? If he keeps you guys out of another Iraq, Afghanistan or Vietnam he will have been one of your best Presidents ever and will have saved countless lives of young Americans.
ckb [July 7, 2013 at 10:21 am] says:
Gareth: If Chamberlain were alive today he could well have written your post.
Indeed. Gareth is one of the last remaining members of Hussein’s Iraqi Republican Guard, reduced to the silly crying girl saying ‘You should’a left Saddam alone, he wasn’t hurting anybody except Arabs‘. How shocking to hear such pompousness from westerners blogging from their comfortable chairs on their iPads and laptops. Does he not know that they have much more free elections and independent news media now ( quite possibly freer and more independent than ours here in the USA )? Clearly there is nothing stopping him now from going to Baghdad and leading a movement to return the nation to the good old days of Ba’ath tyranny. He could lead a march, a demonstration, and carry signs or something.
He rarely mentions it but Gareth is a comfortable UK resident lecturing others from afar, like us in the USA on why our Socialist neo-Communist masters are so good for ‘the many’ at the expense of ‘the few’ ( quite curious definition of ‘few’ btw ). So in the spirit of reciprocation let’s all return the favor and suggest our UK brothers and sisters dump the pound, accept the Euro, dissolve parliament and relocate to Brussels, and while they’re at it toss English and adopt French and German as official languages. Wait, what? He might not reject any of those proposals?! Right then, support UKIP, ban all things Euro and outlaw the Socialists. 🙂
————————————————————————
Garethman
Thanks Blade for your detailed analysis. Personally I was pleased to see the back of Saddam, he was a psychopathic little fascist dictator that we kept in power and sold arms to for far to long. I was probably demonstrating against him when you were supporting him in the Iran/Iraq war. My problem is that we went to war on the basis of a pack of lies. There was no real reason to declare war on Iraq, any more so than we declare war on any of the other nasty regimes we support around the world because it suits our purposes. As a result we have lost thousands of our you people, 100s of thousands have been killed and the palce is a complete dogs dinner with internecine wars between Sunni and Shi’ite. I hope we learned the lesson, but I suspect many in the US are just itching to get in Syria and do it all again.
As regard to blogging from armchairs, I took much more extensive action both in the Middle East and at home to protest against Saddam than you would ever realise. I’m not sure what UKIP has to do with the debate, but you sound as if you have far right political beliefs so I would imagine they and their little Englander isolation politics would be rather attractive. Who are our “Communist” masters by the way? Perhaps you could direct me to the State Farms, Collectives, Work camps and all the other dark symptoms of Communist totalitarian governments? To compare the EU to say North Korea is just bonkers.
With regard to language, English is rapidly displacing all other languages in Europe as our Lingua Franca, mainly due to it being the language of the US and international trade. In my work I travel extensively and most people have English as a second language ( including myself), but it’s much less common to meet English speakers who also speak other European languages as well as English. You may like to think you are behind a fortress where you need to protect English values but you will be pleased to know that it is in fact the opposite, Europe often needs protection from the free loaders and parasites that make up people like UKIP and take substantial sums from the EU for very little work.( They have the highest costs for the least work in the European Parliament) In reality, we may be thrown out of the EU long before we could ever vote to leave in a referendum.
I am pleased to see that the US is dictated by the politics of reason rather than the Tea bag party, by caution in starting more wars rather than belligerence by John Mc.Cain, we could use some of that common sense on this side of the Atlantic. However, the Tea Baggers and UKIP no doubt serve the same purpose as the Communists and fascists in the European parliament, they define the dark edges where no right minded person would not wish to travel, and in that they are harmless, as long as they stay on the fringes. I don’t entirely agree with Obama’s climate change policy, but my point is that it could be so much worse.
The UK government’s ‘cunning plan’ to prevent power outages is now becoming clear. They are proposing a whole army of diesel generators spread across the country to provide backup for when the wind doesn’t blow. The electricity to be charged at a much higher rate than conventional, ie coal and gas, generation, and will be produced with CO2 emissions that negate the savings from wind generation. It will probably make the National Grid’s operations a nightmare dealing with a multitude of additional gererators dotted all over the UK. In addition investors are getting in on the act as they will be getting a good return on their capital. Pity the poor consumer who has to stump up the cost.
http://www.eureferendum.com/blogview.aspx?blogno=84095
In reply to:
Steve Oregon says:
July 7, 2013 at 10:24 am
I see no mystery here.
It’s worse than faith or superstition. If the perpetrators were merely pretending it was their faith it would be less offensive and not so dastardly.
However we are witness political chicanery of the worst kind commingled with and exacerbated by the many interests and causes benefiting directly and indirectly from institutionalized advocacy by and for government influence, revenue and control .
Obama is mendaciously attempting to firm up this mega global warming mission in order to stabilize and preserve the countless other parasitic causes, influence and revenue streams.
Even from cold blooded party interests the Democrats cannot afford the calamitous embarrassment and systemic implosion from a AGW collapse.
If AGW collapses they and many other interdependent groups will not be able to avoid being branded as fraudsters and shamed by millions. They will lose their credibility, their donors and their votes.
There is no level of massive self-inflicted economic wound they will NOT view as preferable to their own demise.
This is the most expansive and corrupted self interest story in the history of human kind.
It has infected government and academia at every level in every location. …
William:
I fully support your above comments. The democrats and those companies, NGOs, and individuals who benefit from the green scams have hitched their wagon to the warmists’ agenda. The warmists’ agenda is the ‘green’ parties agenda. Each Western country now has a ‘green’ fraction in one or more political party that push job killing green scams.
The problem with hitching ones political future and academic career to the AGW band wagon is it appears the planet is about to significantly cool. It is curious that Obama’s scientific advisers have not noticed that there has been a significant slowdown to the solar magnetic cycle and it appears the sun is head towards a Maunder like minimum. There have been nine (9) warming periods during the current interglacial period that correlate with nine solar cycle grand maximums. The nine (9) warming periods where followed by nine (9) cooling periods, at which the time the planet cooled for 50 to 150 years.
Fortunately or unfortunately propaganda does not change the physical world. The warmists can hand wave away a lack of warming for 16 years and can ignore the fact that there is no tropical troposphere hot spot, it is difficult, however, to even imagine how they would try to explain global cooling and distract the public from the fact that the sun is entering a Maunder like minimum, concurrent with the cooling. (i.e. Global cooling requires a change to explain.)
Greenland ice temperature, last 11,000 years determined from ice core analysis, Richard Alley’s paper.
http://www.climate4you.com/images/GISP2%20TemperatureSince10700%20BP%20with%20CO2%20from%20EPICA%20DomeC.gif
http://www.climate4you.com/
http://www.solen.info/solar/images/comparison_recent_cycles.png
https://ams.confex.com/ams/pdfpapers/74103.pdf
The Sun-Climate Connection by John A. Eddy, National Solar Observatory
Solar Influence on North Atlantic Climate during the Holocene
A more recent oceanographic study, based on reconstructions of the North Atlantic climate during the Holocene epoch, has found what may be the most compelling link between climate and the changing Sun: in this case an apparent regional climatic response to a series of prolonged episodes of suppressed solar activity, like the Maunder Minimum, each lasting from 50 to 150 years8.
Ocean has experienced nine distinctive expansions of cooler water in the past 11,000 years, occurring roughly every 1000 to 2000 years, with a mean spacing of about 1350 years. … ….Each of these cooling events coincides in time with strong, distinctive minima in solar activity, based on contemporaneous records of the production of 14C from tree-ring records and 10Be from deep-sea cores. For reasons cited above, these features, found in both 14C and 10Be records, are of likely solar origin, since the two records are subject to quite different non-solar internal sources of variability. The North Atlantic finding suggests that solar variability exerts a strong effect on climate on centennial to millennial time scales, perhaps through changes in ocean thermohaline circulation that in turn amplify the direct effects of smaller variations in solar irradiance.
William: The sun exerts a strong effect climate on centennial to millennial time scale by modulating the amount of planetary cloud cover rather than small variations in total solar irradiance (TSI).
Owen in GA says:
July 7, 2013 at 7:56 pm
Gail Combs:
I don’t know if you noticed, but the Shah was in IRAN not IRAQ. …
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
You are correct but the situation was similar except the Shahs of IRAQ were murdered while the Shah of Iran ousted. It all started with the defeat of the Ottoman Empire and the UK putting puppets on the throne.
Faisal II (2 May 1935 – 14 July 1958) was the last King of Iraq. He reigned from 4 April 1939 until July 1958, when he was murdered during the 14 July Revolution together with numerous members of his family. This regicide marked the end of the thirty-seven-year-old Hashemite monarchy in Iraq….
His father was killed in a mysterious car crash when Faisal was three years old; Faisal’s uncle ‘Abd al-Ilah served as regent until he came of age in 1953…..
WIKI
Kajajuk says: @ July 7, 2013 at 11:24 pm
….True unemployment figures at around 16.8 % (likely higher, look around does it seem like 93% of your neighbors are employed?) ….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Actually the unemployment figures are 22% and rising and have been since Clinton changed the counting method to hide the results of the effects of NAFTA and the World Trade Organization on US employment. See: “GOVERNMENT ECONOMIC REPORTS: THINGS YOU’VE
SUSPECTED BUT WERE AFRAID TO ASK!”
Kajajuk says: @ July 7, 2013 at 11:24 pm
…. Really? Well your “socialist neo-Communist masters” are totally incompetent at effecting socialist paradigms.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
They are following the London School of Economics/‘Third Way’ Just search Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, Pascal Lamy (Director General of WTO) Anthony Giddens ( Director of the London School of Economics 1997–2003 and inventor of the Third Way) and Democracy Corps-Third Way. Another word for the ‘Third Way’ is Communitarianism.
Oh and toss in Global Governance while you are at it.
ROTFLMAO! It took me a couple of read throughs of that to finally figure out where you were coming from. You’re a purist! Let me guess, a teacher, or life long student?
Okay then, let’s determine what benchmarks make up the Kajajuk successful Socialism checklist …
Corporate profits soar = SOCIALIST FAIL.
President criticized by executives = SOCIALIST FAIL.
No offense, but this one is plain kooky. Maybe you didn’t mean to bring up the criticism of the president as its attached to the story, but then you must be talking about alleged ‘corporate profits’ existing because our Socialists are “incompetent at effecting socialist paradigms“. Well how can they be competent, destroy the corporations? That’s competent? Can you possibly believe that? Do you really wake up in the morning, flip on the TV and look at Wall Street and think “if corporate profits are high, it sucks to be me”. When exactly did you begin looking at other people’s money or success in envy?
Unemployment high = SOCIALIST FAIL.
Do you really want to go there? LOL. Maybe if we put all our jailed perps to work banging license plates, pimp our women on the street or make them service the ruling elite, and our 10 to 15 year old kids in farm fields then we can lower that unemployment statistic to an acceptable level, and simultaneously have gulag type slave labor and be a pretty good duplicate of all the infamous Communist societies of the past and present, and then you can strike this benchmark from your checklist? We know we have high unemployment here now. And it’s precisely because of (D)emocratic Socialism destroying the middle class. On purpose.
Homeless high = SOCIALIST FAIL.
Seriously, actual homeless people here are housed at taxpayer expense. Only in the rarest circumstances are they forced into housing, and those are usually with prison bars. Homeless people who are actually on the street are almost always there by choice. So, you should know that when the term “Homeless” is used, it is a big fat lie as it includes all of those choosing to walk the streets, plus those that are in shelters and also in long term section 8 housing and even other categories as well. In summary, these numbers are meaningless. What is interesting though is your thought process that Socialism somehow cures homelessness. In truth our system is a perfect match for hardcore Communist societies with centralized distribution of housing. We have section 8 ghettos in every major city, just like your Utopia would do, and did do. We don’t go rounding them up as I suspect your personal Utopia would now dictate, well unless you count people like Bloomberg in NYC that wanted the streets empty of homeless before a convention or other big event. That’s kinda like China before the Olympics btw.
No, I got a much better idea. Get your head out of the books and look around at the real world. You have going on one hundred years of actual, not theoretical, progressivism, socialism and communism to fill your neurons up with. You have set the bar to the theoretical, and that is your problem. Perhaps your dream is of Engels-Marxist theory, I don’t know, but realize theory that lasts in the real world for about 5 minutes until the first gun is unholstered. Even with absolute top-down tyrannical regimes exercising any and every whim they could never achieve such Utopianism. It’s probably the only thing in history to ever be more mistaken than the AGW climate cult. You won’t listen though, just like the climate kooks, you will press on, pining for that perfect implementation of socialism that will get it right next time. Here is the big question … If Utopia cannot be achieved at the point of a gun, with wanton mass murders to thin the herd and absolute dictatorial decision making, then what is the secret ingredient that is needed?
BTW, I used the terms Socialist and NeoCommunist perfectly for the real world. “Socialist” is self-explanatory, “NeoCommunist” is a clever mash-up that just means new, evolved Communism, western style under the cover of democratic elections to imbue it with the illusion of legitimacy. The tip of the spear for NeoCommunism in the USA is our (D)emocratic-Socialist party currently headed by President DingleBarry. It’s not Rocket Science. And it won’t be found in a book, at least not in the west. It might be found by our friends in formerly Communist territories who can now speak their mind and in fact are doing so by warning us of the dangerous actions now occurring in our District of Criminals.
Now back to your point, nothing is more idiotic than to read books by westerners pontificating about Socialism and Communism. It’s like having climate kooks write books about Science. Not only were they never there on the front lines in Socialist and Communist hell holes around the world, but they all actually believe there is some magic formula to make it work next time. I suggest you put down the fake books, knock off the wishful thinking and meet some Vietnamese, Cambodian, ex-Soviet, eastern European ( aka “New Europe” :-), Cuban refugees, etc.
You see, this is your problem right there. We are not going to construct a perfect society here. No Utopia is going to be built. It is antithetical to freedom and America. What I and others are moaning about is the rollback of freedom and the Constitution. We have, or should I say had, a largely voluntary “system” where we each decided what we would do with ourselves, our money, our time, our labor, our life. As it stands now the government has inched its way up to taking over one half of our earnings in taxes and it redistributes it all away. What do you expect us to do, thank them?
Global warming is just another excuse for Obama to implement his agenda — promote his vision of “social justice” (that is, wealth redistribution), force more people to be dependent upon big government, involve government in every aspect of our lives, put American on a more equal footing with the rest of the world, reward his supporters and punish anybody who does not support him.
Obama and his ilk are not concerned about the environment. Obama is not concerned about economy or jobs. Obama is not concerned about making America more energy independent or improving our economic security or national security. Obama and his minions and not concerned with helping to raise the rest of the world to America’s standard of living because that does not grow government power or make people more dependent upon government.
Sorry I honestly couldn’t get two sentences in that wall of text. Good thing too because you packed a bunch of lies and propaganda in that short space.
I know way too many phonies that parrot that exact line now, after he’s dead. Forgive me if I don’t automatically believe you.
How so? And who is we? We Americans, you Brits, someone else? How did we keep him in power, by killing Kurds and Shi’a and filling the desert up with bodies?
What arms? Be specific please. All those T-72 tanks, AK-47s, Scuds?
Nobody supported “him in the Iran/Iraq war”. Nobody I am aware of ever supported Hussein, period. That’s a tired and insulting meme. He came to power at the point of a gun, just as they all do, during Carter of course. Why would anyone over here ( except possibly Carter and his State dept ) support Hussein? It makes no sense. But I could believe you were rooting for Iran and Khomeini though, especially in 1980-ish after they held 52 Americans for 444 days. Lots of people found it fashionable to hope to see us get a black eye. Were you one of them? Now if you are really gonna say Reagan supported Iraq you’re gonna have get specific. Can you? I know what he did, he supported a stalemate, which means not favoring one or the other to win. And he was successful. There were many people hoping for Iraq to beat Iran’s ass and drag the Ayatollah out by his beard. That was perfectly natural considering what just happened. But rooting for Hussein, just ridiculous. People who say that are really demonstrating how shallow their intelligence is and that they are incapable of parsing facts and details of the world outside their little bubble.
I can’t think of one, let alone a pack of them. But you got your meme and nothing can make you let go of it.
War was declared for exactly the reasons stated in the resolution. Leave, or else. Prior to that it was maintain the decade old terms of surrender, the inspections, the restrictions, etc, or else.
I’ll disregard “support” again because you apparently use very unique dictionary not available elsewhere. But this thing about other regimes. Well how about this … just those regimes with a surrender agreement in place, regimes with over a dozen resolutions condemning them in the UN, regimes that are actively committing acts of war at the time attacking our pilots in no-fly zones? … So Gareth, do “any of the other nasty regimes we support” meet any or all those criteria? You make it sound like we purposely picked only one regime discriminating against many others that also should have been removed for consistency! Who else qualified?
Gareth,
One more item to add to your list of things to educate yourself about before pontificating upon them — The American Tea Party movement. Please don’t embarrass yourself any further.
***
Gareth Phillips says:
July 7, 2013 at 9:53 am
Syria? If he keeps you guys out of another Iraq, Afghanistan or Vietnam he will have been one of your best Presidents ever and will have saved countless lives of young Americans. This site may hate his politics with a vengeance, but you could have done with him in the run up to the pointless wars both our countries have become enmeshed in. Don’t focus on Syria Mr.President, just stay out of it.
***
Got any strategic sense? O’pooper’s inaction/apathy will lead to a Russian/Iranian-controlled “bloc” from Afghanistan west to Syria/Lebanon. Isn’t that special?
more soylent green! says:
July 8, 2013 at 8:07 am
Gareth,
One more item to add to your list of things to educate yourself about before pontificating upon them — The American Tea Party movement. Please don’t embarrass yourself any further.
Well said.
Reading the comments, it is clear that Gareth merely parrots the lies and information of the far left miscreants. No substance to his comments.
I am embarrassed that our President also used the sexual smear tea bagger term which reflects the low class Chicago style political mentality.
“where i am coming from” is irrelevant.
Reading between the lines of the article suggests that the “attacks” are political rhetoric since corporations are doing better under the alleged “socialist neo-communist masters” than ever before. i.e. the talking heads say one thing(s) and the hands say quick another.
Have you been mesmerized by the puppet show of American politics?
Communism is a paradigm that minimizes ‘homelessness’ and unemployment, the “common good”. The stats for ‘homelessness’ ARE meaningless due to the concerted effort of governments not to measure the phenomena. “Homeless people who are actually on the street are almost always there by choice”. No kidding.
Your retort is easy, RT comes from Russia.
Clearly you are coming from a point of reference where you cannot see around you the growing wasteland (yet) as our overlords finish their fattening for the coming Winter.
To set the record straight…once again.
I advocate a dynamic harmony between two idealistic extremes: socialism AND capitalism.
Not the terms used by emotive label lovers or the sham either has become in the modern era.
Sensible energy has a new theme song: “Coal Keeps the Lights On” by Jimmy Rose. Keeps the family fed, too, Obama. Are you listening?
Gareth Phillips says:
July 7, 2013 at 9:53 am
Mr Phillips, Freedom isn’t free, it cost a lot.
Should the Founding Fathers have kept the Continental Army out of war? should the US have ignored WWII?
Sir, A threat to liberty anywhere is a threat to liberty everywhere.
The liberty that our soldiers (US, Brits, Dutch, all) won for the Iraqis was a win for all free men.
Iraqi freedom is equal to US or European freedom.