Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Mashable’s description of Senator Sheldon’s climate speeches to empty rooms, where even Democrats can’t be bothered to turn up. Senator Whitehouse blames dark money.
Meet the U.S. senator obsessed with climate change
Every week the Senate has been in session since April 2012, one lonely Democratic senator from Rhode Island, Sheldon Whitehouse, has taken to the Senate floor to speak about global warming. On March 13, Senator Whitehouse gave his 200th “It’s Time to Wake Up” speech on climate change.
The speech was atypical for Whitehouse, who has grown accustomed to the unsettling feeling of standing virtually alone on the Senate floor while speaking about a topic that he believes is of the utmost importance.
“It’s a very hollow feeling. If you believe that this is a matter of such consequence and that it’s going to hit your home state so hard that you are going to put in this kind of an effort, then to have it be in an empty chamber, it’s a little disconcerting,” he said in an interview, regarding most of his climate speeches.
This time, though, to mark the anniversary, 19 of his Democratic colleagues joined him to discuss the issue.
…
Whitehouse says he’s learned a lot about the science preparing for these speeches, and also has come to investigate why the politics of this issue are so intractable. This has turned his gaze squarely on the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Citizens United v. FEC, which allowed for unlimited corporate money and so-called “dark money” to flow into politics.
“Climate failure and dark money are two sides of the same coin,” Whitehouse said. Dark money is flowing to groups that promote the view that climate change is not real, and also punish Republicans that contemplate acting to reduce the severity of the problem.
…
He said he has “very intentionally wanted to be the witness on the ground” to tell future generations exactly why Congress has not acted. In his view, it’s not because of partisanship or the failure of the Democratic system, but rather special interest money flowing unfettered into campaigns, squelching any potential bipartsian compromises on climate legislation.
…
Read more: https://mashable.com/2018/03/17/sheldon-whitehouse-200-climate-change-speeches/
Its nice that Senator Whitehouse’s colleagues turned out for his 200th anniversary. But endless speeches to empty rooms highlights the scale of Whitehouse’s lost opportunity.
Imagine the good Senator Whitehouse could have done, focussing his obsessive nature on addressing a real issue. He could have been a great reformer, someone who made a real difference to the lives or ordinary Americans. Instead he will be remembered by history the way we remember other half forgotten political failures, as an irrelevant footnote, a blowhard who exemplified the incomprehensible historical delusions of great grandpa’s time.
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I have seen Senator Sheldon Whitehouse on C-Span, and he really needs a better source of talking points. He apparently understands climate science about as well as he understands constitutional law. The truly scary thing is that he gets reelected. Having fled a state, California, which had DiFi and Babs Bouncer as Senators, I understand the frustration the reasonable people of his state feel.
He should be convicted for taking bribes and give his speeches in front of the fellow inmates in a federal prison, not in the Senate: https://defyccc.com/senator-whitehouse-acquires-another-fishy-income-stream/ Senator Whitehouse in a Jailhouse – sounds like a song.
You should always remember that this is a Senator who represents a state that has just a slightly higher population than Jacksonville, Florida. It can be fairly said that he represents less voters than anyone else in the US Senate. (with the exception of the OTHER Senator from Rhode Island)
Sheldon Whitehouse has some sort of a “climate” mental problem. He needs to see a doctor asap, before they put him out to pasture.
Climate derangement syndrome?
High School Climate Change Term Paper for Those Who Don’t Want to Follow the Herd
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2018/03/17/high-school-climate-change-term-paper-for-those-who-dont-want-to-follow-the-herd/
Climate Change Global Warming Homework to Piss Off Your Teacher
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2018/03/16/climate-change-global-warming-homework-to-piss-off-your-teacher/
Very nicely done!
Thanks, please share with every student you know.
co2islife
Great links. I shared them on social media, and I hope more people get educated from them.
Thanks a million. I would love this to get into every classroom out there. The teachers would freak when people actually push back.
Many teachers simply teach “by the book”. Back around 1965 I had an elderly science teacher who taught as she had taught for years, who hadn’t seen all the articles that were then current, explaining that the old idea of “Continental Drift” had been validated by modern observations. When, as a snotty little brat, I told her that her textbook was out of date, she was actually interested. In conclusion: There are some old dogs who can learn new tricks (and I hope I am one of them.)
We definitely need reform in our schools. Before anyone is too harsh on modern school teachers, I dare them to serve as a substitute school teacher in their local school for a month. It is like being in an insane asylum.
Very useful. Everything together in one place. I’ve bookmarked your site.
Thanks a million, be sure to share.
Very well done indeed. Thank you.
Thanks, please share with others.
The guy is a nutjob.
“which allowed for unlimited corporate money and so-called “dark money” to flow into politics.”
Which is Poli Sci speak for you and me being allowed to opine on politics, close to election time. Sure, someone like Anthony Watts will have a bigger audience than a no one like me. Which is why the evil in our country wants to place a value on speech, so as to declare websites like WUWT have a monetary value, and hence are (cue spooky music) Dark Money.
Citizens United was all about a movie, and trying to stop distribution of that movie as it was seen as an in kind contribution.
Lesson? Democrats are as much of a threat to basic rights as any foreign enemy, maybe even more so.
According to the law, when it was close to an election, the only people who were allowed to talk about elections other than face to face, were journalists.
And who determined who qualified as a journalist? The government, of course.
Even worse was the Supreme Courts defense of the law.
They delved deep into sub-penumbras of the Constitution to find a governmental interest clause that they could use to over ride the clear language of the first amendment.
I would suspect that Sancho Panza was faithfully in attendance at all his speeches?
Though this Quixote happens to tilt *for* windmills.
I hate to say it guys but I think it’s more likely Pole Shift. We are the only species to witness and understand our own demise. There should be a tax against it.
Pole shift? Aside from time during the field switching polarity, so what?
Just reverse the polarity of the neutron flow, calibrate the anti-shutdown sensors, and kick the doohickey underneath the doomaflochey. Crisis averted.
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
He could be chief of the climate cuckaloos.
“an irrelevant footnote, a blowhard who exemplified the incomprehensible historical delusions of great grandpa’s time.” An eloquent turn of phrase.
He likes DC better than RI, because there isn’t snow to shovel there.
Hard to rub elbows with lobbyists when you’re elbow-deep in snow.
Sen. Whitehouse will have to run for re-election carrying the baggage as an advocate for carbon taxes,
There is at least one Senate speech on this topic.
U.S. Senate, Sen. Whitehouse
Press Release: 07.26.17
‘American Opportunity Carbon Fee Act Introduced in Congress’
Re: Sen. Whitehouse on climate change and carbon pricing,
https://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/release/american-opportunity-carbon-fee-act-introduced-in-congress
U.S. Senate, Sen. Whitehouse
Press Release: 02.05.18
‘Whitehouse, Schatz, Blumenauer, Cicilline Introduce Updated American Opportunity Carbon Fee Act’
Re: climate change, carbon pricing, transition to carbon-free energy.
https://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/release/whitehouse-schatz-blumenauer-cicilline-introduce-updated-american-opportunity-carbon-fee-act
Congress. Gov
Summary: S.2368- American Opportunity Carbon Fee Act
Introduced in the Senate (02/05/2018)
Bill amends the IRS Code to impose fees.
Major provisions of S.2368, 2018 at:
https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/senate-bill/2368
Correction…There isn’t as much snow to shovel.
From the article: “Dark money is flowing to groups that promote the view that climate change is not real,”
Who are these groups? Senator Whitehouse should name the guilty parties.
When do the folks here at WUWT get our cut of the Dark Money?
That’s what I asked Anthony… 🙂
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/12/23/claim-dark-money-conspiracy-star-deniers-are-scripted-performers/
Whitehouse doesn’t understand climate science, and he doesn’t understand Citizen’s United, either. The Supreme Court ruling on Citizens merely “granted” the little people the same rights to speak before an election which McCain-Feingold had reserved to “media” companies. Why should the NY Times or the Washington Post have editorial freedom that those two idiots (McCain and Feingold) sought to deny the rest of us?
UNEP FI
Category: News
There are pages of news articles at this website and also under Older Posts.
Including: words, cl!mate den!er$, climate change, etc.
http://www.unepfi.org/category/news
UNEP FI
Category: Publications
There are pages of publications at this website. Also see Older Posts.
Includes climate change.
http://www.unepfi.org/category/publications
I was looking to see if there are any videos of Senator Cruz vs Senator Whitehouse, = would have been a perfect “debate” on the subject…
Anyone have/found one video including Cruz and Whitehouse on the subject?
In related news…
Why Is Yawning So Contagious?
Sen Whitehouse is an archetype, matching a small mind to the smallest state. Let us hope this match is unique.
No real correlation. California is the third largest state, and had Barbara Boxer.QED
You are thinking of a linear relationship.
It could be a curve, like the one HERE.
Or consider water, temperature, density.
Unless otherwise stated, correlation refers to Pearson’s R 🙂
Excuses. Excuses. All that imaginary money from big fossil that nobody can find is to blame. Has anybody received their check yet? Is it in the same place as all that hard evidence that they can’t produce? Apparently contrarians have been so successful that they have made both disappear.
The lobbying check from Big Oil to climate change skeptics to deny AGW can be found in the same “lock box” as Social Security taxes to fund retirements for senior citizens.
Sheldon Whitehouse is simply a mentally-ill doofus Liberal.
(yeah, now that’s triply redundant and what you call an ad hom attack)
No doubt that since November 9, 2016, he has gone from one triggered TDS hallucinatory episode to the next, until he ups his Xanax dose to calm down his manufactured anxiety for awhile. (another ad hom).
Any analysis of the things he has said through the years, including on how the right was reacting to ObamaCare legislation, you can see this guy hallucinates regularly about the political right.
So as to not be accused of “strawManning” or making shit up, here are some of Sheldon’s documented hallucinations (beyond his weekly Senate floor rants his colleagues laugh at):
– He made claims that solar PV and “renewables” would lower the cost of electricity in his state and would free the US of foreign oil. Politifact gave him a “mostly false” rating. His continues to insist he is correct.
http://www.politifact.com/rhode-island/statements/2012/jan/08/sheldon-whitehouse/us-sen-sheldon-whitehouse-says-development-solar-p/
– During the ObamaCare/ACA legislative fights, he made statements that the right would running around in blood-thristy crowds in the streets. Again, hallucinations.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/20/AR2009122002872.html
– On the Senate floor he called Republicans opposed to ObamaCare/ACA “racists” and compared them to the Aryan Nation. When confronted by a reporter after his speech, he denied he said those things and told the reporter to go check the records. The reporter did check the transcripts, and Whitehouse did say those things. Again Whitehouse was having hallucinations.
https://web.archive.org/web/20140201202414/http://www.washingtontimes.com/weblogs/watercooler/2009/dec/20/sen-whitehouse-foes-health-care-bill-are-birthers-/?feat=home_top5_read
– Whitehouse said of the ClimateGate emails released from Univ East Anglia/CRU, ““Climategate should properly be known as Climategate-gate because it was the scandal that was phony.” Even though everything is the emails was authetic. He hallucinates that authenticated emails are phoney only in his mind.
https://web.archive.org/web/20150506103652/http://thinkprogress.org/green/2011/12/15/390202/video-climate-hawks-whitehouse-and-franken-hold-climate-crisis-colloquy/
Clearly Senator Sheldon Whitehouse is prone to hallucinatory attacks and is today suffering from regular bouts of TDS.
“Its nice that Senator Whitehouse’s colleagues turned out for his 200th anniversary.”
Hey, give the guy some credit. Anyone who has been married 200 years has got something going for him. My first marriage lasted 27 years. It only seemed like 200 years – under water!
If it was his 200th wedding anniversary I would have been more respectful… 🙂
That’s probably unfair on your first wife?
As far as the US Senate is concerned, I have advocated this political theory for some time:
Thesis: Since Senator Harry Reid-era began in 2006 and continuing to this day, a key goal of senior Democrats in both the House and the Senate of the US Congress has been to neutralize Congress in its constitutional roles.
Rationale: Congress, and most especially the House of Representatives, are by the design of the constitution’s framers, to be the voice of the People in our federal government. Democrats are desperately trying to neutralize the voice of the People. They cannot have the People running the government. For Democrats (actually Progressives), the Government exists to impose its will on the People, and any rights the People have have been granted by the government. That is of course, exactly opposite of what the Constitutions intends.
Finally, even though Congress is viewed as a co-equal branch with the Executive and Supreme Court, it has sole the power of Impeachment and Removal of the President, Vice-President, or any appointed officer or Supreme Court justice or lower court judge in the Federal government.
Background: The Democrats have long believed (now mistakenly) that the US Presidency would never return to the GOP control due to demographic shifts in the US. Thus they saw Bush Jr. as the last US Republican president ever (or a least for a very long time). Obama was supposed to be the start of a long run of Democrats, and thus an Imperial Presidency was preferred. A Liberal President that would run rough-shod over the People and the Constitution that protects them could nullify Congress’s constitutional check on the President.
The Left envisioned the Democratic President would, due to aging of the Supreme Court, be able to install a Progressive bench there to ensure lower court judicial activism would not be nullified, but instead would be supported and affirmed by the Supreme Court.
LEgislation that they could never get through Congress, they could essentially enact via activist judges and a Liberal SCOTUS. A SCOTUS that would turn upside-down the very definition for words in the Constitution. to it Progressive beliefs ( actually that’s a form of hallucinations if they believe it).
Supporting evidence:
– Republicans took impeachment and removal off the table for Obama under heavy media pressure and suggestions from Democrats that impeaching the first black President would simply be racism. Thus Obama had license to violate the Constitution at will, only check by the courts.
– The Senate never passed a Budget bill under Democratic Party control after 2008. It passed abudget only recently after the GOP regained control of the Senate. Passing budgets is Congress’s most important constitutional duty. But passing a budget means out-of-control spending must be accounted for. And votes then become accountability at the ballot box for voters. And once the GOP took over the House in 2011, the Speaker Bohnert sequester gambit only further strengthened Democrats resolve to nullify Congress on imposing spending limits. (To be sure, there are many swamp-dwelling Republicans who do not like spending limits).
– President Obama specifically worked the Paris climate treaty and the Iran nuclear treaty to only be “agreements” to avoid the Senate ratification, which he could never get. Senate Democrats (the vast majority at least) supported the President’s unilateral stripping them of their ratification authority.
(there are lots of other instances of Democrats actively working to undermine Congress’s constitutional authority…)
Conclusion: A key objective of senior Democratic Party Senators and Congressmen/women has been to neutralize Congress and rule the nation through an imperial (Democratic) President and (from the Progressives the President would appoint to the judiciary) allow Liberal Judicial activism to re-write black letter law.
One final note:
Thank God for President Trump beating Hillary with 56% of the vote*. Trump saved the nation and the Constitution from Progressives. At least for now.
* the only vote that matters in determining the US Presidency.
I would add that while everyone has their opinion of Donald Trump, and even for those of us who dislike him personally, he was the right man for the job at the right time in our history specifically for the reasons you show above.
Trump has his flaws but he makes a Great President. If you are a conservative, anyway.
Trump needs some help from fellow Republicans/Conservatives. We need to get out and vote. Any Democrat victories will be a setback for Trump’s agenda and for our personal freedoms and future. Every vote counts.
“Trump has his flaws but he makes a Great President. If you are a conservative, anyway.” By what logic is he a conservative? Increasing the federal deficit by 60% when the economy is in year 7 of a recovery and interest rates are being increased to keep the economy from overheating? Tearing up free trade agreements? Tax cuts that primarily benefit the wealthy? Oh yeah, that is a conservative position – my mistake.
Since the rich pay the vast majority of taxes, tax cuts are going to benefit them more than anyone else.
But then the leftists believe that the job of government is to take money from those who work and give it to them.
BTW, you leftists cheered when Obama more than doubled the deficit.
And this so called recovery, until Trump came along was the weakest recovery ever recorded. Not even strong enough to increase the percentage of the population that was working.
I have been denying global warming for years. Whitehouse and other warmunists say that I am getting dark money. The sad truth is that I do not get dark money, I do not get light money, either. Heck, I do not even get dingy gray money. I get no money at all.
Please, Koch Brothers, Exxon, Peabody Coal, anyone, please send me some money, any money. My family would really appreciate it. Pretty Please.
Same here.
Me too. Combating climate change alarmism costs me a lot of my own money.
Oh, if only!
That’s why I haven’t seen any money! It’s all too dark to see!
Same here, so far. But I got a nice AFP “Hot Air Tour” T-shirt, about ten years ago.
Where is the link in his evolution to advocacy? Where did the money and influence come in to play?
It is there, just not exposed yet.
Sheldon caught doing insider trading. Really. Anyone but a Senator or Congressman would have gone to jail. He probably still does it, just is better at hiding it.
Now his climate change advocacy speeches are his attempt at indemnification (by climate virtue, anyone who would prosecute surely is working for big oil) from his insider trading activity.
I would really like to see something documenting that. Really would!
Sheldon Whitehouse wasn’t alone in the insider trading that went on immediately after a closed-door briefing in Sept 2008 from Bernanke and SecTreasury Paulson about how the stock markets were about to implode. But somehow amazingly his investment broker began selling a huge percentage of Sheldon’s positions. Congress had insider information that had it been done by you or me, we’d have been in prosecuted and see time at Club Fed.
Congress explicitly exempted itself from the insider trading laws.
Dear Senator Whitehouse
If atmos co2 were a control knob that determines surface temperature it would be easy to present empirical evidence of that relationship. But it ain’t.
https://ssrn.com/abstract=3142525
Sophisticated analysis reveals that the 200 units of excessive bloviation raised the CO2 level by 15 ppm +/- 0.000001 ppm.
[]
Drat! Fussy old blockquote conventions.
I believe a large proportion of those still carrying on with the notion of catastrophe ‘poised’ to strike after Climategate, the killer Pause and the contrariness of nature in general, have been battling mounting doubts in their minds. They still have faith that warming will continue but a weariness and less than wholehearted prosecution of the meme is clearly evident.
The cut from 3-5C increase by 2100 to 2C being catastrophic has since been further cut to 1.5C because forecasts using the CO2 formula for temperature rise have proven to be 200% too high. At the same time because of embarrassment caused by such over the top calculations, ECS has been trimmed lower and lower, even by the IPCC although they illogically cling to an upper bound of 5C but make sure to lower the lower bound to 1.5C to not be left far out from recent determinations converging on ~1.5 per doubling – a level that is broadly accepted as benign.
The greening of the planet and doubling of harvests accompanying increased CO2 and modest warming has taken climate worriers by surprise, totally undercutting the ‘cost’ of carbon. Although still vilified by proponents of disaster, rising carbon dioxide is establishing itself as a net benefit.
Non scientists like Whitehouse and Al Gore are becoming the lonely spokespersons for a dying issue. I’m not surprised that Democrats have been walking away from this spent non-issue.
I wonder how long it will take for a majority of alarmists, professional and lay alike, to suddenly act like none of this nonsense ever happened? Slinking away from a position, rather than standing and saying one was wrong, is common.
“I believe a large proportion of those still carrying on with the notion of catastrophe ‘poised’ to strike after Climategate, the killer Pause and the contrariness of nature in general, have been battling mounting doubts in their minds. They still have faith that warming will continue but a weariness and less than wholehearted prosecution of the meme is clearly evident.”
I think that is right. Skeptics keep asking Alarmists for proof of CAGW and there is no proof, and they know it and we know it. That’s what’s got them discouraged. And there’s nothing on the horizon that will get the Alarmists across the finish line other than having the temperatures climb, climb, climb. They are captive to the thermometer.
So we are all waiting to see what the temperture gauge will do in the future.
Modern discussions of atmospheric physics almost universally neglect the Adiabatic Lapse Rate – the single most influential factor in atmospheric temperature distribution. The ALR is almost independent of the composition of the atmosphere, but strongly dependent on the *weight* of the atmosphere. Literally millions of *measurements* over more than 20 years have led to a mathematical model that represents the ALR simply as a function of atmospheric density and the force of gravity. In the lower 80% of the earth’s atmosphere (11 km) the temperature drops 75.5° C – 6.5° C for every kilometer increase in altitude – about 2° C for the height of a tall building.
This temperature gradient also drives convection, which stirs the atmosphere and makes efforts to ‘homogenize’ atmospheric temperatures ludicrous.
Against this background variability the alleged heating due to increased CO2 concentrations is miniscule.
careful. There be dragons ahead for you with that kind if independent thinking.
Also Tad, don’t overlook the most important GHG, water vapor, i.e. humidity.
tadchem, not to worry, you have the right of it. Like Maxwell and all real Physicists since!
The adiabatic lapse rate is highly dependent upon the water vapor content of the atmosphere. Ditto convection at the surface. After a clear, calm night in the winter, it is a delight to watch the cold, dry air drain onto relatively warm water of our salt water cove. As the sun rises, we can see the mist lift from the surface and move majestically under the influence of whatever light breezes are created to accommodate the upward motion of the warmed, moist air. Glider pilots look for recently plowed fields anticipating strong lift for the same reason.
…..Relative to the “greenhouse” effect produced by atmospheric H2O molecules, the alleged heating due to about a .01% increase of atmospheric CO2 is minsicule…..and the hypothesis is proving over and over to be ludicrous when applied to the real world and can only stand up within the imaginary world that is being created by garbage in/garbage out computer models.
What’s it called when a reception of something, a creation of debt, is unjustly identified and appointed to someone?