Posted on 03/04/2013 9:32:27 AM PST by Kaslin
In his first address as Secretary of State, John Kerry said we must safeguard the most sacred trust we owe to our children and grandchildren: an environment not ravaged by rising seas, deadly superstorms, devastating droughts, and the other hallmarks of a dramatically changing climate.
Even the IPCC and British Meteorological Office now recognize that average global temperatures havent budged in almost 17 years. No evidence suggests that sea level rise, storms, droughts or other weather and climate events or trends display any statistically significant difference from what Earth and mankind have experienced over the last 100-plus years. So Mr. Kerry dire warnings are on thin polar ice.
However, we do face imminent climate disasters. Global warming is the greatest moral issue of our time. We must do all we can to prevent looming climate catastrophes.
But those cataclysms have nothing to do with alleged human contributions to planetary climate systems that have always been chaotic, unpredictable and often disastrous: ice ages, little ice ages, dust bowls, droughts and monster storms that ravaged and sometimes even toppled cities and civilizations.
Our real manmade climate crisis takes four closely related forms.
Influence peddling. Over the past three years, the Tides Foundation and Tides Center alone poured $335 million into environmentalist climate campaigns, and $1 billion into green lobbies at large, notes Undue Influence author Ron Arnold. Major US donors gave $199 million to Canadian environmental groups just for anti-oil sands and Keystone pipeline battles during the last twelve years, analysts Vivian Krause and Brian Seasholes estimate; the Tides Foundation poured $10 million into these battles during 2009-2012.
All told, US foundations alone have invested over $797 million in environmentalist climate campaigns since 2000! And over $19.3 billion in environmental efforts since 1995, Arnold calculates! Add to that the tens of billions that environmental activist groups, universities and other organizations have received from individual donors, corporations and government agencies to promote manmade climate disaster theories and pretty soon youre talking real money.
Moreover, thats just US cash. It doesnt include EU, UN and other climate cataclysm contributions. Nor does it include US or global spending on wind, solar, biofuel and other renewable energy schemes. That this money has caused widespread pernicious and corrupting effects should surprise no one.
Politicized science, markets and ethics. The corrupting cash has feathered careers, supported entire departments, companies and industries, and sullied our political, economic and ethical systems. It has taken countless billions out of productive sectors of our economy, and given it to politically connected, politically correct institutions that promote climate alarmism and renewable energy (and which use some of this crony capitalist taxpayer and consumer cash to help reelect their political sponsors).
Toe the line pocket the cash, bask in the limelight. Question the dogma get vilified, harassed and even dismissed from university or state climatologist positions for threatening the grants pipeline.
The system has replaced honest, robust, evidence-based, peer-reviewed science with pseudo-science based on activism, computer models, doctored data, pal reviews, press releases and other chicanery that resulted in Climategate, IPCC exposés, and growing outrage. Practitioners of these dark sciences almost never debate climate disaster deniers or skeptics; climate millionaire Al Gore wont even take questions that he has not preapproved; and colleges have become centers for socially responsible investing campaigns based on climate chaos, sustainable development and anti-hydrocarbon ideologies.
Increasingly powerful, well-funded, unelected and unaccountable activist groups and bureaucracies use manmade global warming claims to impose regulations that bypass legislatures and ignore job and economic considerations. They employ sweetheart lawsuits that let activists and agencies agree to legally binding agreements that leave out the parties who will actually be impacted by the court decisions.
The green behemoth wields increasing power over nearly every aspect of our lives and liberties, with no accountability for screw-ups or even deliberate harm to large segments of our population. All in the name of controlling Earths temperature and preventing climate change
Climate eco-imperialism impoverishes and kills. Climate alarmism and pseudo science have justified all manner of regulations, carbon trading, carbon taxes, renewable energy programs and other initiatives that increase the cost of everything we make, grow, ship, eat, heat, cool, wear and do and thus impair job creation, economic growth, living standards, health, welfare and ecological values.
Excessive EPA rules have closed numerous coal-fired power plants, and the agency plans to regulate most of the US hydrocarbon-based economy by restricting carbon dioxide emissions from vehicles, generating plants, cement kilns, factories, malls, hospitals and other significant sources. Were it not for the hydraulic fracturing revolution that has made natural gas and gas-fired generation abundant and cheap, US electricity prices would be skyrocketing just as they have in Britain and Germany.
EU papers carry almost daily articles about fuel poverty, potential blackouts, outsourcing, job losses, economic malaise and despair, and deforestation for fire wood in those and other European countries, due to their focus on climate alarmism and green energy. California electricity prices are already highest in USA, thanks to its EU-style programs. The alarms are misplaced, the programs do nothing to reduce Chinese, Indian or global emissions, and renewable energy is hardly eco-friendly or sustainable.
Wind energy requires perpetual subsidies and backup fossil fuel power plants that actually produce 80% of the electricity attributed to wind, and blankets wildlife habitats with turbines and transmission lines that kill millions of birds and bats every year. In fact, industrial wind facilities remain viable only because they are exempted from many environmental review, wildlife and bird protection laws that are enforced with heavy penalties for all other industries. Solar smothers habitats with glossy panels, and biofuels divert crops and cropland to replace fuels that we have in abundance but refuse to develop.
Now climate activists and EPA want to regulate fracking for gas that was once their preferred option.
By far the worst climate crisis, however, is eco-imperialism perpetrated against African and other poor nations. When their country was building a new power plant that would burn natural gas that previously was wasted through flaring, President Obama told Ghanaians they should use their bountiful wind, solar, geothermal and biofuels energy, instead of fossil fuels that threaten global warming. Meanwhile, his Administration refused to support loans for South Africas critically needed, state-of-the-art Medupi coal-fired power plant, which the Center for American Progress, Friends of the Earth, Sierra Club and other radical groups stridently opposed.
The actions ignored both the livelihoods and living standards that electricity has brought the world, and the millions of deaths from lung infections and intestinal diseases that these power plants would prevent.
Ready-made excuse for incompetence. Hurricane Sandy proved how dangerous manmade climate change can give politicians a handy excuse for ill-considered development decisions that increase storm and flood risk, failure to prepare their communities for inevitable severe weather events, misleading storm warnings, and slow or incompetent responses in their aftermath. Blaming carbon dioxide emissions and rising seas is always easier than manning up and shouldering the blame for Bloombergsian failures. Citing IPCC computer forecasts of nastier storms and flooded coastlines likewise gives insurers a convenient excuse for hiking insurance rates.
When the conversation next turns to climate change, discussing the real climate crisis and the true meaning of environmental justice could open a few eyes.
What a macaroon! Not only is this kerry dweeb a traitor...he also doesn’t understand science. Is he algore’s twin brother?
And when the global temperatures DO budge it is as likely they'll go down as go up. Remember the 70's scare about the coming man-caused ice age and that we'd all be freezing and starving in the dark when the oil ran out? Same cast of characters, new set of lies.
The only way they can get away with this climate change horse dung is for Americans to forget history.
The Devastating hurricanes of 1934 1936 and the Long Island express that kille over 600 people in 1938.
The Dust Bowl in te Midwest that populated California with Okies overnight.
These storms last year were bad certainly but not any worse than many other storms of history.
They feed us all of this crap and we are expected to not look at history and think this just started.
There is an old saying, “There is nothing new under the sun.” Even the moral decay of America has happened in America and other countries before. It is just now coming to America again.
I’m having great difficulty trying to convince my family that global warming, oops, I mean climate change, is one of the more fake stunts being perpetrated on the American populace. They insist I am a moron, while I insist they do not understand propaganda and manipulation. I try to go into greater detail with them, but they still think I’m a wacko.
Don’t forget the Galveston (TX) hurricane of 1900 that killed between 6000 and 12000 people (official death toll was 8000).
I understand I have a Brother in law who is a Democrat.
I have no doubts of Climate change. Mother Nature changes things all the time.
My doubt is that man has anything to do wih it or that man CAN do anything about it.
He's also got a bad case of "Mission Creep".
Since when is it the duty of the State Dept. to push bad science and political correctness on the world?
With Obama in the White House and creeps like Kerry, Holder, Napolitano, Siebelus, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi running the goverenment, the Founders would be wondering why we have been so lax in using our constitutional rights to clean out the den of vipers in Washington and put the government back on its constitutional path.
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