Posted on 01/04/2014 5:39:29 AM PST by SeekAndFind
In the 19th century, European colonists set out across the world with Bibles tucked under one arm and blueprints of European parliamentary government under the other to teach the great unwashed the fundamentals of civilization.
Today, Secretary of State John Kerry is continuing that tradition — by preaching the Gospel of Global Warming to the rest of the world.
“Shortly after Mr. Kerry was sworn in last February, he issued a directive that all meetings between senior American diplomats and top foreign officials include a discussion of climate change,” reported the New York Times this week. “He put top climate policy specialists on his State Department personal staff. And he is pursuing smaller climate deals in forums like the Group of 20, the countries that make up the world’s largest economies.”
What prompted the Times report was a sermon that Kerry delivered to the Vietnamese last week on the Mekong Delta. “Decades ago, on these very waters, I was one of many who witnessed the difficult period in our shared history,” he said in a gingerly reference to his Swift boat service during the Vietnam War. “This is one of the two or three most potentially impacted areas in the world with respect to the effects of climate change.”
The Times gave ample space to Jake Schmidt, international climate-policy director for the Natural Resources Council, who enthused about the ways the rest of the world is responding to Kerry’s initiatives. “There’s a lot of scar tissue from the U.S. saying it will do stuff [about reducing carbon emissions],” said Schmidt. “They’re still waiting to see what we’re going to do, but the skepticism is much thinner than it was a few months back.”
So what exactly is the Obama administration doing about climate? Well, it’s outlawing new coal plants and shutting down old ones, putting tens of thousands of people out of work in impoverished parts of America and endangering what’s left of our country’s manufacturing economy. Lucky for them, the unregulated development of gas and oil on private lands is producing other fossil fuels that can take up some of the slack. (NRDC and other environmental groups are doing everything they can to stop that as well.)
But what about nuclear energy, the only non-fossil fuel that has a reasonable chance of replacing coal as the world’s source of base-load electricity? Even James Hansen, the original Paul Revere of global warming, sent a letter to the major environmental groups last November telling them it is pointless to talk about reducing carbon emissions without embracing nuclear power. How are we doing on that?
Well, oddly enough, the Vietnamese to whom Kerry was lecturing last week have already signed an agreement with the Russians to start construction on their first reactor in 2014. The South Koreans – who may now be the best nuclear technologists in the world — will be providing $1 million in training and equipment. China just agreed to loan Pakistan $6.5 billion to build a new reactor, with several more planned. The Chinese themselves have 26 reactors under construction. The U.S. did sign an agreement last October to share nuclear technology with Vietnam, but the suspicion in Asia is that we may have done it only to prevent the Vietnamese from developing their own nuclear infrastructure. Right now we are in a prolonged, testy negotiation with Korea trying to prevent them from enriching their own uranium and recycling their spent fuel, even though both technologies are readily available to them.
In short, despite the licensing of four new reactors in Georgia and South Carolina, the United States is rapidly falling toward the bottom of the pack in developing nuclear technology. (Germany and Japan are out ahead of us.) We closed down two perfectly good reactors at San Onofre, Calif., in 2012 that had 40 years of life left in them, and more reactors will probably close in the next few years than will be completed. Gregory Jaczko, who served long enough as chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to close down the Yucca Mountain nuclear-fuel depository at the behest of Senate majority leader Harry Reid, is now touring the country saying we should close down all our reactors.
So just as the missionaries and colonists of the 19th century eventually learned that the backward masses whom they were attempting to civilize were often the inheritors of civilizations far older than their own, so Secretary of State Kerry may eventually learn that his submissive audiences are not as benighted as he imagines. There are now 72 reactors under construction around the world — four of them are in the United States. Maybe they have something to teach us.
— William Tucker is author of Terrestrial Energy: How Nuclear Power Will Lead the Green Revolution and End America’s Long Energy Odyssey.
I think John Kerry needs to take a trip to Antarctica to make sure the penguins aren’t dying of heat exhaustion!
OK!! Everybody pay attention!
Lesson for today:
1. The sun is 1,300,000 times as big as the earth.
2. The sun is a ball of fire that controls the climates of all its planets.
3. The earth is one of the sun’s planets.
4. The earth is a speck in comparison to the size of the sun.
5. Inhabitants of the earth are less than specks.
Study Question: How do less-than-specks in congress plan to control the sun?
How skerry, the insufferable boor, is lecturing anyone on anything is beyond me. The “guy” is a putz supreme...and a traitor to boot. By the way, he does have 4 Purple Hearts, you know.
The globull warming dinosaurs lumber on.
John Kerry - A dope who would willingly see money burned on the alter of the fairy tale of global warming rather than reserved to sustain continued benefits to wounded veterans - a program that the government is considering cutting right now.
John Kerry - the Doofus of State - has never been right about anything.
John Kerry needs to bring his wind surfing board to one of the lakes in northern Minnesota on Monday and see if the prophecy of St. Algore lamenting the world having a fever is really true.
5. Inhabitants of the earth are less than specks.
Study Question: How do less-than-specks in congress...
Question for the teacher: "I don't understand... if the inhabitants of earth are less than specks, wouldn't that make the personnages in congress less-than-less-than specks?
Kerry could stop by in Upstate NY in his swimming trunks and shovel 12 inches of snow today. Overnight temp was minus 20 without the wind chill factor. It’s minus 6 right right. So yeah, technically we are experiencing global warming. Temp went up 14 degrees.
Well, they’re supposed to be representative of the rest of us. We voted them into office. Are we proud?
The appropriate dress for these kinds of presentations would be as a witch doctor.
Probably gets 100% disability from the VA for the scratches he got while riding his swift boat.
John Kerry Brings the Gospel of Global GOVERNANCE to the World
The bible was meant to save the world.
Nuclear fission was meant to destroy the world.
They are the exact opposites.
How does the EPA regulate plants on Navajo land?
The Four Corners APS plants are on tribal land aren’t they?
Perhaps the Indians need a minor revolt...
Oh man, that would be one of those meetings where someone says, "Now about climate change.....". Everyone looks at each other, they all wink, and someone else says "Let the minutes reflect positively that climate change was brought up."
Then, "I move that the meeting adjourn."
"Second"
"All in favor.."
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