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I’ll be on John Stossel’s show tonight (Thursday, March 22, 9 p.m. EDT, Fox Business Channel) entitled “Illegal Jobs”.
John and I discuss the EPA’s overreach in regulating carbon dioxide and fine particulate matter in the air. Based upon how taping went, I think my segment might be the last one of the show, since it represents the ultimate in job killing, war-on-the-poor policies which have unintended consequences far greater than the good those policies were (supposedly) designed to bring about.
As always, Stossel does a great job at simplifying these issues and framing them in ways that speak to the citizens.
The real tragedy of the global warming scare is how its used to justify spending in renwable programs programs with marginal value. The resultant higher energy costs make customers of the ineffecient energy suppliers less competative in the market place leading to job loss. Even the green jobs did not turn out they way they were expected. If you at where the actual manufacturing was being done for wind mills, solar panels and other “green energy” systems, it turns out that 70% was sourced off shore. So much for stimulating the economy.
I think we are missing the point when we push back with job loss, higher costs and those important yet still secondary factors. Real tho they be, the socialist mindset of the GW zealots cannot grasp such ideals (job? what’s that?) and the average person thinks in terms of sacrifice for the common good. A laudable attitude for the unwashed but it misses the basic point: the science of AGW is absolutely defective. Period.
We must hammer, hammer, hammer on the central root cause fallacy that mankind is causing this (or is a significant and meaningful contributor). The science is there to disprove it. Models are not data.
Let’s not get distracted from the fundamental issue: bad science. We need to take back real science from the politians and rent seekers who have merely lined their pockets with this latest version of Dr Gore’s Snake Oil.
some of the latest:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364682612000648
It continually amazes that no one ever talks about the hidden cost of “green energy” (wind and solar) and I’m not talking about the tremendously expensive subsidies either. The fact is that for every watt, kilowatt or megawatt produced by “green energy” you have to provide the equivalent power generated by conventional means (fossil fuels,Hydro or nuclear) on continuous “stand-by”, for when solar or wind-power cannot produce.
As most conventional power plants cannot be brought up to demand out-put “immediately” they are required, in most cases, to “idle” at full power or some where in between there and 1/2 power and in this process, produce more carbon dioxide “pollution” than we would have if there was no wind or solar generation (this due to the inherent inefficiencies in operating at reduced out-put or idling).
Until this problem gets solved wind and solar power are nothing more than a con job by rent seekers on the government dole!
The book “Power Hungry” by Robert Bryce oughta’ be required reading by all who hold elective office.
I agree with Stossel (which I often do not on other issues) and Spencer on EPA and their likes getting excessive and job-killing.
However, it rubs me the wrong way to claim that EPA and/or others on their side are doing “war on the poor”. It appears to me that popular rightwingers in USA are getting votes for their version of “war on the poor”.
What I propose is that in forums that are supposed to be primarily scientific, and secondarily economics for good of all, avoidance of touching on class struggle in the debate. As in, I think it is a detraction to say here that some policy or some organization’s efort is “war on the poor” or “war on the rich”.
I know what you are saying Donald, and I have heard it from a few others over the years. But as someone who has three books which have dealt with the economics of the issue, I consider it my civic duty to speak up for the poor.
The AGW crowd claims the moral high ground on the global warming and pollution issue, when in fact our side has the moral high ground. Poverty kills 50,000+ people per day worldwide (half being children, WHO estimate), and AGW policies worsen poverty by misallocating scarce resources.
Yes, it is a war on the poor. If you think saying something like that somehow hurts my credibility, so be it. But I cannot in good conscience ignore the issue.
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Donald L. Klipstein says:
‘What I propose is that in forums that are supposed to be primarily scientific, and secondarily economics for good of all, avoidance of touching on class struggle in the debate. As in, I think it is a detraction to say here that some policy or some organization’s efort is “war on the poor” or “war on the rich”.’
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My opinion is quite similar.
The whole problem of agw is that it is a political issue. As we see from the measurements as published here, there is very little scientific proof that any kind of warming of the earth is actually happening at present and even much less that any warming at present would be ‘human caused’.
I agree with Dr. Spencer. The fact that the AGW war for political power is killing the poor is a central issue. To ignore this fact is akin to ignoring the fact that tens of millions of civilians were killed in World War II. It must also be kept in mind that a central tenet of the liberal faith that is behind the AGW agenda is that there are too many people on the Earth. So, if a few million poor die every year it is just a necessary sacrifice. The central theme of World War II was not to kill millions of civilians, but rather it was a struggle for power. If you forget that tens of millions of innocent civilians died, then you loose the true horror of that war.
I think that the liberal ideology seriously believes that it can establish a eutopia by forcing the world to adopt so-called “green” technology under a one-world government. Their philosophy completely ignores human nature and the law of unintended consequences. It’s an ivory tower ideology that never works in practice and can’t be justified on its own merits in the real world. They truly believe that the human population needs to be reduced and they may wish they could accomplish this by killing the unborn through abortion, but they will force the world to move quickly to “green” technology and if the unintended consequence is the deaths of millions of the poor, then so be it.
Then there is fundamental dishonesty in the CAGW side of the debate.
On 2012.03.05 and 2012.03.11 I was able to plot HADCRUT3gl data on WoodForTrees up to 2012.08, but note that maybe in an effort to ‘hide the decline’ on March 11, 2012 HADCRUT3 was truncated from 2012.08 to 2011.92.
Also, October, November and December 2011 were “warmed” in the data.
Can anyone explain this?
Can anyone please post the truncated data points in HADCRUT3gl; 2011.92 to 2012.08?
See my WoodForTrees graph at http://www.oarval.org/ClimateChangeBW.htm
HADCRUT4 is not out yet and HADCRUT3 is disappearing and again re-adjusted to show more warming?
To Ken1955: the phrase “We need to take back real science” implies that science was ever really “lost” in the first place. I understand your emotion, but the truth is in a community of scientists, only a handful of politically active folks ever fell for the AGW nonsense. Don’t believe folks like Naomi Oreskes, who originally produced the oft-repeated “97% of scientists” statistic starting with a single small data set of recently published papers and then mis-characterizing what those papers concluded. Oreskes is a science historian and not a scientist. So it is not surprising she got AGW totally wrong. Similarly, Doran’s 2009 poll has been badly spun by journalists seeking to bolster the politics they support (90% are Progressive Liberals who fully back the “green” energy lobby). The Doran poll – properly interpreted – indicates about 90% of scientists either question AGW or don’t care enough to respond to pollsters… again, it’s expected politically active AGW Warmists would respond to a survey on AGW, especially since their jobs are at stake. So if they are out there, why didn’t they respond? Where’s the list of “a million scientists” who believe in AGW? I derive this statistic “a million” by using the 32,000 who have signed the OISM petition questioning AGW by the 0.03 (3%) Oreskes claims they represent. Of course, we all know that only a fraction of scientists who question AGW have actually signed the petition, and we know further that science isn’t determined by consensus.
Dr. Spencer is exactly correct regarding the effect of policies implemented to fight against imagined AGW. It is imperative that everyone who visits this site understand what is at stake — nothing less than the lives of billions of people in the poorest nations around the world. Haughty AGW proponents claim they are working to “save the planet”. By doing so, they assuage their own false sense of guilt (i.e. they feel “guilty” by continuing to use more & more of what they believe are “fossil” fuels, all the while believing they are harming the environment). “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death.” (Proverbs 14:12) This scripture applies directly to AGW and the misguided policies and behavior it generates. In God’s infinite wisdom, He has provided enough oil, coal, and natural gas (through whatever means it was created) so that mankind can continue to develop & improve other means of generating electricity. However, God has not provided so much oil, coal, and natural gas that we can harm Earth’s environment. At about the time mankind’s use of oil, coal, and natural gas will begin to produce a negative impact, the supplies will diminish, and we will need to have alternative ways to generate most of our electrical energy in place (that’s about 250 years from now). We’ve only been using oil for 100 years… I see no reason to believe we will not have developed a replacement for it over the next 250 years!
I have one of just a small handful of pewter scale models of this vehicle that were given out after the race to company execs in sealed cases as a commemoration of this car and LeMans win. Mine is autographed to me by “Koby” Kobayakawa and was given to me by a former president of Mazda North America where I spent nearly 20 years in my automotive career. It is nice to see the actual car so well preserved.
Given the close relationship between asthma and many other diseases and fine particulate matter, on what basis would EPA regulation NOT be needed?