Pete'sPlace

Obama Destroying America

2012-01-23T09:40:00.001-06:00

They have failed by trying to scare people into using less and paying more for energy with the global warming hoax. Now they're using the bullying and extortion tactics of the EPA and The Department Of The Interior, all while circumventing Congress and the Constitution. Some call that treason. The following article says it well.
Peter

Destroying America by Denying Access to Energy

Posted: 22 Jan 2012 08:46 AM PST

It is the crime of the century that America, home to some of the world’s greatest reserves of coal, natural gas and oil, is being deliberately destroyed by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of the Interior as they do everything in their power to restrict access and drive energy producers out of business.

It is common sense that a nation that cannot produce sufficient electricity to turn on its lights and power its manufacturing sector will be destroyed if current Obama administration regulations and actions continue. Our vital transportation sector and all others that utilize petroleum-based products will suffer, too.

con't here

Climate Change: Good Or Bad?

2012-01-11T10:16:00.002-06:00

A reader seeking to initiate discussion and seeking comments writes:

Subject: RE: Revealing our leaders as lightweights....

Well, the real issue is that we, the general public, do not have easy access to the data many are using to claim home sapiens are responsible for global warming. However, opposition to those claims comes from many, like myself, a geologist, who know that climate change is as inevitable as the sun rising. Many of us are skeptical because of the huge amounts of money that will change hands, mostly between politicians. I think the biggest elephant in the room is the lack of discussion about how bad global warming is for the Homo sapien population, and what severe damage it hasn’t caused before.

While we can argue about whether or not the CO2 from fossil fuels is the culprit, it is hard to believe that it is more powerful than the source of the heat itself, the sun and all its moods. With the potential (they say) of the current sun cycle going into a dormant time, we shall see. Again, do we really think a warmer earth is that bad, bad enough to transfer the wealth from one group to a more dangerous group? Who will do the most harm, a rise in temperature or a rich elite (politicians, who have no idea of where money comes from) taking more and more power? I vote that, like Pogo said, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

Alan

The "Green Energy" Boondoggle

2012-01-11T10:03:00.001-06:00

The facts elaborated on in the following article have been obvious, known, and discussed on this blog and elsewhere since its inception. Maybe, finally, our current worldwide economic depression and enforced belt-tightening is bringing some common sense to our energy policies. Let's hope so. The public ought to be outraged at this waste; are you?

Let's hope this same common sense prevails this coming November and those pushing this "green energy boondoogle" find themselves out of office.
Peter

Green Energy Is a Financial Parasite
source: Casey Research subscribers@caseyresearch.com

Any politician who talks of a green, utopian US - where wind and solar produce most of our energy, electric cars put power back into the grid, green fields of corn produce clean fuels, and millions of Americans work in green technology factories - is creating a fanciful vision so far detached from reality it should really be called a lie. Such tales are designed to encourage a public that is increasingly despondent about the future, but the policy moves that have been made in support of these fantasies have cost taxpayers tens of billions of dollars. Much of it is money that will not be repaid, because a whole whack of the companies and industries that accepted green grants, loan guarantees, and tax credits have turned out to be complete failures. (e.g. Solyndra)

Two green subsidies expired with 2011, and not a moment too soon. In fact, we wish more of the US government's initiatives to support green energy had ended with the stroke of midnight, because the green energy industry has become completely dependent on a steady stream of government money. Protected by this "green gold," green technologies from corn ethanol to solar power have not had to compete against other power sectors based on their merits. If they had, many would have already failed.

Let's a take tour through some of the US's green subsidies and examine just how they have tipped the scales in favor of technologies that generally don't stand the test of economics, are often worse for the environment than conventional methods, and are costing taxpayers dearly.

There's nothing good about corn ethanol fuel

On New Year's Eve the corn ethanol subsidy quietly expired, 30 years after it was implemented. In those three decades ethanol became the US's top recipient of alternative-fuel funding, with corn ethanol in particular becoming the darling of the biofuels craze. As a darling should be, the industry was showered with money: Over the last 30 years the federal government has spent $45 billion supporting corn-ethanol producers. In 2011 alone the feds spent $6 billion on corn ethanol subsidies, equating to 45¢ for every gallon of ethanol. Even with that support, US corn ethanol was not able to compete with Brazilian ethanol, which is made from sugar cane. To rectify that, lawmakers instituted a 54¢-per-gallon tariff against the Brazilian product. Together, the 45¢ subsidy and the 54¢ tariff meant American-made corn ethanol was supported to the tune of almost $1 per gallon.

That would be great were ethanol a good way to reduce greenhouse gases, lower energy costs, or increase US energy independence. Unfortunately, it fails on all of those fronts. A growing left-right coalition has been speaking out against ethanol as a fuel for some time now; the latest voice to join the chorus is none other than the National Academy of Sciences. In October, NAS researchers concluded that grain ethanol "could not compete with fossil fuels in the U.S. marketplace without mandates, subsidies, tax exemptions, and tariffs... This lack of competitiveness raises questions about the use of government resources to support biofuels." The report went on to discuss how biofuels actually increase net carbon emissions: pumping energy-intensive row crops into gas tanks leads to land use changes that increase greenhouse gases.

Continuing down the list of ethanol-as-a-fuel failures, it turns out ethanol is very tough on vehicles - a bill to allow gasoline to contain 15% ethanol (compared to the max 10% now allowed) was shot down after every major automaker said that much ethanol would cause significant engine corrosion. Then there's the fact that corn ethanol subsidies also generated a host of painful side effects. One is literally making us fatter: widespread use of high fructose corn syrup. Starting in the mid-1980s farmers realized that, even when sale prices for corn were low, the government's largess meant it was still worthwhile to grow the stuff. More and more corn was grown, beyond what could be consumed by people or livestock or made into fuel. What were producers to do with the rest of it? Make high fructose corn syrup, a sweetener that is now in hundreds of thousands of products and that contributes thousands of empty calories to the average American diet every week.

So ethanol is uneconomic unless the government spends billions of taxpayer dollars supporting it, worse for the atmosphere than fossil fuels, and really hard on engines, while the support system to encourage corn-based ethanol production is contributing to the US obesity epidemic. Why, then, is ethanol even used in fuel? Because of all those government subsidies and mandates. After major lobbying efforts from the agricultural and biofuels industries, Congress mandated annual increases in use of renewable fuels, including ethanol, starting with 15 billion gallons in 2007 and growing to 36 billion gallons in 2022.

So fuel makers have to include ethanol in their mixtures. Too bad that rule did not also expire.

Electric vehicles: expensive toys that basically burn coal instead of oil

Another lesser-known tax break also expired with 2011: the credit that gave electric car owners up to $1,000 to defray the cost of installing a 220-volt charging device in their homes, or up to $30,000 to install one in a commercial location. A related subsidy that did not end still gives $7,500 in tax credits to purchasers of electric vehicles. For a variety of reasons, like the ethanol subsidy none of these incentives should have existed in the first place.

Electric vehicles have failed on one front after another. To start, they are inordinately expensive - the much-lauded Chevy Volt costs $40,000, while the Karma from Fisker costs a whopping $100,000. This means electric vehicles are only affordable for the wealthy; it's pretty hard to understand why American taxpayers should subsidize cars for the wealthiest members of society. The subsidies go beyond direct tax credits and rebates - government loans and grants in support of the Volt alone total $3 billion, which means each car produced to date has been subsidized to the tune of $250,000. (Volt supporters contest this number, saying subsidies only total $30,000 per vehicle... still not an insignificant amount.)

Then, for all that money, you still can only drive short distances. The Volt's official range is 30 miles, but reports show it can actually travel only 25 miles before needing to either recharge or switch to gasoline. There's also the issue that electric vehicles still need power, and the electricity that charges their batteries comes primarily from the US power grid, to which the largest contributor is coal-fired power plants. As such, a Volt essentially burns coal instead of gasoline, at least for the 25 miles it can drive before switching to gas.

At least coal is a domestic resource, compared to gasoline derived from imported crude oil, right? Well, let's see just how much electric vehicles will reduce US oil consumption. Assuming there are 6 million of them on American roads in ten years, out of 300 million passenger vehicles, and assuming that passenger vehicles continue to account for 40 to 45% of total US oil consumption, in ten years these tens of billions of dollars spent to support electric vehicles will have reduced US oil consumption by less than 1%. When you add in the fact that lithium-ion batteries are pretty toxic items, and that coal- or natural-gas-derived electricity demands will go up with each electric vehicle, the case for electric vehicles becomes pretty darn weak. (weak? pathetic!)

Solar and wind power: a financial sinkhole

Electric vehicles and corn ethanol fuel are not the only green industries that have been producing pitiful returns on government investment: Solar and wind power are just as guilty of eating up huge subsidies and still failing to break even economically.

Let's start with an example - one that was highlighted in a recent New York Times article. NRG Energy is building a 250-MW solar project in San Luis Obispo Country (northwest of Los Angeles), known as California Valley Solar Ranch. The ranch's one million solar panels will provide enough energy for 100,000 homes, but it will cost $1.6 billion to build. Most of those dollars are coming from government subsidies or low-interest loans.

All told, NGR and its partners secured $5.2 billion in federal loan guarantees plus hundreds of millions in other subsidies for four large solar projects. The crazy thing is, the government is giving out these grants and loans despite information from its own researchers that solar power is uneconomic now and will remain so in the future. The US Energy Information Administration predicts that by 2016 the total cost of solar photovoltaic energy will be about $211 per megawatt-hour, compared to $63 for an advanced natural-gas combined-cycle power plant.

Just as with corn ethanol, it's the taxpayer who bears the brunt of this obsession with expensive solar power. The main federal subsidy currently covers 30% of the cost of a residential solar system. When other subsidies are added in, as much as 75% of the cost can be covered. Obama's administration has spent $9.6 billion on solar and wind power through the Section 1603 Treasury grant program over the last few years.

With that kind of support, it's no wonder America is in love with solar power. In 2011, solar installations skyrocketed, with 1,700 MW installed during the year, an 89% increase over 2010. Still, all of the panels now installed across the nation produce only about as much electricity as a single coal-fired plant. And even with demand growing rapidly, the industry is awash in debt and bankruptcy.

US solar manufacturers are being pushed out of the market by low-cost Chinese manufacturers, which get even more support from their government than Obama gives to American producers. In California, for example, Chinese producers held 29% of the market at the beginning of 2011; by the end of the third quarter they had grown their market share to 40%, while US manufacturers saw their share fall from 37% to 29%. And with the Chinese flooding the market with cheap solar panels, prices for solar panels fell by 40% in 2011.

Falling prices for solar panels and dwindling market shares forced three US solar companies into bankruptcy in 2011 and recently necessitated staff cutbacks at another two companies. This is all happening despite billions in loan guarantees to these companies. First Solar, for example, took $3 billion in loan guarantees from the federal government to develop three solar farms in Arizona and California. Now the company is cutting half of its staff, including 60 jobs in California where it received $3 million in state sales tax credits.

Of course, the most notable solar bankruptcy of 2011 was Solyndra, the California-based company that went bankrupt months after receiving a loan guarantee of $535 million from the US government and despite increased demand for solar panels in the country following implementation of state mandates for solar energy.

And things are about to get a lot tougher for struggling solar panel producers in the US, because the 1603 program expired on January 1. When you add up grants, subsidies, loans, and tax credits that have been helping the solar and wind industries along, then add in mandates that require utilities to buy renewable power at set prices from the alternative energy producers for decades, you are left with an industry that is wholly dependent on taxpayers, not on its own technology's capabilities. Forced to go it alone in the power industry, solar and wind producers are not going to survive.

Leveling the playing field

In chasing the green power dream, the US is not alone. In fact, it trails several European countries in the effort. Germany and Denmark have the largest installed bases of alternative energy in Europe and are often held aloft as examples of how to encourage wind and solar power. Proponents usually stay mum on the fact that retail customers in Germany and Denmark pay the highest electricity rates in the European Union.

It is true that progress is never easy and is often expensive. From that pulpit, advocates argue that continued investment in green technologies will drive prices down in the long run. However, this reasoning ignores the other side of the problem: solar and wind can never produce baseload energy. The average wind plant in the United States runs at about one-third of its rated capacity, while solar plants runs at about 25% of their nameplate capacity. Since there is no way to store large amounts of electricity, the variable outputs from solar and wind facilities will only ever be able to replace a modest amount of conventional baseload power.

When you look at green subsidies on an energy production basis, the disparity becomes pretty stunning. Wind's 5.6 cents per kilowatt hour is more than 85 times that of oil and gas. Solar power costs 13 times more than wind, making solar more than a thousand times more expensive than conventional fuels.

Wind and solar power, corn ethanol, and electric vehicles are not infant industries in need of support. They are perennially inferior industries that only still exist in their current forms because of a constant stream of "green gold."

That stream is slowly drying up, thankfully. The only way to achieve the very admirable goal of transforming society into an energy-efficient space is to eliminate all of the subsidies that are currently directed at green energy and clean technology while increasing taxes on the things we are trying to minimize, such as gasoline consumption and plastic bags. That would force everyone to innovate, compete, and win or lose according to merit.

Global Warming, Alternative Energy? It's Not Working In Nome, Alaska

2012-01-10T09:41:00.001-06:00

Some say Arctic sea ice is melting and will soon disappear completely. Sea level will rise, polar bears will drown. Some say we can replace fossil fuels like gasoline and diesel with alternatives like solar, wind, and geothermal energy. We've all heard the bogus stories and unrealistic claims. Well, we're now seeing how this la-la land dreaming is playing out this winter in Nome, Alaska.

All the Billions spent on climate modeling, the United Nations cajoling and bullying of lawmakers and taxpayers, and the predictions of catastrophic warming seem like a cruel joke. I bet the people of Nome wish Al Gore could be there with them to warm things up a bit and share the fun.
See the following article from the hypocritical New York Times, long a perpetuator of the myth of man-caused global warming, for the story.
Peter

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/10/us/icebreaker-slowly-carves-path-for-tanker-to-bring-emergency-fuel-to-alaska.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha23

January 9, 2012

A New Race of Mercy to Nome, This Time Without Sled Dogs
By WILLIAM YARDLEY

NOME, Alaska — In the winter of 1925, long after this Gold Rush boomtown on the Bering Sea had gone bust, diphtheria swept through its population of 1,400. Medicine ran dangerously low, and there was no easy way to get more. No roads led here, flight was ruled out and Norton Sound was frozen solid.

Parents still read books to their children about what happened next: Balto, Togo, Fritz and dozens more sled dogs sprinted through subzero temperatures across 674 miles of sea ice and tundra in what became known as the Great Race of Mercy. The medicine made it, Nome was saved and the Siberian huskies became American heroes.

Eighty-seven years later, Nome is again locked in a dark and frigid winter — a record cold spell has pushed temperatures to minus 40 degrees, cracked hotel pipes and even reduced turnout at the Mighty Musk Oxen’s pickup hockey games. And now another historic rescue effort is under way across the frozen sea.

Yet while the dogs needed only five and a half days, Renda the Russian tanker has been en route for nearly a month — and it is unclear whether she will ever arrive. The tanker is slogging through sea ice behind a Coast Guard icebreaker, trying to bring not medicine but another commodity increasingly precious in remote parts of Alaska: fuel, 1.3 million gallons of emergency gasoline and diesel to heat snow-cloaked homes and power the growing number of trucks, sport utility vehicles and snow machines that have long since replaced dogsleds.

For the moment, this latest tale appears less likely to produce a warm children’s book than an embarrassing memo, and maybe a few lawsuits, about how it all could have been avoided.

“People need to get fired over this,” said David Tunley, one of the few Musk Oxen at the outdoor rink on an evening when the temperature was minus 23. “The litigation of whose fault it is will probably go on forever.”

How Nome ended up short on fuel this winter is a complicated issue unto itself, but trying to get the Renda here to help has become a sub-Arctic odyssey — and perhaps a clunky practice run for a future in which climate change and commercial interests make shipping through Arctic routes more common.

“There is a lot of good knowledge that is coming out of this,” said Rear Adm. Thomas P. Ostebo, the officer in charge of the Coast Guard in Alaska.

The learning curve has been steep. Since leaving Vladivostok, Russia, on Dec. 17, the 370-foot Renda has encountered a fuel mix-up in South Korea and storms that prevented it from going to Japan; it has received a waiver of the Jones Act in the United States (to allow the foreign vessel to finally pick up gasoline in Dutch Harbor, Alaska, before transporting it to Nome) and broad support for its mission from Alaska’s Congressional delegation; it has been joined by the Coast Guard’s only operative icebreaker built for the Arctic, the Healy. It has had to alter its route to avoid the world’s most substantial population of a federally protected sea duck called the spectacled eider.

As of Monday, the Renda and the Healy were about 140 miles south of Nome, having made little progress from the night before. Wind, current and the brutal cold are causing complications with breaking what is known as first-year ice — the kind that forms each winter and melts in the summer as opposed to lasting year-round. As soon as the Healy breaks open a channel, ice closes in behind it, squeezing the Renda.

The Coast Guard has been among the most vocal government agencies in asking for more money and better equipment to deal with increased commercial activity in the Arctic and sub-Arctic. Admiral Ostebo said the Healy, a medium-duty icebreaker, was fully capable of making the trip to Nome but that using a heavy-duty polar icebreaker — the Coast Guard owns two: one is retired, the other under repair until at least 2014 — might have made a difference.

He said the Coast Guard had thought that having the Healy lead the Renda would have been easier, “but it turns out that the pressure that ice is under quite frankly makes it hard to move through for the Renda.” He said these were “conditions I think we’re going to see a lot in the future.”

If the Renda reaches Nome, it would be making the first maritime fuel delivery through sea ice in Alaska history. The effort comes as many interested parties are anticipating business that could develop as Shell plans to conduct new exploratory offshore oil drilling just north of here as early as this summer.

“These are not cowboys out here trying to do crazy things,” said Mark Smith, the chief executive of Vitus Marine, the Alaska company that proposed using the Renda to representatives for Nome. “All of the stakeholders involved in this mission look at it as a learning experience as they consider further development.”

Nome usually receives its winter supply of fuel in early fall, before ice hardens over the Bering. But last fall, multiple shipping delays and then a major storm prevented the fall shipment from arriving. Many people here blame Bonanza Fuel, one of two local companies that barge in fuel and the one that failed to ensure its fall delivery made it. But the fuel company’s owner blamed the barge company for delaying shipments.

“Certainly we’ll evaluate how this situation came together,” said Jason Evans, the chairman of the Sitnasuak Native Corporation, which owns Bonanza, “so that we’re not put in this situation and the community of Nome’s not put in this situation again.”

Officials say Nome could run out of heating oil by March. A normal fuel barge cannot make the trip until ice melts in June or July.

Dogs still pull sleds to Nome, in the annual Iditarod race each March, but there are still no roads here from outside. There are, however, more modern means of transportation. Mr. Evans said Nome could resort to flying in fuel through hundreds of small shipments but that shipping costs alone would be more than $3 per gallon. Fuel here already approaches $6. Conservation can only go so far.

“You have to heat your home when it’s 36 below,” he said.

The effort has prompted observers far and wide to comment on what it all means as the United States tries to figure out how to navigate the increasingly important Arctic. One question not to ask here: Regardless of how it came to this, is tiny Nome worth all the effort?

“Why should we be treated any differently than the Lower 48?” said Mayor Denise L. Michels, noting that the Coast Guard also escorts commercial shipments through ice and difficult conditions in the Great Lakes and off the East Coast. “We keep saying that we are an Arctic nation.”

Controlling Climate Change: Flogging A Dead Horse

2012-01-10T08:05:00.000-06:00

The following is a recent summary of the current status of the attempt by the United Nations to control (extort money from taxpayers) global climate change through the reduction of "carbon emissions". They are as Mr. Lomborg says, "flogging a dead horse". It is a dead issue, or it should be.

First off, the science behind the myth of man-caused global warming is based on lies and political manipulation (see "climategate"). Second, there is much doubt that "carbon emissions", which really means carbon dioxide emissions, can cause or are causing global warming. In fact, in spite of all the burning of "evil" fossil fuels over the past couple of centuries or so, it looks like the Earth is cooling, not warming. As Lomborg says, let's get on with something important.
Peter

The Emperor’s New Climate-Change Agreement

Bjørn Lomborg

AUTHOR INFO
Bjørn Lomborg is the author of The Skeptical Environmentalist and Cool It, head of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, and adjunct professor at Copenhagen Business School.
http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/lomborg80/English

COPENHAGEN – Dressing up failure as victory has been integral to climate-change negotiations since they started 20 years ago. The latest round of talks in Durban, South Africa, in December was no exception.

Climate negotiations have been in virtual limbo ever since the catastrophic and humiliating Copenhagen summit in 2009, where vertiginous expectations collided with hard political reality. So as negotiators – and a handful of government ministers – arrived in Durban, expectations could not have been lower.

Yet, by the end of the talks, the European Union’s climate commissioner, Connie Hedegaard, was being applauded in the media for achieving a “breakthrough” that had “salvaged Durban,” and, most significantly, for achieving the holy grail of climate negotiations, a “legally binding treaty.” According to British climate minister Chris Huhne, the results showed that the United Nations climate-change negotiation system “really works and can produce results.”

Sure, the agreement would come into effect only in 2020 – which sounds oddly complacent when environmentalists and political leaders warned ahead of the Copenhagen conference that we had just six months or 50 days to solve the climate problem. But, as the British newspaper The Guardian assured readers, this was a breakthrough, because developing countries, including India and China, were, for the first time, “agreeing to be legally bound to curb their greenhouse gases.” And, just as importantly, the US was making the same promise.

Let’s take a look at the actual agreement reached in Durban that generated all that congratulatory back-slapping. It won’t take long: the document runs to two pages, contains no commitments to cut emissions, and outlines no policies to implement the undefined cuts. There is simply a promise “to launch a process to develop a protocol, another legal instrument, or an agreed outcome with legal force.”

An agreement to launch a legal process. That is what everyone got so worked up about? And, again, the negotiators merely promised to set themselves a deadline of 2015 to finish setting up this legal process, which would enter into force five years hence.

Just a few days later, the Indian environment minister, Shrimati Jayanthi Natarajan, stressed that there was no legally binding treaty: “India cannot agree to a legally binding agreement for emissions reduction at this stage of our development.…I must clarify that [Durban] does not imply that India has to take binding commitments to reduce its emissions in absolute terms in 2020.”

India was not alone. The day after the Durban conference, Canada officially withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol, which Russia and Japan have already declined to extend, leaving only the EU’s member states and a few other countries committed to further reductions.

Hollow victories have been central to climate negotiations since they began. The Durban agreement uncannily echoes the agreement reached in Bali in 2007 “to launch a comprehensive process to enable the full, effective, and sustained implementation of the [UN Climate] Convention through long-term cooperative action.” According to that deal – which was, of course, much celebrated at the time – a legal treaty was supposed to be ready for the 2009 Copenhagen meeting.

In Kyoto in 1997, the treaty was acclaimed as “a milestone in the history of climate protection,” and President Bill Clinton declared that “the United States has reached an historic agreement with other nations of the world to take unprecedented action to address global warming.”

Of course, the treaty had already been rejected in the US Senate by a 95-0 vote, and thus was dead on arrival. This, and lax interpretations of emissions in the years following Kyoto, meant that more emissions occurred under the protocol than had been expected to occur in its absence according to research undertaken by the economists Christoph Böhringer and Carsten Vogt.

Even at the start of global climate-change negotiations in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, the aim of putting the planet “on a course to address the critical issue of global warming” soon went awry. Rich countries fell 12% short of their promise to cut emissions to 1990 levels by 2000.

For 20 years, climate negotiators have repeatedly celebrated deals that haven’t panned out. Worse, for all practical purposes, the promises that have been made have had no impact on global CO2 emissions. They have only provided false hope that we have addressed climate change and allowed us to push it to the back burner for another few years. So, before we get too excited celebrating the “breakthrough” of Durban, we would do well to reflect on a two-decade history of flogging a dead horse.

We will never reduce emissions significantly until we manage to make green energy cheaper than fossil fuels. We must focus sharply on research and development to drive down alternative energy prices over coming decades.

The first step toward doing that is to end our collective suspension of disbelief when it comes to climate-change negotiations. We need to see through the hype and self-serving political spin. We owe it to the future to do better.

Bjørn Lomborg is the author of The Skeptical Environmentalist and Cool It, head of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, and adjunct professor at Copenhagen Business School.

Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2012.

www.project-syndicate.org

Climate Prophecy Coming True

2012-01-06T07:56:00.000-06:00

The myth of man-caused global climate change is being exposed as a fraud. That much is good, but the relentless drive for central (global) control of our lives goes on. Hear it from someone who knows all too well the dangers of central control: meaning communism, socialism, fascism, and totalitarianism. I wish we had someone with this degree of wisdom running for and winning the
Presidency of the United States of America. Read on.
Peter

Freedom, not climate, is at risk

English Pages, 14. 6. 2007

http://www.klaus.cz/clanky/825

We are living in strange times. One exceptionally warm winter is enough – irrespective of the fact that in the course of the 20th century the global temperature increased only by 0.6 per cent – for the environmentalists and their followers to suggest radical measures to do something about the weather, and to do it right now.

In the past year, Al Gore’s so-called “documentary” film was shown in cinemas worldwide, Britain’s – more or less Tony Blair’s – Stern report was published, the fourth report of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was put together and the Group of Eight summit announced ambitions to do something about the weather. Rational and freedom-loving people have to respond.

The dictates of political correctness are strict and only one permitted truth, not for the first time in human history, is imposed on us. Everything else is denounced. The author Michael Crichton stated it clearly: “the greatest challenge facing mankind is the challenge of distinguishing reality from fantasy, truth from propaganda”. I feel the same way, because global warming hysteria has become a prime example of the truth versus propaganda problem. It requires courage to oppose the “established” truth, although a lot of people – including top-class scientists – see the issue of climate change entirely differently. They protest against the arrogance of those who advocate the global warming hypothesis and relate it to human activities.

As someone who lived under communism for most of his life, I feel obliged to say that I see the biggest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity now in ambitious environmentalism, not in communism. This ideology wants to replace the free and spontaneous evolution of mankind by a sort of central (now global) planning. The environmentalists ask for immediate political action because they do not believe in the long-term positive impact of economic growth and ignore both the technological progress that future generations will undoubtedly enjoy, and the proven fact that the higher the wealth of society, the higher is the quality of the environment. They are Malthusian pessimists.

The scientists should help us and take into consideration the political effects of their scientific opinions. They have an obligation to declare their political and value assumptions and how much they have affected their selection and interpretation of scientific evidence.

Does it make any sense to speak about warming of the Earth when we see it in the context of the evolution of our planet over hundreds of millions of years? Every child is taught at school about temperature variations, about the ice ages, about the much warmer climate in the Middle Ages. All of us have noticed that even during our life-time temperature changes occur (in both directions).

Due to advances in technology, increases in disposable wealth, the rationality of institutions and the ability of countries to organise themselves, the adaptability of human society has been radically increased. It will continue to increase and will solve any potential consequences of mild climate changes.

I agree with Professor Richard Lindzen from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who said: “future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early 21st century’s developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally averaged temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree, and, on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer projections combined into implausible chains of inference, proceeded to contemplate a roll-back of the industrial age”.

The issue of global warming is more about social than natural sciences and more about man and his freedom than about tenths of a degree Celsius changes in average global temperature.

As a witness to today’s worldwide debate on climate change, I suggest the following:

- Small climate changes do not demand far-reaching restrictive measures

- Any suppression of freedom and democracy should be avoided

- Instead of organising people from above, let us allow everyone to live as he wants

- Let us resist the politicisation of science and oppose the term “scientific consensus”, which is always achieved only by a loud minority, never by a silent majority

- Instead of speaking about “the environment”, let us be attentive to it in our personal behaviour

- Let us be humble but confident in the spontaneous evolution of human society. Let us trust its rationality and not try to slow it down or divert it in any direction

- Let us not scare ourselves with catastrophic forecasts, or use them to defend and promote irrational interventions in human lives.

Václav Klaus, Financial Times, 14 June 2007

Václav KlausFrom Wikipedia,

Václav Klaus (Czech pronunciation: [ˈvaːtslaf ˈklaus]; born 19 June 1941 in Prague) is the second President of the Czech Republic (since 2003) and a former Prime Minister (1992–1997).

An economist, Klaus was the principal co-founder of the Civic Democratic Party, the Czech Republic's largest center-right political party.[3][4] Klaus is a eurosceptic,[5][6] but he reluctantly endorsed the Lisbon treaty as President of his country.[7] He has been called the "Margaret Thatcher of Central Europe".[8]

Global Warming: A Massive Rip-Off Of American Taxpayers

2012-01-04T14:21:00.001-06:00

The waste of BILLIONS of taxpayer dollars on the global warming scam is an atrocity. Consider this in light of the current economic recession we are enduring. Consider jobs lost, massive and increasing government debt, and a loss of trust in science and the integrity of "scientists". We don't really expect politicians like Al Gore and people running the United Nations to feel any shame, but what about so-called scientists like Michael Mann of Penn State or James Hansen of NASA? Scientists, like Doctors, especially those being supported by tax dollars, are supposed to operate under the strictest measures of honesty. There can be no manipulation of data, no politicking, no lying; but that is not what has been happening since the beginning of the push to "stop global warming".

A scientist who lies about his data is no scientist. They're bought and paid for and can be equated with those who practice what some call "the world's oldest profession". In other words, they are whores. All of the honest scientists in the world, myself included, should be outraged by the actions of the immoral few. All of the non-scientists should be embarrassed and alarmed that they have been so easily misled by the prophets of global warming and environmental catastrophe.

Read the following article and weep.
Peter

U.S. Funds Nearly 50% -- $31 Million -- of U.N.’s Global Warming Panel

By Elizabeth Harrington

January 3, 2012

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/us-funds-nearly-50-31-million-un-s-global-warming-panel

Global Warming Liar In Chief -- Al Gore

(CNSNews.com) – A study by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) determined that the United States funded the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations’ authority on alleged man-made global warming, with $31.1 million since 2001, nearly half of the panel’s annual budget.

The GAO also found that this funding information “was not available in budget documents or on the websites of the relevant federal agencies, and the agencies are generally not required to report this information to Congress.”

In a Nov. 17, 2011 report, “International Climate Change Assessments: Federal Agencies Should Improve Reporting and Oversight of U.S. Funding,” the GAO found that the State Department provided $19 million for administrative and other expenses, while the United States Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) provided $12.1 million in technical support through the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), averaging an annual $3.1 million to the IPCC over 10 years -- $31.1 million so far.

The IPCC runs an annual budget of $7 million, according to the Wall Street Journal, making the United States a major benefactor for its global warming agenda.

IPCC Chairman Hairma Rajendra-Pa. (AP Photo)

An international body, the IPCC was created in 1988. Though thousands of scientists contribute to the panel, only 11 working members support the organization. Set up by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the IPCC is an “effort by the United Nations to provide the governments of the world with a clear scientific view of what is happening to the world’s climate,” according to its Web site.

The organization has been the subject of controversy in the last several years when thousands of e-mails from the University of East Anglia's (UEA) Climatic Research Unit (CRU) were stolen and released in 2009, and again in November 2011, on the eve of climate talks in Durban, South Africa.

The e-mails included those between Michael Mann, the director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State University and author of the infamous “hockey stick” graph that apparently showed global temperatures reaching “unprecedented” levels, and Phil Jones, director at CRU, which brought into question the validity of the IPCC’s work, with the reported statements “hide the decline,” and “Mike’s Nature Trick.”

In explaining its reason for auditing U.S. funding of the IPCC, the GAO said, “Interest in IPCC’s activities increased after the theft of e-mails among IPCC scientists was made public, and with the discovery of several errors in its 2007 set of reports.”

The IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report (AR4), released in 2007, included several errors, including claims that the Himalayan glaciers would melt by the year 2035, which the IPCC, in a statement, later admitted was based on inconclusive data.

After facing “key challenges” in determining the amount of funding to the IPCC, the GAO now recommends that U.S. funding be reported annually to Congress with “accurate and consistent information.”

The report said documents on U.S. financing for the IPCC were “not available in budget documents or on the websites of the relevant federal agencies, and the agencies are generally not required to report this information to Congress.”

Conflicting State Department numbers also made it more difficult for the GAO to assemble the data. The GAO “reviewed documents and interviewed officials from federal agencies and IPCC” to reach its findings.

A 2005 GAO report entitled “Federal Reports on Climate Change Funding Should Be Clearer and More Complete” found that federal funding for climate change was not adequately accountable. “Congress and the public cannot consistently track federal climate change funding or spending over time,” the report concluded.

The report also found federal funding for global warming had increased by 116 percent between 1993 and 2004, to $5.1 billion.

The $3.1 million annual U.S. funding goes towards the IPCC’s “core activities”: meetings of the governing bodies, co-ordination meetings, support for the developing country co-chairs, the IPCC Web site and Secretariat. The IPCC assesses scientific information, but does not conduct any research of its own.

According to the U.S. Climate Change Science Program, the United States “has made the world’s largest scientific investment in the areas of climate change and global change research” with a total of nearly $20 billion over the past 13 years.

Canadians Facing The Facts: Man Caused Global Warming Is A Myth

2012-01-04T08:25:00.000-06:00

A myth or a lie? Well, I'd call the entire idea that man's burning of fossil fuels is causing global warming or that dreaded "climate change", a deliberate and well orchestrated lie. Even now European nations are initiating a carbon tax on airlines and thus their users. How utterly ridiculous and useless!!! This is just another clever way of squeezing more tax money from the public. It can not and will not be used to improve or protect the climate. It is way past time for Canadians and everyone else to wake up and admit they've been lied to about climate change and get on with tackling the real problems in the world. Read on.......
Peter

Progress: Canadian Senate Listens to Global Warming Skeptics

Posted By Tom Harris On January 2, 2011 @ 12:00 am In Uncategorized
32 Comments
http://pjmedia.com/blog/progress-canadian-senate-listens-to-global-warming-skeptics/?singlepage=true

On December 15, four leading scientists appeared before the Canadian Senate Standing Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources to challenge global warming advocacy. The hearing was the first of its kind in Canada. (Video of the hearing can be found here [1].)

Guelph University Professor of Economics Dr. Ross McKitrick [2] led off the hearing, explaining that the foundation of the climate scare — the science as promulgated by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — cannot be trusted:

The so-called Climategate emails confirmed the reality of bias and cronyism in the IPCC process. … IPCC Assessments are guaranteed merely to repeat and reinforce a set of foregone conclusions that make up the party line.

McKitrick explained how his research showed that much of the warming seen in the IPCC surface temperature record is almost certainly a result of urbanization, agriculture, and other land use changes, not greenhouse gases (GHG). He also found that the 50-year record of temperatures measured by balloons does not show the warming trend forecast by climate models.

University of Ottawa (U of O) Professor of Earth Sciences Dr. Ian Clark [3] addressed the committee:

We have not really seen any global warming for the past 10 years. … This is in stark contrast with the IPCC forecast of an increase of some 0.2 degrees per decade.

Clark explained that 20th century warming is merely one of a series of warm periods in the last 10,000 years. During these intervals, carbon dioxide — the greenhouse gas most targeted by governments around the world — was relatively steady:

CO2 had nothing to do with these warming periods.

Clark continued, showing that the last 500 million years show no correlation between temperature and CO2. He explained that water vapor is in fact responsible for the majority of the greenhouse effect. Clark also promoted the theory that the Sun, not CO2, is driving climate change. He concluded:

It is time to turn our attention to real, tangible environmental problems.

U of Ottawa Distinguished University Professor Dr. Jan Veizer [4] spoke next:

Many people think the science of climate change is settled. It is not. … [The Sun] drives the water cycle; the water cycle then generates climate, and climate decides how much jungle, how much tundra and so on we will have, and therefore drives around the carbon cycle. … The sun also warms the oceans that emit CO2 into the atmosphere. Atmospheric CO2 is thus the product and not the cause of the climate.

Veizer explained that solar output must be amplified to explain recent warming:

The IPCC argues that because no amplifier is known, which is an invalid assertion, man made greenhouse gases must be responsible. … However, this is an assumption. … There is no actual empirical experimental proof that carbon dioxide is a driver.

Veizer then showed that changes in cloudiness can account for much of the past century’s warming. Clouds have an enormous impact on temperature, he explained, and cloud extent appears to be controlled largely by cosmic rays entering the atmosphere, which are regulated by the Sun.

Carleton University Professor of Geology Dr. Timothy Patterson [5] discussed how his research in the fjords of British Columbia revealed consistent correlations between solar cycles and climate over the past 5,000 years:

Hundreds of other studies have shown exactly the same thing. … The sun, and not variations in carbon dioxide, appears to be the most important driver of climate change. … Solar scientists predict that by later in this decade the sun will be starting into its weakest solar cycle of the past two centuries, and this will likely lead to unusually cool conditions on earth, which may persist for decades. … It is global cooling, not warming, that is the major climate threat to the world.

Patterson explained how his research on the Tibbitt to Contwoyto winter ice road in northern Canada leads him to “project a period spanning several decades where conditions will remain suitable for continued extensive use of the ice road.”

With the exception of Alberta Senator Grant Mitchell — who asserted that “to believe these arguments is to believe some kind of strange conspiracy theory” — committee members appeared open to the scientists’ testimonies. Patterson encouraged Mitchell to attend one of the large earth sciences conferences where the skeptical point of view is supported by many researchers.

Yukon Senator Daniel Lang challenged the scientists:

Do everything you can to get out and to have that public debate … especially since, as Mr. Patterson’s research has indicated, we may well be looking at a cooling period for quite some time. If that is the case, then we really better have a look at what we are doing.

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Article printed from PJ Media: http://pjmedia.com

URL to article: http://pjmedia.com/blog/progress-canadian-senate-listens-to-global-warming-skeptics/

URLs in this post:

[1] here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xW19pPFfIyg&feature=related

[2] Dr. Ross McKitrick: http://www.uoguelph.ca/%7Ermckitri/ross.html

[3] Dr. Ian Clark: http://www.earth.uottawa.ca/details.php?lang=eng&id=55

[4] U of Ottawa Distinguished University Professor Dr. Jan Veizer: http://www.earth.uottawa.ca/details.php?lang=eng&id=63

[5] Dr. Timothy Patterson: http://http-server.carleton.ca/%7Etpatters/

The Cold Hard Truth About Solar Energy

2011-12-21T14:44:00.000-06:00

The cold hard truth about solar energy is that it is not economically viable, except in specialized, limited and usually subsidized applications. This is despite having Billions of tax-payer dollars fed into the bottomless pit of corrupt science (man-caused global warming) incompetent governments and crony capitalism (Solyndra). So now British Petroleum (BP) has seen the light, figuratively speaking and they're pulling the plug on their solar energy efforts. I could say I told you so.
Peter

BP shutting solar unit as industry struggles

3:13 pm ET 12/21/2011 - MarketWatch Databased News

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- After prominently featuring solar panels in its brand advertisements and at some of its gas stations, BP PLC is planning to shutter its BP Solar operation, according to reports on Wednesday.

BP PLC said global economic challenges have impacted the solar industry, making it difficult to sustain long term returns, according to an internal BP email cited by press reports. The move will affect 100 jobs.

BP, which has been in the solar business for decades, had featured solar panels prominently in its Beyond Petroleum advertising campaign.

BP said the solar business, which has been flooded by excess supply from China, has become commoditized.

A phone call and email to BP by MarketWatch was not immediately returned. BP will hold on to other alternative energy businesses, including wind.

BP inked a supply contract with JA Solar in 2010 as it started scaling back its own solar panel factories and trimming jobs.

Sam Wilkinson, senior market analyst of IMS Research said BP's decision comes as global photovoltaic module manufacturing capacity reaches 50 gigawatts, while demand is expected to total only 24 gigawatts this year. Average prices are now 44% lower than they were one year ago.

"Rapid manufacturing expansions have coincided with a slowdown in the growth of global demand," Wilkinson said in a statement emailed to MarketWatch. "The result has been intense competition and a fierce price war, and not enough demand to support all of the industry's hundreds of suppliers."

The move comes just days after First Solar, the only pure-play solar panel maker in the S&P 500 , issued a profit warning for 2012 and said it'll refocus its business toward large-scale utility projects, rather than residential solar panels. See: First Solar falls to lowest level since 2007.

Wind Power Delusions of Grandeur

2011-12-13T16:26:00.000-06:00

Telling it like it is, a waste of money foisted on unwilling and unwitting taxpayers.

The Wind Power Pipe Dream
Written by Alan Caruba, Warning Signs

December 12 2011

http://www.climatechangedispatch.com/home/9668-the-wind-power-pipe-dream?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+climatechangedispatch%2FnkcO+%28Climate+Change+Dispatch+news%29

Image via Wikipedia

Imagine if you will America’s mountain ranges topped by row upon row of wind turbines and America’s deserts and plains covered by solar panels. How ugly is that?

A recent Wall Street Journal article, “Wildlife Slows Wind Power”, took note of the slaughter of birds and bats by these Cuisinarts of the countryside. The problem has reached such proportions that “New federal rules on how wind-power operators must manage threats to wildlife could create another challenge for the fast-growing industry as it seeks more footholds in the U.S. energy landscape.”

The wind-power industry is heavily subsidized by loan guarantees and mandates, and like solar power is turning out to be a vast pit of wasted funding that also raises the cost of electricity to communities whose utilities have been required to purchase its output.

It is another environmental pipe dream and one intended to enrich those who go into this dubious business.

Not only uneconomical, it utterly fails to produce sufficient electrical energy to meet the demand of America’s homes, businesses and industry. As the article noted, “The U.S. now has more than 43,000 megawatts of wind capacity, double the level three years ago, generating roughly 3% of the nation’s electricity.”

Three percent!

Try to imagine how many wind turbines it would require to produce anywhere near the nation’s needs. Now consider that the wind does not blow in a constant stream and often does not blow at all.

Consider also that the increase in wind power has occurred within the last three years, precisely the time in which the Obama administration has been in office, throwing taxpayer money at this pathetically inadequate means of generating electricity while doing all it can to shut down coal-fired plants currently responsible for fifty percent of all the electricity generated. Concurrent with this have been attacks on the coal mining industry.

In early 2011 a study sponsored by the John Muir trust of the wind turbines in California found that wind farms are much less efficient than claimed, producing below 20% of capacity more than half the time and below 10% of capacity for more than a third of the time. The report found that the suggested output was particularly low during the times of highest demand.

Unknown to most Americans is the fact that wind power generation requires 100% backup. To maintain electrical grid capacity, the ability to supply customer demand for continuous electricity, every wind farm must have a backup generating facility. Thus, it is coal-fired, gas-powered, nuclear and hydroelectric power generation that ensures a reliable supply of electricity to consumers.

This means that the backup facility must have twice the real rated capacity of the wind farm. The result is more capital is required to ensure this, along with operating and maintenance costs when a traditional power company is forced to include wind power in its inventory. This is a global phenomenon wherever wind power is part of the mix.

The noise generated by wind turbines is such that, especially in rural areas, lawsuits and complaints, also noting lost property value. Such lawsuits have cropped up in Illinois, Texas, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Massachusetts, among other states. Increasingly, direct physiological impacts that include rapid heartbeat, nausea and blurred vision have been attributed to the turbine’s ultra-low-frequency sound and vibrations.

An expert on the detrimental aspects of wind power, John Droz, Jr., has created a website for those interested in the facts. Droz notes that “wind energy was abandoned well over a hundred years ago as it was totally inconsistent with our burgeoning, more modern needs of power, even in the late 1800s.” It is an outmoded source of power comparable to plowing farmland using oxen.

Due to intensive lobbying based on the discredited notion that carbon dioxide emissions from traditional power generation plants (with the exception of nuclear power and natural gas) cause “global warming”, this bogus justification is the basis for the wind power industry. Another idiotic rationale is “energy diversity.”

The demand from wind (and solar) power executives for a federal “national renewable electricity standard” would inflict this ridiculous form of power generation upon consumers and it is entirely one of their self-interest. It ignores the nation’s growing population and the need for more electricity generation by means that have a long-established record of efficiency, low cost, and predictability.

Like so much that is based on environmental schemes, it should be abandoned at the earliest possible time.

GLOBAL WARMING MY ARSE!!!!

2011-12-10T07:53:00.000-06:00

And they think wind turbines are going to replace fossil fuels as an energy source, and at the same time stop global warming? What global warming? How daft is that? Follow this link to see what is going on in Scotland and the rest of the U.K. right now. "Green Energy"? Major boondoggle! Follow the link below, look at all the pictures and ask "is this man-caused global warming?"

Britain bought into the global warming hoax and now they're paying the price: flaming wind turbines, power outages, and freezing in the proverbial dark. Thank Al Gore.

From the big breeze to the big freeze: After hurricane-force gusts destroy wind turbines Britain braces itself for snow and bitter cold

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2071633/UK-weather-Wind-turbine-EXPLODES-hurricane-force-gusts-batter-Northern-Britain.html#ixzz1g8itJySr

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2071633/UK-weather-Wind-turbine-EXPLODES-hurricane-force-gusts-batter-Northern-Britain.html

Al Gore, the man who almost became President......now there is a REALLY CHILLING THOUGHT!

The Big Lie Of Man-Caused Global Warming And Buddhism --- A Mismatch

2011-12-10T06:27:00.000-06:00

The concept of man-caused global warming and climate change on a global scale, is a giant fraud and hoax driven by lies and greed. (Al Gore comes to mind.) It is past time for everyone, including well-meaning Buddhists, to recognize it as such and disassociate themselves from this terribly destructive, UN-led and fear-driven charade, now exemplified by and known as "Climategate". The following article sums it up very well.

Peter

Buddhism and Climate Change: Political Fads vs. Pursuit of Truth

Posted By Mark Stuertz On December 9, 2011 @ 11:30 am In Uncategorized
24 Comments
http://pjmedia.com/blog/buddhism-and-climate-change-political-fads-vs-pursuit-of-truth/?singlepage=true

As the second wave of Climategate emails [1] gums-up the Durban Climate Change Conference [2], it’s instructive to revisit the Buddhist position on climate change. In May of 2009 just before the first batch of Climategate emails hit, a group of 20 Buddhist teachers from all traditions released The Time to Act is Now: A Buddhist Declaration on Climate Change [3].

The authors urged members of the international Buddhist community to sign the document in the run-up to the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December 2009. The Dalai Lama [4] was the first to sign, endorsing a “sustainable” atmospheric carbon dioxide limit of no more than 350 parts per million.

The declaration is a peculiar document. At its core, Buddhism is the practice of cultivating compassion to dissipate preoccupation with one’s self — to experience the truth of impermanence by surrendering attachment to things, feelings, and perceptions.

Does the declaration mesh with Buddhism?

The declaration makes note of the “overwhelming” scientific consensus that human activity is triggering environmental breakdown on a global scale. It states with assurance that if humans continue on their current energy-consuming ways, half the species on the planet will be extinct by the end of this century.

To avert catastrophe, the declaration urges fundamental changes in Western civilization. It insists we “de-carbonize” energy systems “by replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy sources that are limitless, benign, and harmonious with nature.” It calls for an end to all coal plant construction.

The document stresses that wind, solar, tidal, and geothermal power are sufficient to meet all of the world’s energy needs. If political leaders refuse to make these changes, putting the long-term good of humankind above the short-term benefits of fossil-fuel corporations, the declaration calls for “sustained campaigns of citizen action.”

The crisis is so pressing that the Dalai Lama indicated he would shelve the issue of Tibetan independence and Chinese oppression, and instead focus on the threats climate change poses to the glaciers on the Tibetan Plateau. This is according to leaked diplomatic cables [5] between “His Holiness” and Timothy Roemer, U.S. ambassador to India.

The most disturbing aspect of this unwavering Buddhist stance is not so much the blindness it exhibits to the corruption [6], data manipulation [7] and suppression [8], willful deception [9], intolerance [10], and even violent sadism [11] infecting the climate change movement. It’s not even the scientific and evidentiary fallacies embedded in the declaration itself. (Example: The Himalayan glacier “crisis” the Dalai Lama notes was based largely on an environmental activist group’s press report [12] and a typo [13]. While some Himalayan glaciers appear to be in retreat, others are expanding [14], and there is no evidence to suggest that they will disappear by the end of this century [15] as some climate alarmists argue.)

Also contrary to the declaration, science is never certain and isn’t the result of “consensus.” The latest findings from CERN [16] indicating that neutrinos travel faster than the speed of light [17] potentially upend the “consensus” of Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity.

The declaration insists that alternative energy sources are “benign.” Far from being “limitless” and “sustainable,” wind, geothermal, and solar power systems consume vast amounts of very limited land [18] and groundwater resources [19]. Windmill and solar panel manufacturing and maintenance are energy-intensive [20], generate toxic chemicals, and require mining processes that are often environmentally destructive [21]. Windmills also kill thousands of birds annually [22].

While the declaration’s suggested abolition of carbon-based fuels might thrill most Buddhists, in reality it would likely unleash a plague of famine and disease to rival the darkest scenarios posited by the climate change alarmists. Fertilizers and pesticides that maintain global food supplies are almost exclusively derived from petroleum. As are virtually all of the life-saving drugs and many of the medical supplies [23] used to treat injury and disease.

Also: fossil fuels are crucial to providing reliable base load power, or the minimum amount of energy required to power essential services such as hospitals, water treatment plants, communications, and traffic signals and airports. Would the Buddhist community accept mass starvation, chaos, injury, infection, and disease as the price of assuaging its offense over widespread fossil fuel use?

The most disturbing element of the declaration: it is in direct conflict with Buddhism itself.

Among the central tenets of Buddhism is the reality of impermanence and the ignorance generated by ego-consciousness. The ego not only attempts to cement experience into permanence, it strives for control over its surroundings, struggling to conform reality to its personal perceptions. This leads to suffering.

But while the term “climate change” acknowledges impermanence — the climate after all is constantly in flux — the movement itself obsesses over maintaining ill-defined or arbitrary points of stability. The core implication of the climate change movement is that there exists some ideal average global temperature that we must strive at all costs to maintain. What is this temperature? No one ever says. Most likely it’s the average global temperature measured in 1967 — the Summer of Love — since the climate change priesthood consists mostly of Baby Boomers who seem reflexively nostalgic for their “Youthquake [24]” years.

The declaration also implies that humans have the capability via massive citizen action to dramatically alter the Earth’s climate — to stop planetary change through the sheer force of human effort. What is this if not the height of conceit — ego on steroids?

It’s a conceit that assumes we know far more about the ebbs and flows of the planet than we actually do; one that presumes the narrow parameters that describe the Earth at this moment are the benchmark of how the Earth must always be — “sustainability.”

Example: the declaration assigns a “sustainable” atmospheric CO2 limit of 350 parts per million. Yet over the course of geological history, atmospheric CO2 concentrations have varied widely, reaching as high as 2,000 parts per million during the Jurassic Period [25], for example. The declaration’s 350 ppm limit is actually a low-end outlier in the context of geological history.

In fact for much of the 19th century CO2 concentrations [26] were higher — at times more than 400 ppm [27] — than they are today. Yet the Earth and life survived, even thrived, during these episodes. Far from an awareness of impermanence, the declaration seems to reflect a fetish for contrived stasis.

Our “ecological emergency” stems from a sense of disconnection from the Earth itself, the declaration states — from the illusion of separateness. But doesn’t the declaration reinforce that sense of separateness by emphasizing the illusion that humans can control the climate? Doesn’t it “disconnect” humans from the Earth by suggesting they are a disturbance in the natural order rather than a part of it? If the Earth is indeed becoming “sick” (whatever that means) as a result of human activity, isn’t that simply another manifestation of the planet’s dynamism and impermanence?

After all, the Earth has “sickened” itself many times over the course of geological history. Massive toxic gas releases from its bowels via supervolcanoes [28] have resulted in catastrophic destruction and mass extinctions. “Ecological emergencies” far more severe than anything envisioned by the climate change movement are a regular feature of the global lifecycle. Far from extraordinary, species extinction is a constant: 99.99 percent of all species that have ever lived are extinct. Virtually all became extinct without the disturbances of human activity.

To reach the conclusions posited in the Buddhist Declaration on Climate Change, you must discard the Buddhist principles of the truth of impermanence and the illusions of ego. The alleged climate change crisis stems from the three poisons of greed, ill will, and delusion, notes the declaration. It is disheartening that the Buddhist community seems unaware of these festering poisons in the climate change movement.

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Article printed from PJ Media: http://pjmedia.com

URL to article: http://pjmedia.com/blog/buddhism-and-climate-change-political-fads-vs-pursuit-of-truth/

URLs in this post:

[1] Climategate emails: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204452104577059830626002226.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

[2] Durban Climate Change Conference: http://unfccc.int/meetings/durban_nov_2011/meeting/6245.php

[3] The Time to Act is Now: A Buddhist Declaration on Climate Change: http://www.ecobuddhism.org/bcp/all_content/buddhist_declaration/

[4] Dalai Lama: http://www.dalailama.com/biography/a-brief-biography

[5] leaked diplomatic cables: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/MA06Ad01.html

[6] corruption: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/18/dr-james-hansens-growing-financial-scandal-now-over-a-million-dollars-of-outside-income/

[7] data manipulation: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/11/23/climategate_2_first_look/

[8] suppression: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mLxgNKRSpk

[9] willful deception: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2066240/Second-leak-climate-emails-Political-giants-weigh-bias-scientists-bowing-financial-pressure-sponsors.html

[10] intolerance: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0210/33371.html

[11] violent sadism: http://youtu.be/PDXQsnkuBCM

[12] environmental activist group’s press report: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1245636/Glacier-scientists-says-knew-data-verified.html

[13] a typo: http://pjmedia.com/blog/climategate-imminent-demise-of-glaciers-due-to-a-typo/2/

[14] others are expanding: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/8284223/Some-Himalayan-glaciers-are-advancing-rather-than-melting-study-finds.html

[15] by the end of this century: http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100119/full/463276a.html

[16] CERN: http://public.web.cern.ch/public/en/About/About-en.html

[17] travel faster than the speed of light: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/nov/18/neutrinos-still-faster-than-light

[18] very limited land: http://green.autoblog.com/2010/06/03/are-we-running-out-of-places-to-build-wind-farms/

[19] groundwater resources: http://thebulletin.org/web-edition/columnists/dawn-stover/the-myth-of-renewable-energy

[20] are energy-intensive: http://campaign2012.washingtonexaminer.com/blogs/beltway-confidential/solar-new-ethanol

[21] often environmentally destructive: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/05/clean-energy-apos-s-dirty-little-secret/7377/

[22] kill thousands of birds annually: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2010/may/03/checking-george-will-birds-and-wind-turbines/

[23] life-saving drugs and many of the medical supplies: http://www.pmpnews.com/news/petroleum-and-health-care-evaluating-and-managing-health-cares-vulnerability-petroleum-supply-s

[24] Youthquake: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youthquake_%28movement%29

[25] 2,000 parts per million during the Jurassic Period: http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/Carboniferous_climate.html

[26] 19th century CO2 concentrations: http://www.biomind.de/nogreenhouse/daten/EE%2018-2_Beck.pdf

[27] at times more than 400 ppm: http://www.biokurs.de/treibhaus/180CO2/bayreuth/bayreuth1e.htm

[28] supervolcanoes: http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/02/04/volcano-mass-extinction.html

The Long Overdue Death Of The Myth Of Man-Caused Global Warming

2011-09-12T14:23:00.001-05:00

If there is any real justice in the world Al Gore and all the other intentional propagators of the great man-caused global warming myth will spend eternity roasting in hades, or some such place. The damage they have done to the world's economy ranks with any of history's all time blunders. The monetary cost and poisoness seeds planted into academia and the minds of at least a generation of young people will take decades to heal. The more quickly this truth is revealed and disseminated the faster will be the road to recovery. Someone said "don't mess with Mother Nature". Well Al Gore and his followers tried to and they failed miserably.
Peter

The Slow, Certain Death of the Global Warming Theory

By Alan Caruba.

September 12, 2011 source

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I have been predicting the death of the global warming theory since late in the last decade when it became obvious that the Earth had entered into a cooling cycle. By 2009 the leak of thousands of emails between the “scientists” whose computer models the claims were based upon revealed they were in a state of panic regarding this obvious phenomenon.

Employed by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Global Warming (IPCC), those “scientists” have since been protected by the universities who benefited greatly from the huge grants of public funding they received. The issue of whether such men should be prosecuted for deceiving the entire world remains to be decided.

The lead player, Dr. James Hansen, still on the payroll of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, is the man who told Congress in 1988 that global warming threatened mankind and the Earth. He has since switched to lying about coal and oil, two of the fossil fuels on which the economies of all nations depend, claiming they are deadly pollutants that must be abandoned in favor of “clean energy”, wind and solar.

Former Vice President Al Gore, the most public face of “global warming”, has become a public joke. Recall, however, that he received a Nobel Prize and an Oscar in additions to the millions earned from the sale of “carbon credits” to offset “greenhouse gases.” Some exchanges devoted to these credits have closed their doors. The proposed Cap-and-Trade legislation based on them lingers in Congress.

One need not be a climate scientist or meteorologist to conclude that humans have nothing to do with the climate or the weather. Watching huge hurricanes wreak havoc, along with other weather-related events should be enough for anyone to conclude that humans do not “cause” such things.

Occam’s Razor is the ancient principle that the simplest explanation is the most likely the correct one, but billions in public funding, taxpayer’s dollars, have been diverted to the “research” that corrupt scientists have used to justify the global warming fraud.

MIT Professor, Dr. Richard Lindzen, an internationally recognized authority on atmospheric science, said, "Future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early 21st century's developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally averaged temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree, and, on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer projections combined into implausible chains of inference, proceeded to contemplate a roll-back of the industrial age."

We owe a huge debt of gratitude to those courageous scientists that stood their ground against the global warming fraud. Recently the Heartland Institute, in concert with the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, and the Science and Environmental Policy Project, published “Climate Change Reconsidered: 2011 Interim Report.” It is 430 pages co-authored by Dr. Craig D. Idso, Dr. Robert M. Carter, and Dr. S. Fred Singer, all of whom have been among the scientists repeatedly slandered as “global warming deniers” and “skeptics” for their efforts to educate the public.

The report, in carefully documented scientific language, identifies the way the warmists' computer models over-estimated the amount of warming, ignored the fact that increased carbon dioxide benefits plant growth, that there is less melting in the Arctic, Antarctic and on mountain tops than claimed, and that there is no sign of acceleration of sea-level rise in recent decades.

A recent Rasmussen survey indicates that upwards of 60% of Americans have concluded that humans have nothing to do with “global warming” or any other aspect of the climate. This is extraordinary when one considers how the mainstream media, the curriculums in the nation’s schools, and the unceasing efforts of major environmental organizations have tried to impose the global warming claims on the public.

In a similar fashion, “The Other Climate Theory” by Anne Jolis, an editorial page writer for The Wall Street Journal Europe, describes how a project of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) has put what may well be the final nail in the global warming coffin. The work of physicists using particle beam technology, CERN confirmed that the Sun’s cosmic rays enhanced cloud formation. The IPCC’s 2007 report had peremptorily dismissed this possibility, but then the IPCC’s reports have been the basis for the global warming fraud, asserting a “consensus” among scientists that never existed.

Thus the scientific method of describing a phenomenon, formulating a hypothesis to explain it, and performing tests to confirm or reject a hypothesis, has once again demonstrated that “global warming” is just so much hot air.

This is not stopped the Environmental Protection Agency from doing everything in its power to destroy the energy sector of the nation based in part on the global warming fraud.

Universities across America have entire departments and units devoted to keeping the global warming fraud alive. The mainstream press is heavily invested in it. Schools continue to frighten children with its claims. All this and other efforts will fail because science—real science—does not support it.

Fears Of Man-Caused Global Warming Decline........

2011-08-29T11:37:00.000-05:00

Of course people are concerned about "climate change", especially after they have just been overwhelmed with frightening images of flooding, tornadoes and now hurricane Irene pummeling the east coast of the United States. That's like asking people if they enjoy pain and suffering! Of course they don't. Call this media bias in reporting and conducting surveys such as this one by Nielsen.

The more important, somewhat hidden message here is that people are not as concerned about "climate change" as they were, and I maintain it is because an increasing number of people recognize that the idea of man-caused global warming or climate change is a fraud, a hoax, a myth perpetuated by those seeking to make a profit from the "big lie", that it is a scam. They see through the mass media dramatic exxageration of weather events. In other words they're not buying Al Gore's lies any more. Take his Nobel Prize, (along with Obama's) and put them in the trash where they belong.
Peter

Climate change concern declines: Nielsen

12:00 pm ET 08/29/2011 - MarketWatch Pulse News Bullet

CHICAGO (MarketWatch) -- Worldwide fears about climate change have receded in the past four years, as other environmental issues such as air and water pollution, water shortages, packaging waste and use of pesticides have been given more attention, according to a new report issued Monday by Nielsen Co. In an Internet survey of more than 25,000 respondents in 51 countries, 69% said they are worried about climate chance, up from 66% in 2009, but down from 72% in 2007. Meanwhile, 77% of respondents named air pollution as a main concern, while 75% cited water pollution. For 73% of those surveyed, pesticides were seen as a serious problem, Nielsen said. "Focus on immediate worries such as job security, local school quality, crime and economic well-being have all diminished media attention for climate stories in the past two years," said Maxwell Boykoff, senior visiting research associate at the University of Oxford's Environmental Change Institute.

Man-caused global warming advocates are prostitutes?

2011-08-24T15:04:00.000-05:00

Strong language indeed! This is almost as sure to cause liberal outrage as was Texas Governor Rick Perry saying that further devaluation of the dollar (i.e. quantitative easing) in America's current economic crisis would be "treasoness".

However, I say the people living off the government gravy train by exaggerating if not outright lying about the dangers of human induced dangerous or "catastrophic" climate change need to at least be called out and exposed as the opportunistic low-life, bottom dwellers they are. Tarring and feathering and riding Al Gore out of town on a rail would not be out of line. Better yet, have him share a jail cell with Bernie Madoff.

America and indeed many countries around the world are up to their eyeballs in debt and much of this debt can be laid at the feet of those who have wasted billions of dollars and euros and every other currency, money that would be be far better spend on solvable problems like education, healthcare and feeding the hungry rather than tilting at windmills, "saving" polar bears or coral reefs or any number of other supposedly man-caused effects on the environment.
Peter

Climate prostitutes, charlatans and comedians

Posted: 23 Aug 2011 01:12 PM PDT
© rgbdigital.co.uk - Fotolia.com Put these guys on Comedy Central. Put ‘em in an asylum … a mandatory restitution program … jail perhaps … or a witness protection program, if they turn state’s evidence on other perpetrators. But keep them away from our money – and our energy, economic, healthcare and education policies.

Climate prostitutes, parasites and charlatans have been devouring billions in US taxpayer dollars, year after year, plus billions more in corporate shareholder cash, activist foundation funds and state government grants. The laws, mandates, subsidies and regulations they advance have cost taxpayers and consumers still more billions for “alternative” energy and other schemes that send prices skyrocketing, kill jobs, and reduce health and living standards.

See the rest of the story here: http://www.climatechangedispatch.com/home/9315-climate-prostitutes-charlatans-and-comedians?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+climatechangedispatch%2FnkcO+%28Climate+Change+Dispatch+news%29&utm_content=Yahoo%21+Mail

Al Gore Completely Melting Down Over Global Warming

2011-08-20T23:51:00.000-05:00

Talk about dodging a bullet.......imagine how close Americans came to electing this amoral clown named Al Gore President. There's no way of knowing if he could possibly be worse than Obama, but the possibilities are truly frightening. Read about how Al Gore is responding to the revelations about the depth and breadth of the whole man-caused global warming fraud.
Peter

Global warming runs out of gas

For those who have a wish to hear the grating sound of a man distempered and frustrated that the cause for which he has given at least a decade of his time, the "greatest moral challenge of our time," is lost, I recommend listening to Al Gore as he was captured during an address at an Aspen global warming conference two weeks ago. It is a revelation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SfWdDP5v_A&feature=related

It is of the utmost importance that all politicians, no matter what their political stripes, be exposed as frauds and hypocrites, if that is what they are. Unfortunately this is not always as easily as that done with a certain politician with the unfortunate name of Wiener. Al Gore will forever be associated with the multi-billion dollar mistake of blaming every aspect of climate change on mankind's activity. This serious scandal goes on as we grow corn to brew into ethanol to burn as fuel in our vehicles while millions of people suffer and die from starvation such as what is now occurring in Somalia.

Rick Perry: Finally A Politician With The Huevos To Deny The Myth Of Man-Caused Global Warming

2011-08-17T19:04:00.000-05:00

Whatever else there is about the current Governor of Texas, at least he has the brains to recognize that man-caused global warming, anthropogenic global warming, man-caused climate change, or whatever else anyone wants to call it, is a fraud. Based on this fact alone, he is worth listening to. I say the gauntlet has been dropped. Let the battle begin between the liberal elite who want to control every aspect of our lives while living off government handouts versus those who believe in common sense, logic, sound science, responsible fiscal policy and the real American spirit. We can get America back on track, headed in the right direction. The Al Gores of the world are hopefully on the way out, just a sad footnote in American history.
Peter

Perry rejects global warming, debt-ceiling compromise

Posted: 17 Aug 2011 09:59 AM PDT

Rick Perry continues his campaigning in New Hampshire today, where Mitt Romney is expected to perform strongly in the first primary of the nomination process (Iowa is a caucus, of course). The Texas governor and new frontrunner — at least in one poll — campaigned strongly to the right, rejecting both the notion of anthropogenic global warming and the debt-ceiling compromise approved by Congress earlier this month:

Rick Perry says he does not believe in global warming. The newest Republican presidential candidate also says he would not have signed the debt-ceiling compromise brokered by Republicans and Democrats. …

Some Food (Water?) For Thought...........

2011-05-11T23:58:00.000-05:00

It is way past time we get beyond the man-caused global warming hoax and address mankind's legitimate and serious problems --- like water and food shortages as illustrated in the following article. Tell everyone.
Peter

Ecological Overshoot

by Richard Mills - Ahead of the herd

Published : May 11th, 2011

"As a general rule, the most successful man in life is the man who has the best information"

For most of human history we’ve been consuming resources at a rate lower than what the planet was able to regenerate.

Unfortunately we have crossed a critical threshold. The demand we are now placing on our planets resources appears to have begun to outpace the rate at which nature can replenish them.

The gap between human demand and supply is known as ecological overshoot. To better understand the concept think of your bank account – in it you have $5000.00 paying monthly interest. Month after month you take the interest plus $100. That $100 is your financial, or for our purposes, your ecological overshoot and its withdrawal is obviously unsustainable.

“One lesson from the five great global extinctions is that species and ecosystems come and go, but the evolutionary process continues. In short, life forms have a future on Earth, but humankind’s future depends on its stewardship of ecosystems that favor Homo sapiens.” John Cairns, Jr., Future of Life on Earth

Water
Freshwater aquifers are one of the most important natural resources in the world today, but in recent decades the rate at which we’re pumping them dry has more than doubled. The amount of water pumped has gone from 126 to 283 cubic kilometers per year - if water was pumped as rapidly from the Great Lakes they would be dry in roughly 80 years.

These fast shrinking underground reservoirs are essential to life on this planet. They sustain streams, wetlands, and ecosystems and they resist land subsidence and salt water intrusion into our fresh water supplies.

Many people think of aquifers as underground lakes but that’s not the case - the water is held between rock particles. Water infiltrates into the soil through pores and cracks until it reaches what is called the zone of saturation - all of the spaces between the rocks are filled with water, not air. This zone of saturation occurs because water infiltrating the soil reaches an impermeable layer of rocks it can’t soak through.

Water held in aquifers is known as groundwater. The water table is located at the top of the zone of saturation.

Almost all of the planet’s liquid fresh water is stored in aquifers. Some of the largest cities in the developing world - Jakarta, Dhaka, Lima, and Mexico City - depend on aquifers for almost all their water.

Most rural areas pump groundwater from wells drilled into an aquifer.

There are two types of aquifers: replenishable (a permeable layer of rock above the water table and an impermeable one beneath it) and non-replenishable (also known as fossil aquifers, no recharge) aquifers. Most of the aquifers in India and the shallow aquifer under the North China Plain are replenishable. When these are depleted, the maximum rate of pumping is automatically reduced to the rate of recharge or refill.

For fossil aquifers - such as the vast U.S. Ogallala aquifer, the deep aquifer under the North China Plain, or the Saudi aquifer - depletion brings pumping to an end.

Groundwater represents about 30 percent of the available fresh water on the planet - surface water accounts for less than one percent. The rest is locked up in glaciers or the polar ice caps.

The highest rates of groundwater depletion are in some of the world's major agricultural centers:

Northwest India
Northeastern China
Northeast Pakistan
California's central valley
Midwestern United States

China’s wheat crop is mostly grown in the semi-arid northern part of the country and is particularly vulnerable to water shortages. A World Bank study indicates that China is over pumping three river basins in the north, the Hai, the Yellow and the Huai.

Irrigated land accounts for four-fifths of the grain harvest in China.

In India the water situation is even more serious - the 21 million wells drilled are lowering water tables in most of the country - in North Gujarat, the water table is falling by 6 meters per year. In the state of Tamil Nadu falling water tables have dried up 95 percent of the wells owned by small farmers.
Irrigated land accounts close to three-fifths of the grain harvest in India.

Indian water well drillers are now using modified oil drilling technology and going as deep as 1,000 meters.

In North America the major concern is over water levels in the Ogallala aquifer under the U.S. Great Plains - the world's bread basket. The Ogallala is the world's largest known aquifer having an approximate area of 450,600 square kilometers and stretches from southern South Dakota through parts of Nebraska, Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and northern Texas.

The Ogallala Aquifer was formed roughly 10 million years ago when water flowed onto the plains from retreating glaciers and streams of the Rocky Mountains. The Ogallala is no longer being recharged by the Rockies and precipitation in the region is only 30-60 cm per year.

In three leading grain producing states - Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas - the underground water table has dropped by more than 30 meters.

In the Pakistani part of the fertile Punjab plain, the drop in water tables appears to be similar to that in India.

Iran is over pumping its aquifers by an average of 5 billion tons of water per year.

Saudi Arabia, relying heavily on subsidies, developed an extensive irrigated agriculture based on its deep fossil aquifer - and they sucked it dry. Some Saudi farmers are now pumping water from wells that are 4,000 feet deep.

In Yemen the water table under most of the country is falling by roughly 2 meters a year. In western Yemen’s Sana’a Basin, the estimated annual water extraction of 224 million tons exceeds the annual recharge of 42 million tons, this drops the water table 6 meters per year.

In Mexico the demand for water is outstripping supply. In the agricultural state of Guanajuato the water table is falling by 2 meters or more a year.

When groundwater is depleted the effects (besides lessening of supply or no more water) can be drastic. Land subsidence happens when porous formations that once held water collapse resulting in the surface layer settling. Water won’t compress, but when the water is sucked out of an aquifer air fills the void between the rocks where the water use to be. Air compresses and the ground sinks or compacts - the aquifer will never hold the same amount of water again.

One study shows that from 1986 to 1992 some parts of the Mexico City Aquifer’s water levels dropped 6 to 10 meters. Areas of Mexico City, as a consequence, have fallen as much as 8.5 meters. The subsidence (ground compaction) is also damaging the sewer system, potentially leading to untreated sewage mixing with fresh water in the aquifer.

In March of 2009, Enoch City in Iron County, Cedar Valley Utah, contacted the Utah Geological Survey (UGS) about what they believed to be a fault running through one of their new subdivisions. It was determined by the UGS that it was a fissure caused by the groundwater level dropping as much as 114 feet since 1939 due to pumping more groundwater than is recharged (refilled).

Another effect of over pumping is saltwater intrusion. If too much groundwater is pumped out from coastal aquifers saltwater may flow into them causing contamination of the aquifer. Many coastal aquifers - the Biscayne Aquifer near Miami and the New Jersey Coastal Plain aquifer for example - have problems with saltwater intrusion.

Conclusion
Streams, rivers and lakes are almost always closely connected with an aquifer. The depletion of aquifers doesn’t allow these surface waters to be recharged - lowering water levels in aquifers is being reflected in reduced amounts of water flowing at the surface. This is happening along the Atlantic Coastal Plain, groundwater depletion is also responsible for the Yellow River in China not reaching the ocean for months at a time, the failure of the Colorado River in the U.S. and the Indus River in Pakistan failing to reach the ocean every day.

"If you let the population grow by extending the irrigated areas using groundwater that is not being recharged, then you will run into a wall at a certain point in time, and you will have hunger and social unrest to go with it. That is something that you can see coming for miles." Marc Bierkens of Utrecht University in Utrecht, the Netherlands

Water is a commodity whose scarcity will have a profound effect on the world within the next decade - the danger to us from the worsening ecological overshoot concerning the world’s fresh water supply makes the reevaluation of our values mandatory. We will have to drastically change the way in which we view our freshwater as a resource.

“Current estimates indicate that we will not have enough water to feed ourselves in 25 years time.” International Water Management Institute (IWMI) Director General Colin Chartres

The central issue for us over the next few decades is not climate change or the global financial crisis - it is whether humanity can achieve and sustain the enormous harvest we need from this planet to feed ourselves.

Is this soon to be front and center issue - our fresh water resources - on your radar screen?
If not maybe it should be.

Richard Mills

Aheadoftheherd.com

"Earth Day": The Joke Goes On......

2011-04-23T09:46:00.000-05:00

"The Joke" you say? Yes, the joke is on us, all of the people on Earth who believed and the many who continue to believe these environmental doomsday predictions. The predictions are often initially made by self-serving academic "scientists" seeking grant money to further their careers. These scientific "truths" are then picked up by environmental "non-profit" organizations (e.g. Sierra Club) and used to frighten and motivate the public to contribute money and join the panicked rush to "save the planet".

Once politicians smell the blood in the water of public opinion, they do what they do best. They jump on the popular bandwagon, act is if they know what they're talking about, and with sincerity oozing from every pore they plead with the public to help them save Mother Earth, whales, polar bears and everything in between by what else, donating to their campaigns and voting for them. (Think buffoons like John Kerry, Al Gore, and now Obama.)

Finally, the liberal mainstream media picks up on the emotional sensationalism surrounding the repeated threats of impending doom and prints claims like those made in the following article and publishes them as if they were the gospel itself. It is a tried and true method of manipulating and fleecing the public, and unfortunately, it is unlikely to end any time soon.

Meanwhile, we can only hope to help educate and inform those who will listen and learn, and perhaps, if people must tighten their belts enough, they will recognize this environmental fraud for what it is and vote these self-righteous, hypocritical environmental opportunists out of office.
Peter

Fifteen Foolish Forecasts: How did environmentalists get it so wrong on Earth Day 1970?

April 22, 2011 ·
What was once Earth Day has now morphed into Earth Hour and Earth Week. The success of the celebration can only be explained by the fact that no one ever bothers to go back to check the accuracy of the eco-wackos’ past predictions.

For example, the predictions made at the first Earth Day in 1970 were wrong. No, wrong isn’t a strong enough word. They were spectacularly wrong. Let’s cover all the tenses and say they were wrong, they are wrong, and then make our own prediction and say they will be wrong in the future.

Jim Morrison, gone. Elvis Presley, gone. Michael Jackson, gone. But none of them were killed by the environment.

Need proof? Here are some of the hilarious, remarkably wrong predictions made on Earth Day 1970.

“Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.”
• George Wald, Harvard Biologist

“We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation.”
• Barry Commoner, Washington University biologist

“By…[1975] some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of the 1980s.”
• Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist

“Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions….By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.”
• Peter Gunter, professor, North Texas State University

“It is already too late to avoid mass starvation.”
• Denis Hayes, chief organizer for Earth Day

“Scientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence to support…the following predictions: In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution…by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half….”
• Life Magazine, January 1970

“Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make. The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.”
• Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist

“At the present rate of nitrogen buildup, it’s only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable.”
• Kenneth Watt, Ecologist

“Air pollution…is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone.”
• Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist

“We are prospecting for the very last of our resources and using up the nonrenewable things many times faster than we are finding new ones.”
• Martin Litton, Sierra Club director

“By the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate…that there won’t be any more crude oil. You’ll drive up to the pump and say, `Fill ‘er up, buddy,’ and he’ll say, `I am very sorry, there isn’t any.’”
• Kenneth Watt, Ecologist

“Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction.”
• New York Times editorial, the day after the first Earth Day

“Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, believes that in 25 years, somewhere between 75 and 80 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct.”
• Sen. Gaylord Nelson

“We have about five more years at the outside to do something.”
• Kenneth Watt, ecologist

“The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years. If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.”
• Kenneth Watt, Ecologist

Today, Earth Day, the eco-wackos will surely get their day moment in the spotlight and their soundbites on the nightly news. They’ll predict a future even grimmer than they predicted 41 years ago.

And they’ll be just as wrong 41 years from now.

Source: Reason.com

The Real Danger This Earth Day: ENVIRONMENTALISM

2011-04-21T03:17:00.000-05:00

I've been necessarily away for a while and it looks as if the myth of man-caused global warming, or call it climate change....whatever.....is dying and fading away, as we have predicted it would. http://thefellowshipofscientifictruth.blogspot.com/ The truth always, ultimately, eventually prevails. However, let us not forget the damage that has been done, to our economy, to the integrity, respect and credibility of our scientific institutions, and scientists themselves.

Most of all, this "Earth Day", let us remember who is and has been behind this "environmental" "green" movement, why, and how. The battle over global warming may be over, but the war over environmental reason and sanity versus liberal, idealistic fascism goes on. Case in point? Look at the current battle with the EPA trying to stop oil and gas drilling by creating the "boogie-man" of "dangerous" hyro-fracking of wells. http://geopetesview.blogspot.com/

The environmental extremists will not give up easily. Their minds are set; their crusade against capitalism, economic health, and freedom is clear. The war is not over, not by half. The following article says it well.
Peter

What Greens Really Believe

Written by Alan Caruba, Warning Signs
April 20 2011

Earth Day was established in 1970 and millions of Americans and others around the world have been steadily brainwashed to embrace the impression that environmentalism is about protecting the Earth, but when Greens talk among themselves, it is a very different story and a frightening one at that.

The massive propaganda program that supports the Green agenda is impressive in its scope. Its locus is the United Nations whose Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was revealed in 2009 to be a complete hoax based on the manipulation of computer models to predict a warming due to excess carbon dioxide. There never was any threat from CO2. It is a gas that is vital to the growth of all vegetation on Earth. It represents a very minor, even minuscule, part of the Earth’s atmosphere.

Nothing, however, deters the Green agenda and, since the first Earth Day, it has penetrated the nation’s schools and, of course, its politics, deliberately deterring and thwarting access to the nation’s vast reserves of oil, coal, and natural gas; the greatest such reserves in the world! It is a drag on business development. It is the ultimate nanny state seeking to alter people's lifestyles through coercion, legislation, and persuasion.

What most people are unaware of is the fascistic hatred of mankind that underlies the philosophic basis of environmentalism.

Kenneth Boulding, originator of the “Spaceship Earth” concept, was quoted by William Tuck in “Progress and Privilege”, 1982, as saying “The right to have children should be a marketable commodity, bought and traded by individuals, but absolutely limited by the state.” Lamont Cole, an ecologist, has said, “To feed a starving child is to exacerbate the world population problem."

Stewart Brand, writing in the Whole Earth Catalog, wrote, “We have wished, we ecofreaks, for a disaster or for a social change to come and bomb us into the Stone Age, where we might live like Indians in our valley, with our localism, our appropriate technology, our gardens, our homemade religion—guilt-free at last!”

I doubt most people are wishing for a disaster and, when they occur such as the earthquakes in Haiti and in Japan, the first instinct of decent people worldwide is to mobilize to help those affected. This is a very human reaction, but it is not a Green one.

Helen Caldicott of the Union of Concerned Scientists characterized capitalism, saying “Free enterprise really means rich people get richer. They have the freedom to exploit and psychologically rape their fellow human beings in the process…Capitalism is destroying the earth.”

It is no coincidence that Earth Day is also the birthday of Vladimir Illich Lenin, the founder of the former Soviet Union and devotee of Karl Marx, the creator of Communism. The Communist revolution worldwide led to the murder of an estimated one hundred million throughout the last century.

At the heart of environmentalism, aside from its wish for far fewer humans, is a hatred of capitalism. The failures of communism and socialism everywhere attest to the way state control of all aspects of life is ignored by Greens.

David Foreman, founder of Earth First!, said, “We must make this an insecure and inhospitable place for capitalists and their projects…We must reclaim the roads and plowed land, hold dam construction, tear down existing dams, free shackled rivers and return to wildness millions of tens of millions of acres of presently settle land.”

Thus, agriculture, the key to civilization, is decried as harming the Earth and all manner of business and industrial enterprises, dependent on the provision of energy, is regarded as evil.

Major environmental organizations, Friends of the Earth and the Sierra Club to name just two, oppose the use of coal, oil, and natural gas to provide energy.

So much of what environmentalism preaches and claims in its propaganda is utterly false, but telling lies is part and parcel of the Green message.

Timothy Wirth, a former U.S. Senator (D-CO) said, “What we’ve got to do in energy conservation is try to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, to have approached global warming as if it is real means energy conservation, so we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.”

Virtually everything being advocated by the Obama administration represents this willingness to take action and tell lies about the nation’s need for energy, with the exception of the worst ways of producing it, wind, solar, and biofuels. Even before gasoline prices climbed to new highs, negatively affecting all aspects of life in America, Dr. Steven Chu, the Secretary of Energy, was advocating higher prices.

The few quotes cited here do not begin to illuminate the horrors that environmentalism would visit on mankind or the nihilistic view it holds, but they represent a far greater body of Green writings and statements over the years that indicate the extent of the threat it poses to humanity.

A deluge of environmental propaganda will precede Earth Day, April 22, 2011. It should be seen as a warning to all who believe in the Creator and all who wish to advance a world at peace, one in which humanity benefits from trade, prosperity, and modern technology worldwide.

2011-02-11T19:55:00.000-06:00

It seems reality is finally forcing the abandonment of the folly of the current crop of "alternative" sources of energy. As I've said here many times, it is a good idea to try and find clean sources of energy to replace oil, gas, and coal. However, the use of lies about the burning of fossil fuels as the cause of global warming and climate change has been stupid from the beginning, because the truth will eventually prevail. The lies have only served to discredit some scientists, science itself and harm what are basically legitimate areas of research. Lies will always come back to bite you.

Of course lies make fools of people like Al Gore, and this should give the millions who supported him at least a little pause for thought. Al Gore doesn't care because he has taken the money and run long ago in a classic scam. Far worse are the billions of dollars of taxpayers money spent to promote the hoax and finance "alternative" sources of energy that are doomed to be economic failures and disaster. The most notable of these failures are solar, wind, ethanol and to a lesser degree, geothermal energy.

Now the people are paying for this huge hoax with lost jobs, increased taxes, a more unstable world, governments hopelessly in debt and an increasingly restive population, as we've just seen in Egypt. Hang on to your hats, it's going to be a bumpy ride.
Peter

Global Panic as Green Sector Collapses and Investors Face Ruin
Written by John O'Sullivan

February 11 2011
Governments, investors and even the World Bank are rushing for the exits in the Great Escape from the green energy bubble.

Solar energy appears to be the worst affected sector so far. Dow Jones reports on a startling U-turn by Britain’s ultra-green government has caught investors off guard and shock waves across the markets will likely precipitate the further rush from green energy projects to shale gas.

The UK’s Department of Energy and Climate Change made the shock announcement as it revealed a comprehensive review of its Feed-in Tariff (FIT) program. Indications from data provider, Prequin are that over $1bn in earmarked funds may be lost as Britain now promises it will only hold tariffs until April 2012.

Read rest…here: http://johnosullivan.livejournal.com/30603.html

Is This The End Of The Man-Caused Global Warming Myth?

2011-01-28T15:10:00.005-06:00

If the resignation of Carol Browner as described in the following article signals the end of the great hoax that has been the myth of man-caused global warming, it couldn't happen soon enough. The next step is to terminate the ridiculous and reckless spending on "alternative" sources of energy such as ethanol, wind power, and solar energy. There is nothing wrong with seeking alternatives to oil, gas, and coal, it is wasted and fraudulent spending of taxpayers dollars as funding and subsidies that is the problem. Let's get all of this out in the open and be honest about what the real alternatives and options are.

We've been lied to by people like Al Gore (and Carol Browner) long enough. Read on, and for some background on these issues, search the archives of this blog and others. Books will be written on this whole issue for decades to come and Al Gore will go down in history as thoroughly discredited as the namesake of the "Ponzi Scheme" or all others who defraud the public on a massive scale. The truth will prevail.

Peter

Browner Resignation, Obama Omission Could Spell the End of Global Warming Policy, Say Climate Change Analysts

Friday, January 28, 2011
By Matt Cover

Carol Browner speaking at a press conference with U.S. President-elect Barack Obama and Vice President-elect Joe Biden, on Dec. 15, 2008. (Wikipedia Commons)

(CNSNews.com) – The abrupt resignation of Carol Browner, President Barack Obama’s global warming czar, and the omission by Obama of global warming from his State of the Union speech on Tuesday could mean that the White House has given up on global warming, according to climate change analysts.

Browner, who announced her resignation Tuesday, led the White House effort to enact global warming legislation and policy. A former director of the Environmental Protection Agency during the Clinton administration, Browner was well regarded in the environmentalist community and served officially as director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy.

In his State of the Union address on Tuesday, Obama left out any reference to global warming or the more ambiguously named climate change, seemingly abandoning what had been one of the most prominent policy areas of the past two years.

Browner’s signature legislative goal – cap and trade legislation – failed in Congress last year when it was not brought up for a vote in the Senate after narrowly passing in the House.

Most recently, Browner was rumored to be in the running to replace Rahm Emanuel as White House chief of staff. Instead of Browner, Obama chose former J.P Morgan Chase executive William Daley.

ClimateDepot.com proprietor Marc Morano told CNSNews.com that Browner’s departure was likely a sign of frustration with Obama and the president’s lack of attention to her signature issues.

“She’s probably frustrated with Obama’s lack of commitment on this issue,” Morano said. “I think Carol Browner is frustrated because she realizes Obama is not the man she thought he was when it comes to global warming.”

President Barack Obama. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

“Obama is terrified of the issue – it’s never been more than a check-box issue for him – so she was basically reduced to not doing that much of anything and she realized that nothing was going to happen,” he said.

Morano also said that Browner probably read the writing on the wall following the November election that swept a wave of conservative Republicans into Congress, effectively making any new environmental legislation all but impossible.

“I think she realizes that her hands may be tied,” Morano said. “She [probably] doesn’t feel like she can be as effective as she wants to. She is a hardcore, committed greenie [environmentalist].”

Morano said that Obama’s omission of global warming from his State of the Union indicated that he would be “running” away from the issue in 2012 because it has become politically unpopular.

“Browner doesn’t want to be in a position where she’s going to be open to a lot of shots especially with the new Republican House and not be able to do what she wants to do because Obama’s going to be focused on reelection and running terrified of the man-made global warming issue,” said Morano.

“The new political expediency is skepticism,” he said. “Man-made global warming is the new butt of jokes in Washington.”

Myron Ebell, director of Energy and Global Warming Policy at the free-market Competitive Enterprise Institute, said it was “hard to say” why Browner left, citing her rumored loss of the chief of staff position.

Ebell said that her departure and Obama’s omitting global warming from his speech may indicate that the administration was merely putting global warming policy on the back burner, preferring a stealthier approach.

“It may be that the White House decided, well, we’re off global warming and she’s the point person on global warming so she no longer has a role here,” he said.

“Remember that when Obama acknowledged this fall that cap and trade was not going to be enacted he said that – and this is pretty close to an exact quote – that there’s more than one way to skin that cat,” said Ebell. “And I think what they’re doing is they are adopting a lower-profile policy, a set of policies, to achieve the same goals without ever mentioning global warming or cap and trade or anything that will allow us to refer back to candidate Obama’s comment when he was senator [to the editorial board of the San Francisco Chronicle] that ‘under my cap and trade plan electric rates will necessarily skyrocket.’”

“They still want that, they just want to achieve it in a way that the public will have a much harder time seeing and therefore opposing,” said Ebell.

The Predictable Failure Of "Alternative Energy"

2011-01-20T22:35:00.003-06:00

As has been described and predicted on this blog and many other places on the internet, and notably NOT in the "mainstream media", the so-called alternative or "green" sources of energy are proving to be just a lot of hot air, a waste of time and mainly tax-payer money. I'm referring primarily to large-scale wind and solar energy electrical projects. They are simply not economically viable without government subsidies. With government hand-outs drying up, so are these "alternative energy" plans. The same holds true for ethanol production and geothermal energy.

The real tragedy here, beyond the waste of huge amounts of taxpayer money to the detriment of all, is the fact that that the entire motivation to develop these alternative sources of energy has been based on the enormous hoax that is the concept of man-caused global warming. It is all blamed on the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere through the burning of "fossil fuels" like oil, gas, and coal. What an utterably idiotic and scientifically untenable theory! Yet so successful has the environmental industry or lobby been over the past several decades, led by shysters and hucksters like James Hanson and Al Gore, that many people have bought into the myth. Indeed an entire industrial and academic cult has grown around this huge hoax.

Fortunately for all of us the man-caused global warming hoax has been exposed and all things relating to it are predictably coming to an end. As far as I am concerned it can not come any time too soon. Read on and search this blog for articles and information supporting and outlining the demise of the myth of man-caused global warming, or what is now popularly and ridiculously called "climate change".
Peter

Home Investors Abandon Green Energy in Wake of Huge New Gas and Oil Find

Investors Abandon Green Energy in Wake of Huge New Gas and Oil Find

Written by John O'Sullivan, Suite 101 20 January 2011

Image via Wikipedia

Huge new recent discoveries in gas, oil and rare mineral deposits see major investors and governments bail out of a collapsing green energy market.

Environmental investments look to be going up in smoke according to Dr. Benny Peiser of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (January 20, 2011). Peiser presents a swath of news reports making distinctly unpleasant reading both for environmentalists and green investors.

European Governments Signal End to Renewable Energy ‘Bubble’

Peiser shows the rush away from green energy began in earnest in December 2010 when first a pro-green Spain slashed funding for wind projects by 35% and declared photovoltaic plants would be cut by 45%.

Read rest…

Blowin' In The Wind.......The Slow Death Of Wind Energy

2011-01-07T18:52:00.005-06:00

There is an old saying, "Money talks and bullshit walks". Few ideas deserve this criticism more than the concept that wind power or wind turbines can generate electricity as an economic alternative to oil, gas, coal, and nuclear energy. About the only thing more stupid is the whole idea that carbon dioxide emissions cause global warming, or should I say "climate change". This grand hoax is coming to a pitiful end, investors are taking their money elsewhere, as documented in the following article. The "smart money" is fed up with the ridiculous alarmist lies of the environmentalists promoting wind energy as a solution to the world's energy needs. Al Gore ought to be hung in effigy from every windmill in the world by the millions of people who lost money and jobs because of his lies and deception. An inconveniet truth indeed!

Peter

Climate-change funds shift focus from wind, solar

12:01 am ET 12/10/2010- MarketWatch Databased News

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- The poor performance of some sectors aiming to slow climate change is pushing money managers to cast further afield for investments that both carry green credentials and are likely to post better returns.

Some renewable-energy stocks, such as those in solar and wind industries, have fallen spectacularly in recent years, belying hopes that they were poised to break out.

Money managers say this poor performance is in part due to a lack of hoped-for policies to help these industries grow. As a result, say the managers, they are looking at other areas of the market that are part of the climate-change story, such as recycling and energy efficiency. Even eBay Inc , as a promoter of reusing goods, fits the bill.

"Nobody's questioning the long-term prospects, market share or gains of [renewable energy] sectors, but over the medium it's not been that good," said Vipin Ahuja, manager of Allianz RCM EcoTrends Fund . "So people are looking elsewhere for sustainable stories for the next couple of years."

Ahuja's fund, which he joined about one year ago, is down 19% a year in the past three years, according to data from Morningstar Inc.

The deteriorating prospect for new policies to combat climate change has been palpable at the recent U.N. Climate Change Conference in Cancun, where delegates from nearly 200 countries met to hash out a possible extension of the Kyoto Protocol and other policies.

The more sober atmosphere this year, particularly compared to the gathering's predecessor in Copenhagen, reflected toned- down hopes the world's largest polluters would reach agreement on policies to combat global warming and promote renewable energy. Read MarketWatch's coverage of the Cancun climate talks.

Those downgraded expectations have left their mark on solar-panel stocks, once Wall Street darlings.

In mid-2008 First Solar Inc.'s stock trading at close to $300. Today, it's at about $132.

It's a similar story with many of First Solar's peers, including SunPower Corp. , whose stock has fallen from close to $100 to about $12 in the past 30 months. The MAC Solar Energy Index is down an annualized 27% in the past three years.

Others in the renewable energy space have also suffered, such as wind turbine maker Vestas Wind Systems , which has seen its stock price fall from more than $140 in 2008 to less than $30 a share this week.

One example of how politics has hurt the renewable sector is the failure to pass a federal renewable portfolio standards policy. The rule would have forced utility companies across the U.S. to supply a certain amount of their energy from renewable sources.

"That discouraged many utilities from signing, for example, agreements for wind [farm] installations," said Colm O'Connor, a portfolio manager at Kleinwort Benson Investors who is part of the management team on Calvert Global Alternative Energy Fund, which is down an annualized 26% over the past three years, according to Morningstar.

Looking elsewhere

"In the past year we've avoided wind and solar investments," said Richard Mercado, manager of London-based F&C Global Climate Opportunities Fund.

Merchado said the fund has been looking more at the natural gas sector, and -- in a theme several money managers repeated -- also at so-called mainstream companies with a climate-change slant. For example, eBay is one of the fund's investments as it "promotes re-using products and not throwing them out," said Merchado.

Merchado said the most represented sector in the fund is energy efficiency. This focus chimed with that of other managers, several of whom pointed to developments in LED technology as an example of the trend. As the costs come down, use of LEDs in anything from televisions to traffic lights increases, and lighting for commercial spaces becomes possible.

Another example of looking at efficient, rather than renewable, energy is demand-response technology. These services let utilities manage consumer demand more efficiently by relaying energy usage data back to providers.

O'Connor said he plays demand response by investing in meter makers such as EnerNOC Inc. and Comverge Inc. .

Ben Allen, director of research at Parnassus Investments, said that since 2007 his firm has invested in Waste Management Inc. , which he said has been focusing on energy efficiency by turning waste into electricity. Another company Parnassus likes is Cooper Industries PLC, in part because of the company's growing LED business.

Allianz RCM's Ahuja said his fund's holdings in LED-related companies went from zero to about 15% in the past year.

Sticking with it

But though solar and wind have suffered recently, that's not the whole tale. For example, while there's no federal renewable portfolio standard, O'Connor said that 29 states have their own standards. And the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act -- the stimulus bill -- created two programs of credits to promote renewable power projects.

What's more, Ahuja noted that global demand for solar energy grew 100% in 2009. And, he said, some solar companies have seen their share prices grow, or at least hold up better than others, in recent years, such as China's Trina Solar Ltd. and Yingli Green Energy Holdings .

Some sectors in the climate change theme, such as renewables, are subject to policy volatility, said Bruce Kahn, senior investment analyst at DB Climate Change Advisors, a unit of Deutsche Bank .

"I agree that the area is struggling in the short term, but we're investing in the long-term trend and trading around the volatility," he said. "It tells me that you can't pick sectors when dealing with this kind of volatility -- it's a stock-pickers universe."

General Electric (GE) Waking Up To Fact That GreenEnergy (and global warming) Is A BUST

2010-12-13T15:04:00.002-06:00

Destroying and disproving the myth of man-caused global warming has had a significant effect on General Electric, one of the myth's primary supporters. Apparently GE has seen the light, come to their senses and finally realizes that the entire premise of man-caused global warming has been one gigantic hoax. Search this blog for articles on GE to follow the history of these schemes, scandals, lies, and deceptions. Look for similar changes in focus and attitude toward global warming, climate change and all it entails.
Peter

The browning of GE

3:36 pm ET 12/13/2010 - MarketWatch Databased News

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- General Electric's decision to buy Britain's Wellstream Holdings PLC is clearly about securing a spot for itself in Brazil's booming deepwater oil industry.

But it also offers an interesting counterpoint to GE's own carefully groomed public energy persona.

For the past few years, GE has been busy prying open business opportunities in green energy. As part of the push, it created a separate R&D clean-tech unit called Ecomagination, slapping a bright green GE logo on the enterprise to visually drive home the point.

The company is now deep into wind power (turbines), it's a huge proponent of electric vehicles (recharging stations), and a major player in the developing a "smart" energy grid (smart meters) -- programs that also happen to be backed by billions of dollars in government stimulus funding.

So why is GE plunking down $1.3 billion to buy Wellstream Holdngs , a company that makes pipeline and other equipment for the offshore oil industry? Read about the GE-Wellstream deal.

Wellstream is an interesting choice because much of its operations and revenue are in Brazil, a country that's emerging as a global energy powerhouse because of its rich offshore oil fields, surplus of sugar-based ethanol fuels and extensive hydropower. GE simply wants to be in the mix.

The oil component of that mix is certainly looking more attractive than it did when GE launched Ecomagination a couple of years ago, before the Great Recession.

GE couldn't at the time have seen just how deep the recession would be, or what impact it would have on budgets aimed at "going green." They also couldn't have foreseen how the Cancun Climate Change Summit, which wrapped up this weekend, would end up being about as toothless as COP15, the Copenhagen climate change summit a year ago.

A major recession and an international stalemate over imposing stricter carbon controls are not helping GE's green technology sales. And who knows how long government stimuli are going to last, especially given the results of the mid-term elections here at home.

By buying Wellstream, GE is doing what all conglomerates do. It's diversifying. It's also plunking down a big chunk of cash to make sure it's got a piece of the action in the overseas offshore oil industry. That might not sound very green to an environmentalist, but given the current economic climate, it simply sounds like GE hedging its bet.

-- Jim Jelter