Denise Cross / flickr

Though it means nothing for 2016, the 2020 presidential election may be decided by popular vote — or at least that’s the timeline given by one of the main proponents.

As it stands now, there really is no national election for president, rather 51 elections (including Washington, D.C.), where electors are doled out by the states/D.C., with the winner needing at least 270 electoral votes.

But most states are a foregone conclusion. Would blue California really go for a Republican? Or would red Mississippi chose a Democrat?

In most instance, no chance, so that gives a disproportionate share of attention by presidential candidates to a relatively small group of states like Florida, Ohio and Virginia.

National Popular Vote is pushing to replace the current race to 270 with a simple majority of the popular vote. Bay Area campaign and election lawyer Barry Fadem, who is working with NPV, says this goal can be achieved by 2020.

How Close Are They, Really?

It may seem like a farfetched idea, but the movement is halfway there. Ten states, including California, have ratified the measure (D.C. has signed on as well). Once enough states have ratified the interstate compact to represent 270 electoral votes — a majority — the county will move to the popular vote.

Last week, the Arizona House of Representatives approved the measure. And although it hasn’t voted yet, two-thirds of the Arizona Senate are sponsors. And there are several other states where at least one chamber has approved.

The way the law is structured, the (Constiutionally-mandated) electors of the states that have ratified the compact would choose the candidate who won the popular vote. Therefore, states that didn’t sign on are free to not participate, but they wouldn’t have enough electoral votes to matter.

The theory is that these states would ultimately fall in line, as they’d then have no incentive to stay under the current system once a majority starts with the popular vote.

Why Go Through This Trouble?

Many voters are still upset that in 2000, Republican George W. Bush beat Democrat Al Gore for president by winning the Electoral College while losing the popular vote. While this is largely Democrats who are upset, supporters of the losing candidate would be sour in any similar situation.

“The disadvantages of the current system, of course, are first that you can have an election where the winner of the popular vote loses the election,” said Norm Ornstein, a resident scholar the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute. “It happened in 2000, without many repercussions, but the next time? Watch out.”

Swing states like Florida, Ohio and Virginia have a disproportionate influence on the general election. There are 12 or so states where candidates spend most of their time because the rest are viewed as forgone conclusions. According to NPV, no campaign events were held by the 2012 presidential candidates outside of these 12 states during the general election.

“Two-thirds of the states now are irrelevant, since they are firmly blue or red, giving all the focus to a small number of competitive ones and distorting the election,” Ornstein.

Downsides

Critics have said that a close election could result in a national recount (“take Florida in 2000 and multiply by 50, with a hundred times the number of lawyers,” said Ornstein), but that the federal government really isn’t equipped to handle a recount of that magnitude.

“The federal government does not conduct elections,” said Kyle Kondik, the managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball, a non-partisan political publication from the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics. “So if there was an election that was so close a recount was required, it would have to be a 50-state recount. That sounds challenging.”

There’s also a concern that attention would shift from swing states to heavily-populated areas, like Los Angeles or New York City, on the theory that time-strapped candidates would plan visits to the densest areas to reach the most people at once.

But NPV contends that the densest cities still only make up a small part of the population. According to Census data, the 30 most heavily-populated cites account for only about 12 percent of the population — nowhere near a majority.

Is It Even Constitutional?

While something that fundamentally changes how the president is elected will likely be challenged in court, Fadem says “a Constitutional amendment is not required,” pointing to language in the Constitution giving each state the right to decide how to direct its electors.

“Records show that the approximately 6,500 sq. foot home boasts 6 bedrooms, 9 bathrooms, a large pool house, 6 fireplaces, wood framed french doors, and carved stone detailing throughout.”

And that was his fourth luxury home.

Gore’s “carbon footprint,” how much energy he uses and how much CO2 he spews into the atmosphere, must be larger than entire provinces of Bangladesh.

Yet after he recently jetted to Hawaii, the Honolulu Civil Beat reported:

“The ‘barriers’ to doing something about climate change are business and political interests that profit off of fossil fuels — ‘dirty energy that causes dirty weather.’ He compared fake science from polluters stating that humans are not to blame for the climate to tobacco companies that used to hire actors to play doctors who denied cigarettes were dangerous.

” ‘That’s immoral, unethical and despicable,’ he said of both.”

That’s funny. Because in his political campaigns, Gore used to profit from both tobacco and being anti-tobacco. As Joan Beck reported in 1996, after Gore told a heart-wrenching story at the Democratic National Conventiion of his sister dying of lung cancer:

“He and his family made money by raising tobacco on their Tennessee farm for years — profiting from a product that killed lots of other people’s sisters and husbands and parents and brothers and friends in a particularly vicious and cruel way.

“They didn’t stop when the surgeon general issued his sharp warning linking tobacco with illness and death in 1964, not until Nancy’s tragic battle with lung cancer.

As late as 1988, Al Gore was bragging in a speech to tobacco farmers in North Carolina, ”Throughout most of my life, I raised tobacco. I want you to know that with my own hands, all of my life, I put it in the plant beds and transferred it. I’ve hoed it. I’ve dug in it. I’ve sprayed it, I’ve chopped it, I’ve shredded it, spiked it, put it in the barn and stripped it and sold it.” And made money growing a carcinogen that killed other people’s loved ones. Gore made this speech, remember, four years after his sister’s death. And 24 years after the surgeon general’s report.

Now, of course, Gore has become vastly wealthier trading in on the global warming/climate change political fad, even as he enjoys the lifestyles of the rich and famous and high carbon-footprinted and hypocritical.

Shortly after, “global warming” went out of favor, replaced by “climate change.” Just two years later, in his acceptance speech at the 2008 Democratic National Convention, candidate Barack Obama didn’t mention “global warming,” only “climate change.”

For example, in a debate over global warming on our site last week, one commentator wrote, “It’s called climate change, John. You have record cold in some places and record heat in others.”

But the phrase “climate change” is a logical fallacy called a tautology, also called circular reasoning. According to the Philosophy Index, “A tautology in logic is a formula that is always true on any valuation or interpretation of its terms.”

Or as I put it, something that explains everything, explains nothing.

Here are some examples of tautologies:

• Either it will rain tomorrow or it won’t rain.
• Bill will win the election or he will not win the election.
• She is brave or she is not brave.
• I will get in trouble or not get in trouble.
• Mary will turn the light on or turn it off.

So here are some examples using “climate change”:

• Climate change is causing the earth to warm and cool.
• Climate change is causing more and fewer hurricanes.
• Climate change is causing greater and lesser crop harvests.
• Climate change is causing higher and lower sea levels.
• Climate change is causing smaller and larger polar ice caps.

Government

Of course, the main reason this logical fallacy is used is to increase government control over our lives to make sure “climate change” doesn’t destroy the planet. It doesn’t hurt that some connected crony capitalists, such as Al Gore, have become even richer by investing in global warming/climate change technology boosted by governments.

The problem has cropped up that the global-warming hypothesis is hard to advance when temperatures have ceased increasing the past 15 years. And although one year doesn’t make a trend, it doesn’t help that much of the United States continues to freeze under record low temperatures.

So “climate change” seems a better phrase because it can, as has been shown, mean anything. The problem though is that, although most people are not logicians, many people can sense something isn’t quite right about phrases based on logical fallacies.

A common fallacy is the argument based on an irrelevant appeal to an authority, such as a celebrity pitching a credit card or diet program. (Appealing to a real authority, such as a physician to heal your aliment, may be valid.) Many people understand that the celebrity isn’t a banking expert; or might have lost weight not because of the advertised program, but because of personal chefs and trainers only the rich can afford.

With a tautology like “climate change,” at least some people understand that it’s a phrase with no explanatory value.

(Note: I am is not arguing about whether or not global warming is occurring, only that those who believe it is occurring should use that phrase, not “climate change.”)

By Katy Grimes

Reader warning: Only read this story if you have low blood pressure; this could make your head explode.

If you were on-the-fence about man-made climate change, this should finally knock you off and bring you back to reality.

The Hill reports A new Capitol Hill climate task force has appealed to a vast array of groups, “including energy companies, green groups, sports leagues and plenty in-between, to submit suggestions for federal actions to battle global warming.”

Really. This is not a joke. These knuckleheads sent a letter asking for help.

“We can’t delay action any longer. We want to jumpstart action by seeking recommendations on what every part of government can do now,” said Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), the top Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, in a statement.

The Bicameral Task Force on Climate Change has discovered “prospects for climate legislation on Capitol Hill are bleak, although it also asks for recommendations on congressional action.”

In other words, Democrats in Washington D.C. are desperately searching for ways to promote climate change, despite all of the evidence showing that it is not a man-made problem, or even a problem, for that matter. Democrats are actually soliciting unions and business for anything the federal government can do, any program it can create, to “reduce carbon pollution and strengthen our resiliency to climate change.”

“Washington is gripped in a barricade of special interests on the urgent issue of climate change,” said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., one of the leaders of the task force, the Hill found.

“That’s why we want to break the Beltway barricade and ask a broad array of businesses, non-profit organizations, and academic institutions to share their ideas about actions the federal government can take. Climate change is already affecting all of us, and we want to get all ideas on the table to address it,” he said in a statement.

Waxman’s website has the letter displayed, as well as this summary:

The organizations whose ideas are being solicited include:

• The five largest domestic oil companies
• The five largest natural gas companies
• The five largest U.S. coal companies
• The five largest electric utilities
• The five largest financial services companies
• The five largest U.S. auto manufacturers
• The three largest U.S. defense contractors
• The top two U.S. and global reinsurers
• Labor unions representing over fourteen million American workers
• Leading environmental and public health organizations
• Universities and think tanks

Maybe Democrats should just ask former Vice President, and global warming zealot Al Gore, what to do. Although, most people are finally realizing that the climate change hoax has been debunked now that Gore sold his failed television network, Current TV, to oil producers in Qatar, and Al Jazeera, for $500 million.

This week, television host David Letterman, and Today Show host Matt Lauer called Gore out for his hypocrisy.

“On ‘Today,’ Matt Lauer pressed the climate-change activist on whether it was hypocritical for him to sell Current to a network financed by fossil-fuel money,” the Los Angeles Times reported. “And last night it was noted interrogator David Lettermanholding Gore’s feet to the flame. Letterman asked about the stigma attached to Al Jazeera, which particularly during the early years of the Bush administration was seen by many as a platform for anti-American sentiment.”

This is just more proof that America’s elected representatives are out-of-touch windbags, who live in carefully protected bubbles, far away from reality and constituents.

Send a letter or email to Henry Waxman, or call his Congressional offices:  (202) 225-3976, or in Los Angeles, (310) 652-3095 / (323) 651-1040. Express yourself!

By Chriss Street

Global cooling? New studies of tree rings show that it’s happening.

Yet California remains governed by AB 32, whose official title is the “Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006.” It’s seven years later. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who signed AB 32 into law, is long gone. And the environmental movement, sensing that “global warming” wasn’t selling any longer, now calls bad weather “climate change,” as President Obama did in his Inaugural Address.

The prestigious Nature Journal recently published a major climate change study, “Orbital Forcing Of Tree-Ring Data.” It provided a thorough analysis of more than 2000 years of tree-ring evidence that showed current climate models substantially underestimated ancient Northern Europe temperatures levels during the Roman and Medieval Periods.

That temperatures have trended downward for the last two centuries debunks theories that anthropogenic (man-made) global warming is caused by a rising CO2 gas levels associated with industrial burning of “fossil fuels.” The main part of AB 32 mandates the reduction by 25 percent of California greenhouse gases by 2020.

Researchers from Germany, Finland, Scotland and Switzerland examined tree-ring density profiles in trees from Finnish Lapland, way up North.  In this extremely cold environment, trees often collapse into one of the numerous lakes, where they remain well preserved for thousands of years.  The international team was able to conduct high reliability calculations of tree-ring density from the Scandinavian pine trees preserved in the cold water. The tree rings correlated very closely with annual summer temperature patterns.

The United Nations-endorsed Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore for interpreting studies of ice cores and ocean sediments to “conclude” that Europe was about to suffer catastrophic anthropogenic global warming.

Cooling trend

But the new tree-ring data allow precise measurements of annual climate variability.   The results reveal there has been a cooling trend of -0.3°C (0.54°F) every thousand years “due to gradual changes to the position of the sun and an increase in the distance between the Earth and the sun.”

The high-resolution graph shown above demonstrates that temperatures during ancient periods were much warmer than predicted by the IPCC.  The study also documented the extreme temperature phases that occurred during Europe’s “Little Ice Age” that resulted in a general cooling trend between the 1150 and 1460 AD, and the extremely cold climate between 1560 and 1850 AD.  According to lead researcher Jan Esper:

“We found that previous estimates of historical temperatures during the Roman era and the Middle Ages were too low.… Such findings are also significant with regard to climate policy, as they will influence the way today’s climate changes are seen in context of historical warm periods.”

The results are a huge embarrassment to the IPCC, which has acknowledged it did not carry out its own original research to monitor climate and related phenomena.  But their extrapolated conclusions regarding a recent warming trend served as justification for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to demand Western industrialized nations implement the job-killing Kyoto Protocol treaty to achieve “stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.”

And the text of AB 32 itself maintained:

“Global warming poses a serious threat to the economic well-being, public health, natural resources, and the environment of California…. The program established by this division will continue this tradition of environmental leadership by placing California at the forefront of national and international efforts to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases.”

‘Cooling trend’

In a direct broadside against global-warming doomsday alarmists, Esper noted:

“This figure we calculated may not seem particularly significant.  However, it is also not negligible when compared to global warming, which up to now has been less than 1°C. Our results suggest that the large-scale climate reconstruction shown by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) likely underestimate this long-term cooling trend over the past few millennia.”

The tree-ring study proves the recent warming trend we are experiencing is not exceptional, because current temperatures have been exceeded for at least two periods over the last 2000 years.

Paleoclimatologists describe the warming of the earth over the last 12,000 years as the Holocene inter-glacial of the current Ice Age.  The prior Eemian interglacial period, which began 130,000 years ago and ended 114,000 years ago, was much warmer.  At the time, the seas were 15 to 25 feet higher than today, Scandinavia was an island, hippos swam in the Thames River near the site of London and the raised beaches of Alaska and fossil reefs of the Bahamas were formed.

Just before the October 2011 unanimous vote by the the eight members of the California Air Resources Board  for California to be the first state in the United States to implement a cap-and-trade system to limit greenhouse gasses emissions, Board Chairwoman Mary D. Nichols proudly hailed, “ We are staking out new ground in the battle against global warming.” The cap-and-trade program was implemented with CARB’s first auction last November.

But given the new tree-ring science showing AB 32 was based on faulty science, it appears she declared war on Californians.

CHRISS STREET & PAUL PRESTON
Present “The American Exceptionalism Radio Talk Show”
Streaming Live Monday through Friday at 7-10 PM
Click here to listen:  http://www.mysytv.net/kmyclive.html
Go to Our Website:  www.edtalkradio.com

By Chris Reed

One of the staples of modern journalism is the piece in which a famous figure is asked to expound on his favorite books or music. With music, answers often seem genuinely enthusiastic. With books, however, the answers inevitably are designed to reflect well on the speaker.

A classic and pathetically revealing example of this – one that should give discerning Californians a good chortle – appeared in The New York Times book review section last Sunday. The Times asked Arnold Schwarzenegger, among other things, which fictional character he most wished he could portray on the big screen. Arnold’s response:

One of my favorite characters in history is Cincinnatus, and I’ve read everything I can find about him. I would love to play him in a film about ancient Rome. He was given the keys to the kingdom — pure, absolute power! — and he did the job and then went back to his farm. He didn’t get drunk on the power. He did the job he was asked to do, dealt with the invasion and walked away. That is the purest form of public service I can imagine, and it would be fun to try to capture that character on film. 

Groan. Plainly, Arnold is suggesting that his political odyssey was the modern version of Cincinnatus’ journey — the noble leader who saves the day and then goes back to the “farm.”

The reformer is defeated — and gives up

From taking office in 2003 until the November 2005 special election, in which his package of reforms was rejected by state voters influenced by a gigantic CTA-funded ad campaign, Arnold was the real deal. But afterwards, his overwhelming focus was on crafting the narrative about his public service for the history books for after he went back to acting. His emphasis was on marketing. He lost his appetite for taking on union hegemony.

And so in 2006, first he crafted the “postpartisan” narrative that held that he alone had divined how to govern a bitterly divided state government — manure eagerly spread by the national media, which failed to notice that a revenue surge made it easy to craft a 2006 state budget and that it was by compromising (giving in) on four Democratic initiatives that Arnold won some biggest headlines.

Next Arnold appropriated one of those initiatives as his own: AB 32, which forced a shift to cleaner but costlier energy to reduce the emissions which contribute to global warming. The Arnold who initially fought for an escape hatch in AB 32 in case it harmed the economy by adding unique energy costs not borne by rival states and nations turned into the sort of raving green who likes to pretend that making energy cost more is a miracle job-creation tool. His administration would occasionally give signs it knew this was manure. But the California media, at its all-time worst, for the most part collectively bought the bizarre idea that adding unique costs to California’s private sector was inherently pro-business.

Arnold wanted to be Al Gore 2, a Global Green Giant revered by enviros around the world. It worked.

The crusade for Schwarzeneggercare

But what’s been largely forgotten is that Arnold also set out to burnish his reputation by introducing his version of Obamacare, a 14-month crusade that began after his November 2006 re-election. Arnold’s version had the same immense basic flaw as Obama’s: It created a disincentive for businesses to provide health insurance to their employees because it was much cheaper to pay a fine to the state and have the state provide the coverage.

But Arnold didn’t care. He was playing for the history books. He was a healthcare visionary, too, not just a green one. The Assembly passed a revised version of his plan. Thankfully, in January 2008, a California Senate committee killed it because of its heavy cost. (No one has ever looked at this angle, but the defeat sure looked like a CTA hit; can’t have another big mouth to feed in Sacramento, you see!)

When Barack Obama got elected and pursued his very similar agenda, we saw the reverse. The greens made little headway with cap-and-trade/renewable energy mandates because Democratic lawmakers in inland states figured out what California media geniuses could not: that it was risky to saddle our economy with unique costs not borne by our rivals. But the health reformers/big government enthusiasts got their way and Obamacare was enacted.

So in California, we have the worst of all possible worlds: a coming huge unique spike in energy costs and a coming transition to Obamacare in the state that has the nation’s oldest family-care practitioners. Rationed care, here we come.

But none of this matters to Arnold. Ever since early on the evening of Nov. 8, 2005, when initial results showed his anti-union ballot initiatives headed for defeat, his focus as governor was primarily on securing a seemingly lofty place in history — or at least the shallow version offered by our media.

He won. We lost.

Oct. 31, 2012

By John Seiler

Nowadays, almost anything that happens is blamed on “global warming.” Or its more recent euphemism, “climate change.”

On his blog, Al Gore just wrote:

“For many, Hurricane Sandy may prove to be a similar event: a time when the climate crisis—which is often sequestered to the far reaches of our everyday awareness became a reality….

“Scientists tell us that by continually dumping 90 million tons of global warming pollution into the atmosphere every single day, we are altering the environment in which all storms develop. As the oceans and atmosphere continue to warm, storms are becoming more energetic and powerful. Hurricane Sandy, and the Nashville flood, were reminders of just that. Other climate-related catastrophes around the world have carried the same message to hundreds of millions.

“Sandy was also affected by other symptoms of the climate crisis. As the hurricane approached the East Coast, it gathered strength from abnormally warm coastal waters. At the same time, Sandy’s storm surge was worsened by a century of sea level rise. Scientists tell us that if we do not reduce our emissions, these problems will only grow worse.

“Hurricane Sandy is a disturbing sign of things to come. We must heed this warning and act quickly to solve the climate crisis. Dirty energy makes dirty weather.”

But he’s not serious. Consider California’s AB 32, the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006. By 2020, just a little over seven years away, it’s supposed to reduce California’s greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent. California is 2 percent of the global economy. So AB 32, assuming it works as advertised, would reduce greenhouse gas emissions over the entire globe by just 0.5 percent.

In his recent autobiography, “Total Recall,” by Arnold Schwarzenegger, the ex-governor says that AB 32 will inspire countries all over the world to imitate California. But that hasn’t happened. And it’s not likely to happen.

Even if the world adopted a global AB 32, greenhouse emissions would drop by 25 percent across the earth, not 75 percent, 90 percent, or 100 percent.

If Gore, Arnold, President Obama, Gov. Jerry Brown and other global warming — or climate change — alarmists are serious, they would call for much more serious actions. Basically, they should call for shutting down the globe’s entire industrial economy. Conditions would have to return to before the industrial revolution began about 1780 with the “dark satanic mills” that William Blake railed against in his poem, “The New Jeruslaem.”

Luddism

We would need a new Luddite movement wrecking the machines of industrial modernity. The United States would have to destroy all non-green machines — which would be about 95 percent of them, including cars. Maybe then Brown’s high-speed choo-choo would become cost effective.

Then the United States would have to order the rest of the world to do the same to every machine on the planet, going to war if necessary. China is happy to sell America solar panels to reduce greenhouse gases. But there’s no way it’s going to impose Luddism on itself as the country continues to pull tens of millions of people each year out of agricultural poverty by giving them jobs in industrial cities. If China stopped its industrial growth, the ChiCom leadership would face vast social unrest, something they know from their past can kill tens of millions of Chinese and overthrow governments.

Attacking other large industrial countries would be difficult because nine countries have nuclear weapons. And when you have nukes, it’s hard to mess with you. Here’s list of the estimated upper limits of nuke numbers:

USA: 8,000

Russia: 10,000

United Kingdom: 225

France: 300

China: 240

Israel: 200

Pakistan: 110

India: 100

North Korea: <10

Of the four BRIC developing industrial countries — Brazil, Russia, India and China — three have nukes. Brazil doesn’t, but could develop them within months.

So there are two possibilities:

1. Man-caused global warming/climate change doesn’t exist, so don’t worry about it.

2. Man-caused global warming/climate change does exist, but nothing can be done about it because Russia, China, India, Brazil and other countries aren’t going to reduce their industrial development to make Arnold, Jerry, Al and Barack happy. There’s nothing that anyone can do to change that, so don’t worry about it.

As we always have, humans will adapt to whatever happens.

Katy Grimes: Is man-made global warming just a lot of hot air?

Speaking of hot air, somebody should tell Al Gore that the Antarctic sea ice has set another record… because it is growing.

That’s great news for that large, ferocious, furry white bear that global warming alarmists, and teachers, keep lying to children about. (snort)

According to Steven Goddard, “Day 256 Antarctic ice is the highest ever for the date, and the eighth highest daily reading ever recorded. All seven higher readings occurred during the third week of September, 2007 – the week of the previous Arctic record minimum.”

Goddard has a blog called “Real Science,” in which he has been following and disputing the global warming data tampering, hype, and government lies, and he does this with real data.

Goddard also has been following the Antarctic sea ice growth, and the lack of reporting on this phenomenon. “Not only is Antarctic sea ice area at a record high, and more than seventeen thousand Manhattans larger than the highest Arctic ice area ever recorded – but it is has been above normal every day during 2012,” Goddard wrote today.

However, the National Snow and Ice Data Center is rather quiet about this good news.

“NSIDC does not mention the record Antarctic cold or ice on their web site, choosing inside to feature an article about global warming threatening penguins,” Goddard wrote.

Forbes online just published a story about this as well, and noted that a recent NPR story about the arctic failed to mention that Antarctic sea ice has been growing steadily for more than 30 years.

“National Public Radio published an article on its website last month claiming, ‘Ten years ago, a piece of ice the size of Rhode Island disintegrated and melted in the waters off Antarctica. Two other massive ice shelves along the Antarctic Peninsula had suffered similar fates a few years before. The events became poster children for the effects of global warming. … There’s no question that unusually warm air triggered the final demise of these huge chunks of ice,’” Forbes reported.

I Googled “Antarctic sea ice growing,” and found only three subtle references to this. Most of the other featured stories led to doom and gloom reports about the diminished arctic because of man-made global warming.

For real news on climate change and global warming, I follow Anthony Watts, a Meteorologist who publishes a great website called “Watts Up With That.” Watts regularly dispels global warming hysteria while providing accurate climate data and information. And he’s a real conservationist, not just a elitist enviro-greenie.

Watts recently reported that the latest ICEsat measurements for Antarctica “melted, now that a continent wide tally has been made,” because totals show significant ice gains. Watts found that the “ice-free Arctic by the end of summer 2012″ prediction has now gone up in flames (s0 to speak), once the total arctic ice measurements showed substantial increases.

Good news for the polar bears and penguines–bad news for global warming hysterics, and anyone trying to make a buck off of Al Gore’s doom and gloom circus act.

California hysterics

Maybe the California Air Resources Board will stop with the world-class AB 32 implementation scam, and allow employers to get back to work doing business cleanly and smartly, as most already do.

Pfffft. I can’t believe I said that.

With the recent news that California’s air is significantly and measurably cleaner already, is there really a need to continue pursing such drastic policies for carbon emission reductions, to 1990 levels, as required by the business-and-job-killing landmark legislation, AB 32, California’s Global Warming Solutions Act?

The  purpose  of  AB 32, and cap‐and‐trade, was to  reduce  greenhouse  gas emissions,  not raise billions of dollars in new tax revenue for the state’s big-spenders.

But don’t bother mentioning that to the state’s bureaucrats who have figured out how to impose even more hefty taxes on private sector businesses — just as Al Gore did when he discovered global warming.

(Note: The author knows that polar bears don’t actually live in Antarctica…tongue in cheek)

By Joseph Perkins

“Climate change,” declares the home page for the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research, “poses an immediate threat to California’s economy, environment, and to public health.”

The Brown administration is “taking action” to avert the worst global disaster since the meteorite (or meteorites, the science is unclear) that wiped out the dinosaurs, but it is being obstructed, the Brownies lament, by those who dare to question the prevailing wisdom on climate change; who “oppose the move to renewable energy and clean transportation.”

Well, the guv’s Office of Planning and Research — OPR, in bureaucrat speak — just isn’t going to stand for it anymore. So it has devoted its entire Website to taking on the evil climate change “deniers.”

“Just as we reached a point where we stopped debating whether cigarette smoke caused cancer,” the site declares, “we need to end the climate change debate and focus on how to solve the problem.”

And that begins by debunking claims of climate change “deniers,” who, as the Brown administration sees it, are on a moral par with devil-worshipping tobacco executives.

The deniers share certain traits, OPR states. “Many have little or no expertise in climate science.” Also, “Many receive funding for their efforts from industries with a financial interest in ignoring climate change.”

Of course, many if not most of those who subscribe to the climate change orthodoxy — that human activity accounts for much of the global warming trend observed in recent years — also have little or no expertise in climate science.

That includes Al Gore, for instance, whose 2006 climate change documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth,” won two Academy Awards (one of which was for Best Original Song), and propelled the former Veep into stardom. He also won a Nobel Peace Prize for his work on “climate change.”

Your tax dollars

As to the insinuation that climate change “deniers” have been corrupted by funding from industries that couldn’t care less if Mother Earth is suffering hot flashes, that dirty industry money pales in comparison to the $2.6 billion the Obama administration proposed last year to fund research reinforcing climate change alarmism.

The reason the Brown administration has gone to such extraordinary lengths to discredit climate change “deniers” is because it blames them for polls indicating that “only about half of less than half of the American public is convinced that emissions from human activities bear responsibility.”

But it’s not because of climate change “deniers” that Americans are skeptical that global warming poses an “immediate threat” to life as they know it. It’s because they have heard similar warnings before of impending climate catastrophe that proved to be false alarms.

In 1975, Newsweek magazine published a scary jeremiad titled, “The cooling world.” It warned that “after three quarters of a century of extraordinarily mild conditions, the Earth’s climate appears to be cooling down.” Time magazine ran cover stories such as, “The Cooling of America.”

Newsweek cited scientific studies, just as Gov. Brown’s OCR does on its website. And it warned of disastrous consequence if government did nothing, same as OCR.

The scientific community was dead wrong on global cooling four decades ago. All climate change skeptics — not “deniers” — are saying is that maybe, just maybe, the threat of global warming might be similarly overstated.

By Chriss Street

Al Gore opened his 2006 movie, “An Inconvenient Truth,” with an apology for not having already saved the world from global warming: “I have advocated policies to promote renewable energy and accelerate reductions in global warming pollution for decades, including all of the time I was in public service.”

In support of his continuing political agenda, Al Gore joined Van Jones last week to argue for wind power’s “clean energy” as a replacement for fossil fuels’ “dirty energy.”  Inconveniently for Mr. Gore, the truth is that mining and processing key materials to make the magnets in wind power turbines are releasing massive amounts massive amounts of air, water and ground pollution, including enormous quantities of radioactive waste into the global ecosphere.

California’s deserts and mountains are rapidly being blanketed by wind farms with huge turning propellers that spin large magnetic coils to produce electricity.  Rare Earth Elements are an essential ingredient needed to manufacture these magnets.  REEs, such as Neodymium, Samarium, Gadolinium and Dysprosium, are in limited supply. Which brings into question both of Mr. Gore’s “renewability” and “sustainability” marketing claims.

California was the world’s largest producer of REEs until 2002, when the huge Mountain Pass open pit mine was closed after the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency determined that 600,000 gallons of highly radioactive mining wastewater had been spilled onto the surrounding desert between 1984 and 1998.  The water contained highly concentrated amounts of radium, which has a half-life of 1600 years, and thorium, which has a half-life of 14 billion years.

Today, 95 percent of all REEs are mined and processed in remote Western China.  Once shrouded in secrecy by China’s autocratic leadership, the environmental dangers of unregulated REE mining have caused so much damage it is now an acknowledged national concern.  According to Wang Caifeng, China’s Deputy director-general of the Materials Department of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, producing one ton of REEs creates 2,000 tons of mine tailings.  It is also estimated that, within Baotou, where China’s primary rare earth production occurs, REE enterprises produce approximately 2.5 billion gallons of highly polluted wastewater per year and most of that waste water is   “discharged without being effectively treated, which not only contaminates potable water for daily living, but also contaminates the surrounding water environment and irrigated farmlands.”

Rare Earths

According to an article published by the Chinese Society of Rare Earths:

“Every ton [2,000 lbs.] of rare earth produced generates approximately 8.5 kilograms (18.7 lbs.) of fluorine and 13 kilograms (28.7 lbs.) of dust; and using concentrated sulfuric acid high temperature calcination techniques to produce approximately one ton of calcined rare earth ore generates 9,600 to 12,000 cubic meters (339,021 to 423,776 cubic feet) of waste gas containing dust concentrate, hydrofluoric acid, sulfur dioxide, and sulfuric acid, approximately 75 cubic meters (2,649 cubic feet) of acidic wastewater plus about one ton of radioactive waste residue (containing water).”

This inconvenient environmental holocaust seems to have been exempted from Gore’s evaluation of wind power as source of “clean energy.”  Recently, physicist John Droz Jr. consulted with nuclear experts to compare the radioactive waste generated from a 3 gigawatt (GW) wind farm with that of a nuclear reactor to generate the same amount of electricity.  Their conclusions:

Wind Energy

Fact 1: Wind turbines require about 2000 lbs. of REEs per megawatt of rated capacity;

Fact 2: U.S. Army reports that mining 2000 lbs. of REE creates about 2000 lbs. of radioactive waste;

Assumption 1: The available Capacity Factor of these turbines will be about 33 percent (very optimistic);

Assumption 2: Water is about 50 percent of the weight of the REE mining radioactive waste. 

Therefore, the radioactive waste for a 3 GW wind facility:

—> Twenty year expected usable life of wind turbine (optimistic);

—>  50% of waste is water that will evaporate away; 

Total of wind power radioactive waste (3000 MW x 2000 REE/MW x 1 x .5) = 3,000,000± pounds

Nuclear Power

Fact 1: Nuclear reactor is Pressurized Water Reactor;

Fact 2: Radioactive waste is spent fuel rods that are permanently stored in deep earth repository;

Assumption 1: GW Nuclear facility generates about 60,000 pounds per year of “spent” uranium;

Assumption 2: Twenty years is used as that is the generous expected life of a wind turbine.

Therefore, the radioactive waste for a 1 GW single-pass nuclear power plant:

—> Average 60,000 pounds per year;

—> Twenty years of operations.

Total of nuclear generator radioactive waste (60,000 lbs. x 20 yrs.) = 1,200,000± pounds

So compared to the radioactive waste from wind energy to the radioactive waste in an “equivalent” nuclear power facility to produce the same amount of electricity, wind energy is dirtier — with 250 percent the amount of radioactive waste!  The next time you hear someone promote wind energy as a renewable, sustainable, clean, green source of energy that will give us energy independence, ask if it will also help the earth glow in the dark.

Note: The writer is indebted to John Droz Jr. for the technical research and analysis provided for this report.  Mr. Droz has been a physicist and an environmental activist for over 25 years.  He received undergraduate degrees in physics and math from Boston College and a graduate degree in physics from Syracuse University.  John has been a participating member of the Sierra Club and the Adirondack Council.

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Chriss Street’s latest book: “The Third Way”; now available at www.amazon.com