If, that is, John McCain can be persuaded to see the light, come to his senses, and make a prime time speech in which he apologizes for being wrong about global warming and climate change, has learned that CO2 is not the enemy, that humans have no identifiable effect on climate, which has always been changing, and humans cannot stop it; and that it is far more important to produce enough energy from all sources, nuclear, geothermal, solar, wind, oil, and coal, than to go tilting at the windmills of Greenism to stop the unstoppable climate change, which is entirely natural and organic.

If John McCain can learn that lesson, he can turn the issue of global warming and climate change on its head, and use it to take down his opponent and the Greens and Greenism in the next four months. But it must be done as a frontal attack, a headlong cavalry charge straight up the hill into the face of the enemy; something neither his opponent nor the Greens are prepared for. It would throw them into total panic and disarray.

Last week oil prices spiked $10.75 in one day, a new record, closing Friday at $138.54. Unemployment rose 10% in one month, May, from 5% to 5.5%. The Dow dropped 394 points, the biggest drop in over a year. The average working stiff has seen his cost to commute to work and home again double in less than two years, even as the equity in his house plummeted. And airlines are cutting hundreds of flights, and thousands of jobs. The high cost of not drilling for oil in America is going to savage the economy at every level.

Cybercast News Service (CNS News), in a June 6th article entitled "Lawmakers Split on Drilling for Vast Amounts of Oil in USA," reports that the Interior Department's Bureau of Land Management estimates there are 139 billion barrels of untapped, recoverable oil onshore and offshore in the United States. This does not include the vast Bakken oil fields of Montana and the Dakotas, or the enormous shale oil deposits in Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, or the oil sands of Oklahoma. CNS interviewed four members of Congress and found the Republicans supporting Jed Babbin's call to "drill here, drill now," while Democrats were opposed.

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) said, "You've got that right. We can't get it (the oil) because the environmental elitists are preventing that with moratoria saying it would take ten years to get it developed. "Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.) also said Congress should deregulate to allow more drilling. "My sense is that the most direct route is for Congress to take direct action and give the American people more access to American oil."

Rep. Mike Honda (D-Calif.) replied, "No," adding that he would "never say never," but that circumstances would have to be "pretty drastic" for him to agree to more drilling. "I am more concerned about global warming and the impact of fossil fuel," he said. House Ways and Means Chairman Charlie Rangel (D-NY) told CNS he needs to study the issue more. "I haven't studied enough to make that decision," he said.

But a lot of middle class, working class, and fixed-income Americans have studied the issue quite enough, and they're beginning to get angry, visibly angry, at the inexcusable inaction of Congress. As gas prices continue to rise through the summer, the anger will swell into fury. "Earth to Mike Honda," they'll be saying soon, "For us, your constituents, five dollar gasoline is pretty drastic. Earth to Charlie Rangel, how many years do you have to study to learn what you can learn in a day? If it takes that long, Charlie, are you sure you're smart enough to be a member of Congress?"

Wasn't it Mark Twain who once quipped, "Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress - but I repeat myself."

Presently, we import 5.4 million barrels of oil a day from OPEC countries. At $138 a barrel, that's $745 million dollars a day we're "exporting" to Saudi Arabia and its neighbors. At 40 jobs per million dollars (at $50,000 a year per job) that's 29,800 jobs for Americans we are "outsourcing" to OPEC each day, rather than investing that money in American oil production and American jobs. At 29,800 jobs a day, that's 10,877,000 American jobs we are exporting to OPEC each year, and if the price of oil rises, so will the job loss. Democrats have threatened to punish corporations that outsource jobs to other countries, but the Democrats' own misbegotten Green policies are the No. 1cause of outsourcing in America.

At some point, something has to give, and it will either be the U.S. economy or Greenism, the obsessive-compulsive Environmentalist Personality Disorder that will sacrifice the jobs, fortunes, futures, and lives, of three hundred million Americans, in slavish homage to the myth that burning "fossil fuels" is causing climate change, and that by reducing our "carbon footprint" we can end climate change. Nothing is further from the truth. The climate has been changing as long as there has been a climate, long before we could have had anything to do with it.

How we ended up with a majority in Congress, and two presidential candidates, who are so appallingly ignorant of the basics of climatology, climate history, and the ubiquity of climate change, after this debate has already been raging for years, is a complete mystery to me. It is, in my opinion, Congressional malpractice: the willful or negligent failure of most members of Congress to become well informed about the real science and history of climate change and what the effect, if any, of CO2 on the global climate really is, or isn't, before making legislative decisions that profoundly affect the lives of 300 million Americans. And I wonder: can we sue Congress, for Congressional Malpractice?

Can we sue Congress for acting on false assumptions, when, by the exercise of reasonable care and due diligence, they could, and should, have become fully and honestly informed on the global warming and climate change issues, before making bad decisions that adversely affect the U.S. economy and the lives of every one of their constituents? Don't they have that duty? And haven't they breached it? And aren't we paying for it?

There is only one way to rescue America from the rising cost of energy that threatens to overwhelm the U.S. economy. And that is to produce more energy. As soon as possible. In America.

We don't have time to wait for pie-in-the-sky fantasies, such as cellulosic ethanol from switchgrass. A little arithmetic tells us that to replace oil with switchgrass, which according to National Geographic can produce "up to" 1,000 gallons of ethanol per acre, per year, we'd have to produce a billion gallons a day, to replace the gasoline and diesel we consume. That's 365 billion gallons a year, plus another 15% to provide the energy to produce all that cellulosic ethanol from switchgrass, for a total of 420 billion gallons a year. This would require 420 cellulosic ethanol plants producing a billion gallons a year, each, and so far, we don't have one. Not one producer of cellulosic ethanol on a commercial scale. And it would require 420 million acres of switchgrass farms, which would be a 150% increase in American farmland. And would not the adverse environmental impact of converting 420 million acres of wildlife habitat to switchgrass farms be enormous? Where are the Greens now? Why isn't the Sierra Club demanding an Environmental Impact Report?

Congress needs to come to grips with the fact that there is no credible evidence that CO2 causes "global warming. "It has been warmer in the past, when CO2 was lower than now, and the temperature dropped 0.7 degrees last year, while CO2 was rising.

But CO2 is plant food, fertilizer, plants suck it up and grow, and more CO2 in the air means plants grow faster, and need less water. With a growing world population facing chronic food shortages, we need more CO2 in the air to produce more food, not less.

And this means the misguided, misbegotten, delusional era of Greenism has to end. Soon. Now. The delusions of the radical environmentalists have taken us down this dangerous road, and the chickens are coming home to roost. And the chickens are very expensive. Having quarantined 90% of Federal lands from energy exploration and development, and blocked construction of nuclear power, and fuel refineries, it is the environmentalist policies, the Green policies, the Greenism, of the last generation that has put American in the spot it's in, and America can only get out of the spot by rejecting the delusional Greenism of the past, and embracing a rational energy policy for the future.

I'm with Barack Obama. I want "change"...but maybe not the same change Barack Obama wants.

Here's the change I want:

1. Legislation to immediately lift all moratoria on oil and natural gas exploration and development on Federal lands, except National Parks.

2. Legislation to grant a 100% tax credit for all new capital investment in energy production in the U.S. and its territorial waters. If you spent $20,000 to put solar panels on your roof, you get a $20,000 tax credit. If Exxon puts $75 billion into developing new oil production in the U.S., Exxon gets a $75 billion tax credit. This would "send a message" to OPEC that the party's just about over, and it would create millions of new jobs for working class Americans in America.

3. Legislation to fast-track NRC-approved nuclear power plant designs, and to require Green plaintiffs suing to block the construction of nuclear power plants, geothermal plants, oil refineries, or any other energy project, to prove by "clear and convincing evidence" that the proposed project was unreasonably dangerous, or that the harm it would cause was greater than the benefit it would confer.

Barack Obama said recently that he will deliver "$150 billion over the next ten years" to develop alternative energy.

That's way too little, way too late. America needs it now, not ten years from now. We don't need to pass it through the government skim machine.

And Barry Boy is clueless. By granting a 100% tax credit for new capital investment in energy in the United States, we unleash the magnificent ingenuity of the American people, who will pump $150 billion into energy development in one year, not ten, and produce ten times, or a hundred times, as much new energy in ten years as any government-managed program ever could.

That's change.

And that's the end of Greenism.

Raymond Kraft

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.325/pub_detail.asp

Comments are welcome at redstatepatriot@hughes.net. Please include the title of the article as your subject line. Selected responses, in whole or part, may be published (appended to the article).

-------------------
Response from James Taylor:

I find no fault with your article except to say, but their is more! There are 75,000 dams in the US, 8,000 are 50 feet or more in height, but only 850 of them produce 5mw or more. The Greens will not let us expand our hydro-electric resources even though there is no carbon released. Cheap and abundant electrical energy could end the use of oil for heating which should be a win/win solution. This makes their real goal a little clearer. They are trying to force America to reduce all energy use, renewable or not.

Al Gore stated in 92', that the internal combustion engine needs to be phased out over the next 25 years. He and his liberal following are using global warming as an excuse to restructure our nation, and allow us to be dominated by the rest of the world. Open borders with non-citizens allowed to do as they please while Americans are limited to only so much carbon use each year. If you drive or fly too much, or kept your home too warm in the winter, you would pay a fine and lose your vehicle.

I have also read about some Greens even filing lawsuits against wind and solar farms.
Thanks for all the good work you are doing, James

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So my suspicions were aroused when I received a March 26th news release from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration saying that NOAA’s Fisheries Service had accepted a petition from “a California environmental group seeking protection under the Endangered Species Act for an ice seal called the ‘ribbon seal’ that inhabits Alaska’s Bering Sea.”

If this goes forward, then the bearded, spotted, and ringed seals will also be considered for protection. What they need is protection against the polar bears because they are all considered a three-course meal by any one of the 50,000 roaming around that area.

It is now blatantly clear, if it has not been to date, that the Endangered Species Act exists to provide Greens a vehicle by which they can keep Americans from having access to the oil that would reduce to some extent our much vaunted dependence on oil from the Middle East. That would seem a good thing to most people, but not to the enemies of any and all forms of energy – particularly energy on which the U.S. depends to maintain and rebuild a shaky economy. (Thank you Senator John McCain - editorial comment)

These listings are not a coincidence. They are a deliberate attack on the security and economy of the nation. Somewhere in the Bush Administration, the word has gone out that it is okay to consider taking action that will harm the United States of America and its long term energy needs.

From the Great North to the great south, Antarctica, the media has been making a big deal of the potential calving of the Wilkins Ice Shelf. It is cited as yet another example that global warming is happening and we’re all going to die unless we stop driving, shut down all the utilities and manufacturing plants in America, begin to live in tents and cook our meals over an open fire.

A fact that is inconveniently ignored by the media is that the vast majority of Antarctica is in a decades-long cold spell. It has been cooling since around 1979. Indeed, the majority of the Antarctic and the Southern Ocean is accumulating ice, not losing it. So, if the Wilkins Ice Shelf should experience any loss, it would run counter to the trend there.

Joseph D’Aleo, executive director of the International Climate and Environmental Change Assessment Project, points out that, “In reality, the Wilkins Ice Shelf and all the former shelves that collapsed are small and most near the Antarctic peninsula which sticks well out from Antarctica into the currents and winds of the South Atlantic.” It lies over a tectonically active region with surface and subsurface active volcanic activity. If Wilkins breaks up, it will eventually do what other ice masses do. It will refreeze.

The media, besotted and enthralled by the global warming lies, continues to inaccurately report the truth of events like the Wilkins shelf because they just don’t care about the truth any more. They, like their fellow Greens, have an agenda and if that means telling big fat lies by leaving out key elements of a story, that’s okay by them.

Alan Caruba
March 2008
--------------------------

Comments are welcome at redstatepatriot@hughes.net. Please include the title of the article as your subject line. Selected responses, in whole or part, may be published (appended to the article).

Response by Les S.:

The enviro's and the media apparently have large numbers of willfully ignorant people in their thrall ... our enemies could ask for nothing more than the weakening of America, happily supplied by the Greens and their lemmings.

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Meanwhile, in the United States, rainfall is increasing, tornados are becoming less frequent, glaciers have been receding for 200 years – back to their more normal average lengths, and hurricane frequency and severity has been unchanged for the past century.

Standing timber in U.S. forests has, however, increased by 40% since 1950; 2,000-year-old pine trees are growing faster; and animal and plant quantity and diversity are sharply increasing. This is truly alarming! If current trends continue, we will be overrun by squirrels, deer, and foxes and fighting for our lives against aggressively growing orange and apple trees. A dire prediction was even published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences – I am not making this up – warning that poison ivy is also growing faster.

The three most important substances that make life possible are water, oxygen, and carbon dioxide. The primary structural and functional element in all living things is carbon. All carbon in protein, fat, carbohydrate, and the other organic molecules in living things is derived from atmospheric carbon dioxide. Without atmospheric carbon dioxide, life as we know it would not be possible. Plants inhale carbon dioxide and are thereby fertilized. When atmospheric carbon dioxide increases – as it has by about 30% during the past century, plant life and the animal life that thrives upon it are also increased.

The annual increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide attributable to human activities – primarily the burning of coal, oil, and natural gas – is about 1 part in 10,000 of that contained in the oceans and biosphere – a contribution of ultimately negligible consequence. Since, however, this human-released carbon must travel through the atmosphere to reach the ocean and biotic reservoirs, human use, while it continues, has caused a transient rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide from about 0.03% to about 0.04% of atmospheric molecules. The primary environmental result of this rise is plant fertilization. We are moving carbon from below ground into the atmosphere, where it is available to produce more plants and animals – a wonderful and unexpected gift from the industrial revolution.

The Earth’s atmosphere and surface are warmed by solar radiation; the greenhouse effect – primarily caused by atmospheric water vapor; and other less-understood phenomena. Carbon dioxide and methane are also greenhouse gases, but their physical properties render their greenhouse effects very weak. Neither warms the Earth significantly, and no greenhouse warming caused by these two substances has ever been unequivocally observed. The warming and cooling of the Earth is correlated most closely with fluctuations in solar activity and is entirely uncorrelated with human hydrocarbon use.

This has not, however, troubled Al Gore, the United Nations, and their enviro-retainers, who are regaling the body politic with unverified computer projections that purport to predict the weather centuries in the future. These computer models cannot predict the weather next week, nor can they even “predict” the weather last year. In order to make the models conform at least somewhat to past temperature trends, their handlers have introduced 6 and even 7 adjustable parameters into their calculations. As Enrico Fermi famously remarked when quoting his friend, the great mathematician and computer pioneer John von Neumann, “with 3 parameters I can fit an elephant and with 4, I can make him wiggle his trunk.”

Why are these people doing this? Why has Al Gore positioned himself to become a historical laughing stock, and why have a few hundred United Nations climate change-funded “scientists” joined them? The reason surely is not global warming. If they truly were alarmed as they say about imminent climatic peril, they would be clamoring for the Penner-Teller solution. These scientists have shown that slight injections of sun-blocking particulates into the upper atmosphere would immediately erase all Earth warming of the past 200 years. Teller estimated the cost to achieve this cooler temperature at about $1 billion. A similar additional amount would probably be required annually to maintain the cooling.

If Al Gore were truly alarmed about hydrocarbon use, he would be clamoring for nuclear power plants. The construction of just 50 nuclear installations similar to that partially completed at Palo Verde near Phoenix would erase most of the U.S. carbon dioxide output – and would also erase most of the U.S. trade deficit at the same time. Yet, while The Wall Street Journal recently counted 381 nuclear power plants in various stages of planning or construction around the world – but none being constructed in the United States, Al Gore and his retainers actually oppose nuclear power.

So, why are they doing this? In the words of Indiana Jones – “fortune and glory, kid, fortune and glory” – paraphrase that “money and power, madam, money and power.” Al Gore, himself, has already accumulated astonishing personal wealth during his campaign against world energy technology and is now a principal in a new corporation being formed to profit from public fear of global warming. Meanwhile, United Nations bureaucrats are mesmerized by the prospect of taxing and rationing world energy supplies – a position of virtually unlimited wealth and power that would give them life-and-death control over both world technology and the human race. (emphasis added)

And, why do we prefer that Al Gore and his friends not succeed? One reason is that, in the poorer countries of the world, billions of people are using technology to lift themselves from poverty and to gain some of the technological blessings that Americans now enjoy. These people need inexpensive, relatively low technology energy that can, with current methods, only be practically derived from hydrocarbons. World hydrocarbon rationing would deprive them of this energy, destroy their dreams, and cause them to slip backwards into suffering, poverty, and death.

Simultaneously, Americans can only maintain and extend their own technology and prosperity with inexpensive energy – available now in practical quantities only from hydrocarbon and nuclear sources. Moreover, only people who are prosperous can afford the cost of true environmentalism.

Most people agree that increased quality, quantity, and length of human life and decreased human suffering are worthwhile goals. These goals are best reached by technological advance, and inexpensive energy is the currency of technological progress. The myth of human-caused global warming currently threatens these goals and that technological advance. This is the truth – inconvenient as it may be to the self-centered aspirations of Al Gore and his United Nations friends.

Complete peer-reviewed scientific references to the facts in this article can be found in the peer-reviewed article, Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide by A. B. Robinson, N. E. Robinson, and W. Soon – available at www.oism.org/pproject.

This article first appeared in Human Events

© 2008 - Art Robinson - All Rights Reserved

Comments are welcome at redstatepatriot@hughes.net. Please include the title of the article as your subject line. Selected responses, in whole or part, may be published (appended to the article).

« Close It

On the Senate side, Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and John Warner (R-VA) have introduced their own "pollution permit" bill, amusingly dubbed America's Climate Security Act [1], to "reduce global warming pollution." It proposes both carbon cap-and-trade and monetary transition assistance to current carbon slobs.

Never to be outdone, Democratic White House frontrunner Hillary Clinton -- no political dummy -- is promising she'd broker and sign a globally binding post Kyoto emissions treaty, a full 2 years before the current failed accord is set to expire.

And closer to people's homes, NBC dedicated last week to "green" programming which, amid its silly how to be a good little greenie tips, spotlighted both Democrats and Republicans vowing to save the planet from "global warming pollution." Automaker Ford wasn't alone in hysteria capitulation when it released a commercial wherein a little girl asks her dad to drop her off a block short of her destination to avoid the humiliation of being seen in a non-hybrid SUV.

It's becoming painfully apparent that the public is buying into this rubbish.

An October CNN/Research Corp. poll found 56% of respondents believing that "the phenomenon of global warming has been proven, and can be largely blamed on human endeavors, such as power plants and factories." And a Harris poll that same month revealed 71% believing that "increased carbon dioxide and other gases released into the atmosphere will, if unchecked, lead to global warming and an increase in average temperatures."

Mind you, while science attests that the planet is, indeed, at an apex of a historically natural vacillation of cold and warm phases, there exists absolutely no proven influence on climate by man-made CO2 emissions.

And yet, the Big Green Scare Machine (TBGSM), its MSM cogs, and Gorebot drones have managed to convince enough people otherwise to successfully engrain this nonsense into the very conscience of society, primarily by silencing dissent with ploys of flawed reason.

Clearing the Corridor to Clouded Correlation

We've all seen them present evidence of an undeniable upward cycle, then label anthropogenic global warming (AGW) skeptics as "warming deniers" who rebuff the proof right before their eyes. This dishonest little dodge is an inverted Straw man argument [2] as it blatantly misrepresents a position, proves its own distortion, and then concludes that the real position has been affirmed.

The upshot of this fraud is a population that largely believes skeptics doubt the warming trend itself, not its anthropogenic influence, and that thereby lies about the"debate." Moreover, this implied association blurs that distinction, leaving many with the very false yet very real impression that they have witnessed convincing evidence of both.

Pretty neat trick -- turning a skeptic questioning the impact of manmade greenhouse gases into a boogieman denying the planet is warming to imply all cynics are obviously wrong about both.

However, as with stage magic, logical illusions require audience receptivity preparation. Here, instilling an assumed connection is paramount.

In An Inconvenient Truth, Gore sermonized before a graph he claimed depicted both unprecedented modern temperatures and startling correlations between temperature and CO2 fluctuations over eons of time. In truth, even were the representations honest -- they were based upon the so-called "hockeystick" graph produced by Dr. Michael Mann which has been proven inaccurate, particularly in its record heat claims -- viewers had no way of discerning the key issue of whether temperature increases followed or preceded rises in CO2.

Of course, had the CO2 increases trailed those of temperature -- as many believe to be the case (solar and/or volcanically warmed oceans emit more CO2) -- then the entire GHG theory crumbles. Indeed, without such temporal reference, Gore is employing a common correlation versus causation confusion trick called Cum Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc (with this, therefore because of this).

The absurdity of such illogic was cleverly lampooned by Bobby Henderson, who wrote in a May 2005 letter to the Kansas School Board:

"You may be interested to know that global warming, earthquakes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters are a direct effect of the shrinking numbers of Pirates since the 1800s. For your interest, I have included a graph of the approximate number of pirates versus the average global temperature over the last 200 years. As you can see, there is a statistically significant inverse relationship between pirates and global temperature."

Gore's flamboyant overtures notwithstanding -- correlation does not imply causation. Of course, nor does it disqualify it. Take, for instance the obvious correlation between global temperatures and sunspot cycles which is entirely ignored by the "solar deniers." From the Maunder Minimum's parallel to the Little Ice in the 17th century (chart) to today's Modern Maximum's place in perfect harmony with our higher temperatures, one would expect this, not hypothetical GHG theories, to have been declared the "debate ender."

Instead, through the chicanery of inverted arguments and the deliberate confusing of cause and effect, TBGSM has imposed the illusory assertion that skeptics deny rising temperatures while science has proven that man controls the thermostat.

This false Fait Accompli lends solace to an equally counterfeit disregard of remaining doubt.

Loaded Questions and Quack Quandaries

So what are we (or you) going to do to save the planet from manmade global warming?

The problem is posed ad nauseum in varying forms to politicians, talk show guests and audiences, students and climate change summit attendees. And most eagerly respond, despite having been asked something equally prejudicial to the classic law school conundrum "so, when did you stop beating your wife?"

Compelling anyone to address AGW remedies is likewise dishonest, as it implies concurrence with the unproven premise that mankind stands as guilty as the accused wife-beater.

This devious ploy of flawed reasoning is known as a Complex Question, as it deceitfully rests on an arguable assumption; any available answer would appear to endorse that assumption.

The complex question is actually a subtle form of False Dilemma, which is an alarmist staple, created by coercing someone to choose between 2 options when others are readily available. For instance, we either act now to reduce global warming or face untold cataclysm later. How often have you heard that nonsense?

And no wonder.

Before they might accept outlandish solutions, it is imperative that the public at large be terrified by AGW's primary false dilemma of action versus planetary calamity.

And once again, logical fallacies prove to be the stuff that green dreams are made of.

Fear and Loathing in the Troposphere

Without hyping the purported consequences of global warming, misrepresenting its cause would be of no particular political or economic value.

Fear refined yields a powerful motivational fuel, and without it, the public would quickly grow inured to doomsday scares and trendy liberal reflexive remedies. That's why, as an adjunct to baseless catastrophic projections, Misleading Vividness is so vital. You've seen the pictures of snow-barren mountaintops, blazing forests, reputedly doomed to extinction Polar bears ostensibly stranded on floating ice sheets (in fact, the species has evolved to swim between sheets) and huge chunks of ice falling to the water in Greenland (a normal summertime occurrence).

Alarmists are well aware that by flashing these visually striking images as backdrop to vividly descriptive exaggerations and lies, anecdotal evidence can be used as the basis for remarkably hasty generalizations. Indeed, audiences of such spectacle are apt to engage emotionally and, consequently, willing to suspend whatever skepticism their better judgment implies.

More despicable still, manufactured images of even greater horrific impact are routinely interspersed to further agitate the easily impressionable. Remember Gore's dreadful depictions of New York flooding and ground zero disappearing under water?

But surely there are those possessed of highly cognitive and expertly trained minds destined to ultimately save us from our own frailties of logic, aren't there?

Yes there are, but no, they won't.

We've previously revealed many of the myriad scientists who dare challenge the "settled science" of AGW, bravely risking ridicule, defunding, demotion and accusations of both lack of care about future generations (another straw man argument ) and being an "oil shill" (circumstantial ad hominem).

A Circumstantial Ad Hominem attacks a position by asserting that the person taking it is doing so simply out of self interest. While there's generally little or no proof proffered, weak-minded observers often disqualify the accused nonetheless.

At the 2007 Oscars, Gore smugly told the audience -- and an estimated 1 billion television viewers:
"that resolving the threat posed by a warming climate is ‘not a political issue, it's a moral issue.'"
In other words, if you don't agree with him, you're immoral.

It's not hard to surmise where the drones acquire their penchant for broad ad hominem attacks on heretics. Nor why it's considerably easier for those same skeptics to remain mum.

Tricks of the Tirade

actually devoid, alarmists compensate with a seemingly bottomless armory of fallacious arguments. Behold but a few more of their sleights-of-thought.

• Ad hominems are the falsely negative form of Genetic Fallacy, a logic flaw committed when an idea is evaluated on its source, rather than its merit. Conversely, similar mind trickery can be played to assert an idea which is falsely positive. We see this irrationality in Gorebots who lecture that if their hero says the planet has a fever and it's our fault and only he knows how to save it - it does and it is and he is.

• Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc (after this therefore because of this) is a similar tactic to Cum Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc, but here the implication is that if one event follows another, the first event therefore caused the second.
"Temperatures have been rising since the start of the industrial age. Therefore companies like Exxon Mobil are melting the polar ice caps"

• Affirming the consequent is an asininity which asserts the "then" of a conditional (consequent) first, and concludes with the "if" (antecedent).
"If GHG were making the Earth warmer then we'd have less snow. Therefore, if we have less snow then GHG are making the Earth warmer."

• Appeal to Consequences of a Belief is to suggest a belief to be true simply because if people didn't accept it there'd be negative consequences.
"We must treat Anthropogenic Global Warming as real because if people refuse to embrace it there'll be no hope for our children"

• Argumentum ad ignorantiam (argument to ignorance) is a fallacy of assuming something is true simply because it has yet to be proven false.
"Global warming is certainly caused by greenhouse gases because nobody has demonstrated conclusively that it is not"
• And the incessant "scientific consensus" claim is a combination of Appeal to Authority, Appeal to Popularity and, of course, Appeal to Bravo Sierra.

Further favorites include appeals to fear, to novelty (newness of an idea is somehow evidence of its truth), and of course, to popularity (an idea must be true simply because it is widely held). There's also The Relativist Fallacy, in which the arguer claims that while something might be true for others, he or she is exempt. Any ideas on this one (hint - think Limo Libs)?

The Debate is NOT Over When the Fat Man Sings

Given the cache of weapons TBGSM wields to shut-down debate, its obvious they've no misconceptions of prevailing should one accidentally break out. Indeed, Gore, himself, has recently refused to debate every AGW challenger tossing the gauntlet (Avery, Lord Monckton, Singer, Ball, etc).

But last week, Gore appeared on the Today Show and was asked about a WSJ op-ed penned by IPCC member and co-Nobel Prize winner John Christy which challenged Gore's dire analysis of global warming's impact and origins. The ensuing response was astounding. After calling Christy an "outlier" who's "way outside the scientific consensus" (Ad Hominem Tu Quoque), he chided journalism's provision of equal-time to opposing viewpoints on the subject:

"Part of the challenge the news media has had in covering this story is the old habit of taking the on the one hand, on the other hand approach. There are still people who believe that the Earth is flat... you don't search out for someone who still believes the Earth is flat and give them equal time"

Okay, so he didn't actually invent the internet, but he did manage to concoct his own logical fallacy -- The Flat Earther Argument -- X disagrees with Y. Y proclaims debate over. X therefore adheres to 600 year-old geological misconceptions and is to be shunned.

Now, the same alarmists who'll follow this charlatan debate-aphobe anywhere speak of an impending "tipping point," at which the Earth's destiny will be calcified. And, while they're dead wrong about the nemesis we face, their concerns are sound.

The Big Green Scare Machine has met no burden of proof whatsoever. To the contrary, they refuse and evade every opportunity to take on their dissenters in any open, objective and analytical forum.

And yet, by way of their fraudulent tactics, they're undeniably winning the clash for public opinion. Should this trend continue, rather than prepare for the consequences of naturally shifting climate patterns, we'll risk untold wealth, progress, resources, and yes -- capitalism itself, in a popular but fool's quest to tame an immutable force of nature.

The imperative to arrest this proliferating cognitive plague through unremitting rebuttal and steadfast refusal to assimilate with its foolish collective mindset or be diverted by its puerile mind games cannot be overstated.

Nearly 20,000 scientists have signed a petition disputing AGW and denouncing Kyoto. This must be loudly shouted at those sluggishly slipping into the green stupor to reinvigorate debate and assure that reasoned voices are heard over the irrational drone of this ultimately political machine.

Footnotes:
[1] Friends of the Earth abhor this bill. Rather than directing auction proceeds to wind, solar and other untenable "renewable" energy companies, it would subsidize the coal industry's efforts to develop carbon capture and storage mechanisms. Considering that base load electric requirements will likely be met by coal-fired plants indefinitely, this green objection to helping "clean them up" certainly speaks volumes to their actual motives.

[2] In her February 9th column, Ellen Goodman combined misleading vividness, blatant ad hominem and stunning ignorance when she wrote that "global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers." Ms. Goodman might be pleased to learn that most links used to clarify logical fallacies used by AGW alarmists herein launch The Nizkor Holocaust Educational Resource Project where they are described alongside other Techniques of Holocaust Denial

Marc Sheppard is a technology consultant, software engineer, writer, and political and systems analyst. He is a regular contributor to American Thinker and welcomes your feedback.

Source of original Internet article: www.americanthinker.com

Comments are welcome at redstatepatriot@hughes.net. Please include the title of the article as your subject line. Selected responses, in whole or part, may be published (appended to the article).

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Is the Earth warming? Yes, it has been warming since the last mini-Ice Age ended in the 1800s. Since then the Earth has warmed a fraction of a degree Fahrenheit or Centigrade. Big deal.

Mr. Hoggan, however, was worried. In a speech called, "You can spin Mother Nature," he told attendees that a survey he undertook revealed that, "More than eighty percent of people believe environmental PR pros mislead the public for a living." Most of the 1,097 respondents said, "They thought PR people were helping clients misrepresent their performance."

He said, "There are climate quibblers in the energy industry. And the auto industry is confused—actively campaigning against climate change regulation even while spending billions on advertising concentrated on its largest, most profitable and most environmentally damaging models."

No, Mr. Hoggan, neither the energy industry, the auto manufacturers, nor their consumers and the general public are "confused" about climate change, nor are they stupid.

About the same time he was giving his speech, the Associated Press reported that, "More people than ever are driving alone to work as the nation’s commuters balk at carpools and mass transit. Regardless of fuel prices, housing and work patterns make it hard for suburban commuters to change their gas-guzzling ways." Oh, boo-hoo. Typical of such articles, the consumer is to blame along with the awful energy and auto companies.

This is why the environmental groups and their PR representatives continue to spend millions to influence legislators to regulate, regulate, and regulate every single aspect of our lives. Based on bogus environmental claims, the intent is to deny people the right to make market-based decisions. (Ed.: That really is what this thing called “global warming” is all about.)

The result is policies that drive up the cost of basic commodities that include food, energy, and housing. Policies based on "global warming" or "climate change" have no real basis in science. They are based on the hatred of free enterprise and, indeed, the hatred of humanity that is endemic to environmentalism.
Who are some of the "climate quibblers" that are casting doubt on green claims? After a slow start when any legitimate climatologist or meteorologist who disputed the claims was attacked, they have been joined by an impressive and growing list of world leaders.
Recently Vaclav Klaus, the President of the Czech Republic, wrote, "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 degrees Centigrade, for the environmentalists and their followers to suggest radical measures to do something about the weather, and do it right now."

In April, Yuri Izrael, a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, was interviewed by the Ria Novosti news agency. The Vice Chairman of the International Panel on Climate Change broke with its much-vaunted "consensus" over global warming. "I think the panic over global warming is totally unjustified. There is no serious threat to the climate." He is the head of the Institute of Global Climate and Ecology in Russia.

(Ed.: Science is not about "consensus." It is about provable facts. Everything else is a hypothesis.)

Richard S. Lindzen, the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who early and often debunked and rebuked the theory of global warming, has been at a disadvantage with the general public because, not surprisingly, he cites some rather complex scientific data. As early as 1988 he began to speak out and that should give you an idea of how long this hoax has been perpetrated.

"The current evidence does not warrant any drastic actions that cannot be justified independently of climate concerns," says Dr. Lindzen.

As is often noted, the same environmental groups, during the 1970s, were aggressively pushing the notion of a new Ice Age. Ironically, they were closer to the truth. The Earth is currently at the end of an 11,500 year interglacial cycle and many of the climate anomalies such as a June snowfall in Denver may well signal the advent of another Ice Age.

What we can do is insure that American politicians like Sen. Harry Reid, Senator Barbara Boxer, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, John McCain, and others do not force some truly horrible legislation through Congress based on the global warming or climate change lie.

There is no climate change crisis and, if there was, like all climate phenomenon, there is absolutely nothing Americans, Canadians, and the rest of humanity could do.

What we do not need to do is turn essential food crops like corn into ethanol. We do not need to insist that auto manufacturers squeeze a fraction of additional energy out of a finite gallon of gasoline. In an economy based on the need for electricity, we must resist efforts to thwart the building of more coal-fired and nuclear facilities to facilitate growth. We should not deter the exploration and extraction of vitally needed, known energy resources off the shores of the North American continent.

Mr. Hoggan ended his speech by tossing out the standard calumnies about those who cite real science. "The mainstream media are presenting a controversy that doesn’t appear in science—usually without mentioning when skeptical experts were unqualified or were associated with energy industry lobbying firms or Exxon-funded think tanks."

What Big Oil is really trying to do is to insure you will have gasoline when you drive up to the pump or a choice of oil or natural gas to heat your home this winter.

If Mr. Hoggan’s survey is correct—and I think it is—the public is skeptical of PR professionals who tell them the Earth is dramatically warming or just about to.

So, whom do you trust? Jim Hoggan? Speaker Pelosi? Governor Schwartzenegger? Al Gore? Do you really believe that "Live Earth" concerts have anything to do with science? I recommend you trust your own common sense.

Hat tip: Len S. in Prescott, Arizona

Comments are welcome at redstatepatriot@hughes.net. Please include the title of the article as your subject line. Selected responses, in whole or part, may be published (appended to the article).

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The crusade against DDT began with Carson's anti-pesticide diatribe "Silent Spring," published in 1962 at the height of the worldwide anti-malaria campaign. The widespread spraying of DDT had caused a spectacular drop in malaria incidence--Sri Lanka, for example, reported 2.8 million malaria victims in 1948, but by 1963 it had only 17. Yet Carson's book made no mention of this. It said nothing of DDT's crucial role in eradicating malaria in industrialized countries, or of the tens of millions of lives saved by its use.

Instead, Carson filled her book with misinformation--alleging, among other claims, that DDT causes cancer. Her unsubstantiated assertion that continued DDT use would unleash a cancer epidemic generated a panicked fear of the pesticide that endures as public opinion to this day.

But the scientific case against DDT was, and still is, nonexistent. Almost 60 years have passed since the malaria-spraying campaigns began--with hundreds of millions of people exposed to large concentrations of DDT--yet, according to international health scholar Amir Attaran, the scientific literature "has not even one peer reviewed, independently replicated study linking exposure to DDT with any adverse health outcome." Indeed, in a 1956 study, human volunteers ate DDT every day for over two years with no ill effects then or since.

Abundant scientific evidence supporting the safety and importance of DDT was presented during seven months of testimony before the newly formed EPA in 1971. The presiding judge ruled unequivocally against a ban. But the public furor against DDT--fueled by "Silent Spring" and the growing environmental movement--was so great that a ban was imposed anyway. The EPA administrator, who hadn't even bothered to attend the hearings, overruled his own judge and imposed the ban in defiance of the facts and evidence. And the 1972 ban in the United States led to an effective worldwide ban, as countries dependent on U.S.-funded aid agencies curtailed their DDT use to comply with those agencies' demands.

So if scientific facts are not what has driven the furor against DDT, what has? Estimates put today's malaria incidence worldwide at around 300 million cases, with a million deaths every year. If this enormous toll of human suffering and death is preventable, why do environmentalists--who profess to be the defenders of life--continue to oppose the use of DDT?

The answer is that environmental ideology values an untouched environment above human life. The root of the opposition to DDT is not science but the environmentalist moral premise that it is wrong for man to "tamper" with nature.

Carson's environmental ideology demands opposition to DDT despite the millions of malaria deaths its use could prevent. The large-scale eradication of disease-carrying insects epitomizes the control of nature by man. This is DDT's sin. To Carson and the environmentalists she inspired, "the 'control of nature' is a phrase conceived in arrogance, born of the Neanderthal age of biology and philosophy." Nature, they hold, is intrinsically valuable and must be kept free from human interference.

On this environmentalist premise the proper attitude to nature is not to seek to improve it for human benefit, but to show "humility" before its "vast forces" and leave it alone. We should seek, Carson wrote, not to eliminate malarial mosquitoes with pesticides, but to find instead "a reasonable accommodation between the insect hordes and ourselves." If the untouched, "natural" state is one in which millions contract deadly diseases, so be it.
Carson's current heirs agree. Earth First! founder Dave Foreman writes: "Ours is an ecological perspective that views Earth as a community and recognizes such apparent enemies as 'disease' (e.g., malaria) and 'pests' (e.g., mosquitoes) not as manifestations of evil to be overcome but rather as vital and necessary components of a complex and vibrant biosphere."

In the few minutes it has taken you to read this article, over a thousand people have contracted malaria and half a dozen have died. This is the life-or-death consequence of viewing pestilent insects as a "necessary" component of a "vibrant biosphere" and seeking a "reasonable accommodation" with them.

Rachel Carson's birthday should be commemorated, not with laudatory festivities, but with the rejection of the environmental ideology she inspired.

By Keith Lockitch

The above article was first published on the internet as an Op-Ed from the Ayn Rand Institute. Keith Lockitch, a PhD in physics, is a resident fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute in Irvine, Calif. Visit the excellent website, www.aynrand.org for more information.

Red State Patriot commentary: ex-Vice President Al Gore has staked out a clear legacy of facilitating extreme measures to combat what liberals claim is a global warming threat to human existence as we know it. Will Al Gore achieve an unforeseen distinction in future decades, similar to Rachael Carson, one of having mindlessly decimated humanity? Will earth’s humanity once again suffer as the direct result of environmentalist social change based on junk science? Who will be blamed? Liberals who intone the global warming mantra today will accept no responsibility tomorrow. It is always “somebody else’s fault.” And DDT use is still banned.

Nature first and human life last. While most Americans would proudly describe themselves as conservationists, what kind of person is an Environmentalist? What kind of person sits back and allows millions of people to die needlessly? Apparently Environmentalists constitute that hard nucleus about which the Democratic Party forms. They have clearly become the source of the Democratic Party's proposed domestic and foreign policy initiatives. It is enough to make a person wonder, is there anything that does not require the death of some innocent man, woman, child or embryo that will satisfy liberals? From Iraq to the bedroom.

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