Free market may kill "cap and trade" before it starts

From 21st Century Wire, via The Liberty Voice:

Plagued by a free fall in carbon emissions prices and the perennial failure of Washington to pass any binding Cap and Trade Bill, it seems that the Chicago Climate Exchange is on its last leg, announcing that it will be scaling back its operations.

Chicago Climate Exchange or CCX, is North America’s sole voluntary, legally binding greenhouse gas trading and carbon “offset” projects in North America and Brazil. Reuters reported on Aug 11th that Intercontinental Exchange Inc, the operating body for the CCX, will be scaling back major operations this month, a move that includes massive layoffs. This is likely due to the complete market free-fall of their only product… carbon emissions.

Anthony Watts from the climate watchdog website Watts Up With That posts a graph from the CCX which shows carbon prices dropping like a stone, bottoming out this week at the embarrassingly low figure of 10 cents per tonne. Compare this to trading prices during its brief heyday in May and June 2008 where market highs reached $5.85 and $7.40 respectively, and you can say that most investors will be evaluating carbon as one of today’s more worthless commodities [as any rational person would have pointed out in the first place].

Further down in the article, they get to the truth of the matter:

Like all government rigged quasi-commercial schemes, the only real beneficiaries are the initial shareholders- a special inner circle who are naturally ahead of the curve knowing about legislation and policy before it comes into existence. They are sometimes called the great and the good, the in-crowd, or the smartest men in the room (again, see Enron). Of these, almost all have jumped ship out of the market while their preferred shares- or in the case of the larger energy and manufacturing monopolies, their gratis “carbon allowances” given to them free by their governments- are still worth something. If you’re on the inside, it’s simple: get in early, make money and then get out.

Pointing out the obvious is always a painful thing in the world of human affairs. The real reason for the complete and total failure of the concept behind trading an atmospheric gas like CO2 is something few within the green block will dare to even mention now, and it’s the same reason why the whole movement will go down in history as one of the most
flamboyant efforts in the history of economics. It’s not just hubris. The whole idea behind making CO2 a commodity was to make it expensive and thus reduce the amount produced, which would (they hoped) reduce the effect of anthropogenic (man-made) global warming, or ‘climate change’ as it’s now commonly referred to.

There was only one massive problem with this equation- there has been no global warming since 1998. So despite the hundreds of millions, perhaps billions spent on research and computer models addressing this possibility, no scientist or body has been able to show that man’s CO2 contribution has had any effect on the global temperature. Another massive blind spot for climatists is their almost religious denial that the sun might have any effect on the earth’s climate (studies show that it does, of course)- a major sore spot in any debate on global warming.

So, there you have it. Another scam exposed. And like Humpty-Dumpty, "all the king's horses and all the king's men," after having gone to great lengths to make this rotten egg, still "could not put Humpty-Dumpty together again."

But it's not dead yet. There are rumors out of Washington that one of the reasons U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wants to hold a lame-duck session after the election is to pass a cap-and-trade bill while that Congress is not politically accountable. We need to be alert, to ensure that such a bill never passes.

Who cares, really?

I did not watch President Obama's speech last night about the BP oil spill, but I have heard enough commentary today to have a pretty good idea what happened and how. In essence, following Rahm Emanuel's dictum to "never let a good crisis go to waste," the President decided to basically ignore the problem, and use it as an opportunity to get his "cap and trade" bill going. It is interesting that his speech drew considerable criticism even from the left. Even that epitome of state-run media, The New York Times, editorialized that the President failed to convince the American people that he would take the right steps to ensure that the oil spill would be cleaned up as soon as possible.

This brings me to Rush Limbaugh. Near the beginning of his show today, he launched into a twenty-minute philippic about the President's failure of leadership in this situation; and as usual, acted as a shill for the neoconservative wing of the Republican Party, whose competence to address a crisis of this nature is equally doubtful. Mr. Limbaugh's criticism is that the feds are not listening to the states, and are not providing the help they need to deal with the environmental damage.

The fundamental error that made this oil spill possible was the federal government's cap on BP's liability, and its failure to provide reasonable legislation to ensure environmental protection in the deep-sea oil fields, as I discussed May 28.

When I was a child, my mother taught me that if I make a mess, it's my responsibility to clean it up. BP should be expected to clean up the mess, entirely at their own expense; but that does not preclude the federal government marshalling resources at its disposal to assist; or to get necessary equipment and supplies to the affected states in a timely manner.

On the other hand, now is probably as good a time as any to instruct the American people, that it is not the responsibility of the federal government to rob the taxpayers for charitable causes, such as providing make-work jobs for displaced workers in Louisiana.

With this in mind, the example of Grover Cleveland in 1887 in dealing with a massive crop failure in Texas should prove instructive, as this piece by the libertarian Mises Institute makes clear. Following are excerpts from President Cleveland's veto message against a Congressional appropriation to provide seeds for the Texas farmers (emphasis added):

To the House of Representatives:

I return without my approval House bill number 10203, entitled "An Act to enable the Commissioner of Agriculture to make a special distribution of seeds in drought-stricken counties of Texas, and making an appropriation therefor." ...

Though there has been some difference in statements concerning the extent of the people's needs in the localities thus affected, there seems to be no doubt that there has existed a condition calling for relief; and I am willing to believe that, notwithstanding the aid already furnished, a donation of seed grain to the farmers located in this region, to enable them to put in new crops, would serve to avert a continuance or return of an unfortunate blight.

And yet I feel obliged to withhold my approval of the plan as proposed by this bill, to indulge a benevolent and charitable sentiment through the appropriation of public funds for that purpose.

I can find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution, and I do not believe that the power and duty of the general government ought to be extended to the relief of individual suffering which is in no manner properly related to the public service or benefit. A prevalent tendency to disregard the limited mission of this power and duty should, I think, be steadfastly resisted, to the end that the lesson should be constantly enforced that, though the people support the government, the government should not support the people.

The friendliness and charity of our countrymen can always be relied upon to relieve their fellow citizens in misfortune. This has been repeatedly and quite lately demonstrated. Federal aid in such cases encourages the expectation of paternal care on the part of the government and weakens the sturdiness of our national character, while it prevents the indulgence among our people of that kindly sentiment and conduct which strengthens the bonds of a common brotherhood...

The appropriation of the current year for this purpose is $100,000, and it will probably be no less in the appropriation for the ensuing year. I understand that a large quantity of grain is furnished for such distribution, and it is supposed that this free apportionment among their neighbors is a privilege which may be waived by our senators and representatives.

If sufficient of them should request the Commissioner of Agriculture to send their shares of the grain thus allowed them, to the suffering farmers of Texas, they might be enabled to sow their crops; the constituents, for whom in theory this grain is intended, could well bear the temporary deprivation, and the donors would experience the satisfaction attending deeds of charity.

That's what I would have liked to have heard from Mr. Limbaugh. A call to the people to assist the Gulf states on their own through charitable organizations that already exist. A call for BP to act responsibly. A call for a President who can use the "bully pulpit" to urge Americans to do what is needed, while staying within the Constitutional bonds our Founding Fathers put into place.

But I suppose I'm whistling into the wind again...

More crying over spilled oil

Gregory Sullivan at Pajamas Media* reports that a firm in Maine is ready, willing, and able to provide enough oil containment boom to contain the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Only problem is, no one is buying it.

John Lapoint of Packgen in Auburn, Maine, says he’s got plenty of floating oil containment boom and can make lots more on short notice. There’s just one problem: no one will buy it from him.

He’s already had a representative from BP visit his factory and inspect his product. The governor of Maine, John Baldacci, visited the facility and made a video plea to no one in particular to close the deal. Maine Senators Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins wrote a letter on May 21 to the secretary of the Interior, the administrator of NOAA, and the commandant of the Coast Guard to alert them to the existence of Packgen, their supply of boom, and their demonstrated capacity to make more.

Clearly, the appropriate agencies of federal government should be aware of this company by now. The longer this oil spill goes on, the more I suspect skulduggery at the federal level.

The only good thing I can say about this story is, it is hastening the day when the American people become so disgusted with incompetent federal government that they will embrace secession.

Virtual buckeyes to Mike McCool and Big Government.

* I am usually skeptical of Internet sources not backed up by mainstream media, but in this case, the facts were obviously checked with primary sources.

Crying over spilled oil

All of the media attention the last few days has been on the oil spill from the BP deep-sea well in the Gulf of Mexico, which exploded over a month ago. While it is impossible to protect the environment from every accident, it is evident that in the case of Deepsea Horizon, due diligence was not done. Why not?

Capitalism is based on opportunity, therefore the executives or owners of a company will try to identify and exploit opportunities that will result in profits for themselves and their shareholders. As far as the capitalist is concerned, this is their only obligation.

However, in assessing an opportunity, risk must be taken into consideration. The federal government, some years ago, mitigated that risk for BP in the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 by limiting its liability to $75 million "unless gross negligence is proven." While BP has agreed to pay the full cost of cleaning up the spill (currently estimated at $12 billion) and Congress wants to up the limit to $10 billion, the discussion of the cap misses the point.

There should be no limit on liability. If a future oil spill is so costly that it bankrupts BP, then let BP go bankrupt. Not because I'm an extreme environmentalist or anti-capitalist; but because the lack of a liability limit will force management to factor in that risk, when they make the decision to invest in a deep-sea oil well. It will also force management to factor in safety precautions that could be made to prevent oil spills. Failure to do so will be considered gross negligence by the company's own stockholders.

There is another party to this gross negligence -- the federal government. It has responded very slowly to this problem. Its reluctance to act reminds me of its response to Hurricane Katrina.

This space is frequently critical of federal interventions where the federal government has no business intervening; for example, with health care and education; but the federal government does have defined powers within the Constitution. Regulating this oil well is one of them, since this well was drilled 40 miles out to sea, well within the 200 miles of territorial waters of the United States. One can reasonably deduce from Article I, Section 8, of the Constitution, that this oil well deals with interstate, even international, commerce.

So what is the take-home? The feds are so busy trying to take over health care, the auto industry, Wall Street, and other businesses "too big to fail;" so busy robbing American taxpayers to pay their friends, that they are neglecting their core responsibilities in immigration and environmental cleanup outside state lines.

To cover up their failures, they are criticizing Arizona for trying to carry out what should be a federal responsibility; and are expecting Louisiana to somehow scrounge for resources to protect its own wetlands.

If Donald Trump were emperor, you know what he would say to the feds...

"YOU'RE FIRED!"

Maybe the time has come for the states, as the feds' employer, to say the same thing. If the feds can't even carry out their Constitutional responsibilities, they are incompetent, and deserve to be fired. The method for states to back out of a broken contract is known as secession.

California spinoff

Leave it to California to take a fresh approach to an old idea. Instead of speaking of secession, with all those bad vibes from the War of 1861, some Californians are now talking of spinoff. Not surprisingly, it is not the Tea Parties that are getting Californians to think this way, but their pocketbooks. From FutureofCapitalism.com:

[T]he big news in California is less the Senate race than the quietly brewing talk of secession -- or, as the Silicon Valley types much prefer to call it, a spinoff.

Not only are California's high income citizens being milked by progressive taxation to support the rest of America, but coal-rich states like West Virginia and Ohio* are hampering the state from pushing a low-carbon (wind, solar) economy, and nativists outside of California are preventing the state from running a pro-immigrant, pro-growth policy on green cards. Not to mention that California is under-represented in the Senate, with just two senators for all those Californians -- the same number as states with much smaller populations. Or so the argument goes, so far as I could follow the description of it from the California bureau. First it was Vermont, now California. Not to mention Rick Perry's victory this week in the Texas gubernatorial primary after warning that Texas may get so fed up that it wants to secede. The California bureau [of FutureofCapitalism.com] recommends reading Harvard economics professor Alberto Alesina on The Size of Nations.

Secession has a bad name for us in the North because of the Civil War and the horrors of slavery, but the American Revolution was a secession from Great Britain, after all. "Spinoff" avoids all the Civil War connotations. As Thomas Friedman paraphrased one Silicon Valley chief executive as putting it, the Obama Team is "very good at listening to Silicon Valley," but "not so good at responding."

And then, there's this: As with every other state (except North Dakota), the Feds are bankrupting the state governments. Californians are hurting that way more than most. A corporate "spinoff" might be just what the doctor ordered. (And just think, we'd be rid of Nancy Pelosi!)

* I know what they're saying; but for the benefit of non-Ohio readers, I would point out that the Buckeye State is building windmill farms and actively pursuing alternative sources of energy, as well.

Critics are coming out of the woodwork

The unionists are getting scared. I have seen a growing number of blog posts and articles sharply critical of secession and nullification. For some reason, they came out in force today. Here is a sampling from today’s Google alerts on secession:

“Secessionist talk is unpatriotic”

Here’s one for you, Old Rebel: The Crimson White, student newspaper at the University of Alabama, asserts that “secessionist talk is unpatriotic.” The writer, Jonathan Reed, took a look at the secessionist discussions taking place in the Texas gubernatorial campaign, and called them “frightening.” When Debra Medina quoted Thomas Jefferson’s “the tree of liberty is watered with the blood of tyrants and patriots,” Mr. Reed concluded that the “tyrants” were all of us as Americans. “They’re our soldiers, sailors, and airmen. They’re people who work 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., watch college football and go to church.” Mr. Reed characterizes “patriots” as “people who believe in America until it raises their taxes.”

He adds:

There was once a day when patriots fought and died for one America. Not just for the land and the people, but for the idea that democracy, despite its occasional faults, can make the nation as a whole work for everyone. When we think of patriots dying in a bloody war, we don’t think of them as fighting for freedom from a government that was fairly elected by a majority of the people, we think of them as fighting against tyrants who threaten people’s essential life and liberties and who offer the people no other recourse.

Mr. Reed, everyone I know in the liberty movement also believes that we should work to make the nation as a whole work for everyone; but, as Sebastian Ronin says, "The free election of the masters by the slaves does not eliminate the master-slave relationship." The federal government is not democratic; it is kleptocratic (best government money can buy) with a thin democratic veneer.

The difference between patriotism and nationalism is knowing when loyalty to the nation becomes contrary to loyalty to the principles on which that nation was founded. We have tried reform for 40 years, and we have failed. The disease of tyranny calls for stronger medicine, so we are working on nullification, and if that fails, secession.

“The Lefty Republic of Vermont”

This one is unusual, in that the writer does not object to secession per se, but to the fact that secession can promote liberal ideals as well as conservative ones. The blog, Thoughtcrime, sounds a little too Justus Twp. white supremacist and anti-Semitic to suit me, and the writer admits that he is a bit envious of the recent article in Time about Vermont's secessionist slate. Unfortunately, he adopts the liberal tactic of namecalling:

The Vermont secession campaign is run by a bunch of hippie-dippy 60s retreads, Jewish and liberal academic types in turtle-neck sweaters and sports jackets with patches on the elbows who drink glasses of Chardonnay in lefty natters at cocktail parties in Burlington and Montpelier… The Northwest Front is frozen out, as for that matter are the libertarian secessionists in New Hampshire and the Christian fundamentalists in South Carolina. Nonetheless, when the topic of secession is found in the pages of Time, truly one of the pillars of the mainstream media, it means that secession is being taken seriously.

I have my differences with the Second Vermont Republic, but if I cannot live in a Republic of Ohio, I would rather cast my lot with the “hippy-dippy 60s retreads” than with the mountain men in the “Northwest Front.” I guess it’s a cultural thing. Or maybe because I have lived in a state that has had an ethnically and racially diverse population for many years, I don’t feel threatened by it.


"The Palin Doctrine: Lie"

Okay, here we go again. The blog What They’re Feeding Me is pulling out the old Todd Palin was a secessionist, therefore we can’t trust Sarah argument. I'm not sure I can trust Sarah, either, but not for this reason. The author, Shawn Gray-Fleek, begins by asserting “Todd Palin, known secessionist, was the real governor of Alaska…” He accuses Sarah of trying, and failing, to cover up the fact that Todd was a secessionist. Now if Sarah was so embarrassed by Todd’s secessionism, why did she speak to the Alaska Independence Party?

Anyway, Mr. Gray-Fleek has nothing but contempt for secessionism, calling it “an utmost disrespect for the law of the land” (emphasis his). For him, secessionism is based on what he calls The Big Lie:

The Big Lie is that the “government is the problem.” Why would you elect a person to an office they [you?] don’t respect? Reagan will [will? President Reagan died in 2004, or didn’t he get the memo?] project annoyance at a nation left to us by wiser folks than any of us dummies. Reagan will claim a down-home attitude, at its heart the nationalist impulse. It will be the crucial test of Sarah Palin’s Shadow Presidency if she makes any sort of "decisions,” in her Shadow State of the Union, since she holds no office currently. If she says “we should destroy the government” who is she suggesting do this? Teabaggers in the room, people watching aghast on Fox News? Sponsors are paying her $100,000. She’s helping the wealthy keep so much more. Perhaps they will “secede” in name only, simply start their own social contract and move to Texas or something. They want to destroy a democracy that the world admires for the selfish interests of the wealthy. [Emphasis in the original]

Now, the truth is coming out. Mr. Gray-Fleek’s animus against secession is deeply rooted in socialist rhetoric, as evidenced by his last sentence. The liberty movement, which includes, but is not limited to the Tea Parties, is more united on the reverse of what he wrote. That is, we want to destroy an empire that has catered to the selfish interests of the wealthy in order to restore democracies that the world will come to admire. Secessionism is not the same as anarchy (and believe me, I am no anarchist, to the consternation of some of my Libertarian friends). Most secessionists do not seek to abolish government, but to make it more accountable to the people by reducing government to a human scale.

Mr. Gray-Fleek does raise some legitimate concerns, particularly about the environment. If we believe that government exists to protect us, then environmental protection is part of the package – but there are right and wrong ways to protect the environment. Without bringing up that whole can of worms again, let me just suggest two ways the environment can be much more efficiently protected: (1) Develop and apply an accounting model to ensure that environmental costs are paid by those who make the messes; and (2) in place of an activist model where the government insists on compliance reporting, develop a more passive model that facilitates lawsuits against polluters.

Mr. Gray-Fleek continues:

The big lie will be repeated endlessly: the government is your enemy. This is primarily why people don’t vote, is the Big Lie. They are scared of government. If only the people would realize they could get the government they all secretly agree they want, a fiscally conservative but socially liberal one where all of us can be our religion or sexuality and smoke our dope and stroke our gun. If
all of us voted, we’d have that government. [Emphasis in the original]

People aren’t scared of government, they’re frustrated with it. We realize now that we can’t get the federal government we “secretly all want” for two reasons – the moneyed interests that control the Congress and the Presidency won’t let us, and what we “secretly all want” varies from state to state. Vermonters want to be “localvores” (supporters of local agriculture and simple living), the Confederates want to restore their Southern culture, and the mountain men just want to be left alone as mountain men have always wanted to be left alone. Here in Ohio, we just want to regain control of our state government and have the ability to budget our resources in the most rational way, free from federal interference. We are convinced that we can run state government much more efficiently than the feds can, with lower taxes and better services.

Mr. Gray-Fleek continues, "Health care saves money and makes sense to everyone but the Teabaggers, who believe the lie." Then why does a recent poll (Jan. 29-31) show that only 36% of Americans favor the health care proposal? Or is democracy only valid when it supports Mr. Gray-Fleek’s agenda?

The big lie turns the people into cynics. 'What’s the point of voting?' they will say. Then Reagan will come along and inspire them to do something stupid, like vote in favor of the lie.

The point of voting is to steer government in the direction that the people want. When government repeatedly ignores the will of the people by bailing out banks that should have been allowed to collapse, engaging in foreign wars that have nothing to do with our national security, and spending trillions of dollars we don’t have in a way that threatens to wipe out our life savings through hyperinflation and cause the collapse of Social Security and Medicare, the people have the right – in fact, the moral obligation to themselves and their posterity – to correct the evil that is confronting them.’’

Thomas Jefferson would have accepted nothing less.

Coal vs. the environment

This should get you warm, figuratively as well as literally. Frank Smecker at Vermont Commons reports on a coal mining practice known as "mountaintop removal" (MTR), in which entire tops of mountains are literally blown away to yield coal. As Mr. Smecker describes it, it is an environmentally horrible practice.

My question is, does the economic value of MTR really exceed the environmental cost? If we don't know, this points to the need for accounting standards to deal with the costs of cleaning up the environment, which should be part of the bookkeeping for every company that deals in an environmentally hazardous process -- coal companies being near the top of that list.

Ohio is heavily dependent on coal, both for electricity and for jobs in the southeastern part of the state. Since Ohio has no mountains, it is unlikely that MTR is done here. It is still important that Ohioans should continue to be vigilant to ensure that coal mining causes as little environmental damage as possible. And to ensure that coal miners and their families are adequately compensated in wages and health benefits, taking into consideration the nature of their work.

Climategate: More common sense!

Dec. 23 update: Dr. John P. Costella, who commented on this post, has conducted exhaustive research on and published the Climategate e-mails that were released. For those who wish to go into greater depth on the facts of Climategate, Dr. Costella's page is quite readable, and he offers expert commentary to aid the reader in understanding the posts.

This time from David Crowe, an environmental and Green Party activist from Alberta, who took time to consider whether global warming has any scientific basis. His article was published today in LewRockwell.com. It is organized into 23 "frequently asked questions" about global warming, with his responses.

The answer to his first question introduces his position on global warming and gives the reader an idea of the style he uses to answer the others:

Q1. Is Global Warming Happening?

It is impossible to know if global warming is happening without waiting for hundreds or thousands of years to see if short term trends go up or down. Of course we can't wait that long, so the question is whether catastrophic global warming is imminent. That also is impossible to know. If the changes are small they are also manageable.

It is also impossible to define a global temperature. Even small biases in measurements made in a small number of points over the globe (such as heat island effects due to measurements near growing cities) can create false temperature increases. When extrapolated and fed into a mathematical model that accelerates them, dire predictions can appear on computer screens around the world.

Global warming, as I wrote on Monday, "makes no environmental sense, it makes no economic sense, and it makes no political sense." It is nothing more than a sophisticated means to rob and enslave the American people for the benefit of environmental idealists, third-world dictators, and New York bankers.

Now, I shall try to let a few days pass before I press this topic again...

Climategate: Common Sense

... from letters to the editor of the Columbus Dispatch on Sunday:

"The fact is, there is collusion between the liberals and the corrupt climatologists. They desire to redistribute wealth to the rest of the world and gain control over domestic policy in the United States in their march toward socialism."

-- John Belt, Westerville

"I fail to see how stealing money from my wallet through utility bills to let President Barack Obama give money to the current dictator-for-life of some banana republic so he can spend it on Russian military arms is going to give us clean air."

-- Jeff Jantz, Hilliard

Ratification of the Copenhagen Treaty is grounds for secession, because it delegates American sovereignty to an international organization. It makes no environmental sense, it makes no economic sense, and it makes no political sense. It clearly is not in our national interest -- nor in the national interest of those who have traditionally been friendly to us.

Climategate: Russian data do NOT prove global warming

James Delingpole at The Telegraph is at it again (via LewRockwell.com). It seems that British researchers cherry-picked Russian climatological data to "prove" global warming from human causes:

On Tuesday, the Moscow-based Institute of Economic Analysis (IEA) issued a report claiming that the Hadley Center for Climate Change based at the headquarters of the British Meteorological Office in Exeter (Devon, England) had probably tampered with Russian-climate data.

The IEA believes that Russian meteorological-station data did not substantiate the anthropogenic global-warming theory. Analysts say Russian meteorological stations cover most of the country’s territory, and that the Hadley Center had used data submitted by only 25% of such stations in its reports. Over 40% of Russian territory was not included in global-temperature calculations for some other reasons, rather than the lack of meteorological stations and observations.

The data of stations located in areas not listed in the Hadley Climate Research Unit Temperature UK (HadCRUT) survey often does not show any substantial warming in the late 20th century and the early 21st century.

The HadCRUT database includes specific stations providing incomplete data and highlighting the global-warming process, rather than stations facilitating uninterrupted observations.

On the whole, climatologists use the incomplete findings of meteorological stations far more often than those providing complete observations.

IEA analysts say climatologists use the data of stations located in large populated centers that are influenced by the urban-warming effect more frequently than the correct data of remote stations.

The scale of global warming was exaggerated due to temperature distortions for Russia accounting for 12.5% of the world’s land mass. The IEA said it was necessary to recalculate all global-temperature data in order to assess the scale of such exaggeration.

Global-temperature data will have to be modified if similar climate-date procedures have been used from other national data because the calculations used by COP15 analysts, including financial calculations, are based on HadCRUT research.

What the Russians are suggesting here, in other words, is that the entire global temperature record used by the IPCC to inform world government policy is a crock.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

In Mr. Delingpole's original post at The Telegraph, he observed that the whole Copenhagen exercise had nothing, really, to do with "global warming". When Climategate exposed the incomplete and just plain cooked scientific data, the kleptocrats from the Third World and the multinational corporations fled to a continuation of the carbon-credits system established by the Kyoto Protocol. In other words, a massive transfer of funds from our pockets (in taxes and higher energy costs) to the New York speculators and tinhorn dictators like Robert Mugabe (who stands to make sextillions of Zimbabwe dollars) and Hugo Chavez.

Folks, it is up to us to stop this robbery; first by pressuring the U.S. Senate not to ratify the Copenhagen Treaty, and secondly by cutting back the power of the federal government through assertion of state sovereignty, nullification of federal laws harmful to our states -- and, if all else fails, by secession.

There's something rotten in Denmark!

*

It doesn't matter that global warming accelerated climate change is based on scientific assumptions that have been cooked by its proponents and questioned by reputable meteorologists.

It doesn't matter that reputable science has linked global climate changes to sunspot activity (of which there is very little at the moment).

It doesn't matter that human activity may only have a minuscule effect on global climate change.

It doesn't even matter that the proposed treaty will establish a governing mechanism that will override the sovereignty of the United States and other nations.

All that seems to matter is that some greedy bankers want to start trading their "carbon credits" at the expense of the taxpayers of developed nations.

The Copenhagen treaty should be treated like the tobacco of the same name. Chew it up and spit it out!


* I've been itching for a month to use that headline!

Does anyone see a pattern here?

December is only four days old. Since Tuesday Dec. 1, I have reported on three scams to rob the American people in favor of government and government's favored interests:

On Tuesday, I forwarded an e-mail I received that reminded us that every major program of the Federal Government has failed to finance itself in a sustainable fashion.

On Wednesday, I exposed Climategate (which finally got on a mainstream media outlet other than Fox News [CBS News, Dec. 2]) as a "licence to fleece, cheat, and rob," in the words of British writer James Delingpole.

Yesterday, I explained the real purpose of the war in Afghanistan, using Gen. Smedley Butler's phrase "war is a racket."

On Wednesday, I also reproduced an analysis of the health care reform act by Texas attorney Michael Connelly, in which he cites the dangers of the proposed legislation, both to the personal liberties of Americans and to their pocketbooks.

Now the Xenia Ohio Citizen Journal has run an article by Marc Kilmer, policy analyst at the Buckeye Institute for Public Policy Solutions, which clearly explains the costs of the health care bill to Ohioans. The bill (HR 3200) certainly should be defeated; but if it passes, Mr. Kilmer provides some excellent reasons why Ohioans should support Ohio's HJR 3 and SJR 7 to prohibit mandatory participation in the proposed federal health care system.

Mr. Kilmer obeserves that in 2008, there were 272,000 Ohioans who live in families making at least three times the poverty level who were uninsured. "Under the plans moving through Congress, they will be forced to buy a product they presumably do not want or pay high fines. Either way, this legislation will cost them."

In addition, the 76,000 Ohio households that make over $200,000 will be subject to an income surtax. Many of these people are small business owners whose productivity will be further penalized if this bill is enacted.

The health care bill also creates a new unfunded mandate:

This federal legislation will also likely mean state taxes will need to be raised. Both House and Senate bills mandate that the state Medicaid program be expanded, which could mean as many as 519,000 new enrollees in this state. While the federal government would pay much of the cost for this expansion, state taxpayers would be required to fund part of it. One estimate puts that cost at $922 million over five years. With the governor and legislators struggling to find ways to balance the current state budget, it seems likely this new burden will mean even higher state taxes.

While proponents of the bill claim that health care is "deficit-neutral," that assumes that costs stay within projections [unlikely, as I showed on Tuesday], that Congress takes the politically unpalatable step of making the promised future cuts in Medicare.

Mr. Kilmer's conclusion:

Today the [federal] budget deficit stands at $1.4 trillion. Total government debt is 41% of our Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Under President Obama’s budget proposals, it will rise to 82% of GDP by 2019. This type of deficit spending isn’t sustainable; someone, someday, will have to pay for it. If this health care bill adds to the deficit that will mean even more debt for future generations to pay off.

No one is saying that this health care bill won’t help some people. Of course some Ohioans will benefit from it. But to evaluate it fairly, both benefits and costs should be considered. The amount of money this bill will require in new and future taxes is significant. Ohioans simply can’t afford the financial burden of this so-called “reform.”

In other words, it is yet another scam to fleece the American people in favor of government and favored interests. It is blatantly unconstitutional. A better and far less expensive solution to health care would be a state-sponsored program along these lines.

Climategate: Greenpeace leader admits "exaggeration"

As broadcast on BBC:



Virtual buckeye to Benja Sariwatta.

But wait, there's more!

Dr. Richard Lindzen, professor of meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, argues in the Wall Street Journal, that confident claims of catastrophe are exaggerated.

And...

James Delingpole, columnist for The Telegraph in London, England, presents several articles further demolishing claims of global warming. Here's an item that is particularly interesting for the content, yes; but also for its veddy British style:

Carbon trading is the Emperor’s New Clothes of international finance. It was invented by none other than Ken Lay, whose Enron would currently be one of the prime beneficiaries in the global alternative energy market, if it hadn’t been shown to be (nearly) as fraudulent as the current AGW [Accelerated Global Warming] scam. It is a licence to fleece, cheat and rob. Still, jolly embarrassing for the Danes to get caught red handed, what with their hosting a conference shortly in which the world’s leaders will try, straight-faced, to persuade us that carbon emissions trading is the only viable way of defeating ManBearPig.

Virtual buckeye to Frank Koch for both items.

More on Climategate

Stephen Hopkins has compiled in his blog Aude Sapere an impressive listing of mainstream and other media reports about the Climategate scandal, which is the revelation that data were being altered to support claims of global warming.

Okay, now do you believe me?

It appears that "Climategate" * is going to sink the Copenhagen Treaty, which has to be good news for freedom-loving people everywhere. Of course, references to it are scarce in the mainstream media, perhaps because they're having trouble figuring out how to spin it.

Or maybe they can't spin it. The theft of some 3,000 e-mails from scientists critical of global warming (and who showed that the data were manipulated) is a serious offense; especially when so much pressure was being put on the world to adopt strict carbon-emissions rules.

I have been stating for some time that the scientific data led to considerable doubt that global warming was anything other than a hoax. But then truth is easy to ignore until something like this happens.

The fictional Perry Mason was famously quoted as having said "The truth will out." Unfortunately, those with a totalitarian political agenda don't usually let that get in the way.

* Our link is to Michelle Malkin, but it's all over the blogosphere.

A world of sissies

In November 1993, Ms. magazine (published by the radical feminist organization NOW) ran a feature article with a cover photo of a baby boy, with the headline, "It's a Boy: Now What?" It appears that they won't have to worry much longer...

According to the [London] Telegraph, research conducted by the Danish Government and confirmed by studies elsewhere indicates that a number of common chemicals are causing male births to decline in many advanced industrial nations. In areas with heavy concentrations of chemical plants, birth rates of two girls for each boy have been reported. (Normally, there are around 106 boys born for each 100 girls -- believed to be to account for losses of males due to hunting accidents and war). Boys born in these areas have reduced sperm counts, and even feminine behavior:

Research at Rotterdam's [Netherlands] Erasmus University found that boys whose mothers were exposed to PCBs and dioxins were more likely to play with dolls and tea sets and dress up in female clothes.

Yet gender-benders are largely exempt from new EU regulations controlling hazardous chemicals. Britain, then under Tony Blair's premiership, was largely responsible for this – restricting their inclusion in the first draft of the legislation, and then causing even what was included to be watered down.Confidential documents show that it did so after pressure from George W Bush's administration, which protested that US exports "could be impacted".

Sounds like slow genocide to me.

Virtual buckeye to Stephen Hopkins at Ohio Freedom Alliance.

Copenhagen Treaty threatens end to American sovereignty

I'm beginning to worry about sounding like Peter crying "Wolf!" The last few weeks have carried with them so many alarming developments that I fear that the alarms are beginning to sound routine. Still, this one will be ignored at our peril.

On Thursday, I mused that the media concentrate on one subject in order to hide activity in another. You will notice that little has been said about the environment in the last week or so; and here may be the reason: Walter Scott Hudson, at the blog Fightin' Words, has transcribed an audio recording of closing remarks by Lord Christopher Monckton at an event sponsored by the Minnesota Free Market Institute in St. Paul Wednesday evening, before an audience of 700 persons. I am normally leery of reporting anything that is not backed up by an account in the mainstream media. I am making an exception here because Lord Monckton (Google) is an established critic of global warming, the accounts I have read cite the proposed treaty, and the remarks are consistent with my understanding of the issues. A video and additional information are available from the Minnesota Free Market Institute website.

At [the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference in] Copenhagen, this December, weeks away, a treaty will be signed. Your president will sign it. Most of the third world countries will sign it, because they think they’re going to get money out of it. Most of the left-wing regime from the European Union will rubber stamp it. Virtually nobody won’t sign it.

I read that treaty. And what it says is this, that a world government is going to be created. The word “government” actually appears as the first of three purposes of the new entity. The second purpose is the transfer of wealth from the countries of the West to third world countries, in satisfication of what is called, coyly, “climate debt” – because we’ve been burning CO2 and they haven’t. We’ve been screwing up the climate and they haven’t. And the third purpose of this new entity, this government, is enforcement.

How many of you think that the word “election” or “democracy” or “vote” or “ballot” occurs anywhere in the 200 pages of that treaty? Quite right, it doesn’t appear once. So, at last, the communists who piled out of the Berlin Wall and into the environmental movement, who took over Greenpeace so that my friends who funded it left within a year, because [the communists] captured it – Now the apotheosis as at hand. They are about to impose a communist world government on the world. You have a president who has very strong sympathies with that point of view. He’s going to sign it. He’ll sign anything. He’s a Nobel Peace Prize [winner]; of course he’ll sign it.
[laughter]

And the trouble is this; if that treaty is signed, if your Constitution says that it takes precedence over your Constitution (sic), and you can’t resign from that treaty unless you get agreement from all the other state parties – And because you’ll be the biggest paying country, they’re not going to let you out of it.

So, thank you, America. You were the beacon of freedom to the world. It is a privilege merely to stand on this soil of freedom while it is still free. But, in the next few weeks, unless you stop it, your president will sign your freedom, your democracy, and your humanity away forever. And neither you nor any subsequent government you may elect will have any power whatsoever to take it back. That is how serious it is. I’ve read the treaty. I’ve seen this stuff about [world] government and climate debt and enforcement. They are going to do this to you whether you like it or not.

This is not quite correct. A treaty still has to be ratified by two-thirds of the Senate (U.S. Constitution, Article II, Section 2).

But I think it is here, here in your great nation, which I so love and I so admire – it is here that perhaps, at this eleventh hour, at the fifty-ninth minute and fifty-ninth second, you will rise up and you will stop your president from signing that dreadful treaty, that purposeless treaty. For there is no problem with climate and, even if there were, an economic treaty does nothing to [help] it.

So I end by saying to you the words that Winston Churchill addressed to your president in the darkest hour before the dawn of freedom in the Second World War. He quoted from your great poet Longfellow:

Sail on, O Ship of State!
Sail on, O Union, strong and great!
Humanity with all its fears,
With all the hopes of future years,
Is hanging breathless on thy fate!

We need to make sure our Senators hear us loud and clear. This treaty must never be ratified by the United States!

Global warming, eh?

Jesse Farrell at the AccuWeather blog presents some interesting statistics about our unusually cool July in Ohio and the Eastern United States. While he is careful not to tie his analysis to the global warming argument and acknowledges that he is professionally neutral on the subject, the stats provide skeptics with some useful ammunition against those who want to go into panic mode. The link is well illustrated with tables and maps.

A few of the items:
1. There have been more than 3,000 record lows set this July, an unusually high number of records.
2. A map of the United States north and east of Memphis shows no place that had July temperatures above average, and one spot that appears to be near Somerset, Pennsylvania, that averaged 10° below normal (which Mr. Farrell considers to be "rare"). Most areas in Ohio showed a variance of 3-5° below normal.
3. Low temperatures for July in Ohio ranged from 47° to 59°. Supposedly, this is summer.
4. There is a beautiful map that shows the number of days above 85° this July. Only St. Louis, Washington, DC, and Roanoke VA showed more than one day that warm this month.

Back in December 2007, I expressed frustration at the difficulty we were experiencing knowing the truth about global warming. While I am not prepared to declare it a hoax, the findings above support others from Columbus meteorologist Jym Ganahl and the scientists cited in the December 2007 article, that cast doubt on the validity of assertions that temperatures are rising globally.*

* Which is not to discount areas, such as the Arctic, where rising temperatures are melting glaciers and endangering habitat for polar bears.

Update 7/27: A commenter in The Ohio Republic's Facebook mirror makes a telling point: "The establishment is one step ahead of you Harold as they have already changed their terms and now use 'global climate change' as their pretext for more taxation and regulation." More smoke and mirrors.

Virtual buckeye to Gordon Gekko at taxmanblog.

Do you keep a vegetable garden? Watch out!

A bill before Congress (HR 2749: Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009) would impose a one-size-fits-all regulatory scheme on all food producers, while failing to address underlying causes of food safety problems resulting from industrial agriculture practices and the centralization of our food supply.

The bill would charge a $500 annual registration fee on any facility that holds, processes, or manufactures food. While “farms” are exempt, the definition is narrow and vague. The act can also be interpreted to affect those who make cheeses or breads at home or in small businesses.

The bill would also empower the Food & Drug Administration to regulate how crops are raised and harvested; and would empower the FDA to make random warrantless searches of the business records of small farmers and local food producers without any evidence that there has been a violation, undoubtedly making raids like Manna Storehouse a routine occurrence.

It gets worse.

“HR 2749 creates severe criminal and civil penalties, including prison terms of up to 10 years and/or fines of up to $100,000 for each violation for individuals, “ and charges the Department of Health & Human Services with establishing a tracing system for food, in which every producer would have to “maintain the full pedigree of the origin and previous distribution history of the food,” and “establish and maintain a system for tracing the food that is interoperable with the systems established and maintained by other such persons.”

Obviously, these will be gross violations of the Fourth, Sixth, and Ninth Amendments.

The Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund has published a detailed analysis of the bill.

Sounds to me like a way to enrich corporate agriculture by forcing individual farmers out of business and individuals to buy, instead of grow, food. This appears to be a huge step on the road to serfdom.

Virtual buckeye to Brian62 at the Ohio Freedom Alliance.

You are brilliant, and the earth is hiring

Following is a commencement address by Paul Hawken to the graduating class of the University of Portland, reprinted in full from http://www.culturechange.org/. It needs no comment from me.


When I was invited to give this speech, I was asked if I could give a simple short talk that was “direct, naked, taut, honest, passionate, lean, shivering, startling, and graceful.” Boy, no pressure there.

But let’s begin with the startling part. Hey, Class of 2009: you are going to have to figure out what it means to be a human being on earth at a time when every living system is declining, and the rate of decline is accelerating. Kind of a mind-boggling situation... but not one peer-reviewed paper published in the last thirty years can refute that statement. Basically, the earth needs a new operating system, you are the programmers, and we need it within a few decades.

This planet came with a set of operating instructions, but we seem to have misplaced them. Important rules like don’t poison the water, soil, or air, and don’t let the earth get overcrowded, and don’t touch the thermostat have been broken. Buckminster Fuller said that spaceship earth was so ingeniously designed that no one has a clue that we are on one, flying through the universe at a million miles per hour, with no need for seatbelts, lots of room in coach, and really good food, but all that is changing.

There is invisible writing on the back of the diploma you will receive, and in case you didn’t bring lemon juice to decode it, I can tell you what it says: YOU ARE BRILLIANT, AND THE EARTH IS HIRING. The earth couldn’t afford to send any recruiters or limos to your school. It sent you rain, sunsets, ripe cherries, night blooming jasmine, and that unbelievably cute person you are dating. Take the hint. And here’s the deal: Forget that this task of planet-saving is not possible in the time required. Don’t be put off by people who know what is not possible. Do what needs to be done, and check to see if it was impossible only after you are done.

When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t understand data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a pulse. What I see everywhere in the world are ordinary people willing to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in order to restore some semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to this world. The poet Adrienne Rich wrote, “So much has been destroyed I have cast my lot with those who, age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world.” There could be no better description. Humanity is coalescing. It is reconstituting the world, and the action is taking place in schoolrooms, farms, jungles, villages, campuses, companies, refuge camps, deserts, fisheries, and slums.

You join a multitude of caring people. No one knows how many groups and organizations are working on the most salient issues of our day: climate change, poverty, deforestation, peace, water, hunger, conservation, human rights, and more. This is the largest movement the world has ever seen. Rather than control, it seeks connection. Rather than dominance, it strives to disperse concentrations of power. Like Mercy Corps, it works behind the scenes and gets the job done. Large as it is, no one knows the true size of this movement. It provides hope, support, and meaning to billions of people in the world. Its clout resides in idea, not in force. It is made up of teachers, children, peasants, businesspeople, rappers, organic farmers, nuns, artists, government workers, fisherfolk, engineers, students, incorrigible writers, weeping Muslims, concerned mothers, poets, doctors without borders, grieving Christians, street musicians, the President of the United States of America, and as the writer David James Duncan would say, the Creator, the One who loves us all in such a huge way.

There is a rabbinical teaching that says if the world is ending and the Messiah arrives, first plant a tree, and then see if the story is true. Inspiration is not garnered from the litanies of what may befall us; it resides in humanity’s willingness to restore, redress, reform, rebuild, recover, reimagine, and reconsider. “One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice,” is Mary Oliver’s description of moving away from the profane toward a deep sense of connectedness to the living world.

Millions of people are working on behalf of strangers, even if the evening news is usually about the death of strangers. This kindness of strangers has religious, even mythic origins, and very specific eighteenth-century roots. Abolitionists were the first people to create a national and global movement to defend the rights of those they did not know. Until that time, no group had filed a grievance except on behalf of itself. The founders of this movement were largely unknown Granville Clark, Thomas Clarkson, Josiah Wedgwood and their goal was ridiculous on the face of it: at that time three out of four people in the world were enslaved. Enslaving each other was what human beings had done for ages. And the abolitionist movement was greeted with incredulity. Conservative spokesmen ridiculed the abolitionists as liberals, progressives, do-gooders, meddlers, and activists. They were told they would ruin the economy and drive England into poverty. But for the first time in history a group of people organized themselves to help people they would never know, from whom they would never receive direct or indirect benefit.. And today tens of millions of people do this every day. It is called the world of non-profits, civil society, schools, social entrepreneurship, and non-governmental organizations, of companies who place social and environmental justice at the top of their strategic goals. The scope and scale of this effort is unparalleled in history.

The living world is not “out there” somewhere, but in your heart. What do we know about life? In the words of biologist Janine Benyus, life creates the conditions that are conducive to life. I can think of no better motto for a future economy. We have tens of thousands of abandoned homes without people and tens of thousands of abandoned people without homes. We have failed bankers advising failed regulators on how to save failed assets. Think about this: we are the only species on this planet without full employment. Brilliant. We have an economy that tells us that it is cheaper to destroy earth in real time than to renew, restore, and sustain it. You can print money to bail out a bank but you can’t print life to bail out a planet. At present we are stealing the future, selling it in the present, and calling it gross domestic product. We can just as easily have an economy that is based on healing the future instead of stealing it. We can either create assets for the future or take the assets of the future. One is called restoration and the other exploitation. And whenever we exploit the earth we exploit people and cause untold suffering. Working for the earth is not a way to get rich, it is a way to be rich.

The first living cell came into being nearly 40 million centuries ago, and its direct descendants are in all of our bloodstreams. Literally you are breathing molecules this very second that were inhaled by Moses, Mother Teresa, and Bono. We are vastly interconnected. Our fates are inseparable. We are here because the dream of every cell is to become two cells. In each of you are one quadrillion cells, 90 percent of which are not human cells. Your body is a community, and without those other microorganisms you would perish in hours. Each human cell has 400 billion molecules conducting millions of processes between trillions of atoms. The total cellular activity in one human body is staggering: one septillion actions at any one moment, a one with twenty-four zeros after it. In a millisecond, our body has undergone ten times more processes than there are stars in the universe exactly what Charles Darwin foretold when he said science would discover that each living creature was a “little universe, formed of a host of self-propagating organisms, inconceivably minute and as numerous as the stars of heaven.”

So I have two questions for you all: First, can you feel your body? Stop for a moment. Feel your body. One septillion activities going on simultaneously, and your body does this so well you are free to ignore it, and wonder instead when this speech will end. Second question: who is in charge of your body? Who is managing those molecules? Hopefully not a political party. Life is creating the conditions that are conducive to life inside you, just as in all of nature. What I want you to imagine is that collectively humanity is evincing a deep innate wisdom in coming together to heal the wounds and insults of the past.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once asked what we would do if the stars only came out once every thousand years. No one would sleep that night, of course. The world would become religious overnight. We would be ecstatic, delirious, made rapturous by the glory of God. Instead the stars come out every night, and we watch television.

This extraordinary time when we are globally aware of each other and the multiple dangers that threaten civilization has never happened, not in a thousand years, not in ten thousand years. Each of us is as complex and beautiful as all the stars in the universe. We have done great things and we have gone way off course in terms of honoring creation. You are graduating to the most amazing, challenging, stupefying challenge ever bequested to any generation. The generations before you failed. They didn’t stay up all night. They got distracted and lost sight of the fact that life is a miracle every moment of your existence. Nature beckons you to be on her side. You couldn’t ask for a better boss. The most unrealistic person in the world is the cynic, not the dreamer. Hopefulness only makes sense when it doesn’t make sense to be hopeful. This is your century. Take it and run as if your life depends on it.

Paul Hawken (http://www.paulhawken.com/) is a renowned entrepreneur, visionary environmental activist, and author of many books, most recently Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming. He was presented with an honorary doctorate of humane letters by University president Father Bill Beauchamp, C.S.C., in May, when he delivered this superb speech. Our thanks especially to Erica Linson for her help making that moment possible.

Virtual buckeye to Carolyn Baker ("Truth to Power") at Vermont Commons.