Tag Archives: Ocean

News

How big business and enviro-charlatans benefit from Obama’s cap-and-trade energy tax

1 Comment

Recently, I posted about the economic effects of the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill, including how it would impact individual families. I wrote about the true effects of Obama’s green jobs initiative, which will actually decrease employment instead of increasing it.

I also posted before about scientific dissent from global warming, the alleged melting polar ice caps, Obama’s planned tax hikes on oil and gas, deceptive alarmism to procure research funding, the alleged warming of the oceans, and the use of made-up crises in order to impose socialism. You can also read the testimony of a Princeton University physicist who is against global warming alarmism.

Who will pay for cap-and-trade?

ECM e-mailed me this story from PowerLine Blog, which explains how much each state will pay if cap and trade passes. John Hinderacker asks whether Obama things that the electorate is stupid enough to believe that the firms who must absorb this tax will just take it out of their profits and leave consumers untouched. He argues that Obama thinks we are stupid enough to believe that.

One commenter to the post writes:

No, he like many liberals actually believe corporations don’t pass on the tax to consumers but it is extracted from profits (lowering them). Remember, they have a very static, zero-sum view of the world.

This is also my view of Obama. He has been indoctrinated with socialist views and he has no freaking idea why they don’t work. He will be as shocked and surprised as any child is when they first learn that the Tooth Fairy is a myth. But that won’t stop him from nationalizing companies once he sees the mess that his interventions have made. Probably his handlers have this all planned out for him.

And where will that money be redistributed to?

But today I wanted to tell you about the people and corporations that are actively pushing for cap-and-trade, because if it passes they will suddenly become very, very rich.

The full story is posted at Steve Milloy’s Green Hell blog.

Big business meddling in government

Excerpt:

Although many businesses have been coerced into supporting Waxman-Markey, much of big business has actively pushed for the bill. Many Wall Street banks hope to profit from the trading of the $9 trillion in emissions allowances to be created under Waxman-Markey. Goldman Sachs would be the preeminent global warming bookie as it owns the exchanges where carbon allowances would be traded.

General Electric, whose CEO sits on Barack Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board, was instrumental in putting together the U.S. Climate Action Partnership (USCAP), a bizarre big business-environmental activist group lobbying consortium that is a primary driver of global warming legislation. USCAP has even taken credit for drafting parts of Waxman-Markey. GE, it seems, would like a federal law requiring electric utilities buy the wind turbines and other energy technologies manufactured by — guess who — GE.

Republican James Sensenbrenner recently asked the Department of Justice to investigate USCAP members General Motors and Chrysler for illegally using taxpayer bailout money to lobby for global warming legislation. AIG, the insurance giant that is now a ward of U.S. taxpayers, only dropped out of USCAP after Rep. Joe Barton pointed out the illegality of accepting federal money and then using it to lobby the federal government.

Enviro-charlatan greed

Excerpt:

And then there’s Al Gore, who stands to become the first “carbon billionaire” through his partnership in the venture capital firm of Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers and the UK-based investment firm of Generation Investment Management. When Gore testified in favor of global warming legislation before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in January, he failed to disclose his personal financial interests and no Senator came close to asking him about them.

When he testified in April before the House Energy and Environment Subcommittee in favor of Waxman-Markey, Gore again failed to disclose his conflicts-of-interest. When Reps. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and Steve Scalise (R-LA) probed into these matters, Gore feigned ignorance and pretended that he would not personally benefit from Waxman-Markey. Although Rep. Waxman made baseball players testify under oath to Congress about the comparatively petty issue of drug use in baseball, he did not subject Gore to penalty for perjury.

And more fascism, too

Competing for most-appalling character in the Waxman-Markey saga is Rep. Ed Markey. Immediately after the head of Warren Buffet’s electric utility unit testified against Waxman-Markey’s cap-and-trade provision, Markey fired off a letter to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) specifically requesting that Buffet’s utility be investigated. After being rebuked by House Republicans for this blatant intimidation, Markey then asked FERC to expand the requested investigation to all investor-owned utilities, rather than appearing to single out Buffet’s. Now all utilities are under operating with a Markey-pointed gun to their heads.

They told lies about Bush’s “abuses of power” all through his presidency. Now that they are in control, and every new day brings to light more greed, bullying, corruption and fraud than we saw in Bush’s entire eight years in office. And that’s not even to mention that the average unemployment rate under Bush was about half of what it is today under Obama.

Kevin Boland reports on John Boehner’s blog that the bill is up for a floor vote in the House this week.

News

Are the oceans warming?

6 Comments

We actually have a pretty comprehensive way of measuring the changes in the temperature of the oceans. We use a submersible sensor called an “Argo Buoy” in order to do the measurements. Since 2003, 3000 of them have been taking measurements in all the oceans of the world. The purpose of the buoys is to provide scientists with confirmation that the globe is really warming. But all was not well.

But the Vancouver Sun reports: (H/T Commenter ECM)

So why are some scientists now beginning to question the buoys’ findings? Because in five years the little blighters have failed to detect any global warming. They are not reinforcing the scientific orthodoxy of the day, namely that man is causing the planet to warm dangerously. They are not proving the predetermined conclusions of their human masters. Therefore they, and not their masters’ hypotheses, must be wrong.

In fact, “there has been a very slight cooling,” according to a U.S. National Public Radio (NPR) interview with Josh Willis at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a scientist who keeps close watch on the Argo findings.

Well, maybe the climate models predicted some cooling?

The big problem with the Argo findings is that all the major climate computer models postulate that as much as 80-90 per cent of global warming will result from the oceans warming rapidly then releasing their heat into the atmosphere.

But surely the other models are being confirmed by observations?

Modellers are also perplexed by the findings of NASA’s eight weather satellites that take more than 300,000 temperature readings daily over the entire surface of the Earth, versus approximately 7,000 random readings from Earth stations.

In nearly 30 years of operation, the satellites have discovered a warming trend of just 0.14 C per decade, less than the models and well within the natural range of temperature variation.

But maybe if we wait for a while, scientists will discover new measurements that are the opposite of these measurements. The new measurements will confirm that global warming is real, that scientists need more grant money, and that socialists must take control of the economy right now in order to save us from the horrible Flying Spaghetti Global Warming Monster! Those 700 dissenting scientists? Paid off by big oil! All of them!

The polar ice caps were also paid off by big oil. How else do you explain their refusal to melt?

UPDATE: NASA study shows that solar activity is responsible for past global warming.

News

Are polar ice caps really melting due to global warming?

12 Comments

This post is old, please take a look at some of my newer posts

Are global warming alarmists wrong?

Consider this article from The Australian: (H/T Watts Up With That)

ICE is expanding in much of Antarctica, contrary to the widespread public belief that global warming is melting the continental ice cap.

The results of ice-core drilling and sea ice monitoring indicate there is no large-scale melting of ice over most of Antarctica, although experts are concerned at ice losses on the continent’s western coast.

Antarctica has 90 per cent of the Earth’s ice and 80 per cent of its fresh water. Extensive melting of Antarctic ice sheets would be required to raise sea levels substantially, and ice is melting in parts of west Antarctica. The destabilisation of the Wilkins ice shelf generated international headlines this month.

However, the picture is very different in east Antarctica, which includes the territory claimed by Australia.

East Antarctica is four times the size of west Antarctica and parts of it are cooling. The Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research report prepared for last week’s meeting of Antarctic Treaty nations in Washington noted the South Pole had shown “significant cooling in recent decades”.

And here’s the graph that goes with the findings:

Source: Cryosphere Today
Source: Cryosphere Today

Why are global warming alarmists wrong?

Now we know that they’re wrong. Why are they wrong? Well, maybe I should start by showing that the media is cherry-picking data in order to delude the public. This post by Anthony Watts which explains how the media deliberately recycles the images and stories about imminent climate catastrophes. This time, it’s about a vast antarctic shelf that’s about to collapse.

Only one problem. It was just about to collapse last year, but the media is re-using the the same scary stock photo and story again this year and telling us again that it’s just about to collapse.

Excerpt:

Those masters of disaster are at it again, and it appears our friendly scientists at that National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) help this story along each year.

…It seems that not only is the photography recycled, so is the storyline. It seems to happen every year, about this time. Note the photos show shear failure and cracks, not melted ice. Shear failure is mostly mechanical-stress related, though ice does tend to be more brittle at colder temperatures.

National Geographic reported this story headline last year, March 25th 2008.

…From the Nat Geo story:

“[It’s] an event we don’t get to see very often,” Ted Scambos, lead scientist at the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado, said in a press statement.

Now, how is it that an ice shelf breaks up in the spring of 2008 and again in the spring of 2009 and it’s “not very often”? Hmmm.

Watts goes on in his post to take a look at how much the ice shelf has really changed over the years (it hasn’t) and whether the air temperatures have gotten warmer (theyhaven’t) such that the air would be causing cracks. So all we really have is a scary re-used photo and a lot of propaganda.

What are the economic effects of policies based on global warming alarmism

Well, to start with, we’re going to lose a lot of jobs, due to increase taxation and regulation of “the rich” and “greedy corporations”. And, the EPA is going to raise consumer energy prices and put American money in the pockets of terrorists, by curtailing domestic energy production. And, we’re going to waste tons and tons of taxpayer money subsidizing corporations to be “green”.

The good news: public opinion is shifting away from global warming alarmism

A recent Rasmussen Reports poll shows that there is hope. (H/T The Chilling Effect)

Global Warming is Primarily Caused By…
Date Human activity Planetary Trends Other Reason
Apr 09 34% 48% 7%
Mar 09 41% 43% 7%
Feb 09 38% 45% 7%
Jan 09 44% 41% 7%
Dec 08 43% 43% 6%
Apr 08 47% 34% 8%

So at least we’re slowly winning the battle for truth. Unfortunately, Obama has got until 2010 until he can be challenged in the mid-term elections.

r.