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Mann Acts
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Suing NASA and UVA
August 19, 2011 | 58 comments
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Indefensible
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Inhibiting an Oil and Gas Boom
July 22, 2011 | 81 comments
Among the Intellectualoids
The Dejected Greens
Their globally warmed heart have melted down.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has proclaimed climate legislation dead for the rest of this year (although some are suspicious about a potential lame duck session in November or December), and environmental pressure groups are blowing off steam over their political failures.
But why complain? They’ve got the command-and-control system of (fossil fuel) energy regulation they wanted, thanks to the EPA’s endangerment finding under the Clean Air Act that enables it to regulate greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide and others) from vehicles, utilities and industry. Sure, it’s being challenged in administrative appeals and courts, but the statist system has been approved and assembly is underway. Those invisible emissions will be policed.
Nevertheless the Greens lament, as exemplified by activist Bill McKibben last week in a commentary picked up by CBSNews.com:
… In late July, the U.S. Senate decided to do exactly nothing about climate change. They didn’t do less than they could have — they did nothing, preserving a perfect two-decade bipartisan record of no action. Senate majority leader Harry Reid decided not even to schedule a vote on legislation that would have capped carbon emissions.
I wrote the first book for a general audience on global warming back in 1989, and I’ve spent the subsequent 21 years working on the issue. I’m a mild-mannered guy, a Methodist Sunday School teacher. Not quick to anger. So what I want to say is: this is messed up. The time has come to get mad, and then to get busy.
The delusional McKibben went on to sincerely commend “corporate and moderate” groups like the Environmental Defense Fund for doing “everything the way you’re supposed to: they wore nice clothes, lobbied tirelessly, and compromised at every turn.” He then summed up with:
By the time they were done, they had a bill that only capped carbon emissions from electric utilities (not factories or cars) and was so laden with gifts for industry that if you listened closely you could actually hear the oinking….
They were left out to dry by everyone — not just Reid, not just the Republicans. Even President Obama wouldn’t lend a hand, investing not a penny of his political capital in the fight.
The result: total defeat, no moral victories.
That last point was like a dagger for both the White House and those “corporate” environmental groups (hello, Fred Krupp), who immediately turned on one another with blamethrowers, as Politico reported:
After Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) last month scrapped plans for a vote, the White House made clear it wasn’t impressed with the environmentalists’ effort.
“They didn’t deliver a single Republican,” an administration official told POLITICO just hours after Reid pulled the plug on the climate bill. “They spent like $100 million, and they weren’t able to get a single Republican convert on the bill….”
Enraged environmentalists flooded the White House with phone calls after the quotation appeared in publication. Publicly, they decried the finger pointing and insisted they aren’t alone in deserving fault, saying Obama failed to use his bully pulpit and moderate Senate Republicans weren’t allowed by their leaders to fully negotiate.
True, if you limit the scope to Congress, the hundreds of millions of dollars poured into lobbying and campaigns by environoia groups (are they really outgunned by Big Oil?) achieved very little. But when the eco-gogues got that EPA dictate based on a Supreme Court order (thanks, Blue America), they should have celebrated. Unless, of course, it wasn’t the emission reductions and resulting climate effect they wanted as much as cap-and-trade.
This seems to be the case. In the words of the corporately environmentalist members of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, “cap and trade is essential.” The business end of that collaboration (General Electric, Duke Energy, Exelon, etc.) joined the likes of Environmental Defense and Natural Resources Defense Council so as to find ways to collect “climate revenues” from such a scheme. But if there’s no scheme, there are no revenues.
About the Author
Paul Chesser is executive director for the American Tradition Institute and a senior fellow for the Commonwealth Foundation for Public Policy Alternatives. The views he expresses do not necessarily reflect the views of these organizations.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (38) | Leave a comment
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drudge ette obama| 8.10.10 @ 6:18AM
Loons like this have successfully indoctrinated our children to "believe" in global warming, like it's a religion. If it is a real science, you don't believe in it.
When someone writes that he is a " mild-mannered guy, a Methodist Sunday School teacher. Not quick to anger" - run like hell. Nothing is more dangerous than a True Believer with an eco-mission.
I fully expect to read one day that he will be found ranting in a dumpster, looking for used plastic bottles.
Robbins Mitchell| 8.10.10 @ 6:40AM
I blame anAl GOREtentive
Eric Cartman| 8.10.10 @ 8:15AM
First, we must keep getting in the faces of the mild-mannered Methodist Sunday School Teacher Types to tell them to" $#&* OFF!" Of course we must be polite about it - don't pull your weapon, yet.
Then, we should agree to tax and cap some useless activities that may cause global warming: Concerts by people like Sheryl Crow, Green Day, etc. Start taking the kiddies cell phones and iPods away, too- carbon feet print, don't ya know (let's see how green they are then! Ahahahahahah!) No more stupid Hollywood movies either - that's a huge waste of time, brain cells and energy. They have run out of ideas anyway. And all that fuel and food to cart the stars fat asses around and stuff their greedy fat faces. THAT has to stop.
Then, no more funding for useless science gatherings like the Climate Change Forums - why do countries like Sudan have to offer in the way of science, anyway?
gypsy| 8.10.10 @ 10:46AM
"mild mannered, not quick to anger,kept to himself" -- isnt that what they say about EVERY serial killer?
Fuck off eco freaks; if you wanna think that my life and my childrens lives are less important than space earth or the global village, well, go right on being a raving nutter. Touch my thermostat, my AC, my car, my fridge or my lights, and you're getting a steel toed Doc Marten right where your brain would be if you had one
NevadaDad| 8.10.10 @ 4:36PM
Tell us what you really think.
Appleby| 8.10.10 @ 7:09AM
When there are real problems to pay attention to, ecoWhackolas are expendable. Mazlow has it absolutely right.
WRTolkas| 8.10.10 @ 8:22AM
I just read Bill McKibben's website. He must be a very good writer and journalist. Mr. McKibben has written enumerable essays, reports, and a few books to boot. This is well and good. However, I did not read one mention of his science, physics, or engineering background. Maybe Washington has had enough of the pseudo-science preached from the high-priests of the Church of Al Gore with no deep science background or understanding? One can only hope.
Ned| 8.10.10 @ 12:36PM
"his science, physics, or engineering background" - now, WHAT would Mr. McK need with something like that? That's just, you know,
facts and details, not anything useful like a degree in Peace Studies, or maybe Gender Studies. Besides, the science is already settled... ALGORE decided all the scientific stuff some time ago... I think it was on a Tuesday, too. And then he parted the Red Sea... wait, that might have been earlier...
A.M. Mallett| 8.10.10 @ 4:30PM
The man is nothing more than a journalist and compared to being a lawyer, that's pretty durn low.
Brat Magursky| 8.10.10 @ 8:55AM
Maybe Mr Mc Kibben can find a captive audience with his Methodist Sunday School class....surely...and if he can't find a Methodist that will listen and believe that should speak volumes that it is time to seek refuge through St Jude
ncatty| 8.10.10 @ 9:56AM
I AM suspicious of the lame duck session. The dems have already shown they can be ruthless ("deeming", "reconciliation") so why would they not pass legislation as they are shown the door? And let's not forget the go along to get along Repubs like Lindsey Graham. If he sneaks back in it will be an open love affair for him with the Washington establishment.
Kishego| 8.10.10 @ 10:14AM
"I wrote the first book for a general audience on global warming back in 1989..." I've not read the book but, I'll bet it mentions something about 10 years to do something about it or we all roast. These arguments and scare tactics really are getting old. Quoting Clint Eastwood from his old movie Heartbreak Ridge to the young gung ho LT "Sir, you're begining to bore the hell out of me"
Petronius| 8.10.10 @ 10:22AM
This contretemp is the result of ecocksuckers being at cross purposes. If the McKibbon faction gets it's way, there will no longer be mining and timber companies to shake down in court. These parasites live off of litigation and jacking up our cost of living at the tort bar. Anybody want to dig coal in the Great Basin? Redford and the Environmental Defense Fund want 15% off the top. They get it and We pay for it. God bless Steve Forbes for being the only one with enough guts to expose them.
Melvin| 8.10.10 @ 10:36AM
The main problem with modern day Environmentalism, is that it has become a business, and the so-called science has become a business so we are always going to have dooms day scenarios pushed upon us.
Science depends on grants from the government or special interest environmentalists that demand dooms day scenarios even it it entails falsified science.
We're stuck in the middle not knowing who to believe and surrounded by Chicken Littles, gnashing of the beaks that the sky is falling as well as the entire universe.
Science used to be respected, and now it's just a tabloid whore for scientists fifteen minutes of fame.
Its too bad because there is allot of good hard working scientists out there but the get drowned out.
Science needs to be put back into the hands of the scientists so people can believe in it again.
RAMIII| 8.10.10 @ 1:38PM
If you want to see the direction science has been headed in read "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand. Fascinating treatise on the "wonders" of do gooder socialists, especially when it comes to business and science.
FTM| 8.11.10 @ 2:14AM
I've been kicking around an idea in my head for a month or two now in regards to rampant enviro-mentalism and I think that I've come to the point that I want to state it publically. Does this sound credable? Could enviromentalism be the latest statist, social engineering concept to redirect the world's resources into an activity other than warfare?
You had the "Nuclear Umbrella" concept from back in the cold war that was supposed to reduce the incentive for individual nations to involve themselves in nuclear weapons programs. That was a social engineering program wouldn't you think? If we tie up ten or fifteen percent of the global GDP in "fighting global warming or climate change or grass chiggers" or whatever the doomsday scenario du jour happens to be there won't be a lot left over to eat and fight a war.
Just my thought.
Sarbo| 8.10.10 @ 11:05AM
It's vert difficult to obtain an 'average' global temperature, just as it is to fix an 'average' male mentality.
The world IS warming. Not all of it is via human agency. Still, as humans, who bear a genetic responsibility to our descendants, the prescriptions of today's bureaucrats, some of whom are called Barack Obama and some Michael Mann, reek of political machinations. There is no alternative energy tech ready for market. Obama and his cohorts know it. So, why castrate a civilisisation before you had a replacement ready?
Appleby| 8.12.10 @ 4:14PM
Did anybody ever get a grant to study the fact that global warming could be caused by the huge number of Boomer Wimmin going through menopause all at the same time? I have four sisters in that stage of life right now, and believe me, there is a lot of heat being generated right there.
Ron Coddington| 8.10.10 @ 11:17AM
Someone once said, "Idiots abound, and most of them are in Congress". You're thinking it was Will Rogers, right? Actually it was me. Pretty pithy, I think. We need not look far to see the results of such depraved leadership. And Cap & Trade is just one more looming sizable nail for our recyclable coffins. Regardless of all my letter writing citing the abundant and robust scientific sources arrayed against global warming, not a single one of my two elected Senators nor my illustrious Congressman has even acknowledged that I am out here with an opinion. All I get in return is a ration of AlGore-babble form letters. Dumb and dumber has found a new home. So at this point though Reid might decry the fate of climate-controlling legislation (they're out to control everything else, why not climate, too?), the moment is at hand for them to act, and their smiley faces should give us no confidence whatsoever that behind the scenes they're not working out some kind of deal to further enhance their ability to separate dollars from our raggedy pockets. Representative government has never sunk quite so low. But stay tuned because I'm convinced they're working late every night to further exceed our expectations.
dw| 8.10.10 @ 11:23AM
So we either die in a melting world or succumb to the brain dead and let them turn us into a third world economy and we die slowly. Let's melt.
Richard| 8.10.10 @ 11:43AM
Don't gloat yet. They will never give up. This should envliven us more to send the Democrats away from Washington.
Jolly Green Giant| 8.10.10 @ 12:31PM
Eat your greens!
WRJonas | 8.10.10 @ 1:00PM
The truth comes slowly like the rising sun. You can roll over in bed and jam the pillow against your face but the sun doesn't care .
And so it is with the truth about global warming . It is a lie and the truth will dessicate it like an exposed fungus.
RAMIII| 8.10.10 @ 1:43PM
Hear, Hear! The truth does not move out of our way for convenience or comfort. It's edge will divide between soul and spirit and expose all the intentions of the heart whether good or evil. Repent before it's too late!
Why not face the rising sun with joy in your heart rather than hide in some dark place with all the unspeakable things that crawl there?
michigander_sandusky| 8.10.10 @ 2:11PM
I'm convinced global warming is true with the main emitter of hot air coming from a single point on the east coast of the U.S.-->Washington D.C.!
Carbonicus| 8.10.10 @ 3:22PM
Mark Carbonicus' words:
1) binding CO2 emissions reduction will NEVER pass in the US. This was the 4th try in the last decade. And this time, the eco-socialists even had a majority in the House and Senate. This was their widest, most open window of opportunity yet and they still couldn't get it done. Game over.
2) the EPA Engangerment Finding is going to get shot down in court. Forget about it. It was never intended to be anything other than a Sword of Damocles hanging over Congress' heads, forcing them to "act". The bluff failed and now EPA has their "oh sh#t, what do we do now" moment at hand. Even after the best attempts at finding an activist court/judge, when this is all said and done if necessary at the Supreme Court level), it WILL be shot down. That will happen for two reasons: a) the Clean Air Act does NOT give the EPA the authority to write a "tailoring rule". CAA says that once something is deemed a "hazardous air pollutant" (per Chesser's article, thanks Blue States and the Supreme Court in Mass. V. EPA; set aside the ridiculous proposition that a trace gas in the atmosphere necessary for all life on earth is a "hazardous air pollutant", a proposition which the Supreme Court simply blew), EPA has no choice but to regulate any source producing more than 250 tons/year; b) as will be shown, EPA did not comply with federal regulations requiring certain veracity of data/studies if they are going to make regulations based on having done no original research.
3) there will be NO binding, global replacement for the Kyoto protocol before it expires in 2012. The best that can possibly happen is for an "extension" of the existing agreement, one which the US has failed to ratify and never will. (Don't believe Carbonicus? Ask yourself if there were 97 Democrat eco-socialists in the Senate when they last voted on ratifying Kyoto, when the vote was 97-0). The US won't agree without China and India and other rapidly developing nations committing similarly (there are just enough sane people in Congress to know that would be economically devastating to US industry and provide no material difference to atmopheric CO2 or global avg. surface temps 100 years hence). And China and India will NEVER agree to such until they have pulled over 1 billion people in their nations out of poverty, a proposition which will take 10-30 years, and which they know cannot happen on the back of "green" energy.
In the time that it takes Carbonicus to be proven right - all of this I've been predicting for almost half a decade now - science which casts enough doubt on the "anthropogenic global warming" Thermageddon scenario will be so strong that this nightmare will be behind us.
Remember the story of Copernicus (my name sake, but for Carbon in the present era) and Galileo. In their day, the Catholic Church taught that the earth was the center of the universe and the sun and all the planets revolved around it. Copernicus showed they were wrong, Galileo proved it. The former held his beliefs until right before his death, because the Church threatened him with jail as a "heretic". The latter took the former's work and proved it. When he began to speak about his results and published them, he went to jail.
Nothing against the Catholic Church, mind you, the story is merely instructive to the present day debate. The "Church" in the modern era is Al Gore, James Hansen (NASA GISS), the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Western (eco-socialist) governments and their agencies, celebrities, and the mainstream media.
Step forward 600 years from Copernicus'/Galileo's time. The Church recently apologized for jailing Galileo (a bit posthumously!). And in the present era, how stupid would one seem to now suggest that the earth is the center of our universe and the sun and all the stars rotate around it? That's a rhetorical question. But the comparison is about to become material, just give it a few years. And remember this post when it happens.
And when it does, look for Carbonicus to very publicly make Gore and the modern day high priests of the anthropogenic global warming church wallow in their failed eco-socialism frequently, loudly, and relentlessly.
In the meantime, tell all the sane people you know who care about America. This anti-capitalist, one-world government eco-religion is America's greatest economic threat for the rest of this century. Stop it now before it's too late.
chester arthur| 8.10.10 @ 11:11PM
I learned all I need to know about the enviro-weenies when I bought a window unit A/C at WalMart.We aren't supposed to use freon because it was somehow skyrocketing up to the upper atmosphere and eating ozone,but didn't react with it at ground level..hmmm.So ozone is a pollutant,at ground level,but won't rise to the upper atmosphere where it's needed.We can't use it,but guess what refrigerant is in the new A/C,Chinese made freon.So I guess only our freon was a danger to the world.No enviro's were protesting WalMart while they sold these units,I guess they don't want to insult our Chinese debt holders.Or they know where their funding comes from.
Marc Jeric| 8.11.10 @ 1:18AM
Some perspective: this scam started 40 years ago wuth the globaloney cooling scam in the 1970; it then continued with the globaloney warming hoax in the 1990's; then it transformed itself in the 2000's into the climate change flimflam; and it ends with the cap & trade power grab (mass nationalizations and taxes).
Our eco-nazis talk about us "deniers"- well let us see who these deniers are: see Internet for "Global Warming Petition" to read the name of 31,478 independent American scientists, including 9,029 of them with PhD degrees, who state that anthropogenic global warming is ZERO. And I am one of them - MS, PhD, UCLA - Engineering.
GavInTucson| 8.11.10 @ 3:15AM
God bless you, Marc. The vast majority of AGW supporting scientists seems to all have one thing in common-- they're the recipients of government funding.
And they seem hell-bent on staking their claim on whichever direction the political winds are blowing at a given moment, as to not bite the hand that feeds them.
GavInTucson| 8.11.10 @ 3:10AM
Oh, I can promise you this; if the Democrats experience major loses in November, you can bet your bottom dollar that they'll use the lame duck session to push through every pet project they've been dreaming about, as a way to "stick it" to the American people.
Personally, I wouldn't be surprised if the canceled their own Thanksgiving and Christmas recesses in order to do so.
Bill| 8.11.10 @ 2:40PM
My advice to Mr. McKibben would be to channel his anger and impatience into further activism. For starters, he would write to his Congressman. Then he could take a leadership role in some environmental organization. After all, he's a well-known author, presumably with some clout. Maybe he could get himself elected to public office and help make the kind of laws he and his constitutency desire.
BobRGeologist| 8.14.10 @ 9:34PM
When I read the Kyoto Protocols I could not believe that they could be serious, or sane. This should be a lesson to Greens everywhere. A knowledge of past climates would have warded off the gigantic snafoo that is AGW. We have been in a cooler than normal climate for 50 million years due to plate tectonics altering of ocean currents. 30 million yrs ago Antarctica iced up. 14 million years ago the Arctic did likewise. Pleistocene glaciations began only 1.75 million years ago. Presently we are in the 5th Interglacial (Holocene) the past 12,000 years, a moment of Earth time. With ice in our polar regions, we are still in a glacial mode. Our obsession with GSG (greenhouse gases) is counterproductive because this is our only hope of helping our weak sun stave off a return of Glaciation #6. Mass extinctions of life are mostly related to the several glaciations in the past, back to pre Cambrian times, 2.2 billion years ago. There are no known extinctions due to over heating Earth.