Great letter to the WSJ. I love the comment on our "fourth branch" of government."The Lawnmower Men" (Review & Outlook, July 19) proves the point that we no longer have only three branches of government. To the executive, legislative and judicial branches we have added bureaucracy. There are now a myriad of government agencies which have a say in how we may live our lives, and none of the people who run or staff these red-tape factories can be held accountable to the people of the nation through any electoral process.
So the Environmental Protection Agency wants to regulate my lawnmower and measure "grams per kilogram of cuttings"? This is the U.S. and here we measure in ounces and pounds; granted illegal drug dealers might not have a problem with this metric nonsense. Is the EPA going to say I can't cut my grass until it reaches a certain height in order to achieve the desired measurements? Will there be an extra tax on foods that tend to create more "emissions"? How about a tax credit for Bean-o? How about they just leave us alone.
We could solve the global energy crisis by hooking up generators to the founding fathers' graves. They should be spinning fast enough to produce enough electricity to fuel the whole country. If they were alive, however, I think I know what they would say about this proposal and all of the other rules dumped upon us: "No regulation without representation!" Though if this bureaucratic trend continues, we might go back to: "Give me liberty or give me death!"
Beth Halgren
Eudora, Kan.
Labels: climate, energy, environment as religion, global warming, taxes
The Metaphysics and Some Politics of Global Warming
Regarding Bret Stephens's "Global Warming as Mass Neurosis" (Global View, July 1): In 1992, at my 25th Harvard College reunion, we got an accurate forecast of the "ideological convenience" driving global warming alarmism. In a discussion of the Rio Summit on environment and development, one of my classmates effused, "Who would have thought that the environment would bring us world government?" In other words, the advent of world-wide "pollution" controls will lead to world government (which all of us statist Harvard grads eagerly await).
On the other hand, climatologist Patrick Michaels has noted that we merely need to "follow the money" to explain global warming enthusiasm among scientists and academicians: Huge amounts of taxpayer dollars are running down the drain of climate research, and the people raking in the bucks are the same ones spouting the global warming nonsense.
--Grant W. Schaumburg Jr.
Boston
Labels: climate, corruption, earmarks, environment as religion, global warming, media bias, taxes
In the absence of God, man will create his own. Bret Stephens expands on that old adage.NASA now begrudgingly confirms that the hottest year on record in the continental 48 was not 1998, as previously believed, but 1934, and that six of the 10 hottest years since 1880 antedate 1954. Data from 3,000 scientific robots in the world's oceans show there has been slight cooling in the past five years, never mind that "80% to 90% of global warming involves heating up ocean waters," according to a report by NPR's Richard Harris.
The Arctic ice cap may be thinning, but the extent of Antarctic sea ice has been expanding for years. At least as of February, last winter was the Northern Hemisphere's coldest in decades. In May, German climate modelers reported in the journal Nature that global warming is due for a decade-long vacation. But be not not-afraid, added the modelers: The inexorable march to apocalypse resumes in 2020.
This last item is, of course, a forecast, not an empirical observation. But it raises a useful question: If even slight global cooling remains evidence of global warming, what isn't evidence of global warming?
... Socialism may have failed as an economic theory, but global warming alarmism, with its dire warnings about the consequences of industry and consumerism, is equally a rebuke to capitalism. Take just about any other discredited leftist nostrum of yore – population control, higher taxes, a vast new regulatory regime, global economic redistribution, an enhanced role for the United Nations – and global warming provides a justification. One wonders what the left would make of a scientific "consensus" warning that some looming environmental crisis could only be averted if every college-educated woman bore six children: Thumbs to "patriarchal" science; curtains to the species.
A second explanation is theological. Surely it is no accident that the principal catastrophe predicted by global warming alarmists is diluvian in nature. Surely it is not a coincidence that modern-day environmentalists are awfully biblical in their critique of the depredations of modern society: "And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart." That's Genesis, but it sounds like Jim Hansen.
And surely it is in keeping with this essentially religious outlook that the "solutions" chiefly offered to global warming involve radical changes to personal behavior, all of them with an ascetic, virtue-centric bent: drive less, buy less, walk lightly upon the earth and so on. A light carbon footprint has become the 21st-century equivalent of sexual abstinence.
Finally, there is a psychological explanation. Listen carefully to the global warming alarmists, and the main theme that emerges is that what the developed world needs is a large dose of penance. What's remarkable is the extent to which penance sells among a mostly secular audience. What is there to be penitent about?
As it turns out, a lot, at least if you're inclined to believe that our successes are undeserved and that prosperity is morally suspect. In this view, global warming is nature's great comeuppance, affirming as nothing else our guilty conscience for our worldly success.
In "The Varieties of Religious Experience," William James distinguishes between healthy, life-affirming religion and the monastically inclined, "morbid-minded" religion of the sick-souled. Global warming is sick-souled religion.
Labels: climate, environment as religion, global warming
For a century, an ambitious, arrogant, unscrupulous knowledge class -- social planners, scientists, intellectuals, experts and their left-wing political allies -- arrogated to themselves the right to rule either in the name of the oppressed working class (communism) or, in its more benign form, by virtue of their superior expertise in achieving the highest social progress by means of state planning (socialism).
Two decades ago, however, socialism and communism died rudely, then were buried forever by the empirical demonstration of the superiority of market capitalism everywhere from Thatcher's England to Deng's China, where just the partial abolition of socialism lifted more people out of poverty more rapidly than ever in human history.
Just as the ash heap of history beckoned, the intellectual left was handed the ultimate salvation: environmentalism. Now the experts will regulate your life not in the name of the proletariat or Fabian socialism but -- even better -- in the name of Earth itself.
Environmentalists are Gaia's priests, instructing us in her proper service and casting out those who refuse to genuflect. (See Newsweek above.) And having proclaimed the ultimate commandment -- carbon chastity -- they are preparing the supporting canonical legislation that will tell you how much you can travel, what kind of light you will read by, and at what temperature you may set your bedroom thermostat.
Only Monday, a British parliamentary committee proposed that every citizen be required to carry a carbon card that must be presented, under penalty of law, when buying gasoline, taking an airplane or using electricity. The card contains your yearly carbon ration to be drawn down with every purchase, every trip, every swipe.
There's no greater social power than the power to ration. And, other than rationing food, there is no greater instrument of social control than rationing energy, the currency of just about everything one does and uses in an advanced society.
-- Charles Krauthammer
Labels: climate, environment as religion, global warming
Why I Left Greenpeace
By PATRICK MOORE
In 1971 an environmental and antiwar ethic was taking root in Canada, and I chose to participate. As I completed a Ph.D. in ecology, I combined my science background with the strong media skills of my colleagues. In keeping with our pacifist views, we started Greenpeace.
But I later learned that the environmental movement is not always guided by science. As we celebrate Earth Day today, this is a good lesson to keep in mind.
At first, many of the causes we championed, such as opposition to nuclear testing and protection of whales, stemmed from our scientific knowledge of nuclear physics and marine biology. But after six years as one of five directors of Greenpeace International, I observed that none of my fellow directors had any formal science education. They were either political activists or environmental entrepreneurs. Ultimately, a trend toward abandoning scientific objectivity in favor of political agendas forced me to leave Greenpeace in 1986.
The breaking point was a Greenpeace decision to support a world-wide ban on chlorine. Science shows that adding chlorine to drinking water was the biggest advance in the history of public health, virtually eradicating water-borne diseases such as cholera. And the majority of our pharmaceuticals are based on chlorine chemistry. Simply put, chlorine is essential for our health.
My former colleagues ignored science and supported the ban, forcing my departure. Despite science concluding no known health risks – and ample benefits – from chlorine in drinking water, Greenpeace and other environmental groups have opposed its use for more than 20 years.
Opposition to the use of chemicals such as chlorine is part of a broader hostility to the use of industrial chemicals. Rachel Carson's 1962 book, "Silent Spring," had a significant impact on many pioneers of the green movement. The book raised concerns, many rooted in science, about the risks and negative environmental impact associated with the overuse of chemicals. But the initial healthy skepticism hardened into a mindset that treats virtually all industrial use of chemicals with suspicion.
Sadly, Greenpeace has evolved into an organization of extremism and politically motivated agendas. Its antichlorination campaign failed, only to be followed by a campaign against polyvinyl chloride.
Greenpeace now has a new target called phthalates (pronounced thal-ates). These are chemical compounds that make plastics flexible. They are found in everything from hospital equipment such as IV bags and tubes, to children's toys and shower curtains. They are among the most practical chemical compounds in existence.
Phthalates are the new bogeyman. These chemicals make easy targets since they are hard to understand and difficult to pronounce. Commonly used phthalates, such as diisononyl phthalate (DINP), have been used in everyday products for decades with no evidence of human harm. DINP is the primary plasticizer used in toys. It has been tested by multiple government and independent evaluators, and found to be safe.
Despite this, a political campaign that rejects science is pressuring companies and the public to reject the use of DINP. Retailers such as Wal-Mart and Toys "R" Us are switching to phthalate-free products to avoid public pressure.
It may be tempting to take this path of least resistance, but at what cost? None of the potential replacement chemicals have been tested and found safe to the degree that DINP has. The Consumer Product Safety Commission recently cautioned, "If DINP is to be replaced in children's products . . . the potential risks of substitutes must be considered. Weaker or more brittle plastics might break and result in a choking hazard. Other plasticizers might not be as well studied as DINP."
The hysteria over DINP began in Europe and Israel, both of which instituted bans. Yet earlier this year, Israel realized the error of putting politics before science, and reinstated DINP.
The European Union banned the use of phthalates in toys prior to completion of a comprehensive risk assessment on DINP. That assessment ultimately concluded that the use of DINP in infant toys poses no measurable risk.
The antiphthalate activists are running a campaign of fear to implement their political agenda. They have seen success in California, with a state ban on the use of phthalates in infant products, and are pushing for a national ban. This fear campaign merely distracts the public from real environmental threats.
We all have a responsibility to be environmental stewards. But that stewardship requires that science, not political agendas, drive our public policy.
Mr. Moore, co-founder and former leader of Greenpeace, is chairman and chief scientist of Greenspirit Strategies.
Labels: climate, Economics, environment as religion, global warming
N.I.M.B.Y... an acronym for Not In My Back Yard. Everybody wants more power, but nobody wants the unsightly powerplant built next to their home. Everybody wants their garbage hauled away, but not if the dump lies next door. You get the picture.
Here's the tale of an environmental activist and director of the California Chaparral Institute, Richard Halsey, who began a fight to protect the chaparral plant back in 2003. So adamant was Mr. Halsey in protecting the environment that he took a typically conceited attitude towards those whose homes were dangered by the plant's overgrowth... that is, until his own home was put in danger this week.On Tuesday, Mr. Halsey found himself standing on the roof of his century-old home, garden hoses at the ready, as wildfire spread across the chaparral and torched houses a quarter-mile away. The Witch Fire, as the conflagration was named, was bearing down on his town of Escondido, Calif., just northeast of San Diego, feeding off the bushes Mr. Halsey has fought to save.
In the 15 or so wildfires that have ravaged hundreds of square miles in Southern California in the past few days, chaparral has been the primary fuel. Whipped by strong winds, the fire has spread across this vegetation, consuming some 1,500 homes along the way.
Chaparral has long bedeviled local fire planners. A key to fire prevention, Mr. Halsey and fire officials agree, is clearing such brush from around homes and other buildings to keep flames from jumping from brush to home.
But some fire-management officials have proposed more aggressive measures, including clear-cutting strips of chaparral to create fire breaks, or conducting controlled burns to combat overgrowth to minimize the potential of destructive wildfires.
Mr. Halsey takes the opposite view: Allow the chaparral to grow, and let nature take its course. "Our landscape is being misrepresented and condemned," he wrote in an essay on his Web site. "We need to come to its defense."
Mr. Halsey began his chaparral crusade in 2003, when he set up a Web site after the area's devastating Cedar fire, which started four years ago today. Mr. Halsey says he was appalled that the public criticized San Diego fire departments for not doing enough to battle the fires. But he also didn't like the bum rap the plants were getting.
"The problem is not the chaparral," he said this week. "The problem is people and the way they decide to place houses." He adds: "When you put a flammable structure in a flammable corridor it's like putting a bowling pin in a bowling alley -- ultimately, it's going to get taken out."
...This week's fires have led Mr. Halsey to do some soul-searching. When he moved to the area in 1982, he says, "I knew there were brush fires, but I had no idea about any of the real dangers."
His house was built in 1909 and he has no desire to lose it to a chaparral-fueled firestorm. And while he has made significant efforts to fire-proof it -- including a fire-resistant roof -- he admits it still contains some highly flammable old wood.
As the fire roared into Escondido on Tuesday, Mr. Halsey ignored the mandatory evacuation order. Along with teams of firefighters, he and a handful of other residents used hoses to soak buildings and extinguish flying embers that sought footholds on patio furniture, inside roof vents and under eaves.
"Embers are why a lot of these structures got taken out," says Mr. Halsey. "The only way to get rid of the embers is to get rid of the vegetation."
He remains opposed to controlled burns or clear-cutting vegetation in the wild. But from now on, he says, in his speaking engagements he will put much more emphasis on keeping the chaparral away from homes and other buildings.
"My passion and my bias is to favor the environment and the natural habitats," Mr. Halsey said yesterday afternoon as he walked by several burned-out homes. But after this fire, he says, "I have a greater appreciation now for the impact of vegetation near structures than I did before."
Mr. Halsey has no plans to overhaul his Web site to give it an anti-chaparral viewpoint. But he might add first-hand stories about fireproofing homes near chaparral. "I'll definitely add a line on the Web site that clearly says, 'Chaparral presents a real fire risk.'"
Labels: environment as religion, fires
When it comes to reporting of the California fires, did you know that police have killed one arson suspect, and arrested another, or that the FBI has recovered possible evidence of arson? You wouldn't know it from our broadcast media, that's for sure.
No, instead all we've heard is global warming and global warming. Today, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D, NV) stated but quickly recanted that global warming is responsible for the latest round of deadly forest fires in California.
Columnist Hugh Hewitt justifiably calls Reid "a witless opportunist."Reid may have wanted to blame the fires on global warming before he got called on it and ran away, but I'd be hard pressed to be persuaded that global warming caused arsonists to start several of these fires, or that global warming knocked down a power line in Malibu starting that fire, or that global warming caused a couple of construction workers to work with an arc welder in high winds, showering the local brush with sparks.
But then again, Reid was simply sounding off in the liberal echo-chamber. Both NBC News and CBS News have this week used the fires as evidence of a climate change problem. CNN too.
If one is seeking cause-effect proof of forest fires they need look no further than a short history lesson, courtesy of Junk Science's Stephen Milloy. It's the environmentalist lawsuits, stupid!"Our forests are detonating like napalm bombs. We need to remove dead and dying bug-killed timber," said Rep. Wally Herger, R-Calif.
Is this Monday-morning quarterbacking spurred by the wildfires now raging in California? Hardly. Rep. Herger uttered those words in August 1994 as part of his demand that Congress declare a state of emergency in federal forests to permit quick removal of dead trees, fallen branches and other debris that fuel wildfires -- like those that burned 3 million Western acres and killed 14 firefighters that year.
A spokesman for the Natural Resources Defense Council ( search) responded at the time by calling Rep. Herger's demand "a pretext for accelerated logging in the Sierra Nevada." Nine years later, though, Rep. Herger's demand is looking pretty prescient.
...As the Western forests burn -- and people die and homes are destroyed -- environmentalists and their political allies in Congress only seem concerned that some "old growth" trees may be cut in the process of thinning the nation's tinder traps. Their nonsensical opposition to thinning only makes it easier for wildfires to spread out of control. That's positively cuckoo.
"We need to do some active management to prevent unnatural fire" that occurs as a result of dense underbrush and trees built up over decades, U.S. Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth says. "If that means cutting a 14-foot [diameter] Sequoia, that's reasonable [to do to] prevent fire."
Amen, brother.
These opinions aren't just relegated to conservative columnists based in Washington D.C., nor are they new. Here's another prescient opinion by the Denver Post from March:We use more paper and wood every year, happily importing these products from Canada and other countries instead of harvesting trees in our backyard.
We want fires suppressed, loggers barred, our forests undisturbed. But the forest needs disturbance, says Ron Cousineau, assistant district forester for the Colorado State Forest Service. "Now we are seeing disturbance on a landscape scale."
You got that right, fella.
Worse, in this article from 2004, it's made pretty clear that the environmentalists' aims aren't so much about "protecting" anything as they are about politics.Groups like the Sierra Club and Greenpeace believe America has already started down that slope and vow to use lawsuits and peaceful protests to stop the slide.
Greenpeace's strategy includes what sound like SWAT teams. "Forest rescue stations," made up of a mobile lab and tents, will be set up at the site of controversial timber sales to monitor activity. The first one opened this month in southern Oregon. "That's where the rubber's meeting the road," says Greenpeace spokeswoman Celia Alario.
Charles Wilkinson, a University of Colorado law professor who advised the Forest Service during the Clinton administration, considers that grandstanding by environmentalists "searching for a mission."
Mechem, the industry spokesman, notes "it's an election year" and that "many people feel President Bush is vulnerable on the environment."
Wilkinson is also skeptical that the timber industry will go back into national forests in a big way because it now has vast private tree farms in the Southeast. Mechem echoes that view, noting the industry gets just 3 percent of its fiber from public lands.
Hmmm. What are we in right now? That's right, another election cycle. Expect to see the mainstream media, Harry Reid Democrats, and environmentalists alike push their "global warming causes forest fires" message in the next year.
But where the rubber meets the road is this: To stop the forest fires you must stop the lawsuits and environmentalist radicalism. Oh, yeah, and the arson too.
Labels: climate, environment as religion, fires, global warming, media bias
[UK Times] A High Court judge today ruled that An Inconvenient Truth can be distributed to every school in the country but only if it comes with a note explaining nine scientific errors in Al Gore's Oscar-winning film.
Read the nine errors here.
Labels: climate, environment as religion, global warming, Gore
[Associated Press] A two-year study released last year by the University of California at Los Angeles concluded that special effects explosions, idling vehicles and diesel generators make the entertainment industry a major Southern California polluter, second only to the oil industry.
You can read the rest. The environloony Left's "carbon offset" donations and other such guilt-driven nonsense are simply the modern equivilant to old world Catholics who would pay indulgence taxes in order to sin more (you'll remember that paid indulgences sparked a reformation led by Martin Luther).
No further comment necessary.
Labels: climate, environment as religion, global warming, Hollywood bias
This is beautiful! I found this link via Michael Goldfarb at The Weekly Standard -- apparently JunkScience.com is sponsoring a $125,000 reward to anyone who can prove that global warming is from human behaviors and deeds.
In fact, the reward went up $25,000 recently because since the contest was announced on August 7 JunkScience has yet to receive any takers. Not one.
Labels: climate, Delusional Democrats, environment as religion, global warming
Bret Stephens admits he's a "global warming denier." Here's the start and the end of a great read.The recent discovery by a retired businessman and climate kibitzer named Stephen McIntyre that 1934--and not 1998 or 2006--was the hottest year on record in the U.S. could not have been better timed. August is the month when temperatures are high and the news cycle is slow, leading, inevitably, to profound meditations on global warming. Newsweek performed its journalistic duty two weeks ago with an exposé on what it calls the global warming "denial machine." I hereby perform mine with a denier's confession.
... I confess: Though it may surprise those who use the term "denier" so as to put me on a moral plane with Holocaust deniers, I have children for whom I would not wish an environmental apocalypse.
Yet neither do I wish the civilizational bounties built up over two centuries by an industrial, inventive, adaptive, globalized and energy-hungry society to be squandered chasing comparatively small environmental benefits at gigantic economic costs. One needn't deny global warming as a problem to deny it as the only or greatest problem. The great virtue of Mr. Lomborg's book is its insistence on trying to measure the good done per dollar spent. Do we save a few lives, at huge cost, as a byproduct of curbing global warming? Or do we save many, for less, by acting on problems directly?
Some might argue it is immoral to think this way. Maybe they are the ones living in denial.
Labels: climate, environment as religion, global warming, media bias
This was an interesting analysis via the Houston Chronicle:If the Great Storm of 1900 had hit Galveston two years ago, it would have inflicted $72 billion in damage, nearly as much as Hurricane Katrina, researchers say.
Already the country's deadliest hurricane with an estimated 8,000 deaths, the 1900 storm also would rank as the nation's third costliest, say hurricane scientists who sought to gauge the economic damage that historic storms would have caused if they had occurred in 2005.
Under the new analysis, which adjusted for inflation, population and coastal development, Hurricane Katrina and its $81 billion cost ranked second to the Great Miami Hurricane of 1926, which caused damage estimated at almost $140 billion. Another Galveston hurricane, in 1915, ranked fourth with $57 billion in damage.
Put simply, the devastation wrought by Katrina in 2005 was not unprecedented.
That's significant in an era when some blame global warming for catastrophic hurricanes. The research concludes that economic damage from hurricanes, after being adjusted, has remained relatively constant during the last century.
Furthermore, scientists involved in the study say, a $500 billion storm in a major metropolitan area along the U.S. coast, such as Miami or possibly even Houston, is conceivable by 2020 if present development trends continue, as expected.
When it comes to hurricanes, these scientists say, coastal development — not warming oceans — should perhaps be policymakers' biggest concern.
Nonetheless, one expects to be pounded daily from the consensus advocates of global warming disaster with the view that Katrina and future storms are somehow "caused by" or otherwise exaggerated by our consumption of fossil fuels. Anyone who dares debate that can further expect to be branded a "denier" - a badge of honor for me - and treated as something lower than a child molester (indeed, RFK's son recently suggested global warming deniers be tried for treason, I kid you not).
It was once said that in the absence of God man will create his own. Environmentalism, especially with climate change, has become precisely that for the Far Left. Their religion is the environment and anyone who dares question their desire to centrally plan economics (carbon trading schemes, "offsets", etc.) in an attempt to "save" the environment is considered a heretic or infidel.
FYI, if you haven't yet read the "Deniers" series at the Canadian Post, you should. It's fascinating because the reporter started the campaign expecting to support global warming beliefs and himself became a skeptic as he digested the data.
Labels: climate, environment as religion, global warming
