October 2006 The Global Warming Deceptions Continue

By Tom DeWeese

They call us the “astro-turf” crowd --those of us who dispute the dire claims of global warming. Let one of us get on the radio or in front of an audience and the accusation is made: “You’re just a lackey of big business.” Nothing we say can have any serious meaning because we are paid by big oil or some other corporation and so must have an ulterior motive.( By the way, I or the American Policy Center have never received a single dime from big oil corporations). Of course, there is always a double standard in the name calling business.

Now comes this report from Senator James Inhofe, Chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. In a speech before the Senate, Inhofe told of the media’s double standard in reporting on the global warming issue.

Said Inhofe, “On March 19 of this year ‘60 Minutes’ profiled NASA scientist and alarmist James Hansen, who was once again making allegations of being censored by the Bush administration. In the segment, objectivity and balance were again tossed in favor of a one-sided glowing profile of Hansen.”

Inhofe continued, “The ’60 Minutes’ segment made no mention of Hansen’s partisan ties to former Vice President Al Gore or Hansen’s receiving of a grant of a quarter of a million dollars from the left- wing Heinz Foundation run by Teresa Heinz. There was no mention of Hansen’s subsequent endorsement of her husband John Kerry for President in 2004.”

Concluded Inhofe, “Many in the media dwell on any industry support given to so-called skeptics, but the same media completely fail to note Hansen’s huge grant for the left-wing Heinz Foundation. The foundation’s money originated from the Heinz family ketchup fortune. So it appears that the media makes a distinction between oil money and ketchup money.”

Meanwhile an effort is underway by global warming worshipers to stop, at all costs, the hated global warming skeptics. These are scientists and commentators (including yours truly) who disagree with the sermons of the church of global warming.

CBS correspondent Scott Pelley has justified excluding scientists skeptical of global warming alarmism from his segments because he considers skeptics to be the equivalent of “Holocaust deniers.”

California’s attorney general sued the six largest U.S. and Japanese automakers, including GM, Ford and Toyota for damages related to greenhouse-gas emissions, even though there is no proof that global warming exists, or that carbon dioxide is a problem (there are now studies available to the contrary). The California suit is really an effort to enforce the Kyoto global warming treaty, even though the U.S. has never ratified it.

It is interesting to note that in preparing for the suit, California Attorney General Bill Lockyer filed requests in federal court to force auto makers to disclose all documents and communications between the companies and the so-called climate skeptics. California accuses the climate skeptics of playing a major role in spreading disinformation about global warming.

California obviously has become a leading practioner of the policy of “globally acceptable truth” as advocated by Donald Sagar of the Eden Institute (The DeWeese Report, Volume 12, Issues 7 & 8). Sagar disavowels the value of science, caring more to kill honest debate and instead to impose strict limitations on how people think. Those who speak out with a difference of opinion, like global warming skeptics, are to be silenced as dangerous. It is the end of free speech and free thought. California’s attorney general has now brought Sagar’s crazed rantings into the nation’s legal system.

However, the growing body of proof that global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on human civilization cannot be denied. For example:

·Global warming preachers claim this summer’s heat wave in the eastern part of the country is evidence of global warming.

In fact, the recent heat wave is nowhere close to breaking record temperatures set in 1930 – fifty years before fears of human caused catastrophic global warming supposedly began. “That summer has never been approached…” said global warming skeptic and the state of Virgina’s climatologist Patrick Michaels.

·Global warming preachers claim that of the 21 hottest years ever measured, 20 have occurred within the last 25 years. And the hottest was this year’s recent heat wave.

In fact, according to official temperature records of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in the UK, the global average temperature did not increase between 1998 and 2005.

·The latest scare tactic by global warming preachers is the predicted extinction of Polar Bears because of the supposedly melting ice of the polar caps.

In fact, according to Dr. Mitchell Taylor from the artic government of Nunavut, “Of the 13 populations of polar bears in Canada, 11 are stable or increasing in number. They are not going extinct or even appear to be affected at present.”

·Worse, scream the global warming preachers, the snows of Kilimanjaro are melting.

In fact, a report from the National Academies says that the ice on Kilimanjaro has been in retreat since at least the 1880’s, with the greatest decline occurring at the beginning of that period, when greenhouse gas concentrations were much lower.” The panel judged that Kilamanjaro glaciers “May be shrinking primarily as a continuing response to precipitation changes earlier in the century.” And finally, there is evidence indicating the scare tactics of the global warming preachers are having little effect on Americans. The latest “Index of Leading Environmental Indicators” presented by the American Enterprise Institute and the Pacific Research Institute reports results of recent polls about important environmental concerns held by the American people. The polls indicate that global warming is far down the list of environmental concerns, behind water pollution, and toxic waste.

About the environment in general, the report goes on to show that U.S. air and water is getting cleaner, not dirtier, and that toxic chemical releases are declining and those that remain are handled more safely than ever before.

More bad policy created by the greens

The never-ending mantra from the greens is the need for alternative energies such as wind, corn solar and hydrogen. The Bush Administration has taken up the chant in its many energy policy initiatives as a way to “break our addiction on foreign oil.” But, as usual, the rhetoric sounds good, the reality is outrageous.

Americans saw oil prices skyrocket this year to well over $3.00 per gallon. What many don’t know is one of the reasons for the dramatic price rise was the enforcement of a provision of last year’s energy bill which mandated the use of ethanol in gasoline mixtures. The process forced an immediate surge of gas prices.

Worse, using ethanol as a means to save energy is, like most environmental schemes, a false hope. That’s because ethanol, a corn-based fuel, requires 29 percent more fossil fuel energy to make than it yields in energy use. Moreover, current levels of domestic corn production could not meet both American food and energy needs.

To get around that inconvenient lack of domestic corn to enforce the politically-correct energy policy, the Bush Administration has a solution. Buy the ethanol from Communist China. On September 4th, Reuters news service reported that China would export from 500,000 to 900,000 tons of ethanol. “Most of the ethanol cargoes go directly to the United States.”

So now, after great fanfare from the White House about a new energy policy that is not only environmentally correct, but, even better, breaks the Middle East’s stranglehold on our energy and economy, we remove that straight jacket… only to lock on Chinese handcuffs.

There is only one true solution to America’s energy problems – drill the darn oil in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico and stop this outrageous political suicide with our enemies, and stop pussyfooting with some whacko environmentalists who know absolutely nothing about running an economy or an industry.

There are those who want to control your thoughts and your actions. And there are those who just want the truth. You’ll have to decide which camp to join.

Tom DeWeese is president of the American Policy Center and editor of The DeWeese Report. 70 Main Street, Suite 23, Warrenton, VA 20186, 540-341-8911, http://www.americanpolicy.org