There’s a lot of global warming climate change garbage going on, especially in light (haha, get it?) of the ludicrous Earth Hour Saturday night.
For one thing, don’t listen to the AP, who reports that, according to AGW activists, Saturday night’s Earth Hour was a huge success. They said around a billion people participated, but there’s no way to measure that. But of course the mainstream media would report this number without an ounce of skepticism.
Well, actually there is a way to measure something: compare the level of power usage during Earth Hour (8:30-9:30 PM) with the usage 24 hours later. Roger Sowell, a California attorney who specializes in scientific matters (he has a degree in chemical engineering) downloaded data from www.caiso.com, the California Independent System Operator, which is “in charge of receiving power from power generating plants, and distributing the power throughout the state grid to the various end users.” [h/t Watts Up With That] You’d figure that if the effects of Earth Hour would be detected anywhere, it would be in California.
The results? Well, as Sowell puts it at his law blog: “There was no apparent decrease in the power load throughout the state, from 8:30 to 9:30 p.m. No step changes, nothing, nada, zip, zilch.”
Second, Rick Moran at American Thinker responds to environ-mental-ists’ claims that (a) they actually accomplished something meaningful and that (b) those skeptics (like yours truly) who spent Earth Hour by using excessive amounts of electricity were “stupid” or “idiotic.” Indeed, Moran has their number:
… Global Warming deniers celebrated Earth Hour a little differently and probably had more fun with their participation given the circumstances. Many on the opposite side of AGW debate decided to turn every single light in their houses on for that hour. The response was declared to be ”stupid” by leading lights of the left.
“Stupid” as opposed to what? Believing that it makes one iota of difference to anyone, anywhere, anytime that turning off your lights for an hour does anything except make the participant feel a false sense of moral superiority not to mention an obnoxious piety about an issue that, despite claims to the contrary, is still open for scientific debate?
Pardon me but the very idea that Earth Hour will show anybody anything, prove anything to anybody, raise the consciousness of anyone who doesn’t already have their consciousness raised on the issue, change any minds, alter the science, frighten politicians, or “help save the planet” is idiotic and bespeaks a frightening ignorance that is more dangerous than global warming itself.
I have news for my buddies on the left; Earth Hour was “stupid” - an insult to common sense, a slap in the face to reason and logic, and a as far from “reality” as the “reality based community” has ever strayed. It was a pointless waste of time and effort and calling your opponent’s counter-protest” “stupid” was more revealing of your inner demons on this issue than you realize.
Of course, all protests are “stupid” unless liberals start them. They are the arbiters of what is worthy of protest and what isn’t. They are the judges as to whether a protest is legitimate or whether it is “stupid.” Hence, all protests not started by liberals are, by definition, illicit by nature. In fact, by trying to delegitimize protests not given the liberal seal of approval, and dismissing them as “stupid,” the left demonstrates its love of authoritarian tactics in dealing with its opponents.
The AGW deniers “protest” was actually a clever way to mock the event—something that flew so far over the heads of Earth Day supporters that it didn’t even muss their hair on the way by. And there was plenty to point a finger at and laugh. First and foremost, the schoolboy earnestness with which these events are planned and executed, accompanied as they are by grandiose claims of importance and significance. Is it stupidity or hubris that makes the left think that ordinary people care one whit what they think is important? Yes all sorts of government buildings and landmarks as well as “socially conscious” corporations dimmed their lights for Earth Hour but how many individual citizens in various countries did the same? Grandiose claims of a billion people participating cannot possibly be proved—which is why AGW advocates are using that number. It might not even be close to the truth but it sure sounds impressive, doesn’t it?
Using their logic, I can claim that 100 million Americans participated in the counter-protest mocking Earth Hour and I would have the exact same legitimacy in making that assumption as they have in saying that a billion people dimmed their lights at 8:30 on Saturday night. The only difference is I’m not an AGW proponent which means my estimate is automatically “illegitimate.”
Moran also argues that the purpose of Earth Hour, and of all AGW alarmism for that matter, is all about what many of us have already concluded: controlling people and stealing your money. Don’t believe it? Then ask yourself why President Golden Calf—and an entourage of 500; that’s a lot of airplane travel!—are traveling this week to the U.K. for a U.N. climate change meeting that will involve the U.N. “reordering” and overseeing all of the world’s economies.
It seems the UN has got it in its head that it can run the economies of the entire planet. The same folks who ran the Oil For Food program for Saddam and ended up stealing more money than in any other caper in human history are proposing to “reorder” the economies of the world and save us all from rising temperatures.
This 16 page note that will be distributed at the climate change conference in Bonn next week and will form the basis for action when the “Copenhagen Accords” replace the Kyoto treaty in 2012 is the most draconian, sovereignty-destroying, illiberal plan ever devised by the UN. Every nightmare the right has ever had about the UN will come to pass if even part of this plan is adopted.
Now, it is not likely much of this plan will actually be adopted. The idea of the UN dictating to the United States, or any other industrial democracy, which economic policies they are to follow, from which new power plants they will permit to taking the power to impose tariffs away from our Congress, is ludicrous.
But it is instructive as to what the AGW crowd thinks they can get away with in the future. The plan calls for a reduction by the US of 20-40% of its emissions by 2020 and 90% by 2050—an impossible goal that would destroy our economy. That result is secondary to the idea that the United Nations would have the power to regulate our energy consumption, our energy industries, and all industries that produce anything by burning fossil fuels.
As I said, a mad plan that has no chance of being ratified by the Senate—today. What the future will bring is anyone’s guess. A few more years of hysteria over AGW and it is foreseeable that people will be willing to give up anything in order that the United Nations save them. And the longer this economic crisis continues, the more likely people will be willing to give up their sovereignty. Like President Obama relying on the crisis to pass his left wing agenda items that have nothing to do with economic recovery but everything to do with “reordering” America, the world body will seek to use a crisis that they themselves manufacture in order to grab control of the world’s economy. And they will be cheered on by the very people who believe any protest not deemed by them as legitimate is by definition, invalid.
Bob Ellis, who runs the Dakota Voice website [h/t Climate Change Fraud], also reaches this conclusion:
Alan Caruba’s latest column provides some simple bullet-point truths about the religion of global warming which demonstrate that adherents to this religion are believing in something as silly as ancient astrology:
Here are a few things you need to keep in mind about carbon dioxide:
– CO2 is not a “pollutant.” It is a trace gas necessary for all life of Earth because it is essential to the growth of all vegetation.
– Without CO2 all vegetation—grasses, forests, jungles, crops such as wheat, corn and rice—dies. Then herbivores die. Then you die.
– The CO2 produced by human industry or activity is a miniscule fraction of a percentage of greenhouse gases. It constitutes a mere 0.038% of the atmosphere.
– The oceans emit 96.5% of all greenhouse gases, holding and releasing CO2 as it has down through the millennia of Earth’s existence.
– In past millennia, CO2 levels were often much higher than the present.
– CO2 levels rise hundreds of years after temperature rise on planet Earth.
– The Sun is the primary source of warmth on Earth. Rising CO2 is an effect of global warming, not a cause.
– Both global warming and cooling are natural phenomenon over which humans have no control.
– The Earth is not currently warming. It has been cooling for a decade and likely to continue for at least another twenty years or longer. If a new Ice Age is triggered, it will last at least 10,000 years.
– Polar ice is now at record levels and still growing.
Obviously this reality doesn’t match up with the flames of hysteria being fanned by Al Gore and the UN. The science is simply not on their side.
So why this massive campaign of unscientific lies? Well, it’s not hard to figure out, when you understand the great motivation of power-hungry big-government socialists.
And Caruba spells it out:
The EPA proposal is not about science. It is about power and it is about money. As the Wall Street Journal noted, “The administration has proposed a cap-and-trade system that could raise $646 billion by 2019 through government auctions of emission allowances.”
Folks, don’t fall for more socialist lies aimed to remove more of the money you earned from yourpocket to make even bigger government which aims to rob you of more of your God-given liberties.
More and more Americans are waking up to the fact that the fantasy of anthropogenic global warming is a load of hot air. […]
Oh, one more thing about the way the left is pushing global warming climate change: I said above it’s about controlling people—their lifestyles and their economic decisions. But it’s all about controlling our speech and thoughts, like most everything espoused by the left. (Just ask actress Angie Harmon, who was called “racist” for daring to disagree with President Golden Calf’s policies, or ask Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who was called “homophobic” by the insufferable Barney Frank (D-MA)). In the above cited AT article by Rick Moran, he concludes:
This streak of leftist authoritarianism manifests itself most noticeably in the debate over AGW. Stifling debate by threatening to try as criminals people who disagree with them, declaring an end to the scientific method by saying that the debate about AGW is “over,” spreading lies about skeptics by positing the notion that they are all being paid by oil and coal companies, attempting to ruin the careers of scientists who disagree with them, and seeking to censor scientific studies that challenge AGW orthodoxy—all point to a desire by AGW advocates to control minds by not allowing any dissent.
The fact that these tactics are generally supported by liberals is indicative of their own doubts about the efficacy of climate change and their desire to close their own minds to any information that would cause them to doubt, or otherwise alter their perception about the debate over AGW. This makes leftists not only authoritarians but stupid ones at that—a very dangerous combination that the United Nations appears to be counting on in order to make their plan a reality.
Personally, I am agnostic on the issue. Free people deciding freely to reduce CO2 levels while the jury is still out on climate change is fine with me. We should rely on the scientific method, one of the crowning glories of the western world: observation, hypothesis, predictions, experimentation.
To date, the authoritarian left has prevented this from dominating the global warming discussion. Perhaps it is due to so many of their observations proving to be wrong, or their hypotheses not panning out, or their experiments blowing up in their faces, or their predictions not coming true.
In that case, it is understandable why the left has taken to doing everything in their power to stifle free speech and debate over global warming.
Wrapping this all up, here’s what Rush said yesterday about Earth Hour and its implications: :
It depresses me to see so many people behave like sheep, mindless, moldable sheep, lemmings, under a misguided premise. “Well, Rush, what’s wrong? If they feel good doing it, what’s wrong?” It’s because of where it leads, because of where it will lead them, and where it will lead our country. Folks, if you’re new to this program, let me give you an umbrella to try to help you understand everything that happens for the most part or every point that’s made, every story we focus on, one of the things that I value most is my personal liberty and freedom, enshrined by our founding documents, Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States. And with someone like Obama and his pals running the United States, it is our individual liberty and freedom that is under assault. We say capitalism’s under assault, the private sector is under assault. Well, it’s liberty. It’s all about freedom. It’s about having the ability to do whatever you want to do, the best you can do it to be the best you can be, to work in your own self-interest, which is not selfishness. And so if you listen to this program and you are new to it, and you listen to me review the Obama takeover of the GM plant, understand it has nothing to do with a personal animus against Obama.
It’s about the fact that 62 million Americans fear, by virtue of those who voted against Obama, we love and we fear the loss of our liberty, the loss of our freedom. We fear a government tyranny. We fear any form of a dictatorship. We fear the notion that government has all the answers and will do everything necessary to solve every problem for individuals. It scares us. So all of the things that happen to be highlighted on this program and all of the comments, criticism aimed at the Obama administration, for those of you new to the program, understand, we’re all about trying to persuade people here not to give up their freedom, not to give up their liberty, not to give up their pursuit of happiness, and that’s why I cringe when I see so many people mindlessly, blamelessly, turn off the lights for a meaningless, symbolic act that will change nothing other than empower the people who want to usurp our freedom and liberty.
Hear hear.
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