People for the West -Tucson
PO Box 86868, Tucson, AZ 85754-6868 pfw-tucson@cox.net
Newsletter, October, 2015
The Bankruptcy of Climate Science
by Jonathan DuHamel
As I noted in the September issue of this newsletter, global warming is now a $1.5 trillion a year industry. $1.5 trillion a year will buy a whole lot of scientists, not just in the United States but around the world. With that kind of money at stake, it is little wonder that global warming hysterics would rather “adjust” past temperature data than admit that their models are wrong, and have no skill at predicting future climate.
Now, promoters of the carbon-dioxide-caused global warming myth want to protect their cash cow by prosecuting any who dare question the orthodoxy.
Twenty scientists wrote a letter to President Obama proposing that any companies or individuals skeptical of the government’s global warming policy be criminally prosecuted under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO). Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) has also proposed to use RICO laws against climate change skeptics and fossil fuel companies. And remember back in February, Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-AZ, attempted a McCarthyite witch hunt against climate scientists he found disagreeable.
This shows that promoters of carbon-dioxide-caused global warming cannot come up with any physical evidence to support their position so instead they devolve to a Spanish Inquisition-type tactic.
Dr. Tim Ball writes of this:
Promoters of ‘official’ climate, which is defined as the works of the UN IPCC, are desperate. Twenty of them, including Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) members like Kevin Trenberth, asked the Obama administration to file Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) charges against climate deniers. All but two of the twenty are at Universities, and the other two are career bureaucrats associated with the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). They all live off the public purse, but somehow in the weird world of climate science that is untainted money.
The RICO charge is a particularly nasty form of ad hominem attack. By applying it in the global warming case, it tries to make criminals out of people doing their job properly. The real criminal part of their enterprise is that skeptics are doing what scientists are supposed to do, that is disproving the AGW hypothesis.
The attack is not surprising because the IPCC created a monster and were driven to keep it alive. Once you create the monster it becomes uncontrollable and even if it becomes a threat to society, the creator will resist its destruction; worse, you have to keep feeding the monster and will take extreme measures if necessary. This inevitability is the moral message of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
The natural tendency of any bureaucracy is to perpetuate its existence. This includes expanding the scope and scale of the work, promoting speculative dangers and threats to society, emphasizing the urgency to resolve the problem, and involving as many other public and private agencies as possible.
If an honest man is wrong, after demonstrating that he is wrong, he either stops being wrong or he stops being honest. Read full post
Dr. Judith Curry has a post about this situation in which she has a copy of the letter and a list of the RICO 20. Curry chastises these scientists:
I will try to clarify here what you have done, and why it is wrong.
First, you have been duped by the Merchants of Doubt book/movie. See my previous blog post Bankruptcy of the ‘merchants of doubt’ meme, which includes reviews by other social scientists.
Second, the consensus on human caused climate change is not as overwhelming as you seem to think. See my recent blog post
The conceits of consensus, which includes a detailed analysis of an extensive survey of climate scientists (not to mention extensive critiques of the Cook et al. analysis).
Third, the source of funding is not the only bias in research, and the greatest bias does not necessarily come from industry funding.
Fourth, scientists disagree about the causes of climate change for the following reasons:
Insufficient observational evidence
Disagreement about the value of different classes of evidence (e.g. models)
Disagreement about the appropriate logical framework for linking and assessing the evidence
Assessments of areas of ambiguity and ignorance
Belief polarization as a result of politicization of the science
The biggest disagreement however is about whether warming is ‘dangerous’ (values) and whether we can/should do something about it (politics). Why do you think your opinion, as scientists, matters on values and politics?
Fifth, what you have done with this letter is advocacy. This is a very dicey role for a scientist to play, fraught with reputational and ethical land mines.
What you have done with your letter is the worst kind of irresponsible advocacy, which is to attempt to silence scientists that disagree with you by invoking RICO. It is bad enough that politicians such as Whitehouse and Grijalva are playing this sort of political game with science and scientists, but I regard it as highly unethical for scientists to support defeating scientists with whom you disagree by such methods. Since I was one of the scientists called out in Grijalva’s witch hunts, I can only infer that I am one of the scientists you are seeking to silence.
It seems also, that at least one of the “RICO 20” is not so pristine himself:
“Leader of 20 scientist effort to prosecute climate skeptics under RICO revealed as ‘Climate Profiteer’! From 2012-2014, the Leader of RICO 20 climate scientists paid himself and his wife $1.5 million from government climate grants for part-time work. George Mason University Professor Jagadish Shukla a Lead Author with the UN IPCC, reportedly made lavish profits off the global warming industry while accusing climate skeptics of deceiving the public. Shukla is leader of 20 scientists who are demanding RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) charges be used against skeptics for disagreeing with their view on climate change.” Source
The “RICO 20” named:
Jagadish Shukla, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA
Edward Maibach, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA
Paul Dirmeyer, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA
Barry Klinger, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA
Paul Schopf, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA
David Straus, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA
Edward Sarachik, University of Washington, Seattle, WA
Michael Wallace, University of Washington, Seattle, WA
Alan Robock, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ
Eugenia Kalnay, University of Maryland, College Park, MD
William Lau, University of Maryland, College Park, MD
Kevin Trenberth, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO
T.N. Krishnamurti, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL
Vasu Misra, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL
Ben Kirtman, University of Miami, Miami, FL
Robert Dickinson, University of Texas, Austin, TX
Michela Biasutti, Earth Institute, Columbia University, New York, NY
Mark Cane, Columbia University, New York, NY
Lisa Goddard, Earth Institute, Columbia University, New York, NY
Alan Betts, Atmospheric Research, Pittsford, VT
NOAA Meteorologist: Politics and Money Drive Global Warming Hysteria
by John Hinderaker
David Dilley has been a meteorologist for 40 years, 20 of which he spent with NOAA. He writes about how government money and political pressure have distorted climate research:
For over 15 years an inordinate proportion of government and corporate research grants have been awarded to universities for a single specific purpose: to prove human activities and the burning of fossil fuels are the main driving mechanisms causing global warming.
Unfortunately, agendas by strong arm politics and the suppression of contrary views have become the primary tools used to manipulate the media, local and state governments (and in turn the general public) into believing what they want us to believe.
Many former research department heads, such as Dr. Reid Bryson (known as the Father of Climatology), openly state that research grants are driven by politics, and in order to receive a government grant you have to play the game. Topics for grants go with the political wind.
In the mid 1990s government grants were typically advertised in such a way to indicate that conclusions should show a connection to human activity as the cause for global warming. The result: most of the research published in journals became one-sided and this became the primary information tool for media outlets.
According to some university researchers who were former heads of their departments, if a university even mentioned natural cycles, they were either denied future grants, or lost grants. And it is common knowledge that United States government employees within NOAA were cautioned not to talk about natural cycles. It is well known that most university research departments live or die via the grant system. Read more
Approximately 66% of global surface temperature data consists of estimated values
by John Goetz
The monthly GHCN V3 (Global Historical Climate Network) temperature record that is used by GISS (Goddard Institute for Space Studies) undergoes an adjustment process after quality-control checks are done.
The adjustments are somewhat controversial, because they take presumably raw and accurate data, run it through one or more mathematical models, and produce an estimate of what the temperature might have been given a set of conditions. For example, the time of observation adjustment (TOB) takes a raw data point at, say 7am, and produces an estimate of what the temperature might have been at midnight. The skill of that model is nearly impossible to determine on a monthly basis, but it is unlikely to be consistently producing a result that is accurate to the 1/100th degree that is stored in the record.
Overall, from 1880 to the present, approximately 66% of the temperature data in the adjusted GHCN temperature data consists of estimated values produced by adjustment models, while 34% of the data are raw values retained from direct measurements. The rural split is 60% estimated, 40% retained. The non-rural split is 68% estimated, 32% retained. Total non-rural measurements outpace rural measurements by a factor of 3x.
The estimates produced by NOAA for the GHNC data introduce a warming trend of approximately a quarter degree C per century. Those estimates are produced at a slightly higher rate for non-rural stations than rural stations over most of the record. During the first 60 years of the record measurements were estimated at a rate of about 75%, with the rate gradually dropping to 40% in the early 1990s, followed by a brief spike in the rate before resuming the drop to its present level.
Approximately 7% of the raw data is discarded. If this data were included as-is in the final record it would likely introduce a warming component from 1880 to 1950, followed by a cooling component from 1951 to the present. Read full post
The Three Big Climate Model Failures
by Jo Nova
First, no conventional model predicted the (now 18-year) pause in warming. We’ve had increasing carbon dioxide (a third of all human carbon emissions in history have occurred since 1998) but not the commensurate rise in global temperature predicted by the IPCC (it has not warmed significantly since the late 1990s). The First Assessment Report of the IPCC in 1990 predicted warming of 0.2 to 0.5 °C per decade for the ensuing decades, whereas it warmed at most 0.17°C per decade since then (all during the 1990s) — this is not a matter of interpretation or ambiguity; it is simply a matter of downloading any of the five main global temperature series.
Second, all mainstream climate models predict a “hotspot”, a warming in the upper troposphere (about 10 km or 6 miles up, in the tropics) caused by an ascending water vapor emissions layer, during periods of warming such as the 1980s and 1990s. This is crucial, because two thirds of their predicted warming is from water vapor; only one third is directly due to increasing carbon dioxide. So no hotspot means not much cause for alarm. Our only suitable instruments for detecting the hotspot are weather balloons—thirty million of them since the 1950s, released from hundreds of locations, twice a day. They show no hotspot, and indicate that the water vapor emissions layer descended slightly instead. Satellites are unsuitable because they intrinsically aggregate information from several vertical kilometers into each data point, but the predicted ascent is only tens of meters.
Third,changes in temperature did not follow changes in carbon dioxide over the last half million years, as predicted by climate scientists in the 1990s, but rather the other way around. This is also significant because this fact was well known and universally acknowledged by 2003, yet Al Gore made his movie two years later in 2005, where he presented the ice cores as his only evidence that carbon caused temperature. Gore introduced this segment of his movie with some lawyerly weasel words. Source
Below are seven irrefutable facts about climate change that are ignored because they do not fit into the alarmists’ scare tactics. These facts are not disputed. By Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) Source
1. For the past 18 years, weather satellites have not measured a global increase in temperatures although carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere has increased over that same period. Weather satellites are the most advanced instruments for measuring global temperatures. The fact that these satellites have not detected a measurable temperature increase despite an increased concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere calls into question the correlation climate change alarmists preach between carbon emissions and temperature.
2. According to the EPA’s own data, U.S. carbon emissions have decreased nine percent since 2005. These carbon reductions have occurred as a result of technological advancements and free market forces, which will continue. This raises the question of whether burdensome regulations are necessary.
3. The natural cycle of global temperatures has resulted in both higher and lower temperatures over the past 1,000 years than exist today. These temperature fluctuations occurred before significant fossil energy use. So temperatures the Earth is experiencing now have been seen before.
4. If implemented, the Obama administration’s Climate Action Plan would reduce global temperatures by only 0.01, or one one-hundredth of a degree Celsius. President Obama’s former deputy secretary for Fossil Energy at the Department of Energy, Charles McConnell, said that the EPA’s carbon rules will have only a minor impact on global climate change. Yet regulations will cost billions of dollars and jeopardize thousands of jobs.
5. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has reported that there is little or no connection between extreme weather and climate change. According to a 2012 report, the IPCC stated that there is “high agreement” that long-term trends in weather disasters “have not been attributed to … climate change.” Climate change alarmists point toward hurricanes, tornadoes and other global weather disasters as a proof that man-made carbon emissions are hurting our planet. However, as the IPCC report stated, the opposite is true. There is scientific agreement that weather disasters are not caused by climate change, despite President Obama repeatedly trying to connect the two.
6. Population growth, especially in the developing world, will account for even more global carbon emissions. Carbon emissions from developing countries are projected to increase by over 125 percent by 2040. And world population is expected to surge by over 2 billion people by 2050, an increase of more than 30 percent. Yet few climate scientists acknowledge the potential impact of population growth on carbon emissions.
7. Carbon dioxide accounts for a very small part of the Earth’s overall atmosphere and those levels have fluctuated throughout the Earth’s history. Carbon dioxide currently accounts for only .038 percent of our planet’s atmosphere. And human-made carbon dioxide only makes up about 3 percent of that. Put another way, if all the gases in the atmosphere were represented by the length of a football field, only the last 1/10 of an inch would be carbon emissions caused by humans. It’s hard to believe that such a small amount would supposedly have such huge consequences.
The EPA and other government agencies too often fail to present all the facts. Their agenda comes first, accuracy comes second. Climate change has many explanations — and unanswered questions. The American people need good science, not science fiction promoted by alarmists.
A clear power grab on climate
By David W. Kreutzer, The Heritage Foundation
Recently President Obama visited Alaska to scare up support for his climate agenda. But it’s becoming clear that this agenda is not, in fact, about climate. Instead, it’s the typical Washington story of power and money – other people’s money.
Alaska provided the apparent novelty of ice that melts in the summer, which was used as a theatrical prop for the president. His photo op in front of the retreating Exit Glacier glossed over another bit of reality: The Exit Glacier started retreating more than 100 years before the start of significant man-made carbon dioxide emissions.
In a bit of bonus irony, the climate research center at the University of Alaska’s data show there has been no warming trend in Alaska since 1977. In fact, the trend is slightly negative. Read more
Updated NASA Data: Global Warming Not Causing Any Polar Ice Retreat
by James Taylor
Updated data from NASA satellite instruments reveal the Earth’s polar ice caps have not receded at all since the satellite instruments began measuring the ice caps in 1979. Since the end of 2012, moreover, total polar ice extent has largely remained above the post-1979 average. The updated data contradict one of the most frequently asserted global warming claims – that global warming is causing the polar ice caps to recede.
The timing of the 1979 NASA satellite instrument launch could not have been better for global warming alarmists. The late 1970s marked the end of a 30-year cooling trend. As a result, the polar ice caps were quite likely more extensive than they had been since at least the 1920s. Nevertheless, this abnormally extensive 1979 polar ice extent would appear to be the “normal” baseline when comparing post-1979 polar ice extent.
Updated NASA satellite data show the polar ice caps remained at approximately their 1979 extent until the middle of the last decade. Beginning in 2005, however, polar ice modestly receded for several years. By 2012, polar sea ice had receded by approximately 10 percent from 1979 measurements. (Total polar ice area – factoring in both sea and land ice – had receded by much less than 10 percent, but alarmists focused on the sea ice loss as “proof” of a global warming crisis.) Read more
Summer 2015 Was One Of The Least Hot On Record In The US
Meteorological summer is over. For the third year in a row, the number of 100 degree readings and their areal extent were near record lows in the US.
The frequency of 100 degree days in the US is down by 40% over the last century. Less than 3% of readings were over 100F, compared to more than 15% in 1936. See graphs and read more
ENERGY
Environmental Disaster: The Renewable Fuel Standard
by Marlo Lewis
Summary: The bipartisan disaster called the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) has all the usual characteristics of bureaucratic central planning: It features unrealistic (actually, impossible) goals, hidden taxes and regulatory burdens, and costly “unintended” consequences, and it’s carried out by anonymous, unelected, unaccountable government officials. Meanwhile, RFS reduces the mileage of motor vehicles, funnels money from consumers to well-connected “crony capitalists,” raises the price of food for the world’s poor, destroys rain forest and wetlands, and expands a dead zone the size of Connecticut in the Gulf of Mexico. It was supposed to make us more energy independent. It was supposed to protect the environment, yet it is responsible for converting millions of acres of wetlands and wildlife habitat to corn plantations. Even the “greens” have turned against it. And, like many a horror-movie villain, it’s immortal. … Or is it? Read more
Energy Policy Agenda for the Next Administration and Congress
By Nicolas Loris, Heritage Foundation
Free markets will produce the energy America needs to power its economy. Government policies that allow markets to operate freely will expand opportunity for all and show favoritism to none. There is no role for government central planning, government subsidies for the favored few, or government over regulation that stifles economic activity. The next Administration and Congress should open access to natural resource development, encourage fossil fuel exports, cut tariffs on energy technology, eliminate subsidies, devolve commercial activities to the private sector, and eliminate costly, job-killing regulations that have little benefit. Read more or print PDF
US Green Energy Subsidies ‘Unfair and Ineffective’, Study Finds
by Adam Creighton, The Australian
A University of California study has slammed the fairness, efficiency and effectiveness of billions of dollars of so-called green energy subsidies provided by the US government.
The US federal government has paid $US18.1 billion in tax credits since 2006 aimed at encouraging American households to install energy-efficient windows, air conditioning schemes, rooftop solar in their homes and buy electric and other hybrid vehicles.
The study has found the bottom 60 per cent US households by income received about 10 per cent of the value of the four main ‘green energy’ tax credits available, while the top 20 per cent (those with annual incomes above $US75,000) extracted 60 per cent of the benefit.
“The most extreme [example] is the program aimed at electric vehicles, where the top income quintile received about 90 per cent of all credits,” concluded Severin Borenstien and Lucas Davis, from the University of California, Berkeley.
The biggest credit, the Non-Business Energy Property Credit, permits non-refundable tax credits of up to $US1500 and has cost $US13.7 billion since 2006. Read more Full paper
At Last: Britain Signals End Of Solar Subsidies
Britain’s solar boom is over after ministers announced they would offer virtually no subsidies for people to install panels on their homes. In a surprise move, ministers on Thursday said that they plan to slash the amount of money given to families who put solar panels on their homes. Under the new proposals, the amount paid to homeowners under the “feed-in tariff” from next year will fall by nearly 90 per cent. Critics say the scheme, which was heavily pushed by energy firms, enables wealthy families to rake in subsidies paid for by many who are already struggling with their energy bills. –Peter Dominiczak, The Daily Telegraph,
Methane Madness: Science Does Not Support White House Policy
By S. Fred Singer
The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on 18 August 2015 proposed regulations to reduce emissions of methane. These regulations would be the first to directly restrict methane emissions by the oil and gas industry; they build on a 2012 rule that sought to curb volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from hydraulic fracturing (fracking) to extract natural gas. Combined, the two regulations could reduce the oil and gas sector’s methane emissions by up to 30% by 2025, compared with 2012 levels, EPA says.
The proposed EPA regs are part of a larger effort by the White House to reduce national methane emissions by 40–45% by 2025. [See go.nature.com/o6uzlj for more detail.] But methane has only negligible influence on climate — contrary to popular belief and contrary to the claims of the IPCC, the UN’s climate science panel. Basic physics does not support White House policies to control methane emissions. Read more
Your Government at work:
Bureau of Land Management set to close 600 miles of Colorado roads
by Marjorie Haun
Despite a long process involving collaboration between local officials the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in Western Colorado, the federal land agency is proceeding with the closure of roads that have been traveled for 50 or more years. The road closures comprise a portion of the BLM’s Resource Management Plan (RMP) for Mesa County, of which, 73 percent is controlled by the federal government and its agencies.
According to CRS 43-2-201, closures of roads or public highways by any governing body other than “a municipality or county” are illegal. That clause prohibits federal officers from closing any route. According to Colorado law, only the county has the right to do what the BLM has done and is attempting to do in Mesa County.
But federal law may also prohibit the BLM’s road closures as well. Revised Statute (RS) 2477 was devised by the United States Congress in 1866 to govern roads, routes and rights-of-way in western states. RS 2477 placed all decisions regarding roads on public lands within the jurisdictions of counties and states. Although the Federal Land Policy Management Act of 1976 (FLPMA), repealed RS 2477, the language within the new act served to “grandfather” in RS 2477. Read more
EPA’s power grab, Water rule beyond its authority
By Rick Crawford and Randy Veach
In the 11th hour of a court dispute, Arkansas landowners were granted a temporary reprieve from an unprecedented expansion of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) jurisdiction, the Waters of the U.S. rule (WOTUS).
This new rule, advertised as a harmless effort to keep our water clean, actually implements the most restrictive land-use requirements imposed in decades.
While the promotion of clean water is an important government responsibility under the Clean Water Act, this rule goes far beyond a reasonable attempt to monitor and preserve clean water. Despite Supreme Court rulings that suggest the EPA is beyond its regulatory purview and without any directive from Congress, the WOTUS rule extends the agency’s authority to include small rivers, streams, ponds, and even ditches and low-lying land.
To make matters worse, in its zeal to pass WOTUS regardless of public opinion, the EPA actually began manufacturing support for the rule in an unprecedented and illegal grass-roots lobbying campaign using social media. The drive, meant to combat the negative comments the agency had received against WOTUS, increased artificial support that has since been used as proof of the rule’s popularity.
The most essential and democratic component of the rulemaking–the public notice and comment process–was abused and corrupted in a way that drowned out opposition to help justify the agency’s actions. Rulemaking by unelected agency officials should take into account the whole view from the affected public–not just its own and that of its political allies. Read more
California to Register Illegals to Vote
by Dave Jolly
California has more eligible voters than any other state and thus the most electoral votes than any other state with 55. Texas is a distant second with 38 electoral votes. There are a total of 538 electoral votes so any presidential candidate that carries California in an election automatically garnishes 25% of the needed electoral votes to secure the White House.
California officials claim that at least a third of eligible voters are not registered to vote and they are set on changing that. Both branches of the California legislature passed bills to allow automatic voter registration starting January 1, 2016. If signed into law, the bills would allow any adult of voting age who obtains or renews a state driver’s license or obtains a state identification card or who fills out a change of address form with the Department of Motor Vehicles to be automatically registered to vote. If someone doesn’t want to be registered to vote, they would have to decline the automatic registration. Read more
Forest management, wildfires and climate change
Climate change doesn’t cause wildfires so much as wildfires release more greenhouse gases that many believe cause climate change.
As firefighters struggle against the deadly plague of wildfires that has scorched the West this year, politicians are chiming in with their theories about what causes them.
California Gov. Jerry Brown thinks climate change is to blame. Other politicians agree, saying it caused the drought that has made the region more vulnerable to wildfires.
While drought certainly has contributed to the wildfire nightmare, other causes have played a larger role. The poor management of federal land, which has allowed forests to become overgrown and bulging with fuel for fires, is the primary cause of the increasing number of large wildfires. Capital Press
MISCELLANY
Around the World in 80 days unless you use a solar plane
Jules Verne’s fictional characters Phileas Fogg and his valet Passepartout were able to complete their balloon trip around the world in just 80 days – and that in a balloon back in the 19th century! Today we find ourselves in the 21st century and now around-the-world trips with the “latest pioneering technology” are taking some 500 days. The Solar Impulse 2 plane was launched from Abu Dhabi, amid much media fanfare, on March 9 this year. Today, almost 200 days later involving 8 legs, it is now stuck in Hawaii; the solar contraption has yet to even reach the halfway point of it’s planned around the world journey. And remember, this so-called “pioneering solo flight” in reality involved the burning of tens of thousands of liters of fossil fuels because an entire support crew had to be flown along in a fossil fuel powered jet. Read more
Environmentally Correct Crony-Capitalism
Examples abound of the incredible waste of taxpayer money to finance the environmental utopia sought by few: Ivanpah Solar Power Facility received $1.6 billion in grants, tax incentives, etc., towards the total cost of $2.2 billion. It generates about 40 percent of design output due to unexpected and unanticipated cloudy and overcast days They forgot to consider cloudy days?
It uses so much gas to fire the boiler that it cannot qualify as a renewable generator.
Google, an investor, concluded: “renewable energy technologies simply won’t work: we need a fundamentally different approach; Suggest a disruptive fusion technology….”
Solyndra Solar Panels received $27 million in taxpayer grants, investments and incentives. Result—bankrupt and we received none of the product. The government lent the support because no private lenders thought it a sound investment.
Hundreds of millions of dollars were awarded to mostly large companies to comply with Round I of CARB truck regulations. How much public money is going to be tossed at companies in the new round of truck regulations to buy their silence? Read more
21,995,000 to 12,329,000: Government Employees Outnumber Manufacturing Employees 1.8 to 1
by Terence P. Jeffrey
(CNSNews.com) – Those employed by government in the United States in August of this year outnumbered those employed in the manufacturing sector by almost 1.8 to 1, according to data published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
There were 21,995,000 employed by federal, state and local government in the United States in August, according to BLS. By contrast, there were only 12,329,000 employed in the manufacturing sector. Read more
A Solution to Success
by Jeff Id
America is voluntarily shutting down its energy production after only a little more than a century since the industrial revolution. In fear of a nearly undetectable amount of warming from CO2, in the face of massive and well known benefits of this particular gas in the atmosphere, we have decided that fear of the unknown will dominate and destroy our progress.
As I write this, America is literally shutting down its primary energy production with no replacements intended. We do this on the basis of an imagined problem, which can already be proven did not happen. The problems of warming DID NOT happen, yet we are destroying – literally – the energy releasing devices which gave us freedom from poverty, sickness and oppression of numerous dictatorships. Coal powerplants have been regulated out of existence and it is under one year before demolitions begin.
There is no ‘renewable energy solution’ in existence. What is worse, there NEVER will be. We use too much power today for exaggerated science of ‘renewable energy’ to actually solve the problem. In the future we will need dramatically more energy, not less. Renewable in today’s terms means incident solar power or geothermal and our required energy needs cannot be rationally met that way. It is a pipe dream which will not exist. Nuclear can solve the problem, as can gas, oil and coal while we continue to improve our nuclear technology. Solar, wind, biofuel, geothermal, can never do it. They WILL never do it. Read full post
The Dirty Truth About ‘Organic’ — It’s Marketing Over Substance
by Henry Miller, MD
Passionate advocates of organic farming and foods resemble members of a religious cult, one founded on a “back to Nature” mentality. They are not so fundamentalist, however, that they do not make concessions to reality. For example, organic standards arbitrarily define which pesticides are acceptable, but allow “deviations” if based on “need.” Synthetic chemical pesticides are generally prohibited, although there is a lengthy list of exceptions in the Organic Foods Production Act, while most “natural” ones are permitted (and the application of pathogen-laden animal excreta as fertilizer is allowed). The decisions are made in a murky process that combines agronomy, lobbying, and fundamentalism.
Are organic foods healthier? They have never been shown to have health (or, for that matter, environmental) benefits; some studies have shown higher levels of certain anti-oxidants, but the significance of that, if any, is unknown. It may even be undesirable; recent medical research has shown that the administration of anti-oxidants blunts the strength-enhancing effects of exercise. In any case, the finding may be a statistical anomaly, because the science of statistics tell us that if you measure a large number of parameters in, say, two plants or other organisms that are identical (or even if you perform blood tests repeatedly on the same individual), purely by chance some differences will appear to be present if we define a statistically significant difference the way that scientists commonly do.
Moreover, a study published in 2012 in the Annals of Internal Medicine by researchers at Stanford University’s Center for Health Policy aggregated and analyzed data from 237 studies to determine whether organic foods are safer or healthier than non-organic foods. They concluded that fruits and vegetables that met the criteria for “organic” were on average no more nutritious than their far cheaper conventional counterparts, nor were those foods less likely to be contaminated by pathogenic bacteria like E. coli or Salmonella. Read more
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“Climatology has become a branch of politics.”- William Briggs
“In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.” -Galileo
“I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious.” —Thomas Jefferson, 1824
“Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.” – Richard Feynman
“It is an object of vast magnitude that systems of education should be adopted and pursued which may not only diffuse a knowledge of the sciences but may implant in the minds of the American youth the principles of virtue and of liberty and inspire them with just and liberal ideas of government and with an inviolable attachment to their own country.” —Noah Webster, On Education of Youth in America, 1788
The Gipper: “This is the issue of this election: Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.”
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The Constitution is the real contract with America.
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People for the West – Tucson, Inc.
PO Box 86868
Tucson, AZ 85754-6868
Jonathan DuHamel, President & Editor
Dr. John Forrester, Vice President
Lonni Lees, Associate Editor
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