People for the West -Tucson
Newsletter, April, 2020
PO Box 86868, Tucson, AZ 85754-6868
pfw-tucson@cox.net
Real environmentalism can go hand in hand with natural resource production, private property rights, and access to public lands
“May you live in interesting times” says an old Chinese curse. We are now experiencing “interesting times” brought about by the Chinese coronavirus which some claim escaped from a Chinese lab or may even be a form of bioterrorism that got out of hand. The presidential campaign and climate change have taken a back seat to this new fear. This circumstance has brought about more government control and mandates which now strain our economy and interferes with our rights and freedom.
“No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.” —Edmund Burke (1729-1797)
Here are some articles I’ve collected during March:
Rights Versus Wishes
by Walter E. Williams
Sen. Bernie Sanders said: “I believe that health care is a right of all people.” He’s not alone in that contention. That claim comes from Democrats and Republicans and liberals and conservatives. It is not just a health care right that people claim. There are “rights” to decent housing, decent food, a decent job and prescription drugs. In a free and moral society, do people have these rights? Let’s begin by asking ourselves: What is a right?
In the standard usage of the term, a “right” is something that exists simultaneously among people. In the case of our U.S. Constitutional decree, we have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Our individual right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness imposes no obligation upon another other than the duty of noninterference.
As such, a right imposes no obligation on another. For example, the right to free speech is something we all possess simultaneously. My right to free speech imposes no obligation upon another except that of noninterference. Similarly, I have a right to travel freely. Again, that right imposes no obligation upon another except that of noninterference.
Sanders’ claim that health care is a right does impose obligations upon others. We see that by recognizing that there is no Santa Claus or tooth fairy who gives resources to government to pay for medical services. Moreover, the money does not come from congressmen and state legislators reaching into their own pockets to pay for the service. That means that in order for government to provide medical services to someone who cannot afford it, it must use intimidation, threats and coercion to take the earnings of another American to provide that service.
Let’s apply this bogus concept of rights to my right to speak and travel freely. In the case of my right to free speech, it might impose obligations on others to supply me with an auditorium, microphone and audience. It may require newspapers or television stations to allow me to use their property to express my views. My right to travel freely might require that others provide me with resources to purchase airplane tickets and hotel accommodations. What if I were to demand that others make sacrifices so that I can exercise my free speech and travel rights, I suspect that most Americans would say, “Williams, you have rights to free speech and you have a right to travel freely, but I’m not obligated to pay for them!”
A moral vision of rights does not mean that we should not help our fellow man in need. It means that helping with health care needs to be voluntary (i.e., free market decisions or voluntary donations to charities that provide health care.) The government’s role in health care is to protect this individual right to choose. As Senator Rand Paul was brave enough to say, “The basic assumption that you have a right to get something from somebody else means you have to endorse the concept of theft.”
Statists go further to claim that people have a “right” to housing, to a job, to an education, to an affordable wage. These so-called rights impose burdens on others in the form of involuntary servitude. If one person has a right to something he did not earn, it means that another person does not have a right to something he did earn.
The provision by the U.S. Congress of a so-called right to health care should offend any sense of moral decency. If you’re a Christian or a Jew, you should be against the notion of one American living at the expense of another. When God gave Moses the Eighth Commandment — “Thou shalt not steal” — I am sure that He did not mean, “Thou shalt not steal — unless there is a majority vote in the U.S. Congress.”
Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. (Source) ☼
Corona virus is not a climate event
By Joe Bastardi, Cfact
As predictable as the morning sunrise, we are hearing that the spread of the Corona Virus is enhanced by “climate change” No proof of that for one, and for two it runs counter to the fact that life thrived in warmer times.
Over the years, after studying all this, I have made no secret that I believe the climate change agenda is a smokescreen for other agendas. One of them is driven by the idea that there are too many people on the planet, using too much of the resources of the planet, This apparently flies in the face of the “be fruitful and multiply” which of course does not say be stupid and trash the planet, but then again does not imply that there is a set limit on what man can do with free will and a head turned toward the higher calling, something beyond the state. But when I look at some of the statements by prominent people that are on the climate change bandwagon, I realize there is a link to population control. And there is that word, control, the idea that one person knows better than another person what is good for the society as a whole. Like it or not, Socialism/Marxism is not at all about equality for all but is a top-down form of government control where the vast majority of the people do not have a chance to rise into the upper echelon unless pledging loyalty to that doctrine. In essence the destruction of free will, which if you believe in God the way I do, runs counter to God’s gift of free will. (Read more) ☼
Climate at a glance
The Heartland Institute has a new website called Climate at a Glance (https://climateataglance.com/)
This website condenses frequently argued climate issues into one- or two-page “at-a-glance” summaries. Bullet-points at the top provide quick, memorable information. Short summaries of a paragraph or two provide additional depth. Many summaries include powerful visual graphs. Embedded links verify the information. The menu above groups the summaries together by category. Heartland will regularly add new summaries.
Heartland has also launched another new website: Climate Realism
Nearly every day, the establishment media promotes new climate propaganda themes designed to scare people into believing a climate crisis is at hand. When the Climate Scare goes unrebutted, people are likely to believe by default that the propaganda is true. Yet most of the media’s climate propaganda is misleading or outright false. ClimateRealism.com will address and debunk the media’s most prominent climate-related tall tales. ☼
A ‘Nearly Zero’ Climate Sensitivity Paper Finds A 16-Fold CO2 Increase Cools Earth Below Pre-Industrial Temperatures
By Kenneth Richard
In yet another new paper (Drotos et al., 2020), scientists determine the climate sensitivity to CO2 is “practically zero” the more the concentration rises. A ~4450 ppm CO2 concentration has cooler climates than observed in the pre-industrial (278 ppm) era. Why? A self-amplifying cloud feedback mechanism cools the Earth by magnitudes “as large as 10 K” upon warming saturation.
Earlier this year, scientists published a paper using mesocosms (controlled outdoor experiments) to demonstrate CO2 concentrations of 3200, 7500, and 16,900 ppm are associated with colder temperatures than in outdoor environments with 480 ppm CO2 concentrations. (Read more) ☼
Eliminate fossil fuels now — U.S. “MAGICC” model says why bother?
By Collister Johnson
The climate alarmist community loves computer models, especially those that predict, with certainty, that the Earth will become uninhabitable by as early as 2050. This of course, unless human production of CO2 is drastically reduced, if not eliminated altogether. A sixteen year old Swedish schoolgirl, a former Vice President of the United States, a member of the British Royal Family, a freshman member of Congress and others actually believe that Armageddon will happen much earlier than 2050. But we will ignore celebrity Apocalyptics for the moment and focus this discussion on the reliance by Alarmists on computer models.
These models are represented by what the UN calls General Circulation Models (GCMs). There are more than 100 of them, mostly produced in the early 1980s. So far, they have proven to be spectacularly wrong, drastically over estimating the increase in observed global temperaratures. Almost as soon as they were created, these predictions ran afoul of satellite data, which replaced land-based thermometers that for years had been “adjusted “ (fudged) by scientists at NOAA and other official organizations in order to support the man-made global warming narrative.
Just as with the General Circulation Models, the UN and the US Government have developed a computer model which is designed to actually tell us the answer. The name of this model is the Model for the Assessment of Greenhouse Gas Induced Climate Change – MAGICC. (We’re not making this up.) MAGICC was developed by a US Government agency called NCAR – the National Center for Atmospheric Research – the same agency which provides the IPCC with the computer models that it uses to support the GCMs. Located in Bethesda, MD, NCAR is the go-to agency for the US Government and IPCC climate modelers to determine the impact of CO2 on world climate.
No matter what assumptions are used for the amount of or increase in fossil fuel generated CO2 in the US, from small amounts to very large ones, complete elimination of all fossil fuels in the US immediately would only restrict any increase in world temperature by less than one tenth of one degree Celsius by 2050, and by less than one fifth of one degree Celsius by 2100. (Read more) ☼
Regulating Greenhouse Gas Emissions: Methane – a more scientific view
Dr. Thomas P. Sheahen, Dr. James P. Wallace III & Joseph S. D’Aleo
The greenhouse effect makes this planet more hospitable. Greenhouse gas molecules in the atmosphere keep the planet warmer than it would otherwise be by re-radiating some of the energy back toward the earth – in a process called back radiation. Water vapor is by far the most important greenhouse gas.
The magnitude of CO2’s influence is now being challenged worldwide. In the U.S., regulation of methane emissions from numerous sources is currently being debated. Currently, this debate is not at all about the scientific basis for regulation, but rather totally about the costs involved with regulating various sources. However, contrary to the common assertions, the GHG temperature impact of methane is negligible. Thus, water vapor and clouds are primarily responsible for the greenhouse gas (GHG) effect – climate modelers take note.
In the real world of real air, the very few possible absorption-lines of CH4 are utterly swamped by the prominent absorption-lines of H2O at the very same wavelengths. Any photon that might be captured by CH4 has long since been captured by H2O. (Read more) ☼
25 Simple Bullet Points Proving Co2 Does Not Cause Global Warming: by a Geologist, for a Change (Dr Roger Higgs)
We urgently need to expose the ‘CO2 = pollutant’ fallacy being forced upon your children, grandchildren, nephews and nieces by schools, universities, governments and mainstream media worldwide, and to denounce it in scrupulously truthful terms easily understood by the public, including those youngsters themselves. Here are the 25 bullet points proving CO2’s innocence: (link to article)
A Sample: 5) The ‘Greenhouse Hypothesis’, on which IPCC’s belief in AGW is based, is that atmospheric gases trap heat. But this old (19th century) notion is merely an idea, not a hypothesis, because it is untestable, impossible to prove in a laboratory as no experimental container can imitate Earth’s uncontained, well-mixed atmosphere.
6) IPCC computer models are so full of assumptions as to be extremely unreliable, e.g. forecast warming for 1995 to 2015 turned out to be 2-3 times too high ! A likely reason is that the greenhouse idea is nonsense, as explained in recent publications by several scientists. See Bullet 19 for an equally drastic failure of IPCC models. See also: https://www.wnd.com/2017/07/study-blows-greenhouse-theory-out-of-the-water/
7) For about 75% of the last 550 million years, CO2 was 2 to 15 times higher than now. Evolution flourished, CO2 enabling plant photosynthesis, the basis of all life. Extinction events due to overheating by CO2 are unknown. !!
10) Supporting this sign that CO2 is a consequence, not cause, of global warming, a published study of 1980-2011 measurements showed that changes in warming rate precede changes in CO2’s growth rate, by about a year. ☼
Earth to Climate Alarmists: Warming Is Good
By Jeffrey Folks
The fact is that cold is more damaging than heat. Long, cold winters followed by cold, damp springs and summers diminish crop yields, leading to global hunger. If the Earth were a few degrees warmer, that heat would expand corn and wheat belts to the north. In terms of global food security, it is cold we should fear, not heat.
In the Little Ice Age, roughly from the 14th through the mid-19th century, global cooling limited food production, resulting in widespread hunger, disease, and economic stagnation. In northern Europe, for instance, population growth was stagnant until the 19th century, and for most people, there was little improvement in daily life until after 1800. In Britain, for example, population has soared from 10 million in 1800 to over 66 million today. That would not have been possible in a period of cooler temperatures.
Globally, 5.4 million die each year from cold-related deaths, while only 311,000 deaths are heat related. Just in the U.S., on average, 1,330 die from the cold each year, and snow and ice cause over 150,000 traffic accidents annually. Just as a matter of human comfort, heat is preferable to cold. There is a reason why tens of millions of retirees have moved to Florida and Arizona. No one retires in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. (Read more) ☼
Why And How China Secretly Supports Climate Alarmism
By Andrew L. Urban
The supreme ‘art of war’ is to subdue the enemy without fighting. —Sun Tzu, The Art of War.
Climate hysteria around the western world is perfectly aligned with China’s objective to economically subdue the west without fighting.
Climate alarmists, that army of ‘useful idiots’, share China’s objective of breaking down the economies and structures of western nations: they’re ‘all in’ with Team China.
For an expansionist and power-hungry China, climate alarmism is a powerful yet arms-length weapon. While they pay lip service to the ruling orthodoxy, their actions defy it and their secret support for it enjoys full deniability.
At the United Nations, for the purpose of setting emission-reduction targets, China self-declares as a ‘developing country’, avoiding onerous expectations. It exploits this privilege to maximum advantage.
Its ‘greenhouse’ gas emissions are rising at the fastest pace in seven years. It has plans to build 300–500 new coal-fired power stations and to open 17 new coal mines within a decade. (Read more) ☼
Cost Of ‘Net Zero’ Will Be Astronomical, New Reports Warn
From The Global Warming Policy Foundation
The cost of reaching the government’s “Net Zero” target will be astronomical for the UK economy. That’s according to analysis by two new reports published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation.
The reports find that decarbonising the electricity system and domestic housing in the next three decades will cost over £2.3 trillion pounds. The final bill will surpass £3 trillion, or £100,000 per household, once the cost of decarbonising major emitting sectors like manufacturing, transport and agriculture are included. (Read more) See also: The Death Of Science Is The Real Climate Emergency ☼
The Carbon Capture Con
By Viv Forbes
Carbon-capture-and-storage “(CCS)” tops the list of silly schemes “to reduce man-made global warming.” The idea is to capture carbon dioxide from power stations and cement plants, separate it, compress it, pump it long distances and force it underground, hoping it will never escape. Smart engineers with unlimited money could do all this. But only green zealots would support the sacrifice of billions of dollars and scads of energy to bury this harmless, invisible, life-supporting gas in the hope of appeasing the global warming gods. The quantities of gases that CCS would need to handle are enormous and capital and operating costs will be horrendous. (Read more)
See also: Wait ’til you see these numbers on Carbon Capture and Storage ☼
Renewable Subsidies Leading America Toward European-Style Energy Poverty
By Bill Peacock, RealClearEnergy
Recent headlines have touted the record $55 billion renewable sector investments last year.
Yet these headlines hide the fact that the renewable energy industry has been engaged in a world-class scam for more than 20 years. If we don’t do something about it, it won’t be long before Americans find themselves living in European-style energy poverty.
Built on promises of clean, affordable, and reliable energy that can’t be kept, today’s renewable energy industry would not otherwise exist but for subsidies—a burden placed on the backs taxpayers and consumers. At the same time, the traditional energy sources that have helped make the United States one of the most prosperous nations in history are rapidly being forced out of the marketplace.
To keep the renewable industry afloat, Americans will pony up more than $120 billion from 2006 through 2029 in the form of direct subsidies, tax credits, and mandates for generation and transmission. Rather than benefit taxpayers, these funds will primarily boost the profits of multi-billion-dollar generators and Wall Street bankers who invested the $55 billion last year, along with providing for generous donations to “non-profit” advocates of renewables in capitols across the country (who then lobby for even more subsidies). (Read more) ☼
Research & Commentary: Studies Show Fracking Ban Would Wreak Havoc on U.S. Economy
By Tim Benson
A new study from the American Petroleum Institute (API), with modeling data provided by the consulting firm OnLocation, details how a nationwide ban on hydraulic fracturing (colloquially known as “fracking”) could trigger a recession, would seriously damage U.S. economic and industrial output, considerably increase household energy costs, and make life much harder and costlier for American farmers.
In America’s Progress at Risk: An Economic Analysis of a Ban on Fracking and Federal Leasing for Natural Gas and Oil Development, API argues that a fracking ban would lead to a cumulative loss in gross domestic product (GDP) of $7.1 trillion by 2030, including $1.2 trillion in 2022 alone. Per capita GDP would also decline by $3,500 in 2022, with an annual average decline of $1,950 through 2030. Annual household income would also decline by $5,040.
In 2022 alone, 7.5 million jobs would be lost (almost 5 percent of the U.S. total workforce), while annual job losses would average roughly 3.8 million through 2030. More than 3.6 million jobs would be lost in five states alone in 2022: 1.103 million in Texas, 765,000 in California, 711,000 in Florida, 551,000 in Pennsylvania, and 500,000 in Ohio. States with the highest job losses as a share of overall employment would be North Dakota (76,000), Oklahoma (319,000), New Mexico (149,000), Wyoming (48,000), Louisiana (321,000), West Virginia (109,000), Kansas (208,000), and Colorado (353,000). (Read more) This article goes on to cite 17 other studies showing that a fracking ban is very bad news. ☼
Calls Grow To End ‘Plastic Bag Bans’ To Help Stem Pandemic
by Jarrett Stepman, The Daily Signal
Mindless virtue signaling doesn’t fare well in a real crisis. As the nation and the world confronts a deadly pandemic, and citizens, businesses, and governments do all they can to tamp down the spread of the coronavirus, some useless measures instituted in less turbulent times will go by the wayside. One of these useless measures is plastic bag bans, which have been proliferating in recent years with the aid of environmentalist activists. With identified community transmission, it is important that shoppers keep their reusable bags at home given the potential risk to baggers, grocers, and customers. (Read more)
See also: Don’t recycle plastic – burn it or bury it and Plastic bags and global warming ☼
Points to Ponder:
“In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus. There is no such thing as consensus science. If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus. Period.” – Michael Crichton
“There must be no barriers to freedom of inquiry… There is no place for dogma in science… And we know that as long as men are free to ask what they must, free to say what they think, free to think what they will, freedom can never be lost, and science can never regress.” – J. Robert Oppenheimer
“It is an unquestionable truth, that the body of the people in every country desire sincerely its prosperity. But it is equally unquestionable that they do not possess the discernment and stability necessary for systematic government. To deny that they are frequently led into the grossest of errors, by misinformation and passion, would be a flattery which their own good sense must despise.” —Alexander Hamilton (1788)
“The welfare state is not really about the welfare of the masses. It is about the egos of the elites.” —Thomas Sowell
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Our Mission
1) Support private property rights.
2) Support multiple use management of federal lands for agriculture, livestock grazing, mining, oil and gas production, recreation, timber harvesting and water development activities.
3) Support a balance of environmental responsibility and economic benefit for all Americans by urging that environmental policy be based on good science and sound economic principles.
Newsletters can be viewed online on Jonathan’s Wryheat Blog:
https://wryheat.wordpress.com/
See my essay on climate change:
https://wryheat.wordpress.com/climate-in-perspective/
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
People for the West – Tucson, Inc. is an Arizona tax-exempt, 501(c)(3) corporation. Newsletter subscriptions are free.
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, any copyrighted material herein is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only.
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