Category Archives: Alarmism

Editor: Why Trump is Right About Paris Climate Accord

President Trump is going to pull out of the Paris Climate Accord tomorrow.
The elite media culture is going to completely lose their minds. International corporations who have invested in “climate change” regulations as a tool to lock out cheaper competition and innovators will display a phony panic.

UPDATE – For example, here is Apple CEO Jim Cook on the Paris Accord:

Apple products are made in China—which as part of the Paris Accord is conveniently exempt from carbon limits.

There are a few facts that you need to know.

1 – If everyone who wanted the Paris Accord actually agreed to it the result, in theory based on computer models that have never accurately predicted temperatures in real life, might affect the temperature by a tiny fraction of a degree over hundreds of years.

2 – But in reality the Paris Accord is based on junk science which is why Global Warming Alarmists have simply given up on debates with real scientists and climate realists as they always lose.

3 – Europe is already in deep violation of the Paris Accord as their CO2 production levels keep rising.

4 – But no one cares about Europe. The Paris Accord is about sticking it to the United States.

5 – Most of the world is not signed on anyways (or simply signed on and ignored it like China) so by complying with it all we are doing is hobbling our economy while others sit back and laugh at us.

6 – The Paris Accord would have required the United States to pay less productive countries direct payments because they produce less than us. The United States would be forced to subsidize third world dictators and tyrannical regimes like Venezuela who would use that money to murder political opposition etc. We are $20 trillion in debt.

7 – No matter what the media says, CO2 is not a poison or pollution. It is vital for life. Plants use it for food.

New FOIA emails show EPA in cahoots with enviro groups, giving them special access

Watts Up With That?

From The Washington Free Beacon, Lachlan Markay. Press release follows.

Internal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) emails show extensive collaboration between top agency officials and leading environmentalist groups, including overt efforts to coordinate messaging and pressure the fossil fuel industry.

The emails, obtained by the Energy and Environment Legal Institute (EELI) through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, could fuel an ongoing controversy over EPA policies that critics say are biased against traditional sources of energy.

Emails show EPA used official events to help environmentalist groups gather signatures for petitions on agency rulemaking, incorporated advance copies of letters drafted by those groups into official statements, and worked with environmentalists to publicly pressure executives of at least one energy company.

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Obama Gave Chinese Solar Producer Suntech $337 Million…Now Bankrupt

With so many of these green energy boondoggles it looks like this – Obama hands over tax-dollars to a fund raiser who is an owner in a junk “green energy company”. Said owners pay themselves in a big way, give big money to Democrats and go out of business.

As of last November (2012) there were 50 such companies. Obama Administration emails released show how green energy money was steered to Obama cronies with sham, junk bond companies.

Christine Lakatos at Green Corruption:

A jaw-dropping revelation came to light in December 2011 by the Trib Total Media, yet it was ignored by the media and even missed by those of us watching the solar world unfold.

© SunTech via Treehugger.com

China’s major solar panel companies — whose low-cost products led some American factories to close, helped create the Solyndra controversy and spawned talk of a trade war — were bankrolled in the United States by the world’s largest investment banks.

Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, USB Investment Bank and others raised $6.5 billion for seven young Chinese solar panel makers in the mid-2000s by underwriting their securities on the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq, a Tribune-Review investigation has found.

The Trib goes on, “It’s not clear how the idea of using offshore tax havens to get listed on U.S. exchanges developed. But the Trib learned through SEC reports how Chinese solar companies grabbed onto the idea.” The first was Suntech Power Holdings Co. Ltd., now the world’s largest solar company. It began operating as a Chinese company in May 2002, and by 2004 reported sales of $85.3 million…”

However, Bloomberg News reported last week, “Suntech Power Holdings Co. (STP) [was] forced to put its Chinese solar unit into bankruptcy last month, “becoming the latest casualty of a painful slump in the global solar industry,” wrote Townhall.com. But Bloomberg noted that Suntech “began that slide into insolvency in 2009 when customers linked to the founder couldn’t pay their bills and the company booked the sales as revenue anyway, regulatory filings show.”

What most don’t know is that Suntech is a tiny fraction of “Obamanomics Outsourced,” whereas his administration is responsible for steering billions in stimulus funds (and other “green” money) to foreign companies and shipping green jobs overseas. This is clearly a broken 2008 energy campaign promise, but worse, a violation on how the 2009 trillion-dollar stimulus package was sold –– to create jobs and grow the economy here in America.

Read more HERE.

National Research Council: Telling both sides “confuses children”

Once again, never does a week go buy were we do not see the most fantastic idiocy coming from the public education sector.

Even many of the authors of the now thoroughly discredited UN IPCC report on global warming, which abandoned even basic academic standards, have called out the report for what it is, the entrenched far left public education establishment is cramming it down children’s throats.

[Editor’s Note – Be sure to see the video at the following link – Lord Christopher Monckton lecture at the Heartland Institute: Global warming alarmists have lost the argument both scientifically and rhetorically.]

Via The Daily Caller:

Climate change may soon be coming to every classroom in the country.

Pending nationwide science standards will recommend that K-12 students at public schools learn about climate change to help fill a knowledge gap concerning the subject, while skepticism will be discouraged.

“Only one in five [students] feel like they’ve got a good handle on climate change from what they’ve learned in school,” Mark McCaffrey of the National Center for Science Education told NPR, adding that many teachers will also need climate change science training. “So the state of climate change education in the U.S. is abysmal.”

New science standards are being developed by the National Research Council with help from 26 states to identify science that “all K–12 students should know,” according to the website promoting the standards.

It has been almost 15 years since the last time the National Research Council and the American Association for Advancement in Science published recommendations on which states base their standards.

“There was never a debate about whether climate change would be in there,” says Heidi Schweingruber of the National Research Council. “It is a fundamental part of science, and so that’s what our work is based on, the scientific consensus.”

Schweingruber added that much consideration was put into how to teach what can be a depressing topic and not alarm students.

“We’ve heard stories of students who learn about climate change,” said McCaffrey. “Then they go home and tell their parents, and everybody’s upset because the parents are driving their kids to the soccer game, and the kids are feeling guilty about being in the

NPR notes that educators say the controversy surrounding climate change encourages many teachers to avoid the topic or show competing viewpoints — like Al Gore’s documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” against the British documentary “The Great Global Warming Swindle” — which they say just causes more confusion about the issue.

Read more HERE

New regulations create more wealth for Obama’s “green cronies”

Use junk science, arbitrary regulations, and abuse of enforcement and licensing to restrict energy at home to raise energy prices so Obama’s “green donors”, who are profiting not from the market, but from massive tax payer support, can make more money and look more “competitive”.

Marita Noon:

On Good Friday, a day fewer people would be paying attention to the headlines than on most other days, the Obama administration released news about its plans to raise the price of gasoline. Gasoline prices for the first quarter of 2013 are higher than the same time in 2012. Intentionally pushing prices up would seem stupid in the midst of a struggling economy—that is, if your goal is to help those most impacted by higher fuel and food prices, rather than boosting the bottom line for your billionaire donors.

The plans, announced Friday, call for stricter limits for sulfur in gasoline—from the current 30 parts per million to 10. (Sulfur is an important element that is found naturally in crude oil has many industrial uses.) The EPA estimates that the low-sulfur gasoline will raise the price of a gallon of gas by “less than a penny,” while industry sources say it will be closer to ten cents a gallon.

Energy analyst Robert Rapier, told me that the new regulations “will certainly make gasoline more expensive.” He said; “Note that diesel was historically less expensive than gasoline until the ultra-low sulfur diesel standard was passed. Since then, diesel has often been more expensive than gasoline. I am not saying whether or not those standards were needed, maybe they were. But the impact on cost is undeniable. I worked in a refinery when those standards were passed, and we spent a lot of capital making sure we could comply.”

Though air pollution is a worthy consideration, it is low on the public’s list of priorities, while gas prices are of utmost importance. If the public doesn’t see air pollution as a problem, and the President’s popularity has peaked, why would he put out policy that would hit the middle class the hardest? Because, despite his campaign rhetoric, he’s not “a warrior for the middle class.

One year ago, Christine Lakatos launched her blog— “The Green Corruption Files”—through which she set out to prove that “green corruption is the largest, most expensive and deceptive case of crony capitalism in American history. Stay tuned as we expose one piece of this scandal at a time.”  Last summer, Lakatos and I partnered to draw more attention to Obama’s Green-Energy Crony-Corruption Scandal. To date, I’ve written fifteen columns based on her research—this is the sixteenth.

A week ago, she posted her expose on George Soros and his profiting from his, apparent, insider information on green-energy investments. Within her post, Lakatos says: “be prepared for regulations and legislation that will, in some form or another, resemble cap-and-trade and demand additional funds to bank roll Obama’s efforts to save our planet.” Exactly one week later, the new EPA standards on gasoline were released. The standards will raise the cost of fuel—which has been the underlying goal of the Obama energy agenda: make what works more expensive so people will accept the high cost of “green energy” in the name of saving the planet. (Remember outgoing Energy Secretary Chu’s 2008 statement: “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.”)

But, as the Soros story shows, it’s not about the planet, it’s about the profit. Soros’ investment portfolio shows he invests where he can make money—both traditional and green energy (though, as you’ll see, through Obama’s green energy emphasis, he has more control over green energy investments). In a 1998, 60 Minutes interview, Soros said: “I am basically there to make money. I cannot and do not look at the social consequences of what I do.”

Continue reading HERE

Obama Administration kills 3,900 power plant jobs in Texas.

The Obama Administration has been using the EPA and the permitting process to make easy permitting for friends and campaign donors, but a GOP state like Texas gets the hand. This is the type of bnana republic abuse of power that is so typical with this administration. Welcome to Chicago.

Washington Examiner:

Chase Power, the parent company behind the $3 billion Las Brisas coal power plant in Corpus Christi, Texas, announced yesterday that it was cancelling the project.

“Chase Power … has opted to suspend efforts to further permit the facility and is seeking alternative investors as part of a plan of dissolution for the parent company,” Chase CEO Dave Freysinger told the Corpus Christi Caller-Times.

Freysinger made it very clear who was responsible for the projects death. “The (Las Brisas Energy Center) is a victim of EPA’s concerted effort to stifle solid-fuel energy facilities in the U.S., including EPA’s carbon-permitting requirements and EPA’s New Source Performance Standards for new power plants,” he said.

The Las Brisas power plant had been part of a larger Las Brisas Energy Center project planned for Corpus Christi’s Inner Harbor. Economists had projected that in the first 5 years of construction and operation the project would create as 1,300 direct and 2,600 indirect jobs. Now none of those jobs will exist.

British Meteorology Office: No Global Warming for 16 Years

The British Meteorology Office, commonly referred to as the “British Met” has been on the paranoid tip of global warming fraud and alarmism for years. After the Climategate scandal where “top” climate scientists own emails revealed that they were rigging some data-sets and hiding others to make it appear as if man made global warming was real resulted in more oversight and ethics rules. After years of false claims of doom and incorrect predictions the British Met is now admitting the truth.

UK Daily Mail:

Global warming stopped 16 years ago, reveals Met Office report quietly released… and here is the chart to prove it

  • The figures reveal that from the beginning of 1997 until August 2012 there was no discernible rise in aggregate global temperatures
  • This means that the ‘pause’ in global warming has now lasted for about the same time as the previous period when temperatures rose, 1980 to 1996
No Global Warming in 16 Years
Research: The new figures mean that the ‘pause’ in global warming has now lasted for about the same time as the previous period when temperatures rose, 1980 to 1996.

The world stopped getting warmer almost 16 years ago, according to new data released last week.

The figures, which have triggered debate among climate scientists, reveal that from the beginning of 1997 until August 2012, there was no discernible rise in aggregate global temperatures.

This means that the ‘plateau’ or ‘pause’ in global warming has now lasted for about the same time as the previous period when temperatures rose, 1980 to 1996. Before that, temperatures had been stable or declining for about 40 years.

The new data, compiled from more than 3,000 measuring points on land and sea, was issued quietly on the internet, without any media fanfare, and, until today, it has not been reported.

This stands in sharp contrast to the release of the previous figures six months ago, which went only to the end of 2010 – a very warm year.

Ending the data then means it is possible to show a slight warming trend since 1997, but 2011 and the first eight months of 2012 were much cooler, and thus this trend is erased.

Professor Phil Jones, director of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia [Editor’s Note – Jones is one of the busted Climategate scientists and had a long record of making over the top doomsday claims], last week dismissed the significance of the plateau, saying that 15 or 16 years is too short a period from which to draw conclusions.

Others disagreed. Professor Judith Curry, who is the head of the climate science department at America’s prestigious Georgia Tech university, told The Mail on Sunday that it was clear that the computer models used to predict future warming were ‘deeply flawed’.

Poll shows most people blame GOP for the “Fiscal Cliff” when much of it is due to Obamacare taxes

Where is the establishment GOP? Where is anyone in the GOP to make the case?

Where is the GOP telling people that Taxmageddon, also known as the Fiscal Cliff, is largely do to 13 new Obamacare taxes, and the Democrats desire to raise taxes not on the rich, but on the productive middle class and small business S-Corps?

Where is the GOP to lambaste all of the wasteful spending and corrupt crony green energy boondoggles?

No one in the GOP is even defending themselves much less making a fight of it (please correct us if I we are wrong).

Robert Davi
Robert Davi

Famed actor Robert Davi said recently that he believes that elements in the establishment GOP and the Democratic Leadership are in a conspiracy to bring the country down. It is nonsense like this that make him correct.

It is nonsense like this that will finally push those who care about good policy to form a new party to replace the Republican Party because its brand is damaged and it’s establishment doesn’t seem to even really believe what it preaches.

I bet many in the GOP wishes they had Newt Gingrich right about now to make the case.

Via Breitbart News:

new poll from CNN/ORC shows that President Obama remains Teflon despite the fact that he designed the upcoming fiscal cliff to speculation. Even though Obama insisted on massive defense cuts and huge tax increases as the two alternative parts of the fiscal cliff, the American public will apparently blame Republicans if the fiscal cliff isn’t stopped. A full 45% of respondents said they would blame Congressional Republicans – even though the Democrats control the Senate – while just 34% would blame President Obama.

The public, by and large, sees Republicans as obstructionist. That’s due to a combination of messaging failure on the part of the GOP — nothing new, in that they seem incapable of explaining the simple fact that low tax rates, particularly on job creators, spur economic growth and thereby raise tax revenues — and a media concerned only with saving its flailing president. The Republicans’ mixed messaging on the fiscal cliff has been astounding to watch. They signed off on the sequester, which put a fiscal gun to their heads, forcing them to choose between raising taxes partially or watching tax rates skyrocket and defense get slashed. Then they turned around and complained about the gun being put to their heads. Now, they’re standing for the principle that we need more tax revenue, but it can’t be raised by raising rates. No wonder the public is confused.

Poll numbers like this could be the reason that Republicans are looking to cave on tax increases, or ending tax deductions. 25% of the country says that the nation would undergo a crisis if we hit the fiscal cliff; 44% expect major problems. 25% say that it would cause minor problems. A full 77% of the public believes the fiscal cliff would hurt them personally.

Republicans have done such a poor job of informing the public about why taxes shouldn’t be increased that even Republicans, by a margin of 52%-44%, say they want both spending cuts and tax increases. An unbelievable 56% of Americans say they want high taxes on higher income earners, despite the fact that higher income earners pay a vastly disproportionate share of all tax revenue.

Green Corruption: Over 80% of “Green Jobs” money went to Obama donors, 50 “green” companies going under…

In a nutshell: 150 more Obama Administration emails released showing how green energy money was steered to Obama cronies with sham junk bond companies. The list of green jobs companies gone or going under grows to 50. That is your money folks.

With so many of these green energy boondoggles it looks like this: Obama gives big taxpayer money to a fund raiser who is an owner in a “green energy company”. Said owners pay themselves in a big way, give big money to Democrats and go out of business.

While the administration claims that this was all science and no politics, a slew of leaked emails show the corruption and influence peddling.

Our friends Christine Lakatos at Green Corruption and Marita Noon at Townhall  have been tracking the list of green jobs boondoggles that are going out of business after paying themselves lavishly with your money. That list went from 15, to 16, to 36  and now 50 green jobs enterprises paid for with your money that either have shut down or are about to. See that list here:

http://greencorruption.blogspot.com/2012/10/green-alert-tracking-president-obamas.html

Via the research from Lakatos and Noon, the Daily Caller is now running with this story, as is former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich:

Newt comments on the erupting “green corruption”story after he discusses the emails showing that the order to let or embassy staff die was from the White House.

Erupting indeed. Emails showing the influence peddling and corruption keep coming out.

The House Oversight Committee has released a new set of 150 emails that show how your money was steered to cronies in the name of green jobs. More on this story from Marita Noon in today’s Townhall (excerpt):

The 1705 loan guarantee program had 460 applicants, but only 7% were approved—26 projects were funded. Of those 26 projects 22 were junk-bond rated—meaning private investors wouldn’t fund them. So why did we, the taxpayers?

Our research showed that at least 90% of the projects had close ties to the White House and other high ranking Democrats. Despite the obvious connection, President Obama has repeatedly denied any involvement—preferring to blame “career bureaucrats” who could take the fall with no political consequence.

In March, Energy Secretary Steven Chu, testified that, “We looked at the loans on their own merits.” Also, back in November 2011, he said: “I am aware of no communication from White House to Department of Energy saying to make the loan or to restructure.”

Just last week, on October 26, President Obama affirmed Chu’s position when he said: “Decisions made in the loan program office are decisions, by the way, that are made by the Department of Energy, they have nothing to do with politics.”

However, late Wednesday, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform released a new report of “over 150 emails that contradict statements by the President, Secretary Chu, and White House and DOE officials.” The emails reveal a series of questionable practices, including coercion, cronyism and, cover ups.

Read the rest HERE.

Says Noon, “The Obama green energy program is the largest, most expensive, and deceptive case of crony capitalism in American history”.

See the rest of our green jobs scam and Solyndra coverage HERE.

UPDATE – Even MORE from the House Oversight Committee: Obama Administration lying about the influence peddling; caught again with more of their own emails.

House Oversight Committee:

INTERVIEW EXCERPT FROM KUSA Channel 9 News Denver Colorado’s Kyle Clark:

KYLE CLARK: In a national address, you touted the stimulus money going to Abound Solar – a Colorado company connected to one of your billionaire fundraisers. Now, as you may know, Abound Solar is out of business and under criminal investigation. The jobs are gone and taxpayers are out about 60 million dollars. How do you answer critics who see Abound Solar as Colorado’s Solyndra – a politically connected clean energy company that went under and took our money with it?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: (Laughs) Well, Kyle, I think that if you look at our record that these loans that are given out by the Department of Energy for clean energy have created jobs all across the country and only about four percent of these loans were going to some very cutting-edge industries that are going to allow us to figure out how to produce energy in a clean, renewable way in the future and create jobs in Colorado and all around the country. And some of them have failed but the vast majority of them are pushing us forward into a clean energy direction. And that’s good for Colorado and good for the country. And these are decisions, by the way, that are made by the Department of Energy, they have nothing to do with politics.

Investigative Reporter Todd Shepherd: NOT POLITICAL? EMAILS SHOW WHITE HOUSE DROVE FAILED GREEN-LOAN IN COLORADO

CompleteColorado.com has obtained emails that seem to directly contradict Plouffe’s answer, and also challenge the President’s notion that the DOE’s loan decisions were universally autonomous within the agency. The emails also lend even more credence to the theory that the loan to Abound Solar was political payback to Colorado’s wealthy Democratic benefactor and Gang-of-Four member, Pat Stryker.”

In the above email thread, DOE loan executive Jonathan Silver tells DOE credit advisor Jim McCrea, “You better let him know the WH wants to move Abound forward.” It appears to be a mild scolding to a Treasury advisor, Ian Samuels, who is not moving fast enough to schedule calls regarding Abound.

The second page of the email thread makes mention of “…transaction pressure under which we are all now operating…” This entire email thread happened just a few days before President Obama would hail the government-backed loans as a job creator for Colorado.

British Meteorological Office: No Global Warming for 16 Years

The significance of this admission from them cannot be understated. The British Met is the academic epicenter of global warming alarmism. They work closely with the University of East Anglia and other ClimateGate hoaxers like Michael Mann at the disgraced Penn State University.

UK Daily Mail:

Global warming stopped 16 years ago, reveals Met Office report quietly released… and here is the chart to prove it

  • The figures reveal that from the beginning of 1997 until August 2012 there was no discernible rise in aggregate global temperatures
  • This means that the ‘pause’ in global warming has now lasted for about the same time as the previous period when temperatures rose, 1980 to 1996

By David Rose

The world stopped getting warmer almost 16 years ago, according to new data released last week.

The figures, which have triggered debate among climate scientists, reveal that from the beginning of 1997 until August 2012, there was no discernible rise in aggregate global temperatures.

This means that the ‘plateau’ or ‘pause’ in global warming has now lasted for about the same time as the previous period when temperatures rose, 1980 to 1996. Before that, temperatures had been stable or declining for about 40 years.

global temperature changes

The new data, compiled from more than 3,000 measuring points on land and sea, was issued  quietly on the internet, without any media fanfare, and, until today, it has not been reported.

This stands in sharp contrast  to the release of the previous  figures six months ago, which went only to the end of 2010 – a very warm year.

Ending the data then means it is possible to show a slight warming trend since 1997, but 2011 and the first eight months of 2012 were much cooler, and thus this trend is erased.

Obama Green Energy Jobs Project Cost $28 Million Per Job

And this is just an excerpt… and so many billions in green jobs projects that just went to cronies and campaign contributors to make them rich. When you are done reading be sure to click the link below and read the rest. Also, retired famed super athlete Christine Lakatos now tracks these green energy projects and dollars on her web site which has shown to be very illuminating as to just how far this corruption has progressed.

Townhall Finance Columnist Marita Noon excerpt:

With the assistance of researcher Christine Lakatos, I have been chronicling Obama’s stimulus-funded green energy failures. First we looked at the companies that have gone bankrupt, and then those that are heading that way—or, at least, have financial issues. Within those reports, we frequently addressed specific green jobs failures. For example, regarding Fisker, the electric car made in Finland, we say:

ABC reported: ‘Vice President Joseph Biden heralded the Energy Department’s $529 million loan to the start-up electric car company called Fisker as a bright, new path to thousands of American manufacturing jobs.’ Those jobs didn’t materialize—at least not in America. … Two years after the loan was awarded, the Washington Post stated that Fisker ‘has missed early manufacturing goals and has gradually pushed back plans for U.S. production and the creation of thousands of jobs’… Now, in 2012, Fisker Automotive is laying off staff in order to qualify for more government loans. So, President Obama’s ‘green’ energy stimulus was supposed to create jobs; now it’s destroying jobs so that companies can get more stimulus?”

About now-bankrupt, and under-investigation for fraud, Abound Solar, we wrote:

“President Obama, in July 2010, praised Abound Solar, which was to make advanced solar panels … He believed these plants would be huge job creators: ‘2000 construction jobs and 1500 permanent jobs.’ In December 2011, CEO Craig Witsoe called Abound Solar the “anti-Solyndra” saying that his company is “doing well and growing.” However, just months after that optimistic report, Abound Solar filed bankruptcy…”

Due to the various loans, grants, and subsidies, it would take an investigative team made up of dozens of people to ferret out each and every true green-energy job that was created, absent that, we are hitting the high points in attempt to answer Ryan’s question: “Where are the 5 million green jobs?”

Short answer, even optimistically—and perhaps deceptively, according to a Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) news release, only 3.1 million green jobs were created. To reach this number, BLS counts jobs that “were associated with the production of green goods and services,” specifically those which “are found in businesses that produce goods and provide services that benefit the environment or conserve natural resources.” It is important to note that most of these 3.1 million jobs are primarily pre-existing jobs that have been reclassified as “green.” Once those existing jobs were shifted into the green column, through three-quarters of 2011 only 9,245 new “green” jobs were generated when the White House touts generating over 200,000 new jobs by 2010.

The House Oversight Committee wondered, just what are those jobs that are “associated with the production of green goods and services?”

On June 6, 2012, at a House Oversight hearing Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) questioned BLS Director John Galvin on his agency’s green jobs numbers. Through Galvin’s reluctant responses (he didn’t want to be there), we learned that the Obama administration’s labor department counts oil lobbyists, bus drivers, garbage men, etc., as green jobs—shameful, embarrassing, deceptive. According to how BLS rates green jobs, I have a green job. I qualify under several headings. After all, I do education and public awareness on environmental issues. Next time I am at a social event, where I am asked the inescapable: “What do you do?” I’ll respond: “I have a green job.”

Complete details can be found in a report on the “Green Job Myth” from the Institute for Energy Research (IER). It states: “the green-job definition is extremely broad and includes both direct and indirect jobs.”  Each of the following would qualify:

A person who sweeps the floor in a solar-panel manufacturing facility

A driver of a hybrid bus

A school bus driver

An employee who fills the bus with fuel

An employee involved in waste collection or water and sewer operations

A clerk at a bicycle repair shop

A manufacturer of rail cars

An oil lobbyist whose company is engaged in environmental issues

An employee of an environment or science museum.

Now that we know what the BLS constitutes as a green job—even recycled ones; those that already existed—we’ll look at the billions of taxpayer money spent on green jobs. We’ll focus specifically on just two programs: the Loan Guarantee Program and the Renewable Energy Grant Program.

On June 19, 2012, Veronique de Rugy, a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, testified at the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform hearings on the Loan Guarantee program. Within her thorough assessment of the program, she states: “since 2009, Department of Energy has guaranteed $34.7 billion in loans, 46 percent through the 1705 loan program, 30 percent through the 1703 program, and 14 percent through the Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing (ATVM) loan program.” And, that “some 2,378 permanent jobs were claimed to be created under the program. This works out to a potential cost per job of $6.7 million.”

The 1603 Grant Program was implemented as part of the Obama stimulus, and is administered by the Treasury Department, with the goal of reimbursing eligible applicants for a portion of the costs of installing specified energy property used in a trade or business or for the production of income. Basically, 1603 gives billions in favored-businesses, tax-free cash gifts that do not have to be paid back.

The June 19, 2012 Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations hearing on “The Federal Green Jobs Agenda,” highlighted the “gimmick” accounting method used by the BLS. Testimony revealed that a multi-billion dollar stimulus program, the section 1603 grants for renewable energy, does not even include job creation among its primary objectives—which obviously contradicts the purpose of the 2009 trillion-dollar Obama stimulus package.

Congressional Research Services expert, Dr. Molly Sherlock, deflected direct questions regarding the total jobs created by the 1603 program. “If you’re looking at the direct jobs, this one estimate has direct jobs created at 3,666 in the construction phase, and direct jobs created at 355. Direct jobs would just be the construction jobs and the ongoing operations and maintenance jobs. But if you wanted to look at the supporting jobs in other industries then you’d want to look at the other figures.”

According to the Washington Free Beacon, Rep. Cory Gardner (R-CO) pressed on: “I just want to know how many jobs were created”

Sherlock admitted: 355 jobs created a year, for $10 billion—which comes out to about $28 million per job.

EPA Sued for Gassing Human Test Subjects

Just when you think that government stupidity could not get anymore…well stupid.

American Thinker:

By Mark Musser

It has been recently revealed that the EPA has far surpassed the dark humor of blowing up kids and people on film that global warming scare-mongers promoted a few years back.  In real life, the EPA has been conducting human experiments on people by piping diesel fumes from a running truck mixed with air into their lungs at a North Carolina university.  The agency has ginned up yet another green crusade — the lethal dangers of diesel fumes.  They even had a gas chamber set up to accommodate the environmental research project that shockingly recalls the death camps in Poland.

Not surprisingly, the EPA is now in the process of being sued for conducting dangerous experiments on human guinea pigs.  The courts will decide whether or not serious laws and practices were violated, including the international Nuremberg Code that was set up after sixteen Nazi doctors were executed for medical terrorism.  After the barbaric fallout of Nazi Germany, where many people were treated like experimental animals, the Nuremberg Code was designed to be an international governing set of principles to regulate the practice of human experimentation.  The whiff of the Jewish holocaust is therefore unmistakable.

When the Nazis found out how difficult it was in practice to shoot so many Jews on the Eastern Front at the outset of the war, they switched to gassing them en masse at death camps with engine fumes.  Such gassing methods became notorious at Treblinka, where almost one million Jews were killed.

In the early part of the war, the infamous commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolf Hoess, visited Treblinka.  Hoess testified at Nuremberg that the Treblinka motor room used tank and truck engines to pipe diesel fumes into the gas chambers.  According to Hoess, it usually took about half an hour before the gas chambers fell silent.  Another half-hour passed before the doors were opened.

Hoess commented that the engine fumes at Treblinka were not always entirely effective in killing the Jews.  While all the victims fell unconscious, many of them were still alive and had to be shot afterwards.  Adolf Eichmann told Hoess that they were experiencing the same problems in other death camps at the time.  Auschwitz used Zyklon B, which was far more effective.

The Nazis killed so many people that they were forced to industrialize the process by making crematoriums that turned countless cadavers into ashes.  All of the ghastly work connected to this assembly line of death was performed by Jewish victims, called Special Detachment Jews, whom the Nazis specifically kept alive for this very purpose.  When the war effort started to go badly for Germany, the Special Detachment Jews were required to unearth old bodies that had been buried and burn them up, too.

When Hoess was forced to oversee such a grisly operation at Auschwitz, he would recover from such horrifying scenes by finding solace in nature: “If I was deeply affected by some incident, I found it impossible to go back to my home and my family.  I would mount my horse and ride, until I had chased the terrible picture away.  Often at night, I would walk through the stables and seek relief among my beloved animals.”

Hoess’s nature-loving tendencies are far more revealing than most scholars would care to admit.  While Jews were treated like experimental animals and were burned up in sacrificial smoke, Hoess said his family lived a free and untrammeled life: “My wife’s garden was a paradise of flowers.”  Hoess was far more concerned about untreated stormwater discharging directly from the camp into the nearby Sola River than he was about the incredible slaughterhouse plans that the Nazi leaders were foisting upon him.  The cunning of nature was indeed an escape route from moral responsibility.

When Rudolf Hoess stood trial at Nuremberg, he concluded his testimony by saying he was not a sadistic man and that he had never sanctioned the extermination of the Jews.  He was even proud of how much more humane the gassing process was at Auschwitz compared to Treblinka.

Rudolf Hoess was SS.  The SS was the greenest faction of the Nazi Party.  It was run by Heinrich Himmler, who was an animal lover, vegetarian, and organic farming enthusiast.  Himmler detested hunting.  In an instructional letter sent to Dachau Concentration Camp and Ester-wegen, Himmler stated, “I wish the SS and the police also will be exemplary in the love of nature.  Within the course of a few years the property of the SS and the police must become paradises for animals and Nature.”  In many ways, the SS was Hitler’s “green” praetorian guard.

Both Hoess and Himmler belonged to a proto-Nazi wandervogel youth group called the Artamanens.  The wandervogels of the early 20th century in Germany were nature-loving youth groups that promoted many green ideas and practices.   Artaman basically means “country man,” with certain racial-indigenous connotations.

The SS promoted an ideology called “blood and soil,” where evolutionary biological racism, peasant agrarianism, and environmentalism were all fused together into a fascist whole.  Many leading SS men actually believed that German racial biology was being destroyed by the cosmopolitan life of the cities, that Germans were being uprooted from their homeland and enslaved to the artificial materialistic values of what they considered to be international Jewish capitalism and communism.  The Jews were vilified for their city ways.  They were also considered unnatural and outside the evolutionary laws of biological racism.  Many Nazis believed that such a violation of the “scientific” laws of Nature had to be remedied.

This flammable cocktail between German biology and environmentalism was at the heart of the holocaust at death camps like Treblinka.  When Jews were crammed into cattle cars on the way to Treblinka, the SS broke strict animal transport laws the Nazis themselves established.  While the SS side of Treblinka was a virtual garden camp, the Jewish side was a hell on earth.  While the SS were all involved in rehabilitating fox populations on their side of the camp, Jews were being exterminated on such a massive scale that the gravestones that still stand today at the Treblinka monument do not have individual names on them, only entire cities.  While the SS had beautiful picnic grounds that showcased a little zoo, the last sight that the Jews were given before they entered the gas chambers was the most exquisite flower garden in the entire camp.  After Treblinka was closed down, the Nazis planted lupine on top of what was left of the Jewish graves.  Lupines are wolf flowers.  Hitler used to call the SS his pack of wolves.

While no one died in the EPA’s gas chambers, the agency is increasingly acting like proverbial wolf in sheep’s clothing.   Under the guise of acting on behalf of everyone’s health, the EPA has crossed a pathological line where people have been potentially treated like experimental animals under questionable methods that conjure up the horrors of the holocaust.  More telling is the EPA subjected human beings to a concoction of diesel fumes that it already said was lethal.  If the EPA were truly concerned about human health, they would not have performed such experiments on more than forty people in the first place.

More energy price hikes and power shortages on the way due to government regulation

Government picking winners and losers and getting kickbacks in what has become “Greenscam”, an effort to funnel tax dollars into far left eco-extremists groups and the Democratic Party – LINK.

Read carefully – Marita Noon:

“Once real numbers have come out about renewable energy costs, people are having second thoughts,” reported Maureen Masten, Deputy Secretary of Natural Resources and Senior Advisor on Energy to Governor Bob McDonnell, VA,  while addressing his “all of the above energy” strategy to meet the state’s energy needs.

The real costs of renewable energy are coming out—both in dollars and daily impacts. After years of hearing about “free” energy from the sun and wind, people are discovering that they’ve been lied to.

On Tuesday, August 14, the New Mexico Public Regulation Commission (PRC) approved a new renewable energy rate rider that will allow the Public Service Company of New Mexico (PNM) to start recovering a portion of its recent development costs for building five solar facilities around the state, a pilot solar facility with battery storage, and wind resource procurements. The renewable rider could be on ratepayers’ bills by the end of the month—“depending on when the commission publishes its final order,” said PNM spokeswoman Susan Spooner.

The rate rider currently represents about a $1.34 increase for an average residence using 600 kilowatt hours of electricity per month—or a little more than $16 per year. This increase seems miniscule until you realize that this is only a small part of increases to come. PNM needs to recover $18.29 million in renewable expenditures in 2012 and the rate rider only addresses monies spent in the last four to five months. The remaining expense will be carried into 2013.

Like more than half of the states in the US, New Mexico has a Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) that mandates public utilities have set percentages of their electricity from renewable sources. In New Mexico the mandate is 10 percent this year, 15 percent by 2015 and 20 percent by 2020. Most states—with the exception of California (which is 33 percent by 2020)—have similar benchmarks. To meet the mandates, PNM will need considerably more renewable energy with dramatically more expense—all of which ultimately gets passed on to the customer. PNM acknowledges that the rider will increase next year and predicts the total cost recovery for 2013 to be about $23 million. By 2020, based on the current numbers of approximately $20 million a year invested, resulting in a $24 a year increase, consumers’ bills will go up about $200 a year just for the additional cost of inefficient renewable energy.

Had the PRC not approved the special rate rider, costs would be even higher. Typically rate increases are only approved at periodic rate case hearings, usually held every few years. The system of only allowing rate increases after a lengthy hearing, keeps the costs hidden from the consumer for longer but increases costs to the utility and, ultimately, the consumer, due to interest charges on the borrowed money. PNM believes the rider will allow for more “timely recovery of costs,” resulting in a $2.7 million savings.

Environmental groups, who’ve been pushing for the renewable energy increases, opposed the special renewable rate rider and have threatened a potential appeal of the PRC’s decision. It is hard to tout “free” energy when there is a special line on the utility bill that clearly points out the new charge for renewables.

So, renewable electricity is hardly free. It also isn’t there when you need it—like in the predictable summer heat of California.

To meet their 33 percent renewable mandate, California’s utility companies, like New Mexico, have been installing commercial renewable electricity facilities—with wind capable of providing about 6 percent, and solar 2 percent, of the state’s electric demand. But in the summer heat, the wind doesn’t blow much and the solar capacity drops by about 50 percent when the demand is the highest.

Despite increasing renewable capacity and an exodus of the population, California has been facing threats of rolling brown/blackouts due to potential shortages. TV and radio ads blanket the air waves begging consumers to limit electricity usage by setting their air conditioners at 78 degrees and using household appliances only after 6PM. “Flex Alerts” have been issued stating: “conservation remains critical.” “Consumers are urged to reduce energy use,” “California ISO balances high demand for electricity with tight power supplies” and “maintain grid reliability.”

Even with expedited permitting, California cannot build renewable electricity generation fast enough. Environmentalists block construction due to species habitat, such as that of the desert tortoise or the kit fox. If they oppose renewable energy construction, you can imagine the vitriol they extend toward coal, natural gas, and nuclear. There is a big push to shut down nuclear power plants and new natural-gas plants, which are ideal for meeting the needs of “peak demand,”are fought by the very same groups that are pushing electric cars.

San Diego-based, nationally syndicated radio talk show host Roger Hedgecock observed: “Right at the moment in California, building new electricity generating power plants of any kind is politically taboo. Electricity itself is becoming politically taboo.”

Texas has been faced with both increasing costs and fears of shortages. “Concerned about adequate electricity supplies,” the Texas Public Utility Commission recently voted to allow electricity generators to charge up to 50 percent more for wholesale power. The increase is to encourage the building of new power plants in the state with the highest capacity in the country for wind electricity generation.

Apparently new electricity-generating power plants are politically taboo in Texas, too—at least within the environmental community. Instead of encouraging new power plants to be built, Ken Kramer, the Texas head of the Sierra Club, said, “A better idea would be to encourage more energy-saving programs”—perhaps like setting the thermostat to 78 degrees and not turning on appliances until after 6PM.

When will Americans revolt over being forced to use less while paying more?

We know that high energy prices are just the beginning of inflation that raises the cost of everything from food to clothing to manufactured goods. When the cost of manufacturing goes up, industry moves to countries with lower-priced energy, cheaper labor, and more reasonable regulations. Jobs go overseas and we import more. The trade deficit grows, and America is less competitive.

The higher electricity costs are 100 percent due to government regulation and legislation that are unreasonably crushing American businesses and ratepayers—much like the pressure England imposed on the American colonies that launched the American Revolution.

Obama Gives $737 Million to Solar Firm Ran by Pelosi’s Brother…

Just when you thought this was bad enough…

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi
House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi

By Jim Hoft, Gateway Pundit:

It’s as if Solyndra never happened. The Obama Administration is giving $737 million to a Tonopah Solar, a subsidiary of California-based SolarReserve. PCG is an investment partner with SolarReserve. Nancy Pelosi’s brother-in-law happens to be the number two man at PCG.

IAC: Previous IPCC Reports failed to meet basic academic standards; Participants “too political”

I have been waiting for this for a long time. When I was in college finishing my latest degree I was making many of these very same claims about global warming alarmist nonsense as the IAC report below. Leftist students and faculty pretty much told me that I was nuts, and I wasn’t a climate scientist so how would I know? Well it looks like I knew. It was easy. First of all it doesn’t take a genius to see when the scientific method is being ignored and second of all, what I am an expert on is politics and I know a political movement when I see one.

At the bottom of the article I posted a list of links that I wrote starting in 2007 saying many of the same things the IAC has pointed out below. Why am I so often using the word “I” when that is not an attitude that as editor I often take here at Political Arena? To be honest, I am going to take the low road and revel in rubbing it in my critic’s noses. I reactivated my old college blog just for the purpose of posting this story. We should ask ourselves what has happened to our education system when the doctoral academics who doubted me and called me names behind my back were all wrong, while the mere undergrad like me was spot on? – Chuck Norton

President of the Heartland Institute Joseph L. Bast:

On June 27, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a statement saying it had “complete[d] the process of implementation of a set of recommendations issued in August 2010 by the Inter Academy Council (IAC), the group created by the world’s science academies to provide advice to international bodies.”

Hidden behind this seemingly routine update on bureaucratic processes is an astonishing and entirely unreported story. The IPCC is the world’s most prominent source of alarmist predictions and claims about man-made global warming. Its four reports (a fifth report is scheduled for release in various parts in 2013 and 2014) are cited by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in the U.S. and by national academies of science around the world as “proof” that the global warming of the past five or so decades was both man-made and evidence of a mounting crisis.

If the IPCC’s reports were flawed, as a many global warming “skeptics” have long claimed, then the scientific footing of the man-made global warming movement — the environmental movement’s “mother of all environmental scares” — is undermined.  The Obama administration’s war on coal may be unnecessary.  Billions of dollars in subsidies to solar and wind may have been wasted.  Trillions of dollars of personal income may have been squandered worldwide in campaigns to “fix” a problem that didn’t really exist.

The “recommendations” issued by the IAC were not minor adjustments to a fundamentally sound scientific procedure.  Here are some of the findings of the IAC’s 2010 report.

Alternative views not considered, claims not properly peer reviewed

The IAC reported that IPCC lead authors fail to give “due consideration … to properly documented alternative views” (p. 20), fail to “provide detailed written responses to the most significant review issues identified by the Review Editors” (p. 21), and are not “consider[ing] review comments carefully and document[ing] their responses” (p. 22).  In plain English: the IPCC reports are not peer-reviewed.

No formal criteria for selecting IPCC authors

The IAC found that “the IPCC has no formal process or criteria for selecting authors” and “the selection criteria seemed arbitrary to many respondents” (p. 18).  Government officials appoint scientists from their countries and “do not always nominate the best scientists from among those who volunteer, either because they do not know who these scientists are or because political considerations are given more weight than scientific qualifications” (p. 18).  In other words: authors are selected from a “club” of scientists and nonscientists who agree with the alarmist perspective favored by politicians.

Too political…

The rewriting of the Summary for Policy Makers by politicians and environmental activists — a problem called out by global warming realists for many years, but with little apparent notice by the media or policymakers — was plainly admitted, perhaps for the first time by an organization in the “mainstream” of alarmist climate change thinking.  “[M]any were concerned that reinterpretations of the assessment’s findings, suggested in the final Plenary, might be politically motivated,” the IAC auditors wrote.  The scientists they interviewed commonly found the Synthesis Report “too political” (p. 25).

Really?  Too political?  We were told by everyone — environmentalists, reporters, politicians, even celebrities — that the IPCC reports were science, not politics.  Now we are told that even the scientists involved in writing the reports — remember, they are all true believers in man-made global warming themselves — felt the summaries were “too political.”

Here is how the IAC described how the IPCC arrives at the “consensus of scientists”:

Plenary sessions to approve a Summary for Policy Makers last for several days and commonly end with an all-night meeting.  Thus, the individuals with the most endurance or the countries that have large delegations can end up having the most influence on the report (p. 25).

How can such a process possibly be said to capture or represent the “true consensus of scientists”?

Phony estimates of certainty

Another problem documented by the IAC is the use of phony “confidence intervals” and estimates of “certainty” in the Summary for Policy Makers (pp. 27-34).  Those of us who study the IPCC reports knew this was make-believe when we first saw it in 2007.  Work by J. Scott Armstrong on the science of forecasting makes it clear that scientists cannot simply gather around a table and vote on how confident they are about some prediction, and then affix a number to it such as “80% confident.”  Yet that is how the IPCC proceeds.

The IAC authors say it is “not an appropriate way to characterize uncertainty” (p. 34), a huge understatement.  Unfortunately, the IAC authors recommend an equally fraudulent substitute, called “level of understanding scale,” which is more mush-mouth for “consensus.”

The IAC authors warn, also on page 34, that “conclusions will likely be stated so vaguely as to make them impossible to refute, and therefore statements of ‘very high confidence’ will have little substantive value.”  Yes, but that doesn’t keep the media and environmental activists from citing them over and over again as “proof” that global warming is man-made and a crisis…even if that’s not really what the reports’ authors are saying.

IPCC participants had conflicts of interest

Finally, the IAC noted, “the lack of a conflict of interest and disclosure policy for IPCC leaders and Lead Authors was a concern raised by a number of individuals who were interviewed by the Committee or provided written input” as well as “the practice of scientists responsible for writing IPCC assessments reviewing their own work.  The Committee did not investigate the basis of these claims, which is beyond the mandate of this review” (p. 46).

Too bad, because these are both big issues in light of recent revelations that a majority of the authors and contributors to some chapters of the IPCC reports are environmental activists, not scientists at all.  That’s a structural problem with the IPCC that could dwarf the big problems already reported.

IPCC critics vindicated

So on June 27, nearly two years after these bombshells fell (without so much as a raised eyebrow by the mainstream media in the U.S. — go ahead and try Googling it), the IPCC admits that it was all true and promises to do better for its next report.  Nothing to see here…keep on moving.

Well I say, hold on, there!  The news release means that the IAC report was right.  That, in turn, means that the first four IPCC reports were, in fact, unreliable.  Not just “possibly flawed” or “could have been improved,” but likely to be wrong and even fraudulent.

It means that all of the “endorsements” of the climate consensus made by the world’s national academies of science — which invariably refer to the reports of the IPCC as their scientific basis — were based on false or unreliable data and therefore should be disregarded or revised.  It means that the EPA’s “endangerment finding” — its claim that carbon dioxide is a pollutant and threat to human health — was wrong and should be overturned.

And what of the next IPCC report, due out in 2013 and 2014?  The near-final drafts of that report have been circulating for months already.  They were written by scientists chosen by politicians rather than on the basis of merit; many of them were reviewing their own work and were free to ignore the questions and comments of people with whom they disagree.  Instead of “confidence,” we will get “level of understanding scales” that are just as meaningless.

And on this basis we should transform the world’s economy to run on breezes and sunbeams?

In 2010, we learned that much of what we thought we knew about global warming was compromised and probably false.  On June 27, the culprits confessed and promised to do better.  But where do we go to get our money back?

Related from my old college blog:

Inconvenient Questions Global Warming Alarmists Don’t Want You to Ask – February 18, 2007 – LINK

Top Scientists Say: You Are Not the Cause of Global Warming – October 22, 2007 – LINK

Global Cooling Continues; Global Warming Alarmists Still Issuing Death Threats – December 28, 2008 – LINK

UK Telegraph: 2008 was the year man-made global warming was disproved – December 28, 2008 – LINK

National Climatic Data Center: Cooling in Last 10 Years – January 10, 2009 – LINK

The Debate is Over. Global Warming Alarmism is About Achieving Central Control of the Economy and Now They Admit It Openly – March 27, 2009 – LINK

Al Gore: Climate change issue can lead to world government – July 11, 2009 – LINK

EPA Tried to Suppress Global Warming Report Admitting Skeptics Correct – October 23, 2009 – LINK

New AP Article on “Global Cooling Myth” Spins a Bad Study – UPDATED: Look where they put THIS ground station… – October 27, 2009 – LINK

Professors Paid to Plagiarize – UPDATE: Global warming scientists hacked emails show manipulation of data, hiding of other data and conspiring to attack/smear global warming skeptics! – November 19, 2009 – LINK

National Association of Scholars on the “ClimateGate” Scandal – November 28, 2009 – LINK

Examples of the “Climategate” Documents – UPDATE: BBC Had the emails and files for 6 weeks, sat on story. UPDATE II – They carried out their conspiracy threat; much of the raw data from CRU destroyed! – November 28, 2009 – LINK

Scientific American thinks you are stupid: The dissection of a blatant propaganda piece for global warming alarmism. – December 6, 2009 – LINK

The Roundup: IPCC Authors Now Admitting Fault – No Warming Since 1995 – Sea Levels Not Rising. Senator Inhofe: Possible criminal misuse of taxpayer research funds. – February 23, 2010 – LINK

OOPS AGAIN: IPCC scientists screeching about the cataclysmic effects of sea-level rises forgot to consider sedimentary deposits… – April 23, 2010 – LINK

UN IPCC Co-chair: climate policy is redistributing the world’s wealth – November 18, 2010 – LINK

More Hadley Center Global Warming Horror Claims Debunked by Real Science – December 6, 2010 – LINK

ClimateGate One Year Later. Elite Media Still Lying – December 6, 2010 – LINK

More ClimateGate One Year Later – December 7, 2010 – LINK

IPCC Lead Author Dr. Richard Lindzen of MIT: Most global warming models are exaggerated, many scientists in it for the grant money or treat it like a religion – December 7, 2010 – LINK

How Global Warming Propaganda Works – December 8, 2010 – LINK

NASA’s global warming evidence page filled with lies, half truths and suspect data – December 10, 2010 – LINK

Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research: Halt economic growth, start government rationing. Global Warming Alarmists Party Fat in Cancun – December 21, 2010 – LINK

Global Warming Conference Delegates Sign Petitions to Ban Water and “Destabilize U.S. Economy” – February 15, 2011 – LINK

Global Warming Alarmist Quote of the Day – Former Canadian Environment Minister Christine Stewart: No matter if the science is all phony, there are collateral environmental benefits…climate change provides the greatest chance to bring about justice and equality in the world.

AAUP Seeks to Limit Transparency Over Climate Science – September 19, 2011 – LINK

Chevy Volt Costs Tax Payers $250,000 Per Car, Low Sales, Huge Losses; Elite Media Silent

But when there was a tiny uptick in Chevy Volt sales in June the elite media was ecstatic.

NewsBusters:

The President is running in large part on the bailout’s $30+ billion loss, uber-failed “success.”  And the Press is acting as his stenographers.  An epitome of this bailout nightmare mess is the electric absurdity that is the Chevrolet Volt.  The Press is at every turn covering up – rather than covering – the serial failures of President Obama’s signature vehicle.

The Press has failed to mention at least five Volt fires, myopically focusing on the one the Obama Administration hand-selected for attention.

The Press has failed to mention that the Volt fire problem remains unsolved.  Is it the battery?  Is it the charging station?  Is it the charging cable?  All of the above?

GM and the Administration don’t know.  And the Press ain’t breaking their necks trying to find out.

In more recent news, the Press has almost as one hailed the June Volt sales increase.

GM’s Volt Sales Up in June

Surprising June Sales for Volt

Chevy Volt Leads US Plug-In Car Sales

Chevy Volt Sales Increases

Volt Records Second-Best Sales Month

The Press has for the most part failed to mention how pathetic this “second-best sales month” actually is.  And even when one Dinosaur does, the unwarranted enthusiasm is palpable.

GM sells 1760 Volts in June, double from 2011

Wow.  Huge number.

The Press also fails to put this pathetic tally in perspective.

The Chevy Cruze is basically a Volt without the dead-weight, flammable 400-lb. electric battery.  Which makes it $17,000, rather than the Volt’s $41,000.

Chevy in June sold 18,983 Cruzes – more than ten times the number of Volts.  And that’s down 1/3 from last June’s 24,648.

But that feeble Volt tally has the Press all revved up.

And speaking of the Volt’s ridiculous $41,000 sticker price:

According to multiple GM executives there is little or no profit being made on each Volt built at a present cost of around $40,000. Furthermore, the $700 million of development that went into the car has to be recouped.

Get that?  GM makes “little or no profit” on the Volt.

So it makes perfect sense that GM would spend millions of dollars advertising it, does it not?  No ideological or campaign intent there, eh President Obama?

Look, I get it, it’s fun.  I just spent $1 million – of your money – advertising free air.  On which my profit margin is just as good as GM’s is on the Volt.

Only my ads didn’t have a song, or a dance.  We just aren’t as cool as the Volt.

I mean, it’s so cool – it can travel back in time to inspire the production of cars before it even existed.

I mean, it’s so cool – it can travel back in time to offer the exact same technology as a car from 1991.  And the exact same electric battery range as a car from 1897.

We’re talking retro-grade cool.

But wait – there’s so much more.

(A)dd $240 million in Energy Department grants doled out to G.M. last summer, $150 million in federal money to the Volt’s Korean battery supplier, up to $1.5 billion in tax breaks for purchasers and other consumer incentives, and some significant portion of the $14 billion loan G.M. got in 2008 for “retooling” its plants, and you’ve got some idea of how much taxpayer cash is built into every Volt.

Speaking of those “tax breaks for purchasers and other consumer incentives” – as of November of last year that tally all by itself was $250,000 per Volt sold.

And that excruciating pain is ongoing.  Again, a Volt sold makes GM no money – but costs We the Taxpayers a $7,500 bribe – I mean “incentive.”  Oh – and President Obama wants to jack that bribe to $10,000 per.

I guess it’s good news after all that Volt sales remain so anemic.

And with GM’s new 60-day return policy, it looks like you can buy a Volt and cash the $7,500 bribe check. Then return the Volt – and keep the $7,500 bribe cash.  How’s that for Taxpayer coin stewardship?

Penn State Administrators “forged an agreement to conceal Sandusky’s sexual attacks”. Pattern of Coverup.

Before we get on to the child abuse scandal, this writer has been paying attention to what has been going on at Penn State for some time. The administration at Penn State has a long history of unethical, radical, and other bad behavior including coverups of other scandals. Here are some examples:

Penn State makes a video painting returning veterans as dumb, mentally unstable, and violent – LINK

Professor at Penn State explains how to teach anti-Israel propaganda to students (video) – LINK

Until the Sandusky Scandal, the most recent internationally covered scandal at Penn State was with their premier climate Scientist Michael Mann. Prof. Mann is one of the infamous “ClimateGate” scientists, who’s own emails revealed that Mann, along with other leftist climate scientists, manipulated data, destroyed data that concerned them, used ridicule and pressure tactics to manipulate the peer review process, etc all in an effort to push global warming alarmism. According to their own emails they had agreed that if ever caught they would destroy much of their raw data, which they did.

Understand that billions of dollars (including billions of your tax dollars) has been spent on the global warming question and as a result Prof. Mann brought in millions for himself and Penn State University. So when the emails were leaked and they were as caught as caught could be, and when other climate scientists started to back away from the claims of Dr. Mann and others at the IPCC, Penn State was pressured to have an investigation of Prof. Mann and their investigation said that Prof. Mann did nothing wrong and totally cleared him, even though the evidence was plain as could be and in the public domain – LINK –  LINK –  LINK.

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education has cataloged a list of cases of illegal censorship, retaliation, and discrimination at Penn State as long as your desk – LINK.

While such a child abuse scandal may be unusual on our college campuses, the pattern of abuse of power, illegal actions and the effort to cover them up is typical of university administrations and is a huge problem.

CNN:

State College, Pennsylvania (CNN) — The most powerful leaders at Penn State University showed “total and consistent disregard” for child sex abuse victims while covering up the attacks of a longtime sexual predator, according to an internal review into how the school handled a scandal involving its former assistant football coach.

Investigators conducted more than 400 interviews and found that several officials had “empowered” Jerry Sandusky to continue his abuse, while Joe Paterno, the school’s legendary head football coach, could have stopped the attacks had he done more, investigators said Thursday.

Read the report here (PDF)

In a scandal that has shaken Pennsylvania residents and gripped the nation, leading to Paterno’s dismissal and the ouster of longtime president Graham Spanier, Louis Freeh, the former FBI director who led the review, said top university officials forged an agreement to conceal Sandusky’s sexual attacks more than a decade ago.

“There are more red flags here than you can count,” said Freeh, emphasizing the abuse occurred just “steps away” from where Paterno worked in the university’s Lasch Building.

Freeh’s 267-page report is the product of a Penn State-funded investigation, which is separate from a government investigation into charges of perjury and failure to report abuse pinned against the school’s former Athletic Director Tim Curley and ex-Vice President Gary Schultz.

The Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office is investigating what Penn State knew about a 2001 incident of child sex abuse by Sandusky, reported by then-graduate assistant Mike McQueary, and how it was handled.

Neither McQueary, Sandusky nor Paterno — who died in January — were interviewed by Freeh’s team and no trial date has been set for Curley and Schultz, though proceedings are expected to begin later in July.

The prosecution of Curley and Schultz comes on the heels of the widely watched Sandusky trial, in which the former defensive coordinator was convicted of sexually abusing young boys over 15 years.

“Our most saddening and sobering finding is the total disregard for the safety and welfare of Sandusky’s child victims by the most senior leaders at Penn State,” Freeh wrote. “The most powerful men at Penn State failed to take any steps for 14 years to protect the children who Sandusky victimized.”

The Wall Street Journal also covered the Freeh Report on Penn State HERE.

Top Global Warming Alarmist Scientist Admits: I Made a Mistake

Lovelock alarmism flood
Lovelock had previously claimed London would be threatened by rising sea levels by 2040

UK Daily Mail:

…and Al Gore is Guilty of exaggerating his arguments..

Environmental scientist James Lovelock, renowned for his terrifying predictions of climate change’s deadly impact on the planet, has gone back on his previous claims, admitting they were ‘alarmist’.

The 92-year-old Briton, who also developed the Gaia theory of the Earth as a single organism, has said climate change is still happening – just not as quickly as he once warned.

He added that other environmental commentators, such as former vice president Al Gore, are also guilty of exaggerating their arguments.

The admission comes as a devastating blow to proponents of climate change who regard Lovelock as a powerful figurehead.

Five years ago, he had claimed: ‘Before this century is over billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable.’

But in an interview with msnbc.com, he admitted: ‘I made a mistake.’

He said: ‘The problem is we don’t know what the climate is doing,’ he told ‘We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books – mine included – because it looked clear cut, but it hasn’t happened.

15th Green Energy Company (UPDATE – Make that 36th) Funded by Obama Goes Under

UPDATE IV – Make that 50… – LINK

UPDATE III – October 18th 2012 – the number is 36 either filing for bankruptcy or about to – LINK

The latest “Solyndra” is Abound Solar.  With so many of these green energy boondoggles it looks like this: Obama gives big taxpayer money to a campaign donor who is an owner in a junk “green energy company”. Said owners pay themselves in a big way, give big money to Democrats and go out of business. “Scheming that the right people got their loan guarantees” – LINK.

Businessweek:

Abound Solar Inc., a U.S. solar manufacturer that was awarded a $400 million U.S. loan guarantee, will suspend operations and file for bankruptcy because its panels were too expensive to compete.

Abound borrowed about $70 million against the guarantee, the Loveland, Colorado-based company said today in a statement. It plans to file for bankruptcy protection in Wilmington, Delaware, next week.

The failure will follow that of Solyndra LLC, which shut down in August after receiving a $535 million loan guarantee from the same U.S. Energy Department program. Abound stopped production in February to focus on reducing costs after a global oversupply and increasing competition from China drove down the price of solar panels by half last year.

Ouch –

U.S. taxpayers may lose $40 million to $60 million on the loan after Abound’s assets are sold and the bankruptcy proceeding closes, Damien LaVera, an Energy Department spokesman, said in a statement today.

For more coverage of green energy boondoggles and corruption see our Alarmism category.

Aside from Finnish car company (and Stimulus money recipient) Fiskar already having troubles, here is the list:

UPDATE – Make that 16 – Amonix Corp near Las Vegas closes doors after 14 months and $20 million in Green Energy grants – LINK

Solyndra
Abound Solar
Energy Conversion Devices
BrightSource
LSP
Evergreen Solar
Ener1
SunPower
Beacon Power
ECOtality
Uni-Solar
Azure Dynamics
Solar Trust

A123 – Being handed to the Chinese after they got our money? – LINK.

UPDATE II – A123 now filing for bankruptcy and selling assets to Johnson Controls – LINK.

President Obama statement praising A123

Obama’s EPA Power Grab to Regulate Ditches and Gullies on Private Property

So this is why you voted for Obama?

Human Events:

Lawmakers are working to block an unprecedented power grab by the Environmental Protection Agency to use the Clean Water Act (CWA) and control land alongside ditches, gullies and other ephemeral spots by claiming the sources are part of navigable waterways.

These temporary water sources are often created by rain or snowmelt, and would make it harder for private property owners to build in their own backyards, grow crops, raise livestock and conduct other activities on their own land, lawmakers say.

“Never in the history of the CWA has federal regulation defined ditches and other upland features as ‘waters of the United States,’” said Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.), chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, Rep. Nick Rahall (D-W.Va.), the ranking committee member, and Rep. Bob Gibbs (R-Ohio), chairman of the Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment.

“This is without a doubt an expansion of federal jurisdiction,” the lawmakers said in a May 31 letter to House colleagues.

The unusual alliance of the powerful House Republicans and Democrat to jointly sponsor legislation to overturn the new guidelines signals a willingness on Capitol Hill to rein in the formidable agency.

“The Obama administration is doing everything in its power to increase costs and regulatory burdens for American businesses, farmers and individual property owners,” Mica said in a statement to Human Events. “This federal jurisdiction grab has been opposed by Congress for years, and now the administration and its agencies are ignoring law and rulemaking procedures in order to tighten their regulatory grip over every water body in the country.”

“But this administration needs to realize it is not above the law,” Mica said.

The House measure carries 64 Republican and Democratic cosponsors and was passed in committee last week. A companion piece of legislation is already gathering steam in the Senate and is cosponsored by 26 Republicans.

“President Obama’s EPA continues to act as if it is above the law. It is using this overreaching guidance to pre-empt state and local governments, farmers and ranchers, small business owners and homeowners from making local land and water use decisions,” Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) said in announcing their measure in March. “Our bill will stop this unprecedented Washington power grab and restore Americans’ property rights.”

“It’s time to get EPA lawyers out of Americans’ backyards,” Barrasso said.

Obama Green Energy Program Cost $9.8 million Per Job…

After almost a dozen solar companies who got large sums of taxpayer dollars have gone bankrupt after the CEO donors paid themselves and donated back to the party news of this program came as no surprise, but still manages to turn stomachs.

CNS News:

The Obama administration distributed $9 billion in economic “stimulus” funds to solar and wind projects in 2009-11 that created, as the end result, 910 “direct” jobs — annual operation and maintenance positions — meaning that it cost about $9.8 million to establish each of those long-term jobs.

At the same time, those green energy projects also created, in the end, about 4,600 “indirect” jobs – positions indirectly supported by the annual operation and maintenance jobs — which means they cost about $1.9 million each ($9 billion divided by 4,600).

Combined (910 + 4,600 = 5,510), the direct and indirect jobs cost, on average, about $1.63 million each to produce.

As explained in a report by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, which is part of the U.S. Department of Energy, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (“economic stimulus”) of 2009 included Section 1603, a grant program run through the Treasury Department.

The 1603 program offered “renewable energy project developers a one-time cash payment” to reduce the need for green energy companies “to secure tax equity partners” and also help them to achieve  “ ‘the near term goal of creating and retaining jobs’ in the renewable energy sector.”

“Zero Tolerance Policy” Used to Turn the EPA Into a National Economic Planning Agency

To those of us who have been paying attention to the antics of the EPA under this administration this is no surprise. By the rational currently being used by the EPA they could ban all cars and justify it by saying that if cars put just one life at risk they must be strictly regulated or banned. The same can be said of anything. Of course, just like health care and other  regs, Obama donors get a waiver.

By Kathleen Hartnett White via The Daily Caller:

For the last three years, the Environmental Protection Agency has justified new air quality regulations — unprecedented in stringency and cost — on the assumption that even trace levels of particulate matter can cause early death.

A recent EPA report states that by 2020, the EPA’s rules “will prevent 230,000 early deaths.” EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson has gone so far as to testify before Congress that the new regulations would provide health benefits as valuable as a cure for cancer. If true, this is compelling. Unfortunately, such rhetoric is built on implausible assumptions, biased models, statistical manipulations and two cherry-picked studies.

Unwinding this tangled web is tedious but necessary to prevent the EPA from becoming a national economic planning agency that transforms our economy and undermines our form of democratic government, in which elected representatives — not federal technocrats — have the authority to make the country’s major policy decisions.

On Wednesday, a U.S. House subcommittee will conduct a hearing to examine the real costs and benefits of the EPA’s environmental regulations, with invited testimony from one of my former colleagues at the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

As I noted in my latest report for the Texas Public Policy Foundation, “EPA’s Pretense of Science,” the EPA now justifies almost every major new air quality rule on the basis of models indicating implausibly exaggerated health risks from fine particulate matter, rarely considered a killer by physicians or toxicologists.

Extrapolating from assumptions, the EPA in 2009 decided that no risk is too low, improbable or uncertain that it is not worth responding to with regulation. With a straight face, the EPA’s leadership now maintains that there is no safe level of ambient fine particulate matter — however near to zero — at which risk of “early” death ceases. Statisticians call this analytic approach a “no threshold linear regression to zero.”

The Clean Air Act requires that national air quality standards be set at levels adequate to protect human health with a margin of safety and regardless of cost. That’s a very cautious rubric. But through the no-safe-threshold assumption, the current EPA goes further: to zero risk. This methodological change leads the EPA to the implausible finding that mortal risks increase to the extent that ambient levels of fine particulates exceed natural background levels of 1 microgram per cubic meter. The current federal standard is 15 micrograms per cubic meter.