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Featured Story:
John Fund in the Wall Street Journal reports on a brand new documentary, "Not Evil, Just Wrong" that will have its premier tomorrow (Wednesday) at Rachel Carson Elementary School in the suburbs of Seattle.
Irish documentary filmmakers Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney have stirred up trouble before by debunking smug liberal hypocrisy. Their latest film, "Not Evil, Just Wrong" takes on the hysteria over global warming and warns that rushing to judgment in combating climate change would threaten the world's poor.
The film reminds us that environmentalists have been wrong in the past, as when they convinced the world to ban the pesticide DDT, costing the lives of countless malaria victims. The ban was finally reversed by the World Health Organization only after decades of debate. The two Irish filmmakers argue that if Al Gore's advice to radically reduce carbon emissions is followed, it would condemn to poverty two billion people in the world who have yet to turn on their first light switch.
The filmmakers previously made "Mine Your Own Business," another documentary that focused on a small, incredibly poor village in Romania that desperately wanted to open a new gold mine. The new mine would have helped alleviate the town's nearly 70% unemployment rate. Radical environmentalists, predictably, and unfortunately, would have none of it. And it was yet another example of environmentalists getting the science wrong, and hurting people in the process.
To see the trailers for both films, visit the GreenWatch Blog.
The Radical Green Movement far too frequently get the science wrong, but the real damage comes when foolish policy based on that bad science is implemented. The latest example of that bad policy? One need look no further than the President of the United States. To read more about Obama's railroad blunder, click here to visit the GreenWatch blog.
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U.S. Power Company to Tap Solar Energy in Space
Talking Climate Change with Anthony Watts
Hurricane Predicted to be Down in 2009
Energy and the Environment: Myths and Facts
There are even more headlines on the GreenWatch Blog. To see them, click here.
The Reader's Corner:
From David, who's fed up in Michigan:
"I am so fed up with the Global Warming lies. There is NO Global Warming, it's just a way for the Government to take more control over all of us. It is the middle of April and we have not had a day with the temperature over 50 degrees during the day and above 40 degrees during the night. It has been getting colder for the last 15 years, not warmer. We long for 75 or 80 degree weather."
Daniel writes:
"I've just read your story from the Washington Times about the "Waxman Markey" bill, allowing anyone "who has suffered, or reasonably expects to suffer, a harm attributable, in whole or in part" due to government inaction to combat greenhouse gas emissions to sue the federal government.
Does this mean that the converse is also true, that anyone who suffers harm due to government action on the environment could file suit?
I've been waiting for this!!! I'd love to see a RICO lawsuit against the "environmentalists" who have blocked every attempt to expand production and distribution of energy within our borders."
Elizabeth:
"As to the "Most Egregious Claim of the Week", no surprise it came from Andy
Rooney, but where is the proof that we are running out of oil? I've never
seen this ridiculous claim substantiated. As with everything else these
global warming nuts claim, it's bogus. If the climate did not change
periodically as it was made to do by powers far greater than man, wouldn't
I be walking my dinasours in the woods every morning rather than my dogs?
"Reigning in pollution is one thing, and striking a balance between our
industrial genius and our beautiful landscape is important, but these
people want us to stop driving, stop heating our homes, they are even going
after livestock so that we stop eating animal products. Anyone who does not
see the obvious agenda here is a fool."
But the e-mail of the week comes from Dave, responding to the same Andy Rooney piece with just four words: "Bring on the iceberg..."
Most Egregious Claim of the Week:
The nominees are:
Stephen Chu, Energy Secretary of the United States.
"I think the Caribbean countries face rising oceans and they face increase in the severity of hurricanes. This is something that is very, very scary to all of us. The island states in the world represent -- I remember this number -- one-half of 1 percent of the carbon emissions in the world. And they will -- some of them will disappear."
Scientists and Hunters in Germany
The boar population has increased recently, and the new boars are wreaking havoc in cities throughout the country. The reason cited for the increase?
"Scientists and hunters blame global warming for a surge in the boars' reproduction rate, now estimated at over 300 per cent a year, which means 100 boars can grow into almost 10,000 within five years."
Of course it is.
Researchers in Yellowstone National Park
In an impressive display of double talk, they argued that Global Warming has destroyed the food supply of the local Grizzly Bear, while worrying about the increase and spread of the bear's population.
“What we need, then, is a smart transportation system equal to the needs of the 21st century, a system that reduces travel times and increases mobility, a system that reduces congestion and boosts productivity, a system that reduces destructive emissions and creates jobs.”Too bad President Obama's plan will do practically none of those things.
3) If you (unlike this author) believe that greenhouses gases are a problem, you DON’T WANT a shared passenger/freight system. One of the reasons why Europe is doing such a wretched job of complying with Kyoto is that it does only 10% of its freight by rail, as opposed to 51% in the U.S. Europe moves more people by rail, and more freight (i.e., heavier stuff) on trucks. Our intermodal system of truck-to-rail container transfer helps account for the fact that freight emissions of greenhouse gases are 155 grams per ton mile in the U.S. compared to 193 grams per ton mile in Europe.David Freddoso elaborates on NRO.
Environmentalists say the measure was narrowly crafted to give citizens the unusual standing to sue the U.S. government as a way to force action on curbing emissions. But the U.S. Chamber of Commerce sees a new cottage industry for lawyers."You could be spawning lawsuits at almost any place [climate-change modeling] computers place at harm's risk," said Bill Kovacs, energy lobbyist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
The phenomenon has been discovered in a variety of flora, ranging from tropical rainforests to British sugar beet crops.
It means they are soaking up at least some of the billions of tons of CO2 released into the atmosphere by humans that would otherwise be accelerating the rate of climate change.
Plants survive by extracting CO2 from the air and using sunlight to convert it into proteins and sugars.
Since 1750 the concentration in the air has risen from of CO2 278 parts per million (ppm) to more than 380 ppm, making it easier for plants to acquire the CO2 needed for rapid growth.
Plants are getting bigger and stronger, taking in more CO2 and, I presume, sending out more O2. Could it be that a little extra CO2 in the atmosphere, rather than spelling out doom for every living thing on the planet, is...a good thing? Could it be that increased CO2 will mean stronger plants, and thusly more and better crops? Could it be that efforts to stem the tide of the increase in CO2 will lead to decreases in food production and food shortages across the globe?
Lawrence Solomon, author of The Deniers, wrote about this very phenomenon last June in the Financial Post, in a column called "In Praise of CO2."
Doubling the jeopardy for Earth is man. Unlike the many scientists who welcome CO2 for its benefits, many other scientists and most governments believe carbon dioxide to be a dangerous pollutant that must be removed from the atmosphere at all costs. Governments around the world are now enacting massive programs in an effort to remove as much as 80% of the carbon dioxide emissions from the atmosphere.
If these governments are right, they will have done us all a service. If they are wrong, the service could be all ill, with food production dropping world wide, and the countless ecological niches on which living creatures depend stressed. The second order effects could be dire, too. To bolster food production, humans will likely turn to energy intensive manufactured fertilizers, depleting our store of non-renewable resources. Techniques to remove carbon from the atmosphere also sound alarms. Carbon sequestration, a darling of many who would mitigate climate change, could become a top inducer of earthquakes, according to Christian Klose, a geohazards researcher at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. Because the carbon sequestration schemes tend to be located near cities, he notes, carbon-sequestration-caused earthquakes could exact an unusually high toll.
Amazingly, although the risks of action are arguably at least as real as the risks of inaction, Canada and other countries are rushing into Earth-altering carbon schemes with nary a doubt. Environmentalists, who ordinarily would demand a full-fledged environmental assessment before a highway or a power plant can be built, are silent on the need to question proponents or examine alternatives.
Everywhere you look, there's another hole in the theory of Global Warming. Even a second grader could tell you that.
Thousands of children 12 and younger ride motorcycles, ATVs and snowmobiles, which is why a lot of effort and time has gone into designing vehicles made for smaller folks. On Friday, The Wall Street Journal noted a study by the Motorcycle Industry Council that concluded "90% of the youth fatalities and injuries on motorcycles occur when kids ride adult vehicles.On Thursday of last week, the Senate of the United States voted 58 to 39 to reject an amendment to the budget bill designed to keep kids on bikes designed for them and thus off adult vehicles. The reason the amendment was offered by South Carolina's Jim DeMint is because the 2008 "Consumer Products Safety Improvement Act" mandates that products containing even trace amounts of lead --trace amounts highly unlikely to ever come in contact with a child's digestion system-- were banned from sale to children 12 and under.The law took effect in February an instantly made it illegal to sell the kid-sized vehicles because of nearly undetectabl amounts of lead in tire valves, brakes, batteries etc. Replacement parts for vehicles for kids are similarly interdicted.
I find it ridiculous to point this out to Congress, but children do not eat ATVs. The lead content of its components will not end up in small stomachs. Children do not ride ATVs without being clothed, so skin contact is minimal and transitory. What's next -- banning cars because children might ride in them?
All farming depends on the weather, but few foods are more dependent on a specific climate than maple syrup. After all, for the sugar maple's sap to run at all requires cooperative weather - freezing nights followed by warmer days.
But with the buildup of invisible greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, those temperature swings don't happen as reliably. At risk is an American tradition that stretches back even before Europeans discovered the "New World."
"Weather controls it all," says Marty Fitzgerald, a fifth-generation sugarmaker in upstate New York.
