Source:  Red Maryland

Last week I attended a PR event for the new movie Cool It featuring the Skeptical Environmentalist Bjorn Lomborg. Cool It based on Lomborg’s book by the same name, is an antidote to Al Gore’s fallacy riddled scare mongering film, An Inconvenient Truth. The film accepts that global warming or climate change (the alarmists are using climate crisis now) is real and it should be dealt with, but that it’s not the apocalyptic event Gore makes it out to be, and that the current Kyoto-style cap and trade approach is not working.

Lomborg argues—correctly—that spending trillions of dollars on carbon mitigation schemes (cap and trade) for a negligible return on investment—literally less than a degree of temperature reduction—is waste of money, which could be used to address more pressing issues like poverty and healthcare

I asked Lomborg what he thought about Martin O’Malley’s plan to reduce Maryland’s greenhouse gasses by 25% of 2006 levels by 2020. Lomborg’s replied “good luck with that.”

The snarky bluntness of Lomborg’s criticism may offend Maryland’s green zealots, but it has the virtue of being true. (more…)

In all of the smoke and mirrors drama that passes for debate on ‘climate change’, it is sometimes helpful to the layman to provide a ‘voters guide’ on this confusing squabble. The strictly science issues are confusing, but further skewed by economic interests who have complete control of the federal government.

When the objective is greater control, greater regulation and greater tax income then the federal government is NOT a disinterested party in the debate. When federal grants and subsidies can be directed to favor one outcome, then there CAN BE NO OBJECTIVITY. When the 350 year traditions of the English Scientific Method can be abandoned for the ‘good of the cause’, then there is little hope for truth in the future.

To the layman this may appear as a two sided debate, with ‘government science’ under attack from kooks and industry insiders. To those involved in this debate there is a vast difference. At this time there is a four sided debate and this is a guide to those four sides. (more…)

Source:  Wall Street Journal Editorial

Democrats want to change the subject from the Gulf spill to cap and tax. BP approves.

Not too many weeks ago it looked as if President Obama’s cap-and-tax program for energy was dead for this year. But with the political and media left whacking the President for his handling of the worst spill in U.S. history, Democrats have suddenly decided that this is one more crisis that shouldn’t go to waste.

Consult Mr. Obama’s remarks last Wednesday about “the future we must seize” at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Mellon. “The time has come, once and for all, for this nation to fully embrace a clean energy future,” he said. “I want you to know, the votes may not be there now, but I intend to find them in the coming months.”

Nancy Pelosi forced House Democrats to walk the cap-and-tax plank last July, and the White House now plans a summer push in the Senate, where Midwest and coal-state Democrats are still leery of imposing huge new energy costs on their constituents. But Democrats won’t stop merely because cap and tax is unpopular and destructive. ObamaCare was too. (more…)

Source:  American Specator

By Chris Horner on 5.12.10 @ 8:50AM

Today at 1:30 pm Eastern time Senators John Kerry (D-MA) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT) will host a press conference announcing the fifth Senate reinvention of “cap-and-trade” global warming legislation since 2003, the “American Power Act”. Call it the American Power Grab Act, instead, for reasons that will become obvious momentarily.

The orchestrated spectacle, with a cast expected to be in the dozens which massive alignment of special interest groups is apparently supposed to persuade you of the justness of their cause, is in fact a manifestation of all that is wrong with Washington and what Americans have become increasingly enraged by.

At this press conference, Sens. Kerry and Lieberman have both already indicated, they will insist that their scheme isn’t “cap-and-trade” because… they aren’t going to use that term this time around. Kerry has even said that “this is not an environment bill.” It seems that the public aren’t buying that argument, either, so it’s really about whatever appeals to you. Just not what it was about the previous four times they’ve tried to slip this Power Grab past you. Except that a summary of the bill makes plain it is, too, cap-and-trade. And worse. It includes billions of dollars each year in gas tax revenue to underwrite the wealth transfers these companies are so in favor of. (more…)

Source:  Joanne Nova

Thanks to Glenn Beck, we get bit more insight into the tangled web that The House of Global Warming was built on.

Who would have thought? Goldman Sachs has been working hard to save the environment for years.

Generation Investment Management (GIM) was founded by Al Gore, and a few friends, which included David Blood (former Goldman executive), Mark Ferguson (Goldman) and Peter Harris (Goldman). They are the fifth largest shareholder in the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX). Then in 2006, when the CCX needed some extra funding, who should step up to buy 10% of the company – Goldman Sachs.

CCX is an exchange that won’t be doing a heck of a lot if carbon trading doesn’t become mandatory. All of these players have a vested interest in Cap N Trade legislation. (more…)