Source: http://godfatherpolitics.com/6783/global-warming-fear-is-about-money-not-science/

The League of Conservation Voters (LCV) is spending $1.5 million to defeat five of the most outspoken members of the House of Representatives who believe man-made global warming is a hoax.

The campaign, called “Defeat the Flat Earth Five” will focus on running TV, mail and phone initiatives to spread the message that the members are ignoring science and out of touch with what most Americans believe.

Equating these anti-global warming congressmen with a belief in a flat earth shows how the folks at the LCV are as out of touch with the history of science as they are with the science behind climate change (it changes every day) since no one of any reputation ever believed in a flat earth.

In the end, it’s not about science; it’s about government (tax-payer) grant money. (more…)

Source:  Numbers of the Month

Numbers watch

by John Brignell

The way to bring down a modern state is to attack its energy, manufacturing and transport systems, hence the dam busters and the bombing of German railways and factories during the Second World War. Nowadays, however, developed nations are under attack from the Enemy Within, the neo-Marxist Greenies. Greenpeace, which in its inchoate form was a fairly straight environmental campaigning group, was soon taken over by political extremists and after its conversion to an apocalyptic vision lost original members such as Patrick Moore; but over time this has also happened to other mainstream parties. The UK is the world basket case in this respect (witness the passing without comment of the destructive carbon tax, which is being strongly resisted in other western countries) and almost the entire British political class have become true believers. Nevertheless, countries far apart in both distance and character, such as Australia and Germany , are manoeuvred relentlessly by their green parliamentary minorities in the direction of economic suicide. (more…)

Source: Wattsupwiththat?

This is a collection of news story excerpts this past week. AGW proponents and environmentalists is general are taking hit after hit in the media this week. – Anthony

The Crisis of Climate Catastrophism

The threat to tropical rainforests from climate change may have been exaggerated by environmentalists, according to a new study. Researchers have shown that the world’s tropical forests thrived in the far distant past when temperatures were 3 to 5C warmer than today. They believe that a wetter, warmer future may actually boost plants and animals living the tropics. – David Derbyshire, Daily Mail, 12 November 2010

There are many climactic models today suggesting that … if the temperature increases in the tropics by a couple of degrees, most of the forest is going to be extinct. What we found was the opposite to what we were expecting: we didn’t find any extinction event [in plants] associated with the increase in temperature, we didn’t find that the precipitation decreased. — Carlos Jaramillo, The Guardian, 12 November 2010 (more…)

Source:  Spiked On Line

by Ben Pile

Environmentalists have long claimed that their desire to save the world has been thwarted by conspiracies of Big Oil and right-wing think-tanks. Channel 4’s What the Green Movement Got Wrong (watch it here) showed signs that some environmentalists are at last beginning to take responsibility for their failures. But does it tell us anything we didn’t already know, and will the new environmentalists be so different from the old?

The main thrust of the film is that, by opposing GM, nuclear power, and DDT, environmentalists have damaged the chances of a solution to climate change and have done serious harm to poorer people and their own public image. Critics have been arguing this for environmentalism’s entire history, of course. But it is interesting to see some sober reflection on green failure nonetheless. Mark Lynas, author of Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet (see a review of the book here), speaks candidly about how his objection to GM ‘wasn’t a science-based rational thing. It was an emotional thing and it was about the relation between humans and other living things’. Since Lynas ‘came out’ in favour of nuclear power, he has found himself on the receiving end of the self-righteousness he once meted out to others.

Although it is interesting to see one-time activists reflecting in this way, the reformulation of environmentalism doesn’t really address the problems with its initial perspective. The arguments in the film don’t form a criticism of environmentalism as an instance of the politics of fear, but merely moderate some of its excesses. There is an interesting discussion about the shortcomings of the precautionary principle, and the film’s participants are far more circumspect about risk from certain technologies than they have been in the past. (more…)

Source: PushBack

by Walter Russell Mead

{Excerpt}

The rise of the environmental movement reflected the increasing independence of thought and judgment of a public that was becoming less and less impressed with credentials and degrees.  The public wanted to take power back from experts and appointed government agencies and put up new obstacles in the way of technocratic engineers with big projects in mind.

But when it comes to global warming, the shoe is on the other foot.  Now it is suddenly the environmentalists — who’ve often spent lifetimes raging against experts and scientists who debunk organic food and insist that GMOs and nuclear power plants are safe — who are the pious advocates of science and experts.  Suddenly, it’s a sin to question the wisdom of the Scientific Consensus.  Scientists are, after all, experts; their work is peer-reviewed and we uneducated rubes must sit back and shut up when the experts tell us what’s right. (more…)

Source:  Quadrant

by Ray Evans

Climate: The Counter Consensus by Robert M. Carter
(Stacey International, 2010)

Bob Carter is a member of a small group of Australian scientists (although he was born in the UK and mostly educated in New Zealand) who, having attained a distinguished position in their disciplines (he is a paleo-climatologist), were willing to put their reputations on the line by speaking out against the most extraordinary fraud in the history of Western science: the fantasy that by controlling anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide, mankind can control global temperatures; a miraculous global thermostat.

This fantasy is so bizarre that Jonathan Swift could, using statements from today’s Royal Society without embellishment, write them into his account of the kingdom of Laputa. The citizens of Laputa lived on a cloud and threw rocks at rebellious surface cities beneath them. Using Laputa as a satire on the Royal Society, Swift portrayed the ruin brought about by the attempts by the scientists living in the clouds to impose their will on the helpless people living below them.

Bob Carter’s book is a well written account of the deep corruption of our scientific inheritance which has been central to the spread of this fantasy. It is a fantasy which has spread throughout the intellectual, political and religious elites of the English-speaking world, and which has infected key Australian institutions, notably the CSIRO, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, and virtually all our universities. (more…)

Source: Ayn Rand Center

By Keith Lockitch (Washington Times, January 9, 2009)

As environmentalism continues to grow in prominence, more and more of us are trying to live a “greener” lifestyle. But the more “eco-friendly” you try to become, likely the more you find yourself confused and frustrated by the green message.

Have you tried giving up your bright and cheery incandescent light bulbs to save energy–only to learn that their gloomy-but-efficient compact fluorescent replacements contain mercury? Perhaps you’ve tried to free up space in landfills by foregoing the ease and convenience of disposable diapers–only to be criticized for the huge quantities of energy and water consumed in laundering those nasty cloth diapers. Even voicing support for renewable energy no longer seems to be green enough, as angry environmentalists protest the development of “pristine lands” for wind farms and solar power plants.

Why is it that no matter what sacrifices you make to try to reduce your “environmental footprint,” it never seems to be enough? (more…)