Tag Archive for: climate change skeptic

Climate Crusaders Poised to Claim Oregon

A drama playing out in Oregon this week exemplifies, at best, the vast and growing distance between Left and Right in America today.

At worst, it exemplifies the relentless onslaught of corporate leftist tyranny, in all things, and everywhere at once, and the rising fury of an abused population that is slowly awakening. In Oregon’s case, a handful of Republican state senators are fighting an uphill battle to protect the people they represent from yet another attack of the climate crusaders.

While the Left Coast of America may be deep blue, the disenfranchised interior is an equally deep red.  Almost invariably, to drive east from Seattle, Portland, the San Francisco Bay Area or Los Angeles, is to drive into a GOP controlled hinterland. A political map depicting Oregon’s 2018 gubernatorial election makes this plain – the entire eastern two-thirds of the state is Republican, along with the entire south coast and rural stretches of the north coast. The Democratic political machines in Portland, Salem, and a handful of college towns deliver enough votes to control the state, effectively denying a voice to everyone else.

Democrats in Oregon hold what Ballotpedia and others refer to in state politics as a “trifecta,” control of the lower house, the upper house, and the governor’s mansion. But in the Oregon State Senate, the Democrats are still one seat short of being able muster a quorum to pass legislation without Republican participation, and last week the Republicans rebelled.

The issue was proposed House Bill 2020 which would establish a “Climate Policy Office” to bring cap and trade to Oregon. The measure had cleared the House and after floor debate, was poised to pass in the Senate, wherein Oregon’s Democratic Governor would have signed it into law. But the Republicans had one option left, and they used it. All eleven Republicans are at an “undisclosed location.” Some believe they’ve gone to Idaho.

In response, Democrat Governor Kate Brown threatened to send state police to round up the absent legislators. Reacting to the Governor’s threat, Oregon State Senator Brian Boquist, a former special forces lieutenant colonel in the US Army, stated in a local television interview that “the governor better send Oregon state troopers who are ‘bachelors’ and ‘heavily armed.'” Boquist later said he will “refuse at all costs to be arrested as a political prisoner in Oregon, period.”

It’s important to recognize that these confrontations could easily move beyond rhetoric. Oregon’s Democratic Governor Kate Brown is a dangerous puppet. Shown on the CNN website flanked by, of course, children wearing tee-shirts that say “I will be 25 when my climate fate is sealed,” Kate Brown probably has no idea that she is a tool of the most anti-American, fascist gang of profiteers and power mongers in modern American history.

The climate propagandists have succeeded in brainwashing a generation of K-12 children, who now parrot apocalyptic sound bites with the same fervor that motivated China’s Red Guards back in the 1960s. Instead of Mao Tse-tung, we’ve got Al Gore, and instead of the transparent oppression of Orwell’s 1984, we have the softer fascism, the Soma induced stupor of Huxley’s Brave New World. That makes sense. Because the entire “climate” movement is being expertly marketed by multinational corporations. Behind the sincere fanatics and befuddled children, serious, powerful people are setting themselves up to make trillions in profits, obliterate all competition, turn nations into fiefdoms, and rule the world.

When you examine the “solutions” demanded by the climate change crowd, there isn’t any other logical explanation. It is impossible to replace fossil fuel with renewables, and every rational observer knows this. It is also ridiculous to expect other nations, most notably China and India, to follow America’s lead and even make the attempt, and every rational observer knows this as well. Finally, the solutions themselves are unlikely to even reduce CO2 emissions – consider the embodied energy in wind turbines and batteries, consider the ecological disaster of biofuel, consider the necessity of backup plants running on fossil fuel to compensate for darkness or lack of wind.

Moreover, if the climate crusaders were serious, why are they shutting down nuclear power plants instead of building new ones? Why are they tearing out hydroelectric dams? Why aren’t they demanding more research into commercializing fusion energy?

Yet “climate change” is the moral axe that cuts through every objection. If someone helpfully tries to point out the stupefying expense climate legislation inevitably imposes on ordinary working families, they’re called “denier” and silenced. They can lose their jobs, their reputations, their research funds, even their friends. The “denier” epithet is leveled on people merely for pointing out the impracticality of “climate change” mitigation, even if they refrain from reminding us that CO2’s alleged harm is still a theory, not a fact.

Thanks to earlier state legislation pushed by the climate crusaders, Oregon is already beginning to experience unaffordable housing because most new development must now take place within the footprint of existing cities. An in-depth study by Oregon’s Cascade Policy Institute patiently ticks through the futility of these policies in a spacious, nearly empty state. But supposedly if you have uncongested roads and people don’t live on top of each other like rats, there’s more “greenhouse gas.” Hardly anyone dares question this nonsense. Instead, people buy homes they can barely afford and become mortgage slaves. And for those who don’t work or don’t make enough to pay that mortgage, the government increases taxes so they can subsidize construction of “affordable housing.”

This is a perverse, oppressive, profiteering scam. To make housing affordable, simply permit builders to expand the urban footprint of cities. But in Oregon, the scammers were just getting started. It wasn’t enough to ruin the housing market so wealthy real estate investors could get wealthier, so government agencies could collect more property tax, and so major land developers could make more profit selling overpriced homes. Now the climate crusaders want to create a huge new state bureaucracy that will team up with Wall Street bookies to skim a few dollars off of every unit of conventional energy that’s ever bought or sold. It’s called carbon emission trading.

It’s hard to imagine a bigger scam than carbon emissions trading. The scheme relies on incredibly subjective “carbon accounting” whereby every business has to assess how much CO2 they emit each year. The bureaucrats at the “Climate Policy Office” come up with a baseline allocation for each business, which documents how much CO2 they emit in the first year. Then, systematically, these businesses have to either emit less CO2 each year, or purchase CO2 emissions permits to make up the difference. People who plant trees, or in some way come up with projects to supposedly reduce CO2 emissions, are permitted to sell “carbon credits” to the companies that are over-emitting. Are you confused yet? They’re counting on that. And through it all, the bureaucrats get their salaries, and the trading bookies on Wall Street get their commissions. Trillions are on the table.

It must be pointed out, as an aside, that the policy of “emissions trading” often seduces libertarians, especially since it is a new profit center for their donors. Libertarians view emissions trading as preferable to a simple tax on gas and oil. But when you’re infatuated with your own mind, byzantine schemes to rob the public are always more seductive than simple theft. And after all, “market forces” are harnessed. Thanks so much.

Libertarians, when it comes to borders, trade, online censorship, getting Republicans elected, and now climate change, are always there when you need them.

Meanwhile, as ordinary Americans work like dogs to pay mortgages on overpriced homes that sit on lots with yards too small to grow a tree or set up a trampoline, and spend twice as much for gasoline and electricity, and as American manufacturers relocate because of energy costs, the Chinese prepare to take over the world. Has America’s corporate Left not thought this far ahead? Perhaps we’ll fight the next war with battery operated tanks and planes.

The solutions being proposed for “climate change” are so obviously unworkable and so obviously repressive that it is terrifying that more people cannot see it. Oregon’s Republican Senators should not back down. Not this time. Not ever.

This article originally appeared on the website American Greatness.

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Credible Climate Skeptics

An article entitled “The Danger of Cosmic Genius” appearing in the December 2010 edition of The Atlantic, authored by Kenneth Brower, refers to the brilliant physicist Freeman Dyson, and his “dangerous” skepticism regarding climate change. As Brower puts it, “Among intelligent nonexperts who have weighed in on climate change, Freeman Dyson has become, now that Michael Crichton is dead, perhaps our most prominent global-warming skeptic.”

In an article that exceeds 6,000 words, Brower repeatedly launches scathing attacks on Dyson’s credibility, stating at one point “how could someone as smart as Freeman Dyson be so dumb,” or “many of Dyson’s facts on global warming are wrong… but more disconcerting is the selective way he gathers his information or the peculiar conceptual framework into which he inserts it,” or “how is it possible to misapprehend so profoundly how the real world works,” or “he is emotionally incapable of seeing the true colors of the rampant ingenuity of our species…”

Not content with merely attributing the dangerously delusional nature of Freeman Dyson’s climate skepticism to the apparent failings of his personal emotional and intellectual architecture, Brower then applies what quite likely is a template used to discredit any climate skeptic – especially since some of them, such as Dyson, are too widely respected to be simply demonized. Brower shares these theories, suggesting Dyson may be a “contrarian,” since “physicists, astronomers, scholars of every stripe, have always been charmed by the counterintuitive – and why not, as it so often turns out to be right.” Brower then ventures another theory, “he doesn’t really mean it,” suggesting “it is not always apparent when he is inhabiting some Dali-esque experimental landscape between his ears and when he has touched down on Earth.” Making sure he doesn’t miss anything, Brower continues with an “educated fool” theory, noting that even the brilliant Albert Einstein couldn’t make change, and explaining that “it seems only right that some leveling principle should deprive the geniuses among us of common sense, street smarts, mother wit. It is tempting to try to explaining Dyson this way.” Brower concludes his theories by considering, than dismissing, the possibility that the 86 year old Dyson is becoming senile.

Kenneth Brower is the son of David Brower, a man who actually cared about the environment, instead of our current generation of environmentalists, who have become tools of corporate monopolies bent on controlling global energy output by encouraging us to believe the earth is about to poison itself with CO2. Some of the original Brower comes through when Kenneth Brower admonishes Dyson for his optimism regarding our species, reminding us, among other things, that “many of the large cities of Africa, South America, and Asia are megalopolises of desperate poverty ringed by garbage. Vast tracts of tropical rainforest… disappear annually, burned or logged or mined. Illegal logging is also ravaging the slow-growing boreal forests of Siberia… African wildlife is in precipitous decline…” If only today’s environmentalists would return their focus to these obvious challenges. Instead Brower observes, correctly, that Dyson has compared alarm over climate change to a religion, and turns that around, claiming it is Dyson who is abandoning reason for faith, a faith whose “tenets go something like this: things are not really so bad on this planet. Man is capable of remaking the biosphere in a coherent and satisfactory way. Technology will save us.” As Brower sums it up, “Environmentalism worships the wisdom of nature. Dysonism worships the indomitable ingenuity of Man.” But Brower contradicts himself.

Throughout Brower’s article he provides – in between the slurs and the theories regarding Dyson’s climate heresy – abundant evidence that Freeman Dyson is one of the most capable scientists alive. It is abundantly clear to anyone reading this article – or independently familiar with Freeman Dyson and his body of work – that he is an intensely rational individual, whose conclusions are governed by logic, whose articles of faith are the product of his reason. Listen to these accolades:

“Freeman Dyson is one of those force-of-nature intellects whose brilliance can be fully grasped by only a tiny subset of humanity, that handful of thinkers capable of following his equations. His principal contribution has been to the theory of quantum electrodynamics, but he has done stellar work, too, in pure mathematics, particle physics, statistical mechanics, and matter in the solid state. He writes with a grace and clarity that is rare, even freakish, in a scientist…”

Another prominent climate skeptic, Richard Lindzen of MIT, has argued that climate science is a multi-disciplinary field where it is very unusual, if not impossible, for any single individual to acquire sufficient technical expertise in the diversity of fields necessary to intuitively apprehend what may be actually driving global climate trends. Lindzen claims that many scientists who feel peer pressure to embrace the theory of anthropogenic CO2 driving potentially catastrophic climate change preserve their integrity by limiting their contrarian observations and theories to their own narrow areas of expertise. The glaciologist will deny that glaciers are shrinking worldwide. The atmospheric scientist will point out that the troposphere is not exhibiting temperature trends that reflect what the computer models indicate they should. The oceanographer reminds us that the Pacific Decadal Oscillation will not drive the Arctic to begin to show significant cooling again until 2018. The paleontologist points out we are still emerging from the mini ice age. But none of them challenge the conventional wisdom. This fact – that most scientists are unwilling to risk being politically incorrect with respect to the big picture – nullifies Brower’s point that “he [Dyson] is such a scientific minority on climate change that his views are easy to dismiss.”

And if global climate theories are indeed best ventured by scientists with diverse qualifications, qualifications so diverse, in fact, that it is impossible for one individual can acquire them all, it is disingenuous to suggest Dyson is unqualified to have an opinion on global warming. Does this sound like someone who is not allowed to have a credible opinion on climate change? “Freeman’s gift…it’s cosmic. He is able to see more interconnections between more things than almost anybody. He sees the interrelationships, whether it’s in some microscopic physical process or in a big complicated machine… He has been, from the time he was in his teens, capable of understanding essentially anything that he’s interested in. He’s the most intelligent person I know.”

Brower is not sparing in his discussions of just how powerful and multi-faceted Dyson’s intellect is, saying “His career demonstrates how a Nobel-caliber mind, in avoiding the typical laureate’s dogged obsession with a single problem, can fertilize many fields, in his case particle physics and astrophysics, the history of science, religion, disarmament theory, literature, and even medicine, as Dyson was a co-inventor of the TRIGA reactor, which produces medical isotopes.” This sounds like just the man to take a good look at the current alleged consensus regarding anthropogenic CO2 and its supposed role in inducing catastrophic climate change. Brower – along with his fellows in the AGW alarmist community – simply didn’t get the answer from Dyson that they wanted to hear.

Michael Crichton, who Brower identified as the internationally recognized “non-expert” climate skeptic who Dyson has now replaced, in one of the last public appearances of his life, had this to say about how politicized and corrupted environmental organizations have become, stating “what more and more groups are doing is putting out lies, pure and simple, falsehoods that they know to be false.” Crichton also understood, like Dyson and Brower, that sometimes faith distorts what properly belongs in the realm of science, and had this warning:

“In the end, science offers us a way out of politics. And if we allow science to become politicized, then we are lost. We will enter the Internet version of the dark ages, an era of shifting fears and wild prejudices, transmitted to people who don’t know any better. That’s not a good future for the human race.”