Radical Environmentalists Lose Attack On Judge

Last year, a left-wing environmentalist and social(ist) lobbying organization called the Community Rights Counsel ("CRC"), filed a petition alleging ethics violations against four judges who served on the Board of Directors of the free-market-leaning Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment ("FREE").

Three of those judges resigned from the Board of FREE, but one, Judge Danny Boggs of the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals, decided to stand up to the attack.

FREE gives seminars to judges, lawyers and business people, including sometimes allowing judges to participate free of charge. Since FREE often espouses free-market and good science-based approaches to environmental issues, CRC argued that the seminars gave people who might have business before the court improper ability to influence a judge. FREE argues that the seminars are educational in nature and that FREE itself does not take positions in cases.

In a decision which was somewhat stunning for its bluntness, the deciding Judge, James Loken, Chief Judge of the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals, Judge Loken ruled that FREE's seminars are indeed educational, noting that FREE had a wide range of financial contributors and that if judges could not attend seminars they would be cut out from substantial learning opportunities. Not only did Judge Loken throw out the ethics violations charges but he also excoriated CRC for "presuming a lack of integrity and impartiality" and for resorting to "character assassination".

[It is instructive to read the position of left-wing activists, including but not limited to environmentalists, at the "Trips for Judges" site (link below.) Note that they are complaining because judges are learning from people who discuss free-market and capitalist solutions to economic and environmental problems. I can't say that I'm surprised to see John Kerry's name linked to the move to prevent such junkets. He can't truly believe it would cause a judge to be impartial; he just doesn't like what they're learning.]

(Post lifted from Rossputin. More here)






THE GLOBAL WARMING CODE

From Reason Online, 2 June 2005 by Ronald Bailey:

Michael Crichton's technopolitical thriller State of Fear (HarperCollins) turns on a controversial notion: that all the talk we've been hearing about global warming-polar ice caps melting, weather systems sent into calamitous confusion, beach weather lingering into January-might be at best misguided, at worst dead wrong. It's The Da Vinci Code with real facts, violent storms, and a different kind of faith altogether.....

State of Fear is, in a sense, the novelization of a speech Crichton delivered in September 2003 at San Francisco's Commonwealth Club. He argued there that environmentalism is essentially a religion, a belief system based on faith, not fact. To make this point, the novel weaves real scientific data and all-too-real political machinations into the twists and turns of its story. Kenner uses the data to rebut Drake's exaggerated assertions that humanity is headed toward environmental calamity.

For example: Contrary to claims that rising global temperatures will melt the ice caps of Greenland and Antarctica, thus elevating sea levels catastrophically, average temperatures over Greenland have been falling since 1987 at a rather steep rate of 2.2 degrees Celsius per decade. Over Antarctica, they've been falling for 50 years. Crichton also correctly reports that Nils-Axel Moerner, a professor of geodynamics at Stockholm University, has found "a total absence of any recent sea level rise" and has instead found evidence of a fall in sea levels in the last 20 years.

What about the trend in global average temperatures, a question central to the debate in State of Fear? According to satellite data, since 1978 the planet has been warming up at a rate of 0.08 degree Celsius per decade. Simple arithmetic reveals that, if that rate continues, the planet will warm by 0.8 degree Celsius by the end of the century. That compares with an increase of 0.6 degree Celsius during the 20th century. No catastrophe there.

Indeed, Crichton has one of his characters note the costly uselessness of the supposedly heat-reducing Kyoto Protocols. State of Fear also addresses other environmental scares. For example, Crichton notes how millions of lives have been lost to malaria because of the misconceived ban on the pesticide DDT. He debunks the notion that power lines are causing a cancer epidemic and that 40,000 species go extinct each year.

Such facts help counter the conventional wisdom we hear every day in real life and, in State of Fear, act as a plot-driving counterforce to the less-than-admirable activist characters. Crichton gets the scaremongers exactly right throughout State of Fear. But the author is not 100 percent accurate. The MIT professor Kenner claims at one point that "environmental groups in the U.S. generate half a billion dollars a year." The actual amount for just the 12 largest environmental lobby groups in the U.S. in 2002 was almost $2 billion. That buys a lot of influence in Washington.




ANOTHER VOICE FROM AUSTRALIA IN FAVOUR OF NUKES

Reliant on brown coal, Victorians live in a high-polluting state. Opposition to nuclear power makes little sense when we have the capacity to safely dispose of the waste.....

The green left believes nuclear power plants are unstable and dangerous. Mining and transporting uranium are unhealthy and a menace to Aborigines. Disposal of radioactive waste is impossible, except that which is used in nuclear weapons.
However, let's look at some facts. Chernobyl frightens us away from nuclear power, but the Canadian province of Ontario, not unlike the state of Victoria, gets 40 per cent of its power from nuclear plants and, as far as I know, has not had a nuclear accident.
France gets about 75 per cent of its power from nuclear sources and the French people congratulate themselves on doing their bit to keep the atmosphere clean.

In Victoria, it is stating the obvious to say that a nuclear power generator would be safer than our filthy brown-coal burners. In fact, the two states that desperately need nuclear power are South Australia and Victoria, arguably the two worst polluting places on the face of the planet. Taking everything into consideration, I would feel more confident of my grandchildren's future in France than in Victoria.

Just last week, the Chinese Government announced its intention to install 40 reactors over the next few years, aiming to produce 6 per cent of its power using nuclear energy. That is a relief. China is the world's second biggest consumer of electricity after the US, so the more nuclear plants and the fewer coal-fired plants it installs the better. Having said that, it is hypocritical to then say, "But not here, thank you. It is too dangerous".

I have never been convinced by the waste-disposal argument. In fact, I wonder if those who use it to damn nuclear power even believe it themselves. We live on a vast continent, most of which is uninhabited, geologically stable desert. If ever there were an ideal place for safe disposal of toxic radioactive waste, this is it. Even those who hold a romantic view of the desert must admit that there are thousands of square kilometres of wasteland of no scenic or economic value.

In the end, we must get our base-load electricity from either burning fossil fuels or using uranium. Deep greens scoff at geosequestration of carbon dioxide and are implacably opposed to nuclear. But Carr and Howard are right: it's going to be one or the other, and we had better be quick about it.

More here




More waste of resources at the behest of Greenies: "California's start this year of mandatory recycling of computers and television sets -- paid for by consumer fees of up to $10 -- has sparked congressional interest in developing a nationwide policy on dealing with electronic waste. Two other states, Maine and Maryland, have followed California in adopting recycling plans, but they use different financing mechanisms that collect money from manufacturers to pay for the recycling. And 24 other states are considering their own programs. Fifty different state laws are unworkable, say manufacturers, retailers and recyclers, and they want a uniform federal approach to a multimillion-dollar problem."

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists

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