Will the Democrats outlaw beer, Coca-Cola and Champagne?

Post below lifted from American Thinker. See the original for links

In a preposterous article in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, author Bill McAullife postulates burying carbon dioxide underground in North Dakota to save the atmosphere.

"A partnership that includes Minnesota corporations and state agencies is testing whether it can pump carbon dioxide -- the key pollutant linked to climate change -- deep into the ground. That would not only remove it from the atmosphere, but also free up inaccessible oil and gas deposits. Winning crucial federal money last month, the "Plains CO2 Reduction Partnership" is part of a nearly $300 million program underway in three regions of North America."

Yet another wise commenter on Lucianne.com named "veritas" muses that:

Hey, it's simpler and cheaper to just shut down Coke, Pepsi, Anheuser-Busch, and Miller -- "Big CO2.". Carbonation will kill us all!

There you have it. The Global Warming Crowd are all but ready to outlaw the average citizen's consumption of beer, Coca-Cola and Champagne. Those that are rich enough to pay for carbon credits may have no trouble dealing with a fine for carbonated drinks. When Rush Limbaugh says the Greens want to control our lives down to the smallest detail, he is not exaggerating in the least. Busch Derangement Syndrome?




Incorrect water

Post below lifted from Classical Values. See the original for links

My unending quest to determine precisely what it is that constitutes morality takes a lot of twists and turns, and one of my major complaints is with the constant manufacture of new morality. Well, it's Sunday, and time for the latest dish of manufactured morality. In this case, the front page of the Philadelphia Inquirer unveils the new evil of bottled water:

Throughout the region, tap water is getting a boost from college events and eco-campaigns. At least one restaurant is about to banish bottled water, even as another celebrates it with 42 selections.

Bottled water - a $10.9-billion-a-year industry in the United States - has even emerged as a moral issue, a peace issue. "We are called by our faith stance," said Sister Sharon Dillon, a former executive director of the Franciscan Federation in Washington, as she pledged to forgo Deer Park, Poland Spring, and all the others. For her, it's a matter of equitable access. A billion people worldwide don't have safe drinking water, one in five of them children.

Americans, on the other hand, with near total access, are binging on bottled of every sort, from the handheld variety to the office jugs. We swigged 8.25 billion gallons in 2006 - an average of 28 gallons per person.

Dillon spoke at a teleconference organized by the advocacy group Corporate Accountability International, which sees bottled water as a corporate abuse - the takeover of a natural resource that should belong to everyone. The group wants people to "Think Outside the Bottle" and, like Dillon, pledge not to drink it.

Well, hey, I drink tap water, but only because I'm a cheapskate. However, all this talk of taking a politically correct "pledge" not to drink bottled water makes me feel like running out and buying several cases on general principle. The activists are also screaming that bottled water leads to war:

The Women's International League of Peace and Freedom has launched a three-year "Save the Water" campaign, on the notion that drinking bottled water encourages privatization, which can lead to wars over water.

This really shouldn't come as a shock, because I heard about a recent incident involving an employee who was scolded at work for drinking a bottle of water from Fiji. Until then, I hadn't known there was such a thing about politically incorrect water, so I asked, and I was told that the objection was that because bottled water is transported, while tap water comes out of the faucet, that bottled water eats up more carbon than tap water, and the longer the distance from the source, the more carbon is burned.

But a lot of things are transported long distances -- many of them a lot more frivolous in nature than water. Does it matter whether the water industry helps the Fiji economy, or is that irrelevant?

A lot of what we call "political correctness" is simply an attempt by one group to impose a new morality on another group. I suppose that if it were claimed loudly enough thatthat buying bottled water helped certain countries that it might be a "mitigating" factor, but I don't see why people are so quick to jump on these brand-new moral bandwagons without taking the to really look at the overall economic picture. It's as if people sit around feeling guilty about themselves, waiting for someone to come along and scold them. And right away, they do as they're told:

On Friday at a University of Pennsylvania "Green Fest," the campus enviro group held a tap-water challenge - part taste test, part educational opportunity. "You don't have to do any convincing," said Anil Venkatesh, a math major who guzzles West Philly tap water. "Most people are like, 'Wow, thanks for telling me.' " Public officials are acting.

I'll just bet they are. Bottled water is the newest form of immorality for the trendy scolds, and there are huge numbers of evil conspicuous consumers running around drinking it, just waiting to be put in their place! (Much the same way evil people once enjoyed smoking.)

With any luck, the moralists will soon come to the realization that we started down this slippery slope when we allowed bottles and cans to be invented. By degrees, our inattentiveness allowed the wasteful corporate racketeers to first addict people to buying things like canned and bottled soft drinks and beer. Any idea what's the principal ingredient in those cans and bottles? BINGO! They are over 90% water! It took some time, but eventually the capitalists realized that if people would buy a product that's mostly water, they might be persuaded to buy just the water itself.

But does merely exposing this scam really go far enough? Is it really fair to stop with shaming the water drinkers and placing restrictions on bottled water, while beer and flavored soda drinkers sit around imbibing with impunity? Aren't they destroying the environment too? Especially those who drink imported beer and imported soft drinks, why aren't they being made to feel appropriately ashamed?

This whole thing makes me nostalgic for the good old days when no Communist would ever drink a glass of tap water. Because, of course, only they knew that the real reason they had put fluoride in our water was to destroy our precious bodily fluids in what a distinguished American general properly called "the most monstrously conceived and dangerous Communist plot we have ever had to face." Today, of course, the Commies don't mention the fluoride in our drinking water. Instead, (in a pot calling the kettle black move that everyone seems to have missed), they complain about Dick Cheney putting arsenic in our drinking water. Fluoride, arsenic, whatever. The undeniable fact is, they want us all to be poisoned and die, for why else would they want to make us drink it? And pretty soon there will be no avenue of escape in the form of bottled water, because the one world capitalist Cheney-Bush-Halliburton globalists have been caught putting arsenic in the pure Fiji water!

when the City of Cleveland conducted a chemical analysis of Fiji brand bottled water, they discovered that it contains dangerously high levels of arsenic - higher even than our own drinking supply.

What I want to know is this: if it's impossible to avoid Dick Cheney's arsenic by drinking bottled water from Fiji, why aren't the moral scolds pointing this out? Instead, the moral attacks zero in on things like "consumer culture":

...our newfound taste for water is certainly good news. But there's a dark side to our new water craze. And in many ways, Fiji Water optimizes the self-destructive insanity of consumer culture. The problem is not Fiji Water per se. The company has built hospitals and water systems in Fiji, and I'm sure their water is great. The problem is bottled water in general, and Fiji Water makes a great case study.

I'm in Western New York State watching people drink Fiji Water out of little, indestructible plastic tanks adorned with colorful images of tropical flowers and waterfalls. But there's something very wrong here. Something very unnatural about this natural treat. Something that threatens the very existence of the tropical paradise depicted on the bottle. Something that lays bare the insanity of consumerism.

Trust me, the piece goes on to lay bare the insanity of consumerism at great length. Having done this, the writer closes with what I'd call self-nihilistic advocacy of consumer fraud:

If you like water, and you don't like tap water, then buy a water filter and refill your colorful Fiji bottles over and over. You can still imagine you're in Fiji. They're your daydreams to do with as you wish. Perhaps you can even dream of a healthy world.

Healthy world? Bah! Notice that there's not a word about the Commie fluoride, and nothing about Dick Cheney's deadly arsenic! Just blatant advocacy of fake, fluoridated, faux Fiji fascism. The message of course is that we are doomed because we deserve to be doomed. Because we consume.





BRITONS REMAIN SOBER IN FACE OF CLIMATE ALARMISM

Warnings about the effects of climate change have made most Britons aware of the crisis, but few are willing to make major changes to the way they live, a survey showed on Friday. The Department of the Environment's annual survey of Attitudes and Behaviours in relation to the environment also suggested that while older people were pessimistic about the climate's future, the younger generation were less concerned. "Government is determined to make it possible for people to choose greener lifestyles and to provide advice and encouragement through our Act on CO2 campaign," said Environment Minister Joan Ruddock.

The survey comes days after the government said it may consider deeper reductions to its current carbon emissions target, which aims to cut them by at least 60 percent by 2050. The survey, the sixth since 1986, found that six out of 10 people said they knew a lot or a fair amount about climate change and many were willing to do something to help. But nearly half declared they would not make changes that impinged on their lifestyles and less than three in 10 said they had switched to using a more fuel-efficient car, cut car usage or taken fewer flights.

Contradictory responses also came through in a question on satisfaction with lifestyle, with nearly half replying they were doing enough to help the environment and only 40 percent prepared to do a bit more.

A separate consumer survey found people over 50 -- among the most climate-aware and affluent group -- were deeply suspicious of any government move to raise green taxes, viewing it as a money-making mechanism. People between 16 and 29, especially men, were most likely to say the environment was a low priority for them. They offered a range of reasons for not changing their lifestyles. The survey by Millennium, an agency specialising in marketing to the mature, found 84 percent believed the government was capitalising on climate fears to raise funds and also found little willingness among respondents to change lifestyles much -- if at all -- to benefit the environment. "Our research clearly shows ... the overriding sense of cynicism with which they approach those attempting to jump on the 'eco-friendly' bandwagon," said Millennium managing director Fiona Hought.

The DEFRA survey found there was an overriding sense of guilt about the environment. The most popular corresponding actions tended to be recycling, giving old clothes to charity shops or changing light bulbs. "The most encouraging finding in this survey is the majority of people believing that it's up to individuals to accept responsibility by making lifestyle changes," said Ruddock. "This is vitally important as 40 percent of climate change emissions come from our actions as individuals."

Source





From the U.S. Democrats: Nostradamus Science wedded to Santa Claus economics

Sen. Barbara Boxer of California delivered a speech in the Senate last week in which she linked global warming to the San Diego wildfires, Darfur, the imminent loss of the world's polar bears and even a poor 14-year-old boy who died from "an infection caused after swimming in Lake Havasu," because its water is warmer. Forget arson. Forget genocide. Forget nature. There is no tragedy that cannot be placed at the doorstep of global-warming skeptics.

Oh, and there's no need to acknowledge that the regulations or taxes necessary to curb emissions by a substantial degree might damage economic growth. According to Boxer, laws to curb greenhouse gases - this country would have to cut its greenhouse gas emissions in half over 12 years to meet the latest international community goals - will do good things for the American economy and create lots of jobs. It's Nostradamus Science wedded to Santa Claus economics.

It is rhetoric such as Boxer's - an odd combination of the-end-is-near hysteria and overly rosy economic scenarios - that keep me in the agnostic/skeptic global-warming camp.

Boxer and Sen. James Inhofe, the ranking Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee that Boxer chairs, have been engaging in a running debate on global warming. Last month, Inhofe took on the Al Gore suggestion that polar bears are in peril because of global warming. Inhofe pointed to U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services estimates that show the polar bear population at about 20,000 to 25,000 bears - up from the estimated 5,000 to 10,000 polar bears in the 1950s and 1960s.

Boxer rejected Inhofe's claim that there are more polar bears, selectively citing the "best-studied population" of Canada's western Hudson Bay that found a 22 percent reduction of polar bears from 1987 to 2004. Then she referred to a World Conservation Union prediction that the polar bear population will drop by 30 percent by 2050. Global warming is supposed to be about science, yet projections now stand as fact.

Bjorn Lomborg addressed the polar bear scare in his book, "Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming." Of the 13 polar bear populations in Canada, the populations of 11 are stable or growing. The biggest cause of polar-bear deaths: hunters, who shoot an average of 49 polar bears in western Hudson Bay yearly.

By the way, Lomborg, a Danish professor of statistics, believes "global warming is real and man-made." I note this because, to the global-warming crowd, it is more important that you believe in global warming than that you curb your emissions. Which doesn't make a lot of sense. If you believe their doomsday predictions, you would think they'd care more about results.

Instead, the true believers laud Our Betters in Europe for signing the 1997 Kyoto global warming pact, while ignoring the fact that only two Western European countries (Sweden and the United Kingdom) are on track to meet their Kyoto goals. They laud former President Bill Clinton because he said he supported Kyoto and they bash President Bush because he rejected it. They don't care that Clinton never asked the Senate to ratify the treaty. Or that under Clinton, greenhouse gas emissions rose, contrary to the Kyoto goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 7 percent below 1990 levels by 2012.

Ten years ago, Boxer was one of 95 senators who voted in favor of a resolution that directed the Clinton administration not to sign onto any global warming treaty that exempted developing nations, or "would result in serious harm to the economy of the United States." Yet that is what Kyoto did. Boxer was right, then. Kyoto would have damaged the U.S. economy without curbing greenhouse gases to the extent activists say is needed.

Today, Democrats have abandoned all reason. They buy the worst-case scenarios and sell snake-oil economics. The air of unreality pervades the debate. It doesn't matter what you spew if you say you believe in global warming. You don't have to sacrifice. Fighting global warming will be easy and good for the economy. This isn't science. It's fantasy.

Source





CHINA TO DOUBLE COAL OUTPUT

Yanzhou Coal Mining Co Ltd, China's third-largest coal producer by market value, plans to double its annual output to roughly 70 million tonnes by around 2012, with aggressive expansion offsetting lower production at its old mines. The company was investing two to three billion yuan ($268 million-$402 million) to develop new mines as part of the expansion, including a project with Thailand's C.P. Group in Shaanxi province, an official from the mine told Reuters at the company's headquarters on Friday . But Yanzhou's 2007 coal exports were likely to reach just two million tonnes, falling short of an initial target of three million tonnes, said investment relations officer Jin Qingbin.

China, the world's top coal producer and consumer, emerged as a net importer of the commodity for the first time in January and remained so in each month during the first half of the year, helping to push up global prices to record highs.

Asked about future exports, Jin said: "If the prices are good, we will increase our exports next year. Otherwise we may reduce them further from the current level."

FULL STORY here

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