The original Moonbat in 2002

Are you beginning to feel starved? No? Well you will next year, so there! Or so said gorgeous George in 2002. No wonder the Green/Left hate history. George is revealed as yet another false prophet

In a recent article George Monbiot lambasted his opponents (and to be fair, they are legion) for claiming that many of his fellow greenies were anti-human and spouted hate-filled rhetoric. "The great majority of greens are powerfully motivated by a concern for social justice, and recognise that if we don't defend our life-support systems, humanity will suffer grievously" he wrote sententiously.

Really? Let's examine that claim. In fairness to Monbiot, rather than picking someone from the green movement at random we'll restrict ourselves to people whom Monbiot himself relies on when writing his articles.

Back in 2002, Monbiot warned us of a meat-apocalypse by as soon as 2012:

Within as little as 10 years, the world will be faced with a choice: arable farming either continues to feed the world's animals or it continues to feed the world's people. It cannot do both.

The impending crisis will be accelerated by the depletion of both phosphate fertiliser and the water used to grow crops. Every kilogram of beef we consume, according to research by the agronomists David Pimental and Robert Goodland, requires around 100,000 litres of water. Aquifers are beginning the run dry all over the world, largely because of abstraction by farmers.

And it wasn't just eating meat, that Monbiot was demanding we ditch - "vegetarians who continue to consume milk and eggs scarcely reduce their impact on the ecosystem". As the title puts it, "Vegans were right all along". Give up meat, eggs, cheese, butter and milk, or we'll all be starving within as little as ten years, he warned.

100,000 litres of water to produce 1 kilogram of beef is a big claim - so who is Monbiot relying on for his argument here? He cites "agronomists Robert Goodland and David Pimental". And who is David Pimental? He is a professor at Cornell University, an environmentalist and, according to the SPLC and others, an anti-immigrant campaigner.

The anti-racist organisation, the Center for New Community, notes that Pimental was at the centre of attempts to comandeer the respectable conservationist outfit, the Sierra Club to turn it into an anti-immigrant organisation:

By the 2004 Sierra Club elections, SUSPS needed to elect only three additional candidates to the board in order to control the organization and impose its anti-immigration plank. Its three main candidates were Richard D. Lamm, national advisor to Tanton's Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR); Frank Morris, board member of Tanton's Center for Immigration Studies; and David Pimental, board member of the Carrying Capacity Network whose president, Virginia Abernethy, described herself as a "white separatist."

Pimental is an advisor to "Progressives for Immigration Reform" as well as being a board member of the Carrying Capacity Network, which the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) describes as a "hate group". Pimental was listed by the SPLC in its report "Greenwash: Nativists, Environmentalism, and the Hypocrisy of Hate" as one of the "Key Groups and Individuals" of concern.

Pimental gladly works with racists, Malthusians and people who defend Holocaust deniers -is this the sort of person Monbiot really wants to be getting his information from?

No matter, because as 2012 meat-apocalypse day drew near, Monbiot threw his ideology into reverse gear and reversed his edict on veganism. Echoing the contemptuous "Let them eat cake" quip of pre-revolutionary France, Monbiot now decreed "let them eat meat" - and admitted that his 2002 claim on the end of meat-eating was total BS:

Like many greens I have thoughtlessly repeated the claim that it requires 100,000 litres of water to produce every kilogram of beef. Fairlie shows that this figure is wrong by around three orders of magnitude. It arose from the absurd assumption that every drop of water that falls on a pasture disappears into the animals that graze it, never to re-emerge. A ridiculous amount of fossil water is used to feed cattle on irrigated crops in California, but this is a stark exception.

At least Monbiot admitted that in this case he was wrong "by about three orders of magnitude" - hopefully when the global warming theory is finally seen to be bogus he will feel capable of issuing a similar mea culpa.

Monbiot is not a racist. He is not even a neo-Malthusian. But in his eagerness to impose austerity on everyone, he gets taken in by the arguments of those who are. It's why he earnestly believed the patently ludicrous claim that it took 100,000 litres of water to make 1 kilogram of beef, a risible claim that anyone not ideologically blinded would instantly dismiss as nonsense, as he himself was forced to do as 2012 approached.

More HERE (See the original for links)






No Matter What Happens, It Is Due To Global Warming

For years, scientists have recorded the gradual march of plants and animals up mountain slopes and toward higher latitudes as global warming has forced them to chase their climatic comfort zones.

A new study suggests that for plants, however, a warming climate can send them downhill as well

SOURCE






UK Government Goes MAD: Plans to Airlift Fish to "Cope With Global Warming"

The British Government appears to have been poisoned with LSD or a similar hallucinogen, and has announced that it will be releasing more than ONE HUNDRED reports on how it intends to cope with global warming.

The first of the reports, due to be released later this week, will lay out plans - apparently in all seriousness - to airlift fish from areas like the lake district hundreds of miles north to Scotland. As The Ministry of Truth reports:

Fish from the Lake District will be moved to cooler waters in Scotland under radical plans - which will be unveiled this week - aimed at coping with climate change.

The first seven of more than 100 reports by government agencies and utility companies will set out how Britain needs to change to cope with hotter summers and wetter winters. They will highlight the risks - and potential costs - of more landslides, buckled railway lines, crumbling water pipes and rising sea levels threatening lighthouses around the coast. Officials say the studies are needed because levels of carbon emissions mean climate change over the next four decades is unavoidable

You have to marvel at the complete circularity of the reasoning presented by this palpably barking mad idea. This is necessary because it's going to get very hot - and why is it going to get very hot? Because of the amount of carbon dioxide being released.

Thus, even though temperatures in the UK have shown no discernible change from normal, despite Co2 emissions going up and up, the government is spending a fortune in taxpayer's money to fund 100 reports on how we're going to cope. Madness.

SOURCE




NASA extremist advocates U.S. decline

Radical green James Hansen pushes Chinese war on American economy

Imagine if a former military officer, a traditional-values conservative now an attache at the State Department, wrote for a largely foreign audience to urge an international boycott of U.S. goods. The aim was to ruin the American economy to protest the new policy of allowing open homosexuality in the armed forces. Media outlets and politicians would be screaming for his dismissal. Free speech is one thing, but nobody on the taxpayer dole in a position of responsibility would be allowed to call for the destruction of our economy. One way or another, the man would be forced out.

Now consider James E. Hansen, director of the taxpayer-funded NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Last week, blogger Marc Morano discovered a Nov. 24 blog post by Mr. Hansen calling on China to lead an international effort to impose fees on carbon-dioxide emissions, then lead the World Trade Organization to allow import fees on goods from any county - with the U.S. being the target - without such fees. The goal would be to punish America, causing "continual descent into second-rate and third-rate economic well-being," until the "fossil-money- 'democracy'" no longer "rules the roost in Washington." Mr. Hansen also praised communist Chinese leadership for "tak[ing] the long view ... in contrast to the West with its [lamentably] short election cycles."

This blog-burst followed a Hansen trip to the Middle Kingdom, where he wrote similar columns for Chinese newspapers. This is part of a continuing pattern of behavior that could be in violation of ethical rules for civil servants. On Wednesday, the Environmental Law Center of the American Tradition Institute filed a lengthy Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request suggesting Mr. Hansen's office has countenanced employment and honoraria receipts, without legally required waivers, outside of taxpayer-funded jobs. The FOIA request also sought apparently missing "statement* of conflicts of interest by James E. Hansen" and "any internal discussion of any cautions or warnings of actual or possible disciplinary action" involving Mr. Hansen.

His anti-democracy disposition is real. Mr. Hansen supports American courts forcing carbon-dioxide limits on the public without presidential or congressional action. A year ago, he endorsed "Time's Up" by Keith Farnish, who argued, "The only way to prevent global ecological collapse and thus ensure the survival of humanity is to rid the world of Industrial Civilization." The book considers "razing cities to the ground ... along with an (almost certainly necessary) element of sabotage."

U.S. taxpayers shouldn't have to pay the salary of an anti-American loose cannon like Mr. Hansen.

SOURCE





British public sceptical of all-electric cars

THE electric car revolution is unlikely to get out of first gear any time in the near future, motor dealers in Britain have warned.

The slow uptake is forecast despite the promise of tens of millions of pounds in government subsidies.

Senior figures at the Retail Motor Industry Federation said that battery-driven electric vehicles were causing anxiety over their range, the lack of charging infrastructure in place and because of their cost - starting at about œ24,000 ($38,800) even after a œ5000 government incentive.

Paul Williams, chairman of the RMI, said: "At a meeting with dealer groups last week, I was particularly disappointed at the lack of involvement from the motor industry in general with the retail sector in promoting the case for electric cars to consumers.

"There is a distinct lack of awareness by the consumer of this product group, which, given the opportunity, the motor retailers could enhance substantially."

Rob Foulston, the RMI's chief executive, said: "If the range of the average production electric vehicle is only 100 miles (161k), then we are still a long way off a mass market consumer proposition.

"The long-awaited battery-driven Nissan Leaf is due in dealerships in March and Peugeot's iOn has already been soft-launched. However, all-electric cars look likely to be superseded by the next generation of plug-in hybrids, such as the Toyota Auris and the Chevrolet Volt.

"These cars use petrol to extend the vehicle range to hundreds of miles. Last autumn, the coalition cut the Labour Government's pledge of œ230m in support for electric car subsidies to œ43m. It plans to review the scheme next January.

SOURCE




Water, Water Everywhere...Except for California's Farms

By Tom McClintock, House Chamber, Washington, D.C., speaking January 19, 2011

Mr. Speaker:

The Department of Interior issued an announcement yesterday that perfectly illustrates the irrationality of our current approach to water issues.

California's precipitation this season has gone off the charts. Statewide snow water content is 198 percent of normal; in the all-important Northern Sierra snowpack is 174 percent of normal. This is not only a wet year - it is one of the wettest years on record.

Yet yesterday, we have this announcement from the Department of the Interior: that despite a nearly unprecedented abundance of water, the Bureau of Reclamation will only guarantee delivery of 45 percent of the California Central Valley's contracted water supply south of the Delta. This is the same percentage they received last year with barely average rainfall.

This is of crucial importance to the entire nation, since the Central Valley of California is one of the largest producers of our nation's food supply. California produces half of the U.S.-grown fruits, nuts and vegetables on the nation's grocery shelves and the prices you pay are directly affected by the California harvest.

The deliberate decision by this administration in 2009 and 2010 to divert hundreds of billions of gallons of water away from the Central Valley destroyed a quarter million acres of the most productive farmland in America, it threw tens of thousands of families into unemployment and it affected grocery prices across the country.

At the time, the administration blamed a mild drought, but never explained why a drought justified their decision to pour 200 billion gallons of water (that we did have) directly into the Pacific Ocean. In a rational world a drought means that you are more careful not to waste the water that you have.

The real reason for this irrational policy, of course, is that they were indulging the environmental Left's pet cause, a three-inch minnow called the Delta Smelt. Diverting precious water to Delta Smelt habitat was considered more important than producing the food that feeds the country and preserving the jobs that produce the food.

But that issue is now moot. This year we have nearly twice the normal water supply at this point in the season, and yet the Department of Interior will allow only 45 percent of normal water deliveries to California Central Valley agriculture south of the Delta. The difference comes to 1.1 million acre-feet of water. 1.1 million acre feet. Now consider this: since December 1st, the Central Valley Project has released 1.4 million acre feet more water into the Pacific Ocean than they did just last year.

Let me repeat that. At the same time this Administration is denying California Central Valley agriculture 1.1 million acre feet of their rightfully contracted water in one of the wettest years on record, it is dumping 1.4 million acre feet of additional water into the Pacific Ocean.

M. Speaker, this is insane. Coleridge's lament "Water, water everywhere but not a drop to drink" appears to have become the policy of this administration. The American people did not invest billions of dollars into federal water projects so that their water can be dumped into the ocean to please environmental extremists. This policy may have been cheered by the previous Congress, but it won't be tolerated by the new majority, nor by the American people.

There was a time when the principal objective of our federal water policy was to assure an abundance of water to support a growing population and a flourishing economy. But in recent years, a radical and retrograde ideology has taken root in our public policy, abandoning abandoned abundance as the objective of our water policy and replacing it with the government rationing of government-created shortages.

I cannot imagine a more disturbing example of this ideology at work than the announcement yesterday by the Department of Interior. Even faced with a super-abundance of water, they are determined to create and then to ration water shortages.

The American people expect better and they deserve better. They deserve a government dedicated to restoring jobs, prosperity and abundance - all of which is well within our reach - if we will simply reverse the folly that was on full display with yesterday's announcement.

Ironically, this announcement came on the same day that the President ordered his agencies to identify regulatory policies that are harming the economy. Mr. Speaker, it appears the Department of Interior missed that memo.

SOURCE





Some Australian criticism of the windmill craze at last

One of Australia's most successful company receivers is taking on the proponents of a $400 million wind farm development that plans to place turbines taller than the Sydney Harbour Bridge overlooking his rural getaway on the NSW southern tablelands.

"It started out as a NIMBY (not in my back yard) issue, but it is now much more than that," said Tony Hodgson, who co-founded the insolvency specialist Ferrier Hodgson, which has handled some of Australia's highest-profile corporate collapses, including One.Tel and Laurie Connell's Rothwells Ltd. Ferrier Hodgson also pursued Christopher Skase for his missing millions and more recently was the receiver for the failed logistics group Allco.

Mr Hodgson is no stranger to a protracted fight. He was chairman of the Melbourne Port Authority during the 1998 waterfront dispute between Patrick Ltd and the Maritime Union of Australia. "My position in life is I thought Genghis Khan was a bit of a piker so I am out there," Mr Hodgson said.

Hodgson bought his property in Collector, about 30km west of Goulburn, five years ago and said he learned of plans for a 160-megawatt, 80-tower wind farm in October.

He has launched a furious campaign against wind farm proponent Transfield Services, the state government and his absentee neighbour, a Double Bay cafe owner who has agreed to host some of the proposed wind towers in exchange for lease payments estimated at $1m a year for 20 years.

Since Mr Hodgson started his campaign, Transfield has been forced to disclose, belatedly, about $39,000 in political donations that it failed to report when it lodged its development application.

Mr Hodgson's lawyers have referred Transfield's non-disclosure to the Independent Commission Against Corruption after NSW Planning Minister Tony Kelly declined to do so. Mr Kelly said he was "satisfied" that Transfield's failure to disclose the donations with its project application on September 17 last year did not indicate "corrupt conduct". Transfield has rejected any suggestions of impropriety.

Mr Kelly has announced he will not consider the Transfield application -- as is his right under the special project status given to wind farms -- and will instead refer it to the Planning Assessment Commission for assessment. This has been claimed as a significant victory by those who object to the wind farm proposal.

Meanwhile, lawyers acting for Mr Hodgson have advised his neighbour that the businessman may sue him for loss of amenity and reduced property value if the wind farm goes ahead.

Mr Hodgson has formed a Friends of Collector group to lobby against the development. He has organised a community meeting this weekend at which Sarah Laurie, from the Waubra Foundation, will talk about her research into the health impacts of wind farms on nearby residents.

Opponents of the wind farm are planning to erect a giant billboard alongside the Federal Highway at Collector tomorrow that says "Transfield. Go stick your 80 turbines somewhere else. Try Sydney".

Mr Hodgson said he did not want the Collector wind farm to go ahead but, if it did, Transfield should be forced to make payments to the local community on a dollar-for-dollar basis on what it was paying landholders who had sold the right to host the turbines. He said the company should also be forced to lodge a bond of $200m to cover the cost of decommissioning the wind turbines at the end of their life.

Opponents want the state government to scrap the Part 3a provisions that give wind farms special project status, and exempt them from normal planning rules and land and environment court oversight.

They also want an inquiry into the environmental and economic value of wind farms and an inquiry into the health impacts of living near them. Transfield's preliminary environmental assessment says there would be a minimum 1km buffer between the wind towers and non-involved residences. The company said it was anticipated that only five non-involved residences would be within 2km of the nearest turbine.

Mr Hodgson said the size of the towers and blades -- at 150m, taller than the top of the Sydney Harbour Bridge from the water level -- meant the visual impact was far-reaching. "My view is there should also be a register of easement that shows up on all the adjoining land," Mr Hodgson said. "My position would be if I knew there was going to be a wind farm here I would not have bought it five years ago. I could have gone anywhere."

The Collector protests reflect widespread concern in rural communities where wind farms are being proposed.

The wind industry has dismissed concerns it is being self-interested and has research that shows 80 per cent of residents in areas where wind farms have been proposed support the developments. However, a survey of Collector residents who claim they will be immediately affected by the wind towers has produced the opposite result.

Community opposition to wind farms is a global issue. At a future energy conference in Abu Dhabi this week, Morten Albaek, senior vice-president of Denmark-based wind turbine maker Vestas, said the industry had underestimated the NIMBY syndrome. "The not-in-my-backyard syndrome is strong and driving the political decision-making," Mr Albaek said.

He said he believed the wind industry must provide more information to communities. "There are too many rumours and conspiracy theories about wind power plants and we as an industry are doing too little to fight them," he said.

SOURCE

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