"FORGET "EARTH HOUR"; PARTICIPATE IN "ENERGY HOUR" ONE HOUR EARLIER"‏

Doing the right things for the wrong reasons is a serious mistake

 “Earth Hour [This Saturday] is a poignant symbol of how climate activists have hijacked the environmental movement,” said Tom Harris, executive director of the Ottawa, Canada-based International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC). “Most people do not realize that, when they turn out their lights for sixty minutes on March 23, they are not supporting science-based environmental protection. Participants in Earth Hour are unwittingly helping prop up one of the most threatening scientific hoaxes in history—the idea that carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from human activities are known to be causing dangerous global warming and other problematic climate change.”

Read whole media release  here.






Earth Hour, Smog & Kim Jong Il

For Earth Hour’s eco-campaigners, barbaric oppression in North Korea is merely a talking point, something to casually make use of.

DoTheGreenThing.com describes itself as “an environmental charity” that uses creativity “to inspire people to be more sustainable.” Its latest campaign

    "involves creating 23 Posters with world-famous designers, artists and creatives, and publishing one a day from March 1st until Earth Hour on the 23rd.

    Each poster inspires people to do one of the sustainable actions chosen by Do The Green Thing’s nine environmental advisors. And it does so using world-class creativity, which we believe is a brilliantly effective tool to seduce, provoke and persuade people to change their behavior for the better."

Changing other people’s behaviour. That’s what these folks are about. You and I are the unwashed, uninformed masses. We behave the way we do not because we’ve considered our options and have chosen the path that makes the most sense.

We aren’t intelligent beings making intelligent decisions. Rather, we’re eco-sinners. And the DoTheGreenThing folks are missionaries spreading the gospel.

You can see the first 10 of the 23 posters here. A few days ago the featured image proclaimed loudly: “Hot dog, Hot Smog.” It insists that eating meat is responsible for 18% “of all greenhouse gas emissions.”

The fact that no source is provided for this factoid in the accompanying text suggests that the DoTheGreenThings folks don’t care whether it’s accurate or not. That number appears to come from a 2006 UN report, the findings of which have been disputed. Indeed, a 2010 news story is headlined: UN admits flaw in report on meat and climate change.

But the other obvious problem is that carbon dioxide emissions have long been the primary target of global warming campaigners. And carbon dioxide is both colourless and odourless. Whatever else one might say about it, it is not smog.

So we have an inaccurate claim and a dubious statistic on a poster that’s supposed to be connected to the World Wildlife Fund’s Earth Hour event. Judging by the fact that the accompanying text contains three links to vegetarian recipes, this is really just an ad for vegetarianism.

But that’s nothing compared to another poster which features a photograph of North Korea’s late dictator, Kim Jong Il with the text: “Standby lights are evil” added to it. I can’t think of a better illustration of one of Ben Pile’s frequent themes. As he says: “environmentalists have no sense of proportion.” [Hooray for Ben!]



Between 1995 and 2000, hundreds of thousands of souls – and perhaps as many as 2.4 million – died of famine in North Korea as a result of a long sequence of actions taken by Kim Jong Il’s government. A 1998 report prepared for the US Congress includes a section on Prisons for the Hungry:

    "As North Korea’s food crisis deepened, Kim Jong Il issued an order on September 27, 1995 to “protect” people wandering for food by incarcerating them. Named after the date of this order, these “9.27″ prisons represent a new low in the human rights record of a country that is already at the bottom of respect for international human rights."

Elsewhere the report tells us about Hyesan City Hospital No. 1:

    "The hospital was filthy. It had no water or electricity. Flies were everywhere. Sixty percent of the hospital’s 120 patients suffered from malnutrition… The children suffered from malnutrition, tuberculosis, and lung and kidney infections. We saw a “homemade” intravenous fluid (IV) attached to a child that was constructed from an empty glass bottle containing water and sugar. The IV tube was dirty and yellow. It was tied to the child’s head by a dirty piece of cloth."

The human tragedy that is North Korea is profound. But for Earth Hour’s eco-campaigners, that gaping wound of oppression and deprivation is a mere talking point, something to casually make use of. The text that accompanies this poster quotes the artist, Joe Stephenson:

    "The standby light embodies everything that’s wrong with the world: rather than walking two steps to turn the telly off properly, we just leave it on standby, sucking up electricity and driving up our energy bills. So I wanted to demonize those little red lights, by making everyone think of Kim Jong Il whenever they see one."

A few appliances on standby represent everything that’s wrong with this world. He actually says that.

SOURCE





An Hour of Darkness. Or Light!

By Alan Caruba

On Saturday, Greens around the world will turn off their lights in a symbolic “Earth Hour” gesture against climate change, the term they adapted in the face of the fact that the Earth has been cooling for seventeen years and is on the cusp of a mini-ice age that will ensure cold weather for many years to come.

Earth Hour is a protest against the use of electricity—energy—to light our lives in countless ways. Anyone who has gone through an outage as I did in the wake of Hurricane Sandy will tell you that life without electricity is an immediate return to primitive times. Mine lasted a week and included the loss of access to the Internet and the ability to use my computer and every other piece of equipment in the apartment. It was not fun.

We derive electricity from burning coal, from natural gas, from nuclear fission, and from hydroelectricity generated by huge dams. The least amount of electricity we use comes from oil and, in particular from wind and solar, a bare two percent or so. These latter two sources exist only because of government subsidies and mandates. Without these they could not compete against far more affordable and effective sources. Oil, of course, fuels all our vehicles.

What Americans generally have not absorbed is the fact that the large, multi-million dollar funded environmental organizations oppose every form of energy we use. Here is a week’s schedule of events planned to lead up to and follow Earth Hour in New Jersey by the Sierra Club chapter.

# On Thursday, March 21, they sponsored a “Fracking Waste Ban Lobby Day” in the state capital of Trenton.

# On Saturday they will sponsor an “adventure aquarium trip” devoted to sea turtles and a lecture on “how our plastic addiction impacts them.” We are no more “addicted” to plastic than to oil from which it is produced and found in virtually everything we use. Energy is not the enemy. It is the lifeblood of a successful economy and society.

# On Sunday there will be a town hall meeting about “clean energy solutions” in concert with Climate Mama, 350.org and the Sierra Club with a panel that will discuss how clean energy, solar and wind, “can dramatically reduce our use of fossil fuels and move our state forward without the pollution.” It will also discuss how “climate change has impacted you.” Americans are not going to reduce the use of fossil fuels, oil, coal, and natural gas. We already enjoy the cleanest air and, more importantly, the Earth in general and America in particular has enormous reserves of these energy reserves.

# On Wednesday, March 27, another panel will engage in “pipeline education”, ignoring the fact that America has 170,000 miles of pipelines that transport oil and natural gas throughout the nation. They are safe and secure, but none carry ethanol, a chemical that erodes not only pipelines, but damages the engines of millions of cars and trucks. The pipeline panel will likely take note of the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada that has been delayed for five years now and cleared of any charges of environmental harm.

The Competitive Enterprise Institute suggests that Earth Hour is a good time to celebrate “Human Achievement Hour”, a way to debunk the global warming hoax and the nonsense surrounding “climate change”, a process that has gone on for billions of years on the planet. The notion that people can do anything about the climate is so absurd it defies the imagination.

Earth Hour is just one more way for the Greens to continue spreading their lies about fossil fuels, plastic, and chemicals they want to demonize despite the advances in health and longevity, the manufacture of products we use, and the extraordinary lifestyle we enjoy with abundant food and protection against the multitude of insect and rodent pests that afflict us, along with the many species of weeds that affect crops.

Not that long ago, Greens were spreading nonsense about “peak oil”, saying that the Earth was running out of this energy source, but new reserves of oil are being found all the time. Between 1945 and 2010, the United States alone produced 167 billion barrels of oil, more than eight times more oil than the amount of proven oil reserves it had in 1944. Oil doesn’t merely fuel our cars and trucks, but as fracking techniques have been developed, more and more of it is available. Between 1980 and 2010, the U.S. produced 77.8 billion barrels of oil and still had 20.7 billion barrels of oil reserves left.

What Americans should keep in mind during Earth Hour is that we have a White House that has done everything in its power to deprive us of the coal, oil and natural gas that we have at our disposal. It has restricted the exploration and extraction of billions of barrels of oil from offshore of our east and west coasts, and in Alaska. It has generated regulations that have already shut down coal-fired plants and is seeking to impose greater restrictions despite the fact that we have enough coal to keep them operating for hundreds of years.

With more than 1.7 trillion barrels of recoverable oil under our soil, we have enough oil to fuel our present needs for the next 250 years. Delaying the Keystone XL pipeline has deprived the nation of thousands of jobs and will result in $5 billion being spent annually to import oil. Meanwhile, the Obama administration has wasted billions on “clean energy investments.”

Americans know their energy bills are increasing as the result of anti-energy policies, know that the energy sector, if allowed to flourish, would provide thousands of jobs, and should know that every drop of oil and cubic foot of natural gas we secure from our own reserves would reduce the cost to everyone in every way.

Turn on your lights at 8:30 PM on Saturday. Turn them all on. Send a message to the White House and to the world that energy is the heartbeat of life and economic growth for America and the world.

Hating energy is another form of hating humanity.

SOURCE





Even scientists are cooling on climate change

By: Ann Widdecombe, British parliamentarian

WHAT do Peter Lilley, Andrew Tyrie, Philip Davies Christopher Chope and I have in common?  We were the only MPs to vote against the 2008 Climate Change Bill, which is to say we had by then considered all the evidence and found it wanting.

For years we have endured insults.

Behind the scenes Fiona Bruce, normally the most courteous of broadcasters, called me a “flat-earther” to my face.

Others branded us “deniers” as if we were disputing the holocaust. The Al Gore film was accorded the status of Holy Writ. David Bellamy lost his job. Doubting scientists were scorned.

Nigel Lawson found it difficult to get his book An Appeal To Reason published.  Others branded us “deniers” as if we were disputing the holocaust

In short there was an orthodoxy which was enforced with all the rigour of communism or fascism or, for that matter, the Spanish Inquisition. Dissenters must not be heard and global warming became a religion.

Well the dissenters have now been proved right.

Heaven knows how many billions of pounds later the world is now being told that actually the warming is so far off predictions that all bets are off and indeed the world’s temperature is static or falling.

So all those wind farms were in vain, as were all those expensive carbon-saving measures inflicted on industry and passed on in costs to you and me.

If I could tell that from the published Hadley Centre figures, the scientists must have known for years yet only now do they admit it. Why?

Heaven forbid that it should be because of all that money tied up in their research.

SOURCE  





British budget 2013: George Osborne vows to 'make shale gas happen' despite fracking concerns

Controversial "fracking" has won backing from the Government after Chancellor George Osborne used his Budget to promise a generous new tax regime for extracting shale gas.

Mr Osborne said "shale gas is part of the future and we will make it happen", as he unveiled measures to support the new industry, including gas field allowances to promote early investment in the sector.

Shale gas is exploited through drilling into rock and fracturing it with high pressure liquid to extract the gas - a process known as fracking.

Supporters say shale gas production in the UK could provide a cheap, secure source of energy, but opponents are worried about the possibility of earthquakes and water pollution caused by fracking. It could also lead to the development of shale wells in the countryside, potentially threatening house prices, and will make it harder for the UK to meet goals to cut emissions and tackle climate change, they argue.

The Chancellor said proposals would be developed to ensure that local communities would benefit from shale gas projects in their area.

But the Government will be keeping under review whether the largest projects could have the option to apply for the go-ahead through a central Government process rather than via local authorities.

Neil Sinden, The Campaign to Protect Rural England's director of policy, said: "We will make sure communities are not sidelined in the decision-making process, if we move beyond the exploration phase, and that the beauty and tranquility of the countryside aren't compromised by intrusive development related to shale gas."

Environmental groups were quick to criticise the Chancellor's support for fossil fuels.

John Sauven, Greenpeace executive director, said: "We got tax breaks for polluters and almost complete disinterest in the green economy, one of the only sectors that has consistently delivered jobs and growth in recent years.

"British businesses stand poised to become dominant forces in the global clean energy market, but they're being undermined by a Chancellor who seems increasingly ill-suited to the times we live in. This man lacks a vision."

Andrew Pendleton, Friends of the Earth's head of campaigns, said: "Shale gas is not the solution to rising energy bills - it's dirty, unnecessary and its extraction will have an earth-shattering impact on local communities across the UK."

SOURCE  




Eco-Imperialism Joins Vulture Environmentalism

Paul Driessen

Gina McCarthy, President Obama’s choice to replace Lisa Jackson at the Environmental Protection Agency, has been chastised for having lied to Congress, in claiming that EPA did not use “dangerous manmade climate change” to justify new 54.5 mpg standards for cars and light trucks. She’s also been implicated in the agency’s practice of using fake emails to hide questionable dealings and activities.

These issues highlight attitudes toward ethics, law and public policy that prevail at EPA and too many other government agencies. However, that attention should not distract from other important matters.

Ms. McCarthy may be the worst of the new nominees. In addition to her dishonesty, she helped devise onerous mercury and soot rules that employed junk science to shutter coal-fired power plants and kill thousands of jobs – and those vehicle mileage standards, which will force people to drive less safe cars that will cause millions more serious injuries and thousands more needless deaths every year.

However, she, Ernest Moniz for Energy and Sally Jewell for Interior are all team players for the Obama White House; they all share ideologies and agendas that bode ill for America’s and the world’s energy, economic, health and environmental future. They represent a rapidly expanding, increasingly powerful government class that is determined to control what we eat, say, do and buy.

In the environmental arena, these would-be czars and czarinas want to regulate what kinds of energy we can produce and use, cars we can drive, and jobs and living standards we can have. They are the vanguard of a dangerous alliance of eco-imperialism and vulture environmentalism.

Driven by utopian, Deep Ecology and global governance ideologies, elected and unelected ruling elites pass laws, promulgate regulations and issue edicts, based on faulty to fraudulent science and unsupported proclamations about dangerous manmade global warming, resource depletion and sustainable development. They seek to radically and fundamentally transform the energy, economic and social fabric of our nation and world – in the name of “social justice” and “saving the planet.”

They operate with little or no transparency or debate, often with vague or minimal legislative or constitutional authority, and with virtually no accountability for the false pretexts they use to justify their intrusive actions, or the harm they cause to people and wildlife. Their attitudes and actions often reflect a callous disregard for environmental values and people’s property, civil rights, jobs, health and even lives.

Our courts give them almost limitless discretion to impose laws and regulations, select pseudo-scientific “facts” to justify them, and ignore both the imaginary benefits and substantive harm they cause. They allow and encourage sweetheart “sue and settle” legal actions between regulatory agencies and activist groups, capricious agency inaction on mineral leases and permits, and arbitrary bureaucratic waivers of endangered species and other environmental laws for gigantic wind and solar projects.

Nameless, unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats effectively control the lands and resources of federal lands that constitute 30-86% of the acreage in Alaska and our eleven westernmost states. America’s federal, state and private lands are rich in energy, mineral, timber and other resources that offer vast job and revenue opportunities. We could easily have drilling, mining, forestry and ranching, along with recreation, wildlife, parks and wilderness – and for decades government regulators emphasized this “multiple use” approach. But today, environmentalists and bureaucrats block these uses and vigorously promote preservation.

Today their motto seems to be: If it creates real energy, jobs and revenues – pillory, ban, delay and regulate it out of existence. If it can be labeled “renewable” – mandate it, subsidize it, waive endangered species laws, and ignore the policies’ impacts on wildlife and on people’s health and well-being. Instead of ensuring that resource development activities are conducted properly, don’t permit them at all.

Under their agenda, US domestic oil and gas production climbed during Mr. Obama’s tenure – but the increase was all on state and private lands, mostly because of fracking and despite Team Obama, which is trying to limit and control this game-changing technology even there. On federal lands, oil production fell 23% and gas production plummeted 33% from fiscal-2010 to FY-2012 – dragging jobs, living standards, and federal bonus, royalty and tax revenues downward with them.

The eco-imperialists profess concern for human health and lives, wildlife and environmental quality. They demand pristine air quality to reduce risks that exist only in EPA computer models. But then they issue lethal vehicle mileage regulations, corn ethanol standards that increase global food prices and harm nutrition, and myriad rules that kill jobs and cause foreclosures, stress, and more heart attacks and strokes. They blame deadly wildfires on global warming, instead of on Deep Ecology policies that prohibit forest thinning, prevent treating insect infestations, and require substandard fire suppressants.

Nearly 700 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa rarely or never have electricity. As a result, pollution from open fires causes asthma and other lung infections that kill a million African women and children annually; countless more die from intestinal diseases due to eating spoiled, unrefrigerated food. And yet, during a speech in Ghana, President Obama said hungry Africa should rely on its “bountiful” wind, solar and biofuel energy, while his administration refused to provide or support loans for gas or coal-fired generating plants, because he believes Earth is “threatened” by global warming.

Eco-imperialist politicians, regulators and environmentalists demand heavy penalties for birds and other wildlife killed by petroleum-related accidents. They delay or ban drilling, fracking and mining because these activities might “disturb” sage grouse. But when millions of birds and bats are exterminated year after year by wind turbines, they turn a blind eye and actively help hide the horrific slaughter, while ignoring evidence that turbines impair the health of people living near them.

Vulture environmentalists hijack environmental laws to further the venal interests of eco-activists, bureaucrats and wealthy elites, who covet private property but don’t want to pay fair prices. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has joined celebrity fracking opponents, green pressure groups and blueblood vultures that are salivating over beautiful Catskill farmlands. Overtaxed, over-regulated owners could save their family farms through careful natural gas production – but the hovering vultures prefer to force them into foreclosure, and grab the prime properties at fire sale prices.

Radical greens used imagined threats to the western spotted owl to eliminate logging jobs and a way of life in western states, to create playgrounds for the green 1 percent. Now the feds plan to shoot formerly eastern barred owls, to keep them from breeding their spotted cousins out of existence – before their habitats are incinerated in fiery conflagrations brought on by other ignorant eco-imperialist policies.

In states and communities all over the USA, the Endangered Species Act, Agenda 21, critical habitat areas and buffer zones, endless regulation and litigation, advisory panels stacked with eco-activists but nearly devoid of private property owners, lowball appraisals of lands and water rights, climate change scare stories and other tactics are used repeatedly to seize title or control over property, without payment of just (or any) compensation. The abuses are endless, and are occurring over the planet.

In just one example, over 20,000 Ugandans were evicted, impoverished and left homeless by the New Forest Company and government authorities, to make way for foreign investors promoting “clean development mechanisms” and carbon-trading credits, as solutions to “runaway global warming.”

We went to war with England over far less than this, back in 1776. It’s high time that our environmental laws were again used to address real air, water and wildlife problems – instead advancing what Greenpeace cofounder Patrick Moore has called the “anti-science, anti-technology, anti-human” agenda of eco-imperialists and vulture environmentalists.

SOURCE  

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