By Paul Driessen
Saturday, June 01, 2013
Numerous articles document how European climate policies
have been disastrous for affordable energy, economic growth, entire industries,
people’s jobs and welfare, wildlife habitats and human lives. Even the IPCC,
BBC and Economist have finally recognized that average global temperatures have
not budged since 1997. The EU economy is teetering at the precipice, people are
outraged at the duplicity and the price they have been made to pay, the Euro
Parliament has voted to end subsidies for its Emissions Trading Scheme, and the
global warming and renewable energy false façade is slowly crumbling.
Ignoring this, alarmist scientists, eco activists and
government bureaucrats are meeting yet again – first in Bonn, Germany June 3-14
for the 38th meeting of UN climate treaty promoters and wordsmiths, then in
Warsaw, Poland November 11-22 for 19th Conference of the Parties to the UN
Framework Convention on Climate Change. They are determined to hammer out a new
treaty, demanding more restrictions on fossil fuel use and CO2 emissions,
before the tide turns even more inexorably against them.
Meanwhile, in the United States, the Environmental
Protection Agency is issuing more anti-hydrocarbon regulations and more
statements detailing the horrors caused by “dangerous manmade climate change.”
Two points must be kept uppermost: the global warming
“disasters” exist only in computer models, Hollywood movies and alarmist
assertions; and the “preventative measures” are worse than the disasters.
The issue is not whether greenhouse gases “contribute to”
climate change. Scientists acknowledge that. The only relevant issues are: how
big a contribution; whether these gases now dominate planetary climate
variation, supplanting the solar, atmospheric, oceanic and other forces that
have warmed and cooled our Earth throughout its history; and whether human
GHG/CO2 emissions will cause dangerous climate changes that are unprecedented
or worse than those mankind has confronted since time immemorial.
No evidence supports EPA or Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change positions on these issues.
Average planetary temperatures have not budged in 16
years, even as atmospheric levels of plant-fertilizing CO2 have climbed
steadily. For many areas, the past winter was among the coldest in decades, and
the US and UK just recorded one their coldest springs on record. The frequency
and severity of hurricanes, tornadoes, floods and droughts are no different
from observed trends and cycles over the last century. 2012 set records for the
fewest strong tornadoes since 1954 and the number of years with no category 3
or higher hurricane making US landfall. Arctic climate and sea ice are within a
few percentage points of their “normal” levels for the past fifty years. The
rate of sea level rise is not accelerating.
These facts, and many others, completely contradict
computer model predictions and alarmist claims. Moreover, as Climategate and
numerous studies have shown, the “science” behind EPA’s ruling that carbon
dioxide “endangers” human health and welfare is conjectural, manufactured,
manipulated, comical and even fraudulent. Here are just a few of numerous
examples of dangerous “climatism” at work.
The EPA and IPCC insist they rely entirely on scholarly
peer-reviewed source material. However, fully 30% of the papers and other
references cited in the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) were not peer
reviewed; many IPCC “lead authors” were graduate students or environmental
activists; and many sources were actually master’s degree theses or even
anecdotal statements by hikers and mountain guides.
The IPCC claimed Himalayan glaciers would “disappear by
the year 2035,” depriving communities in the region of water. This assertion
was based on a World Wildlife Fund press release, which was based on a
non-peer-reviewed article in a popular science magazine – which was based on an
email from a single glaciologist, who later admitted his prediction was pure
“speculation.” The IPCC lead author in charge of this section subsequently said
he had included the Himalayan glacier meltdown in AR4 – despite his knowing of
its false pedigree – because he thought highlighting it would “encourage”
policy makers and politicians “to take concrete action” on global warming.
Almost 90% of National Weather Service climate-monitoring
stations relied on by the IPCC and EPA to prove “unprecedented” warming were
placed too close to air conditioning exhaust vents, blacktop and other heat
sources. The heat contamination caused the stations to report higher than
actual temperatures.
EPA is using this junk science to justify actions that
will be devastating for Americans. The agency is supposed to protect our
environment, health and welfare. Instead, it “safeguards” us from exaggerated
or illusory risks, and issues regulations that endanger our health, wellbeing
and wildlife far more than any reasonably foreseeable effects from climate
change.
As anti-fossil fuel mandates put EPA in control of nearly
everything Americans make, ship, eat and do – fuel and regulatory compliance
costs will increase. Companies will be forced to outsource work to other
countries, reduce work forces, shift people to part-time status, or close their
doors. Poor and minority families will be unable to heat and cool their homes
properly, pay the rent or mortgage, buy clothing and medicine, take vacations,
pay their bills, give to charity, or save for college and retirement.
Reduced nutrition and medical checkups, along with the
stress of being unemployed or involuntarily holding two or more low-paying
part-time jobs, also lead to greater risk of strokes and heart attacks, and
higher incidences of depression, alcohol, spousal and child abuse, and suicide.
New 54.5 mpg fuel efficiency standards will force more people into smaller,
lighter, less safe cars – causing thousands of needless additional serious
injuries and deaths every year.
Regulators and environmentalist groups have given heavily
subsidized wind turbine operators a free pass, allowing them to slaughter
millions of birds and bats every year – including bald and golden eagles,
hawks, condors and whooping cranes. Rainforests and other wildlife habitats are
being cut down, so that “innovators” can produce $50-per-gallon biofuels, to
replace oil and natural gas that the world still has in abundance and could
easily produce with conventional, enhanced and fracking technologies.
US forests are also being chopped down – to fuel
electricity generation in Europe, where regulations prohibit both fossil fuels
and tree cutting, but promote subsidized “renewable” energy. So American trees
and wetland/forest habitats are being turned into wood pellets for shipment to
Britain and other EU countries: 1.9 million tons of pellets in 2012, to burn in
power plants that consumed over 7 million tons of wood last year and expect to
double that by 2020. It’s insane. It’s not sustainable or ecological.
Would the IPCC, US Global Change Research Program or EPA
“ever produce a report saying their issue is of diminishing importance – so
that EPA regulations of greenhouse gases are not needed?” climatologist Patrick
Michaels wonders. “Not unless they are tired of first class travel and the
praise of their universities, which are hopelessly addicted to the 50 percent
‘overhead’ they charge on science grants.”
EPA finds, punishes and even targets anyone who violates
any of its ten thousand commandments, even inadvertently. EPA’s climate change
actions, however, are not inadvertent. They are deliberate, and their effects
are far reaching and often harmful. For better or worse, they affect all of us,
100% of our economy.
And yet, these increasingly powerful bureaucrats – who
seek and acquire ever more control over our lives – remain faceless, nameless,
unelected and unaccountable. They operate largely behind closed doors, issuing
regulations and arranging sweetheart “sue and settle” legal actions with
radical environmentalist groups, to advance ideological agendas, without regard
for the impacts on our lives, jobs, health, welfare and environment. They know
that, for them, there is rarely ever any real transparency, accountability or
consequences – even for gross stupidity, major screw-ups, flagrant abuses or
deliberate harm.
We need to save our environment from environmentalists
and EPA – and safeguard our liberties, living standards and lives against the
arrogance of too-powerful politicians and bureaucrats. How we achieve this,
while protecting our lives and environment from real risks, is one of the
greatest challenges we face.
(Original article with links included here.)
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