Search This Blog

De Omnibus Dubitandum - Lux Veritas

Thursday, February 28, 2013

Piracy on the High Seas

By Rich Kozlovich

It turns out that on Monday the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals delivered a ruling on something many of us have been saying for years.  The Sea Shepherds are “pirates”!   They're activities are now defined by the United States as being illegal actions on the high seas, with Chief Judge Alex Kozinski ,in agreement with the Japanese groups filing the suit against Sea Shepherd, saying;

"You don't need a peg leg or an eye patch," he wrote, according to AP. "When you ram ships; hurl glass containers of acid; drag metal-reinforced ropes in the water to damage propellers and rudders; launch smoke bombs and flares with hooks; and point high-powered lasers at other ships, you are, without a doubt, a pirate, no matter how high-minded you believe your purpose to be."


Variation of the flag used
 by Sea Shepard
International  in the past

Most of us will remember the television show “Whale Wars” headed up by Paul Watson and his Sea Shepherd organization, whose purpose is to disrupt the annual whale hunt in Antarctica waters. I remember watching it and thinking; how can anyone not perceive this as piracy, especially since they attacked these ships while not flying a flag of any nation.  Technically that in itself made them pirates, until 2008, when, it is my understanding, they started flying the flag of the Netherlands.  Well, flying a nation’s flag or not, it’s the actions that constitute maritime piracy which is defined as; “The act of violence or depredation on the high seas.” 
 
Watson and his attorneys insist that U.S. courts have no jurisdiction in these waters.  For most of us that would seem to be accurate.  However, piracy on the high seas has been going on forever and as a result the world’s nations decided the only way to effectively combat it was to join in cooperation with other nations.  As for the United States having jurisdiction in these waters;

“The power to criminalize piracy originated in the U.S. Constitution, which was followed by the first federal law in 1790 and crucial revisions over the next sixty years. Additionally, the United States and other nations cooperated to combat piracy in the twentieth century. This resulted in a unique shared view of jurisdiction: piracy on the high seas can be punished by any nation.

Although there have been variations in the laws governing what constitutes piracy, today it is governed by;

“antipiracy law [in] title 18, chapter 81, of the United States Code, although numerous other antipiracy provisions are scattered throughout the code. Additionally, international cooperation has shaped a unique form of jurisdictional agreement among nations. Significant in bringing about this cooperation was the geneva convention on the High Seas of April 29, 1958 and the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. The primary effect of such agreements is to allow pirates to be apprehended on the high seas—meaning outside of territorial limits—by the authorities of any nation and punished under its own law. This standard is unique because nations are generally forbidden by International Law from interfering with the vessels of another nation on the high sea.

Somehow I don’t think Watson’s argument regarding jurisdiction is going to float.  Now they have been declared, by a standing legal jurisdictional authority, as pirates, and any nation can now take legal action against them if they carry out any “act of violence or depredation on the high seas.”  I wonder.....do they still sink pirate ships.   
 

People Are Smarter Than We Thought.


Seventeen years of continuous surveys covering countries around the world show that people not only do not care about climate change today – understandably prioritising economic misery – they also did not care about climate change even back when times were good.  The new information comes in a study released by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago – a large, long-standing and respected non-profit. The results are based on surveys which began in 1993, back in the boom times, and “are the first and only surveys that put long-term attitudes toward environmental issues in general and global climate change in particular in an international perspective,” according to NORC’s Tom W Smith.  According to a NORC statement issued yesterday:…….Essentially, the environment joins terrorism and immigration on the list of subjects nobody has ever been able to really give a toss about, though the compiling profs did note that in Turkey they do consider terrorism serious: the Turks rate it number one, in fact, though nobody else does.
The full report from the NORC can be accessed here (PDF) Full story

California in Crisis: Golden State's green jobs bust

Conn Carroll February 27, 2013 | 6:00 pm

California built decades of broad-based prosperity from the Gold Rush, then Hollywood, then aerospace, and later Silicon Valley. At the turn of the century, "green jobs" were supposed to be the wave of the future. "This is not just a challenge, it's an opportunity," then-candidate Barack Obama said during a 2008 presidential debate. "Because if we create a new energy economy, we can create 5 million new jobs, easily, here in the United States."  President Obama, of course, has completely failed to deliver on this promise of 5 million new green-collar jobs……..But where the rest of the nation has rejected all or most of these proposals, California has embraced them all.  How is that going for them? …... renewable energy mandate alone will drive up electricity rates for everyone by more than 13 percent, according to the Pacific Research Institute, as utilities are forced to buy more expensive electricity from renewable sources….California will once again face rolling blackouts starting in 2015….. all these new green energy programs must at least be creating thousands of new green jobs, right? Wrong......fewer than 2,500 green jobs have been created in California since 2010. To Read More......

My Take - Once again....I thank the citizens of California for sticking to their principles.  They see the way, set the pattern and reap the consequences.  In this case all negative of course, but what would you expect when they buy into the nonsense of a man who never held a real job and then predicts a rosy future for green economics in spite of the historical foundation of unending failure in the past.  But we can be grateful that they light the path for the future.  Now all that everyone has to do is the opposite of California and success will be assured.  And after they have driven all the job creating, sane normal people, who pay all the taxes out of the state, all that will left are those who qualify for membership in the "Club For the Galacticly Stupid". 

California Girds for Electricity Woes

 Rebecca Smith

Increased Reliance on Wind, Solar Power Means Power Production Fluctuates -- California is weighing how to avoid a looming electricity crisis that could be brought on by its growing reliance on wind and solar power.  Regulators and energy companies met Tuesday, hoping to hash out a solution to the peculiar stresses placed on the state's network by sharp increases in wind and solar energy. Power production from renewable sources fluctuates wildly, depending on wind speeds and weather.  California has encouraged growth in solar and wind power to help reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. At the same time, the state is running low on conventional plants, such as those fueled by natural gas, ...At Tuesday’s meeting, experts cautioned that the state could begin seeing problems with reliability as soon as 2015.  To Read More…..

America's Red State Growth Corridors

By Joel Klotkin

Low-tax, energy-rich regions in the heartland charge ahead as economies on both coasts sing the blues. - In the wake of the 2012 presidential election, some political commentators have written political obituaries of the "red" or conservative-leaning states, envisioning a brave new world dominated by fashionably blue bastions in the Northeast or California. But political fortunes are notoriously fickle, while economic trends tend to be more enduring.   These trends point to a U.S. economic future dominated by four growth corridors that are generally less dense, more affordable, and markedly more conservative and pro-business: the Great Plains, the Intermountain West, the Third Coast (spanning the Gulf states from Texas to Florida), and the Southeastern industrial belt.  To Read More….. 

Haley, GOP governors blast Obama after sequester meeting

The appeared here to read more, by Ed Morrissey

Barack Obama apparently hoped that a private meeting with GOP governors would help push House Republicans to compromise on the sequester. The meeting backfired in that regard, at least partially.  The private meeting so incensed Nikki Haley that she could barely contain herself afterward at the US Chamber of Commerce afterward, and while she expressed frustration with both sides, she delivered a withering shot at Obama for refusing to make even slight cuts in federal spending:

“I could not be more frustrated than I am right now,” Haley told reporters after the meeting. She said that when she asked Obama if he would consider a last-minute plan to shave about 2 percent from the annual federal budget without increasing taxes, the answer was “no.”

“My kids could go and find $83 billion out of a $4 trillion budget,” Haley said. “This is not rocket science.”...........

“There is no leadership. There is no confidence. There is nothing that shows us that they actually care about what they’re doing,” Haley said. “What they’re doing is playing games, and we as the taxpayers are having to cover for their games. We’re not going to do it anymore.”

Haley also noted that “no one should be going home. No one should be playing golf. No one should be taking vacations.”........
.............according to Byron York:

"When reporters asked about that new state-by-state analysis of possible cuts — which just happened to be released on the eve of the meeting — the governors saw a White House political trap.

“You all got it in the media before we got those,” said Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. “So I think it’s pretty clear that those were put out for political purposes … If you were serious about having a discussion with the governors about the implications, you wouldn’t give it to the press before you gave it to the governors.”
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal added that Obama seemed bound and determined to use the sequestration fight to win higher taxes, willing to hold out the prospect of painful cuts to accomplish his goal.

“I think the president is trying to force us into a false choice,” Jindal said. “The reality is, there is no reason for these cuts to be made this way.” Obama could instruct his Cabinet to emphasize cuts to spending on things like consultants, Jindal said, and not on things like Head Start. “It is the president’s job as the chief executive to prioritize.”

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley said the governors asked Obama to come up with better cuts, or even to delay future spending, like the Medicaid expansion in Obamacare, if the budget situation is as dire as the administration says. “The answer to everything we got was no,” Haley said.

Lord Lawson Calls On Sir Paul Nurse To Acknowledge Global Temperature Standstill

Press Release 27/02/13
Letter to the President of the Royal Society

London, 27 February: In a letter to the President of the Royal Society, Lord Lawson has criticised Sir Paul Nurse for denying the reality of a global temperature standstill.

Lawson was responding to a gratuitous attack by Sir Paul in a recent lecture at Melbourne University. In his speech, Sir Paul appeared to reject empirical evidence that the global warming trend of the 1980s and 1990s has come to a temporary halt since the beginning of the 21st century.

In his letter, Lord Lawson writes:

You claim that I “would choose two points and say ‘look, no warming’s taking place’, knowing that all the other points that you chose in the 20 years around it would not support his case”. That is a lie. I have always made clear that there was a modest degree of recorded global warming during the 20th century (see, for example, my book An Appeal to Reason, which you have clearly not taken the trouble to read).  However, so far from choosing any arbitrary ‘two points’, I was drawing attention to the fact that this warming trend appears to have ceased, since – contrary to the predictions of what you describe as “consensus scientific opinion” – there has been no further recorded global warming at all for at least the past 15 years, as even the IPCC Chairman, Dr Pachauri, has now conceded. Whatever the precise reason for this, it cannot simply be dismissed or denied.   Full letter


Contact:

Dr Benny Peiser
Director, The Global Warming Policy Foundation
1 Carlton House Terrace, London SW1Y 5DB
tel: 020 7930 6856
mob: 07553 361717

VAWA Bill Likely To Pass Congress This Week, Despite Violating First Amendment

Violence Against Women Act Reauthorization: Don’t Let that Pesky Constitution Stand in the Way of a Law With a Nice-Sounding Title
by Hans Bader on April 25, 2012 · 1 comment

Senators “will let legislation on domestic violence” known as the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act “pass the upper chamber despite having concerns about its constitutionality,” reports The Hill newspaper. That includes a provision backed by Democrats “empowering American-Indian tribal authorities to prosecute” non-Indians.

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), a member of the Judiciary Committee, said he was “really taken back by some of the changes in laws dealing with Indian reservations,” calling it “unacceptable and very bad policy.”

A Republican aide cited a Congressional Research Service report that warned expanding the prosecutorial power of tribal authorities could violate constitutional guarantees on due process and double jeopardy.

UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh yesterday raised additional civil liberties problems with the Violence Against Women Act reauthorization, arguing that the changes made to the existing VAWA statute by Senate Democrats violate First Amendment free speech guarantees [first, second posts]. Volokh is one of the law professors most frequently cited by federal judges and America’s law reviews, and the author of two First Amendment textbooks, The First Amendment and Related Statutes (4th ed. 2011), and The Religion Clauses and Related Statutes (2005).  To Read More….. 

Cook CEO to Toomey: MDT will drive our device business overseas

By: Neil W. McCabe  2/26/2013 05:19 PM

The Keystone State senator, who for many years ran a small restaurant with his brothers, drew out from Steve Ferguson, the chairman of Cook Medical, a discussion about the damage President Barack Obama’s medical device tax has on his company during a Feb. 26 hearing of the Senate Budget Committee.

“Am I right in understanding that because of the medical device tax and if it stays in effect, you will forgo expanding production in the United States of medical device manufacturing?” said Sen. Patrick J. Toomey (R-Pa.), who in addition to helping to operate the restaurant in Allentown, Pa., had a successful Wall Street career….To Read More…. 

Environmental Protection Agency Funding Up 51% Since 2008

February 27, 2013 By Fred Lucas

Inflation-adjusted spending by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has increased by 51% since fiscal 2008, according to Treasury Department data. In 2008, EPA funding was $7,938,000,000, according to the final Monthly Treasury Statement for fiscal year 2008. That equals $8,464,894,460 in 2012 dollars, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics inflation calculator. Meanwhile, EPA funding was $12,796,000,000 in fiscal year 2012. That’s a 51.1 percent increase over four years. The Obama administration has argued that severe consequences would occur if the sequester  (automatic spending cuts) kicks in on Friday. If Congress and President Barack Obama cannot reach an agreement, there will be an automatic 1.2 percent reduction in the growth rate of government spending in this fiscal year, 2013, which amounts to $44 billion for this year. The entire federal budget is $3.6 trillion…..To Read More…..

One of the Meaningful “Insignificant Events”

By Harry Katz

Over the years I have had the privilege of having phone conversations and e-mail communications with Harry.  Harry, who is now 97 I believe,  has been a legend in the pest control industry.  Harry has sent me lettes or articles about his life -an interesting and productive life.  Here is one recently sent.  RK.

While I was the Company Clerk (keeps daily company records) for a company of military police  guarding the White House during the war,  I had a three day pass to visit my Aunt Esther in Pittsburgh.  While waiting for a street car on Fifth Ave, a car stopped, driven by my Aunt Bess Winograd.  She was coming to Pittsburgh from Rochester PA for kosher meat for Shabbat. She had a passenger, a neighbor who came for the same purpose, for her family. She was an attractive young lady, her neighbor, Ruth Gordon, daughter of Bess’ friend who lived in Rochester.

She appealed to me. I asked if she ever visited Washington DC . Yes, sometimes to visit a cousin who works in the Pentagon.  “Call me, the next time you come” She did, We had a delightful evening at dinner at a restaurant.  “Can you come again?” She did. When she came the third time, I actually proposed, so captivated was I  by her personality. Being 2 years older than I, She readily accepted, marrying a man with no money or profession.
           
After I was discharged from Army Service we were married at Poale Zedek Schule in Pittsburgh, PA  My brothers and some Schule members made the Minyon. We had a dinner at Caplan’s restaurant with the family, total wedding cost, $28.00. Married over 50 years, never a argument!!

I was just starting my hardware store, with very limited funds  Ruth had a job with the Government , interviewing people who were signing up for a new  Social Security program. We both learned to do something rare and valuable these days with the younger generation: we had learned to “do without”.                                                              

Slowly. I built the hardware business, from a pitiful store my dad started,, which  earned little more than to pay rent. (One day, the only thing we had to eat, 3 meals, was corn meal mush which cost 5 cents a lb.).

I passed up a scholarship that I got from Geneva College in Beaver, PA. With ailing parents in dire poverty, I took over dad’s pitiful hardware store.
          
One of my suppliers was Fred Pollock, with his Elco Mfg Co., who came regularly to the hardware store to deliver pesticide items that he made. When he refused to get involved with the paper work needed for a new Social Security Program for hiring a single female employee, he decided to sell, on terms I could pay over many years. He also showed me how he serviced customers with his primitive exterminating system.
         
I took over, got books on basic entomology and (then) rare elementary books on exterminating. I really got fascinated with the bug business. I studied enough that I wrote a monthly column on Pest Control for the principal pest management industry for decades, earning me the award of No. One Pest Management Person in the U S in 1980.  I gave many lectures at University and Regional Assn  Pest Management Conferences, in the U.S. and overseas. I also wrote several chapters in the Mallis Handbook of Pest Control, the ‘bible’ of the Pest Management industry.

I believe that I played a significant role in elevating the public’s perception of a lowly trade, the “rat catcher” (a step above outdoor latrine cleaning), to “exterminator”, then ”pest controller” and finally the present “Pest Management”!

Along the way, I organized a group that saved the historic log cabin in Canonsburg, forerunner of W & J College in Washington, PA., and first school for settlers West of the Alleghany mountains in PA. while Washington was President, I organized a campaign that raised enough money to replace decayed and termite eaten logs.  I treated the logs with “Lumber Last” a preservative that my Elco Co made.  

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

EPA scrubs database of air pollution experiment on children?

By Steve Milloy

This first appeared here.  I would like to thank Steve for allowing me to publish his work. 
RK

EPA Stalin-izes an experiment exposing children to diesel exhaust. 

Amid last year’s Fakegate scandal involving Peter Gleick and the Heartland Institute, JunkScience.com discovered that the EPA scrubbed its grants database of grants the agency had given Gleick.

Now amid the ongoing human testing scandal, the EPA seems to have again scrubbed its database of a study involving the intentional exposure to children to diesel exhaust. Here’s the story.

Medscape reported on Feb. 23 that:

Exposure to airborne polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons is linked to epigenetic changes associated with childhood asthma and allergy as well as higher rates of asthma diagnosis in the highly polluted city of Fresno, California, investigators report.

Recalling that the EPA had given the University of Southern California money in the mid-2000s to study whether diesel exhaust would “induce reproducible gene expression” in children, I searched for the USC grant in the EPA extramural research grants database. What I found was jaw dropping.

Although the a document summarizing the grant remains in the database, it appears to has been heavily edited and the description of the diesel exposures to children has apparently been deleted. Fortunately, a copy of the original document was saved.

Click here for the report as extracted from the EPA database on December 14, 2012.

Click here for the report as extracted today. [EPA database link to report]

If you compare the the beginnings and ends of the two documents, you’ll see that they are identical, including, for example, capitalization and spacing errors.
So why would EPA have made this deletion?

First, exposing children to diesel exhaust to see if harm can be induced obviously flies in the face of all rules governing the protection of human subjects. This research is essentially illegal.

Next, since Dec. 14, 2012, I tried contacting the principal investigator at USC, Frank Gilliland, and others at USC about this study and have received NO response to multiple inquiries. An NPR-affiliated journalist has also reportedly tried to contact USC about these experiments with no luck.

I encourage readers to try to prove me wrong on this. The home page for searching the EPA extramural grants data base is here.

EPA Ex-boss Jackson Caught Breaking Law, Scamming U.S. Taxpayers

Written by  Alex Newman
The Environmental Protection Agency and its disgraced former boss Lisa Jackson are under fire from lawmakers and activists for, among other reasons, having recently been exposed violating federal law by using bogus identities and e-mail accounts to coordinate propaganda and policy with media allies, "green" groups, and policymakers to advance the Obama administration’s radical “environmental” agenda. Other EPA corruption is also still in the headlines, too, with the agency being criticized for ripping off U.S. taxpayers and foisting more unconstitutional regulations on the economy by working with extremist pseudo-environmental groups using a controversial scheme dubbed “sue and settle.”

The most recent major scandal, which began unraveling late last year after a federal court ruling, involves former EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, who conveniently announced her resignation in late December. The self-styled “most progressive EPA chief in history" was caught, apparently in violation of federal law, using the fake name "Richard Windsor" and a bogus e-mail account to conspire with allies in the establishment media and friendly policymakers. The shady dealings were part of an effort to promote Jackson and the Obama administration’s wildly unconstitutional policies without being exposed to public scrutiny. …To Read More…..

Whole Lotta Redactin’ Going On

BY: CJ Ciaramella February 19, 2013 4:59 am

EPA releases thousands of heavily redacted emails from secret account - The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released its second batch of emails from former administrator Lisa Jackson’s secret email address Friday, but the researcher who sued the agency to obtain the records says it improperly redacted nearly all of the information.

The emails, released in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request from the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), are from Jackson’s pseudonymous, secondary email account under the name “Richard Windsor.”  The emails are the second of four batches of roughly 12,000 emails from the “Richard Windsor” account the EPA has been ordered to disclose.L….EPA officials heavily redacted Friday’s release, omitting all but the most mundane communications. Meeting schedules, discussions of media coverage, and nearly all other content were redacted.  The EPA relied mostly on the “deliberative process” FOIA exemption, which allows agencies to redact intra-agency communications. The argument for the rule is that disclosing internal debates could chill officials’ ability to have forthright discussions about policy....To Read More.....

Of course: Former EPA chief “Richard Windsor” had some buddies

by Erika Johnsen  February 19, 2013
I suppose it stands to reason that, if erstwhile EPA chief Lisa Jackson spent part of her tenure using an — er — shall we say, extracurricular e-mail account to quietly conduct EPA business and eclipse transparency laws in order to cloak the EPA’s job-killing agenda, some of the people with whom she was conspir–I mean, corresponded, probably had e-mail aliases, too. If the chief thought it was a good idea, why not get some of her lieutenants in on the scheme, too?
The EPA released the second tranche of Richard Windsor e-mails required by the FOIA request from the Competitive Enterprise Institute and subsequent lawsuit against the agency (nevermind that they withheld 900 e-mails from the first batch in January without much explanation), and Ranking Republican Sen. David Vitter on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee today revealed some of their findings today. Turns out Richard Windsor wasn’t acting alone, emphasis mine:....To Read More.....

EPA official scrutinized over emails to resign

By Judson Berger Published February 19, 2013

A top EPA official plans to resign, just three weeks after Republican Sen. David Vitter questioned him over the use of a personal email account to conduct "official business." 
EPA spokeswoman Alisha Johnson confirmed to FoxNews.com that Region 8 Administrator James Martin plans to resign effective Friday. She said it was "for personal reasons."  Martin was facing questions about his use of personal email, as former EPA boss Lisa Jackson also comes under scrutiny for using alias emails to communicate with employees.   The agency reportedly is disputing the notion that Martin's resignation had anything to do with the email controversy…..The EPA, according to Politico.com, downplayed the communication as a one-time occurrence. But the Republican lawmakers wrote that "it does not appear that this transaction was an isolated incident." "Rather, the body of emails suggests that you regularly used this personal email account to stay informed on matters relating to your official duties," they wrote. Further, they said the issue raises concern that he could be trying to "insulate" himself from formal records requests and "circumvent" federal records law. ..To Read More.....

Junk Science's Top Stories on EPA Corruption

By Rich Kozlovich

Why is it that the Main Stream Media is ignoring this issue?  I don't even see Fox demonstrating the outrage that is obviously needed.  Although I have to be honest....I don’t watch Fox much anymore either.  Please remember that Nixon didn't kill anyone during the Watergate fiasco and that was wall to wall coverage on the big three networks. This is an outrage that smacks of the same kind of monstrous lack of concern for human beings demonstrated by the socialist monsters of the 20th century, and it took Steve Milloy to expose it. Where was ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC and the rest?  The links below not only expose the corruption at EPA over these illegal tests on human beings, it displays a pattern of deceit and corruption that has been part and parcel of the EPA since its founding. 

Top Stories

WashTimes: Judge nixes case against EPA human experiments (February 13) | Senators Question EPA Air Regulation Rule Over Human Testing (February 5) | Human testing lawsuit dismissed; Court lacks jurisdiction to hear case against EPA February 1

Monday, February 25, 2013

Goodbye to a Very Green Business Week

By Alan Caruba

This first appeared here.   I wish to thank Alan for allowing me to publish his work. RK

In late 2010 I let my subscription to The Economist expire and now I am going to do that for Bloomberg Business Week.

In the February 18-24 edition of Business Week, an editorial, “The Right Way Forward on Climate Change”, contained this gem: “Still, the U.S. accounts for about 19 percent of all emissions—emissions that are causing global temperature increases, rising seas, and destructive droughts, floods, and hurricanes, according to a government advisory panel report released last month.”

When a magazine publishes such drivel, you should not read it. There are no rising temperatures worldwide. There is, in fact, a colder world that reflects a cooling cycle that began around sixteen years ago. Glaciers are growing. Snow is falling in increasing amounts and in places one usually does not associate with snow like Arizona. The seas are not rising. Polar bears are not going extinct. Et cetera.

To not know such simple facts betrays either an appalling ignorance or an appalling agenda, the advancement of the global warming—now called climate change—hoax.

The February 25-March 3 edition had an editorial on why the Keystone XL pipeline should be approved. It began “Americans concerned about pollution and climate change have traditionally stood with science, in particular the consensus that greenhouse gas emissions from human activity are warming the earth and changing the climate.”  There is so much wrong with this short sentence one hardly knows where to start.

First of all, “climate change” is what the climate has been doing for 4.5 billion years on planet Earth. There have been a number of ice ages which properly can be called climate change . When the last one ended around 11,000 years ago, we entered the Holocene.

Pay attention now to this description of the Holocene: “Most recent of all subdivisions of geologic time, ranging from the present back to the time (c.11,000 years ago) of almost complete withdrawal of the glaciers of the preceding Pleistocene epoch. During the Holocene epoch, the sculpturing of the earth's surface to its present form was completed.”

“Withdrawal of the glacial ice resulted in the development of the present-day drainage basins of the Missouri and Ohio rivers, the development of the Great Lakes, and a global rise in sea level of up to 100 ft (30 m) as the glacial meltwater was returned to the seas. Warming climates resulted in the poleward migration of plants and animals.”

“The most significant development during the Holocene was the rise of modern humans, who are thought to have first appeared in the late Pleistocene.” Those modern humans did not control the climate when they arrived on the scene and they do not control it now. They will never control it no matter how many times Al Gore or the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says so.

We do not sacrifice virgins, tossing them into volcanoes to ensure a good harvest, nor do we do rain dances during a drought any more. Some of us, however, are convinced that we are the first Americans to have ever experienced a drought, a hurricane, or a blizzard.

When a magazine like Business Week employs morons to write its news and opinion, there is no point in subscribing to it in order to have your own intellect reduced by a couple of IQ points.
I am thoroughly sick of hearing that all life on the planet is threatened or going extinct. Been there. Done that.

In his weekly column on science topics, the Wall Street Journal’s Matt Ridley noted that, “When the asteroid slammed into the Yucatan Peninsula 66,038,000 years ago, North America took the brunt of the impact, because the asteroid came in from the southeast like a golf chip shot.” Globally, it wiped out all the dinosaurs, along with many bird and other species. Their relatives, the alligators survived. “Mammals reappeared within 20,000 years in North America, “probably from Asia via an Arctic land bridge.”

Right now, countless “environmental” organizations around the world are gearing up to celebrate “Earth Day” on April 22. Is it just a coincidence that it is the birthdate of Communist revolutionary and the former Soviet Union’s first dictator, Vladimir Lenin? I think not.

Business Week, the Economist, Time, Newsweek and countless other elements of the print and broadcast media will have an environmental orgasm, spewing forth the tired, old lies that undergird the greatest hoax of the modern era; one they can no longer call “global warming” because millions of people have concluded the Earth is getting colder, so now they call it “climate change.”

The alleged “consensus” of geoscientists and others that supports the climate change theory barely exists.

As reported in the March edition of The Heartland Institute’s Environmental & Climate News,Global warming alarmists are attacking the integrity of scientists, desperately seeking to minimize the damage presented by a recent survey of geoscientists and engineers regarding global warming.
 
“A recent survey of more than 1,000 geoscientists and engineers reported in the peer-reviewed Organization Studies found that only 36 percent agree with the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assertion that humans are causing a serious global warming problem. By contrast, a majority of scientists in the survey believe that nature is the primary cause of recent global warming and/or that future global warming will not be a very serious problem.”

 Meanwhile, here in America, the current administration will continue to flush billions of dollars we do not have down the environmental drain, “investing” in the most uncompetitive and least productive forms of energy ever invented. It is an administration that declared war on coal—a resource that powered fifty percent of all the electricity we use until they came along. Can we—should we—trust people who cannot reduce the nation’s insane debt and deficit by even one half of one percent?

Should we trust people, journalists, charged with the responsibility to bring us the news about economic and scientific topics when they clearly are clueless? I think not.

© Alan Caruba, 2013