Junk Science Thirteen Years Ago

By Rich Kozlovich

I published this on Friday, November 24, 2011 calling it, This Week With Steve Milloy, saying:

My theme this week has been about alternative energy and what an abject failure it has been. All of which was perfectly predictable. We tried it during the Carter administration and it failed then. Did the technology get so much better that we would think it would work now? No! At least Carter had the excuse of ignorance…They just didn’t know then, although I have few doubts that those who worked with the engineering problems knew right from the beginning it was going to be a failure. However...this time we had some history... we knew this time it had to fail. There really is no fixing stupid. The articles linked here are a small part of what Steve and his staff link each week. I try to get the things that interested me the most. I you wish to see all of it go to Junkscience.com.

I have to point out this was 13 years ago and nothing has changed.  We know the scientific fraud perpetrated to promote global warming initiatives, we know alternative energy is a bust, we know the EPA is corrupt to it's core, we know sustainability is a code word for the imposition of big government tyranny, and we knew it 13 years ago. So why are we still listening to these misfits promoting it.  Nitwits like John Kerry who thinks the world would like Russia better if they were more concerned about emissions.  How delusional is this man?  However, we know two things for sure from that.  Kerry is a blithering idiot, and we dodged a gigantic bullet when it wasn't elected President.  We can thank the Swift Boaters for that, not Karl Rove.  

Also, I would like to throw in this July 14, 2014 piece by Hank Campbell entitled, Sexist Weather And Hermaphroditic Frogs: The Problem Of Faux Peer Review, and the reason why is I'm working on a piece highlighting the Lysenkoist mentality that permeates modern science today.  That politically motivated embrace of junk science has had a massively negative impact on humanity, whether its been about climate change, alternative energy, covid, or any number of junk science outrages they've embraced.  This is just another example of it.

Anthropogenic Climate Change Fraud

Climategate 2.0 is here!
More devastating Climategate e-mails were released today. We’ve covered juicy ones in the posts listed below. More on the way. Read ‘em all. They validate EVERYTHING the skeptics have been saying. Viva les sceptiques!

Green –Irrational, Corrupt and Misantropic

Lack of electricity, development, kills 1.5 million Nigerians annually
“Poverty is a death sentence” states whoever publicly released the Climategate e-mails and they are so right -WHO Projects 1.5 Million Cooking Stove Deaths In Nigeria — The World Health Organization (WHO) has projected 1.5 million annual premature deaths in Nigeria because of household air pollution from traditional cooking stoves, a Ministry of Environment official says. Quoting from a WHO report, Bahijjatu Abubakar, the National Co-ordinator of the Renewable Energy project of the ministry, told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) here Tuesday that the projection could affect the world at large, especially sub-Saharan Africa. Abubakar said the WHO data also predicted that the premature death rate would be larger than that caused by malaria, tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS.

Strassel: Stringing Up Gibson Guitar
Aren’t trees the ultimate renewable resource? Kim Strassel writes in the Wall Street Journal: On a sweltering day in August, federal agents raided the Tennessee factories of the storied Gibson Guitar Corp. The suggestion was that Gibson had violated the Lacey Act—a federal law designed to protect wildlife—by importing certain India ebony. The company has vehemently denied that suggestion and has yet to be charged. It is instead living in a state of harassed legal limbo. Which, let’s be clear, is exactly what its persecutors had planned all along. The untold story of Gibson is this: It was set up…

Is sustainability science really a science?
Past the fact that this is obviously a sad day for the once proud Los Alamos National Laboratory, “sustainability” is a really stupid and dangerous notion…..“Sustainability” is not a science; it’s an excuse not to growth and develop. Thomas Malthus trial-ballooned sustainability in the 18th century — and he was dead wrong. But at least he intended no malice. The modern Malthusians cynically use sustainability to thwart capitalism. We are aware of only one serious sustainability project that was ever attempted — and the enviros killed it.

Horner: A Summary of James E. Hansen’s NASA Ethics File
NASA records released to resolve litigation filed by the American Tradition Institute reveal that Dr. James E. Hansen, an astronomer, received approximately $1.6 million in outside, direct cash income in the past five years for work related to — and, according to his benefactors, often expressly for — his public service as a global warming activist within NASA.

Horner on EPA’s Jackson: Whoa! Which time are you lying?
Chris Horner points out the inconsistencies in Lisa Jackson’s rationale for EPA regulating greenhouse gases.

Alternative Energy

Allianz: ‘Green’ energy could trigger catastrophic blackouts
‘Unstable’ renewable energy sources increase the risk of ‘supra-regional’ electricity blackouts with multi-billion pound consequences, insurance giant Allianz has warned. ‘Unstable’ renewable energy sources increase the risk of ‘supra-regional’ electricity blackouts with multi-billion pound consequences, insurance giant Allianz has warned. Green energy could trigger ‘catastrophic’ blackouts – Solar panels and wind turbines are a “volatile” source of power with fluctuations in the electricity supply risking “grid instabilities” and triggering wide-scale blackouts. Ageing infrastructure and increasingly cross-border electricity networks have heightened the likelihood of a devastating collapse of power supplies lasting months and covering several continents, according to the joint report by Allianz and the Chief Risk Officer Forum. In eastern Germany, turbines in strong wind can produce more than all German coal and gas plants put together, while the need to switch off turbines in high winds causes a drop-off in electricity of 12GW – equal to two nuclear power plants. Outages are likely if there is too little demand or storage capacity to accommodate the jumps in supply.

Bill Frezza: Alternative Energy’s Alternate Reality
The “alternative energy” experiment is unraveling, having barely begun - Alternative Energy’s Alternate Reality – Creating a “green energy” economy may be the most daunting central planning task ever attempted. It entails nothing less than the reengineering of our entire energy infrastructure. And, like all central planning schemes, it is based on a roadmap that eschews real-world experience and sound economics in favor of utopian ideology driven by political connections. Now the experiment is unraveling, having barely begun. As the parade of government-subsidized failures like Solyndra, Stirling Energy, SpectraWatt, Evergreen Solar, Beacon Power, and others mount, now is a good time to look at how all the pieces of the alternative energy puzzle are supposed to fit together—and what happens when they don’t.

Experts fear cost of California renewable energy goals
California’s increasing use of renewable power is going to hurt consumers - California’s increasing use of renewable power will come at a price, pushing up electricity bills across the state. And while it’s impossible to tell how big the cost to consumers will be, some experts fear the total cost of renewable energy in California will be in the billions of dollars. In the next three years, many long-planned solar plants and wind farms will come online, bringing California closer to its goal of getting one-third of the state’s electricity from renewable sources by 2020. As soon as they start delivering power to utility companies, the utilities’ customers will start paying for that electricity.

Of course it’s renewable energy – it just relies on fossil fuels
Although it sounds like an advertisement for ladies’ undergarments “firmed and shaped” actually refers to intermittent “renewable energy” made useful with fossil-fueled “spinning reserve” CleanPowerSF will still rely on fossil fuels despite claims – City officials boast that the proposed CleanPowerSF public power program will offer consumers 100 percent renewable energy, but for some that sounds a lot better than what is really behind the green label.

Reformed Leftie/Greenie challenges energy statism
Robert Bryce is a reformed Leftie/greenie. The solar array he installed on his roof was a bust, and he followed the logic of energy density to conclude that wind, solar, water, crops, plants, and wood would not allow energy to be mankind’s master resource.

Gas beats renewables: fund manager
As remarkable as it seems, energy-dense fuels are more value than dilute power sources

Royal Wind Slam Update: Duke ‘spot on’
“Former Chancellor Lord Lawson yesterday led the backing for Prince Philip after he branded wind farms ‘absolutely useless’.”

Outrage of the Day

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Gibson Guitar CEO strikes back

Henry Juszkiewicz once again blasts feds 'violent, hostile' raids - Late in the same day that Department of Justice announced they had reached a settlement with Gibson Guitars, in which Gibson acknowledged illegally importing environmentally endangered woods, CEO Henry Juszkiewicz struck a defiant tone as he continued to criticize government actions.

“We felt compelled to settle as the costs of proving our case at trial would have cost millions of dollars and taken a very long time to resolve,” he said in statement released via the company’s @gibsonguitar Twitter account late Monday.

“We feel that Gibson was inappropriately targeted, and a matter that could have been addressed with a simple contact (by) a caring human being representing the government,” the statement said. “Instead, the Government used violent and hostile means with the full force of the U.S. Government and several armed law enforcement agencies costing the taxpayers millions of dollars and putting a job creating U.S. manufacture (sic) at risk and at an unfair disadvantage.”……. Gibson must pay a $300,000 penalty within 10 days, but the company won’t face any further sanctions by the federal government as long as it complies with an 18-month criminal enforcement agreement.  In addition, the guitar maker must pay $50,000 to the National Fish and Wildlife Federation to promote conservation of protected woods used in the manufacture of musical instruments.

What an outrage!  I would like lay some foundation on this subject. I posted this on May 15, 2012.  RK

Congress Looks to Rewrite Act That Led to Gibson Guitar Raid
by Audrey Hudson
Lawmakers are reviewing legislation to amend a century-old law that led to a raid by armed federal agents at the Gibson Guitar Company in August 2011 at its Nashville and Memphis factories and, in a separate case, to the imprisonment of two Americans for importing improperly packaged lobsters,,,,, “How can this possibly be constitutional?” …..Federal agents confiscated a half-million dollars worth of property from Gibson Guitar in the August raid, including guitars and computers. The company did not import banned wood products, but is accused of violating a law in India that requires the wood product be finished by workers in that country before it can be exported. …Abner Schoenwetter and David McNab spent six years in federal prison, accused of violating Honduran fishing regulations. The lobsters they received should have been shipped in plastic, rather than cardboard, boxes…. [this] is a frightening example of over-criminalization. ….U.S. importers have been turned into policemen, who are responsible for knowing a myriad of foreign laws that are simply impossible to keep track of,”

Is this any different than the EPA's attempt to destroy the Sacketts property rights?  Notice the same pattern. It simply costs too much to defend your rights and in turn your rights are in the hands of bureaucrats with unlimited power and money. The Fourth Branch of Government! We have lost our minds and are about to lose everything else!  RK

Sackett versus the EPA: There is more

Today the United States Supreme Court issued an opinion in Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency, a case brought by an Idaho couple represented by our friends at the Pacific Legal Foundation. It is a great victory for landowners facing the wrath of the EPA.

Wyoming Liberty Group's Steve Klein's article was a refreshing change from the dozen or so articles I read or skimmed in the liberty-media and elsewhere in the days after the SCOTUS decision was announced. I even posted a comment – in general praising Steve's work – though it has not (as of Saturday the 24th at 1800 hours MT) been screened and posted. Perhaps they thought that I was being too critical of Steve's article. To read more..... This ruling handles the surface issue but this goes far deeper than the surface issue. RK

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Observations From the Back Row

Ten Thousand Commandments

Welcome to The Other National Debt -- The Cost of Regulation

Congress Looks to Rewrite Act That Led to Gibson Guitar Raid
by Audrey Hudson

Lawmakers are reviewing legislation to amend a century-old law that led to a raid by armed federal agents at the Gibson Guitar Company in August 2011 at its Nashville and Memphis factories and, in a separate case, to the imprisonment of two Americans for importing improperly packaged lobsters,,,,, “How can this possibly be constitutional?” …..Federal agents confiscated a half-million dollars worth of property from Gibson Guitar in the August raid, including guitars and computers. The company did not import banned wood products, but is accused of violating a law in India that requires the wood product be finished by workers in that country before it can be exported. …Abner Schoenwetter and David McNab spent six years in federal prison, accused of violating Honduran fishing regulations. The lobsters they received should have been shipped in plastic, rather than cardboard, boxes…. [this] is a frightening example of over-criminalization. ….U.S. importers have been turned into policemen, who are responsible for knowing a myriad of foreign laws that are simply impossible to keep track of,”


A censored race war?
by Thomas Sowell

CommentsWhen two white newspaper reporters for the Virginian-Pilot were driving through Norfolk, and were set upon and beaten by a mob of young blacks -- beaten so badly that they had to take a week off from work -- that might seem to have been news that should have been reported, at least by their own newspaper. But it wasn't…..Similar episodes of unprovoked violence by young black gangs against white people chosen at random on beaches, in shopping malls or in other public places have occurred in Philadelphia, New York, Denver, Chicago, Cleveland, Washington, Los Angeles and other places across the country. Both the authorities and the media tend to try to sweep these episodes under the rug as well. In Milwaukee, for example, an attack on whites at a public park a few years ago left many of the victims battered to the ground and bloody. But, when the police arrived on the scene, it became clear that the authorities wanted to keep this quiet. One 22-year-old woman, who had been robbed of her cell phone and debit card, and had blood streaming down her face said: "About 20 of us stayed to give statements and make sure everyone was accounted for. The police wouldn't listen to us, they wouldn't take our names or statements. They told us to leave. It was completely infuriating."


Changing the world one city at a time
by Steven Greenhut

Given the nation's deep fiscal problems, many Americans of the Right and Left are so frustrated about the political process that they are jumping on Tea Party buses and occupying city parks. But efforts to reform Washington, D.C., or Sacramento are hopeless, despite those "change" slogans advanced by a president committed mainly to the status quo. If you want to change the world, you need to start in your city. A great example of what agitated citizens can accomplish is taking place in the Southern California city of Fullerton. Three council members are the targets of a recall election on June 5. The effort has gained steam after the Orange County district attorney recently released a horrific 33-minute video of the city's police officers beating a frail homeless man named Kelly Thomas last July. Thomas later died in a hospital.


My Take - Since I am probably perceived (rightly so thank you!) that I am a law and order guy you are probably wondering why I inserted this last article. It is simple...some things are right and some things are wrong...period. Far too many in positions of authority forget that this is 'received' authority. Received from the population to protect...not rule! Far too often this 'received' authority is perceived as personal power that requires no accountability for inappropriate actions. How do these things occur? It occurs when there is either a vacuum in leadership or that leadership is corrupt. Both will create a culture of corruption wherein bestial practices will grow unrestrained.

Observations From the Back Row: 8-8-11

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“De Omnibus Dubitandum”

Video with John Stossel and Richard Tren regarding DDT

A complete list of things caused by global warming

Everthing we are told should bear some resemblance to what we see going on in reality!

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The climate just turned cold for non-physicists

Question: What could a climate scientist bring to the debate among physicists over the interaction of cosmic rays with the Earth’s atmosphere?

Answer: the coffee.

Physicists have long maintained that the question of climate change was properly within the realm of physics rather than that of those glorified weathermen who call themselves “climatologists.” Last week we got confirmation of that. It came in the form of a study by physicists in Switzerland.

Models only touch on the complexity of the climate -- so inevitably get it wrong

The claims of those who worry about human damage to the climate become ever more strident despite, or perhaps because of, the real world data rapidly diverging from that which they anticipated……They ask us to believe many impossible things:

Report finds that taxpayer dollars support the ‘Big Green’ agenda

Lawsuits against a power-hungry government agency like the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are inevitable. The lawsuits come from all sides and all entities. For example, citizens and states might sue the EPA for overregulation of an industry that could lead to lost jobs and revenues. Green groups might sue the EPA because they feel it hasn’t done enough to over-regulate businesses or to expand enforcement of current environmental laws.

But it is important to note that in many cases the EPA and Treasury Department are required to award attorney’s fees to those plaintiffs that successfully dispute the EPA. And because the Justice Department is what defends the EPA in court cases, your tax dollars are what are used to pay the opposing sides’ attorneys……What was discovered is jaw-dropping. The GAO report found that in addition to attorney’s fees awarded, the Justice Department spent at least $43 million in taxpayer dollars defending EPA in court from 1998 to 2010. That doesn’t include the fact that Treasury paid about $14.2 million from fiscal year 2003 through 2010 and the EPA paid approximately $1.4 million from fiscal year 2006 through 2010……The three primary beneficiaries from 1998 to 2010 were: Sierra Club, Earthjustice and Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). Total amounts these organizations received from all attorney fees paid to EPA litigants combined was at least 41 percent of the total payouts. Earthjustice alone received 32 percent, as indicated by this report.

Go figure that the primary beneficiaries of statutes set to protect citizens and private industries would instead be awarded to environmental groups that want nothing more than to extend the power and grasp of the federal government’s EPA. Even more striking was the payout to all environmental groups (ENGOs), which in total was 82 percent.

“This fund has turned into nothing more than a taxpayer slush fund designed to pay environmental attorneys whose sole function is to further the scope and power of environmental laws, which kill industries and those jobs vital to America,” says Bill Wilson, president of Americans for Limited Government (ALG).....

If organizations like NRDC, which had a reported $181,427,464 in net assets in 2009, want to sue the EPA, it should do so with its own funds, not those of the taxpayer. It makes little sense to reward environmental groups with taxpayer money to file lawsuits directed at putting taxpayers out of work.

Besides, in this administration these environmental groups and the EPA have too much power as it is.

Where the Jobs Aren’t

With the economy stagnating and unemployment high, where are the jobs of the future going to come from? A few years ago, it seemed as though the Green Economy could be a big part of the answer. (NYT)

Enough with the green jobs

President Obama arguably spurred the development of the Tea Party, helped hand the Republicans the House majority and, best of all, put an end, we hope, to the green-jobs fetish…..Politicians are not particularly well-equipped to identify market trends or spot investment opportunities. They are, however, very adept at rewarding politically connected friends and using taxpayer money to in essence reimburse their donors (and then some) for the generosity shown in helping the pols get elected. You dress it all up with high-minded phrases (“a 21st-century economy,” “green jobs,” “private-public partnerships”), and it sells like hot cakes. I mean who wants a 19th-century economy? And goodness knows we don’t want dingy jobs, we want bright green ones (with that little recycling logo on every product).

My Take – I would like for someone to name one politician, one bureaucrat or one government agency that picked Microsoft to be a winner. There is a reason for that. They don’t have a clue about economics or what works or doesn’t work. Why would we think that people who went to college and then into government…or never ever had a real job could do anything right involving economics?

Obama's Jobs Speech is D.O.A.

By Alan Caruba

Not only is President Obama’s forthcoming “jobs” speech a self-inflicted embarrassment when he was told he could not deliver it to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday—the first time any President was refused the day and time of his choosing—but it is essentially D.O.A.; dead on arrival……Obama has also become well known for his advocacy of “green jobs” and, one day after Wayne Crews was lamenting the regulation explosion, Stephen Moore was writing in The Wall Street Journal that “President Obama is expected to seek another $250 billion or so in new stimulus funds next week, with plenty of money for clean energy and the creation of so-called green jobs.”

Stuff You Won’t See on the News

Eliminate the minimum wage prop to big business:

"Walmart has pushed for a higher minimum wage. But Walmart already pays above minimum wage, so raising it would barely affect them. But it would impose costs on various Walmart competitors. So Walmart gets to advocate for what looks like social justice, while hobbling its competition."

My Take - Those of us who really believe in capitalism have to come to an understanding that there is capitalism and then there is big business….and there is a difference. The bigger the company the more they like regulations and taxes. Why? Because it prevents smaller companies from getting bigger. Who was the greatest pusher of the tobacco deal with the states Attorneys General some years back? Big tobacco! Why?

What most of us don’t realize that there are actually a lot of tobacco companies out there and not just the big three or four of which we are all aware. The deal they struck kept the small companies small and the penalties the bigger companies had to pay became de-facto “un-voted on“ excise taxes because they could be passed on to the consumer. This has been a practice since the Whiskey Tax of 1790, (this link doesn't tell the whole story, but it supplies useful information and is worth reading. This event is pivotal to everything we deal with today. This is foundational information for understanding the issues of overreaching government) which was a favorite of Alexander Hamilton as the first Secretary of the Treasury who wanted support for the new government and new Constitution (1789) by business, and was a big advocate of military enforcement. Sort of ironic isn't it. Through taxation he wanted to destroy the rights of some in order to defend the document that said their rights should not be abridged. Regulations and taxation has been a Constitutional bypass mechanism from the beginning. We do need to get that!

Gibson Guitars proves the environmental police state that wants your wood products and guns

The recent US government raid of Gibson Guitars' Tennessee manufacturing facility is now receiving widespread media coverage, thanks to a flood of reports that have appeared across the web in recent weeks, including here at NaturalNews. But beyond simply the raid itself is the reality of the new environmental police state that appears to be taking over, where personal wood products of all kinds -- whether they be furniture, hand tools, or even guns made with rare wood stocks -- are now threatened with arbitrary confiscation……You see, Gibson's import of rosewood and ebony from India was not illegal under either US or Indian law. FWS merely decided to interpret Indian law in its own illogical way, and invoke the Lacey Act as justification for its illegal raid. And if the agency gets away with doing this to Gibson, they will surely do it again to others…………..The American police state truly is growing at an unprecedented rate, which is evidenced by the unveiling of this new environmental police force that is eager to confiscate personal property in the name of enforcing (fictitious) laws. If it is not stopped now, it will continue to grow until not a shred of freedom remains.

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Observations From the Back Row: 8-31-11

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“De Omnibus Dubitandum”

Video with John Stossel and Richard Tren regarding DDT
A complete list of things caused by global warming

Everything we are told should bear some resemblance to what we see going on in reality!
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Krugman Fails Climate Science 101

Economist Paul Krugman took to the pages of The New York Times on Sunday in order to regurgitate Sierra Club talking points regarding global warming and to castigate the Republican Party for being “anti-science.” As Roger Simon noted, like just about everybody else writing about the issue, Krugman doesn’t bother to explain or understand the science or the nature of the robust scientific debate that has been going on for some time. Instead, he relies on the Left’s preferred method for analyzing scientific issues: a moistened finger held up to the wind.

Obama: Regulations Are Mere Rumors

“Don’t believe everything you hear.” Many rumors “are unfounded.” That’s what Barack Obama had the audacity to tell farmers on his recent tour in the Midwest after they complained about federal regulations……Federal regulations are not only disrupting business, they are entering Americans’ lives, including how we heat our homes, light our rooms, what food we buy, how we cook it, the mattresses we sleep on, the toys our children play with, etc. Regulatory costs for businesses are passed on to consumers in such items as toilets, showerheads, cars, washing machines and dryers, ovens and refrigerators, TV sets, even bicycles. No official accounting of total regulatory costs exists, the Heritage study said. Estimates vary. Unlike accounting of tax revenues, the study says “an oft-quoted estimate of $1.75 trillion annually is about twice the amount of individual income taxes collected last year…..The cost burden imposed by new regulations can be tracked, however, the Heritage analysis said, and “it is growing substantially.” Fiscal 2010 saw record increases, and they have risen in 2011. From the start of the Obama reign to mid-FY 2011, regulators have stuck the American citizenry with $38 billion in new costs, “more than any comparable period on record.”

My Take – What fascinates me is that there are about 80,000 pages of federal regulations; so what in the world could they have left out? There is only one answer to getting fewer regulations. Fewer regulators! RK

Whose Axe Made Your Axe? You Better Find Out

For the second time in two years, federal agents from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service have raided two Tennessee factories that make iconic Gibson guitars. The government alleges that Gibson imported woods in violation of the Lacey Act, a century-old law that makes it a federal crime to trade in plants, wildlife, or timber that have been harvested in violation of “any foreign law.”

"The time has come," the Walrus said,

"To talk of many things:

Of shoes, and ships, and sealing wax -

Of cabbages and kings,

And why the sea is boiling hot,

And whether pigs have wings."

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