December, 2018, Part 5, I Am A Global Warming Doubter and A Believer In Science: More Reviews Of Failed Global Warming Forecasts and Renewables Flunk The Test in Texas

Every month we have enough material to return to a continuing theme in this blog, namely that “I am a global warming doubter AND a believer in science.” This became of interest because of people like Al Gore who fanatically and verbosely claimed that you had to be an idiot to not believe in manmade global warming. It has been my life belief that anyone that is that loud and that obnoxious is hiding something, that rather than argue facts and reality it is better to beat down and insult anyone who disagrees.

As we have dove into the whole issue of man made global warming, or its new rebranded title of climate change, we found that Al Gore and people like him were guilty of a number of things:

• Ignoring science and realities that did not support their opinions and positions.
• Rather than have an adult conversation about climate, these types of advocates like Gore sank to the level of insulting those who dared look at ALL science by calling them a variety of names including racists, homophobes, terrorists, flat earth believers, and other slanderous names.
• Continuing to insist that politicians step up their intrusions into our lives with higher taxes, more regulations, and more control on our freedoms and standards of living based on a shaky theory at best.

To see the past posts and the multitude of evidence that we have compiled that showed it is perfectly okay to be a global warming doubter and a believer in science, enter the phrase "global warming doubter” in the search box above or go through the monthly historical post listed on the right side of this page.

Thus, let’s see the latest facts and science that prove you can be a global warming doubter and a believer in science, regardless of what Al Gore proclaim.

1) We have spent most of the past four posts reviewing how incredibly wrong global warming forecasts have been. From the prediction of a new Ice Age in the late 70s to decades of grossly incorrect global warming forecasts to the latest shoddy and likely incorrect Federal government man made global warming/climate change report. In all cases the predictions of more and more intense hurricanes, melting ice caps, more wildfires, more tornadoes, more droughts, etc. never came true. 

Let’s continue those discussions today with more realities and more scientists that verify how wrong global warming alarmist predictions have been:

• Davie Harsanyi, writing for the Heritage Foundation on December 8, 2018, concluded that “Climate Change Alarmism Is the World’s Leading Cause of Hot Gas.”
• In 1970, Harvard biologist George Walk claimed that, “Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against [environmental] problems facing mankind.”
• Since it is now 48 years after he made that statement, let’s put his prediction in the failed to materialize column.
• In 1977, John Holdren, who served as Obama’s “science czar," wrote a book with Paul R. Ehrlich which predicted that global warming could lead to 1 billion starving people by 2020.
• Just over one year from that doomsday date, while some starvation does exist throughout the world, it is probably nowhere close to 1 billion people and in fact, there is emerging research that shows that global warming from decades ago likely helps stave off starvation by increasing crop yields around the world.
• In fact, even the United Nations estimates that there are 200 million fewer people in a starvation condition than there were in 1990 despite population growth.
• Fortunately their prediction did not come true since one of their solutions to this non-problem was compulsory abortion to control the population.
• Back in 2006, Al Gore predicted that sea levels would rise 20 feet, putting most coastal cities underwater, a situation that has not come close to happening.
• At least Gore hedged his bet on this prediction, not wanting to box himself in on a specific date, just saying that the 20 foot rise would happen “in the near future,” which means he can never be wrong since the near future is so nebulous.
• At a climate conference in 2005, attendees, scientists and politicians, concluded and warned that the world had as little as 10 years before “the point of no return on global warming” would be reached.
• This “point of no return” would include “widespread agricultural failure,” “major droughts,” “increased disease,” “the death of forests,” the “switching-off of the North Atlantic Gulf Stream,” and other terrible disasters.
• And yet since then, global warming has stopped increasing, crop yields are at the highest levels ever, droughts, wildfires, hurricanes, etc. are either at normal historical levels or actually decreasing, forests are still alive and with us, and the Gulf Stream has not moved off of historical trends.
• A failed forecast on ALL possible counts.

Into this history of failed hysteria and forecasting steps the latest Federal government report on the climate, financed and developed by the same types of people who failed at all previous attempts to accurately predict Mother Nature and the climate. And we are supposed to believe that this time they finally got it right. Absolutely nothing tells me they got it right this time so pardon me for continuing to be a global warming doubter and a believer in science.

2) Mike Bastasch, also writing for the Heritage Foundation, went back to see how a Texas town was doing with its renewable energy efforts. This town was featured in Al Gore’s movie, “An Inconvenient Sequel,” a follow up failed movie attempt to his original “An Inconvenient Truth” movie whose climate predictions we have already debunked this past week:

• Back in 2016, Gore praised the Texas town of Georgetown for the city’s plan to get 100% of its energy from solar and wind power” “I think Georgetown is already a trailblazer.” 
• Nice concept on paper but in reality it appears that such a goal is not a good idea.
• Georgetown’s city owned utility lost almost $7 million on this effort in 2018 and now the town politicians are trying to find a way out of this renewable energy nightmare and the long term energy contracts it foolishly signed with providers of solar and wind energy.
• According to Bill Peacock, vice president of research at the Texas Public Policy Foundation: “It’s costing them big time. This doesn’t appear to be the first time they’ve lost money, just the first time it was big enough to have to go public with it.”
• But Gore claimed that, “And one thing that Georgetown demonstrates to other places that are just beginning to think about it is that the power supply is not only more affordable, the cost is predictable for at least 25 years into the future and really beyond that.” 
• But that appears not to be the case if the utility Georgetown is now running incremental losses of $7 million a year and his actively trying to get out of this “more affordable” and “predictable” cost.
• Back in 2016, the Georgetown mayor claimed that, “This is a long-term pocketbook issue. It’s a win for economics and a win for the environment.”
• Two years later, not so much and we have another failed global warming/climate change forecast as the city tries to renegotiate its long term renewable contracts.
• However, the wind contract is in effect until 2035 and the solar contract is in effect until 2043 which means that these are probably not going to be easy renegotiations.
• The promise of cheap, renewable energy has not happened since the cost of other energy sources, especially natural gas, has dropped dramatically while the cost of renewables far exceeded the city’s budget forecast according to Lisa Linowes, the founder of the anti-wind power group Wind Action.
• Ms. Linowes points out that the city’s utility’s energy costs were more than $23 million over budget in 2016 and 2017.

So much for a future based only on renewables. If a small town, dedicated to becoming reliant only renewable energy sources, cannot pull of the trick in a small, controlled environment, how badly do you think the Federal government would do trying to pull this off for the whole country? Not only would they not be able to do it, they would not have to do it, as we have discussed hundreds of times in this blog over the years, making any futile effort even more futile, a bad solution looking to resolve a non-problem.

That will do it for this month’s episode of “I Am A Global Warming Doubter and A Believer In Science.” More failed predictions, more futile attempts to resolve a non-problem and yet global warming/climate change alarmists continue to rollout forecasts of gloom and doom despite their track record of failure.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

Even A Blind Squirrel Finds A Nut Once In A While: Why Can't The Obama Administration Find Any Success in Alternative Energy?

Just when you thought that we had covered all of the inane and wasteful spending the Obama administration has dumped on failed alternative energy companies, another company jumps up and bites the American taxpayer. Consider a company called LG Chem, located in Michigan, a company that produces high tech batteries, and what was uncovered by the local NBC television station in an investigative report:

• The company has received a Department of Energy grant worth $151 million as part of Obama’s economic stimulus program.
• The Korea-based company recently said it has 200 employees, and the company's most recent Federal financial filing shows 100 of them are funded through the Recovery Act grant. So, we have given American taxpayer money to a foreign company to operate a factory in this country. Unbelievable.
• Company financial records show that the company has spent $133 million so far, mostly for construction and equipment. But about 40% has gone to foreign companies, mostly to Korea, the NBC analysis shows.
• The company also spent more than $533,000 of that Federal grant for the groundbreaking and not for producing batteries.
• The analysis of Federal records show taxpayers spent $7 million to train workers and have paid more than $700,000 for workers' health and dental insurance.
• The production goals of the company was to be 300 employees pumping out 15 million battery cells a year. However, so far, virtually no batteries have been made.

But it gets worse, especially if you are an American taxpayer who put up that $150 million. Employees had so little work to do that they spend hours and days playing cards and board games, reading magazines and watching movies.

Consider quotes from actually employees at the LG Chem location:

• "There would be up to 40 of us that would just sit in there during the day," said former employee Nicole Merryman, who said she quit in May.
• "We were given assignments to go outside and clean; if we weren't cleaning outside, we were cleaning inside. If there was nothing for us to do, we would study in the cafeteria, or we would sit and play cards, sit and read magazines," said Merryman. "It's really sad that all these people are sitting there and doing nothing, and it's basically on taxpayer money."
• “There's a whole bunch of people, a whole bunch," filling their time with card games and board games," one of those current employees said.
• "There's no work, no work at all. Zero work," another current employee said. "It is what it is. What do you do when there's no work?"
• "I thought it might be a decent place to start a career, lots of places to move up," said one former employee, who left the job this summer.
• "You can only do nothing for so long. There were days, sitting around all day doing nothing. ... I didn't play a whole lot of cards," said the worker, who added, "I bailed out of a sinking ship."

You cannot make this stuff up. American taxpayers paying employees to do nothing. While workers at the Holland plant have quit or are looking for jobs, others continue to play games and watch movies and others have started helping local non-profits on company time. No telephone messages were returned to the NBC personnel putting the investigation together.

The only good news to come out of this report is that investigation has led the Washington, D.C.-based Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board to investigate. The Board is supposed to be an oversight agency for the Federal economic stimulus program: "We are sending this to the Inspector General, Department of Energy, for his review," said Ed Pound, spokesman for the board. The Inspector General's Office would decide whether to open an investigation.

So now we can add LG Chem to the long list of Obama’s failed and wasteful alternative energy fiascoes: Solyndra, Spectra Power, Beacon, Abound, Solar City, Tesla, Fisker, ECOtality, A123, and others. Details about these other failures can be reviewed at:

 http://www.loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2012/10/obama-energy-disasters-still-abound.html

http://www.loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2012/10/more-obama-solar-failures-and-some.html

http://www.loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2012/10/the-corpse-of-solyndra-solarcity-and.html


So what is the total bill for all of this failure? How much American taxpayer wealth has been sacrificed for no societal benefit from Obama’s ill-fated alternative energy venture capital “Bets?” How much money has ended up enriching wealthy Obama election campaign fundraisers?

The obvious answer is too much has been spent, but an article in a recent October, 2012 issue of Business Week took a detailed look at how much wealth has been destroyed.

The article starts off with a review of the promises President Obama made back in 2008 when he was campaigning:

• At that time he promised to create 5 million “green jobs” (as if the government can “create” jobs) by spending $150 billion over ten years by investing in biofuels, hybrid cars, low emission coal plants, solar energy, and wind energy.
• It should come as no surprise, given the failed investments like Solyndra listed above, that this promise is seriously unfilled four years later.
• Business Week dove into detailed government records and found that the American taxpayer has paid out $21 billion to alternative energy companies via 19 Department of Energy programs so far, money that went towards 3,960 projects that resulted in the employment of 28,854 people.
• Thus, some simple math shows that it cost over $727,000 of taxpayer money to create each of those 28,854 jobs, hardly an efficient use of taxpayer wealth.
• Rather than creating 5 million jobs over ten years, this administration’s bad investments of taxpayer money has created less than .6% of that total over the first four years of trying, and failing.
• That means to meet his objective, Obama’s efforts would have to generate more than 99.4% of those promised jobs over the next six years.

As I have said before, you cannot make this stuff up. Results from this administration’s efforts in spending taxpayer dollars on alternative energy efforts is so bad that you actually start to wonder if they are trying to be unsuccessful.

You would think that the law of averages would come into play, that this administration would get lucky at some point in time, since “even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while.” But tens of billions of dollars later, we have very few jobs created, no outstanding breakthroughs in the energy field, no significant alternative energy infrastructure put into play, nothing.

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http://www.unitedstatesofpurple.com/

The United States of Purple is a new grass roots approach to filling the office of President of The United States by focusing on the restoration of freedom in the United States, focusing on problem solving skills and results vs. personal political enrichment, and imposing term limits on all future Federal politicians. No more red states, no more blue states, just one United States Of America under the banner of Purple.

The United States Of Purple's website also provides you the formal opportunity to sign a petition to begin the process of implementing a Constitutional amendment to impose fixed term limits on all Federally elected politicians. Only by turning out the existing political class can we have a chance of addressing and finally resolving the major issues of or times.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at www.loathemygovernment.com. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com/
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment/