April, 2015,I Am A Global Warming Doubter and A Believer In Science

Every month we revisit the theme, “I am a global warming doubter and a believer in science.” The theme started when I got tired of people like Al Gore and others yelling and slandering anyone who dared to disagree with their view of global warming, since then rebranded as “climate change.” Yelling and demeaning people is no way to win them over to your view, which is what the Al Gores of the world are still doing.

Thus, we set off to explore ALL science, research, and realities relative to global warming, not just the handpicked science that global warming advocates cherry pick. What we have found through the years is that it is very realistic and in tune with the real world to be a global warming doubter and a believer in science.

Much science and research has been shown to debunk Al Gore’s way of thinking and slandering. And we have brought counter evidence to his view of the world every month for years. To access those previous posts, just enter the search term "I am a global warming doubter” in the search box above. 

Our intention is to start an adult, mature, science based conversation based on all available information. That has certainly not been the intention of Al Gore types. They have wanted to browbeat their views into disbelievers heads. And even if they are right about global warming, which we have proven they are quite possibly wrong about, they come up with no plans that would reunite the world around a solution. 

They only want the United States to curtail their carbon footprint, a reduction that would be dwarfed by the increasing carbon footprint of the rest of the world, especially China and India. All they would end up doing is briefly forestalling their end result while crippling the economic growth and vitality of the United States.

With that background, let’s look at what the global warming/climate change hysteria has brought us in the past month or so.

1) Obama is really worried about global warming. Secretary of State Kerry is really worried about global warming. Al Gore is really worried about global warming. The American people? Not so much. According to a recent Gallup poll:

• Americans worries about environmental issues such as pollution and extinct species is down across the board from last year’s poll.
• In fact, of all the green issues polled, Americans have the least concern about global warming.
• Last year 34% of Americans worried about global warming or climate change, this year only 32% worried about them.
• Despite all of Al Gore’s rants and other global warming hype, according to Gallup, Americans concerns about global warming is no higher than when Gallup first started asking the question in 1989.

Given previous science related discussions in this blog about the fallacy of global warming/climate change, and Americans having much bigger concerns than global warming according to Gallup, maybe the President and the Secretary of State should refocus on what is important to Americans and not what is important to lawyer and former politician Al Gore.

2) This President likes to make statements and claim facts, expecting us to take him at his word. However, after six years and lies too numerous to count, you have to take anything Obama says with a grain of salt and disbelief. 

Continuing this tradition of statements having no basis in reality, he recently claimed that global warming/climate change was responsible for his daughter’s asthma. As usual he provides no science for his assertion, expecting us to just believe him. Global warming/climate change was the cause of an asthma attack when she was a toddler, an incident that caused the family to rush to the emergency room: “Well, you know Malia had asthma when she was four and, because we had good health insurance, we were able to knock it out early. And if we can make sure that our responses to the environment are reducing those incidents, that’s something that I think every parent would wish for.”

However, in a 2009 USA Today article, Obama said: “I’ve said before that as a former smoker I constantly struggle with it. Have I fallen off the wagon sometimes? Yes. Am I a daily smoker, a constant smoker? No.”

So, maybe secondhand smoke was the culprit in the asthma attack and not global warming? That certainly has a higher chance of causing an asthma attack than global warming/climate change. 

3) We have often pointed out that even if the U.S. reduced its coal power plant carbon footprint by double digit amounts, that effort would be overwhelmed by the expected large increases in coal usage around the world. India and China alone are planning to add hundreds and hundreds of coal fired power plants in the coming years. 

Given the political friction between European nations and Russia because of the Ukraine situation, many nations are moving back to using coal rather than natural gas it used to get from Russia. Even worse, a lot of the coal that they are now using is some of the dirtiest coal in the world.

And now, another country is getting online for coal. Given that Japan used to have a large reliance on nuclear power but has shut down a lot of that capability after the tsunami disaster, it is in dire need of additional energy sources. As a result, it plans to build 43 coal fired power plants to fill the energy gap. Although Japan had promised to submit a plan to cut its carbon footprint, it is not one of the only 35 countries which have submitted plans to the U.N.

Japanese environmentalists from the Kiko Network estimate that these new coal plants will throw off 127 million metric tons of carbon dioxide which they feel will never allow Japan to meet its reduction in carbon output: “These projects, which may still be operating in 2050, run counter to Japan’s efforts to tackle climate change and should be quickly reviewed or stopped,” the Kiko Network said in a press release

The loss of over half of the energy it used to get from nuclear plants has resulted in skyrocketing power costs for Japanese consumers and businesses. Thus, it has turned to coal and is unlikely to turn away from that energy source any time soon, despite whatever promises the country made to Obama and the U.N.

That will do it for this month’s update. Not a lot going on but some of the same old stuff:

• Americans having a better sense of what is important to them vs. what Washington politicians think is most important for them.
• Politicians claiming they know what is best for us even if they have to bring their kids illnesses into the debate and leave science out.
• Another country goes over to the dark side of coal, making any sacrifices Americans make in the name of global warming is even less important.

I am still a global warming doubter and and a believer in science, even more so after today's review.

Miscellaneous Missteps, Mistakes, and Misses From the Political Class

One depressing aspect of writing about the American political class is that you rarely get to write about bold steps, great government programs, and direct resolutions of problems. Instead, it seems we are constantly overwhelmed with their missteps, mistakes, and misses on major issues facing Americans. Consider:

- The October 14, 2011 issue of The Week contained a story about the failed Federal government program on mortgage support and relief for struggling homeowners. The program has been a failure since it started last year:

• Although funded with a billion dollars to help unemployed homeowners with their underwater mortgages, the program closed after a year with only half of its budget spent. Imagine that: a government program that did not spend all of its budget, you know that it must have been a bad program.
• The article claims that the program was plagued by poor administration and onerous qualifying rules and guidelines.
• Because of the strict eligibility guidelines, less than half of the intended 30,000 recipients received half under the program.
• A Dallas consumer credit counseling center helped more than 1,000 homeowners file the necessary paperwork, only to see about 80% of the needy homeowners get rejected by the program's strict income guidelines, i.e. in order to get government help for mortgage relief as a result of  the homeowners did not having a job, they needed to adhere to strong income requirements, which they could not because they often did not have a job.

Thus, a program that was supposed to help tens of thousands of homeowners probably ended up helping out only thousands of homeowners while there are millions of American homes in foreclosure.  Is this a misstep, a mistake, a miss or all three?

- An article in the September 21, 2011 issue of The Week talked about the potential for defrauding the Federal government via scams from the for-profit colleges and schools:

• There are 2,000 for-profit colleges in the country which serve 12% of all American students involved in higher education today, up from 3% ten years ago.
• Critics contend that these colleges mislead applicants about loan costs,  overstate the post graduation salaries, target the homeless and disabled veterans to increase enrollment, and provide dubious educations and degrees that do not lead to better paying jobs and careers.
• As an example, they cite the University of Phoenix, the market leader, which graduates less than 9% of its students in six years.
• Bridgepoint Education posted a $216 million profit last year from its 78,000 students despite the fact that 84% of its students drop out within two years of enrolling, the school has 1,700 recruiters but only one job placement person on staff, and according to Senator Tom Harkin, the school is "an absolute scam."
• Many students report worthless degrees with mountains of student loan debt after attending these for-profit institutions.
• The largest for-for profit company has annual revenue of almost five billion dollars and the CEO of another leading for-profit education company took down an annual salary of $42 million, sixty times more than what the president of Harvard University made.

Why should the American taxpayer care about this seemingly shoddy education performance and experience? According to the article, about 75% of the revenue for these companies running the for-profit schools comes from the Federal government via grants and loans. At Bridgepoint Education, 87% of their revenue comes from the Federal government.

A recent Congressional committee report stated that "Some for-profit schools are efficient government-subsidy collectors first and educational institutions second." Some critics claim that the for-profits intentionally target poor and minority students for the express purpose of leveraging their status to get Federal government aid money, which has grown from $4.6 billion in 2000 to $26 billion today.

As a result, according to Education Secretary Arne Duncan: "Millions of low income students are borrowing heavily to attend for-profit colleges and too many of them are dropping out, failing to to get a job, and leaving the taxpayers with the bill. In the meantime, many of the for-profit colleges are getting rich off of Federal grants and support.

Although the article points out that the Federal government is finally starting to crackdown on the fraud and waste in the program, citing the recent suit against Education Management Corporation which is accused of fraudulently charging the Federal government for $11 billion for student aid over the years, one always has to wonder 1) why it took so long to do the right thing and crack down on the fraud and 2) how much taxpayer money has been wasted over the years and how much will continue to be wasted in the future?

At $26 billion a year, this inefficient and ineffective program could fund more than half of Obama's jobs program every year. It is the one government program that might do a worse job at creating jobs than Obama's job proposal, wasting money on students that rarely get educated and never get job placed successfully. Missteps, mistakes, or misses?

- According to an April, 2007  Newsweek article by Fareed Zakara, as reviewed under Step 25 in "Love My Country, Loathe My Government," China and India were scheduled to open up more than 800 coal burning power plants between 2007 and 2011. This comes out to about 160 plants new coal plants per year, three per week, coming on line.

The article estimates that just these new coal plants, not existing coal plants in China and India, will dump 2.5 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the air every year. Certainly a cause for concern regardless of whether or not you believe in man made global warming. 2.5 billion TONS is a lot of air pollution.

So what is the political class doing about it? Apparently nothing since they are preoccupied with what American asthma sufferers put into the lungs to be able to breath. According to an article in the Weekly Standard on September 23, 2011, the Obama administration banned the current set of asthma relief inhalers that most asthma sufferers use, as of January, 2012. The reason? An international treaty that seeks to reduce the amount of chlorofluorocarbons released into the air in an attempt to protect the ozone layer.

But these asthma inhalers do not release chlorofluorocarbons into the air, they are released into a person's lungs so that they can breathe easier. However, the Federal government is banning them and forcing Americans to use a different type of inhaler which will cost anywhere from 50% more to three times as much per inhaler.

Let's see, focus on getting the Chinese and Indian governments to reduce the incremental 2.5 billion TONS of pollutants their new power plants will put into the atmosphere every year or make Americans pay more for different medical relief from asthma for the medicine they shoot into their lungs, not the air, different medical relief that may not work as well? What is the better priority and better use of government resources? A misstep, mistake or miss on the part of the political class and Federal government?

- According to an article in Fortune magazine, that was summarized in the October 14, 2011 issue of The Week magazine, prices for prime Midwest farmland have risen 17% on average over the past year as a result of rising food prices and the growth of the corn ethanol market. Thus, tell me again why the American taxpayer still pays Americans farm interests tens of billions of dollars every year in farm subsidies, subsidies that mostly go to big agriculture corporations and not family farmers? Missteps, mistakes or misses when it comes to wasting taxpayer money via corporate welfare?

- The last misstep, mistake, or miss comes from a recent Associated Press news article. The U.S. Senate has voted to block an Obama administration proposal that would limit potatoes in school lunches. It seems that the administration is worried about too many kids eating too many French fries at lunch time in our schools, wanting to restrict schools to two servings a week of potatoes and other starchy vegetables.

The U.S. Senate actually took formal government time and resources and voted to accept an amendment by Republican Sen. Susan Collins that would block the government from putting any limits on serving potatoes or other vegetables in school lunches. Collins is from Maine, a potato-growing state.


14 million Americans unemployed, national debt fast approaching $15 TRILLION, pubic schools in this country still undereducating our kids on average, leaky borders, three foreign military conflicts underway, no national energy policy, health care costs up 9% on a year over year basis, the country as divided as ever, a President who would rather politically campaign than actually execute his Presidential duties, the economy on the verge of another recession, etc. Do our Senators really believe that the great potato debate should take precedence and attention over dozens of other more important and more pressing issues facing the majority of Americans today? Misstep, mistake, a miss or just plain pathetic?


You look at these constant, unrelenting misses, in whatever form they appear, and you begin to see the imperative need for Step 39 from "Love My Country, Loathe My Government," the need to impose term limits on all Federally elected positions. The current crop of politicians has been in office for so long that they no longer understand the reality of the average American's world.

This is a world and a reality where unemployment issues should be handled before potato issues, a world where wasting taxpayer dollars on fraudulent schools, bad mortgage programs, and agriculture corporate welfare  should take precedence over potato issues, a world where we properly set balances and priorities so that American asthma suffers do not suffer, both medically and financially, when India and China are doing far more harm to the world's environment. Term limits now, less misses later.



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 http://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.


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http://www.loathemygovernment.com/
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http://realpolichick.blogspot.com/
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http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment.com/