Paul Driessen - Olympic-sized climate propaganda

I am posting this article at Paul Driessen's request.  I would add to the comments of the Egyptian commentators he quotes about Obama's belief that man-made global warming is our foremost crisis that Hillary Clinton claims she will have an even more radical program of fossil fuel use suppression than does Obama.  And yes, I do believe that Hillary is so divorced from reality, such a criminal, and so mad for power that it is very reasonable to evaluate her as insane. Here is Paul Driessen's article:

Olympic-sized climate propaganda

It was wrong to interrupt Rio’s delightful opening ceremonies with deceitful agitprop  

XXXI Olympiad competitors are joyfully showcasing their skills and sportsmanship, while delighted fans revel in their amazing efforts. But opening ceremonies featuring colorful history, dance, song and athletes were rudely interrupted by an unprecedented propaganda film.

As audiences around the world were getting pumped up in eager anticipation for the upcoming events, a slick but deceitful video soured the mood by inserting partisan climate change politics.

Fossil fuels are warming our planet, and the manmade heat is melting its ice caps, narrators intoned. Animated maps showed Greenland “disappearing very quickly” and Amsterdam, Dubai, Miami, Shanghai, Lagos and Rio being swallowed up by rising seas.

Well, yes, if average global temperatures really did soar 4 degrees Celsius (7.5 Fahrenheit), and if all of Greenland’s ice melts, oceans certainly could rise 20 feet and other terrible things certainly could happen.

But wild assumptions, computer models and animations are not reality. Few of us are really worried about being eaten by raptors and Tyrannosaurs cloned from DNA in fossilized amber, even though Jurassic Park sure made them look real. Ditto for Hollywood sharks, werewolves, cave monsters – and global warming.

In the Real World outside the animators’ windows, average planetary temperatures barely budged for 18 years. After climbing a headline-grabbing 0.55 degrees C (1 deg F) in 2015, a strong El Niño year, they plummeted a media-ignored 0.5 degrees C the first seven months of 2016, as La Niña approached. That’s a far cry from the 4/7.5 temperature spike that animated the animators’ fear-mongering. The sun has entered a low-sun-spot phase, possibly heralding a new colder period for Planet Earth.

As to temperatures increasing “since the industrial era began,” that primarily reflects Earth’s emergence from the 500-year Little Ice Age. Of course, climate alarmists happily claim this natural warming is due to mankind’s growing fossil fuel use during the same period of time, though scientists still cannot distinguish human and natural factors. With temperatures rising 1850-1940, cooling 1940-1975, warming 1975-1998, and mostly flat-lining since then, it’s hard to blame oil, gas and coal for any warming.

So the likelihood of Greenland’s ice all melting is about zero. In fact, its ice mass has been growing since the time period the Olympics propaganda squad selected to show the ice sheets “disappearing.”

News stories about the Rio video also featured claims that climate change has “already had real effects in Brazil,” where 60% of the Amazon rainforest is located. Some 240,000 acres were clear-cut just in June 2016, “as a result of deforestation” – related to global warming, it was slyly suggested.

If they’re talking about replacing rainforests with biofuel plantations, to replace fossil fuels that could be produced from a fraction of that acreage, then yes, there’s a climate (policy) connection. But there would be little need to chop down all those trees if climate chaos campaigners weren’t obsessively opposed to the fossil fuels that power 80% of the world’s economy and provide other vital human needs.

The indispensable benefits of hydrocarbons and petrochemicals for Olympic Games alone are impressive.

They are the raw materials for uniforms of every description; swim suits, goggles and caps; kayaks and kayaker helmets and paddles; bicycle helmets, shoes and carbon-fiber frames; basketballs, vaulting poles, tennis balls and racquets, soccer balls and shin guards; bows and arrows; volleyball and field hockey nets; basketballs [Paul really likes basketballs]; seats and clothing for fans; prosthetics and wheelchairs for Paralympians; and much more.

No one could watch the games without plastics for computers, cameras, monitors, cell phones, dish antennas, banners and other equipment that promote, record and transmit the events. Neither athletes nor fans could get to the games without airlines, vehicles and fossil fuels.

In short, virtually nothing we make, grow, eat, use or do is possible without fuels and materials that come out of holes in the ground somewhere on our planet. But radical greens want it all put off limits. They would rather see billions of acres of croplands, rainforests and wildlife habitats cleared and plowed – and trillions of gallons of water and fertilizer expended – to grow biofuel crops to replace fossil fuels. “Keep it in the ground,” they demand.

African, Asian and European countries cannot afford to stop using oil, natural gas or coal. Nor can the United States or any other modern or developing country.

Naturally, the video and news reports mentioned none of this. So why did the Rio organizers agree to present this manmade climate cataclysm video?

One possible reason is a desire to distract people from its real problems. Mosquitoes are spreading Zika. Shoddy athletic housing has bare wires and sinks falling off walls. The open-water swimming venue is a bacteria-infested open sewer. Swallowing just a few teaspoons of Rio’s tap water will make visiting athletes and fans horribly sick. Eleven construction workers died while preparing Rio for the games.

Brazil’s economy is on the rocks and #174 out of 189 nations for starting a new business. Its current and previous presidents are under investigation for corruption.

But once the games got underway, they were fantastic, fun, exciting and dramatic; their own distraction.

So the video could be simple “greenwashing” – making the 2016 games the “greenest ever.” Or it might be to reinforce Brazil’s claim to billions of dollars that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have promised for mitigation, adaptation and compensation for the climate chaos we supposedly caused.

Just as strange, even ExxonMobil played the politically correct climate game. Its Olympics TV ad says the company is doing all it can to reduce “carbon pollution.” Surely Exxon knows it’s not carbon (soot); it’s carbon dioxide. And it’s not pollution; the plant-fertilizing CO2 is enriching the atmosphere and making forests, grasslands and food crops grow faster and better. So why use Obama/EPA terminology?

Maybe the company just wants to buy some feel-good PR and “peace in our time.” Maybe it and its corporate and political colleagues are forgetting 1960s radical activist Jerry Rubin’s comment: “The more demands you satisfy, the more we’ve got.” And Winston Churchill’s blunt truth: “An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.”

All of it reminds me of the way several Egyptian journalists responded to President Obama’s 2015 commencement speech at the Coast Guard Academy. “Climate change is a serious threat to global security, an immediate risk to our national security,” he asserted. “It will impact how our military defends our country.” Anyone who fails to recognize this is guilty of “dereliction of duty.”

The journalists reacted in disbelief. “Is he insane? Is he on drugs?” asked one. “What did you expect from a president who never served in the military and never worked a day in his life?” said the second. “I’m sure he’s not deliberately trying to destroy his country,” the first suggested. “Of course he is,” the third said.

Now millions of Americans appear perfectly willing to sacrifice their livelihoods, living standards, liberties and country on the altar of manmade climate Armageddon. Are they insane? Are they on drugs?

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power - Black death.

Our Government Propaganda Mill on Energy & Global Warming Still Churns

The many false claims of the catastrophic man-made global warming alarmists have been used over and over as justifications for new government controls, spending programs, the picking of winners and losers in U.S. industry, forced changes in our lifestyles, wiping out jobs not considered green, and huge increases in all of our energy costs.  I received this in an e-mail about another government attempt to use these false claims for such purposes from the Science and Environmental Policy Project earlier today:

As a whole, the US media has been dismissive of the importance of Climategate and subsequent revelations. The non-scientific claims of the IPCC are considered by many commentators as insignificant. A reading of Chapter 9, “Transforming the Energy Sector and Addressing Climate Change,” in the recently released Economic Report of the President illustrates the significance of the scientifically unsupported claims by IPCC.

The chapter begins by citing claims that CO2 emissions will likely cause large temperature increases – all from IPCC models that have never been validated thus have no predictive power. It continues with claims of “increased mortality rates, reduced agricultural yields in many parts of the world, and rising sea levels that could inundate low-lying coastal areas.” 

“The planet has not experienced such a rapid warming on a global scale in many thousands of years, and never as a result of emissions from human activity.”

Elsewhere the President’s report cites EPA’s Endangerment Finding, calculates massive increases in property damage from increased severity of storms, justifies cap-and-trade, and promotes spending $60 Billion in cash and $30 Billion in tax credits for alternative energy. Of course tax credits benefit only those with high tax liabilities (high incomes).

The claims of increased mortality rates and reduced agriculture yields (found in IPCC reports) are directly contradicted by late 20^th Century history, the period claimed to be one of unprecedented warming. During this time mortality rates generally went down, human longevity up, and agricultural yields increased dramatically. Ironically, after declaring agricultural yields will decline the President’s report embraced an increase in mandatory bio-fuel use in gasoline from 9 billion gallons in 2008 to 36 billion gallons by 2022. It does not calculate the farm acreage required for this effort.

The claimed massive increases in property damage are, no doubt, based on IPCC’s claim in which the actual study found no statistically significant link between warming and catastrophic property damage. Sea levels have increased about 400 feet in the last 18,000 years or about 27 inches per century. The report cites a 7 inch rise since 1900 as if it is alarming. The statement that the “planet has not experienced such a rapid warming” has no merit.

Perhaps most journalists consider spending $90 Billion on various schemes to “fight climate change” insignificant. But one would hope for better scientific justification.

The mandate requiring more bio-fuel use will cause many of our food prices to go up greatly in addition to our fuel costs.  If the government were right about crop yields going down, then food prices will be going up badly even without the thoughtless requirement that more farmland be used to make fuel.  In fact, increased CO2 in the atmosphere and warmer weather will more likely lead to increased crop yields, not the lower ones foolishly claimed here.  As I have noted before, plant growth is benefited by higher CO2, which plants find essential for growth.  In many areas, greater warmth leads to longer growing seasons and will allow multiple plantings per year.  Those who worry about greater warmth in the tropics, need to remember that the tropics warm up little due to the cooling effect of increased water evaporation.

I fear that such nonsense as the widespread belief in catastrophic man-made global warming due to man's CO2 emissions from fossil fuel use, the widespread claims that minimum wage laws are good, the lack of a strong blow-back on the ethanol nonsense, the widespread acceptance of farm subsidies and supports, the lack of anger and response to the government's ever increasing meddling with big industries in co-operative efforts to control the market, the tendency for many college-educated people to want the government to takeover the health care industry, and the general belief by that same educated elite that they are qualified to make value and life management decisions for everyone else, have caused me to wonder seriously about the intelligence of many, many Americans.

Fortunately, the Tea Party movement has provided a counterweight to this assessment, in the nick of time, that my fellow Americans are not too bright.  It appears that the dumbness is mostly to be found in the college-educated elite who succumbed to brain lobotomies at the hands of their colleges, the progressive media, and the government.  Some people are simply easily programmed by constant repetitions of propaganda!!!!  But, it turns out that the greater part of the American People have not allowed this propaganda lobotomy process to remove their gray matter.  What a relief!

1804 Federal Subsidy Programs

No, I am not going to discuss the federal government subsidy programs of 1804. The number in the title is the number of federal subsidy programs in 2008 according to a recent Cato Institute study by Chris Edwards.

The Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance, 2,205 pages, lists federal programs for aid, subsidies, grants, loans, insurance, scholarships, and other benefits. The number of such programs by year is reproduced below:

2008 1804
2006 1696 [Edwards, Cato Institute, Tax and Budget Bulletin of 2006]
2005 1645
2000 1425
1995 1390
1990 1176
1985 1013 [Cutbacks by President Ronald Reagan]
1980 1123
1975 1009
1970 1019

The biggest new subsidy program was the $62 billion prescription drug program. Among the other programs are:

Homeland Security Grants $1,040,000,000
Local Firefighter Staffing $180,500,000
Clean Diesel Funding Assistance $156,000,000
Healthy Marriage Promotion $150,000,000
Community Abstinence Education $117,054,000
Education Data Systems Grants $100,000,000
Small Shipyard Grants $98,000,000
Bioenergy Fuels Grants $80,000,000
Specialty Crop Block Grant $49,000,000
Anti-gang State Grants $45,000,000
Laura Bush Librarian Program $26,500,000
Senior Farmers Market Program $22,000,000

As Edwards points out there is more and more funding and, no doubt, interference of the federal government in state and local government affairs revealed in these programs. What on earth is the federal government doing to promote healthy marriages? Frankly, no government has any business messing with marriages. The only proper role of government is to issue domestic partnership contracts as far as I am concerned. Then there is the nonsense and uselessness of the Community Abstinence Education grants! Stay out of our sex lives government! In fact, if government would also stay out of the education business and allow private schooling its proper role, we would have much more rational people and many of their sexual and marriage problems would be ameliorated. Then there are the subsidized fuel programs for clean diesel and for biofuels in this list. The two massively bloated farm bill of 2008 added many subsidies. Examples are apparently the Specialty Crop Block Grants and the Senior Farmers Market Programs above. Why on earth do Senior Farmers need a special market program?

What areas gave rise to the biggest increases in numbers of programs? Here is the list:

Interior, +88
Agriculture, +74
Homeland Security, +64
Transportation, +33
Health & Human Services, +27
Justice, +15

So, not only does Interior hog huge fractions of the land of many states, especially in the west, but it also is especially prolific in producing subsidy programs. I wonder what kind of mischief they are up to, other than refusing to allow anywhere near enough drilling for oil and gas and interfering with attempts to develop coal, tar sands, and oil shale extractions. Both the 2002 and 2008 huge farm bills produced the big increase in the subsidies of the Agriculture Department.

The reasons offered for most of these programs have little to do with their real purpose. The real purpose is always to buy votes in elections. There is little effort ever made to determine the effectiveness of these programs. When a program is shown to be ineffective, it is very rarely ended. Commonly, a completely false assertion is made that they are effective, with the facts being so blatantly ignored that one cannot help but know that the politicians and bureaucrats are lying.

I am still waiting for Congress to end the Ethanol Mandates now that it is well-known scientifically that there is no net energy production from corn-based ethanol and there is no pollution reduction advantage to mixing ethanol in with gasoline. I expect to have to wait a very long time because the program's real reason for existence was always as an excuse to subsidize farming and the ethanol refining companies such as ADM. Meanwhile, the program drives up the cost of corn, corn oil, corn syrup, beef, chicken, and pork directly and because farmland, water, and fertilizer are diverted to corn production, fewer soybean, wheat, and other crops are grown and the farm inputs cost more, which causes their prices to go up due to the ever-present law of supply and demand. This is just an example of the way in which subsidies for one thing drive up costs for many other things in our economy.

If you want to start putting some pressure on the politicians, go to www.usaspending.gov and look up the subsidy programs and who is getting the money and start complaining about it.

Meanwhile, government debt soars and will continue to do so until Americans finally throw the bums out of Washington. Then, the voters must return to the principle that the only non-tyrannical government is that which exists only to protect and defend the sovereign individual right to his own life, his liberty, his property, and his pursuit of happiness. We must insist that politicians are not appointed to choose our values for us and then to force us to live our lives in accordance with the values they have chosen.

Food Riots and Food Fuels

Believe it or not, there is a substantial number of people who recognize that turning foods such as corn and soybeans into fuel for cars does not make sense. Steven Milloy, who publishes JunkScience.com and DemandDebate.com and is an adjunct scholar at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, has written a commentary on food riots and other consequences of the Green lobbyists. The article is entitled A New 'Green' Body Count Begins.

The human population is growing and with it the demand for food and fuel. People in many areas of the world are finally improving their diets and traveling and trading more. The agricultural effort world-wide has been remarkable in doing such a great job in meeting the increased demand for food. The foolish campaign against Frankenfoods, especially strong in childish Europe, is doing what it can to restrict the increase in food production. In general, the Greens are not friendly to farmers. They do not like them using woodlands, prairie lands, or marsh lands. They do not like them using fertilizers and insecticides. They do not like them using water or fuel. They sometimes do want them to produce fuel from foods such as corn, soybeans, sugar cane, and biomass. The use of biomass such as general leaves and stalks is not yet economical and may never be very economic, due to the need to haul large masses of material to biomass fuel plants, as Steven Milloy points out. So, the conversion of valuable food such as corn and soybeans into fuel is now what is happening. This reduces the food supply and drives up prices to the point that many of the poor in the underdeveloped world cannot afford enough food.

Steven Milloy points out food riots in Haiti, Egypt, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Senegal, and Ethiopia. He does not mention the anger in Mexico due to rising tortilla prices. He does note that troops have been deployed to protect the farm fields and food warehouses in Pakistan and Thailand. Indian and Turkish government officials are quoted as saying it is foolish to turn food into biofuels.

Milloy goes on to note that the Greens are doing everything they can to prevent us from having adequate power. They propose biomass fuel disasters. They oppose every economical means of generating power, however. The Sierra Club wants to shut down our coal power plants. The Natural Resources Defense Council opposes nuclear power plants. Earth First! opposes almost every source of power, including natural gas, whose cost is rising rapidly now due to the failure to build more nuclear power plants, restrictions on new coal power plants, and restrictions on developing new oil fields in the stable western countries. Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley has declared that no wind mills will be allowed in Maryland, since they are an eyesore! It is clear that the Greens simply do not want to allow people to have power.

So, how do we plan for a future without power. Well, in Maryland officials are planning rolling blackouts beginning in 2011. As I have noted, we already have nightly brownouts. Personally, I would much rather live with coal-fired power plants and with nuclear power plants! I want my power and, indeed, it is essential for my laboratory business that I have high quality and dependable power. The damn Greens can go and live in Antarctica or take over Paraguay and use as little power as they wish to use!