With just a few shopping days until Christmas, “You’ve Been Gored” offers….

…Holiday Ideas for Green Grinches & Climate Change Believers!

CCB – that’s Climate Change Belief – is a religion. It has a God (Gore) and prophets/saints (DiCaprio, Sting), but where are the holidays? Christmas and Chanukah offer great reasons to eat, drink and get crazy. But ALpostles, convinced that all human activity damages Gaia, are such a gloomy  bunch.

So enviro-doomsayers, pull up an old cable spool next to the artificial, non-denominational log, grab a bowl of recycled waste-punch and get in the spirit with these fun holiday ideas. (more…)

As the UNFCCC – that’s United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change – frolics in Durban, South Africa for 11 days of cocktails, crab legs and planet saving, what better time for another excerpt from YOU’VE BEEN GORED.

The UN is in the world government business, make no mistake about it. And our current domestic regime is more than happy to embrace and comply with UN edicts – oh how they love to embrace and comply.

Planetary Citizens,  meet your new Uncle Sam. And prepare to embrace, comply and bleed, with:

ECO TAXES

Once the richest country on earth, America is hopelessly broke. So it prints trillions at will — each fresh buck devaluing the previous one. Now, the most gargantuan, wasteful, polluting, unsustainable machine ever created – the U.S. Government – must drill for fresh revenue. But where? Greeniacs have the answer. Tax our every breath, because we are all greenhouse gas producers/polluters and therefore responsible for global warming/climate change/Gaia’s suffering.

We must financially atone for our eco sin–living.

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My six year-old, parroting her teacher, proclaimed, “If we don’t fix Climate Change, we’re all gonna die!” At that moment, I decided to write YOU’VE BEEN GORED, the book that lampoons Al Gore and his hypocritical “ALpostles.”

The environment has become the hottest political issue of our time. And when anything is politicized, falsehood flourishes. The volume of lies, disinformation, propaganda, hypocrisy and exaggeration far exceeds the quantity of material pollutants – and is more hazardous.

Green has become the convenient, safe, lucrative cause for politicians, corporate weasels, celebrity eco-frauds, power-hungry government agencies and fast-buck swindlers hustling everything from gas-to-water engine conversion plans to carbon offset credits.

There’s a combination gold-rush/Armageddon’s a-comin’ zeitgeist that’s very troubling. It’s like watching the panicked crowd flee from Godzilla. Their mindless fear is more dangerous than the monster.

Statistics of doom are conjured and accepted without vetting. Idiotic “solutions” are clutched in desperation. Most terrifying of all, leaders are anointed and followed — without scrutiny.

There’s more mass hysteria in the air than particulate matter. And that hysteria is stoked by people with ulterior motives – money and power.

Green rhetoric has morphed into dogma. Totalitarian semantics force an agenda on those less educated or wary. One who disagrees is labeled a denier – a pejorative term that invalidates an opinion since only “truth” can be denied.

With Bolshevik fervor they scream for the heads of non-believers. Jobs are lost, professional credentials are revoked, jail time will be served. Non-compliance is not tolerated. Mere tolerance is not tolerated. One must embrace the new creed.

It’s time to step back, set up the bullshit filter (make sure it’s on full screen), and carefully evaluate the message. And even more carefully, examine the messengers.

Over the next several weeks, BigGovernment.com will serialize portions of YOU’VE BEEN GORED.

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Chillin' at the ice hotel

As serious scientists pull back from the alarmist predictions of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and from the extreme policy pronouncements of left-wing lobby groups, the complex reality of climate is starting to emerge.

AFP reports today, “Global warming rate less than feared: study”:

High levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere may have less of an impact on the rate of global warming than feared, a study said Thursday.

The authors of the study funded by the US National Science Foundation stressed that global warming is real, and that increases in atmospheric CO2, which has doubled from pre-industrial standards, will have multiple serious impacts.

But the more severe estimates, such as those put forth by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, are unlikely, the researchers found in their study published in the journal Science…. (more…)

The headline in today’s ClimateWire (subscription required) blares “U.N. says turning lights on for world’s poor need not boost CO2.” That is, we can provide electricity to 1.5 billion people who have never flipped a light switch and not see an increase in emissions of carbon dioxide (until the global warming fad/excuse for doing things statists like to do, this was called plant food, the driver of photosynthesis).

CO2 is released not just by oceans when they warm (absorbed when they cool) or decaying plants, or people exhaling, but combusting “fossil fuels” like the coal, gas, and, in some places, oil used to create electricity. CO2 emissions generally correlate with economic prosperity–more on that, momentarily.

But there is even less to this absurdity than meets the eye. Here’s how the ClimateWire story opens: (more…)

Several reports of late reveal that new regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency will cause utility providers to shut down a number of coal-fired power plants. It is time to expose the history of the thuggish tactics utilized by the EPA in promoting a “green” energy agenda, specifically during the Clinton/Gore administration.

A press release from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) dated November 3, 1999 reported:

“U.S. SUES ELECTRIC UTILITIES IN UNPRECEDENTED ACTION TO ENFORCE THE CLEAN AIR ACT”.  The release states that “seven separate suits allege that the electric utility companies — American Electric Power, Cinergy, FirstEnergy, Illinois Power, Southern Indiana Gas & Electric Company, Southern Company, Tampa Electric Company — or their subsidiaries, and the TVA, violated the Clean Air Act by making major modifications to many of their plants without installing the equipment required to control smog, acid rain and soot.”

In Florida, Tampa Electric Company (TECO) was the first utility in the country to reach a settlement agreement with the EPA and the Department of Justice.  Under the terms of the settlement agreement, as outlined in a statement from then EPA Administrator Carol M. Browner, Tampa Electric Company agreed to pay $3.5 million in civil penalties, along with another “$10 million for environmentally beneficial projects designed to mitigate the impact of their pollution.”  The entire Consent Decree can be viewed here.  A visit to Tampa Electric Company’s website contains a declaration that in 1999 they were the “first utility in the nation to develop a plan with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to address its coal-fired utility initiative.” When questioned about the connection between Tampa Electric Company’s website statement regarding their cooperation with the EPA and the announced settlement with the EPA and DOJ, a source inside the industry replied “Do you mean did they hold a gun to their head?  Absolutely!”

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The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) has learned of a UN plan recently put in place to hide official correspondence on non-governmental communication accounts, which a federal inspector general has already confirmed are subject to FOIA requests. This “cloud” serves as a dead-drop of sorts for discussions by U.S. government employees over the next report being produced by the scandal-plagued IPCC, which is funded with millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars.

Although this is seedy and unlawful at any time, it also goes in the “bad timing” file, especially for the Obama Administration and the UN.

Just as a brand new book further exposes the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (whose scams I dissected here, and in more disturbing detail here), and on the heels of the weekend surprise of a 2005 memo showing President Obama’s cooling/warming/population zealot of a “science czar” John Holdren is the kind of guy Mitt Romney turns to for developing his “environmental”’ policies, we’ve exposed the Obama administration and IPCC have cooperated to subvert U.S. transparency laws, operating domestically out of Holdren’s White House office.

With this morning’s Freedom of Information Act request, the explaining they have to do must begin by providing the taxpayer certain records regarding — including but not limited to — user names and passwords for a backchannel ‘cloud’ established to hide IPCC deliberations from FOIA, thereby also seeking to undermine the Presidential Records Act (PRA) of 1978. (more…)

This Rick Perry video — which is really all about Mitt Romney — has caught some attention on the heels of a front page story by the Wall Street Journal raising the issue of Mitt Romney’s record on energy and environment issues. It’s not on the editorial page, mind you, but the less market-friendly news pages. This is a good thing, and wherever it leads, I do not believe the video can be shown, viewed or written about too often.

Mr. Romney finds himself needing to detach himself from these past positions on environmental issues without painting a target on his back for more accusations of flip-floppery. Otherwise, he must plainly state that voters should expect him to stick to his prior instincts on these issues.

This is too big a topic to pussyfoot around. The importance of Romney’s views on energy and his courting of environmental lobbyists — including a venture capitalist about to take the reins of what has become the world’s largest (and worst) VC slushy fund — cannot be overstated at this point.

This would be true even without Solyndra having exposed many voters to the growing fiscal disease in “green” industries, which is so typical and predictable that some of us foresaw it long ago.

Romney’s seeming embrace of the corrupt environmental lobby is made all the sadder by the fact that this country has a real opportunity for a spectacular revival with a domestic energy production boom. But such a change will require a leader with both strong vision and the will to stand up to anti-business, anti-energy extremists. (more…)

“EU Carbon Trading Rocked By Mass Killings”, “Armed Troops Burn Down Homes, Kill Children To Evict Ugandans In Name Of Global Warming”

These two headlines from today’s Global Warming Policy Foundation update ought to finally shake some sense into any of the many US companies pushing for our involvement in the Kyoto debacle. That’s a demand invented by Enron (greenies, I was in the room, don’t bother), and I particularly recall DuPont’s rep whining like a child to the US representative about their being denied the right to cash in, at a State Department briefing at one global confab I attended in 2002.

This is particularly true on the heels of the experience of Coca Cola and Unocal with the 1789 Alien Tort Claims Act, under which they were sued to pay for the actions of a government in whose country they operated.

Specifically, news reports indicate that:

“Armed troops acting on behalf of a British carbon trading company backed by the World Bank burned houses to the ground and killed children to evict Ugandans from their homes in the name of seizing land to protect against ‘global warming,’ a shocking illustration of how the climate change con is a barbarian form of neo-colonialism.

The evictions were ordered by New Forests Company, an outfit that seizes land in Africa to grow trees then sells the ‘carbon credits’ on to transnational corporations. The company is backed by the World Bank and HSBC. Its Board of Directors includes HSBC Managing Director Sajjad Sabur, as well as other former Goldman Sachs investment bankers…

Villagers told of how armed ‘security forces’ stormed their village and torched houses, burning an eight-year-child to death as they threatened to murder anyone who resisted while beating others.

‘We were in church,’ recalled Jean-Marie Tushabe, 26, a father of two. ‘I heard bullets being shot into the air.’

‘Cars were coming with police,’ Mr. Tushabe said, sitting among the ruins of his old home. ‘They headed straight to the houses. They took our plates, cups, mattresses, bed, pillows. Then we saw them getting a matchbox out of their pockets.’

‘But in this case, the government and the company said the settlers were illegal and evicted for a good cause: to protect the environment and help fight global warming,’ reports the New York Times.”

To beat some too-typical greens to their punch, no, this is not what happens when one introduces “market mechanisms” into environmental schemes.

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From The Washington Times:

The Environmental Protection Agency’s internal watchdog said Wednesday the Obama administration cut corners in evaluating the science it used to back up its finding that carbon is a dangerous pollutant that can be regulated under existing federal law.

The report by the EPA’s inspector general is certain to be used in court by those seeking to overturn EPA’s claim that it can write global-warming rules under existing law and doesn’t need new authority from Congress.

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James Delingpole is a bestselling British author and blogger who helped expose the Climategate scandal back in 2009. Reason.tv caught up with Delingpole in Los Angeles recently to learn more about his entertaining and provocative new book Watermelons: The Green Movement’s True Colors. At its very roots, argues Delingpole, climate change is an ideological battle, not a scientific one. In other words, it’s green on the outside and red on the inside. At the end of the day, according to Delingpole, the “watermelons” of the modern environmental movement do not want to save the world. They want to rule it.

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Politicians who exaggerate the effects of climate change are as much in “denial” of science as those who reject the phenomenon come what may–more so, in fact, since they exhort the public to “believe” in something they themselves can rarely explain.

Case in point: President Barack Obama, taking Texas governor Rick Perry to task for “denying” climate change even though his “state is on fire.”

Fire twister from a 2009 Texas fire (Associated Press)

Let’s put aside, for a moment, the president’s appalling use of an ongoing disaster for political purposes, and focus on the scientific claim he is making: that Texas wildfires are the result of climate change (which in turn is the result of human use of fossil fuels–which, when burned, release gases into the atmosphere that trap heat and warm the earth’s surface).

What is the scientific basis for that claim? None, according to the government’s own leading climate change scientist.  (more…)

On his West Coast fundraising swing, Obama test-drove a new, more combative tone.  Highlights include accusing GOP debate audiences of “cheering at the prospect of somebody dying because they don’t have health care” and booing a gay service member and calling Rick Perry “a governor whose state is on fire, denying climate change.”

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ATHERTON, Calif. (AP) – President Barack Obama charged Sunday that the GOP vision of government would “fundamentally cripple America,” as he tried out his newly combative message on the liberal West Coast.

Aiming to renew the ardor of Democratic loyalists who have grown increasingly disenchanted with him, the president mixed frontal attacks on Republicans with words of encouragement intended to buck up the faithful as the 2012 campaign revs up.

“From the moment I took office what we’ve seen is a constant ideological pushback against any kind of sensible reforms that would make our economy work better and give people more opportunity,” the president said at an intimate brunch fundraiser at the Medina, Wash., home of former Microsoft executive Jon Shirley, where about 65 guests were paying $35,800 per couple to listen to Obama. (more…)

The globalists at the United Nations are busy preparing their agenda for the Rio + 20 Conference in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, which will be held on June 4 – 6, 2012.  They have prepared a draft entitled “Enabling a Flourishing Earth: Challenges for the Green Economy, Opportunities for Global Governance”.  It is truly amazing that this is not being devised in Dr. Evil’s hidden lair in the depths of some inactive volcano or on a deserted island.  This has been made available for everyone to read.  It reveals the true intent; the hopes, dreams and aspirations for this new world order that they have been working on for twenty plus years.  The entire document can be viewed here.

In the document they make reference to the Earth Charter, which is purported to be “an ethical framework for a more just, sustainable and peaceful world”.

They understand that their “green” initiative has not progressed as quickly as they had hoped it would.  Cap and trade schemes that involve redistribution of wealth from developed countries to developing countries based on a market price on carbon dioxide emissions have not generated sufficient revenue.  A new or additional economic or market solution should be implemented, because humankind has transgressed against nature.  Humans have been treating nature as a commodity.  The “loss of biodiversity,  desertification, climate change and the disruption of a number of natural cycles are among the costs of our disregard for nature and the integrity of its ecosystems and life-supporting processes.  As recent scientific work suggests, a number of planetary boundaries are being transgressed and others risk being so in a business-as-usual world”,  according to the U.N. Secretary General’s report to the U.N. on Harmony with Nature.

Their proposal is to create a new world organization, naming it  the World Environmental Organisation (WEO) which will have a global legitimacy and mandate to have jurisdiction over what are considered the “common goods”, defined as “fresh water, healthy soil and clean air, but also the oceans, the atmosphere and diversity of life” since it would be difficult to implement or trade on these “common goods” that are not privately owned or traded on markets.

This document states “Our proposed WEO should be mandated with a trusteeship function over global public goals and common goods”.  Much like a legal guardian is appointed in the case of a person who is unable to represent him/ herself, such as an infant, insane or senile person, they are proposing such a legal guardian to represent and give “legal voice for the otherwise voiceless environment”.

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Let’s face it – there are few things more annoying than Science.  We conservatives need to take a firm stand against Science in all its forms.  In fact, Science sucks.

But let’s not confuse “Science” with “science.”  The regular, boring, old lower-case “science” has to do with applying the scientific method to observed phenomena in order to expand our knowledge of the universe.  It requires a rigorous analysis of empirical evidence and the testing of hypotheses without preconceived, concrete, politicized notions of what the truth must be.  In contrast, “Science” is a ration of pseudo-plausible horseshit asserted by liberals who try to occupy the intellectual high ground and then shut you up by basically saying you are too dumb to express an opinion.

Liberal “Science” is a bludgeon that superficially looks like what we understand to be science, but bears no more than a casual relationship to it.  It is a way of trying to end the debate before it begins – or, more precisely, before you begin.  That leaves the liberals’ nonsense as the first and last word on the subject.  And then they win.

It’s a nice trick – if you let them get away with it.  So don’t.

Call them Scientistians – liberal doofs who try to wrap themselves in the white lab coat of objective reason for only as long as it supports their particular pinko policy prescription du jour.

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Al Gore is using his considerable media muscle to express his frustration that people and governments the world over – but especially here in the United States – have increasingly rejected the notion humans are destroying the planet. He’s broadcasting on his cable channel, Current TV, and online something he calls “24 Hours of Reality,” beginning at 7 p.m. CDT, Wednesday, September 14.

Gore will show a new multimedia presentation attempting to “connect the dots between recent weather events” and man-caused global warming. He has promised that 95 percent of the slides are new and different from those he showed in his Oscar-winning film, An Inconvenient Truth – which is a good thing, considering that film has since been exposed as fraudulent in many respects.

But the truth is, Gore can’t handle the reality that thousands of reputable scientists across the globe have rejected his dogmatic view of climate catastrophe. Those scientists have done the kind of hard scientific work that The Heartland Institute has presented in six conferences, dozens of papers and books, podcasts, videos, and in Environment & Climate News.

“Science!”: Beyond the Pose, Mr. Huntsman, What Would You DO?

When that silver-haired Republican candidate weighs in on the ‘climate’ debate I want to stick around until the end of the video. I love that line, “Good heavens, Miss Nakamoto, you’re beautiful!”

Wait, that’s not Magnus Pyke?

Seriously. Mr. Huntsman, beyond the pose: what would you do? “Science!” is a talking point. More of a pose, really, of being the thoughtful man while its success depends on no more than Pavlovian nodding and clucking in response. Anything else ultimately arrives at the question Hunstman’s pose begs:

What. Would. You. Do.?

What’s your point? You’re down with the kidz on campus and your media base can rest easy because you’re not, you know, ‘crazy’ as you say? Or you’re going somewhere with this? Is it cap-and-trade? Kyoto? Kyoto II? Carbon (dioxide…meaning ‘energy’) taxes?

What? And after you answer that, well, without using the word “science(!)”, please then state why?

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For nearly three years as Americans have struggled through this Great Recession, President Obama has given speeches that relied on failed Keynesian economic theory and the politics of class warfare and envy. As his big government policies have spent this nation to the brink, the employment picture continues to worsen.

Tonight, President Obama will deliver a major economic address before a Joint Session of Congress. The MacIver Institute expects it will be more of the same rhetoric and promotion of government solutions we’ve been hearing for the last 3 years.

The timing of the speech also conflicts with the pomp and circumstance surrounding the kickoff of the 2011 NFL season. As a Packers’ fan and in the spirit of public service, I directed our staff to comb through the hundreds of speeches President Obama has already made to give you a concise two-minute preview of his latest ‘big speech.’

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Many have wondered why Jon M. Huntsman Jr., a former Obama administration official as Ambassador to China, climate-change believer, ally of Harry Reid and all-around anti-Tea Party candidate is running for the Republican presidential nomination.  Were the 2012 Republican primaries your typical RINO race (not that there aren’t abundant RINOs in the current field, at least in this author’s view), it would be clear that Huntsman would be setting himself up as the establishment, “civil,” “grown up” candidate, in the mold of a more liberal Mitt Romney.

However, primaries are determined by the most ardent partisans, which for the Republican party today certainly means Tea Partiers, and conservatives and libertarians who hold similar views to those of the Tea Party.  Given that it is abundantly clear that those who will determine the Republican nominee will never accept a person with Huntsman’s political views, one must wonder why he is in the race.

I believe I have found a plausible answer.  Jon Huntsman Jr. is potentially the key to four more years of Barack Obama, not by running as a Republican but by running as an Independent.  Allow me to explain.

By running to the left of the rest of the Republican field, Huntsman likely has no intention of competing in the Republican primary.  Instead, he may use the Republican primary and his substantial personal wealth to set up for a run in the general election as an Independent — as the “reasonable” candidate in a field characterized by the mainstream media as consisting of terrorist Tea Partiers practicing radical brinksmanship and wanting to take us back to the Antebellum era, and President Obama who has proven ineffective, weak and ever-willing to compromise.

Independents who buy this line thus may look to spend their vote on a more moderate and palatable candidate.  Jon Huntsman would be their man.

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“I do believe that the issue of global warming has been politicized. I think there are a substantial number of scientists who have manipulated data so that they will have dollars rolling into their projects. I think we’re seeing it almost weekly or even daily, scientists who are coming forward and questioning the original idea that man-made global warming is what is causing the climate to change. Yes, our climates change. They’ve been changing ever since the earth was formed. But I do not buy into, that a group of scientists, who in some cases were found to be manipulating this data.”

Not much to quibble with Texas Governor Rick Perry about there. Except if you’re the Washington Post which, like Politico, cannot countenance Perry’s refusal to bow at the altar of what has been decided. So for his apostasy WaPo gives Perry a whopping “four Pinocchios” in a sneering, nasty and intellectually dishonest piece, “Rick Perry’s made-up ‘facts’ about climate change”, rife with straw men, heavy on double standards, and otherwise mixing and matching errors of omission and commission.”

First, an editorial note. WaPo reveals its delirium on the issue by citing polls as its apparent evidence for man-made climate change, concluding with “After all, it was first established in 1896 that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere could help create a ‘greenhouse effect.’” Apple, meet orange.

This non-sequitor misreads WaPo’s own cited source and is more confused than the ritual confusion of climate change with man-made climate change, then conflated with the alleged catastrophic climate change (which WaPo also then offers). So, Mr. Kessler, the greenhouse effect, in existence somewhat longer than man, enables life on earth. Man does not help create it. It’s here with us, or without us. On WaPo’s relative scale, this scolding of another for supposed ignorance, clueless about that of which it scolds, merits at least five Pinocchios.

Perry’s camp referred ’something called’ the Washington Post to “something called the Petition Project, which claims to have collected the signatures of 31,487 ‘American scientists’ on a petition that says there is ‘no convincing scientific evidence’ that human release of greenhouse gasses will ’cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the earth’s climate.’ The petition is a bit old, having been started in opposition to the 1997 Kyoto agreement on global warming.”

WaPo, using a week’s worth of sneer quotes if still citing ‘no convincing evidence’ of catastrophic heating, just polls of other people not addressing ‘catastrophic climate change’, didn’t like that.

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