Climate scientists come to terms with the lack of global warming

- The Daily Caller - http://dailycaller.com -

Climate scientists come to terms with the lack of global warming

Posted By Michael Bastasch On 10:42 AM 04/26/2013 In Daily Caller News Foundation | No Comments

Despite the heated rhetoric from the Obama administration and environmental groups about the urgency of global warming, climate scientists have begun to come to terms with the lack of evidence of catastrophic global warming over the last decade.

“While some climate scientists continue to resist the obvious that the climate system is more complex than they assumed, others are starting to accept that the multi-decadal climate projections provide very incomplete simulations has to how the real climate system works,” Roger Pielke, Jr., environmental studies professor at the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado at Boulder, told The Daily Caller News Foundation.

Establishment media outlets have been reporting about the unexpected stabilizing global surface temperatures over at least the last decade, and even former NASA scientist and environmental activist James Hansen has recognized the decade-long lull.

This has frustrated some environmentalists who recently sent a letter to major news networks urging them to have more coverage on global warming, and to stop portraying the issue as a “two-sided debate” by featuring global warming skeptics.

“The divergence of the real world observations from the multi-decadal climate predictions, both in terms of forecasting the magnitude of global warming and of changes in regional climate, is finally initiating a much overdue scientific debate on the level of our knowledge of the climate system,” Pielke added. “While there is no doubt that humans are altering the climate system, it is in a diverse variety of ways besides that caused by adding greenhouse gases such as C02.”

Pielke said that climate scientists are beginning to recognize that the natural climate forces and feedbacks play a larger role than previously thought.

“This is a highly complex calculation to make in the first place. The short period of time, only 10 years in which the increasing temperature has leveled, really doesn’t tell us very much other than the fact that temperatures may still be rising but just not as fast as they were before,” said Elgie Holstein, the senior director for strategic planning at the Environmental Defense Fund, told Fox News.

“The mainstream media cannot maintain the official man-made global warming narrative any longer,” Marc Morano of the climate skeptic website ClimateDepot.com told TheDC News Foundation. “With the lack of warming and the failure to shift the climate debate to ‘extreme weather,’ warmists are now losing once stalwart members of the media in promoting man-made climate fears.”

A study by Norwegian researchers from earlier this year found that global warming is less severe than was predicted by the United Nations climate authority. In fact, studies have been lowering their warming forecasts since the 2007 UN estimate.

In a Washington Times op-ed, Cato Institute climate scholar Patrick Michaels provides a partial list of studies that have made estimates lower than the UN:

“Richard Lindzen gives a range of 0.6 to 1.0 C (Asia-Pacific Journal of Atmospheric Sciences, 2011); Andreas Schmittner, 1.4 to 2.8 C (Science, 2011); James Annan, using two techniques, 1.2 to 3.6 C and 1.3 to 4.2 C (Climatic Change, 2011); J.H. van Hateren, 1.5 to 2.5 C (Climate Dynamics, 2012); Michael Ring, 1.5 to 2.0 C (Atmospheric and Climate Sciences, 2012); and Julia Hargreaves, including cooling from dust, 0.2 to 4.0 C and 0.8 to 3.6 C (Geophysical Research Letters, 2012).”

“It’s appropriate to jump off a ship when it begins to take on water,” Michaels said. “If you look at the monthly temperature anomalies from the University of East Anglia you see no significant trend in any direction going back to the fall of 1996 which would put us at 17 years of no trend.”

“These are not good times for the promoters of global warming,” said Morano. “Earth is failing to follow global warming predictions and the new study claiming current temperatures are the ‘hottest ever’ may be facing a full scientific retraction. The great warmist retreat has officially begun.”

However, environmental groups were encouraged earlier this year when President Obama promised to address global warming during his second term, threatening executive action if Congress failed to pass legislation on the issue.

“We can choose to believe that Superstorm Sandy, and the most severe drought in decades, and the worst wildfires some states have ever seen were all just a freak coincidence,” Obama said in his State of the Union Address. “Or we can choose to believe in the overwhelming judgment of science — and act before it’s too late.”

Green groups may have a reason to be optimistic as a Gallup poll from March found that 58 percent of Americans say they worry a great deal or fair amount about global warming, up from 51 percent in 2011.

Follow Michael on Twitter

Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contactlicensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

---

Article printed from The Daily Caller: http://dailycaller.com

URL to article: http://dailycaller.com/2013/04/26/climate-scientists-come-to-terms-with-the-lack-of-global-warming/

 

PRESIDENT OBAMA’S STEALTH TERMINATION OF CIA GLOBAL WARMING UNIT

PRESIDENT OBAMA’S STEALTH TERMINATION OF CIA GLOBAL WARMING UNIT

 

By NWV News Writer Jim Kouri
Posted 1:00 AM Eastern
November 28, 2012
© 2012 NewsWithViews.com

More than three years later, and after spending billions of taxpayer dollars, an Inside-the-Beltway watchdog group reported on Monday that President Barack Obama ordered the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to quietly shutdown its example of government waste and duplication: the Center on Climate Change and National Security.

The scandal-plagued government agency responsible for providing national security intelligence to senior U.S. policymakers, the military, homeland security officials and law enforcement operated an insignificant special unit that focused on global warming, according to a watchdog group that’s proudly been a thorn in the side of the Obama White House.

Regardless of the fact that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had already possessed a multi-billion dollar intelligence center for global warming, a new report by public-interest group Judicial Watch’s blog claims that the Obama administration believed the nation’s intelligence community needed yet another taxpayer-funded entity to better determine the impact of climate change on U.S. national security.

“This waste of money is even more shameful when you consider millions and millions of Americans out of work or losing their homes and here’s ‘Mr. Green Jeans’ Obama spending money to duplicate what’s already being done by his own government and the private sector,” said political consultant Mike Baker.

It was just a few years ago that the CIA opened its top-secret global warming headquarters, the Center on Climate Change and National Security. Its charter is not the science of climate change, but the national security impact of phenomena such as desertification, rising sea levels, population shifts, and heightened competition for natural resources, according to the Judicial Watch blog.

“The Center will provide support to American policymakers as they negotiate, implement, and verify international agreements on environmental issues. That is something the CIA has done for years. Decision makers need information and analysis on the effects climate change can have on security. The CIA is well positioned to deliver that intelligence,” said then CIA Director Leon Panetta, who is now the Secretary of Defense, where the new climate change center was instituted.

The Center assumed responsibility for coordinating with intelligence community partners on the review and declassification of imagery and other data that could be of use to scientists in their own climate-related research. This effort draws on imagery and other information that is collected in any event, assisting the US scientific community without a large commitment of resources, according to Judicial Watch

“No one really knows what goes on in the exclusive unit because it operates under a cloak of secrecy that rejects all public-records requests, despite President Obama’s promise to run a transparent government. What we do know is that the unit is led by senior specialists,” the JW blogger noted.

According to the JW blogger, in the last few years the Obama Administration has been quite active in its campaign to enlighten Americans about the ills ofglobal warming. A few months ago a group of esteemed scientists from several public universities warned that climate change will make food “dangerous” and add to the malnourishment of millions worldwide.Apparently, the CIA’s staff isn’t getting the job done because the Defense Science Board (DSB), a decades-old committee appointed to provide thePentagon with scientific and technical advice, says the U.S. intelligence community needs an organization that can assess the impacts of climate change on national security. And now, President Obama is giving the CIA climate change unit the thumbs down.

Special thanks to Judicial Watch’s director of public affairs, Jill Farrell, for her continued help and valuable information. Also thanks to this reporters contact within the intelligence community for his information.

---

For radio interviews regarding this article:
COPmagazine@aol.com

 

LESSONS FROM THE STORM

11/8/12 11:30 PM

LESSONS FROM THE STORM

By Lee Duigon November 8, 2012 NewsWithViews.com

(Note: I am writing this before the election. Afterward, I will be either too elated or too depressed to write coherently about anything.)

After spending five days without heat and without electricity, and seeing so many of my neighbors so much worse off than that, I find that Hurricane Sandy teaches us important lessons. These are lessons that apply no matter who’s in the White House.

First lesson: Government by its very nature is too big, too slow, too cumbersome, too far removed from the scene of the action, too easily distracted by politics, and too wasteful ever to be able to react swiftly and efficiently to emergencies. During a crisis and its aftermath, bad things happen fast. People wind up shivering in the dark because some clerk in Washington didn’t submit the right paperwork for fuel and blankets.

Let’s indulge in high fantasy and assume no corruption, no spite or pettiness, no out-and-out incompetence—a government of angels. Even then there are still so many chutes and ladders between Washington and Staten Island, it’s simply impossible not to get hung up on one or more of them. Even New York’s state government in Albany is too big, too slow, too far away.

If needful things don’t get done locally, it’s likely that they won’t get done at all. They preach and preach at us to be dependent on the government, but when we really need it, the government always lets us down.

Second lesson: Bad news for Agenda 21 fans—when high-density occupancy fails, it fails big. Herding people together like cattle makes them more vulnerable to natural disasters. You don’t want to be on the 20th floor of a high-rise when the power conks out. Massing all the people into one small area only makes them a target. Take the same people and spread them out in a suburb, and there will always be some who escape the worst of it.

Third lesson: If you live along the coast, you can be sure that sometime during your life, you’re going to get walloped by a coastal storm. Ask anyone who’s lived on Long Beach Island, NJ, for the last 50 or 60 years. They’ve all been through it more than once—homes washed out to sea, people swept away, communications severed, the works. In the 1962 storm, a U.S. Navy destroyer was tossed up on the beach like a toy, and the town’s police chief perished on a flooded road.

It’s not possible to protect the coastal population from coastal storms. Sooner or later they’re going to get it. It goes with the territory. So might it not be wise to have, within easy reach of those shore communities, warehouses stocked with generators, gasoline, food, blankets, bottled water, etc.?

Fourth lesson: Under no circumstances will big-government utopians and Global Warming zealots ever change their minds. Got a hurricane? It must be Global Warming! Got a blizzard? Ditto!

For them any excuse at all is an excuse to grow the government. Like other simple organisms, they respond the same way to every stimulus. Too hot? Twitch. Too cold? Twitch. Raise taxes. Create a new bureaucracy. Hire thousands more government employees, to be pensioned off at 55 and paid handsomely for the rest of their lives for not working. Draw up a few thousand more new rules and regulations further restricting what we can do, and adding to the list of things we must do. Whether it’s a hurricane, a blizzard, an earthquake, a tsunami, a volcano, or an invasion from Mars, it must be caused by Global Warming and only a bigger, costlier, more powerful government can save us— any excuse to hop on a private jet to Davos, Switzerland, and there sip champagne while pontificating on the need to deprive the poor plebs of their air conditioning. We’ve seen it all before.

Fifth lesson: In a time of crisis, what most politicians are good at is getting their picture taken, and precious little else. It’s hard to forget Mayor Giuliani and his police and fire commissioners actually on the scene on September 11, at no small risk to their own lives, trying to get things done. But the reality seldom lives up to that idea. The usual pattern—be it a president, governor, senator, or grand poobah—is, “He came, he saw, he got his picture taken, and he left.” Sometimes they offer what they think is good advice, as when Mayor Michael Bloomberg, during a rather nasty blizzard two or three years ago, counseled frustrated New Yorkers to go see a Broadway play. Sometimes even your local government is all but useless.

Sandy will not be the first hurricane to blast our shores. These are acts of God that no man can control, no matter how high they raise your taxes.

But if we could wean ourselves off FEMA and the rest of the government’s unkept and unkeepable promises, we just might, maybe, find some ways to be better prepared, locally, for the next disaster.

© 2012 Lee Duigon – All Rights Reserved

Lee Duigon, a contributing editor with the Chalcedon Foundation, is a former newspaper reporter and editor, small businessman, teacher, and horror novelist. He has been married to his wife, Patricia, for 34 years. See his new fantasy/adventure novels, Bell Mountain and The Cellar Beneath the Cellar, available on http://www.amazon.com

Website: LeeDuigon.com E-Mail: leeduigon@verizon.net

Solar Industry Meltdown – Intersolar China 2012 Tradeshow CANCELLED Due To “Difficult Market Conditions”!

By P Gosselin on 24. Oktober 2012

Tradeshows are important business events for all branches of industry. The mood at a trade show is often a good barometer of how business is doing in a particular branch.

Solar cemetery? The solar boom dies. (Photo source: US Government)

If times are tough, then one can expect to hear a bit of grumbling from those exhibiting at the trade show, but that’s about it. So when a trade show is cancelled altogether just weeks before it is scheduled to begin, then you know things must be really bad.

This is preceisely what has just happened in the solar industry. Things for the “energy of the future”, solar energy,  have gotten so bad that a major tradeshow,Intersolar China 2012, has just been cancelled. The tradeshow had been scheduled to take place from December 12 to 14 at the China Convention Center in Beijing. Now, according to www.pv-magazine.com, the event has been postponed until an unspecified date in 2013. PV magazine cites “difficult market conditions”.

With “difficult market conditions they are likely talking about the tsunami of insolvencies that has swept over the global solar business. A slew of large solar companies likely have cancelled their participation and so many of the exhibition stands would be empty. This is a major embarrassment for proponents of solar energy.

Other German media outlets are now reporting on the Interworld China debacle. Read here, here and here.

PV magazine writes:

Intersolar China opened its doors for the first time just last December in Beijing. Solar Promotion International’s first Chinese tradeshow got off to a slow start, with just 135 of an expected 250 exhibitors showing up. Top-tier solar panel manufacturers like Yingli, Suntech and JA Solar also stood out by not being present at the show.”

Even Siemens Corporation unloads its solar business

Earlier this week, engineering giant Siemens Corporation announced it’s bailing out of the solar biz as well. CO2 Handel writes:

Intersolar first began 20 years ago in Freiburg [Germany] and saw steady growth. [...] Over the past several months a number of German manufacturers, among them former market leader Q-Cells, have declared insolvency. On Monday Siemens Corporation announced it would sell its solar business because it had failed to fulfil expectations.”

How many billions in stimulus packages were pumped in to prop up this industry? Now the bubble has popped and consumers are left with higher electric rates and a solar rust belt. In the meantime former solar executives are likely retired and living high on the hog, relaxing on diesel-fuel powered yachts – paid for by “stimulus” dollars.

This has got to be one of the biggest scams of all time.

 

Should a Virginia Family Be Allowed to Mine the $6 Billion in Uranium on Its Own Land?

October 17, 2012

The Coles family has lived and worked on its family farm in Virginia since 1785. Their farm, Coles Hill, rests 1,600 feet above what is believed to be 119 million tons of uranium, the largest uranium deposit in the country. The deposit is valued at $6 billion, and contains enough fuel to power all of America’s 104 nuclear reactors for two years.

But the Virginia government believes the risks of mining uranium outweigh the benefits and has blocked the Coles from developing this resource.

The Heritage Foundation’s Jack Spencer and Katie Tubb explain the issue at the heart of this debate:

At issue is whether the Virginia General Assembly will produce regulations that allow uranium mining. Uranium mining would create jobs and wealth in a region that badly needs it, and would provide an important energy source. Those factors are significant, but even more is at stake: the underlying issue over private property rights. May people safely develop their own property as they see fit?

The uranium deposit is located in southern Virginia, which has long suffered from a depressed economy. Considering the economic boost the mining of uranium ore would provide the struggling region, it’s almost neglectful for the state to deny its development.

The state makes an environmental argument against the development, but this falls short since uranium has been mined safely and successfully elsewhere. Virginia itself, Spencer and Tubb report, “has extensive experience in regulating the mining of other resources, like coal and titanium.”

Unfortunately, mining opponents are propagating misinformation about nuclear energy:

These anti-mining arguments rely on incomplete or incorrect information and have successfully scared some Virginians. In the end, they do not stand. In fact, assuming that uranium is mined safely under rigorous oversight, the benefits to the surrounding community and the state could be substantial.

The demand for clean, cheap nuclear energy is increasing, making this uranium more valuable. It is time the state allowed the Coles to use the valuable resources they already have at their fingertips to sustain themselves for another generation.

 

Coal miners ask Obama to stop ‘absolute lies’

October 13, 2012

By CASEY JUNKINS – Special to the Herald-Star , The Herald-Star

BEALLSVILLE – Coal miners at the American Energy Corp. Century Mine said they want President Barack Obama to stop what they term the war on coal – and to stop spreading mistruths about them.

Miners gathered Friday afternoon to express their opposition to Obamas energy and environmental policies, which they believe threaten their jobs. Miner Mitch Miracle read aloud a letter the miners mailed to Obama that outlines some of their concerns.

The miners said Obamas campaign team is running ads filled with blatantly false statements about the miners regarding their participation in Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romneys August campaign stop at the Century Mine. These ads assert that the miners were forced to attend the event by the mines owner, Robert Murray.

STANDING UP FOR COAL — Mitch Miracle, a coal miner at American Energy Corp. Century Mine near Beallsville, speaks out Friday against what he and his fellow miners call President Barack Obama’s war on coal.

There are numerous false statements and absolute lies concerning our participation in this event, mostly started by a local shock jock radio host, the miners letter to Obama states. Why would you (Obama) lie about the 500 working miners who have signed this letter? We, the employees of the Century Mine would request you immediately stop these false ads.

This summer, Murray Energy Corp., parent company of the Beallsville mine, cut or relocated 56 workers with the closure of the Red Bird West mine near Brilliant. Murray also cut 29 mining jobs from The Ohio Valley Coal Co.s Powhatan No. 6 Mine. All of this was done, Robert Murray said, because of Obamas war on coal.

Murray then hosted the August Romney campaign stop in Beallsville, during which many miners appeared behind Romney as the former Massachusetts governor spoke about the need to protect coal mining jobs. In response to the assertion some have made about the miners being forced to appear with Romney, the miners made the following points on Friday:

As for anyone who claims the miners were forced to attend, those on-site Friday said these assertions probably came from discharged or disgruntled former employees.

Despite the miners Friday statements, Ohio Democrats have requested a federal investigation regarding Murrays campaign contributions and practices.

 

 

AL GORE BAILS FROM GREEN-ENERGY INVESTMENT

 

WND EXCLUSIVE

AL GORE BAILS FROM GREEN-ENERGY INVESTMENT

But climate-change prophet’s company still touts profits of ‘alternative’ market

Published: 6 hours ago

by COLIN FLAHERTYEmail | Archive

Colin Flaherty is an award-winning reporter and author of“White Girl Bleed a Lot: The return of racial violence to America and how the media ignore it.”

If you are thinking about green energy for your portfolio, Al Gore has a few words of advice: “Don’t do it.”

“Of course he does not say that in public,” says Bill Gunderson, president of Gunderson Capital Management. “Gore’s company still talks about how alternative energy is a good investment. How companies are adopting it, governments are subsidizing it and people are using it.”

But SEC filings from Gore’s company, Generation Investment, tell a different story, says Gunderson, who hosts a nationally syndicated financial talk radio program and writes for MarketWatch and TheStreet.com.

“Generation Investment says it is all about climate change, but it is just a typical investment fund with typical stocks,” Gunderson said.

“It has Amazon, Colgate Palmolive, eBay, Nielsen, Qualcomm, Strayer University and a smattering of stocks from biotech and health care. Not one company that makes solar panels, or windmills or biogas or electric cars. Catheters and commercial real estate, yes. Solar panels, no.”

Which is good, because the so-called clean tech sector has been a terrible investment for at least two years, Gunderson said.

A veteran meteorologist exposes the global warming scam in “Climategate.” Get it at WND’s Superstore!

First Solar, America’s largest maker of solar panels, was one of the few pure climate-change stocks Generation Investment had in its portfolio. And it was a disaster.

In the summer of 2010, Generation Investment bought about 440,000 shares of First Solar, worth almost $65 million

Gore bought near the peak.

As the price of First Solar plunged from $141 in 2010 to $30 in the first quarter of 2012, Gore’s company kept throwing good money after bad, buying more and more stock until its investment in early 2012 totaled about 1.12 million shares worth about $28 million dollars.

Generation Investment sold it soon after, SEC records show.

Generation Investment also has private investments and investments in other alternative energy companies that it is not required to disclose to the SEC.

Among the companies listed in the “private and confidential client update” from Generation Investment are SMA Solar, the largest solar company in Germany. Its value has gone down 57 percent over the last year.

In China, Generation Investment said it had an investment in the world’s largest solar panel manufacturer, SunTech. The stock has gone down 82 percent over the last year.

Also in the portfolio are EcoSynthetix, Landi Renzo and Meyer Burger, which have lost 60 percent, 25 percent and 49.6 percent respectively over the last year

In Gunderson’s newsletter and on his radio shows, he told his listeners and clients to “sell everything under the sun” and he was shorting First Solar at $121 in May 2011. Gunderson repeated this to the Toronto Globe in December 2011.

“I don’t blame Gore for getting out of alternative energy,” Gunderson said, “even if he did it too late in the case of First Solar.

“But when is he going to tell people that alternative energy is a lousy investment?”

One of Generation Investment’s larger clients is the New York public employees pension fund. It has received $30 million in fees since 2009, said the New York Post. Gore also invests for the California teachers public employee union pension fund.

Neither Gore, Generation Investment or the New York public employees pension fund would discuss the details of their purchases.

“Everyone in alternative energy knows their goose is cooked because subsidies are going down, and so is the price of oil and natural gas if we are allowed to drill for it here,” Gunderson said. ‘”But if you want to have energy in your portfolio, there are plenty of American stocks producing traditional energy that are doing just fine.”

 

THE GREEN ENERGY FRAUD

THE GREEN ENERGY FRAUD

By Michael S. Coffman
September 26, 2012
NewsWithViews.com

Just like Obamacare, President Obama is committed to force us into using green energy regardless of what the people want – or can afford. Although U.S. reserves of oil, natural gas and coal are inexpensive and very abundant, Obama has done all he can to shut down every plan to develop these sources of economically cheap energy.

Obama even defied a court order requiring the Department of Interior grant deep water drilling permits for oil. Meanwhile, Cuba contracted several companies, including China, to conduct exploratory drilling within 60 miles of the Florida coast; something Obama would not let U.S. companies do. By the end of 2011, Cuba had brought in a Chinese deep water drilling rig and started drilling some 60-70 miles from Florida.

The EPA is also refusing to grant new permits to open new coal mines and has gone so far as to revoke existing permits. Once again, the federal court ruled against the efforts of the Obama administration, in this case the EPA, charging that the EPA exceeded its authority under Section 404 of the Clean Water Act.

One of Obama’s most recent actions was to deny the permit to build the XL oil pipeline from Canada down to Texas. The pipeline would have delivered 1.2 million barrels of oil a day; the amount of oil the U.S. currently gets from Saudi Arabia, and 46 percent more than all the wind and solar energy currently produced in the U.S. each day. This has led energy-sector executives to suspect the administration “is at war with American energy.”

While Obama gives lip service to reducing the dependence of the U.S. on foreign energy and create jobs, he is actually making America more dependent on foreign energy, reducing the U.S.’s national security, while killing hundreds of thousands of jobs in the process. It borders on the bizarre, yet the mainstream media are strangely quiet about this threat while promoting the president’s jobs program which even some Democrats in the U.S. Senate voted down.

After spending tens of billions of dollars on subsidies to green energy wind and solar farms Obama’s Clean Energy Program, the nation’s dependence on green energy has barely budged, from about 1.5 percent 10 years ago to 2 percent today. Worse, in his new book, Throw Them All Out, Peter Schweizer details how 80 percent of DOE funds for clean energy have gone to Obama backers:

…In the…government-backed-loan program [alone], for example, $16.4 billion of the $20.5 billion in loans granted as of Sept. 15 [2011] went to companies either run by or primarily owned by Obama financial backers—individuals who were bundlers, members of Obama’s National Finance Committee, or large donors to the Democratic Party.

This is beyond cronyism, its raw corruption that calls into question whether Obama is pushing green energy because he believes in it, or to pay off his supporters with taxpayer’s money. Solyndra is a case in point. Solyndra was Obama’s poster child for his “clean energy initiative.” The dirty details of the Solyndra scandal trickled out over months, in spite of the administrations herculean effort to bury the information.

One of the details exposed was that a DOE employee monitoring the Solyndra loan guarantee, Steve Spinner, happened to be one of Obama’s top fundraisers. Another major Obama fundraiser, George Keiser, had deep ties to Solyndra. His George Keiser Family Foundation’s investment arm, Argonaut Ventures, owned a huge piece of Solyndra and received direct political support from the Whitehouse and money from the federal government. Argonaut’s President, Steve Mitchell, also served on Solyndra’s board of directors.

As the scheduled groundbreaking for Solyndra approached, a series of emails from the Whitehouse showed the administration put intense pressure on the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to make a decision immediately on the Solyndra loan. The Whitehouse never said what the OMB’s decision should be, but wanted Vice President Bidden to attend the groundbreaking ceremony as a photo op and time was running out. However, the OMB said the Whitehouse deadline did not give them time to do their due diligence. If they had, perhaps the OMB would have said “no.”

Worse, as it became clear Solyndra would fail, the DOE allowed private creditors, including many big donors to the Democrats, to get paid first when Solyndra’s assets were sold, in violation of the law. The investors got some of their money back, the U.S. taxpayer got none. Then, as layoffs became inevitable, the Energy Department asked Solyndra to delay the announcement until after the 2010 election.[1]

Besides the cloud of corruption, the Solyndra scandal shows why the government shouldn’t be in the business of picking winners and losers. Not only is wind and solar power economically ruinous, it just doesn’t work. Simply put, wind energy only works when the wind blows, about 25 percent of the time. Likewise, solar power is even less effective because it doesn’t work when the sun doesn’t shine or it’s cloudy. There are a host of other technical reasons why wind and solar won’t economically competitive with carbon-based energy on a large scale for a long time into the future.[2] Yet, the Obama administration is spending billions of dollars to force us to use green energy because of a proven failed ideology.

Europe is already reeling from the realization green energy is bankrupting them. Great Britain estimated last summer that 25 percent of their population already suffers from “energy poverty” as British energy costs skyrocketed by 71 percent. British companies are threatening to move to other countries. Some are already moving.

The European evidence means nothing to Obama. His clean energy plan is an utter failure that has cost the American people tens of billions of dollars, killed hundreds of thousands of jobs, and opened the door to what appears to be rampant corruption. Yet, the Obama administration and the progressives in Congress continue to force-feed us its failed policy. It’s time to say goodbye to any elected official who blindly accepts Obama’s failed clean energy policies.An in-depth study in Spain found that for every job green energy creates, 2.2 are lost in the rest of the economy as the enormous subsidies required for green energy sucks jobs out of the private sector. Research in Italy found that they lost an incredible 6.9 jobs in the industrial sector and 4.8 jobs across the entire economy for every green job created. As European nation after European nation realizes the enormous costs of alternative energy, they are shutting off their astronomic subsidies to prop up green energy. Green energy is in a death spiral in Europe.

© 2012 Michael Coffman – All Rights Reserved

Footnote:

1. Carol Leonniug and Joe Stephens. Solyndra: Energy Dept. Pushed Firm to Keep Layoffs Quiet Until After Midterms. Washington Post, November 15, 2011.
2. Ibid

Dr. Coffman is President of Environmental Perspectives Incorporated (epi-us.com) and CEO of Sovereignty International (sovereignty.net) in Bangor Maine. He has had over 30 years of university teaching, research and consulting experience in forestry and environmental sciences. He produced the acclaimed DVD Global Warming or Global Governance (warmingdvd.com). His newest book, Rescuing a Broken America (rescuingamericabook.com) is receiving wide acclaim. He can be reached at 207-945-9878.

E-Mail: mcoffman@epi-us.com

Website: DiscerningToday.org

 

PLANNING COMMISSIONS, SMART GROWTH AND LAND USE PART 2

PLANNING COMMISSIONS, SMART GROWTH AND LAND USE
PART 2

 

By Kelleigh Nelson
September 24, 2012
NewsWithViews.com

“The inherent vice of Capitalism is the unequal sharing of its blessings; the inherent vice of Socialism is the equal sharing of its miseries.” –Winston Churchill

“The issue today is the same as it has been throughout all history, whether man shall be allowed to govern himself or be ruled by a small elite.” –Thomas Jefferson

While most Americans go about their busy lives and focus on being entertained by an endless stream of college football games and new fall programs on TV, our freedoms and rights are disappearing at an exponential rate. As I described in Part 1 of this article, we have a two-pronged attack on our property rights.

Rosa Koire, author of Behind the Green Mask describes one prong, “What Smart Growth is and what United Nations Agenda 21 Sustainable Development does is instates Communitarian Law, which says that the individual’s rights are subsumed by or balanced with the rights of the “community.” Those rights are not delineated, they’re not written, and they can change at any time, or even be taken away. What we’re being told is that this is for our own good, and for the good of the community. It’s a stealth plan, people don’t know about it. In fact, when you’re invited to come down and give your opinion on what that new plan is (like our Plan ET) for the remaking of your city center, it’s a Delphi Technique meeting where you’re being tricked, or manipulated into thinking your point of view is actually desired by your city or county. In fact, the plan has a pre-determined outcome. The plan was already completed before you even came in the room. All that’s needed is so-called community buy in, because they want to be able to say the community vetted it, looked at it, approved it, and this is your plan.”

The second prong also includes the city or county planning commission which institutes changes in codes and zoning, annexes property into areas to be “protected,” and works to facilitate plans which restrict development of land such as Conservation Trusts. If the city or county is a member of ICLEI, then it is very easy for the planning commission to have approval from the city council or county commission members.

Many will deny that our property rights are under attack regardless of the proof surrounding us in our local city and county governments. The planning commissions in every town in America have similar projects as our Smart Growth Hillside/Ridgetop Protection Plan. This plan effectively stops a great percentage of development, which is one of the core features of UN Agenda 21. The people will be herded into the high rise stack-em and pack-em’s in the city and the undeveloped rural and suburban lands will be turned over to the dinosaurs once again.

Knoxville’s Smart Growth Hillside/Ridgetop Protection Plan

The creation of this so-called plan was made possible through a grant from: The Tennessee Department of Agriculture, Division of Forestry and the US Department of Agriculture, Forest Service. The funds come from our tax dollars through “stimulus” monies from the federal government. This plan was adopted by the Knoxville-Knox County Metropolitan Planning Commission on December 9, 2010. It is nothing more than a restriction on development in both the City and County of Knoxville.

As I explained in Part 1, when Bill Haslam was Mayor of the City of Knoxville, he hired his former Democratic opponent, environmental extremist, Madeline Rogero, as Director of Community Development. While in this position, she applied for the Smart Growth federal grant from Housing and Urban Development (HUD). The grant gave the City of Knoxville $4.3 million and another $2.5 million came from non-profits. The City of Knoxville is now a member of ICLEI (International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives). The ICLEI name has been changed to Local Governments for Sustainability. Madeline Rogero is now mayor of the City of Knoxville, and as such, she is a strong proponent of Smart Growth’s Plan ET and the Hillside/Ridgetop Protection Plan.

The HS/RT Plan was also adopted by the county, but with an amendment making this plan “advisory.” The amendment was added by Commissioner Briggs and passed by a vote of 8 to 3. Unfortunately, the MPC doesn’t wish to abide by the amendment. They are actually choosing to fully ignore it.Here is a summary of the plan.

In 2007, a 30-member Task Force was formed by then City Councilman, Joe Hultquist and County Commissioner Tony Norman, who happens to be my Commissioner. They allegedly brought together developers, conservationists, neighborhood activists, engineers, and others with a vested interest in land use and property rights. After two years of meetings and public hearings—some of them famously contentious—the task force produced a 76-page report. It recommended new standards for what can be built on hillsides and ridge tops, and how the building should be done.

As I mentioned in Part 1, the Smoky Mountain area is very hilly. The plan proposed a Hillside and Ridge top Protection Area made up of property across the county of at least five acres in size and a grade of 15 percent or greater. (It would also include flatter property on ridge tops.) But the National Green average grade is 22 percent or greater, yet the Task Force has gone even lower! Here are the progressive maps showing the evolution of the HS/RT Protection Plan and affected land. The first map is a 40% slope on ridge tops only, the second is a map showing a 30% or greater slope, and the third map shows a 15% or greater slope. For an area like ours, this plan almost totally restricts development in the County. Also check out the maps on the website of the Hillside/Ridgetop Protection Plan!

How Much Land is Affected

To show how much land (acreage) the County of Knoxville would be unable to develop, here is the Vacant Land Analysis of Knox County, Tennessee according to the Knox County Property Assessor in 2011 and the Knoxville-Knox County MPC in 2012:

Location              Total Land Area            Vacant Land
————————————————————
Knoxville                      66,669                                  9,334
Farragut                       10,380                                  3,138
County*                        259,534                               142,626
———                              ———
County Total                336,582                               155,098

*(excluding Knoxville and Farragut)

Starting at a 15 degree slope, the restrictions are as follows:

15%-25% Slope: 2 units per acre
25%-40% Slope: 1 unit per 2 acres
40%-50% Slope: 1 unit per 4 acres
50% Slope: No development

Then check this link for the percentage of vacant land inside and outside HS/RT.

The City has a very small portion of undeveloped land, (approximately seven percent) as does Farragut, but the County would really be hindered. Approximately 60 percent of the land in the County is undeveloped property, and with restrictions on 15% or greater slope, this would affect nearly all of the undeveloped property. It also decreases the value of the property for the owners.

Our County Mayor, Tim Burchett, is against the plan. Here’s what he said,“The HS/RT Protection Plan lays the foundation for bad public policy, and it is my hope that Knox County Commission votes to reject it. It is in fact a roadmap for the significant erosion of the rights of thousands of Knox County property owners. In this difficult economy, government should not put in place new bureaucratic roadblocks that further restrict economic development. From both a philosophical and practical standpoint, I oppose this plan. In addition, few property owners know the exact slope of every hill on their property. The Metropolitan Planning Commission, however, has the full list of affected property owners, and I believe it is their responsibility to directly notify these Knox County taxpayers about this plan. On February 8, I sent a letter to MPC encouraging them to do just that. Unfortunately, they chose to ignore this advice. Citizens deserve a legitimate opportunity to voice their opinions of this plan.

“If Commission approves this plan Monday, tens of thousands of taxpayers will wake up Tuesday not knowing whether their property is affected. I hope this does not happen.” [Link]

This is, of course, part of UN Agenda 21′s Smart Growth plan.

The Goal is Control

Under “goals” in the Growth Plan on the MPC website, is this statement,“Encourage a pattern of compact and contiguous development to be guided into urban areas and planned growth areas.” That, my friends, is Smart Growth!

Here’s a nasty little caveat to all this development restriction. If a planned hillside subdivision sets aside some of its higher ground as “shared community green space,” the developers could have a higher density of construction in the lower parts of the project than would otherwise be allowed. Also, if developers give land as “conservation easements,” they have a greater opportunity of getting their development plans approved. Isn’t that special, just a little blackmail for the land! This conservation and environmental crap they feed us is just that! This is all about money and control.

The same thing is going on in Memphis, Tennessee. Our Governor, through his bagmen in the Senate and House tried to codify their illegal activities of bypassing the Clean Water Act and the State of Tennessee water laws. The Norfolk Southern intermodal rail yard development will net the Governor’s family $25 to $40 Million a year in diesel sales, but all kinds of conservation laws were broken. [Link]

With MPC’s ability of rezoning, undeveloped private property in the HS/RT protection area can be restricted from development as a protected area accessible to the public for future use as greenway extensions or trails. The property owner, however, is responsible for upkeep, cannot sell the property, and must still pay the taxes.

As you can see, the two-pronged effort of Plan ET and HS/RT Protection Plan effectively destroys our God-given and Constitutionally protected private property rights.

First Approved Zoning Under HS/RT Protection Plan

Remember, the City of Knoxville has approved and fully passed the HS/RT Protection Plan. Here is what has recently happened to privately owned land annexed by the City.

From an MPC News Release on June 26, 2012:

On June 12, 2012, the Knoxville City Council utilized recommendations of the HS/RT plan in approving the rezoning of more than 110 acres in northeast Knoxville. Property owned by Babelay Farm, LLC, was recentlyannexed into the City of Knoxville and rezoned from the General Residential zoning it had while outside the city to a Planned Residential zone district in the city.
The property is the site of the Legends at Oak Grove, a 264-unit apartment complex. The zoning approved by City Council allows up to 510 additional dwelling units on the remaining 93 acres of undeveloped land on the property.

The approval of a Planned Residential zone district for this property is consistent with the recommendations of the HS/RT Protection Plan, allowing the clustering of dwelling units on to the flatter portions of the site to protect the RT and steeper, more forested slopes. The rezoning requires approval by the MPC of a development plan for any future building. Remember, the MPC is an appointed, unelected group of people, with a decidedly Communitarian stance.

More than 30 acres of the undeveloped property are located within the HS/RT Protection Area and contiguous to Knox County’s New Harvest Park. Based on recommendations of the HS/RT Plan, two conditions were attached to the rezoning: at the time of development plan approval, this protection area must remain undisturbed, and, the property owners must make the protected area accessible to the public for future uses such as trails or greenway extensions.

Do you understand this? The City of Knoxville under this communist “eminent domain on steroids” HS/RT plan, took 30 acres of the Babelay Farm and the owner of the property has no recourse.

MPC Total Control

On August 27, 2012, at the Knoxville County Commission meeting, there was an important vote. The vote included two items from MPC that would codify HS/RT Plan into hard law.

The County Commission voted down the HS/RT plan, not once, but twice. When they finally approved the plan, it was approved with an amendment that made the plan “advisory” only. It was approved only after a Delphi Technique facilitator was brought in and paid for by a private individual in order to bring the Commission members to consensus agreeing with this HS/RT Plan.

The MPC used an interpretation of T.C.A. 13-3-403 to put the HS/RT Plan into law knowing that this statute has no appeal process to County Commission or Knox County Courts! T.C.A. 13-3-403 says “the regional planning commission shall adopt regulations governing the subdivision of land within its jurisdiction.” There is no mention in T.C.A. 13-3-403 that the elected body of County Commissioners must approve MPC’s subdivision regulations. It also doesn’t mention allowing an appeal to any local court.

This means, this MPC unelected body would have sole discretion on the HS/RT Plan without approval of the elected County Commission members or appeal to the Knox County Courts. This is an obvious and outrageous violation of citizens rights to due process! This is United Nations Agenda 21.

The resulting decision of the Commission was to table this discussion and vote until it could be taken up in the January session of the State of Tennessee legislature.

Several local state representatives sent letters to the Commission requesting a tabling of the vote, as they’d received countless complaints from concerned property owners. So now we wait.

Conclusions

Here is an excellent website showing which federal department has taken land from each state. If you find your state, click on the “Print PDF Map.” It will enlarge the map for you to see just how much land in your state is now federally owned land and by which federal department. As an example, 85% of Nevada’s land is federally owned, 50% of Idaho’s land, and 37% of Colorado’s land. Here is the map of who owns the West!

The U.S. federal government owns and manages more than one-fourth of the nation’s acreage. In fact, more than half of the West is federally owned. Yet, the acts that enabled states to be a part of the nation promised transfer of public domain title. The citizenry of each state owns the land, not the centralized federal government.

Federal land management is not the panacea it is sometimes perceived to be. Federal lands reduce the tax revenues available to states. The government does not pay property taxes. The more land the state or the federal government lays claim to, the less taxes available for local and federal infrastructure. The citizenry will be heavily taxed to make up for the losses. This is another avenue to move the populace into urban areas and out of suburbia and rural communities.

Sadly, there are only a handful of educated folks trying to protect the rights of us all. The apathy will be our death knell. I beg of you, get off your backsides, get on your knees and pray to the Almighty for guidance and help, and then get with people in your community who are fighting this rotten United Nations Communitarian takeover and destruction of our freedoms. You can meet them at the city and county meetings, at the town halls. Find them, get educated, and get busy. Unless we take action, we are most certainly doomed.Where is the outrage? Where are the citizens at every Commission and Council meeting watching over what these elected and unelected officials are doing? Where is the citizenry at the state legislature watching what our representatives are passing?

© 2012 Kelleigh Nelson – All Rights Reserved

---

Kelleigh Nelson has been researching the Christian right and their connections to the left, the new age, and cults since 1975. Formerly an executive producer for three different national radio talk show hosts, she was adept at finding and scheduling a variety of wonderful guests for her radio hosts. She and her husband live in Knoxville, TN, and she has owned her own wholesale commercial bakery since 1990. Prior to moving to Tennessee, Kelleigh was marketing communications and advertising manager for a fortune 100 company in Ohio. Born and raised in Chicago, Illinois, she was a Goldwater girl with high school classmate, Hillary Rodham, in Park Ridge, Illinois. Kelleigh is well acquainted with Chicago politics and was working in downtown Chicago during the 1968 Democratic convention riots. Kelleigh is presently the secretary for Rocky Top Freedom Campaign, a strong freedom advocate group.

Website: www.rockytopfreedom.com

E-Mail: Proverbs133@bellsouth.net

---

Voters Abandon Global Warming Fears

- Accuracy In Media - http://www.aim.org -

Voters Abandon Global Warming Fears

Posted By Alan Caruba On September 7, 2012 @ 6:28 pm In Guest Columns | Comments Disabled

Former President Jimmy Carter will address the Democratic Party convention via a televised address, but former Vice President Al Gore and candidate for President will be no where in sight.

The leading advocate for global warning will be conspicuous in his absence, but that doesn’t mean that the greatest hoax of modern times will not be mentioned. It has been a consistent theme of the Obama administration, particularly to justify the Environmental Protection Agency’s efforts to attack the energy and business sectors of the nation’s economy.

As this is being written, the morning of the start of the Democratic Party convention, one wonders if the tired, thoroughly debunked claims that carbon dioxide (CO2) is causing a warming that does not exist and that humans are also causing it will be mentioned.

On the night that Obama had won his primary victory over Hillary Clinton’s bid to be the party’s presidential candidate, among his promises and claims, he said, “This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.” You cannot get more absurd than that. It would translate into the administration’s push for cap-and-trade legislation (regarding CO2 emissions) that was rejected by a Democrat-controlled Senate.

Obama’s claim did not go unnoticed by Mitt Romney who, during his acceptance speech, said, “President Obama promised to slow the rise of the oceans and to heal the planet. My promise is to help you and your family.” The global warming hustlers were apoplectic in their denunciations of Romney, but his promise received a standing ovation.

The administration has become famous for the billions wasted on so-called green jobs, green energy, and controlling greenhouse gases. It is essential to understand that CO2 has never caused any of the warming cycles the Earth has been through over 4.5 billion years. It shows up after climate cycle change occurs. Moreover, the oceans that cover 71% of the Earth surface both stores and releases CO2.

Prior to Earth Day in 2011, a Gallup poll revealed just how Americans felt about various environmental issues. Asked about a variety of concerns, the respondents rated global warming dead last with 48% saying they were either not much or not at all concerned about it.

The decades of apocalyptic claims and warnings have given way to reality. There have been no massive famines, no complete melting of the north or south poles, no increase in natural phenomenon such as hurricanes, no mass extinctions of various species. By 1998, the planet began a new cooling cycle, one that panicked the perpetrators of the global warming myth.

In 2009, the leak of emails between the researchers whose deliberately false “data” was the basis for global warming claims revealed that the cabal behind the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports were plotting to suppress the truth. The leak would become known as “Climategate.”

Just prior to the Democratic Party convention, President Obama issued yet another Executive Order, this one calling for “investment”, i.e., more spending, on cogeneration plants in order to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by deploying “cleaner and more efficient energy production in the country by working around political resistance to climate change and ‘green’ energy legislation on Capitol Hill.”

In reality, you cannot “save” energy. You can only use less of it and the Obama administration has done everything in its power to ensure that there will be less by deterring the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada-estimated to generate 20,000 new jobs-and by waging a war on coal. Coal mines and coal-fired plants are being closed. Oil continues to be discovered in the U.S. but not on federally controlled lands, nor can it be explored and extracted offshore where billions of barrels exist.

In effect, the Obama administration has been the most anti-energy administration in recent times while, at the same time, wasting billions on solar energy companies that have gone bankrupt and on wind power which, combined, represent less than 3% of the electricity generated nationwide and which would not exist were they were not, like ethanol, completely dependent on government mandates and subsidies.

It will be interesting to see how many of the convention speakers make any reference to global warming, carbon dioxide, or the real sources of energy, coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear power.

Throwing a bone to the environmentalists, it is likely that President Obama will make a passing reference to global warming and energy, but it is not likely that the “planet will begin to heal” as it grows colder in a completely natural cooling cycle that threatens to tip over into a new ice age.

There are real problems to be addressed, high unemployment, a lagging “recovery,” a fiscal crisis that will occur on January 1st unless Congress acts to extend tax cuts and puts off a massive sequestration of funding to defense and other sectors. In the end, it is likely we will be told that the last four years were all George W. Bush’s fault.

---

Article printed from Accuracy In Media: http://www.aim.org

URL to article: http://www.aim.org/guest-column/voters-abandon-global-warming-fears/