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Obama Saves The Salamander |
The Obama
administration has
reversed a Bush administration decision and is proposing to restrict
development on 74,000 acres in Sonoma County that is habitat for the
endangered California tiger salamander. The U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service settled a lawsuit this week by an environmental group
challenging its decision in 2005, under President George W. Bush, to
withdraw the designation of land on the Santa Rosa Plain as critical
habitat for the rare amphibian. The area covers farmland, housing and open space
from Windsor in the north to Skillman Road northwest of Petaluma.
Under the agency's proposal, any development that might harm the
salamander or its habitat would have to be cleared with the Fish and
Wildlife Service. Federal officials could require developers to take
protective measures or make offsetting investments in nearby land set
aside to protect the species. "The California tiger salamander
will finally receive the protection it needs to survive," said Noah
Greenwald of the Center for Biological Diversity.
Salamanders used to get in my house in Florida. They're pests. |
|
Obama's Pollution Standards |
Obama plans to
announce new vehicle
emission standards and pair them with a broader goal of reducing
pollution.
Officials familiar with the administration's
discussions say Obama will unveil the new standards on Tuesday.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the official
announcement had not been made.
The plan would for the first time
link federal emission standards and greenhouse gas limits.
California, 13 other states and the District of Columbia have urged the
federal government to let them enact more stringent standards than the
federal government's requirements. The states' regulations would
cut greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent in new cars and trucks by
2016. |
|
Obama's New Rules |
Some soccer moms will have
to give up hulking SUVs. Carpenters will still haul materials around in
pickup trucks, but they will cost more. Nearly everybody else will drive
smaller cars, and more of them will run on electricity. The higher
mileage and emissions standards set by the Obama administration on
Tuesday, which begin to take effect in 2012 and are to be achieved by
2016, will transform the American car and truck fleet.
The new
rules would bring new cars and trucks sold in the United States to an
average of 35.5 miles per gallon, about 10 mpg more than today's
standards. Passenger cars will be required to get 39 mpg, light trucks
30 mpg.
That means cars and trucks on American roads will have to
become smaller, lighter and more efficient.
Eric Fedewa, vice
president of global powertrain forecasting for the auto consulting firm
CSM Worldwide in Northville, Mich., said the changes will make pickup
trucks so much more expensive that they will be used almost exclusively
for work.
And instead of a minivan or SUV, more parents will haul
their families in much smaller vehicles with three rows of seats --
something more like the Mazda 5 small van, he said. The Mazda 5 gets
about 28 mpg on the highway.
"I think what you'll see is a lot
more creativity in interior packaging," Fedewa said. "You'll get more
rows of seats where you traditionally had cargo space."
Update: With a stroke of the pen, Barack Obama has imposed
higher fuel-economy standards on the American auto industry. Those
standards can only be met by making the average car smaller and lighter
than consumers prefer. The inevitable result is that thousands of
innocent Americans, possibly tens of thousands, will die painful and
sometimes fiery deaths, while many thousands more will be seriously
injured. This prospect apparently gave Obama no pause whatsoever.
He has never so much as hinted that he sees a moral dimension in the
trade-off between human life and reduced carbon emissions.
On the
other hand, Obama sees the brief and physically harmless discomfort of
three terrorists as posing a moral crisis of almost unparalleled
dimension, necessitating endless apology and hand-wringing. The
contrast in Obama's priorities is striking, to say the least. I
would submit that this is what happens when you substitute preening for
intelligent policy-making.
Another
update: The National Academy of Sciences has linked mileage
standards with about 2,000 deaths per year. The National Highway
Traffic Safety Administration estimates that every 100-pound reduction
in the weight of small cars increases annual traffic fatalities by as
much as 715.
And what will be gained by the new mileage
standards?
The Natural Resources Defense Council said that the
35 MPG standard would save about one million gallons of gas per day.
So how does that savings balance against the 2,000 fatalities per year
that the National Academy of Sciences says are caused by those same
lighter cars?
For the sake of being utilitarian, let’s
generously assume that the mileage standards reduced the price of
gasoline by $1. That would translate to daily savings of $1
million. Is that savings worth killing more than five people per
day, plus other non-fatal injuries and property damage?
The U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency -- for the purposes of risk assessment
-- values a single human life at $6.9 million dollars. So under
the new mileage standards, it would cost about $35 million per day in
human lives (not including non-fatal injuries) to save $1 million in
gas.
Just makes me want a
1958 Cadillac El Dorado
even more. |
|
Obama Is Wrong About Energy |
So far the score card, in
my
opinion, is not too pretty for the Messiah. He is wrong on Afghanistan,
wrong on Gitmo, wrong in taking over Chrysler and General Motors,
obviously wrong on the Banks as they all want to give the money back,
wrong on trying to push unproductive Unions down our throats, wrong on
who is supplying weapons to Mexican drug cartels, wrong on many aspects
of healthcare, wrong to apologize to the Mexicans, Europeans, and
Muslims in the name of all Americans, and now; he is spitting into the
wind with a fantasy of going green with energy.
As the rest of
the world is careening as fast as the wind toward nuclear power our
visionary leader (pun intended) is wedded to ideas that the rest of the
world (even those he apologized to on our behalf) had been there done
that and moved on, or are trashing it as we speak. Actually I don’t
think Obama can even utter the word nuclear; it never comes out of his
mouth you see.
In a recent speech to Congress the Messiah
pointed to China, Germany and Japan and three forward thinking countries
that are leading the United States in developing renewable energy. Wrong! Just like the weapons used by the Mexican Cartels and his
statistics on the connection between healthcare and bankruptcy, this is
totally false and pulled right out of some fantasy land.
China
is a coal digging, coal burning, cogeneration, coal liquefaction country
primarily. They are the biggest polluter of carbon-dioxide in the world. They will continue to be far into the future. According to the Beijing
State Electricity Council, their renewable energy production is
miniscule and in fact as declined over the last two years. There is hope
though for China but it ain’t in the direction Obama would lead us to
believe. China intends to increase its already significant nuclear power
production over the next 10 years by 8 time’s current production.
Japan produces a lot of solar panels; panels primarily for export! Only 3% of their energy is renewable energy and it is heavily subsidized
by the government. Their plan is to boost their nuclear power production
from a current 30% to nearly 50% over the next 10 years.
In the
Messiah’s world I guess Germany would be a valid example of going green
if it was sustainable and if they were not dismantling a great deal of
it at this time. The currently generate 15% of their energy through
renewable sources. As it turns out Germany has neither much sun nor much
wind and renewable energy companies are mostly on the government dole at
a huge expense to the country. Sounds Obama-like with some sort of thing
they call a "feed-in-tariff" whereby the producers are guaranteed a
price 7 times higher than the wholesale rate for the next 20 years. The
German electricity bill went up 38% in one year in 2007. And the Germans
have discovered that renewable energy is very inefficient in all
respects thus it will always be tremendously costly compared to other
forms of power.
And what about the Obama fantasy called
cap-and-trade which is also a disaster in Europe. According to Alex Alexiev, an adjunct fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington D.C.,
"four years after its introduction, the EU carbon trading scheme has
failed to create a functioning emissions permit market, to generate
revenues, or to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions as promised…..but lead
to large increases in the price of electricity." Mr. Alexiev further
states, "The bottom line is that for the foreseeable future renewable
energy will remain a pie-in-the-sky green fantasy, not feasible
economically without huge public subsidies."
And my God, once
again I am agreeing with the French! They generate 80% of their energy
from nuclear power. Italy, Sweden, Great Britain, Ukraine, Russia,
Poland, Finland, Lithuania, Bulgaria and Romania all have major plans to
grow their penetration in nuclear power significantly over the next 10
years. Did I mention India and China? Same for the both of them as well! It seems that solar panels and wind turbines are not in their plans!
As Mr. Alexiev stated, "this leaves the United States in the
unenviable position of being the only major economic power led by a
president dogmatically wedded to yesterday’s make-believe universe of
green energy that has already been debunked by reality in the rest of
the world. If Obama’s dubious energy agenda is rammed through Congress,
as seems likely, not only are Americans going to be saddled with a
crushing tax burden…….the country’s economic competitiveness could
suffer lasting if not irreparable damage!" |
|
Scientists Pan Obama Climate Report |
This is a small sampling of
first reactions to Obama's new global warming
report:
Meteorologist Joe D"Aleo, the first Director of Meteorology at The
Weather Channel and former chairman of the American Meteorological
Society"s (AMS) Committee on Weather Analysis and Forecasting says,
"This is not a work of science but an embarrassing episode for the
authors and NOAA."
Roger Pielke Jr., professor of environmental
studies at the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the
University of Colorado at Boulder, says the report "misrepresents the
science" and "ignores the relevant work in peer-reviewed literature."
Geophysicist Dr. David Deming, associate professor of arts and
sciences at the University of Oklahoma who has published numerous
peer-reviewed research articles, says, "I become more skeptical every
year. I am now beginning to conclude that global warming simply does not
exist."
Despite the scientific evidence that the globe has been
cooling over the last 10+ years, Obama
chose to publish his first "science" report void of any recent,
real-world climate science. Instead, his administration hired a
public reltions firm
to embellish the past scaremongering generated exclusively from virtual
climate computer models. Unfortunately for real science and America, he
has sided with the pseudo science of "virtual lies" and hysterical
climate claims in order to get his badly needed revenue-generation
engine, "Cap & Trade," passed in Congress.
Continue reading
here
. . . |
|
Obama’s Politicized Global Warming Agenda |
Michelle Malkin's slams the EPA for suppressing inconvenient truths
about Obama’s politicized global warming agenda. As she
blogged
early Wednesday afternoon, the Competitive Enterprise Institute released
e-mails detailing how eco-bureaucrats stifled a senior researcher who
challenged the agency’s reliance on outdated data to support its
greenhouse gas "public endangerment" finding.
Breaking late
tonight, CEI has released the draft version of the censored study that
the EPA doesn’t want you to see. You can read the entire 98-page
document
here.
Here is the preface, which begins,
"We have become
increasingly concerned that EPA and many other agencies and countries
have paid too little attention to the science of global warming. EPA and
others have tended to accept the findings reached by outside groups…as
being correct without a careful and critical examination of their
conclusions and documentation." No wonder they tried to shut up senior
researcher Alan Carlin.
Continue
reading
here . . . |
|
Obama's Solar Panels |
| Here's something you
won't hear about from the ObamaMedia -- the solar panels that Barack Obama
and Joe Biden inspected before signing the Generational Theft Act in
Denver, Colorado, will take 110 years to pay for themselves.
Barack Obama and Joe Biden feign interest as they look at solar panels during
a tour of the solar array at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science in
Denver, Colorado, where Obama bragged about the efficiencies of these solar panels -- what
he didn't tell you about was that it will take until 2118 for them to pay for
themselves.
That's 110 years.
Oh! Here's a
little detail that Obama neglected to mention --these panels have
an expected life-span of 20-25 years.
There's more details
here . . . |
|
Obama Poised to Cede US Sovereignty, Claims British Lord |
Fightin' Words blog
reports that Lord Christopher Monckton, former science adviser to
British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, gave a scathing and lengthy
presentation at Bethel University, complete with detailed charts,
graphs, facts, and figures which culminated in the utter decimation of
both the pop culture concept of global warming and the credible threat
of any significant anthropomorphic climate change. (video)
Here were
Monckton’s closing remarks:
At [the 2009
United Nations Climate Change Conference in] Copenhagen, this
December, weeks away, a treaty will be signed. Your president
will sign it. Most of the third world countries will sign it,
because they think they’re going to get money out of it. Most
of the left-wing regime from the European Union will rubber stamp
it. Virtually nobody won’t sign it.
I read that treaty.
And what it says is this, that a world government is going to be
created. The word "government" actually appears as the first
of three purposes of the new entity. The second purpose is the
transfer of wealth from the countries of the West to third world
countries, in satisfaction of what is called, coyly, "climate debt"
-- because we’ve been burning CO2 and they haven’t. We’ve been
screwing up the climate and they haven’t. And the third
purpose of this new entity, this government, is enforcement.
How many of you think that the word "election" or "democracy" or
"vote" or "ballot" occurs anywhere in the 200 pages of that treaty?
Quite right, it doesn’t appear once. So, at last, the
communists who piled out of the Berlin Wall and into the
environmental movement, who took over Greenpeace so that my friends
who funded it left within a year, because [the communists] captured
it -- Now the apotheosis as at hand. They are about to impose
a communist world government on the world. You have a
president who has very strong sympathies with that point of view.
He’s going to sign it. He’ll sign anything. He’s a Nobel
Peace Prize [winner]; of course he’ll sign it.
|
|
"It’s Dishonest" |
CNSNews.com is reporting that Sen. Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, the
ranking Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee,
says it is "dishonest" for Barack Obama to attend the United Nations
Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen next week to announce that the
United States will cap its carbon emissions because legislation to do so
has no chance of passing in Congress.
The White House announced
on November 26 that Obama will
personally attend the climate summit on December 9 and take it upon
himself to announce there that the U.S. intends by the year 2020 to
reduce its carbon dioxide emissions to 17 percent below what they were
in 2005. This 17% reduction mirrors the reduction that would be
mandated in the United States if the
cap-and-trade bill that passed the House by a 219-212 vote on June
26 were enacted into law.
Cap-and-trade legislation has stalled
in the Senate, however, and Inhofe told in a video interview this week
that he is certain it will not even get a Senate vote during this
Congress. When asked if he predicted that the cap-and-trade bill
would not come up for a Senate vote in this Congress, Inhofe said:
"Yes, I do. Absolutely. It cannot come up. It won’t
come up. They need 60 votes. They’re not even halfway there.
And they know this," Inhofe said of the Senate advocates of
carbon-capping legislation.
"I think it is dishonest for him
[Obama] to go," to Copenhagen and tell the world that the U.S. will cap
carbon emissions.
Really?
Obama? Dishonest? Who knew?
Here's the
video
. . .
George Will says Barack Obama, understanding the
histrionics required in climate-change debates, promises that U.S.
emissions in 2050 will be
83 percent below 2005 levels. If so, 2050 emissions will equal
those in 1910, when there were 92 million Americans. But there
will be 420 million Americans in 2050, so Obama's promise means that per
capita emissions then will be about what they were in 1875. That.
Will. Not. Happen.
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.)
says Obama's refusal to investigate the
Climategate emails is unconscionable, and the White House's
unwillingness to open a similar inquiry could now only be characterized
as "a sad abdication of their responsibility to ensure that U.S.
policies are not driven by corrupted science and data."
And Lord
Christopher Monckton, former science adviser to British Prime Minister
Margaret Thatcher, gave a
scathing refutation
of the concept of man-caused global warming at Bethel University in St.
Paul, Minnesota. He closed his presentation with a stern warning
to Americans that Obama will be signing a new climate change treaty
(likely to be known as the Copenhagen Treaty) at the United Nations
Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in early December and that
this treaty will "impose a communist world government on the
world."
Check out
this video, it will really give you something to think about . . . |
| Obama's Latest Swindle |
The LA Times is
reporting that Obama is pressing Congress to provide money to
homeowners to improve energy efficiency -- and the economy -- by
replacing doors, caulking windows and padding their attics with more
insulation, in a scheme that has been dubbed, "Cash For Caukers."
Obama admitted that the "idea may not be very glamorous" but
declared Tuesday that he found insulation "sexy."
Under one
proposal being considered by House Democratic leaders, $20 billion from
February's economic stimulus package would be used to offer incentives
of $1,000 to more than $3,000 for people to apply to projects that
improve the energy efficiency of their homes. About 5 million
homes could be retrofitted under the program, saving homeowners a total
of $3.3 billion annually on energy bills, supporters said.
According to the US Census Bureau's "American
Housing Survey (AHS)," there were 128,203,000 housing units in the
United States in 2007. Approximately 110,692,000 were occupied as
regular residences and 17,511,000 were vacant or seasonal.
According to my calculator, that $180.68 per home, if all of America's
homes were to benefit from Obama's latest swindle. That, of
course, ain't gonna happen.
The beneficiaries of Obama's scheme,
comprise only only 4.5% of the occupied dwellings in the United States.
How do you suppose Obama is going to pick and choose the winners in this
program? Hmmmmmm?
And check out the Democrats "fuzzy math."
$20 billion for 5 million homes (less than 5% of America's homeowners)
-- that's $4,000 per home, according to my calculator -- so how do the
Democrats calculate their average of $2,000 per home?
"Administrative" costs, no doubt -- half the allocation would be paid to
some unknown entity to distribute the benefit. Do I smell another
ACORN, or ACORN affiliate, cash grant in
the wind?
Can you spell "reparations?" Can you spell
"redistribution?" Hard working, mortgage paying Americans won't
see a dime of this money. This swindle is just another handout to
Obama's supporters -- another payment for their vote. |
| Obama Heads To Socialist Conference |
Reuters is
reporting
that Barack Obama will head to Copenhagen on Thursday to help secure a
U.N. climate pact, staking his credibility on an as yet elusive deal
that has ramifications for him at home and on the world stage.
Obama is expected to arrive in the Danish capital on Friday morning,
joining about 120 other world leaders to finish a complicated process of
reaching a political agreement ostensibly to to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions and fight global warming, but in reality is a plot by
socialists and environmentalist to hobble America's economy and drain
its riches to fund third-world dictators.
John Hinderaker, at
Powerline blog says, "Don't fall for the pretense that the international
"green" movement is about anything other than anti-free enterprise and
anti-American ideology. That was demonstrated once again in Copenhagen,
where, after other speakers received luke-warm welcomes, Venezuelan
tyrant Hugo Chavez was
given an ecstatic reception:
Then President Chavez brought the house down.
When he said the process in Copenhagen was "not democratic, it
is not inclusive, but isn't that the reality of our world, the world
is really an imperial dictatorship...down with imperial
dictatorships" he got a rousing round of applause.
When he
said there was a "silent and terrible ghost in the room" and that
ghost was called capitalism, the applause was deafening.
But
then he wound up to his grand conclusion - 20 minutes after his 5
minute speaking time was supposed to have ended and after quoting
everyone from Karl Marx to Jesus Christ - "our revolution seeks to
help all people...socialism, the other ghost that is probably
wandering around this room, that's the way to save the planet,
capitalism is the road to hell....let's fight against capitalism and
make it obey us." He won a standing ovation.
Do we want to turn our economy over to these
people? I don't think so. |
| Allies Shield Obama From Climate Catastrophe |
Politico is
reporting
that, as Barack Obama jetted off to save the climate talks Thursday
night, his allies at home and overseas were engaged in another rescue
mission of sorts: guarding his prestige from taking a hit if the talks
flop.
Obama’s aides have spent weeks tamping down expectations
that he can be the decisive factor at COP-15, going so far as to
schedule his visit during the doldrums of the conference’s first week
until a backlash forced them to reschedule him for an appearance at
Friday’s finale.
On Thursday night, senior administration
officials touted the day’s modest progress after Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton offered an American commitment to a $100 billion-a-year
fund for developing nations in exchange for China’s flexibility on
emissions monitoring.
But they also offered a litany of very
real perils that could still scuttle a deal, including continuing
negotiations over emissions inspections with China and the fight by
poorer countries to preserve the Kyoto Protocol.
The Washington
Post was
reporting that Obama's approval rating on dealing with global
warming has crumbled at home and there is broad opposition to spending
taxpayer money to encourage developing nations to curtail their energy
use, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.
Early today, Fox News was reporting that there
will be NO deal.
Copenhagen is a bad luck town for Obama. This is his second
failure there. Remember his Olympic
disaster?
The Drudge Report led with the banner, "the Ego has Landed"
Obama
is going to end up with no ObamaCare deal at home, and o Climate
agreement abroad |
| Angry Obama Loses His Cool |
The Examiner
believes Obama is quite the angry man these days.
Obama, who
fancies himself a solid B+ or A- thus far, was supposed to be loved and
adored in Copenhagen, ground zero for the new communist movement known
as "the green movement." (Do a quick Google
search on Gorbachev and "green movement" for more on that one.)
Global warming propagandists and frauds from all over the world have
converged on Copenhagen to promote a new Communist global initiative
that will further crush America’s economy. Of course, who cares
about putting food on the table when you have carbon footprints to
consider? Raising our utility bills in some cases by 100-200% is
the least we could do when we can barely pay our bills as it is.
So in the completely snow-covered global warming convention, Obama
was supposed to be a rock star. President Bush, we were told, had so
damaged our nation’s prestige in the world (particularly on the
environment) that only a political deity like Obama could dig us out of
this negative avalanche.
Yet, the great hope of
Saul Alinsky has fallen flat on his face.
It seems the world is souring on Obama nearly as quickly as America is.
The U.K.’s Guardian reports that Obama "looked visibly frustrated as he
appeared before world leaders."
Fringe gaggle of environmental freaks known as
"Friends of Earth" claimed that Obama had "disappointed the whole
world." Another observer remarked candidly that perhaps
"Copenhagen isn’t Mr. Obama’s city" after his other failed visit here in
an attempt to score an Olympic hosting job for Chicago. Then of
course there was the fore-mentioned
attack by his pal Chavez and an accompanying
one from Castro.
Perhaps the "citizen of the world" --
returning to America with his tail between his legs and a non-binding
yet somehow "meaningful"
agreement -- can muster the strength to put aside his "hurt
feelings" that people have rejected his supreme deity over mankind long
enough to handle the little incident in Iraq, where peace-loving Iran
has capturing an Iraqi oil field (no doubt simply for peaceful energy
production similar to their nuclear program that Obama fails to see a
problem with.) Probably not. It will simply be noted in a
future speech as another positive contribution to America by Muslims.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. |
| Obama’s Involvement In The Chicago Climate Exchange |
Judi McLeod
says it's good to know that the truth will always out -- even when
you’re Barack Obama.
"Obama Years Ago Helped Fund Carbon Program
He Is Now Pushing Through Congress" is a FOX News
story by Ed Barnes. In short, "While on the board of a Chicago-based
charity, Barack Obama helped fund a carbon trading exchange that will
likely play a critical role in the cap-and-trade carbon reduction
program he is now trying to push through Congress as president."
The charity was the Joyce
Foundation on whose board of directors Obama served and which gave
nearly $1.1 million in two separate grants that were "instrumental in
developing and launching the privately-owned Chicago Climate Exchange,
which now calls itself "North America’s only cap and trade system for
all six greenhouse gases, with global affiliates and projects
worldwide."
And that’s only the beginning of this tawdry tale.
The "privately-owned" Chicago Climate Exchange is heavily influenced by
Obama cohorts Al Gore and
Maurice Strong.
For years now Strong and Gore have been
cashing in on that lucrative cottage industry known as man-made global
warming.
Strong is on the board of directors of the Chicago
Climate Exchange, Wikipedia-described as "the world’s first and North
America’s only legally binding greenhouse gas emission registry
reduction system for emission sources and offset projects in North
America and Brazil."
Gore, self-proclaimed Patron Saint of the
Environment, buys his carbon off-sets from himself–the Generation
Investment Management LLP, "an independent, private, owner-managed
partnership established in 2004 with offices in London and Washington,
D.C., of which he is both chairman and founding partner. The
Generation Investment Management business has considerable influence
over the major carbon credit trading firms that currently exist,
including the Chicago Climate Exchange.
Strong, the silent
partner, is a man whose name often draws a blank on the Washington
cocktail circuit. Even though a former Secretary General of the
1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (the much
hyped Rio Earth Summit) and Under-Secretary General of the United
Nations in the days of an Oil-for-Food beleaguered Kofi Annan, the
Canadian born Strong is little known in the United States. That’s
because he spends most of his time in China where he he has been working
to make the communist country the world’s next superpower. The
nondescript Strong, nonetheless is the big cheese in the underworld of
climate change and is one of the main architects of the failing Kyoto
Protocol.
Full credit for the expose on the business partnership
of Strong and Gore in the cap-and-trade reduction scheme should go to
the investigative acumen of the Executive Intelligence Review (EIR).
The tawdry tale of the top two global warming gurus in the business
world goes all the way back to Earth Day, April 17, 1995, when the
future author of "An Inconvenient Truth" travelled to Fall River,
Massachusetts, to deliver a green sermon at the headquarters of Molten
Metal Technology Inc. (MMTI). MMTI was a firm that proclaimed to
have invented a process for recycling metals from waste. Gore
praised the Molten Metal firm as a pioneer in the kind of innovative
technology that can save the environment, and make money for investors
at the same time.
"Gore left a few facts out of his speech that
day," wrote EIR. "First, the firm was run by Strong and a group of
Gore intimates, including Peter Knight, the firm’s registered lobbyist,
and Gore’s former top Senate aide."
Continue reading
here . . . |
| Obama Is "Imperial, Arrogant" |
Nelson Acosta
reports
Cuba accused Barack Obama on Monday of being "imperial, arrogant" and
dishonest during last week's global climate conference in the latest
sign of deteriorating relations between Havana and Washington.
Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez said in a televised press
conference that Obama lied during the United Nations summit in
Copenhagen and is making a habit of it after less than a year in office.
"He lies all the time, deceives with demagogic words, with profound
cynicism," Rodriguez told reporters.
"In this summit there was
only an imperial, arrogant Obama who doesn't listen, who imposes
positions that even threaten developing countries," he said.
Rodriguez also
said
Cuba and other poor nations have refused to recognize the agreement
because they weren't permitted to participate in its development.
He singled out comments Obama made during a news conference in
Copenhagen, when Obama said no agreement had yet been reached but he was
confident one would before the summit ended. "Obama knew he was
lying, that he was deceiving public opinion," the foreign minister said.
When asked if Cuba was serious about forging a climate agreement
given that President Raul Castro declared Copenhagen a failure days
before it ended, Rodriguez said, "Cuba's prestige is well-recognized in
international negotiations."
"It was an open secret that countries would not reach an agreement,"
he said.
The
much-heralded gathering sought a global reduction in the emission of
"greenhouse gases" blamed for warming the earth's climate but ended only
with the delegates taking note of a nonbinding accord struck by the
United States, China, Brazil, India and South Africa to combat climate
change.
Cuba joined Venezuela, Bolivia and and Nicaragua in
opposing formal U.N. adoption of the deal which they and other
developing nations saw as an imposition by powerful nations.
"The
Copenhagen summit was a failure and a deception to world public opinion.
The cause is clearly evident -- lack of political will by the developed
countries," Rodriguez said. |
| Obama Diverts Critical Intelligence Assets To Spying On
Icebergs |
As terrorists continue to infiltrate America, Obama is tasking some
of our nation's most elite intelligence-gathering agencies to
divert their resources to environmental scientists researching
global warming.
Experts with The National Center for Public
Policy Research are decrying this practice as a distraction from
important counterterrorism duties. They further question if it is
a possible avenue to renew climate change subterfuge already plaguing
some of these scientists.
"This is another example of President
Obama not taking terrorism seriously," said Deneen Borelli, a fellow
with the National Center's Project 21 black leadership network.
"Our enemies must be laughing at the Obama Administration's
incompetence."
A January 5 article in the New York Times reported
that the White House restarted a program in which scientists are
obtaining classified intelligence data from the Central Intelligence
Agency and National Reconnaissance Office. Information from
these secret government surveillance programs is being used to track
climate change.
A similar program was discontinued by the Bush
Administration in 2001. Former vice president and current climate
change entrepreneur Al Gore began lobbying for its renewal in 2008.
It now reportedly has the strong support of CIA Director Leon Panetta.
"Given the very real threat posed by terrorists, it is ridiculous
and downright dangerous to divert any intelligence resources to
monitoring polar ice," added Project 21's Deneen Borelli. "Its
said this won't hinder regular intelligence-gathering, but it's also
clear that agencies can't yet share data and track a terrorism suspect
who was identified by his own father. It's unwise to further
distract our intelligence network by forcing it to consult with
scientists about icebergs, polar bears and sea lions. Obama is
putting his Marxist political agenda before the safety and security of
our nation."
Speaking on the involvement of Al Gore, Tom Borelli,
Ph.D., director of the National Center's Free Enterprise Project, noted:
"If anything, Al Gore is the real national security threat. Gore's
climate change fear mongering, which lines his own pockets with cash,
has stoked a war against the fossil fuels so vital to our nation's
economic prosperity and national security. His self-serving agenda
is stymieing domestic energy exploration and production efforts.
Now, he successfully lobbied to resurrect this diversion of our
intelligence assets after the Bush Administration wisely ended it."
The claims of some scientists are already suspect after the
Climategate scandal. Tom Borelli pointed out: "We've already seen
climate scientists discussing the idea of destroying raw data to
preserve climate change models that may be seriously flawed, and then it
turns out that very same sort of data was allegedly "lost." How
can we trust them to not behave similarly with CIA data -- such as
denying the proper peer review under the guise that the data is secret?
The real question is: who's going to be watching the scientists?"
The National Center for Public Policy Research is a non-partisan
educational foundation based in Washington, DC. It receives less
than one percent of its funding from corporate sources. |
| Obama Turns Off Homegrown Energy |
The Washington Examiner
tells us that Obama says he wants to decrease U.S. dependence on
foreign oil by increasing U.S. production of domestic U.S. resources,
including America's rich deposits of fossil fuels. To that end,
Obama promises efforts to "enhance U.S. energy supplies through
responsible development of domestic renewable energy, fossil fuels,
advanced bio-fuels and nuclear energy." At least, that's what
Obama says he wants to do. To see what he's actually doing, take a
look at the policies of the Department of Interior. In fact, the
Obama administration is cutting production of domestic fossil fuels --
oil, natural gas and coal -- by creating costly and time-consuming new
layers of suffocating red tape and legal barriers.
Here are the
stark facts, as compiled by the Institute for Energy Research, about the
area where the federal government has the most direct and immediate
effect on domestic energy production -- managing energy exploration and
production leases on western and off-shore public lands:
• The
Interior Department has collected only one-tenth as much revenue
from oil and gas lease sales in 2009 as it did in 2008.
• Revenue from such lease sales
produced a return for the taxpayer of $942 per acre in the last year
of the Bush administration, compared with only $254 per acre in the
first year of the Obama administration
•
Presently, not quite 3 percent of the 2.46 million
available public lands are leased and that percentage is headed
down. Under Obama's Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, fewer acres on-
and off-shore were leased in 2009 than in any previous year.
This is why IER's president, Thomas J. Pyle, says that
"when it comes to paving the way for the responsible development of
homegrown, job-creating energy resources, no administration in history
has done more to ensure producers do less." Similarly, David Holt,
president of the Consumer Energy Alliance, offers this common-sense
observation: "Adding layers of additional and unnecessary bureaucratic
red tape to the federal oil and gas leasing process will result in less
homegrown energy...at the same time, erecting these needless roadblocks
for safely producing American energy will not only lead to more
expensive and less stable prices for struggling consumers, but it will
also deepen our nation's dependence on foreign and often unfriendly
regions of the world to meet our growing demands and to keep our economy
moving." In other words, Obama's policies in the energy field are
producing exactly the opposite result he claims to seek. |
| Obama Likely To Rebrand Climate Bill |
CQ Politics
says that despite the obituaries being written for Senate passage of
a cap-and-trade bill this year, Obama is expected to reiterate his call
for comprehensive clean energy and climate change legislation and to
rebrand it as part of his job-creation agenda.
White House
officials and senators leading efforts to write a bipartisan climate
bill signaled Wednesday that they will keep pushing hard for legislation
that would curb emissions of greenhouse gases and boost development of
alternative energy.
At a clean energy forum Wednesday, White
House energy and climate adviser Carole Browner previewed the energy and
environment slice of Obama’s State of the Union address. Stressing
the need for legislation to eliminate dependence on foreign oil, put a
price signal on carbon emissions and mandate an increase in electricity
from renewable sources, Browner stuck to the "jobs" script and never
used the phrase "cap and trade."
"This is about creating a new
generation of clean energy jobs that will position us in a global
market, and we need the legislation to do that," she said.
Experts expect Obama to avoid the cap-and-trade label -- which many
lawmakers see as a confusing turn-off to voters -- instead, framing the
plan with the rhetoric of jobs creation.
Meanwhile, White House
officials said the boost in spending on alternative energy research,
which Obama began last year in the stimulus and has consistently listed
as a top priority, will emerge relatively unscathed from Obama’s
proposed spending freeze.
"We’re still working on making
investments in clean energy," Rob Nabors, deputy director of the White
House’s Office of Management and Budget, told reporters in a conference
call. "Not everything in the budget is of equal importance to the
country -- or to the president’s agenda. Those things that are the
most important to the president, the things like education, things like
energy research -- they’re at the top of the list. There are other
things that aren’t at the top of the list, and we felt that those areas
could be most effectively reduced." |
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