Saturday, May 30, 2015

Thought Police: You may soon be arrested for doubting "Global Warming"

June 2, 2015 UPDATE: Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democratic Senator from Rhode Island, wants to prosecute Global Warming Skeptics!
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/sen-whitehouse-d-ri-suggests-using-rico-laws-global-warming-skeptics_963007.html


Liberals Call for Jail Time for  “Global Warming Dissenters”
By Terri Lynn

    Just recently, Lawrence Torecello, Professor of Philosophy at Rochester Institute of Technology writing for The Conversation, a publication geared to academia, wrote that global warming dissenters should be arrested. He stated “We have good reason to consider the funding of climate denial to be criminally and morally negligent. The charge of criminal and moral negligence ought to extend to all activities of the climate deniers who receive funding as part of a sustained campaign to undermine the public’s understanding of scientific consensus.” Torcello goes on to say, "We must make the critical distinction between the protected voicing of one’s unpopular beliefs, and the funding of a strategically organized campaign to undermine the public’s ability to develop and voice informed opinions."

I am a Dissenter


       A few years ago, I returned to school, and our science professor assigned us a “mandatory” paper on Global Warming. As a Global warming supporter and staunch liberal, she set the topics and guidelines that were to mandatorily be covered within the paper. In reality, it was nothing more than a liberal professor with a clandestine agenda to indoctrinate an impressionable group of 20 year olds to the liberal ideologies and agenda,en masse.
       Well, I was the lone conservative in the class, “the troublemaker”, the one who challenged every topic that arouse in the class. But I was informed. So when she assigned the paper, up goes my hand, as expected, as done countless times before, and I asked, “ Can I make this global warming paper a political paper?” I was already writing for the school newspaper in a weekly political column and gaining a reputation, and she had commented on some of my articles in class.
      After I asked the question, she retorted, “As long as you can hit all of the required points outlined in the assignment. The required subject matter that she wanted “substantiated included the following:
·        What is Global Warming
·        The causes of Global Warming
·        The effects of Global Warming on Sea Levels
·        Extreme Weather
·        Melting Glaciers
·        Species Extinction
·        What we can do to reverse Global Warming


        Well, a few weeks later, every one was turning in their papers, and most of the others papers were 3 to 4 pages, ALL supporting Global Warming. Well, the rebel that I am turned my twelve page paper in. As I did so, she glanced over my paper, and in shock, said "in ALL THE YEARS she had assigned that paper...THAT NO ONE had ever turned it into a political paper". However, she said that I covered all the topics, and I supported my points, so she had to grade it on that, and I made a 100% refuting a LIBERAL science professor! Should I now tremble in fear of being imprisoned? I say in jest, but perhaps reality in the near future.



My Refuting Global Warming

Introduction

         Never in the political, social, industrial, or scientific arena’s has there been a more hotly debated issue than there has been in regard to the issue of global warming. It is truly a partisan and polarizing issue. Perhaps, the only area in which Conservatives are truly liberal on is the environment, and the only issue in which Liberals are truly conservative. To solve a world issue there has to be a general public understanding and consensus, which on this issue there is, certainly not.
      In 1988, the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP), recognized the problem of global climate change along with the World Meteorological Reorganization (WMO) and established the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The role of this entity is to assess on  a “comprehensive, objective, open and transparent basis the scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant to climate change. This group reviews the potential impacts of human- induced contributors to climate change and considers options for adaptation and mitigation. However, the IPCC does not carry out research nor does it monitor climate related data or other relevant parameters. The IPCC bases its assessment mainly on peer reviewed and published scientific/ technical literature.  However, even with the establishment of this overseeing world body, a general consensus concerning this issue has not been established.

I.  Global Warming (GW)

        The commonly accepted belief of Global Warming established by The International Panel on Climate Control (IPCC) is that Global Warming is the increase in the average temperature of the Earths’s near surface air and oceans attributed to an observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations. The proposition is that increasing global temperatures will cause sea levels to rise, and increase the intensity of extreme weather events, and change the amount and pattern of precipitation. Other concerns associated to Global Warming include changes in agricultural yields, glacier retreat, species extinction and increases in the ranges of disease vectors. The “greenhouse effect” keeps the earth warm and habitable; without it, the earth’s  surface would be about 60 degrees Fahrenheit colder on average. Since the average temperature of the earth is about 45 degrees Fahrenheit, the natural greenhouse effect is clearly a good thing. But the enhanced greenhouse effect means even more of the sun’s heat is trapped, causing global temperatures to rise. Scientists who support Global Warming  refer to what has been happening in the earth’s atmosphere over the past century as the “enhanced greenhouse effect.”

  

II. The causes of Global Warming (GW)

           No one knows precisely what is the cause of Global Warming (GW), but there are a lot of speculations and assumptions. Environmentalists present to the Populus what conservatives refer to as ‘faulty science’, and are met with frigid responses from the Conservatives. The poor blame the rich man’s lavish lifestyle as contributing to the Green House effect, Liberals blame conservatives for their flippant disregard of the issue. Hollywood has even involved itself in the awareness on the issue in movies such as “Day After Tomorrow” which vilifies the Bush Administration in its depiction of the potential devastation of Global Warming. Even a Theological debate rages amongst Christians, as they are not unified on the issue. Some Christians believe that as stewards of their Creator’s  world that they should exercise better care of it. While other Christians give reference to the scripture in the book of Romans where it talks about humanity forsaking God, and that they “exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped (or revered) and served creation more than the creator who is blessed forever. Amen” Romans 2:25. And so the debate rages. But perhaps Al Gore or Hilary Clinton’s camp will come out with the truth that the real source of Global Warming (GW) falls at the feet of GW (Global Warming) Bush.        
                                                                                                                                                                               True proponents of Global Warming claim that this warming is largely the result of  emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from human activities including  industrial processes, fossil fuel combustion, and changes in land use, such as deforestation. They claim that continuation of historical trends of greenhouse gas emissions will result in additional  warming  over the 21st century, with current projections of a global increase of 2.5ºF to 10.4ºF by  2100, with warming in the U.S. expected to be even higher. The presumption is that this warming will  have real consequences for the United States and the world, for with that warming will also come additional sea-level rise that will gradually inundate coastal areas and increase  beach erosion and flooding from coastal storms, changes in precipitation patterns, increased risk of droughts and floods, threats to biodiversity, and a number of potential challenges for public health. 

III. Scientific Dissenters.

        In spite of all of the IPCC reports, there are numerous world renowned scientific minds, once  supporters of Global Warming who are now dissenters, who believe that Global Warming is a misnomer. Amongst the dissenters, however, the claim is that there has been a media black out of  world renowned scientists who do not adhere to the internationally accepted position of global warming. Some have referred to the scientific divide on the issue as the “Split Forecast”.  

      While doing my research on scientific dissenters, the numbers of scientists staggered me                           —17,100 basic and applied American scientists, two thirds with advanced degrees, are against  the Kyoto Agreement. The Heidelberg Appeal—which states that there is no scientific evidence for man-made global warming, has been signed by over 4,000 scientists from around the world since the petition’s inception. And all of the scientists were in total agreement: the Kyoto Protocol was complete fiction.  Including One of the most decorated French geophysicists, Claude Allegre. Allegre, a former government official and an active member of the French Socialist Party,  has converted from a believer in manmade catastrophic global warming to a climate  skeptic.      
                                             
            The reasons for this dissent amongst scientists  varies.
Some scientists believe global warming is not occurring at all
Some scientist believe the accuracy of IPCC climate projections is inadequate
Some scientist believe global warming is primarily caused by natural processes 
Some scientists believe the cause of global warming is unknown 
Some scientists believe that global warming will benefit human society

   IV. The effects of Global Warming on Sea level

            It has been speculated that increasing global temperatures will cause the sea levels to rise. Greeners claim that warmer temperatures are expected to raise sea level by expanding ocean water, melting mountain glaciers, and melting parts of the Greenland Ice Sheet. Warmer temperatures also increase precipitation.
           Greener’s surmise that Sea-level rise can be a product of Global Warming through two main processes: expansion of sea water as the oceans warm, and melting of ice over land. Global warming is predicted to cause significant rises in sea level over the course of the twenty-first century. In 2001, the (IPCC)'s Third Assessment Report predicted that by 2100 GW will lead to a sea level rise of 9 to 88 cm. At that time no significant acceleration in the rate of sea level rise during the 20th century had been detected.


V. Extremes in Weather 

      According to supporters of the Global Warming school of thought, greater numbers of heat waves but fewer periods of extreme cold are likely consequences of a warmer atmosphere. The climatological record of the past several decades offers evidence for these trends. While most recent winters in North America and Asia have been milder than average, a number of countries have experienced record heat waves. Over 500 people died in Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A. in 1995 when that city's temperatures neared 100 F (38 C) for almost a week. A heat wave in May of  2002 claimed over 600 lives in India as temperatures soared to 122 F (50 C). A global rise in temperatures increases the possibility that more deadly heat waves such as these will occur. One of the most important physical consequences of a warmer atmosphere is an increased capacity to hold moisture. According to the Clausius-Clapeyron relation, the amount of water vapor that can be stored in the atmosphere increases rapidly with temperature. A warmer planet is also most likely a wetter planet, as more evaporation could occur.
           Supporters of (GW) believe that an increase in the frequency or intensity of floods would be catastrophic in several places around the world. They believe that no country is more vulnerable than Bangladesh. Over 17 million people live at an elevation of less than 3 ft (1 m) above sea level, and millions more inhabit the flat banks of the Ganges and Brahmaputra Rivers. Past floods have displaced millions in Bangladesh, and increased flooding there would have tragic results. Other nations, including China and Vietnam, have experienced floods killing thousands and causing billions in property damage within the past few years. While average global rainfall is predicted to increase under global warming, not every point on the planet would experience greater rainfall. Evaporation and precipitation occur  at different places, and while wet regions could receive even more rainfall if the planet warms, drier regions may have even more acute shortages of water as evaporation is accelerated in those areas. However, dissenters point out that despite the global warming predictions by the extreme weather proponents theory that  we in the U.S. would see  numerous tropical storms in 2007, it has been a surprisingly light hurricane season and the  record early start of  this year’s winter in many parts of the U.S. have further put a damper on the constant doomsaying of the global warming alarmists and their media allies. 

VI.  Melting Glaciers

      Scientific dissenters dispute that Glaciers are melting.A 2005 study by a scientist named Ola  Johannessen and his colleagues showed that the interior of Greenland is gaining ice. Also, according to the International Arctic Research Institute, despite all of the media hype, the Arctic was warmer in the 1930’s than today. There have also been recent findings in peer-reviewed literature over the last few years showing that the Antarctic is getting colder and the ice is growing and a new 2006 study in Geophysical Research Letters found that the sun responsible for up to 50% of 20th- century warming.
       Dissenters claim that Snow cover has increased in Eurasia between 1936 and 2004, whereas models predict a decline. Ref.: Groisman, P.Y., R.W. Knight, V.N. Razuvaev, O.N. Bulygina, and T.R. Karl, 2006. State of the ground: Climatology and changes during the past 69 years over northern Eurasia for a rarely used measure of snow cover and frozen land. Journal of  Climate, 19, 4933-4955. They also claim that the amount of Antarctic ice is increasing. Ref.: Wingham, D.J., A. Shepherd, A. Muir, and G.J. Marshall. 2006: Mass balance of the Antarctic ice sheet. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, 364, 1627-1635.


VII.  Species Extinction

          According to a National Geographic article written by John Roach, By 2050 Warming to Doom Million Species; Mr. Roach believes that by 2050, rising temperatures exacerbated by human-induced rising temperatures exacerbated by human-induced belches of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases could send more than a million of Earth's land-dwelling plants and animals down the road to extinction, according to a recent study. He reported that according to Chris Thomas, a conservation biologist at the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom."Climate change now represents at least as great a threat to the number of species surviving on Earth as habitat-destruction and modification."  He reported researchers worked independently in six biodiversity-rich regions around the world, from Australia to South Africa, plugging field data on species distribution and regional climate into computer models that simulated the ways species' ranges are expected to move in response to temperature and climate changes. According to the researchers' collective results, the predicted range of climate change by 2050 will place 15 to 35 percent of the 1,103 species studied at risk of extinction. The numbers are expected to hold up when extrapolated globally, potentially dooming more than a million species. As global warming interacts with other factors such as: habitat-destruction, invasive species, and the build up of carbon dioxide in the landscape, the risk of extinction increases even further.” However, among the dissenters, some argue that there is not yet enough data to support the view that a mass extinction is occurring. Many of the estimates of species loss are extrapolations based on the global destruction of rain forests and other rich habitats. 
             Among non-scientists, meanwhile, the subject appears to have made relatively little impression. Sixty percent of the laymen polled professed little or no familiarity with the concept of biological diversity, and barely half ranked species loss as a "major threat."


VIII. Things we can do to reverse Global Warming

         The United Nations addressed this issue by The Kyoto Protocol. It is a global agreement made under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), negotiated in Kyoto, Japan in 1997. The treaty was brought into force on February 16, 2005. Countries that ratify this protocol commit to reduce their emissions of carbon dioxide and five other green house gases, or engage in emissions trading if they maintain or increase emissions of these gases. We, as inhabitants of the earth, are being monitored and our activities, regulated in regard to our environmental footprints. We can comply willingly, or our country face sanctions and reprimands from the governing world body. There will be two types of world citizens, and countries: the compliant and the noncompliant. Addressing climate change is no simple task. However, supporters of Global Warming believe that in order to protect ourselves, our economy, and our land from the adverse effects of climate change, we must:  ultimately dramatically reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.  To achieve this goal we must fundamentally transform the way we power our global economy, shifting away from a century’s legacy of unrestrained fossil fuel use and its  associated emissions in pursuit of more efficient and renewable sources of energy. Such a transformation will require society to engage in a concerted effort, over the near and long-term, to seek out opportunities and design actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. 

   ■ Purchase environmentally friendly products 
  ■  Honor Arbor day. Plant Trees 
  ■ Recycle 
  ■ Enforce Industrial Compliance 
  ■ Engage in conversation that include all view points 
  ■ “Think Globally. Act Locally” 


IX. Industrial Compliance 

        International energy companies are now facing unprecedented pressure to reduce green  house gas (GHG) emissions. Nations implementing the Kyoto Protocol are committed to significant reductions. Industries are being forced into compliance, and reprimanded and even threatened.  On October 30, 2006 the headlines read,
  
“ROCKEFELLER AND SNOWE DEMAND THAT EXXON MOBIL END FUNDING OF CAMPAIGN THAT DENIES GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE” 
Senators Demand that the World’s Largest Oil Maker Make Public Its History of Funding Climate Change “Skeptics” October 30, 2006

WASHINGTON, D.C. – In an effort to call attention to the detrimental effects of industry-funded, so-called “research” in the debate on global climate change, Senators John (Jay) Rockefeller IV (D-WV) and Olympia Snowe (R-ME) today called on the world’s largest oil company to end its funding of a climate change denial campaign. Rockefeller and Snowe’s effort would also reassert the leading role of the United States in addressing important global issues that demand the world’s collective attention. 

Rockefeller and Snowe said that ExxonMobil’s extensive funding of an “echo chamber” of non-peer reviewed pseudo-science had unfortunately succeeded in raising questions about the legitimate scientific community’s virtually universal findings on the detrimental effects of global warming. This ongoing “debate” has also damaged America’s reputation as a leader in global affairs. 
“American companies have every right to engage in important public debates, but these discussions should neither serve as a license to obscure credible data and research nor impede domestic and international actions based on that data,” said Rockefeller. “Climate change is one of the most serious environmental and economic issues facing the United States and our partners in the international community. It is absolutely irresponsible for any entity to try to influence our government’s involvement in such an important debate in any way that is not scrupulously accurate and honest.” 

“The institutions that ExxonMobil is supporting are producing very questionable data. The company’s support for a small, but influential, group of climate skeptics has damaged the United States’ reputation by making our government appear to ignore conclusive data on climate change and the disastrous effects climate change could have.” 

“ExxonMobil - which recorded $10.5 billion in third quarter profits this year – has an obligation and a responsibility to the global community to refrain from lending their support, financial and otherwise, to bogus, non substantiated articles and publications on climate change that serve only to cloud the important global debate of rigorous peer-reviewed research and writings,” Senator Snowe said. “The efforts of those supported by ExxonMobil foster the false belief among the international community that the United States is insensitive to global warming and unwilling to engage in forthright discussion on what many consider to be one of the most important economic and environmental issues of the 21st century.” 

“Rather than continue to damage our credibility abroad, I urge ExxonMobil, under its new leadership, to work with those of us in Congress who are committed to moving our nation back to the negotiating table and leading the way toward greater energy efficiencies, and clean alternative and renewable fuels. ExxonMobil has the tremendous opportunity to employ its significant resources and assist the United States and the world by promoting the technological innovations necessary to address climate change and help develop a global solution to this undeniably global problem.” 

According to reports, in 2004 alone, ExxonMobil was the primary funder of more than 29 climate change denial front groups. Since the late 1990s, ExxonMobil has spent more than $19 million on a strategy of “information laundering,” enabling a small number of professional skeptics, working through so-called scientific organizations, to funnel their viewpoints through non-peer-reviewed websites, such as www.techcentralstation.com. 

“Climate change denial has been so effective because the ‘denial community’ has mischaracterized the necessarily guarded language of serious scientific dialogue as vagueness and uncertainty,” Rockefeller and Snowe wrote ExxonMobil Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Rex Tillerson. “ExxonMobil is responsible for much of this scientific data debate and support of global warming deniers.” 

Rockefeller and Snowe insisted that ExxonMobil end its funding of the climate change denial campaign by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) and other organizations with similar purposes. The two Senators also encouraged ExxonMobil and Tillerson to make its history of funding public and acknowledge the dangers and realities of climate change. Finally, Rockefeller and Snowe suggested that Tillerson, as the company’s new CEO, has a unique opportunity to change the culture of the company: “You will become the public face of an undisputed leader in the world energy industry and a company that plays a vital role in our national economy. As that public face, you will have the ability and responsibility to lead ExxonMobil toward its rightful place as a good corporate and global citizen.” 

The entire letter is attached. 

October 27, 2006 

Mr. Rex W. Tillerson 
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer 
ExxonMobil Corporation 
5959 Las Colinas Boulevard 
Irving, TX 75039 

Dear Mr. Tillerson: 

Allow us to take this opportunity to congratulate you on your first year as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the ExxonMobil Corporation. You will become the public face of an undisputed leader in the world energy industry, and a company that plays a vital role in our national economy. As that public face, you will have the ability and responsibility to lead ExxonMobil toward its rightful place as a good corporate and global citizen. 

We are writing to appeal to your sense of stewardship of that corporate citizenship as U.S. Senators concerned about the credibility of the United States in the international community, and as Americans concerned that one of our most prestigious corporations has done much in the past to adversely affect that credibility. We are convinced that ExxonMobil’s longstanding support of a small cadre of global climate change skeptics, and those skeptics’ access to and influence on government policymakers, have made it increasingly difficult for the United States to demonstrate the moral clarity it needs across all facets of its diplomacy. 

Obviously, other factors complicate our foreign policy. However, we are persuaded that the climate change denial strategy carried out by and for ExxonMobil has helped foster the perception that the United States is insensitive to a matter of great urgency for all of mankind, and has thus damaged the stature of our nation internationally. It is our hope that under your leadership, ExxonMobil would end its dangerous support of the “deniers.” Likewise, we look to you to guide ExxonMobil to capitalize on its significant resources and prominent industry position to assist this country in taking its appropriate leadership role in promoting the technological innovation necessary to address climate change and in fashioning a truly global solution to what is undeniably a global problem. 

While ExxonMobil’s activity in this area is well-documented, we are somewhat encouraged by developments that have come to light during your brief tenure. We fervently hope that reports that ExxonMobil intends to end its funding of the climate change denial campaign of the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) are true. Similarly, we have seen press reports that your British subsidiary has told the Royal Society, Great Britain’s foremost scientific academy, that ExxonMobil will stop funding other organizations with similar purposes. However, a casual review of available literature, as performed by personnel for the Royal Society reveals that ExxonMobil is or has been the primary funding source for the “skepticism” of not only CEI, but for dozens of other overlapping and interlocking front groups sharing the same obfuscation agenda. For this reason, we share the goal of the Royal Society that ExxonMobil “come clean” about its past denial activities, and that the corporation take positive steps by a date certain toward a new and more responsible corporate citizenship. 

ExxonMobil is not alone in jeopardizing the credibility and stature of the United States. Large corporations in related industries have joined ExxonMobil to provide significant and consistent financial support of this pseudo-scientific, non-peer reviewed echo chamber. The goal has not been to prevail in the scientific debate, but to obscure it. This climate change denial confederacy has exerted an influence out of all proportion to its size or relative scientific credibility. Through relentless pressure on the media to present the issue “objectively,” and by challenging the consensus on climate change science by misstating both the nature of what “consensus” means and what this particular consensus is, ExxonMobil and its allies have confused the public and given cover to a few senior elected and appointed government officials whose positions and opinions enable them to damage U.S. credibility abroad. 

Climate change denial has been so effective because the “denial community” has mischaracterized the necessarily guarded language of serious scientific dialogue as vagueness and uncertainty. Mainstream media outlets, attacked for being biased, help lend credence to skeptics’ views, regardless of their scientific integrity, by giving them relatively equal standing with legitimate scientists. ExxonMobil is responsible for much of this bogus scientific “debate” and the demand for what the deniers cynically refer to as “sound science.” 

A study to be released in November by an American scientific group will expose ExxonMobil as the primary funder of no fewer than 29 climate change denial front groups in 2004 alone. Besides a shared goal, these groups often featured common staffs and board members. The study will estimate that ExxonMobil has spent more than $19 million since the late 1990s on a strategy of “information laundering,” or enabling a small number of professional skeptics working through scientific-sounding organizations to funnel their viewpoints through non-peer-reviewed websites such as Tech Central Station. The Internet has provided ExxonMobil the means to wreak its havoc on U.S. credibility, while avoiding the rigors of refereed journals. While deniers can easily post something calling into question the scientific consensus on climate change, not a single refereed article in more than a decade has sought to refute it. 

Indeed, while the group of outliers funded by ExxonMobil has had some success in the court of public opinion, it has failed miserably in confusing, much less convincing, the legitimate scientific community. Rather, what has emerged and continues to withstand the carefully crafted denial strategy is an insurmountable scientific consensus on both the problem and causation of climate change. Instead of the narrow and inward-looking universe of the deniers, the legitimate scientific community has developed its views on climate change through rigorous peer-reviewed research and writing across all climate-related disciplines and in virtually every country on the globe.

Where most scientists’ dispassionate review of the facts has moved past acknowledgement to mitigation strategies, ExxonMobil’s contribution the overall politicization of science has merely bolstered the views of U.S. government officials satisfied to do nothing. Rather than investing in the development of technologies that might see us through this crisis – and which may rival the computer as a wellspring of near-term economic growth around the world - ExxonMobil and its partners in denial have manufactured controversy, sown doubt, and impeded progress with strategies all-too reminiscent of those used by the tobacco industry for so many years. The net result of this unfortunate campaign has been a diminution of this nation’s ability to act internationally, and not only in environmental matters.

In light of the adverse impacts still resulting from your corporation’s activities, we must request that ExxonMobil end any further financial assistance or other support to groups or individuals whose public advocacy has contributed to the small, but unfortunately effective, climate change denial myth. Further, we believe ExxonMobil should take additional steps to improve the public debate, and consequently the reputation of the United States. We would recommend that ExxonMobil publicly acknowledge both the reality of climate change and the role of humans in causing or exacerbating it. Second, ExxonMobil should repudiate its climate change denial campaign and make public its funding history. Finally, we believe that there would be a benefit to the United States if one of the world’s largest carbon emitters headquartered here devoted at least some of the money it has invested in climate change denial pseudo-science to global remediation efforts. We believe this would be especially important in the developing world, where the disastrous effects of global climate change are likely to have their most immediate and calamitous impacts.

Each of us is committed to seeing the United States officially re-engage and demonstrate leadership on the issue of global climate change. We are ready to work with you and any other past corporate sponsor of the denial campaign on proactive strategies to promote energy efficiency, to expand the use of clean, alternative, and renewable fuels, to accelerate innovation to responsibly extend the useful life of our fossil fuel reserves, and to foster greater understanding of the necessity of action on a truly global scale before it is too late.

Sincerely,

John D. Rockefeller IV   
Olympia Snowe


X. Global Warming and Domestic Policy Debate

        An article published by Ruthland Herald and reprinted on the website of Cooler Heads Digest, entitled, “The new Green Regime” reveals the Global Warming is truly a hot topic:                         

November 8, 2007  By John McClaughry


The report of the Governor's Commission on Climate Change calls upon the governor, the Legislature and all Vermonters to make sweeping changes in the way Vermonters live. Not coincidentally, it recommends adoption of virtually the entire agenda of the state's environmental movement dating back to 1970.

The foundation of this sweeping program is the supposed Menace of Global Warming, the result of — so the report eagerly assumes — the human-caused emission of greenhouse gases. Declares the report, smugly: "The time for debate over the realities of global climate change is over." Vermont is at "grave risk." Reducing greenhouse gas emissions is "the major challenge facing Vermonters in years to come."

This alarming pronouncement reflects a deeply ingrained Green Theology that unshakably believes that selfish, greedy consumption-crazed humankind is turning the planet into a steaming hothouse, to avert which our governments must force us to make painful and costly sacrifices.

If Vermonters were the primary cause of the planet's ills, it might make some sense to force us to mend our ways. But we aren't. In fact, Vermont is already the greenest of the 50 American states. We are the invisibly tiny tail on the global carbon dioxide dog.

Long before they discovered the Menace of Global Warming, Vermont's environmental movement had pursued a well-defined agenda. At the head of it was controlling and reducing air and water pollution. This was and is a sound policy. Except for agricultural runoff, it has largely been accomplished.

But after that, the more controversial goal was land use control. The Perfect Little State, they said, must have a State Land Use Plan to prescribe the correct use of every single acre of land.

The first attempt at enacting such a plan was beaten down after a four-year battle ending in 1976. A second attempt produced Act 200 in 1988, which by the mid-1990s had effectively expired. Always there were proposals for preserving "historical settlement patterns" — "development centers" with "traditional downtowns" — as the alternative to the evils of "sprawl."

In every land use battle, the enviros heaped scorn on the human right of private property ownership. They view it as an obsolete relic of Dark Age selfishness and an unjustifiable nuisance to public-spirited planners.

Now the enviro land use control agenda is back again. In the name of fighting greenhouse gas emissions, the climate change report urges high-density development centers surrounded by CO2-absorbing pastoral landscapes and connected by public bus and rail transportation.

To suppress greenhouse gas emissions by private vehicles, the report favors "feebates" (penalty taxes) on low-miles-per-gallon cars, vans and trucks, and a percentage-based sales tax to make motor fuel more expensive.

One might favor that latter proposal to raise funds to rebuild Vermont's deteriorating roads and bridges, but that is clearly not the intent of the report. It wants to raise more money to subsidize public transportation, not to pay for better and safer highways for undesirable private driving.

The report urges that state government assess itself a carbon offset fee for having a "carbon footprint." Thus not only would taxpayers pay for the state highway crews to plow the roads and state police to patrol them, but they would also pay additional taxes to the state to subsidize   favored renewable energy producers. Wind turbines are mentioned.

The report advocates the creation of a "vigorous, proactive, public/private partnership" to promote "enormous, systemic and long-term cultural, cross-generational change in our awareness and behavior through the efforts of our formalized K-12 public and private school systems." (Whew!) Cynics will doubtless refer to this as the "Green Madrassa" proposal, whereby our environmentally certified schoolteachers are instructed to fill up their pupils with certified Green Theology.

To direct and supervise these momentous changes, the report advocates creation of another public/private partnership to be called the Vermont Climate Collaborative. This centralized super-government would "insure coordination of efforts and development of cross-cutting initiatives to address climate change." Creating the Perfect Little State requires no less!

There are, admittedly, some things in the report well worth doing, whether or not Vermont is threatened by the Menace of Global Warming. But throughout the report one looks in vain for any candid discussion of the costs that would be imposed on Vermonters. We are only told that the costs of not doing all this will be even greater. Maybe, or maybe not.

The enviros insist that the greatest challenge facing Vermont is the Menace of Global Warming. A far more serious challenge will be the capture of public policy by a well-organized and well-funded movement eager to seize upon an imagined climate crisis as the excuse for enacting the entire enviro agenda, regardless of what it might cost the taxpayers, and regardless of how their   Green Regime might overpower our local communities and diminish our freedoms.”




I. Congressional Debates 
       
             Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.) Chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, commented recently on the media’s unfounded global warming hype and some of  the recent scientific research that is shattering the so-called “consensus” that human greenhouse gas emissions have doomed the planet. The American people are fed up with media for  promoting the idea that former Vice President Al Gore represents the scientific ‘consensus’ that  SUV’s and the modern American way of life have somehow created a ‘climate emergency’ that only United Nations bureaucrats and wealthy Hollywood liberals can solve. It is the publicity and grant seeking global warming alarmists and their advocates in the media who have finally realized that the only “emergency” confronting them is their rapidly crumbling credibility, audience and bottom line. The global warming alarmists know their science is speculative at best and their desperation grows each day as it becomes more and more obvious that many of the nations that ratified the woeful Kyoto Protocol are failing to comply,” Senator Inhofe said last week. “The mainstream media needs to follow the money: The further you get from scientists who conduct these alarmist global warming studies, and the further you get from the financial grants and the institutions that they serve the more the climate alarmism fades and the skepticism grows.”
However, on November 5, Senator Hilary Clinton (D-NY) unveiled her presidential campaign’s plan to fight global warming. About the economics of climate mitigation policy, Senator Clinton said. “The climate crisis is one of the greatest economic opportunities in the history of this country.” On that same subject, the Congressional Budget Office, she said,  "Most of the cost of meeting a cap on CO2 emissions would be borne by consumers, who would face higher prices for products such as electricity and gasoline." And so the debate continues, as Democrats, Republicans, conservatives, and liberals, are all at odds on the issue.

XII. Conclusion

           Based upon my research and understanding of the issue and the great divide that this issue has created in the public, in Congress and in Science, diplomacy is key. Perhaps, the International Panel on climate control (IPCC) will broaden and allow specialists from all backgrounds, secular and Christian, liberal and conservatives, to partake in the discussions and engage a civil, round table discussion and allow the exchange of ideas from all ideologies and perspectives. We should no longer fear each other or the discussion of the issue. However, if evolution is a truth, than perhaps nature, through Global Warming, is undergoing a natural process, necessary to arise to the next level of the evolutionary process, and we should not interfere. If evolution is true, and would we humans could have witnessed monkeys becoming human’s would we have been up in arms to prevent the monkey’s from changing? Perhaps it is necessary for the climate to change to allow the living creatures that are meant to be here to remain, and those that should not be here, the earth is purging. In conclusion, whatever the cause, source or contributors to Global Warming be they man made natural a combination neither, bi partisan diplomacy needs to be used to address the issue. In the end, regardless of the side of the political aisle you are on, cooler heads will prevail.



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