posted May 29, 2015 02:35 PM            

Late last year, President Obama stood with Chinese President Xi Jinping to reiterate their shared goal of aggressively tackling the issue of climate change. The official joint announcement in November offered strong and impressive-sounding language:

The United States of America and the People’s Republic of China have a critical role to play in combating global climate change, one of the greatest threats facing humanity. The seriousness of the challenge calls upon the two sides to work constructively together for the common good.

All this cooperation is of course very good, with the United States the largest per capita emitter of greenhouse gases and China with the largest overall volume of greenhouse gas emissions, it is imperative that these two countries in particular play a leadership role on tackling the issue of climate change.

But there's a wrinkle.

In fact, it is a really big wrinkle in the form of a black burnable rock that just so happens to be the single largest source of greenhouse gas in the world.

While President Obama is saying and doing many good things on climate, his administration is at the same time allowing very large amounts of coal to be mined and shipped overseas to countries like China and India where it will be burned, pumping an astounding amount of planet-heating greenhouse gases into our collective atmosphere.

In fact, according to analysis by Dr. Brian Moench and the Physicians for Social Responsibility, the greenhouse gas reductions that will result from President Obama's Clean Power Plan, will be wiped out if his administration allows planned new coal leases to go ahead in the Powder River Basin mining region of Montana.

Right now, the Obama administration's Bureau of Land Management is planning to give out 16 new leases to coal companies to extract a whopping 10.2 billion more tons of coal from the Powder River Basin.

If these leases go ahead and all of that coal is mined and burned, it would result in 16.2 billion more tons of heat-trapping carbon dioxide being pumped into our atmosphere.

That is an absolutely astonishing amount of pollution. To put it into perspective, the total carbon emissions globally from fossil fuels in 2013 was 9.9 billion.

But here's the thing: if the coal is mined in the United States, but not burned in the United States, and is instead shipped overseas, the Obama administration does not have to take any responsibility for the resulting greenhouse gas emissions.

The president, technically at least, could stand by his country's commitment to climate change, but it is hard to believe that he could do it without crossing his fingers behind his back.

With all the smart people Obama has surrounded himself with, there is no way he cannot know this.

And it almost goes without saying, that President Obama knows we all share a borderless atmosphere which does not discern between coal burned in the US, China or anywhere else. All that greenhouse gas has the same impact on our atmosphere regardless of who burns it.

posted June 11, 2015 11:30 AM            

It's laughable you believe the Marxist Messiah O'Bomber has the authority to outlaw oil extraction!

posted June 12, 2015 08:45 AM            

"So, I guess he should have outlawed oil extraction, too?"

posted June 18, 2015 02:03 PM            

It’s time to stop scaring our children and refocus them on the morality of free markets and individual liberty.
Richard Rothschild
June 17, 2015

Listen to propaganda from the EPA and MDE, and you would think “Climate Change” programs are about saving the environment–but you would be wrong.

I’ll start by defining a term I created: “climateer”–someone with a vested interest in believing in catastrophic anthropogenic climate change. Two especially interesting attributes of climateers are the facts that (a) they have no conclusive facts, but rely on anecdotal assertions like ”97% of scientists believe in climate change”; and (b) climateers are genuinely disappointed when evidence indicates their fears are exaggerated.

The fact is, exaggerated Climate Change has little to do with the E-word, i.e. the Environment…but has everything to do with the C-words: Communism vs. free-market Capitalism.

Perhaps you’re thinking… “sounds a little over the top, commissioner…”

Consider this.

The question of whether or not there is climate change is not the question. Climate has been changing since the beginning of time. The more relevant questions are these: Is change exceeding regular cyclical norms? And to what extent is it anthropogenic, i.e. man-made?

Let’s return to the question of whether climate change doctrine is motivated by the E-word or the C-word. Nothing I say will convince climateers they’ve been duped, so I’ll let the leftist “experts” tell us in their own words.

Fasten your seatbelts.

Ottmar Edenhofer, Vice-chair of the U.N. International Panel on Climate Change, says: “One must say clearly that we… redistribute the world’s wealth by climate policy.” Hmmm.

Harvey Ruvin, former Vice-chair of the International Council on Local Environmental Initiatives, said: “Individual rights will have to take a back seat to the collective” in the process of implementing Sustainable Development.” Interesting vernacular.

Naomi Klein of The Nation magazine says: “So when [Commissioner Rothschild] reacts to… climate change as if capitalism itself were coming under threat, it’s not because [he’s] paranoid… It’s because [he’s] paying attention. … most leftists have yet to realize that climate science has handed them the most powerful argument against capitalism.”

Third Annual Conference of the World Association for Political Economy in Lang Fang, China, May 2008: “…global ecological sustainability will be possible only with fundamental social transformations and a new global economic system organised on the principles of social ownership of land and other major means of production … only socialism and the global solidarity of all working peoples can free both humanity and the earth from the fatal threat of global capitalism.”

Are you catching these not-so-subtle undercurrents of Marxism?

A top-10 favorite comes from David Foreman, founder of Earth First and director of the Sierra Club: “We must make this an insecure and inhospitable place for capitalists and their projects … We must reclaim the roads and plowed land, halt dam construction, tear down existing dams, free shackled rivers and return to wilderness tens of millions of acres of presently settled land.”

Truth is stranger than fiction.

In the book “Ecology and Socialism: Solutions to Capitalist Ecological Crisis by Environmentalist Chris Williams,” Williams says: “It is utterly impossible for Capitalism to view the world as a single interlocking system. “ He asserts the only political system that can holistically address the challenges of the 21st century is “Marxism.”

The frontal attack on free-market capitalism is self-evident.

They regularly change phraseology, so rebutting them is like playing a game of whack-a-mole at the Ocean City Boardwalk–as soon as you knock down one of their hysterical arguments, an increasingly ambiguous replacement argument pops-up. Pow!

A lack of conclusive evidence forced climateers to change their vernacular four times in three decades. First, it was “Global Cooling.” Then, “Global Warming.” Next, “Climate Change.” And now, drum roll please, they have adopted their most ambiguous term. They call it “Climate Disruption.”

Cute… and sufficiently ambiguous to allow every self-appointed pantheistic climateer to wave his/her hands hysterically and yell “climate disruption.” Every time there is a storm, hurricane, tornado, typhoon… you name it… hotter, colder, wetter, dryer, more snow, less snow… see, it’s exactly what we warned would happen. Their diagnosis is always the same, and it reminds me of the snake-oil salesmen of the 1850’s who went from town to town selling the same “ointment” for anything and everything that ails you.

Climateers also shifted vernacular related to “Sea Level Rise.” In an effort to band-aid unsustainable hysteria, it’s now called “Storm Surge.” Convenient.

There you have it. Hilarious, pathetic, and a threat to America and individual liberty.

Climate Change is all about attempts to put a stake through the heart of America’s free-market economy, and replace it with a government-controlled Marxist economy… all in the name of social justice… to save the world from the threat of free market capitalism.

Remember, this was in their own words, not mine.

posted June 18, 2015 02:33 PM            

Cant for the life of me imagine why someone named Rothschild would have a vested interest in scaremongering against environmental regulations.. so I am sure there is no slant in this piece.

Its kind of interesting that the "projections" you dont like are pooh-poohed but those that back you up are seen as incontrovertible.

Again, there is a fair share of idiots in the most extreme of both camps.

posted June 18, 2015 09:20 PM            

Your words, right? Just a few omissions but you really typed them.

posted June 19, 2015 06:59 PM            

Glad you have decided to support the environment Madeira! And "highlight " the public service being done by the "global warming religionists". Awesome.

posted June 20, 2015 11:16 AM            

Talk-radio giant Rush Limbaugh is warning that there is a real danger from the talk about climate change, global warming, the threat of the extinction of humanity, and more. Not a danger from the actual events, which may or may not happen.

He talked about the danger from the talk.

“How much has this nonsense cost us financially over the years? How much money has been wasted preparing for a doom that isn’t happening, that hasn’t happened, that isn’t gonna happen? And how about the costs that are not dollars and cents? How about the effect on people? How many lunatics has this created? How many genuinely normal people have been driven to the brink of insanity simply by the news media every day? We know that not everybody is rock-solid stable,” he said on Friday.

He launched into his sermon because of a Phys.org report headlined “Humans will be extinct in 100 years says eminent scientist.”

The report by Lin Edwards quotes Australian scientist Frank Fenner and identified him as one “who helped to wipe out smallpox.”

His prediction?

According to the report, “Humans will probably be extinct within 100 years, because of overpopulation, environmental destruction and climate change.”

What is climate change really? Sen. James Inhofe pins it down in “The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future.”

The report claims homo sapiens “will not be able to survive the population explosion and ‘unbridled consumption,’ and will become extinct, perhaps with a century, along with many other species.”

The report continued, “[Fenner] said he believes the situation is irreversible, and it is too late because the effects we have had on Earth since industrialization (a period now known to scientists unofficially as the Anthropocene) rivals any effects of ice ages or comet impacts.”

Fenner, now 95, claims more people will spark “wars over food.”

He is a patron from Sustainable Population Australia.

“He’s a fearmonger,” Limbaugh said. “Now, how many guys like this are there on the left? How many people are predicting the end of the human race? How many people are telling young people, ‘If we don’t something in 10, 20 years, it’s the end of us’? Ted Danson did this 25 years ago. Algore’s been doing it for 25 years. The pope now joins the bandwagon. Now we got this guy.

“I’m asking you: How often does a child have to be exposed to this before it really sets in and begins to affect the child and his outlook on his own life and the future? Yet we are the fearmongers, according to them, these doomsayers. These phony baloney, plastic banana, good-time rock ‘n’ roll doomsayers are never held responsible for their blatantly wrong predictions. You know why? Because their intentions are good. Yeah.

“They’re only trying to save the planet. They’re only trying to advise and guide humanity into taking the right steps so that we’re not all wiped out. Their intentions are good. It’s the nature of the evidence; forget whether they’re right or wrong. They have big hearts. They’re trying to help. And that is a thousand percent wrong. They are fearmongering. They are lying. They are making money getting grants, promulgating false allegations and predictions. It’s nonsense,” he said.

He said men such as Fenner are perceived as mainstream scientists, but people need to look closer.

“Do you realize there’s not one leftist scientists who has predicted anything like this who has ever been right? The top of that class is Paul Ehrlich, who, back in 1970 some odd wrote a book called ‘The Population Bomb ‘saying by 2000 we’d be finished. That the earth couldn’t even come close to supporting a population that the world indeed has today.”

Despite that prediction, Limbaugh said, “He’s still a guru. He’s still a hero. He’s still a go-to source. He’s still at Stanford. He hasn’t been discredited at all. He couldn’t be more wrong. He’s still a leftist hero because he advances the liberal agenda, which is fear, chaos, panic, you name it, whatever it takes to get people to sign on and vote for bigger government, higher taxes, less freedom. So he’s ideal.”