Democratic Energy Bill Advances

After decades of a one way anti-energy commitment, the House and Senate will soon reconcile an energy policy that looks forward to new and clean energy, while it recognizes the need to dramatically expand fossil fuel exploration, production, and refining within our borders. It's breathtaking what can be achieved when all the people's voices are heard.

America's energy policy has been pointing in the wrong direction for over three decades. Why? Because extremist enviros have been shaping and designing laws and regulations. This misguided and abusive activity has brought us $3 per gallon gasoline and over 50 cent per kilowatt electricity. Today, for the first time in decades, a democratic process that includes all the "stakeholders" has developed a balanced and reasonable bi-partisan legislative product.

The lesson here is that when the elected and bureaucrats become disconnected from the people, mischief results. This is also easy to see in education; medical care; roads and transportation; manufacturing; and other industries and institutions. Institutional and regulatory failures reflect the disconnect from the will of the people. Democracy, with a small d, works better than any elitist inspired arrogance driven process. Why won't some ever understand that?

Sea Levels are Rising?

I just listened to a recent NPR report on the melting of glaciers, especially those in Greenland. The program's science expert was Ira Flatow, who hosts Science Friday on NPR. Mr. Flatow talked at length about the fact that Greenland's glaciers are melting at breathtaking speeds. And he says that: "the world's sea-levels will increase by 20 feet when the ice has melted. He further claimed that other UN based climate predictions assure us that the sea level will increase by 20 feet or more.

Even the US EPA states that sea-levels have increased by as much as 12 inches in the past century. And predicts further increases of as much as 2 feet in this century. The basis for all this speculation is that enviros believe that Arctic Ice and Antarctic Ice are the world's "air conditioners." So as the ice melts, the speed of global warming will inevitably increase dramatically. Gee, this sounds suspiciously like the not-to-popular film: 'Day after Tomorrow."

Yet, as with all global warming and climate change predictions, the actual measurable activities do not support the hot air. In fact, the British Antarctic Survey, one of the most credible Antarctic Stations, estimates otherwise. Their 2004 statement on ice change activities for the Antarctic seems much less sure of its results. Here's the direct quote:

"Ironically there is an opposing effect (to rising sea levels) that scientists are more confident in predicting. If the southern hemisphere climate warms, warmer air will transport more moisture to Antarctica. This will give more precipitation, and the ice sheet will respond by becoming thicker (which it is today). So over the next century changes in Antarctica may actually oppose sea level rise, although it is not known if they (thickening ice changes) will be sufficient to completely counteract the thermal expansion of the oceans and the melting of glaciers outside the Antarctic region."

NPR's Flatow says: "20 feet or more" and the EPA says: "two feet or more" in sea level rise. Yet more respected and real scientific researchers say otherwise. The facts are that the sea level has rising globally by about 1mm or a little more over the past century. Some say the cause was natural thermal expansion, not an increase of water volume. So how on earth can the EPA say that US coastal sea-levels have risen by more than a foot? Because they measure erosion, not the water level. Erosion is the result of storms and man-made coastal development changes, like sea walls and other flow disrupters. But politically, 1mm sea-level rise will not support the enviro-extremist's need to paint a planet plunging into environmental hell.

Global Warming from Political Hot Air

Business Week's June 27th issue has a commentary by John Carey headlined: Global Warming: Suddenly the Climate in Washington is Changing. A follow up headline says that "Bush (is) increasingly isolated." It's true that the Senate has come a long way or has drifted far out to see since the 1997 95-0 condemnation of the Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gases.

Global Warming is not science, it's a political movement. Therefore new scientific research has no affect on the religious left's conclusions. Recently 35 mayors of the nation's largest cities unanimously petitioned the Whitehouse for so-called greenhouse gas emission controls. Then Democrats announced in the Senate that they seek a climate change amendment to be attached to the energy bill. On June 14th, the Administration "fired a shot across the senate's bow, warning to veto any climate change amendments.

So what has changed in the political landscape inside the Beltway? As all religious movements, this one's adherents are out recruiting daily. The fervor and intensity is breathtaking. And for some, whether there is global warming or not is irrelevant. They believe that slower economic growth and less energy use is just plain good sense.

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Energy Policy influenced by Energy Experts

I've got to say that I'm shocked, absolutely shocked that energy experts are involved in shaping the Bush administration's energy policy. Why change something that has worked so well for the past three decades? In that time, enviro-extremists stopped all nuclear power plant construction; stopped all refinery development activity; stopped all upgrades and improvements to dozens of coal fueled power plants; and stopped power plant development in most parts of the country.

So Democrats and elite organizations demand to know why the Bush administration is being so arrogant by changing what has worked so well for a few at the cost of almost 300 million American residents?

Energy is everything! Economic output is either increased or decreased by the availability of cheap energy, in whatever form. That is why it's is critical for the United States to have a clearly articulated energy policy. That's not what has driven energy activities for the past three decades. Policy was handled, shaped, and regulations were written by elite and extreme left of center enviro advocates. Their handy work is today expressed in high cost electricity, almost $3 per gallon gasoline and diesel, and slow growth in energy efficiency improvements.

Seldom have so few made life so difficult for so many in the United States. It's now easy to see how far we were taken down this path of destruction. Anyone who votes for Democrats must understand that returning them to power will surely bring back extreme energy policies.

Republicans Stand Up to Global Warming

Opposing any environmental legislation, or educational funding, or New Deal program funding no matter how misguided or corrupt brings savage attacks from the extreme left. So many of the left's programs are often given wide political leeway due to the intensity of the resulting demonizations. But some Republicans are finding a new spine about "Global Warming."

Senator Imhof took the senate floor to give this speech. It marked what is now a momentum builder for others to express their doubt of the "science" used to prove that the global warming theory is fact. The senator called the "threat of catastrophic global warming the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people." So he wonders why left of center enviro-extremists and their elitist organizations are pursuing this coarse.

First is that "environmental extremists exploit the issue for fundraising purposes, raking in tens of millions of dollars, even using Federal taxpayer's dollars to finance the campaigns." Second he says: "Put simply, man-induced global warming is an article of RELIGIOUS FAITH (emphasis added) to the radical far left alarmists. Therefore, contending that its central tenets are flawed to them is heresy and of the most despicable kind. Furthermore, scientists who challenge its tenet are attacked, sometimes personally for blindly ignoring the so-called scientific consensus." Third he points out that: "skeptical scientific views are contemptuous, out of the mainstream. This seems highly ironic. Aren't scientists to be nonconforming and (to) question the consensus? ...'Skeptic' and 'out of the mainstream' are their thinly veiled code phrases (for scientific skeptics) meaning anyone who doubts alarmist orthodoxy is in short a quack."

Another tremendous quote comes from the Russian delegation to a Kyoto meeting in Milan, Italy, in 2004, that talked about Russia signing on to the Kyoto Protocol. They were straight forward saying" No, there is no science to it, but we stand to make hundreds of millions of dollars if we sign on to this thing." That's because Kyoto is a secular socialist program of redistribution of wealth managed and controlled by the UN and the WTO. My guess is that an international tax on environment will begin to independently fund the UN so that its bureaucrats can rule the world. Wells was a few decades off when he penned 1984.

Senator Domenici Draws a Line in the Sand

Senator Pete Domenici of New Mexico, Republican chairman of the Senate Energy Committee today ditched all aspects of Democrat's push for Global Warming legislation. The senator cited the need for a public hearing process in which real science can be vetted to identify if, why, and possibly how carbon emissions are to be controlled. The enviro-extreme position is that carbon dioxide is a poison. Yet most experts in carbon disagree.

We do know that carbon dioxide is increasing to about 370 parts per million in our atmosphere in a few locations. While we know that it is reducing in other locations. Yet real affect of that carbon dioxide is yet to be observed and measured. The "feeling" among atmospheric scientists is that carbon dioxide will trap solar heat creating "global warming." These same scientists were quoted in 1975, that's just 30 years ago, telling all of us to prepare for "carbon winters" due to very slow carbon dioxide increases. It was their belief, which they expressed as absolute fact, that carbon dioxide would repel solar heat cooling our earth.

When climate model after climate model failed miserably to predict actual changes, another movement sprang up in 1989. That's the "global warming" crowd. They too "know" that carbon dioxide will end the earth as we know it. It is these guys who came up with the concept expressed in a poorly attended film called: "The Day after Tomorrow" in which the northern hemispheres freezes solid in 72 hours, presumably caused by global warming.

It's time that real science be used to allow us to understand our climate.

G-8

Today's Washington Post headlines that: "US Pressure Weakens G-8 Climate Plan." It would seem that the Bush administration is watering real science down for their own "greedy" benefit. But what is actually being negotiated here? It's the interpretation of climate facts that are often unrelated. A spike in temperature here or there! A melting glacier here or there. Yet other spots are colder today than in recorded history and glaciers, especially in the Antarctic are growing thicker and broader than ever before observed.

It is appropriate for our elected leaders to ask: "Where's the beef?" Not the political science beef and not the world view of egalitarianism and redistribution of wealth view. There is no dispute that the earth is moving away from it's last major ice age. That means the planet is warming. Yet, the one area climate scientists agreed would warm fast, the outer atmosphere, is cooling. Say what? Cooling!

There are many productive ideas emerging from these often extreme positions taken by one political world thinking groups. Carbon basins are a healthy concept that guarantees to inject more oxygen into the atmosphere. Fewer particulates in the atmosphere will reduce asthmatic issues for some. And overall sustainable management of forests will strengthen our biosphere's overall health.

One gargantuan problem with climate change politics is that extremist groups take no prisoners. They want it their way or the highway. Take the World Wildlife Fund's Hans Verolme. He says that "they would rather not have a deal (at the G-8) that lets George Bush off the hook." What hook is that? The get on board with his group's extreme views hook.

Carbon Dioxide isn't here yet!

Atmospheric trace elements are often given more credit for climate change than they seem to deserve. Take the late 1960s and early 1970s when climatologists feared that a perceived increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) would thicken the earth's cloud layers, reflect warming sun light, and eventually cool the planet back into a major ice age. We affectionately called it the "carbon winter syndrome." Lots of clouds and little if any sunlight.

Today CO2 is said to be reaching 377 ppm when as recently as a hundred years ago it was down near 320 ppm. What does this mean? I asked the Scripps folks who are said to be the strongest in atmospheric research. At what point is CO2 too much? When does an increase in CO2 begin to benefit plant life and the food chain and agriculture worldwide? No-one knows, they say. No-one has extensively researched these questions.

We do know from our pot growing friends and from greenhouse agriculture, that high concentrations of CO2 spur growth in plants. CO2 is after all, plant food. Plants require lots of fertilizer and high amounts of hydration to grow fast and strong. So low levels of CO2 create a thirst by plants for fertilizer and water. Conversely, high CO2 levels reduce the plant's need for fertilizer, water, and insecticides and anti-fungal chemicals because plants grow stronger and more resistant to insects and fungi.

It gets better. Explosive plant growth strengthens the food chain. Plankton in the oceans grows faster to feed shrimp and other small fish who feed salmon who feed mammals such as whales and fish such as sharks. CO2 also strengthens fisheries to the point where the world would be awash with fresh and health omega 3 oil fish.

The Canadian version of the Environmental Protection Administration states on their website that if global worming takes, "Canada's agriculture will be a net winner" from higher CO2 concentrations. Plants grow faster, use less hydration, strengthen, and produce much more per acre. Trees benefit from as much as twice their normal yearly growth.

And Mother Earth? All this CO2 conversion creates more oxygen which provides for relief for asthma victims and probably increases sports records everywhere. Now who says that CO2 is a pollutant? Only those who will benefit from slower economic growth and from more enviro-extortions.