Democrats and Global Warming

Now that the Democrats have moved our country closer to their Socialist goals and control one sixth of the economy, it is time to take over another huge portion of our gross domestic product. This will be done by the religious belief in global warming and cap and trade. Let me tell you a little about my experience in Poland, Russia and Belarus and what they think of Global Warming.

During the communist years, the populace and the politicians of Poland thought very little about global warming. In fact pollution of all sorts was abundant. Rivers were dirty and as mentioned earlier some were even black as in the town of Katowice. There was concern about lung cancer particularly in those cities were coke oven gas emissions were intense. People constantly complained of the dirt and soot that was emitted from steel mills and power plants. They tried to keep their cities clean as evidenced by the lack of paper and debris on city streets. In fact I was reprimanded by a woman when I threw a cigarette butt onto the sidewalk. Waste receptacles were placed strategically on the streets. These containers also included a small tray for extinguishing cigarettes and cigars. I learned to use them when I did walk the streets. But in spite of the populace’s tendency for personal responsibility toward the environment the companies paid little heed. Raw sewage was dumped into rivers. Chemical discharges into rivers were also frequent. Cities near paper plants smelled from the stench of vapors being let loose from the mills into the air. These complaints were some of the reasons that people left the cities on the weekends and went to the country to their “dzialkas” (garden plots) for “swieze powietrze” (fresh air). The complaints regarding pollution were never made with regard to climate control or changing climate, but only in regard to how it affected their daily lives. The cleanliness of the cities and their health concerns were of primary importance.

The state of the environment in Poland had been worsening since the 1950’s. At this time the communist bloc emphasis was placed on building up heavy industry, the military and the economy. No one paid much attention to the environment . Due to the lack of adequate communal and industrial sewage disposal most of the rivers were significantly polluted. Only 50% of the cities in Poland had sewage purification plants. Warsaw had none at all. Silesia (Katowice is part of this region) and Cracow are frequently called “the area of ecological disaster” because they generate most of the pollutants in Poland. They occupy only 3% of the Poland’s land area but generate 50% of all toxic gas emissions and 40% of all dust emissions. Lead and cadmium particulates were of special concern as eventually these heavy metals found there way into the food chain. The Poles were concerned with the safety of their children both born and yet to be born.

The Russians had 38 garrisons stationed in Poland and as Townsend (www.zb.eco.pl/gb/4/soviet.htm)stated: “Not one of the Soviet garrisons stationed in Poland has shown the slightest regard for laws protecting the environment. Commanders do not recognize it as their duty to repair the ecological damage, nor to pay compensation.”

Oil, kerosene and other oil based substances had found there way into the soil and rivers causing severe pollution. When the Soviets left these bases, the area looked as if a hurricane hit the place. They removed windows, doors, plumbing, electrical wiring and anything else that could be salvaged and took it with them. The only thing left behind was a devastated and badly polluted area. Officer’s apartments were stripped bare. They took everything: bathtubs, toilets and even the kitchen sink. It had been reported that lead and cadmium polluted the soil and water around their air bases and fuel bunkers . The Poles resented what the Russians did to their environment and demanded that Moscow pay for the cleanup and damages. However the Russians refused and the Poles gave up their demands in 1992.

The post 1989 years introduced democracy into Poland and brought about increased attention to the environment and as of late the so called heating of the earth’s climate (global warming). The awareness of global warming may have been the result of the propaganda that liberal newspapers throughout the world have generated in this regard. Equally as well, since Poland is closely allied with the Western world and in particular with the United States, it may be that the Polish politicians found it expedient to mimic the mantra of the US Democratic Party -- especially now with a Democratic White House and Congress.

Conversely, in recent years, Polish, Russian, American and many other scientists have begun to think not only about global warming but rather global cooling. Professor Dr. Zbigniew Jaworowski , a Pole, studied ice core samples from numerous glaciers throughout the world from 1972 to 1991. He has published twenty papers on climate, most concerning the measurement of carbon dioxide in ice cores. The most important greenhouse gas found in the atmosphere is water vapor and is responsible for about 96 to 99% of the “greenhouse” effect. Among the other greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide (CO2), fluorocarbons, ozone, methane and nitrous oxide the most important is CO2. The latter contributes only 3% to the total “greenhouse” effect. The manmade contribution of CO2 to the total effect may be in the range of 0.05 to 0.25%. His recent paper (http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/Articles%202004/Winter2003-4/global_warming.pdf) warns that global cooling is in progress and an ice age is coming. Solar cycles, not carbon dioxide, determine climate.

He refutes much of the data that are presented in Al Gore’s documentaries including Gore’s presentation of the famous “Hockey Stick” graph that represents atmospheric carbon dioxide content over the past 10,000 years. Dr. Jaworowski is not alone in his antipathy toward Gore’s conclusions. (For those liberals totally immersed or not committed to the pseudo science of global warming, I heartily recommend reading his publications and many of the references cited in this book. They are filled with data, history and graphs to substantiate the conclusions drawn.) An excerpt from Dr. Jawarowski’s article follows: “....an eventual drift into Ice Age conditions appears inevitable.” These conditions “would render a large fraction of the world’s major food-growing areas inoperable, and so would inevitably lead to the extinction of most of the present human population.” According to Hoyle and Wickramasinghe(F. Hoyle and C. Wickramasinghe, Cometary Impacts and Ice-Ages, Astrophysic and Space Science, 2001, Vol. 275, pp. 367-376) “those who have engaged in uncritical scaremongering over an enhanced greenhouse effect raising the Earth’s temperature by a degree or two should be seen as both misguided and dangerous,” for the problem of the present “is of a drift back into an Ice Age, not away from an Ice Age.”

Dr. Jaworowski is strongly against the global warming theory and believes it is more of a political program. In a more recent article, he gives a summary of how the global warming movement was pushed forward. The following is taken directly from his recent paper (http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/Articles%202007/20_1-2_CO2_Scandal.pdf: “Maurice Strong, who dropped out of school at age 14, established an esoteric global headquarters for the New Age movement in San Luis Valley, Colorado, and helped produce the 1987 Brundtland Report, which ignited today’s Green movement. He later become senior advisor to Kofi Annan, U.N. Secretary-General, and chaired the gigantic (40,000 participants) “U.N. Conference on Environment and Development” in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. Strong, who was responsible for putting together the Kyoto Protocol with thousands of bureaucrats, diplomats, and politicians, stated: “We may get to the point where the only way of saving the world will be for industrial civilization to collapse.” This pretty much appears to be the intent of the Democratic Party. Strong elaborated on the idea of sustainable development, which, he said, can be implemented by deliberate “quest of poverty...reduced resource consumption...and set levels of mortality control.”

Timothy Wirth, U.S. Undersecretary of State for Global Issues, seconded Strong’s statement: “We have got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.”

Richard Benedick, a deputy assistant secretary of state who headed policy divisions of the U.S. State Department, stated: “A global warming treaty must be implemented even if there is no scientific evidence to back the [enhanced] greenhouse effect.”

For the reader’s benefit, the Brundtland Report (www.un-documents.net/ocf-06.htm#I) was put together in 1987 and was a report presented to the United Nations concerning the preservation of species and ecosystems on the planet earth. This, as Dr. Jaworowski said, started the Green Movement.

James Schlesinger (www.ecolo.org/documents/documents_in_english/climate_change_Schlesinge.htm), who had served as secretary of energy, made these comments at a symposium on the 25th anniversary of the Energy Department's C02/climate change program. He gave a concise summary of some of the anomalies that exist in the data used to support global warming. His final comment, as reported in the Washington Post article, was:
“There is an idea among the public that "the science is settled." Aside from the limited facts I cited earlier, that remains far from the truth. Today we have far better instruments, better measurements and better time series than we have ever had. Still, we are in danger of prematurely embracing certitudes and losing open-mindedness. We need to be more modest.”

A recent article in the Russian newspaper Pravda (www.english.pravda.ru/science/earth/106922-1)warns of an impending ice age. Ice core data show that ice age maximums and warm interglacial periods are cyclic in nature. Unlike Al Gore’s misinterpretation of the data in an Inconvenient Truth, the data show that increases in carbon dioxide levels lag temperature increases by about eight hundred years. In other words, as temperatures increase global carbon dioxide levels rise and not the reverse. This is a major point in the global warming debate. Al Gore and the rest of the global warming advocates reiterate that an increase in carbon dioxide causes a corresponding increase in global temperatures – contrary to the scientific evidence. I suppose that it is to Al Gore’s benefit to maintain this fiction as his financial gains are large with the cap and trade marketing effort. The Vostok ice core data show these cyclical variations over the past 420,000 years. Within that time span, peak temperatures occur every 110,000 years followed by peak carbon dioxide levels of approximately the same range as they are today. Pravda reports that we are at the peak of a warm interglacial time span and the earth is about to enter the next ice age.

A US Senate report (http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Files.View&FileStore_id=83947f5d-d84a-4a84-ad5d-6e2d71db52d9) concerning global warming gives information about 650 reputable scientists who debunk the liberal (Al Gore and the Democrats) claim that a consensus has been reached regarding global warming. These scientists are from all over the world with substantial scientific credentials. Several quotes taken from report are listed below to illustrate the opinions expressed.
• ““I am a skeptic…Global warming has become a new religion.” - Nobel Prize Winner for Physics, Ivar Giaever.”
• ““It is a blatant lie put forth in the media that makes it seem there is only a fringe of scientists who don’t buy into anthropogenic (man made, definition mine) global warming.” - U.S Government Atmospheric Scientist Stanley B. Goldenberg of the Hurricane Research Division of NOAA.”
• ““Even doubling or tripling the amount of carbon dioxide will virtually have little impact, as water vapor and water condensed on particles as clouds dominate the worldwide scene and always will.” – . Geoffrey G. Duffy, a professor in the Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering of the University of Auckland, NZ.”
• ““The Kyoto theorists have put the cart before the horse. It is global warming that triggers higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, not the other way round. A large number of critical documents submitted at the 1995 U.N. conference in Madrid vanished without a trace. As a result, the discussion was one-sided and heavily biased, and the U.N. declared global warming to be a scientific fact,” Andrei Kapitsa, a Russian geographer and Antarctic ice core researcher.”
• ““I am convinced that the current alarm over carbon dioxide is mistaken...Fears about man-made global warming are unwarranted and are not based on good science.” - Award Winning Physicist Dr. Will Happer, Professor at the Department of Physics at Princeton University and Former Director of Energy Research at the Department of Energy, who has published over 200 scientific papers, and is a fellow of the American Physical Society, The American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the National Academy of Sciences.”
• “Warming fears are the “worst scientific scandal in the history…When people come to know what the truth is, they will feel deceived by science and scientists.” - UN IPCC Japanese Scientist Dr. Kiminori Itoh, an award-winning PhD environmental physical chemist.”

There are many more comments like this with somewhat detailed explanations of why the various scientists believe as they do. Aside from the abundant scientific data debunking global warming as being man made, many doubt the computer simulations (which do not include significant climate variables) that predict climate effects out into the far future when they can’t predict next week or next month’s weather. Many of the scientists, as quoted in the Senate report, believe that the global warming belief is pure politics. The introduction to the reports says it all.
“Over 650 dissenting scientists from around the globe challenged man-made global warming claims made by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and former Vice President Al Gore. This new 231-page U.S. Senate Minority Report -- updated from 2007’s groundbreaking report of over 400 scientists who voiced skepticism about the so-called global warming “consensus” -- features the skeptical voices of over 650 prominent international scientists, including many current and former UN IPCC scientists, who have now turned against the UN IPCC. This updated report includes an additional 250 (and growing) scientists and climate researchers since the initial release in December 2007. The over 650 dissenting scientists are more than 12 times the number of UN scientists (52) who authored the media-hyped IPCC 2007 Summary for Policymakers.

The chorus of skeptical scientific voices grow louder as a steady stream of peer reviewed studies, analyses, real world data and inconvenient developments challenged the UN’s and former Vice President Al Gore's claims that the "science is settled" and there is a "consensus." On a range of issues, 2008 proved to be challenging for the promoters of manmade climate fears. Promoters of anthropogenic (man made) warming fears endured the following: Global temperatures failing to warm; Peer-reviewed studies predicting a continued lack of warming; a failed attempt to revive the discredited “Hockey Stick”; inconvenient developments and studies regarding rising CO2; the Sun; Clouds; Antarctica; the Arctic; Greenland’s ice; Mount Kilimanjaro; Causes of Hurricanes; Extreme Storms; Extinctions; Floods; Droughts; Ocean Acidification; Polar Bears; Extreme weather deaths; Frogs; lack of atmospheric dust; Malaria; the failure of oceans to warm and rise as predicted.”

Fifty two United Nations scientists (who may have been politically motivated) wrote the report “IPCC 2007 Summary for Policymakers ” that the liberal media have hyped as the cause of global warming. The Democrats needed an issue and jumped on it. Henry Waxman and Nancy Pelosi (both Democrats) are strongly in favor of reducing greenhouse gas emissions . As both are non-scientists but are politically deft, they became converts to the pseudo scientific religious belief propounded by Al Gore in an Inconvenient Truth. Waxman, trying to demonstrate that the greenhouse gas problem is a fact and to dramatize a growing (growing – Hebert’s or Waxman’s word not mine) business community consensus that believes the climate issue must be confronted, invites 14 industrialists and environmentalists to the opening of the new Congress’ first hearing on global warming. Just who did he invite? As Hebert (www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D95NNE8O0&show_article=1)wrote in his article the invited were “….14 corporate executives and environmental leaders who have pressed for an 80 percent reduction in greenhouse gases by 2050”. No dissidents, only those that agree with Waxman. This makes a consensus? Since when is science ruled by consensus and not by facts?

What did these industrialists and environmentalists recommend? They endorsed a cap and trade plan along with incentives for coal plants that capture carbon dioxide. What were the incentives? Who knows? But you can almost be sure that our tax dollars will pay for these incentives. What might these incentives be? Undoubtedly they will include initial capital equipment expenditures, if not as an outright gift to the industry, then probably thru a rapid depreciation allowance or a “grandfathering” of their pollutant emissions for a number of years. If none of these options come true then certainly our after tax dollars will pay for the capital equipment and the additional operating cost through higher product costs. Industrialists are not stupid. Knowing full well that the Democrats won the election and will pursue global warming to satisfy their voters, why not take advantage of the election and have the government (we the taxpayers) pay to solve an imaginary problem. The CEO’s of the various companies involved are responsible to their stockholders for maintaining profitable operations. If the global warming debacle requires additional spending that will add nothing to their bottom line, they would be fools not to try having the government (we the people) pay for it.

The Democrats are proposing a “cap and trade” policy to prevent greenhouse gas emissions. What is cap and trade? The government (read as some wise, all knowing Democrat) will tell each factory the amount of pollutants they can emit and cannot exceed. For this they will receive a credit (cap) for the specified amount of pollutants that they may emit. If they exceed their amount of credit (cap) then they must buy additional credits from a company that pollutes less than permitted. The purchase and sale of these credits is the trade. In theory, the company that pollutes less than its cap makes money by selling the excess credits. On the other hand the polluter who buys credits loses money. Who keeps the profits? The company that sells the credit. Who pays for the losses? The consumer as no company can keep operating at a loss. The companies forced to buy credits will pass their costs on to the consumer through higher prices for their products.

But is there really a profit when a company sells a credit? That depends on the price of the credit. If the price of the credit is too low to afford a reasonable return on the investment for capital equipment, no company will install pollution abatement equipment unless forced to do so by the government. So who sets the price of the credit? The government and it will set the price as high as possible to ensure that equipment is installed. It is somewhat of a Ponzi scheme with the last few in being the losers. To whom will the last few factories sell their credits?

Between companies, cap and trade is a zero sum game. What one loses the other gains in equal amount. The only loser in the game is the consumer as no matter what the companies do, provided they try to meet the proposed requirements for greenhouse gas emissions, the consumer will pay through higher costs for the goods provided. It is a Ponzi scheme with the taxpayer the loser. Cap and trade theoretically provides the cheapest method for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and supposedly provides encouragement to install pollution abatement equipment for the control of greenhouse gases. The only problem with this economic theory is that it must first be proved that there is a need to remove man made carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. If it is proven, then it might make sense, but this seems highly unlikely.

The Democrats are solving a problem that does not exist. Their only concern appears to be in keeping their voting base happy and who cares about the rest. Another case of class warfare; only this time their poor base will be hurt. The cost of electricity, gasoline and a myriad of other products will rise beyond the poor’s economic current status. On second thought, maybe not; since the Democrats do want to spread the wealth around they may provide additional government benefits to the “poor” (who knows who the poor are but I suppose the Democrats will eventually tell us) to offset price increases. Cap and trade coupled with the Democrats spending plans will certainly help us on the way to a grand dose of inflation; all of this for the pseudo scientific religious belief in global warming. The Democrats are sure of global warming as evidenced by quotes reported in Hebert’s article:
“Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., who chairs the subcommittee that will write the initial legislation and chairs a separate committee on climate, said a consensus for mandatory emissions reductions is clear. "Now the hard task of enacting global warming legislation is before us," said Markey”.

Fourteen handpicked members holding similar convictions to those of Democratic politicians are invited to a committee hearing and that makes it a consensus. This “consensus” is the mandate for enabling Congress to pass global warming legislation? Only a Massachusetts liberal could come to such a wise and clear conclusion from such limited data. He would make King Solomon proud.