Chu On This: Obama's Global Warming Secretary Clueless

Will Malven
2/04/2009

God save us from the true believers of Anthropogenic Global Warming.

Well Liberals are persistent if nothing else. Last week it was the Goracle holding court in Washington DC with every lemming of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee frozen in rapt attention by the dire predictions of Albert Bore Gore, Jr. Seemingly awed by being in the presence of the Goracle, the Senate Lemmings lobbed softball questions and nodded wisely in assentation as he issued his dire warning (what is that now, dire warning number 137?) of the impending global disaster as people in the real world...those braving the freezing cold and blizzard Washington was experiencing...struggled to get to their destinations through the snow slickened streets and two foot high snow drifts.

It would all be comical if the possible fruits of their absurd efforts weren't so destructive to our economy and our liberty. These Chicken Little's of the climate are so brain-dead that they cannot even see when they are contradicting themselves.

Senator Kerry began his committee hearing by reminiscing about the time that he and Albert Gore, Jr. held the first meeting on Global Warming:

"...we also teamed up on the first ever Senate hearing on climate change for the commerce committee back in 1988. And on a sweltering June day some Senate staff opened up the windows and drove home the point, with everyone sweating in their seats during Dr. James Hansen's historic and tragically prescient testimony. We are obviously not going to repeat that gesture today, [Oh really, why don't you tell us the reason for your reticence Mr. Kerry-Heinz] but I speak for everyone on this committee when I tell you how much we appreciate you being here today, Mr. Vice President, and particularly on a day in what passes down here as tough winter weather.

To the nay‑sayers and deniers out there, let me make it clear that the little snow in Washington does nothing to diminish the reality of the crisis we face. [Emphasis added]

I understand now, John-boy, it was relevant that you open the windows on a "sweltering June day" (Isn't that amazing, a sweltering day in June?) because you were trying to prove a point about Global Warming, but the freezing weather of one of the coldest January's on record would have contradicted your Global Warming agenda...well consistency has never been very high on the list of Liberal priorities.

I think I've got it now, hot weather important portent of things to come, cold weather just a head-fake by God to fool us, right-got it.

Anyway the Nobel Laureate (we all know how important and meaningful that "honor" is) had his day in the Senate-light and has gone on to his huge carbon foot print house on his private jet to sell more faux "carbon offsets" to those gullible enough to buy them. So enter state Left (and I do mean "Left") the President's new Carbon Warrior in Chief, Steven Chu.

Mr. Chu is now issuing his own dire predictions of doom and gloom...isn't it funny how every issue is a crisis and is always accompanied by dire predictions of doom and gloom when it comes from the Liberals.

Mr. Chu may be a physicist of great accomplishment, but he is no climatologist. The LA Times has his Global Warming Propaganda today:

California farms, vineyards in peril from warming, U.S. energy secretary warns

'We're looking at a scenario where there's no more agriculture in California,' Steven Chu says. He sees education as a means to combat threat.

By Jim Tankersley
February 4, 2009

Reporting from Washington -- California's farms and vineyards could vanish by the end of the century, and its major cities could be in jeopardy, if Americans do not act to slow the advance of global warming, Secretary of Energy Steven Chu said Tuesday.

In his first interview since taking office last month, the Nobel-prize-winning physicist offered some of the starkest comments yet on how seriously President Obama's cabinet views the threat of climate change, along with a detailed assessment of the administration's plans to combat it.

Chu warned of water shortages plaguing the West and Upper Midwest and particularly dire consequences for California, his home state, the nation's leading agricultural producer.

In a worst case, Chu said, up to 90% of the Sierra snowpack could disappear, all but eliminating a natural storage system for water vital to agriculture.

"Lions and Tigers and Bears! Oh my!"

Come on PEOPLE were you born yesterday? One would think that these idiot lemmings spouting their faux science were. It's like the world was created yesterday and has never seen temperatures warming than it did in 1998...notice I said 1998, not 2008. That's because 1998 was the warmest year in this so called Global Warming Crisis. Yep, it hasn't warmed any further in ten years.

Let me repeat that, it hasn't gotten any warmer in a decade. In fact since 1998, the trend, such as there is, has been downward, with the last two years among the coolest.

Anyone with a high school education knows, or should know that the planet has been through dozens of cycles of warming and cooling going back for millions of years...all of it occurring without the "evil influence" of man and his industrial revolution...all of it as a result of natural astronomical and solar events...and none of it as a result of CO2 build up in the atmosphere.

That's right; Albert Gore, Jr. is a liar. He makes up data to support his, growingly discredited, pet theory because the data just don't support the hypothesis any longer. Al's buddy James Hansen is a liar. He's been caught penciling in data to support his lies.

Now we have a new Chicken Little in Chief whom the article even admits is no climatologist, he's an administrator:

Chu is not a climate scientist. He won his Nobel for work trapping atoms with laser light. He taught at Stanford University and directed the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where he reoriented researchers to pursue "clean energy" technologies to help reduce the use of greenhouse-gas-emitting fossil fuels in the U.S., before Obama tapped him to head the Energy Department. [Emphasis added]

He used to be a scientist, now he's a bureaucrat who "taught, directed, and reoriented" other scientist to work on his pet theory. Of course you know what happens if you don't do what your boss directs you to do, you lose funding for your project, or get fired.

Coercion is a great generator of global warming fervor among scientists whose livelihood depends on federal funding. You can bet there will be a plethora of papers published by professors who look to the federal government for funding.

• Fact: The planet has been going through cycles of warming and cooling for millions of years.
• Fact: The planet has witnessed periods of warming far greater than the current warm period within human historical records...with no industrial revolution.
• Fact: A growing number of climatologists now believe that far from entering a period of "Global Warming," we are now entering a period of Global Cooling.
• Fact: Those who follow the actual data do not believe in Global Warming, those who follow computer models do.
• Fact: Computer models show only the pre-existing biases of those who created them. They can be made to show anything and can be made to confirm or deny any theory.
• Fact: Global Warming alarmism has become a lucrative career and business opportunity for those cynical enough to pursue it.
• Fact: Global temperatures peaked in 1998 and since then have been trending generally downward.
• Fact: Ice core sample data prove that CO2 levels trail global temperature increases, not precede them.
• Fact: Albert Gore, Jr. is an idiot who knows less about science than he does about how to govern...(Oops! How did that one get in here?).
• Fact: The IPCC lied when they claimed that all of the scientist listed as authors in their politically motivated screed agreed with their conclusions.

Well, don't be too hard on Liberals; lying comes to them as easily as taking money from tax-payers and giving it to those whom they deem worthy. The problem I have with them is that they wish to take us all down that same Yellow Brick Road that they wish to follow.

And now to scare you some more, here is another tidbit from our new Global Warming Czar, Steven Chu:

"...Chu made clear that he sees public education as a key part of the administration's strategy to fight global warming.

Can you say "indoctrination?" It appears that this elitist believes that the reason so many people doubt his pet theory is that they just don't understand it. So to remedy this failing, he and his fellow Stalinists, will use our public education system to indoctrinate our children. I wonder if "re-education camps" are far behind.

If you don't believe maybe President Obama, a self-confessed ardent admirer of China, will send you to be re-educated they same way that the Chinese have done to their own population.

As an aside, I do hear that Representative Alcee Hastings (D-FL) has submitted a bill in Congress H.R. 645, calling for the secretary of homeland security to establish no fewer than six "national emergency centers" for corralling civilians on military installations...strictly for our own good, of course. Source LIFE WITH BIG BROTHER: Bill creates detention camps in U.S. for 'emergencies'

I'm sure these events are all just innocent coincidences.

Funny isn't it? All my life I have heard Liberals warning whomever was foolish enough to listen to them about the threat of "Big Brother" those on the Right pose. Yet every time I look to see who is threatening my individual freedoms and liberty, it is someone from the Left. From gun control laws (for your own good), to seatbelt laws (for your own good), to global warming and all of the restrictive laws being sought under its auspices (for your won good), it is the Left which impinges on the individual's rights (for your own good, mind you).

True freedom includes the freedom to screw up, the freedom to fail, and the freedom to suffer the consequences of your own actions. The result of that freedom is the right to succeed, the right to excel, and the right to prosper from the fruits of your labor...not the labor of another person. That is the nation our Founding Fathers left to us and that is the nation in which I still choose to live.

Long Live Our American Republic!!!!

Maybe it's not so funny.

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Renowned climate scientist addresses Houston business leaders

Spencer: Major climate models overestimate human role in global warming

HOUSTON – Speaking today to Houston business leaders, renowned climate scientist Dr. Roy Spencer said that new data collected from NASA satellites show that there are significant errors in the climate models used by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Dr. Spencer – published author, principal research scientist for the University of Alabama in Huntsville, and the U.S. Science Team Leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer on NASA’s Aqua satellite – presented his latest climate research at the Texas Public Policy Foundation’s Global Warming Policy Breakfast this morning at the Houston City Club.

The IPCC science is the driver behind national and international programs to mandate reduction of carbon dioxide. “The major climate models used by global warming advocates all assume a far greater sensitivity to atmospheric carbon dioxide changes than what we observe in the empirical satellite data,” Dr. Spencer said. “That’s why all of these scenarios produce such outlandishly high forecasts about future global temperatures.”

Spencer said that manmade global warming proponents had confused cause and effect. “Al Gore’s apocalyptic temperature scenario assumes that carbon dioxide causes temperature changes,” Spencer continued. “Except there is one problem – global temperatures precede carbon dioxide levels by approximately 800 years. Ice core data reveals the opposite of what Gore claims.”

“When politicians and activists claim that the manmade global warming debate is ‘settled,’ they point to these IPCC climate models as their proof,” said Kathleen Hartnett White, Director of the Center for Natural Resources at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. “Dr. Spencer’s empirical research contradicts the assumptions in those models.”

White urged policymakers to reassess onerous carbon reduction schemes because they are no longer supported by this far more substantial science based on the actual measurement of climate dynamics in the upper atmosphere. “Genuine science is never settled but always evolving, as Dr. Spencer’s work powerfully demonstrates,” White concluded.

The Texas Public Policy Foundation is a non-profit, free-market research institute based in Austin, Texas.

Dr. Roy Spencer is the author of "Climate Confusion: How Global Warming Hysteria Leads to Bad Science, Pandering Politicians and Misguided Policies that Hurt the Poor." He is a principal research scientist for the University of Alabama in Huntsville, the U.S. Science Team Leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer on NASA’s Aqua satellite, and the former senior scientist for climate studies at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville.

Kathleen Hartnett White is Director of the Center for Natural Resources at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. She is the former Chair of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

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How "inconvenient"

Last year, our friends at the Tennessee Center for Policy Research obtained the energy bills from Academy Award-winning documentarian Al Gore’s Nashville mansion. They found, among other things, that Gore’s electricity usage in August 2006 was more than twice what the average American household uses in an entire year.

Gore family spokesman Kalee Kreider responded that, “the bottom line is that every family has a different carbon footprint. And what Vice President Gore has asked is for families to calculate that footprint and take steps to reduce and offset it.”

So TCPR just took another look at Nobel laureate Al Gore’s energy bills to see how their “reducing and offsetting” was going. What they found: Even after a “green” retrofit in June 2007 that included new solar panels, a geothermal heating system, lighting upgrades, and an overhaul of the windows and ductwork, Gore’s home energy usage in the 12 months following the renovations was more than 10% higher than the 12 months before.

The average American household consumes 11,040 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity per year. Gore’s Nashville mansion uses an average of 17,768 kWh per month.

And that doesn’t include the carbon footprint from Al Gore’s private jet and Lincoln Town Car transport, his Live Earth concerts, or his 2007 book and arena tours.

“Actions speak louder than words, and Al Gore’s actions prove that he views climate change not as a serious problem, but as a money-making opportunity,” Johnson said. Al Gore is exploiting the public’s concern about the environment to line his pockets and enhance his profile.”

Even after all of his mansion renovations, Al Gore has quite a bit of work to do to get his proverbial carbon house in order.

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Two new blog stars at TPPF

As much as it damages my ego to admit publicly...OK, here it goes...I am no longer the only blog star at the Texas Public Policy Foundation.

Drew Thornley, policy analyst in our Center for Economic Freedom and Center for Natural Resources, is a new regular contributor to "Planet Gore" on National Review Online. His first post is on the new global cooling data.

We have also added (almost) daily news commentary to the "Speaking Freely" feature on our site. Today's post is by our new events manager, Angie Choueifati, who some of you may remember from her time working with Americans for Fair Taxation. (And if you do know her, you won't be surprised that she is talking about coffee.)

We hope that you will frequent both of those sites in addition to The Houston Conservative.

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Truth is conveniently missing from global warming debate

On Monday, former Vice President Al Gore brought his "Inconvenient Truth" speaking tour to the Frank Erwin Center at the University of Texas at Austin. But no matter how many times he uttered his claim that "the debate is over" on man-made global warming, a sizable portion of the scientific community would beg to differ. In this week's commentary, Drew Thornley, a policy analyst in the Foundation's Center for Economic Freedom, notes the devastating effects on mankind if we make hasty and far-reaching policy decisions based on political pressure instead of solid science.

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Truth is conveniently missing from global warming debate
By Drew Thornley

If the popular press is your source for climate science, you are probably terrified the end is near—moving as far inland as possible and staying inside to avoid heat stroke. You might be altering your lifestyle to combat the effects of carbon dioxide emissions. But if you look at the facts about “global warming,” the picture is not as bleak as it may seem.

Whenever anyone refuses to debate an issue and repeatedly asserts the “debate is over,” red flags should go up. Al Gore, who brought his man-made global warming message to Austin on October 1st, claims the debate is over. But as MIT Professor Richard Lindzen says, this is “a clear attempt to establish truth not by scientific methods but by perpetual repetition.”

Findings released in September reveal more than 500 scientists have published research findings refuting one or more elements of man-made global warming theory. The climate debate is anything but over.

However, even if human-created global warming were proved, there would still be no need for alarm. Gore and other global warming alarmists insist increased global temperatures are bad. On the contrary, a warmer earth would be a net benefit to us all.

Uninhabitable and inarable land could become suitable for living and farming. More carbon dioxide in the air means healthier plants and trees. Better agriculture raises living standards and reduces poverty.

Warmer temperatures reduce energy bills, as savings on heating costs are estimated to exceed added cooling costs. Additionally, cold causes twice as many deaths as heat, worldwide; seven times as many in Europe. Warming is positive and shouldn’t be feared.

However, even if we ignore all of the evidence and allow that man is causing harmful warming, carbon dioxide-reduction projects are still terrible investments. The European Union (a party to the Kyoto emissions treaty) spends vast amounts of money to curtail emissions, but, since 2000, the EU’s increase in emissions is almost double that of the United States (a non-Kyoto country). Even if all Kyoto-signees curb their emissions, those reductions will be offset by massive increases from non-Kyoto developing countries, like China and India.

At the Copenhagen Consensus Center, top-level economists (including four Nobel laureates) evaluated 17 global priorities, from an investment standpoint. The three climate initiatives claimed the bottom three spots, all categorized as “Bad Opportunities,” meaning “for each dollar spent, we would end up doing much less than a dollar worth of good for the world.”

Pumping vast sums of money into global warming makes no sense, when the same money could lead to actual solutions to genuine global problems, such as malnutrition, dangerous water and unsanitary living conditions, HIV/AIDS, and malaria.

Cutting emissions will negatively impact the reliable, efficient energy supply that has been, and continues to be, crucial to Texas’ economic growth. A booming energy market has opened the floodgates of economic prosperity here, and decreasing the energy supply or artificially raising its costs will harm all sectors of our economy.

Measures proposed by climate scaremongers to reduce carbon dioxide emissions threaten our economic prosperity. That reality, rather than the possibility of melting ice caps and rising sea levels, is a genuine cause for concern.

Drew Thornley is a policy analyst in the Center for Economic Freedom at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a non-profit, free-market research institute based in Austin.

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