GLOBAL WARMING ALERT - June's chill in Chicago is one for the records

The Global Warming/Global Cooling/Climate Change/Carbon Footprint/Carbon Dioxide/Cap and trade crowd should go hide for about 10 years just for embarrassing themselves so badly on the world stage.
Rees

from WGNTV.com
By Steve Kahnon in Chicago
article from June 12th

The cloudy, chilly and rainy open to June here has been the talk of the town. So far this June is running more than 12 degrees cooler than last year, and the clouds, rain and chilly lake winds have been persistent. The average temperature at O'Hare International Airport through Friday has been only 59.5 degrees: nearly 7 degrees below normal and the coldest since records there began 50 years ago.

More bad weather is on the way Saturday with a cold rain expected to linger through the bulk of the morning. Rainfall could be heavy -- especially north of the city, which would be a reversal of Thursday's deluge that targeted the southern suburbs.

Better days aheadEncouraging signs in recent computer runs signal a change to more typical June weather which by now should feature daily highs around 80 degrees. A return of sunshine should boost temperatures well into the 70s Sunday and Monday, though lake cooling will continue. By midweek a northward shift in the jet stream promises a steady diet of highs in the 80s, though showers and thunderstorms are likely to accompany the warm-up.
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Pelosi promises an “inventory” of every American’s carbon footprint

Video: Inventorying Pelosi
from Hot Air.com
May 29,2009
by Ed Morrissey

It’s an interesting time when an American political leader goes to China — and winds up sounding more authoritarian than the government in Beijing. Nancy Pelosi managed it while discussing the way green policies will be enforced in the Democratic regime in Washington DC. When pressed on specifics, Pelosi promised an “inventory” of every American’s carbon footprint (via Say Anything):

In answering a question from a student about how Pelosi was going to get Americans to cut back on their carbon emissions, the leading Democratic lawmaker said it was important to educate children on how to conserve energy and for citizens to build more environmentally friendly homes.

“We have so much room for improvement,” she said. “Every aspect of our lives must be subjected to an inventory … of how we are taking responsibility.”

Hmmm …. and who would conduct these “inventories”? A YouTube video speculates on that question:



Make no mistake about it. The climate-change activists want state control of energy production and use, which will allow the government control over every aspect of our lives. It’s the lifelong dream of utopian elitists. This only counts as a gaffe under the definition of the term as “the accidental telling of an embarrassing truth by a politician”.

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CBO Fires Another Shot At Cap & Trade - A huge Tax On Everyone

from Cheat-Seeking Missiles
May 20th 2009
by Laer

The Dems dream of a vast new IRS is still alive even as Congressional Dems back off from Obama’s concept - cap and trade as a tax - in favor of a seemingly less onorous cap and trade as a grant concept. But that darn Congressional Budget Office just keeps on pointing out the obvious: No matter how its structured, cap and trade will be an economic Katrina on the American economy.

The CBO has issued a second letter opining on the Dem scheme, WashTimes reports:

Congress’ chief scorekeeper says the global warming bill moving through Congress will either be scored as a major tax increase or a massive expansion of the federal government - and either one could give opponents substantial ammunition to complicate Democrats’ efforts to pass a bill.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO), in a letter sent last week to House Energy
and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry A. Waxman, said Democrats’ approach of creating allowances for emitting greenhouse gases requires developing from
scratch a market worth hundreds of billions of dollars. …

The six-page CBO letter also listed repeated examples of situations in which, for purposes of the federal budget, it will assume that the cap-and-trade approaches will dampen businesses’ income, meaning less revenue to the federal government.

The Dem response? Well, they’re trying to work with CBO. They figure that maybe if they threaten the CBO budget or start making personal attacks on its staff, they’ll be able to get the watchdogs to change a couple assumptions and come out with a rosier report. In other words, they’re not looking at the bill, seeing it for what it is and deciding to wait until the economy is back on its feet to cut its legs out from under it. Instead, they remain intent on kicking the economy while its down and want to get fudged numbers to excuse their action.

Meanwhile, the environmental lobbying machine is busy discounting the CBO:

Dan Lashof, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council’s climate center, said the CBO will still have to issue a final score on the bill when it passes the committee, and NRDC hopes the letter is not the last word.

“What they have left out of their analysis is the benefit to consumers of energy efficiency - that actually lowers their bills. I don’t see anywhere in this long set of examples this accounts for that,” Mr. Lashof said.

That’s because the CBO hasn’t yet come up with the metrics to measure pipe dreams and fantasies. There is no energy efficient replacement immediately available that would allow us to avoid the immediate impacts of cap and trade. As one commenter to the WashTimes story sarcastically put the Dem view of things,

The CBO is full of partisan hacks who want to do nothing more than destroy this once great nation. But, the Natural Resources Defense Council’s climate center is a straight down the middle lovable group who would never do anything that might tear apart the very foundations of our economy.

The new bill gives the GOP and blue dog Dems some hope that cap and trade might be the first Obama policy initiative to fall flat on its face. That certainly must be the goal, both to protect the economy from Warmie lunacy and to signal an end to the devastating run Obama’s enjoyed.

Do your part. Write your member of Congress and demand they tell you before they vote how the bill will impact your power bill and the price at the pump. Keep asking; hold them to it.
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Cap-and-trade scheme will wreck U.S. economy

from The Washington Examiner
May 19, 2009

House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Rep. Henry Waxman, D-CA, has teamed with Rep. Edward Markey, D-MA, chairman of the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, to produce the latest in a series of “cap-and-trade” bills designed to reduce carbon-dioxide (CO2) emissions. Such emissions are produced when carbon-based fuels like petroleum and coal are burned to create energy to run things like electric power plants, automobiles and air conditioning systems. These emissions must be reduced because they are allegedly causing the earth’s atmosphere to heat up, with all sorts of lethal consequences following, not excluding death, destruction and the Final Apocalypse of All Mankind. The problem for such advocates, however, is that earth’s average temperatures have been declining for a decade, and a fast-growing number of climate and other scientists now question the root idea of a global warming crisis. These critics are increasingly banding together with elected officials and other experts in the public policy arena who see cap-and-trade schemes like Waxman-Markey as fatally flawed on two counts.

First, under Waxman-Markey, the government would establish a schedule of emissions reductions – 70 percent by 2030 – and a program of “credits” for businesses that meet the schedule. Those that don’t meet it can buy credits from companies that do, thus satisfying the government’s emission reduction mandate. The problem is that even under the most optimistic scenario, achieving the Waxman-Markey reductions would have only a negligible effect on global temperatures. Europe’s similar cap-and-trade program has been in effect for five years, yet has had no measurable impact on global temperatures. The U.S. effort is likely to fail, too, for the simply reason developing countries, particularly China and India, aren’t going to hobble their expanding economies, which will be dependent upon carbon-based fuels for the foreseeable future. Thus, at best, Waxman-Markey will reduce average global temperatures by much less than one degree.

That reduction highlights the second flaw, which is the excessive cost of achieving virtually no reduction in global temperatures. The conservative Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis used an econometric model of the U.S. economy to measure the projected impact of Waxman-Markey and found that by 2035, it would:

- Reduce aggregate gross domestic product (GDP) by $7.4 trillion,
- Destroy 844,000 jobs on average, with peak years seeing unemployment rise by over 1,900,000 jobs,
- Raise electricity rates 90 percent after adjusting for inflation,
- Raise inflation-adjusted gasoline prices by 74 percent,
- Raise residential natural gas prices by 55 percent,
- Raise an average family's annual energy bill by $1,500, and
- Increase inflation-adjusted federal debt by 29 percent, or $33,400 additional federal debt per person, again after adjusting for inflation.

That is a prescription for wrecking American prosperity for decades to come.
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Support the Cap-and-Trade Tax Disclosure Act

image by Rees

article from Michelle Malkin.com
written by Michelle Malkin
May 7, 2009

Rep. Jason Chaffetz, one of the bright lights of the GOP in the House, has a terrific idea to let the sun shine in on the Democrats’ massive national energy tax proposal.

He’s looking for co-sponsors of a measure that would require full disclosure of the impact of “cap-and-trade” on ratepayers.

The details via the Republican Study Committee:

Rep. Jason Chaffetz is seeking original cosponsors for the Cap-and-Trade Tax Disclosure Act which will require utility companies to disclose and separately itemize the impact of cap-and-trade taxes on each customer’s utility bill. Sound tax policy requires that taxes should be visible to taxpayers and not buried in the cost of items we purchase. With this legislation, every utility customer – residential and business — will be able to identify the cost of cap-and-trade emissions that the utility is passing on to the customer. As regulated entities, utilities pass taxes on to customers, unlike unregulated companies that can also pass taxes on to shareholders and employees. The cap-and-trade tax is potentially the largest tax increase ever imposed. According to the Administration’s own budget document, the cost will be at least $646 billion over an eight-year period. No matter where you stand on the issue of cap and trade, both sides can agree that full disclosure and transparency are good public policy.

Call your rep and ask them to sign on (and make a special effort to contact the Democrats who have publicly criticized the national eco-tax): 202-224-3121.

Pssst, President Obama: This is what transparency looks like.

***
And this is what transparency looks like, thanks to Sen. Jim DeMint:

The US Senate has finally reversed its longstanding policy of restricting public access to raw data about how Senators vote, and is now posting XML of votes on Senate.gov.

This move follows a recent initiative, led by Senator DeMint, to request the Senate Rules Committee post the votes data.

While this issue may seem to be arising out of the blue, with recent coverage in the Politico, Senate votes XML have been brooched as a perennial roadblock. It would seem, however, that the number of people affected by the restriction grew to the point where they could no longer be ignored, and common sense prevailed.

Just as the recent rewriting of Web use restrictions has led to creative Internet use among Members of Congress, the new votes data should help fuel a renaissance of vote analysis and visualization. XML encourages advanced processing and analysis, making votes legible to both humans and computers, and giving us a new view on how Senators vote.

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Cap-And-Trade: Al Gore's Cash Cow

By Investor's Business Daily
Posted Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Global Warming: At the cap-and-trade hearings, it was revealed that not everyone will suffer from this growth-killing energy tax. A congresswoman wanted to know why sea levels aren't rising but Gore's bank account is.

When Gore left office in January 2001, he was said to have a net worth in the neighborhood of $2 million. A mere eight years later, estimates are that he is now worth about $100 million. It seems it's easy being green, at least for some.

Gore has his lectures and speeches, his books, a hit movie and Oscar, and a Nobel Prize. But Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., was curious about how a man dedicated to saving the planet could get so wealthy so quickly. She sought out investment advice we all could use in a shaky economy.

Last May, we noted that Big Al had joined the venture capital group Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers the previous September. On May 1, 2008, the firm announced a $500 million investment in maturing green technology firms called the Green Growth Fund.

Last Friday, Gore was the star witness at the hearings on cap-and- trade legislation before the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Blackburn asked Gore about Kleiner-Perkins, noting that at last count they "have invested about a billion dollars invested in 40 companies that are going to benefit from cap-and-trade legislation that we are discussing here today."

Blackburn then asked the $100 million question: "Is that something that you are going to personally benefit from?" Gore gave the stock answer that "the transition to a green economy is good for our economy and good for all of us, and I have invested in it but every penny that I have made I have put right into a nonprofit, the Alliance for Climate Protection, to spread awareness of why we have to take on this challenge."

Last May, we also noted that on March 1, Gore, while speaking at a conference in Monterey, Calif., admitted to having "a stake" in a number of green investments that he recommended attendees put money in rather than "subprime carbon assets" such as tar sands and shale oil.

He also is co-founder of Generation Investment Management, which sells carbon offsets that allow rich polluters to continue with a clear conscience. It's a scheme that will make traders of this new commodity rich and Bernie Madoff look like a pickpocket. The other founder is former Goldman Sachs partner David Blood.

As Stephen Milloy, author of "Green Hell," points out, Goldman Sachs is lobbying for climate change legislation and is part owner of the Chicago Climate Exchange, where carbon credits from cap and trade would be traded.

Others hope to cash in along with Gore. On Earth Day 2007, the various NBC networks gave 75 hours of free air time to Gore to hype climate change. NBC is owned by General Electric, perhaps the largest maker of wind turbines and other green technology in the world. It, too, stands to benefit financially from cap and trade, as Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly has noted, connecting dots others won't.

Gore's altruism is phony. According to a March 6 Bloomberg report, Gore invested $35 million of his own money not in green nonprofits, but with the very profitable Capricorn Investment Group LLC, a Palo Alto, Calif., firm that directs clients to green investments and invests in makers of environmentally friendly products.

As reported on Green Hell Blog, Capricorn was founded by the billionaire former president of eBay Inc., Jeffrey Skoll, who also happens to be an executive producer of Gore's Oscar-winning documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth."

Gore has not taken a vow of poverty even as he advocates legislation that will push millions into it. He has said greed and corporate profits are behind the studies disproving his alarmism. Maybe it's his desire for profits that's behind his manipulation of the truth.
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Obama sows seeds of demise - and the bigger the ego the harder the fall

from The Hill
By Dick Morris

When the Obama administration crashes and burns, with approval ratings that fall through the floor, political scientists can trace its demise to its first hundred days. While Americans are careful not to consign a presidency they desperately need to succeed to the dustbin of history, the fact is that this president has moved — on issue after issue — in precisely the opposite direction of what the people want him to do.

Right now, Obama’s ratings must be pleasing to his eye. Voters like him and his wife immensely and approve of his activism in the face of the economic crisis. While polls show big doubts about what he is doing, the overwhelming sense is to let him have his way and pray that it works.

But beneath this superficial support, Obama’s specific policies run afoul of the very deeply felt convictions of American voters. For example, the most recent Rasmussen Poll asked voters if they wanted an economic system of complete free enterprise or preferred more government involvement in managing the economy. By 77-19, they voted against a government role, up seven points from last month.

And in the Fox News poll — the very same survey that gave Obama a 62 percent approval rating and reported that 68 percent of voters are “satisfied” with his first hundred days — voters, by 50-38, supported a smaller government that offered fewer services over a larger government that provided more.

By 42-8, the Fox News poll (conducted on April 22-23) found that voters felt Obama had expanded government rather than contracted it (42 percent said it was the same size) and, by 46-30, reported believing that big government was more of a danger to the nation than big business. (By 50-23, they said Obama felt big business was more dangerous.)

By 62-20, they said government spending, under Obama, was “out of control.”

So if voters differ so fundamentally with the president on the very essence of his program, why do they accord him high ratings? They are like the recently married bride who took her vows 100 days ago. It would be a disaster for her life if she decides that she really doesn’t like her husband. But she keeps noticing things about him that she can’t stand. It will be a while before she walks out the door or even comes to terms with her own doubts, but it is probably inevitable that she will.

For Americans to conclude that they disapprove of their president in the midst of an earth-shaking crisis is very difficult. But as Obama’s daily line moves from “I inherited this mess” to “There are faint signs of light,” the clock starts ticking. If there is no recovery for the next six months — and I don’t think there will be — Obama will inevitably become part of the problem, not part of the solution.

And then will come his heavy lifting. He has yet to raise taxes, regiment healthcare or provide amnesty for illegal immigrants. He hasn’t closed down the car companies he now runs and he has not yet forced a 50 percent hike in utility bills with his cap-and-trade legislation. These are all the goodies he has in store for us all.

Obama’s very activism these days arrogates to himself the blame for the success or failure of his policies. Their outcome will determine his outcome, and there is no way it will be positive.

Why?

• You can’t borrow as much as he will need to without raising interest rates that hurt the economy;

• The massive amount of spending will trigger runaway inflation once the economy starts to recover;

• His overhaul of the tax code (still in the planning phases) and his intervention in corporate management will create such business uncertainty that nobody will invest in anything until they see the lay of the land;

• His bank program is designed to help banks, but not to catalyze consumer lending. And his proposal for securitization of consumer loans won’t work and is just what got us into this situation.

So Mr. Obama should enjoy his poll numbers while he may.

Morris, a former adviser to Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and President Bill Clinton, is the author of Outrage. To get all of Dick Morris’s and Eileen McGann’s columns for free by e-mail or to order a signed copy of their new best-selling book, Fleeced, go to dickmorris.com .
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EPA Fines Alaska over Mount Redoubt Volcanic Emissions

Volcanic eruption also violates conditions of Obama's new Cap and Trade Law

ANCHORAGE, Alaska – I'm obviously being facetious, but I'm trying to point out not only how absurd the government has become, but how extreme some of their agencies are. The Cap and Trade Law will increase the cost on all sources of energy, which will ultimately increase the cost of everything consumers buy. Obama pledged that he wouldn't raise taxes on 95% percent of Americans. Well, that was a lie. Cap and Trade is a Tax, and it will affect 100% of the American people. The sad thing is it will hurt poor people and fixed income people like senior citizens the most.

Obama is on a spending and taxing spree. He is taxing everything in sight but trying to disguise it as something we all need and convince everyone that it is in their best interest.

For an example of this government stupidity, the EPA will be issuing fines to farmers for dust pollution. Yes, they must control their dust! That's what the government and the EPA is worried about now. Yet, the four or five eruptions this past week from this Alaskan Volcano probably added more particulates, including toxic gases, into the air than a combined 10 years of farming in the U.S..

You'll never see the Global Warming Whores like Al Gore ever include the data from Volcanic evruptions when they are convincing you that man is having such a devastating effect on pollution and Global Warming. Volcanic gases consist of water vapor, carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide. Man-made carbon dioxide emissions are dwarfed by the amount that volcanic eruptions across this planet create.

Hey, maybe we can get our government to pass laws regulating volcanic eruptions. Why not? They regulate everything else.
Rees

Now, back to being serious.

Yahoo News
from Associated Press
March 27, 2009

ANCHORAGE, Alaska – Another volcanic explosion at Alaska's Mount Redoubt has sent an ash cloud 50,000 feet above sea level.

The National Weather Service says ash from a Friday morning eruption and smaller ones overnight were expected to miss Anchorage but could fall on more sparsely populated areas north of the state's largest city.

The other eruptions occurred less than an hour apart late Thursday and early Friday.
Since the series of eruptions began Sunday night, the volcano has had several bursts. One on Thursday sent ash 65,000 feet high. The last round of activity at the volcano was during a four-month period in 1989-90.
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Mitt Romney on Larry King Live 3/19 - 2 Parts

Cap-and-Trade's Regressive Tax

by Jillian Bandes
from Townhall.com
March 21, 2009

A new study released by the Tax Foundation details just how regressive the proposed cap-and-trade legislation will be on American families, a plan the Obama administration hopes to implement by the end of the year. According to the Tax Foundation, the bottom 20% of income earners would pay 6.2% of their income towards the tax, while the top 20% of income earners will pay 1.4%.

“They can talk all they want about offsets and other benefits that they plan to give the poor to make up for this new additional heavy tax burden. This is a very real and immediate tax imposed on working families, and then there is a future promise of some theoretical benefit or handout that will somehow make it all better,” said Landrith. “Con men usually make the argument better than that.”

The Tax Foundation’s report claimed that on average, the cost of Obama’s cap-and-trade scheme will cost each household $1,218, with the heaviest burden on single-parent households and those living alone. Others who would be most affected include those under 25 and over 75 years of age and those in southern states, according to Matt Moon, manager of media relations at the Tax Foundation.

Rep Pitts, (R-Penn), a member of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, said it was obvious that cap-and-trade system would adversely affect those with low incomes.

“Everyone uses energy, but lower income people spend a higher percentage of their income on energy. These families would see prices rise on all of the products they purchase—anything that requires energy to be manufactured, grown, produced, or shipped—in short, everything,” he said.

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