The titanic tip of the climate spending iceberg

© www.acting-man.com
The dawning of reality, a very cold prospect.

    
Lock­heed Mar­tin, a recent Wash­ing­ton Post arti­cle notes, is get­ting into renew­able energy, nuclear fusion, "sus­tain­abil­ity" and even fish farm­ing projects, to aug­ment its reduced defense prof­its. The com­pany plans to forge new ties with Defense Depart­ment and other Obama ini­tia­tives, based on a shared belief in man­made cli­mate change as a crit­i­cal secu­rity and plan­e­tary threat. It is charg­ing ahead where other defense con­trac­tors have failed, con­fi­dent that its exper­tise, lob­by­ing skills and "socially respon­si­ble" com­mit­ment to pre­vent­ing cli­mate chaos will land it plen­ti­ful con­tracts and subsidies.

© futureofwork.glider.com
As below, not above.

    
As with its polar coun­ter­parts, 90% of the titanic cli­mate fund­ing ice­berg is invis­i­ble to most cit­i­zens, busi­ness­men and politi­cians. The Lock­heed action is the mere tip of the icy mountaintop.

The multi-billion-dollar agenda reflects the Obama Administration's com­mit­ment to using cli­mate change to rad­i­cally trans­form Amer­ica. It reflects a deter­mi­na­tion to make the cli­mate cri­sis indus­try so enor­mous that no one will be able to tear it down, even as com­puter mod­els and dis­as­ter claims become less and less cred­i­ble - and even if Repub­li­cans con­trol Con­gress and the White House after 2016. Lock­heed is merely the lat­est in a long list of reg­u­la­tors, researchers, uni­ver­si­ties, busi­nesses, man­u­fac­tur­ers, pres­sure groups, jour­nal­ists and politi­cians with such strong mon­e­tary, rep­u­ta­tional and author­ity inter­ests in alarmism that they will defend its tenets and largesse tooth and nail.

Above all, it reflects a con­vic­tion that alarmists have a right to con­trol our energy use, lives, liveli­hoods and liv­ing stan­dards, with no trans­parency and no account­abil­ity for mis­takes they make or dam­age they inflict on dis­fa­vored indus­tries and fam­i­lies. And they are pur­su­ing this agenda despite global warm­ing again being dead last in the lat­est Gallup poll of 15 issues of great­est con­cern to Amer­i­cans: only 25% say they worry about it "a great deal," despite steady hys­te­ria; 24% are "not at all" wor­ried about the cli­mate. By com­par­i­son, 46% per­cent worry a great deal about the size and power of the fed­eral government.

But Cli­mate Cri­sis, Inc. is using our tax and con­sumer dol­lars to advance six simul­ta­ne­ous strategies.

1) Cli­mate research. The US gov­ern­ment spends $2.5 bil­lion per year on research that focuses on car­bon diox­ide, ignores pow­er­ful nat­ural forces that have always dri­ven cli­mate change, and gen­er­ates numer­ous reports and press releases warn­ing of record high tem­per­a­tures, melt­ing ice­caps, ris­ing seas, stronger storms, more droughts and other "unprece­dented" crises. The claims are erro­neous and deceitful.

They are con­sis­tently con­tra­dicted by actual cli­mate and weather records, and so alarmists increas­ingly empha­size com­puter mod­els that rein­vent and sub­sti­tute for real­ity. Penn State mod­eler Michael Mann has col­lected mil­lions for headline-grabbing work like his lat­est asser­tion that the Gulf Stream is slow­ing - con­trary to 20 years of actual mea­sure­ments that show no change. For­mer NASA astronomer James Hansen received a ques­tion­able $250,000 Heinz Award from Sec­re­tary of State John Kerry's wife, for his cli­mate cri­sis and anti-coal advo­cacy. Al Gore and 350.org also rake in mil­lions. Alarmist sci­en­tists and insti­tu­tions seek bil­lions more, while vir­tu­ally no gov­ern­ment money goes to research into nat­ural forces.

2) Renew­able energy research and imple­men­ta­tion grants, loans, sub­si­dies and man­dates drive projects to replace hydro­car­bons that are still abun­dant and still 82% of all US energy con­sumed. Many recip­i­ents went bank­rupt despite huge tax­payer grants and loan guar­an­tees. Wind tur­bine instal­la­tions butcher mil­lions of birds and bats annu­ally, but are exempt from Endan­gered Species Act fines and penalties.


Tesla Motors received $256 million to pro­duce elec­tric cars for wealthy elites who receive $2,500 to $7,500 in tax cred­its, plus free charg­ing and express lane access. From 2007 to 2013, corn ethanol inter­ests spent $158 mil­lion lob­by­ing for more "green" man­dates and sub­si­dies - and $6 mil­lion in cam­paign con­tri­bu­tions - for a fuel that reduces mileage, dam­ages engines, requires enor­mous amounts of land, water and fer­til­izer, and from stalk to tailpipe emits more car­bon diox­ide than gaso­line. Gen­eral Elec­tric spends tens of mil­lions lob­by­ing for more tax­payer renew­able energy dol­lars; so do many other com­pa­nies. The pay­offs add up to tens of bil­lions of dol­lars, from tax­pay­ers and consumers.
3) Reg­u­la­tory fiats increas­ingly sub­sti­tute for laws and car­bon taxes that Con­gress refuses to enact, due to con­cerns about eco­nomic and employ­ment impacts, and because China, India and other coun­tries' CO2 emis­sions dwarf America's. EPA's war on coal has already claimed thou­sands of jobs, raised elec­tric­ity costs for mil­lions of busi­nesses and fam­i­lies, and adversely affected liv­ing stan­dards, health and wel­fare for mil­lions of fam­i­lies. The White House and EPA are also tar­get­ing oil and gas drilling and fracking.

Now the Obama Admin­is­tra­tion is unleash­ing a host of new man­dates and stan­dards, based on arbi­trary "social cost of car­bon" cal­cu­la­tions that assume fos­sil fuel use imposes numer­ous cli­mate and other costs, but brings min­i­mal or no eco­nomic or soci­etal ben­e­fits. The rules will require oner­ous new energy effi­ciency and CO2 emis­sion reduc­tion stan­dards that will send con­sumer costs sky­rock­et­ing, while chan­nel­ing bil­lions of dol­lars to retail­ers, installers, banks and mostly over­seas manufacturers.

As ana­lyst Roger Bezdek explains, water heaters that now cost $675 - 1,500 will soon cost $1,200 - 2,450 - with new­fan­gled exhaust fans, vent pipes and con­den­sate removal sys­tems. Pickup trucks with more fuel effi­ciency and less power will nearly dou­ble in price. Microwaves, cell phones, vac­uum clean­ers, hair dry­ers, toast­ers, cof­fee pots, lawn mow­ers, pho­to­copiers, tele­vi­sions and almost every­thing else will cost far more. Poor and mid­dle class fam­i­lies will get clob­bered, to pre­vent per­haps 5% of the USA's 15% of all human CO2 emis­sions toward 0.04% of atmos­pheric CO2, and maybe 0.00001 degrees of warming.

4) A new UN cli­mate treaty would limit fos­sil fuel use by devel­oped coun­tries, place no bind­ing lim­its or timeta­bles on devel­op­ing nations, and redis­trib­ute hun­dreds of bil­lions of dol­lars to poor coun­tries that claim they have been harmed by emis­sions and warm­ing due to rich coun­try hydro­car­bon use. Even IPCC offi­cials now openly brag that cli­mate pol­icy has "almost noth­ing" to do with pro­tect­ing the envi­ron­ment - and every­thing to do with inten­tion­ally trans­form­ing the global econ­omy and redis­trib­ut­ing its wealth.

5) Vicious per­sonal attacks con­tinue on sci­en­tists, busi­ness­men, politi­cians and oth­ers who dis­agree pub­licly with the cat­e­chism of cli­mate cat­a­clysm. Alarmist pres­sure groups and Demo­c­rat mem­bers of Con­gress are out to destroy the stud­ies, fund­ing, rep­u­ta­tions and careers of all who dare chal­lenge cli­mate dis­as­ter tau­tolo­gies. At Pres­i­dent Obama's behest, even dis­as­ter aid agen­cies are pil­ing on.

New FEMA rules require that any state seek­ing dis­as­ter pre­pared­ness funds from the Fed­eral Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency must first assess how cli­mate change threat­ens their com­mu­ni­ties. This will mean rely­ing on dis­cred­ited, worth­less alarmist mod­els that rou­tinely spew out pre­dic­tions unre­lated to real­ity. It likely means no fed­eral funds will go to states that include or focus on nat­ural causes, his­tor­i­cal records or mod­els that have bet­ter track records than those employed by the IPCC, EPA and President.


6) Thought con­trol. In addi­tion to vil­i­fy­ing cli­mate chaos skep­tics, alarmists are deter­mined to con­trol all think­ing on the sub­ject. They are ter­ri­fied that peo­ple will find real­ist analy­ses and expla­na­tions far more per­sua­sive. They refuse to debate skep­tics, respond to NIPCC and other stud­ies exam­in­ing nat­ural cli­mate change and car­bon diox­ide ben­e­fits to wildlife and agri­cul­ture, or even admit there is no consensus.
They want the news media to ignore us but can­not put the inter­net genie back in the bot­tle. The White House is try­ing, though. It even sent picketers to FCC Chair­man Tom Wheeler's home, to demand that he knuckle under and apply 1930s' tele­phone laws to the inter­net, as a first step in content control.

States must refuse to play the cli­mate cri­sis game. Through law­suits, hear­ings, inves­ti­ga­tions and other actions, gov­er­nors, leg­is­la­tors, AGs and other offi­cials can delay EPA dik­tats, edu­cate cit­i­zens about solar and other nat­ural forces, and explain the huge costs and tri­fling ben­e­fits of these dra­con­ian regulations.

Con­gress should hold hear­ings, demand an account­ing of agency expen­di­tures, require solid evi­dence for every cli­mate claim and reg­u­la­tion, and cross-examine Admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials on details. It should slash EPA and other agency bud­gets, so they can­not keep giv­ing bil­lions to pres­sure groups, pro­pa­gan­dists and attack dogs. Hon­esty, trans­parency, account­abil­ity and a much shorter leash are long overdue.

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