The Cost of Obama’s Green Appeasement

Bob Beauprez

This weekend’s Boston Globe Magazine will feature a gargantuan, 3600 word homage to rabid environmentalism in the form of a profile on 350.org founder Bill McKibben. The piece and President Obama’s disastrously short-sighted decision Wednesday to reject permitting for Transcanada’s Keystone XL pipeline are both symptomatic of a much larger ailment plaguing liberal politicking in general and the Obama administration in particular: a continual willingness to sacrifice the well-being of the majority for an elite, hypocritical minority.

The Keystone project, a 1,700-mile pipeline that would bring crude from Alberta’s oil sands to U.S. refineries on the Gulf Coast, has the potential to create hundreds of thousands of direct and indirect decent-paying American jobs and reduce our dependency on the oil of despotic, anti-western nations with questionably sane leaders. But radical environmentalists like McKibben – a second generation jailed protestor and disciple of John Kerry – seem either not to know or else don’t care what real poverty looks like. And he is among the leaders of the voting contingent to which our president is pandering – purely for political reasons.

The Harvard-educated McKibben, who was among the 1,252 people arrested during protests against the pipeline outside the White House last year, is on a mission to “end the tyranny of oil” and coal. Along with his worship of the false god of climate change, McGibben like many leftist elitists is committed to “social justice” according to the Globe. What McGibben and his ilk overlook is that real social justice begins with a job, the dignity of work, and the ability to care for and feed one’s own family. McGibben & Company’s quest is anti-jobs and therefore anti true social justice.

According to analysis released just this week by the Brookings Institution, child poverty has risen 4% in the past five years – an addition of 3 million impoverished kids, most of them added in the time Obama has been in office. The state with the highest rate? Mississippi, in the Gulf Coast – the very region in which many of the Keystone XL’s quarter-million jobs would have been created, and where the Obama administration’s six-month deepwater drilling moratorium cost Americans tens of thousands of jobs. T.V. talk show host – and Obama supporter – Tavis Smiley said recently, “Many of the ‘new poor’ are the former middle class.”

Obama claims to be “all in” for domestic energy production and job creation, but when handed a no-brainer like Keystone, he choose to side with a radical minority of his base. Why? As Michael Brune, the head of the Sierra Club said, “it shores up the base, definitely.”

On Capitol Hill there has been almost universal silence from Congressional Democrats who apparently are listening to that same “base.” So, what does that say about what agenda really drives the Democratic Party? Politico.com says that according to a “top Democratic fundraiser” the issues driving the party donors are “Keystone and gay marriage.”

Obama and the Democrats may soon grow to regret the Keystone decision. There are about 25 million Americans unemployed, under employed, or that have given up even trying to find a job. If you’re out of work or struggling to get by, a politician focused on killing jobs and promoting gay marriage probably doesn’t sound like one that has your best interests at heart.

Besides all jobs we now stand to lose out on, we also face a considerable new security challenge in the form of a bolstered China. As Rep. Steve King of Iowa said this week: “If we block [the pipeline] that oil will certainly go to China. It will enrich their economy.” Canadian Prime Minster Stephen Harper has no intention of waiting for the United States to reverse this wrongheaded move; his goal is to see Canada at the forefront of the energy game. Harper will travel to Beijing next month, where he will likely take part in talks on selling his country’s vast oil supplies to the Chinese government. And China is serious about quenching its thirst for oil.

“Chinese firms aren’t just buying stakes, they’re buying whole operations,” reads a piece this month in Canada’s daily Globe and Mail. “It’s a new phase of China’s step-by-step Canada strategy. It will change not just the oil patch but Canada’s foreign policy. And a game of international energy politics is afoot in Canada’s West.”

When Obama finally turns around for a gander at his fellow Washington backers on this latest political choice, he will see he has precious few.

http://finance.townhall.com/columnists/bobbeauprez/2012/01/29/the_cost_of_obamas_green_appeasement/page/full/

Spain Suspends Subsidies for New Renewable Energy Power Plants

Spain halted subsidies for renewable energy projects to help curb its budget deficit and rein in power-system borrowings backed by the state that reached 24 billion euros ($31 billion) at the end of 2011.

“What is today an energy problem could become a financial problem,” Industry Minister Jose Manuel Soria said in Madrid. The government passed a decree today stopping subsidies for new wind, solar, co-generation or waste incineration plants.

The system’s debts were racked up as revenue from state- controlled prices failed to cover the cost of delivering power. Costs have swollen in the past five years because of an increase in regulated payments for the power grid, support for Spanish coal mines and subsidies for renewable energy plants.

“It’s clear they have to make major cuts,” said Francisco Salvador, a strategist at FGA/MG Valores in Madrid. “The government has already ruled out a significant increase in prices, so the cuts will fall in many places and the spotlight is on renewables, but not just on renewables.”

Renewables companies fell on the Spanish action. Vestas Wind Systems A/S (VWS), the biggest wind-turbine maker, slid as much as 2.9 percent in Copenhagen. Abengoa SA, a Spanish engineering firm specializing in solar mirrors, dropped as much as 2.2 percent in Madrid and Iberdrola SA (IBE), the biggest renewable energy producer based in Bilbao, declined as much as 1.5 percent.

First Step

Spain’s decision is a “first step” to rein in debts, and officials are working on a broader package of measures, Soria said. The nation isn’t planning a levy on hydropower or nuclear plants, nor will it take on power-system liabilities, he said.

The Spanish action follows Germany’s announcement last week that it would phase out support for solar panels by 2017 and the U.K.’s legal battle to reduce its subsidies for the industry.

Spain was an early mover in developing renewables plants, and support for wind energy helped Iberdrola become the world’s biggest producer of clean power, with plants in the U.S. and Brazil. The industry sustains about 110,000 Spanish jobs, according to the Renewable Energy Producers Association.

The government is wrestling with competing priorities as it struggles to convince investors it can meet a target to cut the budget deficit to 4.4 percent of gross domestic product this year, from 8 percent last year, while trying to create jobs in a country where 23 percent of workers are unemployed.

Horse Bolted

“This is shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted,” said Peter Sweatman, chief executive officer of consultant Climate Strategy. “The risk is that Spanish firms that are recognized global leaders in renewable energy feel their position undermined by lack of domestic support.”

Generating capacity is about twice Spain’s peak demand following a boom in investment in solar panel installations and combined-cycle gas-fired plants, while the country is ahead of its targets for clean power production, Soria said. The suspension won’t affect operating plants or projects that have already been approved for subsidies by the government, he said.

“It’s a real positive for the developers, the owners of assets, because it removes the risk of retroactive cuts,” said Sean McLoughlin, a renewable energy analyst at HSBC Plc. “The government could certainly have done that again when you think of how much it’s costing them but have decided not to. This suggests that the government is listening to the industry.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Ben Sills in Madrid at bsills@bloomberg.net

President Obama’s Very Dishonest Campaign Ad Regarding Energy

Obama clean energy ad airing in Va.

A new ad from President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign that touts his energy and ethics record began airing in Virginia this week even as Republican blasted him over a decision to reject a permit for a proposed oil pipeline from Canada.

The 30-second spot (see below) makes a case that Obama’s policies have promoted clean energy jobs and reduced the nation’s dependence on foreign oil while enduring unfounded attacks funded by wealthy energy industry officials.

[…]

This campaign ad is nothing but a collection of falsehoods.

Falsehood #1: “Secretive oil billionaires attacking President Obama”… The Koch brothers (and the oil & gas industry in general) have been anything but secretive in their attacks on President Obama.

Falsehood #2: The ad implies that President Obama has created 2.7 million “clean energy industry” jobs.

The 2.7 million figure is purportedly cited from a Brookings report. The report said that there currently are 2.7 million jobs in America that “produce goods and services with an environmental benefit.”

The clean economy, which employs some 2.7 million workers, encompasses a signifi cant number of jobs in establishments spread across a diverse group of industries. (Page 4)

The report says that the “clean economy establishments added half a million jobs between 2003 and 2010.” So… Obama didn’t even “create” half a million “clean energy jobs.” He didn’t even create half a million clean economy jobs. The Brookings report refers to “clean economy” not “clean energy” jobs. The vast majority of the “clean economy” jobs are not in energy… And almost all of those jobs were created before Obama took office.

More than 82% of the “clean economy” jobs listed in the report have nothing to do with energy production…

Waste Management & Treatment … 386,116 … 14%
Public Mass Transit … 350,547 … 13%
Conservation … 314,983 … 12%
Energy Saving Building Materials … 161,896 … 6%
Regulation & Compliance … 141,890 … 5%
Professional Environmental Services … 141,046 … 5%
Organic Food & Farming … 129,956 … 5%
Recycling & Reuse … 129,252 … 5%
Green Consumer Products … 77,264 … 3%
Green Building Materials … 76,577 … 3%
HVAC … 73,600 … 3%
Sustainable Forestry Products … 61,054 … 2%
Recycled Content Products … 59,712 … 2%
Green Architecture … 56,190 … 2%
Air & Water Purification … 24,930 … 1%
Green Chemical Products … 22,622 … 1%
Total … 2,207,635 … 82%

Tuesday’s ‘State of Solyndra’ Speech

Oh my, The Hill reports,

President Obama will unveil his election-year energy agenda Tuesday night in his State of the Union address.

In a video message [below] sent to supporters Saturday, Obama said the speech will lay out an economic platform that includes “American energy, fueled by homegrown and alternative energy sources.”

Obama is also likely to tout achievements such as the increase in auto mileage standards and federal support for clean energy projects as he mounts his case for reelection.

The real mystery is whether the president will map out major new energy proposals or simply offer a robust defense — and maybe repackaging — of existing policies…

It is time to remember that President Obama used his first two State of the Union speeches (the first actually not called that, but…) and, to show his seriousness, his first address to the UN General Assembly, to upbraid Congress with the same, very deliberately worded demand for “legislation that will finally make clean energy the profitable kind of energy in America”.

Well, we’ve all decoded that one by now. It means making the stuff that works cost prohibitive — “bankrupt[ing]” it, in his famous words to the San Francisco Chronicle editorial board — while propping up the uneconomical stuff which doesn’t work. Sealing off federal land for hydrocarbon projects while fast-tracking land-grabbing and bird/bat chopping solar and wind. Which happen to disproportionately be “investments” of his campaign bundlers and other supporters.

Here’s to hoping those in attendance and, dare I wish for this, the media, make a mockery of such a State of Solyndra speech.

h/t JunkScience.com

MPS’ BID TO HALT HOT AIR CHRIS HUHNE’S WIND FARMS

Chris Huhne wants a major expansion of onshore wind farm development to meet green targets

Sunday January 22,2012
By Kirsty Buchanan

A NEW cross-party campaign group is to be set up in Westminster to demand the Government drops its support for thousands more wind farms.

Energy Secretary Chris Huhne wants a major expansion of onshore wind farm development to help Britain meet green targets.

Backbench MPs from all parties will brand heavily subsidised onshore wind farms inefficient, expensive and a major blight on the landscape.

They will urge Ministers to re-think a policy which will add £280 to the annual energy bill of hard-pressed homeowners by 2020.

Tory Chris Heaton-Harris, Daventry MP, is the driving force behind the new parliamentary pressure group.

He said: “Ministers need to look at this policy again. It is an inefficient technology, it adds to the bills of consumers, it harms the balance of the National Grid, it is the wrong renew­able for the UK. We need a change of policy.” Britain is the only country in the world to have signed up to cut CO2 emissions by 2050. The pledge, enshrined in the Climate Change Act, requires a major expansion of wind farm development bankrolled by taxpayer subsidies.

It is an inefficient technology, it adds to the bills of consumers, it harms the balance of the National Grid, it is the wrong renew­able for the UK

Official figures from the Department for Energy and Climate Change suggest up to 32,000 more wind turbines could be erected in the next 20 years, of which 6,000 would be onshore sites.

At present, there are about 3,000 onshore wind turbines with a few hundred off shore. They generate less than two per cent of the nation’s power and are frequently brought to a standstill by too cold or too windy conditions.

MPs have grown alarmed by a trend for onshore wind farm applications to be approved on appeal because of Mr Huhne’s target, even when inspectors concede they will be a blight.

Last month a planning inspector approved a turbine farm overlooking the Battle of Naseby site in Northamptonshire, even after he admitted it would “harm” the historic setting. The proposal from German firm E.ON for six 415ft turbines was rejected by Daventry District Council but national planning inspector Paul Griffiths overturned the ruling.

In the Lords last week, Lord Naseby, patron of the Naseby Battlefield Project, urged Communities Secretary Eric Pickles to call in the decision, which he said would devastate the view of the Civil War battlefield.

“We do not have the funds to challenge in the High Court. However, the Secretary of State has the right to call it in at any point,” he said.

Each year thousands of tourists visit the site of the 1645 battle in which Oliver Cromwell’s New Model Army destroyed the forces of King Charles I.

It was a turning point in British history, and the site was heralded as “the birthplace of democracy in England” by Lord Peter Brooke of Sutton Mandeville.

Raising the issue in the Commons last month, Mr Heaton-Harris, whose constituency includes the site, said it was “unbelievable that one planning inspector can overrule all elements of democracy” because of the “particularly poor policies we have”. He added: “That is what upsets people about the onshore wind industry. The sooner that can change, the better.”

Minister ponders the need for more Wind Farms

The World Council for Nature (WCFN) supports the Spanish government’s no-nonsense assessment of the energy situation in Spain. In two separate interviews on January 18th and 19th, the Energy Minister of the new government declared that there may be no need in his country for more investment in renewable energy, at least for several years.

On Wednesday José Manuel Soria, Minister of Industry, Energy and Tourism, said on Spanish television “TVE Canal 24h” that Spain has as much as 100,000 MW of generating capacity, while its peak demand is less than half that figure. This is why his Ministry is wondering, he announced, if Spain must keep adding new capacity, especially in the subsidized renewable sector which is the most costly of all. (1)

The following day, on TV channel “Telecinco”, he repeated the same considerations, and insisted that Spain must remain competitive on the global market. Our electricity, he said, costs on average more than that of France, one of our principal competitors, and this is hurting our economy as production processes generally have important energy components. (2)

He also pointed out that, if Spain would stop now adding to its generating capacity in renewable energy, “it would take eight or ten years for the European average to reach our level”. (3)

Commenting on the story, a regional newspaper reminded its readers that Spain has an accumulated “tariff deficit” of 24 billion euros. This deficit is the difference between what electricity has cost to produce in recent years, and what has been charged to consumers. (4) “Subsidies to renewable energy have caused this gaping hole in the country’s finances”, adds Mark Duchamp, chairman of WCFN, “and this weighs on the sovereign debt”.

The World Council for Nature is supporting a platform, SALVAREXT, whose objective is to save “the European Serengeti”. This is the byname some conservationists gave to Extremadura, a region of Spain which shelters five species of eagles, three of vultures, two of storks, a critically important population of great bustards, 80,000 wintering cranes, iberian linces, etc.

“Spared from wind farms to date, this vital habitat is about to become a minefield for birds”, laments Duchamp. “As many as 97 wind farm projects are in the pipeline, totalling 1,700 MW. Given the low winds prevailing in Extremadura, the average load factor would be 15% at best, i.e. 255 MW. This is less than 50% of what can produce reliably, on demand, a single gas-fired power plant. Is it worth destroying Europe’s most important bird sanctuary for so little electricity?” asks Mark. WCFN hopes that Energy Minister Soria will effectively stop subsidizing this crime against Biodiversity.

Contact:

Mark Duchamp +34 693 643 736
World Council for Nature
world.council.for.nature@gmail.com
http://www.wcfn.org

(1) – Europapress, 18 January 2012: http://www.europapress.es/economia/energia-00341/noticia-economia-energia-soria-pregunta-si-debe-seguir-aumentando-instalacion-renovables-prima-20120118194509.html

(2) – Europapress, 19 January 2012: http://www.europapress.es/economia/energia-00341/noticia-economia-energia-soria-duda-necesidad-instalar-mas-potencia-electrica-prima-20120119104638.html

(3) – Newspaper La Expansión, 19 January 2012: http://www.expansion.com/2012/01/19/empresas/energia/1326964046.html?a=bf9d1bf77a2cf18c277eca6ea17b35ec&t=1327035615

(4) – Newspaper La Opinión de La Coruña, 20 January 2012: http://www.laopinioncoruna.es/economia/2012/01/20/gobierno-abre-puerta-frenar-nuevos-parques-eolicos-caida-consumo/571674.html

Destroying America by Denying Access to Energy

By Alan Caruba

It is the crime of the century that America, home to some of the world’s greatest reserves of coal, natural gas and oil, is being deliberately destroyed by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of the Interior as they do everything in their power to restrict access and drive energy producers out of business.

It is common sense that a nation that cannot produce sufficient electricity to turn on its lights and power its manufacturing sector will be destroyed if current Obama administration regulations and actions continue. Our vital transportation sector and all others that utilize petroleum-based products will suffer, too.

While President Obama babbles about millionaires and billionaires, everyone will be impoverished by the loss of jobs and revenue our energy sector produces now and can produce in the future.

This isn’t an “energy policy.” It’s a “no-energy policy” and it is a guarantee of economic disaster.

Obama’s decision to reject a permit for Canada’s XL Keystone pipeline is just one example. It is a job-killer and a revenue-killer. There are thousands of pipelines serving America’s energy needs and the XL Keystone pipeline would ensure that Canada’s own vast energy reserves would flow to America. It is one of our key trade partners and Obama has slapped it in the face.

In early January, Ken Salazar, the Secretary of the Interior, announced a new 20-year, million-acre ban on uranium mining for federal lands in Arizona, despite the fact that these lands hold the highest-grade of known uranium deposits in the United States. It is an outrage that a new GOP-Congress will have to overturn if the nation is to be assured of sufficient uranium to power its nuclear plants and for weapons development. If the ban remains, these uranium resources would be inaccessible until 2023!

Tom Pyle, president of the Institute for Energy Research said that Salazar’s announcement “further compounds a man-made energy crisis that has been planned and executed in Washington, D.C.”

At the same time we are learning of enormous natural gas discoveries that can reduce our energy bills and turn sleeping little towns into boomtowns, environmental organizations have launched a vast propaganda campaign against “fracking”, a technology that has been safely used for more than fifty years. Their claims about dangers to the nation’s supply of fresh water are baseless. Their claims that fracking has caused earthquakes in Ohio are absurd.

Need it be said that the Environmental Protection Agency has turned its eyes on fracking and is working on a report due later this year that will likely call for harsh crackdowns on its use and more regulations to throttle the expansion of natural gas extraction?

The EPA has just released a report of those power plants that top the list of its regulation of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. There is no basis in science to justify the reduction of CO2. Indeed, since it is a gas on which all vegetation depends, much as oxygen is vital to all animal life, reducing it would impair great crop yields and healthier forests.

These regulations are based on the global warming hoax that blamed CO2 for warming the earth. That is utterly false. The Earth is currently in a perfectly natural cooling cycle and the climate of the Earth is almost entirely based on the Sun—solar radiation—along with the actions of oceans, clouds, and even volcanic activity that spews tons of particulates into the atmosphere.

Coal-fired power plants account for fifty percent of all the electricity generated in the United States. Fifty percent! And yet the EPA is determined to shut down dozens of them providing that vital factor in the lives of all Americans and the economy, nor does this take into account the billions that energy producers have spent to upgrade their technology to reduce emissions.

The Obama administration fuel economy agenda, a call for 54.5 miles per gallon ignores simple physics. There is a finite amount of energy a gallon of gas can generate. If you dilute it with ethanol as is currently required, you get even less mileage. The administration is trying to circumvent Congress by issuing standards based on regulating “greenhouse gas emissions”, but there is no need for this. It is a false argument. The Center for Automotive Research says that the proposed new standards would cause the retail price of average motor vehicles to increase by more than $11,000.

Americans and the nation’s future are being victimized by Obama administration policies. The 18th annual Index of Economic Freedom, was released on January 12th by The Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal, measures the many factors that contribute to the economic health of a nation—things like property rights, regulatory efficiency, open markets, free trade and labor policies.

Economic freedom is declining worldwide as governments try to spend their way out of the global recession. The United States fell to 10th place. In 2009 it ranked 6th, in 2010 it was 8th, and in 2011, it was 9th.

We are witnessing the deliberate murder of a superpower.

Green Subsidy Farms Harvest £25 Million For Sweet F.A.

The Times, 18 January 2012

Tim Webb

Wind farms are receiving millions of pounds to shut down when the weather is too windy, The Times has learnt.

Dozens of onshore facilities shared £25 million last year, a 13,733 per cent increase on 2010, after a particularly blustery year, according to the figures released by National Grid.

The payments to stop operating are made by National Grid because it cannot cope with the amount of power being fed on to the system when it is very windy. But experts and consumer groups have accused wind-farm operators of abusing the system by demanding excessive payments.

Ultimately, the cost of being shut down is passed on to households because National Grid charges energy suppliers, who add the levy to bills.

Wind farms already receive large subsidies from consumers because they cost more to operate than coal and gas plants but produce no carbon emissions.

In total last year National Grid paid operators to stop generating for 149,983 megawatt-hours, equivalent to 1.49 per cent of the total electricity generated by Britain’s wind farms. This is equivalent to one large onshore farm being paid to be switched off all year.

It is the first time that National Grid, a FTSE-100 company, has revealed how much it paid wind farms not to operate. Many of the payments are made to onshore wind farms in remote places, like the Scottish Highlands, where the grid has not been properly upgraded.

National Grid argues that it is usually cheaper to pay off wind farms on the occasions when they would be operating at full capacity than spending billions of pounds to strengthen these isolated parts of the grid.

On one of the windiest days in October last year, National Grid paid wind farms £1.6 million, or £361 per MW/h on average, about four times the price that operators would expect to sell their electricity, according to ENDS, the specialist environmental information provider.

Consumer Focus said that wind-farm operators should not be able to hold National Grid to ransom by demanding huge payments in return for not generating electricity.

Richard Hall, head of energy regulation, said: “If wind-farm generators are asked to cut production they will clearly expect some compensation. But to keep costs down for customers we believe this should be at a level which reflects the realistic value of the loss to the company, not an arbitrary level that the firms set themselves.”

Ofgem, the energy regulator, said that it had “long-standing concerns” about the level of payments.

Since 2007 the amount of these “constraint payments” to all power generators has doubled as the amount of renewables being built has risen. Wind farms receive a disproportionately high amount of these payments compared with coal and gas plants.

The size of payments will soar further as Britain tries to meet its target of generating a third of its electricity from renewables, mostly wind farms, by 2020.

Phil Hare, vice-president for northwest Europe for Pöyry Management Consulting, the energy consultant, said: “If wind farms are receiving much more in constraint payments than they would if they sold the electricity, they are making a turn they shouldn’t be.

“By 2020, because of all the wind farms which will be on the system, the ups and downs of power generation will be staggering and very hard to deal with.”

What other industry generates more revenue from not producing a product? BTW, wind is notoriuously unreliable and variable – useless when too weak or too strong and requiring expensive inefficient fossil fuel back up sources to maintain a steady electrical flow on the grid. The other renewables also have issues. the sun shine at most a part of the day and in some siuations and seasons is a minor energy source aat best. Ethanol uses grains that could be used to feed to world’s population or forces prices for the grains to rise all in order to produce a mix that is less efficient than pure gasoline. And it emits more CO2. But don’t tell a green – they live in a virtual world where the sun shines day and night and the wind blows at a steady ideal rate and fossil fules are evil.

Scientists want to indoctrinate climate change in young minds

By Ben Wolfgang The Washington Times

Climate change subscribers say the fight against global warming will require younger soldiers.

On Monday, the National Center for Science Education, a nonprofit group that denounces intelligent design and supports an evolution-only curriculum in the classroom, will expand its mission. The organization of scientists, anthropologists and others is turning its attention to climate change, and it will mount an aggressive effort to teach the nation’s schoolchildren that climate change is real and is being driven by human activity.

“For 20 years, we’ve helped teachers cope with what we can only describe as societal or political problems in teaching evolution. They’re running into the same opposition in teaching climate change,” NCSE Executive Director Eugenie Scott said. “We worry, because of our experience with evolution, that basic science is going to be compromised as a result of this political and ideological opposition. Good science needs to be taught.”

Critics point out important distinctions between the defense of evolution and the promotion of climate change, since the latter carries more obvious and immediate policy implications. Alarmists call for broad federal policies to combat climate change, such as President Obama’s proposed “cap-and-trade” legislation, which is designed to limit carbon emissions. Although that measure is on hold, a law imposed by the European Union requires all airline companies to pay for their carbon emissions during flights in and out of Europe. Officials at the United Nations have even called for a global tax on carbon dioxide emissions.

Ms. Scott maintains that the NCSE won’t advocate for teachers to push liberal policy solutions to climate change, but others fear that students will be targets of political indoctrination.

“If you say it’s man-made, you must be implying some solutions. [Climate change] is taught to promote a particular political point of view, and that’s the problem,” said Kathleen Porter-Magee, senior director of the High Quality Standards Program at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a Washington-based conservative education think tank.

“It’s very different than the evolution debate. The whole evolution versus intelligent design debate very much relates to the issues of separation of church and state. Climate change is different because it doesn’t touch on that at all. It comes from an environmentalist perspective.”

Ms. Porter-Magee said such efforts essentially amount to “the politicization of curriculum.”

Even if schools don’t explicitly call for cap-and-trade or similar measures, she said, students could bombarded with strong subliminal messages to take action against climate change.

Textbooks and other materials geared toward the youngest students already are peddled to school leaders.

The University of California at Berkeley operates the website globalwarmingkids.net, a subsection of its climatechangeeducation.org initiative. On the website, instructors can order “Global Warming for Young Minds,” a handbook aimed at 6- to 10-year-olds. It also offers “Let’s Stop Climate Change” DVDs, in which a hippopotamus named Simon encourages children to take action against global warming.

Despite those efforts, principals, superintendents and school boards retain the final say about what their students are taught. Unlike the fights between evolution and intelligent design, the curriculum has no legal backing.

After a school board in Dover, Pa., voted in 2004 to require that biology classes teach creationism alongside evolution, the issue eventually ended up before a federal judge in a closely watched case with national implications. Judge John E. Jones III ultimately ruled that intelligent design, by its nature, is a religious theory and its teaching in classrooms violated the First Amendment.

“There is no comparable provision for climate change. It’s not unconstitutional to teach bad science,” Ms. Scott said. “I don’t see any legal recourse, as we have with the First Amendment for [the teaching of] evolution.”

With no legal defense, the NCSE and other groups instead will launch a public relations effort. If it is successful, climate change skeptics could become a small minority and might be derided for their beliefs.

——–

Better take an anti throwup med before seeing these:

See the clip here if you have not seen it before http://www.prisonplanet.com/climate-film-depicts-children-assassinated-for-not-reducing-carbon-footprint.html

and this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tm4hp1LPesw

and last but not least:

The photo below is a screen capture of a flier promoting a tradeshow last year put on in Cannes by ACT-Responsible — the ACT stands for “Advertising Community Together.” Kofi Annan was announced as attending.

IPCC’s Claim That Antarctica’s Ice Sheets Are Melting Due To Global Warming Is Found To Be Fraudulent

IPCC science on Antarctica can’t withstand scrutiny of experts and technology – Antarctica’s polar ice caps are not melting and can’t

Recently, we wrote of the bogus science by Josefino Comiso, an IPCC lead author, that attempted to fabricate warming across the Antarctica continent. Either due to extremely sloppy science, or massive stupidity or science corruption, Comiso and his cohorts “found” Antarctica warming and that its polar ice caps were at risk to melting.

Fortunately for the world, the study by the IPCC’s Comiso was thoroughly trashed by experts within the peer-reviewed community. That study has now joined Al Gore’s discredited climate science in the ash heap of history.

With that said, what is the actual temperature situation across the Antarctica continent? Well, the above map provides some insight to actual temperatures. (click on image to enlarge)

The Antarctica area between the two green circles represents the polar area measured by the state-of-the-art NASA satellite. Since 1978, that entire area has been slightly cooling, not warming, as shown in this previous chart. (The satellite is unable to take measurements for the area within the inner green circle – the doughnut hole area.)

There indeed has been some slight warming in the area of the Antarctica Peninsula but the huge mass of ice sheets actually reside in East and West Antarctica, which measurements show to be cooling.

As can be seen, the temperatures (listed by each red circle) during both the warmest and coldest months (January and July) are well below freezing temperatures. The major ice sheets exist in an interior environment where melting can’t occur presently; and, even a future warming of 10 degrees won’t cause any melting.

Simply stated, West and East Antarctica are just too freaking cold for any melting to happen, with the exception of coastal areas that already are affected by moderate maritime temperatures.

Despite this actual empirical evidence, the fraud-centric IPCC and its associated scientists still make claims that Antarctica is warming and its gigantic ice caps will soon melt, thus flooding the world. These are flat-out false claims designed to only promote hysteria.

Note: The red circles on the map represent either manned research stations or automatic weather stations. The three temperatures listed for each circle include the average January, the average July and the average annual temperature. For links to average temperature data for each site, go to: Download Antarctica Stations Temps https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Asac_n1hsvx5dC1nRzYtdU41UU10WUdmR1JrSFRaaHc&hl=en_US#gid=0