CIVIL DEFENSE PERSPECTIVES

March 2008 (vol. 24, #3)
1601 N Tucson Blvd #9, Tucson AZ 85716
c 2007 Physicians for Civil Defense

Before we “voluntarily” reduce our energy use by some 75% to meet politicians' 2050 CO₂ emissions goals (CDP, November 2007), we may discover the effect of having 30% of our energy supply cut off. This could happen within the year.

Thirty percent is the fraction of American energy that has to be imported. It is paid for largely with the product described at www.moneyfactory.gov. U.S. fiat money is taking a drubbing in the global currency markets, as gold bumped over the $1,000/oz level. The banking system (CDP, January 2008) is endangered. The 30% could soon disappear, “purchased by people in countries who are able to pay with good and services and real money, instead of unpayable debt and fiat money,” writes Arthur Robinson (Access to Energy, November 2007).

“The loss of that 30% will make a much larger difference than is realized because a substantial part of the remaining 70% must be used for essential activities.”

“EPA Says Carbon Caps Won't Hurt the Economy Much” (WSJ 3/17/08) as Congress prepares to debate the Lieberman-Warner cap-and-trade bill, which could impose costly new permitting requirements on schools, hospitals, retail stores, and apartment buildings. On the other hand, Obama advisor Jason Grumet said, “This is going to require a kind of social commitment the likes of which we haven't seen in this country since World War II.” The 30% could moot that debate.

The 30% drained $300 billion/yr from our country with oil at $60/barrel–it's now $100–not counting the cost of war.

Political Science

In January, Science ran a 10-page “Newsfocus” on “Science and the Next U.S. President,” with blurbs and photos of most candidates (excluding Ron Paul), most of whom have become irrelevant. “Candidates address issues,” including “how the next Administration should manage science”–presumably along with the economy, agriculture, education, health, etc. The issues of importance to AAAS are government funding, “climate change,” education [in the unchallengeable dogma of Evolution], and embryonic stem-cell research (Science 2008;319:22-31).

In the accompanying editorial, entitled “Science and God in the Election,” Donald Kennedy notes that focus on the religious commitments of candidates is “now endemic to the United States but few other non-Muslim nations.” Thus, we need to examine how their beliefs are related to their answers to “scientific” questions such as when human life begins. His view of orthodox Christianity seems clear. So does his view of globalism and Marxism: the new President, he writes, will work with “leaders of other nations in planning our collective global future” [emphasis added].

“Competent people managing [science policy]...might be more likely to happen with a Hillary Clinton [presidency],” suggested David Moncton of MIT. She claims that, unlike Bush, she'll “ban political appointees from removing scientific conclusions” from government publications. And she'll create “green energy” by taxing oil companies (ibid.).

When in his 30s, “Harvard Law school grad and community organizer” Obama, while discussing “racial disparities,” urged students to “use scientific inquiry to make intelligent public policy.” But he has “suffered some political bumps and scrapes” on the way to carbon cap-and-trade, actually having proposed to subsidize conversion of coal to liquid fuel as a step toward energy independence. Apparently, he has seen the light.

According to “The Blueprint for Change: Barack Obama's Plan for America,” Obama has awesome abilities and resources: “Obama will implement a cap-and-trade program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to the level recommended by top scientists.” And “Obama will invest $150 billion...to deploy clean technologies....” Also, “Obama will reduce oil consumption overall by at least 35 percent...by 2030.” Most impressively, “Obama will establish a...standard to require that 25 percent of electricity consumed in the U.S. is derived from clean, sustainable energy sources, like solar, wind and geothermal by 2025” [nearly a 10,000% increase].

It's rather like the theory, promulgated by Stalin's top agricultural scientist Trofimko Lysenko, that crops could be trained into growing bigger and better [even on reduced CO₂?]. And there's the scientific (wissenschaftlich) theory of history– called Marxism. Is Science now a promoter of Lysenkoism?

The suppression of scientific dissent was a key topic at the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change in New York City, sponsored by the Heartland Institute (www.heartland.org). “I was shocked...[by accounts] of really outrageous and unethical behavior on the part of some editors,” stated William Briggs of Monthly Weather Review. NASA refused to publish papers countering global warming alarm by physicist Miklós Zágoni. And some speakers reported that scientific colleagues did not attend the Heartland conference out of fear that it might affect their employment.

Can America Supply the Thirty Percent?

The Clinton Administration locked up $1 trillion worth of low-sulfur Utah coal. Kansas recently blocked a new coal-fired plant, writes Roy Innis, also stalling wind farms for want of reliable back-up generators–without which blackouts, marked fluctuations in AC frequency, and transformer fires occur. The compact fluorescent lightbulbs now mandated to replace incandescents could become a more significant source of environmental mercury than coal-fired industrial plants.

Surging demand in China has fueled a doubling of coal prices around the world (WSJ 2/12/08). The world's largest store of coal is in North America; Illinois alone has more BTU in coal than Saudi Arabia has in oil. With modern “scrubbers” and “getters,” energy production from coal is very clean (Early Warning Report, March 2008).

Oil in the ANWR could supply New York for 34 years; Hillary Clinton voted against drilling there nine times, and Obama twice. “We cannot drill our way out of the problem [of dependence on foreign oil],” he said. Call it the “audacity of helplessness” (Investors Business Daily 2/20/08).

A Greater Depression could cut energy demand by 30%. A 30% cut in supply could ensure the Depression.

Rube Goldberg Meets Carbon Caps

Sen. Kit Bond (R-MO) has prepared a diagram showing how the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act would drain billions of dollars from Americans into new agencies, including “The Corporation” and “The Board.” Search bond.senate.gov on “Rube Goldberg.” Unfortunately, Sen. Bond appears to think the contraption can be fixed.

Companies such as Climate Exchange PLC of London have struck a new kind of black gold. “Financial resources are being redistributed to the banks and traders rather than paying for technological innovations...,” stated Carlos Stagnaro (Wall St J 3/13/08). It's a movement, stated Berkeley professor-turned-carbon entrepreneur Richard Sandor. It was launched at the 1992 UN Earth Summit, “where there was more tie-dye... than at a Grateful Dead concert.” Redistribution is the object.

Catastrophic Winter of 2007-2008

Virtually unreported in Britain, snowfall elsewhere in the world is breaking records going back, in some cases, to 1873. Afghanistan has lost 300,000 cattle; Tibet, 500,000 animals, leaving 3 million people on the verge of starvation (Telegraph 3/9/08). Bitter cold caused major energy disruptions in Brazil, hundreds of deaths in Peru, and at least $200 million in agricultural losses in Chile. New Zealand's vineyards lost most of the harvest, and Australia had the coldest winter ever (Boston Globe 1/6/08). Arctic ice has not only recovered but is 10-20 cm thicker in many places compared with last year (Telegraph 2/26/08). Baghdad saw snow for the first time in living memory. February could be the coldest in 10 years in Britain; bus service was disrupted by emissions cuts (NewsMax 2/19/08).

Total cooling ranges from 0.65-0.75 C, enough to wipe out 100 years of warming. (www.dailytech.com 2/26/08).

The BBC confidently announced: “2007 Data Confirms Warming Trend” (John Tierney, NY Times 1/1/08).

Warming alarmists knew the cooling would come when solar activity dropped, but hoped to get restrictions on economic activity fixed in place first, under UN bodies controlled by environmental religionists, writes Alec Rawls. “The fake bride was almost to the altar, but Mother Nature put her food down on the bridal veil” (TWTW 3/1/08).

Maybe that's what they meant by calling the December 2007 Bali meeting “make-or-break time” (Nature 2007:450:319).

Follow the Money

Over the past decade, research intended to prove human-caused global warming has received $50 billion in funding; research by skeptics has received $19 million: a 2,630-fold difference (see TWTW 3/15/08, www.sepp.org).

Poor Fuel Causes Global Food Insecurity

Ethanol contains water that distillation cannot remove; thus, it can damage engines and cannot be shipped by pipeline.

Producing 1 gal of ethanol requires 1 gal of oil, plus 1,700 gal of water (ibid.).

The 450 lbs of corn required to fill one SUV tank with ethanol could feed a person for a year.

Land-use change from native ecosystems to biofuel stock releases carbon; it could take centuries to pay back the “debt.”

The price of corn is $5/bushel, up from $2 in 2006. Since 2000, butter and milk prices have doubled, and poultry tripled.

Ethanol Byproducts Make CO₂

Shelby, NY, expects 50 new jobs to be created by a plant that will produce 300 T of CO₂ per day, using byproducts of a nearby ethanol facility. Main users are greenhouses and the food and beverage industry (Buffalo News 12/3/07).

Will carbonated beverages be outlawed if the EPA finds CO₂ to be a pollutant?

Outlaw Divorce?

The BMJ recently published a digest of an article from PNAS showing that people living in divorced households spent 46% and 56% more on electricity and water, respectively, than did people in married households. Will radicals demonstrate against environmentally destructive divorcees? Not likely (Theodore Dalrymple, City Journal 12/27/07).

15-Year CO₂ Scores

Two European countries reduced their CO₂ emissions between 1995 and 2005: Germany (-14%) by modernizing inefficient Communist factories, and Denmark (-10%) by selling wind energy and buying reliable power from the European Grid. Emissions rose in France (13%), U.S. (19%), Japan (22%), Canada (35%), Australia (55%), Ireland (71%), Israel (90%), India (103%), and China (138%). They fell in some troubled, impoverished spots, such as Zimbabwe (-22%), Somalia (-23%), North Korea (-40%), and Afghanistan (-85%) (Energy Inform¬ation Agency, cited in Energy Advocate, January 2008).

Orders of Magnitude

Christopher Monckton, co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize for his contributions to the United Nations IPCC 2007 report (such as correcting tables), points out a 100-fold exaggeration of contributions of Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets to sea level rise (if they melt), and a 20-fold exaggeration of radiative forcing by CO₂. In 1,600 pages there is no mention of the Stefan-Boltzmann equation, without which radiant energy effect on temperature cannot be calculated. It imposes a strict, very low limit on greenhouse-gas-induced temperature rise (Jakarta Post 12/5/07).

A Second Opinion

For an extensive deconstruction of the 2007 report of the UN-Intergov¬ern¬mental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)¬, see the report of the Non-governmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) assembled by S. Fred Singer. This was released at the NYC conference and is available at www.heartland.org or www.sepp.org.

An Audacious Hope

While warning of a Middle East war involving a nuclear power–Pakistan, which would jeopardize two-thirds of the world's oil supply, Richard Maybury holds out hope that cold winds of reality might awaken enough Americans who still have freedom to act. Watching their children freeze in the dark, they will in desperation re-discover the real black gold under their feet. They will throw off the chains forged by bogus environmentalist religion; ecofascists had best not try to impede the stampede to coal (EWR, March 2008).