Saturday, August 09, 2008

Calling all Bloggers!

You are invited to a Bloggers Luncheon, this Tuesday in Wilsonville. The occasion is the kickoff of a new statewide campaign about energy policy by Freedomworks.

If you have an interest in coming and hearing about what is being planned (and perhaps being a part of it) just leave me a comment here, and I will email you the details.

Thursday, August 07, 2008

Krugman gets a smackdown

A few days ago in The Funny Paper, nationally syndicated columnist Paul Krugman wrote yet another alarmist screed about global warming.

Today, Dr. Martin Hertsberg - a retired meteoroligst with a PhD in physical chemistry - a lifelong liberal democrat - took him to task for it in an open letter. As the so-called Global Warming Consensus is revealed to be the outright lie it always was, the left is getting increasingly shrill.

Read the letter below:
Dear Prof Krugman:

I have generally found myself in strong agreement with most of the opinions expressed in your columns dealing with politics and the economy. I am a lifelong liberal Democrat, but I am also a scientist.

In your interview with Keith Obermann last night, there was an implication that somehow those of us who are human-caused global warming skeptics were all supported by big-oil money. In the 20 years that I have been studying this issue and expressing my skepticism, I have never received a cent from either big-oil or the government to study the problem. You failed to mention the 50 billion being spent by governments to finance research that supports the human-caused global warming theory.

In this morning’s article “Can This Planet Be Saved”, you simply regurgitated the typical fear-mongering hysteria that the Gore-IPCC-Hansen clique promulgate without any serious consideration of the fact that that hysteria is based on half-baked computer models that have never been verified and that are totally our of touch with reality. I am sure that as an Economist you have seen similar econometric models that are similarly out of touch with reality coming from the likes of “the Chicago boys” or the Heritage Foundation.

I have taken the liberty of attaching copies of Alexander Cockburn’s articles that appeared in the Nation Magazine last year. They are based, in part, on my studies of the issue. Also attached is a recent talk I gave on the subject. It has been published in the Australian web-site: http://www.carbon-sense.com. Also attached is a list of web-sites of global warming skeptics. I can only hope that you will read the attachments with an open mind and consider the possibility that you might need an informed and objective science adviser before making any further pronouncements on the subject.

I will also forward under separate cover, a letter I sent to the President of the American Physical Society about their treatment of a well known global warming sceptic, Lord Monckton. If you might recall, he had routinely advertized in the N. Y. Times, challenging Gore to a debate on the issue, which Gore ignored.

You can always tell the difference between a propagandist and a scientist. If a scientist has a theory, he looks diligently for facts that might contradict his theory so that he can test its validity or refine it. The propagandist on the other hand selects only those facts that agree with his theory and dutifully ignores those facts that contradict it.

Sincerely,

Dr. Martin Hertzberg
P. O. Box 3012
Copper Mountain, CO 80443

Friday, August 01, 2008

The consumption police

Front page Funny Paper today, all about the carbon footprint of regular consumables. I KNEW this wasn't far behind.

As soon as we accept any kind of carbon taxing/measuring/limiting regime, there is simply no limit to the ways in which government will intrude on what we do and how we behave. The sustainability nags can indict ANY consumption at all they don't like.

The article says half of all carbon emissions come from the manufacture of consumer goods. It laments that we don't even try to measure it. But have no fear! Oregon wants to be the first state to track carbon emissions from consumer goods.

David Allaway from Oregon's DEQ says that unless we see changes in "consumer behavior," our CO2 emissions from consumption will continue to climb, because of the expected population increase in Oregon.

The real culprit here, of course, is economic growth. A sure way to reduce CO2 is to slow down the economy. Poor people don't buy much stuff. A state full of paupers will be uber-sustainable.

Do these people realize what happens when we "reduce consumption?" What has to happen before anything can be consumed? Yup, it's gotta be produced. So if the government's goal is for us to reduce consumption, what they are really saying is we should reduce production, which means shrink the job base.

Any volunteers for voluntarily becoming unemployed so the bureaucrats can meet their carbon reduction targets from consumables? Do you think any government jobs will be the ones that go?

This is dangerous. Chilling, really. I am just shocked that so many people seem to blithely go along, and apparently not see how damaging this is.