Julie Walsh

You can download the entire zip file of the uncovered emails and documents here but it is 61mb of text. The searchable files are here. A good list of the worst emails discovered so far is here. Here’s a very funny video on the whole mess. But here is the best article, by Marc Sheppard, that shows that all the data and wherever it has been used–Kyoto and IPCC–has to be thrown out. The data has been massaged, corrupted, manipulated, and abused beyond recognition:

One can only imagine the angst suffered daily by the co-conspirators, who knew full well that the “Documents” sub-folder of the CRU FOI2009 file contained more than enough probative program source code to unmask CRU’s phantom methodology.

In fact, there are hundreds of IDL and FORTRAN source files buried in dozens of subordinate sub-folders. And many do properly analyze and chart maximum latewood density (MXD), the growth parameter commonly utilized by CRU scientists as a temperature proxy, from raw or legitimately normalized data. Ah, but many do so much more.

Skimming through the often spaghetti-like code, the number of programs which subject the data to a mixed-bag of transformative and filtering routines is simply staggering. Granted, many of these “alterations” run from benign smoothing algorithms (e.g. omitting rogue outliers) to moderate infilling mechanisms (e.g. estimating missing station data from that of those closely surrounding). But many others fall into the precarious range between highly questionable (removing MXD data which demonstrate poor correlations with local temperature) to downright fraudulent (replacing MXD data entirely with measured data to reverse a disorderly trend-line).

In fact, workarounds for the post-1960 “divergence problem”, as described by both RealClimate and Climate Audit, can be found throughout the source code. So much so that perhaps the most ubiquitous programmer’s comment (REM) I ran across warns that the particular module “Uses ‘corrected’ MXD – but shouldn’t usually plot past 1960 because these will be artificially adjusted to look closer to the real temperatures.”

What exactly is meant by “corrected” MXD, you ask? Outstanding question — and the answer appears amorphous from program to program. Indeed, while some employ one or two of the aforementioned “corrections,” others throw everything but the kitchen sink at the raw data prior to output.

For instance, in subfolder “osborn-tree6mannoldprog” there’s a program (Calibrate_mxd.pro) that calibrates the MXD data against available local instrumental summer (growing season) temperatures between 1911-1990, then merges that data into a new file. That file is then digested and further modified by another program (Pl_calibmxd1.pro) which creates calibration statistics for the MXD against the stored temperature and “estimates” (infills) figures where such temperature readings were not available. The file created by that program is modified once again by Pl_Decline.pro, which “corrects it” – as described by the author — by “identifying and “artificially” removing “the decline.”

But oddly enough – the series doesn’t begin its “decline adjustment” in 1960 — the supposed year of the enigmatic “divergence.” In fact, all data between 1930 and 1994 are subject to “correction.”

And such games are by no means unique to the folder attributed to Michael Mann.

A Clear and Present Rearranger

In 2 other programs, briffa_Sep98_d.pro and briffa_Sep98_e.pro, the “correction” is bolder by far. The programmer (Keith Briffa?) entitled the “adjustment” routine “Apply a VERY ARTIFICAL correction for decline!!” And he/she wasn’t kidding. Now, IDL is not a native language of mine, but its syntax is similar enough to others I’m familiar with, so please bear with me while I get a tad techie on you.

Here’s the “fudge factor” (notice the brash SOB actually called it that in his REM statement):

yrloc=[1400,findgen(19)*5.+1904]

valadj=[0.,0.,0.,0.,0.,-0.1,-0.25,-0.3,0.,-0.1,0.3,0.8,1.2,1.7,2.5,2.6,2.6,2.6,2.6,2.6]*0.75 ; fudge factor

These 2 lines of code establish a 20 element array (yrloc) comprised of the year 1400 (base year but not sure why needed here) and 19 years between 1904 and 1994 in half-decade increments. Then the corresponding “fudge factor” (from the valadj matrix) is applied to each interval. As you can see, not only are temperatures biased to the upside later in the century (though certainly prior to 1960) but a few mid-century intervals are being biased slightly lower. That, coupled with the post-1930 restatement we encountered earlier, would imply that in addition to an embarrassing false decline experienced with their MXD after 1960 (or earlier), CRU’s “divergence problem” also includes a minor false incline after 1930.

And the former apparently wasn’t a particularly well-guarded secret, although the actual adjustment period remained buried beneath the surface.

Plotting programs such as data4alps.pro print this reminder to the user prior to rendering the chart:

IMPORTANT NOTE: The data after 1960 should not be used. The tree-ring density records tend to show a decline after 1960 relative to the summer temperature in many high-latitude locations. In this data set this ‘decline’ has been artificially removed in an ad-hoc way, and this means that data after 1960 no longer represent tree-ring density variations, but have been modified to look more like the observed temperatures.”

Others, such as mxdgrid2ascii.pro, issue this warning:

NOTE: recent decline in tree-ring density has been ARTIFICIALLY REMOVED to facilitate calibration. THEREFORE, post-1960 values will be much closer to observed temperatures then (sic) they should be which will incorrectly imply the reconstruction is more skilful than it actually is. See Osborn et al. (2004).’

Care to offer another explanation, Dr. Jones?

Gotcha

Clamoring alarmists can and will spin this until they’re dizzy. The ever-clueless mainstream media can and will ignore this until it’s forced upon them as front-page news, and then most will join the alarmists on the denial merry-go-round.

But here’s what’s undeniable: If a divergence exists between measured temperatures and those derived from dendrochronological data after (circa) 1960 then discarding only the post-1960 figures is disingenuous to say the least. The very existence of a divergence betrays a potential serious flaw in the process by which temperatures are reconstructed from tree-ring density. If it’s bogus beyond a set threshold, then any honest men of science would instinctively question its integrity prior to that boundary. And only the lowliest would apply a hack in order to produce a desired result.

And to do so without declaring as such in a footnote on every chart in every report in every study in every book in every classroom on every website that such a corrupt process is relied upon is not just a crime against science, it’s a crime against mankind.

Indeed, miners of the CRU folder have unearthed dozens of email threads and supporting documents revealing much to loathe about this cadre of hucksters and their vile intentions. This veritable goldmine has given us tales ranging from evidence destruction to spitting on the Freedom of Information Act on both sides of the Atlantic. But the now irrefutable evidence that alarmists have indeed been cooking the data for at least a decade may just be the most important strike in human history.

Advocates of the global governance/financial redistribution sought by the United Nations at Copenhagen in two weeks and the expanded domestic governance/financial redistribution sought by Liberal politicians both substantiate their drastic proposals with the pending climate emergency predicted in the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Kyoto, Waxman-Markey, Kerry-Boxer, EPA regulation of the very substances of life – all bad policy concepts enabled solely by IPCC reports. And the IPCC, in turn, bases those reports largely on the data and charts provided by the research scientists at CRU – largely from tree ring data — who just happen to be editors and lead authors of that same U.N. panel.

Bottom line: CRU’s evidence is now irrevocably tainted. As such — all assumptions based on that evidence must now be reevaluated and readjudicated. And all policy based on those counterfeit assumptions must also be re-examined.

Gotcha. We’ve known they’ve been lying all along, and now we can prove it. It’s time to bring sanity back to this debate.

It’s time for the First IPCC Reassessment Report.

Mr Krugman in Sunday’s New York Times is worried.

In  his article “Cassandras of Science” he says, “What’s driving this new pessimism? Partly it’s the fact that some predicted changes, like a decline in Arctic Sea ice, are happening much faster than expected. Partly it’s growing evidence that feedback loops amplifying the effects of man-made greenhouse gas emissions are stronger than previously realized. For example, it has long been understood that global warming will cause the tundra to thaw, releasing carbon dioxide, which will cause even more warming, but new research shows far more carbon locked in the permafrost than previously thought, which means a much bigger feedback effect.”

He’s worried about the Arctic ice. Here’s the latest, though. Information from the National Snow and Ice Data Center shows that the Arctic has been rebounding for the past two years. (It hasn’t recovered yet, though.) The minimum sea ice extent in September of 2007 was 4.3 million square kilometers. In 2008, it was 4.7 mill sq km. And in 2009, it was 5.1 mill sq km. If the Arctic ice continues to rebound at this rate of 0.4 mill sq km per year, in two years it will be back to the level seen in 2006 of 5.9 mill sq km. And if it continues at this rate for three years? It will pass the Arctic sea ice minimum in 1995 of 6.1 mill sq km.

Krugman is also worried about the warming tundra releasing carbon dioxide and methane. But CO2Science .org says, “Another scare story came from a scientist who said the last IPCC report underestimated the vast amount of carbon contained in the world’s permafrost, which could be released to the air by rising temperatures. However, a detailed study of this phenomenon (Delisle, 2007) indicates that “permafrost will mostly prevail in this century in areas north of 70°N,” even for an unbelievable warming of 8°C, and that “permafrost will survive at depth in most areas between 60° to 70°N.” This scenario is also supported by the small amount of organic carbon released from permafrost during previous periods of warming, such as the Medieval Warm Period and Holocene Climatic Optimum, when no significant methane excursions were detected in ice core records of either Antarctica or Greenland.” If the Medieval Warm Period, which was warmer than today, didn’t have increased methane, then we won’t see it either.

If Mr Krugman is concerned about the sea bed deposits of methane called clathrates, he would be comforted reading about this six-year study by Petrenko at the University of Colorado, then. Petrenko says, “The results definitely help us to say that it doesn’t seem methane clathrates respond to warming by releasing lots of methane into the atmosphere, which is really good news for global warming.” Petrenko also said that temperatures in Greenland 12,000 years ago had increased about 10 degrees Celsius in 20 years. But it took 150 years for methane levels in the atmosphere to increase by 50 percent. Therefore, the methane did not contribute to that increase.

Arctic hockey stick graphs that claim that the Arctic is warmer now than in the past two thousand years such as this one, rely upon “previously published data from glacial ice and tree rings that were calibrated against the instrumental temperature record.” That tree ring data is now known to have been incorrect. When those graphs are corrected, they will  likely show that around 1000AD the Arctic was warmer but that runaway global warming obviously did not occur.

I can understand that Krugman hasn’t followed the science, but to make comments like this one, Krugman just looks very deceived: “And the industries of the past have armies of lobbyists in place right now; the industries of the future don’t.” The money behind “green” is actually enormous.

Sounding more like Yes Men prankster than president, President Obama spoke of rising seas, floods, drought, and climate refugees. Yet his policies have been far from humorous.

His aim to double generating capacity from wind and other renewable resources sounds similar to President Bush’s goals. Yet to quote George Wallace of the American Bird Conservancy, “To meet (President Bush’s) request that 20 percent of the nation’s energy comes from renewable sources by 2030, the number of turbines would have to increase 30-fold. At current mortality rates, the wind industry would be killing between 900,000 and 1.8 million birds per year.” (Environment and Energy Daily, July 11, 2008)

Obama at least admits that these types of “clean energy” energy haven’t been profitable when he says that the “House of Representatives passed an energy and climate bill in June that would finally make clean energy the profitable kind of energy for American businesses…” (emphasis mine). He and I differ on his “profitable” prediction, however. Wind and solar energy have been receiving government subsidies since the ’70s, now at the rate of $23 per megawatt hour. (Coal-fired power only costs around $25 per megawatt hour and receives a 44 cent per megawatt hour subsidy.) Yet renewables still aren’t profitable, as he admits. Gifts to corporations such as GE won’t change that.

The president also boasted of “investing billions to cut energy waste in our homes, buildings, and appliances – helping American families save money on energy bills in the process.” Yet, he has tied the hands of those same families from receiving money from efficiency gains when he has supported guaranteed utilities profits. Decoupled rates, for gas utility service, electric utility service, or both, as twenty states have, guarantee profit levels for utilities despite usage reductions.

The $7 trillion dollar federal debt that these policies are helping to create is definitely not “a future that is worthy of our children.”

Just Breaking

by Julie Walsh on September 18, 2009

in Blog

The Treasury Department just released to my CEI colleague Chris Horner the unredacted FOIA documents on their internal discussions of cap and trade policy that he had requested. The information previously covered up? “One advantage of auctioning allowances is the potential for raising large revenues (perhaps $300 billion annually)…” That’s over 2% of GDP! Another of the previously blacked out text: “Domestic policies…will involve significant costs and potential revenues, possibly up to several percentage points of annual GDP (i.e. equal in size to the corporate income tax).

No wonder they had previously blacked out that information. And some people have claimed that these global warming policies would only cost Americans a postage stamp a day. The background behind this story is from the Director of Freedom Action, also Director of Energy and Global Warming Policy at CEI. From the Cooler Heads Digest, 18 September 2009:

The big news this week is furnished by my colleague at CEI, Chris Horner, who released some interesting documents he obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request from the Treasury Department. Chris’s initial blog post was picked up first by Amanda Carpenter in the Washington Times and then by Declan McCullough at CBSNews.com. There has been a flurry of stories since then, most of them trying to explain why it isn’t really a news story. (I wish more reporters spent more time explaining why what they are writing can be safely skipped. It would save a lot of time.)

It turns out that a busy team of economists hired by Bush Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson to devise a better cap-and-trade program were fully aware that it would be very costly for consumers. Treasury’s upper end estimate works out to $1761 for the average household per year.

That’s in line with what President Obama said when he was running for President (“Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.”), but a lot less than what EPA and the White House have been saying about the Waxman-Markey bill.

Global warming alarmists have been quick to point out that Treasury’s $1761 estimate couldn’t possibly apply to the Waxman-Markey bill that passed the House in June on a 219-212 vote because, first, Waxman-Markey didn’t exist when Treasury was making its estimate and, second, Treasury assumed that all the ration coupons would be auctioned whereas Waxman-Markey gives most of the coupons away to big business special interests in the early years of the program.

That argument is specious. As Peter Orszag, now director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, explained in congressional testimony last year when he was head of the Congressional Budget Office: “Under a cap-and-trade program, firms would not ultimately bear most of the costs of the allowances, but instead would pass them along to their customers in the form of higher prices. Such price increases would stem from the restriction on emissions and would occur regardless of whether the government sold emission allowances or gave them away. Indeed, the price increases would be essential to the success of a cap-and-trade program….”

The most interesting thing about the documents Chris obtained from Treasury are the bits that are redacted (see above). For example, a paragraph headed Overview says: “[I]t will raise energy prices and impose annual costs on the order of [rest of sentence is blacked out].” Perhaps the folks in the FOIA Compliance Office at Treasury didn’t get the January 21st memo from President Obama on increasing transparency in his administration. The memo says in part: “The Freedom of Information Act should be administered with a clear presumption: In the face of doubt, openness prevails. The Government should not keep information confidential merely because public officials might be embarrassed by disclosure, because errors and failures might be revealed, or because of speculative or abstract fears. Nondisclosure should never be based on an effort to protect the personal interests of Government officials at the expense of those they are supposed to serve.”

The EPA, supposedly the Environmental Protection Agency, has become the Economy Poisoning Agency. In the name of preventing a global warming apocalypse, President Obama’s EPA is on the verge of declaring carbon dioxide a pollutant and then controlling our entire economy through energy regulations. This would result in huge increases in our energy bills and virtually everything we buy. Yet to do this, of course, EPA had to ignore science. In fact, EPA was found in June to have suppressed a report by one of its own senior analysts that concluded that EPA’s global warming “science” was incomplete and out-of-date. EPA has tried to spin its way out of this fiasco, even proposing to shut down the office in which its whistleblower works!

The EPA’s possible economy-crushing activities have prompted a grass-roots email campaign to pressure EPA into changing course on its pending “Endangerment” proceeding, the rulemaking underlying all EPA global warming proposals. CEI and Freedom Action, a new organization affliliated with CEI, urge concerned citizens to join the fight by writing EPA with an easy form to tell EPA to put their regulatory plans on hold until they clear up this scandal and reveal ALL of the science.

The Congressional Budget Office released a report on June 5th detailing the costs and revenues of H.R. 2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act, before the House. Noticeably absent, however, is analysis of the effects of Renewable Electricity Credits (RECs) and the domestic and international offset credits. These should force up costs for consumers and therefore reduce economic growth and federal revenues.

Highlights:

The bill gives away over three-quarters of the rationing coupons, auctioning off just 18 percent until 2020. CBO estimates in the first ten years, the bill would bring in revenues of $845.6 billion, but increase federal spending by $821.2 billion—a $24.4 billion net gain over ten years.

CBO estimates that the cost of mandates in the bill would well exceed the annual threshold established in the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act for intergovernmental and private-sector mandates. One of these mandates is requirement for States’ to establish greenhouse gas registries plus about $1 billion annually for public entities to comply with the greenhouse gas program.

The program would start with 4,627 million metric tons of CO2-equivalent (MT-CO2e) coupons in 2012 and over the next four years grow to 5,482 million MT-CO2e. Then they would decline by 100 to 150 million MT-CO2e per year to 2,035 million MT-CO2e in 2050, about 14 percent of projected emissions from business-as-usual projections.

The amount of coupons auctioned actually drops from 29.6% in 2012 and 2013 to 17.5% through 2019, while the free allocations (i.e,windfall profits) increase to 82.5%.

The new carbon market would exceed $60 billion by 2012.

The banking of coupons in the bill increases allowance prices by 13 percent by 2019.

CBO estimates that covered entities would use 230 million domestic offsets (230 MT-CO2e) in 2012 and 300 million in 2020, plus 190 million international offsets in 2012 and 425 million in 2020.

CBO expects that some regions of the country—particularly the southeast—would probably not generate sufficient RECs to satisfy the federal standard, and therefore, would choose to make compliance payments.

CBO estimates $8.2 billion in federal agencies’ administrative costs from 2010 to 2019.

Green Agitators

by Julie Walsh on April 11, 2009

in Blog

A 15-Year-Old on Global Warming
April 10, 2009

Transcript from Rush Limbaugh show

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Who’s next? Alyssa, a 15-year-old from Holdingford, Minnesota. Is that right? Nice to have you on the program.

CALLER: Hi, Rush. Thanks. I was going to tell you about a conference about cap and trade that I went to at St. Cloud State, Minnesota, and –

RUSH: Wait a minute. Wait a minute here, Alyssa. You’re 15.

CALLER: Yeah.

RUSH: How did you end up going to a cap-and-trade seminar?

CALLER: My dad got a couple of e-mails about it from Michele Bachmann, and I really wanted to learn more about it.

RUSH: Oh, okay, so Michele Bachmann is your congresswoman?

CALLER: Yes.

RUSH: And so she did a town meeting seminar on cap and trade?

CALLER: Hm-hm.

RUSH: Oh, oh, oh, okay. So your dad wanted to know about it, he took you.

CALLER: He took me and one of his friends.

RUSH: All right, so did you know what cap and trade was before the seminar?

CALLER: A little bit.

RUSH: Do you know more about it now?

CALLER: Yeah.

RUSH: And…?

CALLER: I was going to tell you about the liberals that were there.

RUSH: Oh, good. I love hearing about liberals at seminars.

CALLER: They were actually really rude there, and they had to be talked to by security a couple times.

RUSH: You mean they were disrupting Congresswoman Bachmann?

CALLER: And Chris Horner. Chris Horner was the one that was talking about it.

RUSH: Okay. These are probably community organizers like ACORN, the same kind of people that are the pirates.

CALLER: Yes. And they were screaming questions, and we got these cards that we had to fill out questions on, and instead of that they were screaming them out. And then they asked about green jobs, and he asked them to name a couple of them, and they just shut up after that.

RUSH: Yeah, a green job is a myth. What is a green job? They didn’t have an answer for it?

CALLER: No.

RUSH: What is a green job? How much you make doing a green job?

CALLER: There is no such thing.

RUSH: A landscaper is a green job. You work around things that are green: Grass, weeds, flowers, plants, that sort of thing.

CALLER: Yeah.

RUSH: Well, I’m glad that you got to see this. Was this the first time that you had seen in person this kind of rude behavior from liberals?

CALLER: Yeah.

RUSH: How did it make you feel?

CALLER: I was actually really mad at them.

RUSH: Were you scared at all?

CALLER: Not really.

RUSH: You were just mad?

CALLER: Yeah.

RUSH: Did they try to shut down the seminar? Did they succeed in doing that?

CALLER: No.

RUSH: How many of them were there?

CALLER: I think there were about 2,000 people there, and there were probably maybe 20 of them.

RUSH: Twenty agitators, 20 community organizers showed up –

CALLER: Yeah.

RUSH: — to try to disrupt the thing, but they failed, essentially?

CALLER: Hm-hm.

RUSH: Now, you knew that this was liberal behavior before you went there, you just had never seen it in person?

CALLER: Yeah.

RUSH: Seeing it in person has a much more powerful impact than just watching it on television. Watching it on television, you’re not really there. You see it on TV so much, it doesn’t have any impact. But when you’re there, like you were, profound impact. Well, that is pretty much standard operating behavior for American libs. Well, it is, Snerdley. People think I’m going to be misleading this young girl, but I’m not. They’re constantly mad; they’re constantly angry; they don’t want to debate whatever is being debated. They want to shut down any discussion of a position that’s not theirs, because they’re afraid that the 2,000 people there were going to be persuaded to agree with a concept that they don’t agree with. So, rather than debate it, they wanted to shut it down. This is how they operate. It’s intimidation. These people were probably paid, too.

CALLER: Most of them looked like they were college students.

RUSH: Yeah. I’m sure they’re just saving up money for the next party, kegger, whatever. Well, good, how did it end up? Did the seminar end up being okay and you learned more about it than you knew before you went in?

CALLER: Yeah, I learned a lot, actually.

RUSH: Is there one thing that stood out that you learned?

CALLER: The global cooling that they talked about like a couple years back when my dad was in school, and there was global warming that was way worse before, the earth fluctuates in temperature.

RUSH: Yeah. That’s right. By the way, your dad was in school more than two years ago, I hope.

CALLER: Yeah.

RUSH: ‘Cause you’re talking about the covers of Newsweek and TIME Magazine back in 1979. They were talking about the coming ice back then. I want to give you, Alyssa, a closing thought that will help you to understand liberals even more. Let’s take the global warming debate, and this has to do with what I call the vanity and the total lack of humility that these people have. The earth is billions of years old. The earth, as you learned, has gone through cycles of heat and cooling, warmth and freezing, that are beyond the ability of any earthly creature, human or otherwise, to influence. We can influence our environment, we have air-conditioning and heat. But we can’t change the climate, we never have been able to. But for some reason, throughout all these billions of years, the last 20 or 30, which are so microscopic a grain of sand does not represent the size of the last 30 years in just a hundred years. I mean we are so infinitesimal a part of this planet, yet the last 30 years all of these people, Alyssa, say that everything that is now is normal. The level of ice, the temperatures, average temperatures around the world, the amount of rainfall, cloud cover, everything now is what is normal, and any variation is a disaster.

Any variation or trend toward any variation is a disaster. Now, what kind of arrogance does it require for a living human being to think that in the full breadth and scope of world history, that their little irrelevant period of time on it is the way it’s always been or is even optimum and the best? The world is constantly moving and shaping. Your dad someday is going to take you to the Grand Canyon. Your dad someday is going to take you to Arizona, and you’re going to see big mountains, and you’re going to learn, you’re going to see lines and scales all up and down the sides of the canyons and you’re going to be told that what you’re looking at used to be thousands of feet under water, and what you’re looking at is sediment lines. And you look up, and it’s thousands of feet in the air, hundreds of feet in the air. What? Under water? And then you’re going to ask yourself how in the world could I have seen to it that all these rocks that were under water somehow became mountains on the surface? You couldn’t have done it. It’s just happened, and that’s how the climate operates. You got a great head start thanks to your dad taking you to this thing. It’s great that he did. Alyssa, thanks for the call. Appreciate it.

END TRANSCRIPT

“The financial crisis is not the only problem. There’s another worse one, because it has to do not with the means of production and distribution but with our very existence. I’m referring to climate change. Both are here and will be discussed simultaneously,” Castro said in the latest of his commentaries on current events.,” according to the Latin American Herald Tribune.

He’ll fit right in with the altruistic designers and promoters of the Waxman-Markey bill, which is “modeled closely on the recommendations of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership (USCAP)”  industry lobbying organization.

Al Gore, the lobbyist

by Julie Walsh on January 28, 2009

in Science

In a letter dated January 26th, 2009 Al Gore’s company Generation Investment Management sent a coalition letter along with other institutional investors representing $1.7 trillion in assets to Senate Majority leader Harry Reid. The letter asked for:

1) longer-term economic incentives including extending the Production Tax Credit (PTC) for five years or more,

2) funding for energy efficiency programs – such as retrofitting buildings,

3) federal funds to flow to states that allow utilities to treat energy efficiency comparable to new supply; states that adopt energy efficiency resources standards to achieve energy savings goals; or, states that adopt strong building codes to encourage energy savings, and

4) that part of the funding in the stimulus package should be directed toward modernizing and improving the electric grid system.

Today, two days later,  Al Gore, The Climate Protector, testified to the Senate Foreign relations Committee of the need for:

1) renewable tax credits and “small” grants for wind power and solar,

2) energy efficiency and conservation,

3) decoupling (giving utility companies a guaranteed source of revenues and Gore’s declared “single most important measure”), and

4) the need for a new electric grid.

He also frequently mentioned solar energy (an extremely expensive source of energy), deforestation (big area of carbon trading) and soil carbon credits (they need the farm votes).

Of course, Chairman Gore punctuated these requests by the possibility of every earthly catastrophe befalling us if we don’t grant him his requests.

How gullible are we?

by Julie Walsh on January 15, 2009

Scrolling through the $825 billion dollar monstrosity, my first question is–how many unemployed construction workers do they think there are? Don’t they realize that they will be competing with the private sector beyond those currently unemployed?

We signed our name to a blank check. (CEI opposed it.) Now they want us to sign again and again—bailout, stimulus, whatever they’re calling it today.  But as Martin Hutchinson said, “Stimulus plans also raise the chance of a Great Depression because of the deficits they cause.”

The Wall Street Journal reported today that Americans are in favor of Obama’s stimulus with 89% in favor of deficit spending to create more renewable energy and energy efficiency.

Here’s some hard questions that should be asked about those “green” projects, though:

1. How long will it take the projects to break ground?

2. How many permanent jobs will be created and at what cost?

3. Of those permanent jobs, are they sustainable without government subsidies? EIA has reported that solar energy is subsidized to the tune of $24.34 per megawatt hour, wind $23.37 and “clean coal” $29.81. By contrast, normal coal receives 44 cents, natural gas a mere quarter, hydroelectric about 67 cents and nuclear power $1.59.

4. What is the current unemployment rate of the industry to be “stimulated?”

5. You won’t catch me signing up to build a wind turbine or highway, so who will you be employing?

6. Is that national electrical grid going to bring inexpensive coal-fired power to needed US industries? E and E reports that Frederick Butler, president of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, acknowledged that “strategically sited” transmission lines could bypass power plants in coal states, while running through countryside laced with wind farms to promote clean energy.

Finally, as environmental economist John Whitehead cautioned yesterday in Salon:

“The Wall Street Journal’s economic forecast survey concludes that a big fiscal stimulus will lead to positive economic growth by the third quarter of 2009. But without the fiscal stimulus positive economic growth will be restored by the beginning of 2010. Speeding up the recovery is important in the short run, but there are also long-run risks associated with excessive government spending. At some large debt to gross domestic product ratio, lenders may no longer buy our government bonds and interest rates could spike.”