Paul Chesser, Heartland Institute Correspondent

The National Wildlife Federation Action Fund, the “grassroots lobbying arm” of NWF (you know, they only educate), announced last week that “hunters and anglers” (as though NWFAF represents that unified group) are running ads in Democrat-held swing districts (PDF) of three congressmen ahead of an upcoming expected vote on the Waxman-Markey cap-and-energy-tax legislation:

“Hunters and anglers want fast action to safeguard natural resources and reduce the effects of climate change in the places where they fish and hunt – places they want to protect for their children and grandchildren,” said Sue Brown, executive director of the National Wildlife Federation Action Fund. “The ads send a clear message that the nation’s sportsmen and women want a strong bill from the committee that will reduce global warming pollution and invest in our natural resources.”

The sportsmen were so incensed that they showed up en masse at Congress’s doorstep:

Dozens of hunters and anglers from across the country visited Capitol Hill, making nearly 100 visits with members of Congress and their staffers and meetings with Administration officials.

How did the representatives (and their staffers) manage to withstand all that political pressure? Almost 100 visits!

Meanwhile the three Congressmen targeted by NWFAF and their casters and shooters are Arkansas’s Mike Ross, Louisiana’s Charlie Melancon, and Utah’s Jim Matheson. All are members of the Subcommittee on Energy and Environment under the Waxman-chaired Energy and Commerce Committee. Here’s what each has said (PDF) recently about Waxman-Markey:

Ross: “If you don’t like $4-a-gallon gasoline, you’re really not going to like your electric bill sometime between now and 2030.”

Melancon: “I believe this bill would create an undue burden on families who are already paying too much in energy bills and on an industry that provides thousands of Louisianians with good jobs.”

Matheson: “The draft bill we are looking at today is a huge piece of legislation,” Matheson said at a hearing recently, bringing up 12 problems he sees with the bill. “It seeks to address an exceptionally complicated issue. I am concerned about moving so quickly.” (Salt Lake Tribune)

NWFAF is running a television ad (“Ducks are coming later; the seasons don’t change like they used to.” — What — are the leaves turning in the spring now?!) in the Little Rock district of Ross, and newspaper ads in Melancon’s (PDF) and Matheson’s (PDF) districts. Word out of DC is that Waxman-Markey has been “watered-down.” Certainly it won’t be enough to alleviate the quoted concerns expressed by the three congressmen.

That would be Karl Bohnak, chief meteorologist at WLUC-TV on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, who calls global warming alarmism his “pet peeve” and finally got so fed up with it that he wrote to his congressman, Democrat Rep. Bart Stupak. He shared his letter in a blog post on his station’s Web site:

For years as a broadcast meteorologist, I kept silent about the issue of “global warming.”  Declaring skepticism labeled you (and still does) as an anti-environmentalist. After former VP Gore’s movie hit the big screen, I could remain silent no more.  “An Inconvenient Truth” was filled with so many gross distortions and outright scientific misrepresentations; I felt it was my obligation to speak out….

CO2 is not a pollutant and it’s not a problem.  The problem is rent-seeking corporations looking to cash in on cap and trade and low-output, high-cost alternative energy.  As your Michigan House colleague Congressman Dingell says “cap and trade is a tax, and it’s a great big one.”  This is not the time to raise energy prices, which is what this bill will surely do.  I believe the majority of your constituents will suffer adversely if this legislation is passed.

After receiving Stupak’s standard constituent letter, Bohnak responded with some data that clarified some of the congressman’s misconceptions. Then Bohnak addresses readers of his blog, and specifically takes aim at his own industry — the media:

Note Congressman Stupak’s response on the issue of higher energy costs.  He states that he wants to make sure “unreasonable costs” are not passed on to consumers.  I ask, “What are unreasonable costs?”  I do not want to pay ANY higher costs (reasonable or unreasonable) for a problem that just isn’t there.

I ask you to look at the data.  Don’t fall for the line that “An overwhelming majority of scientists agree that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are causing this unusual warming of our planet.” Majority rule is not how science is conducted.  If one wants to play that game, there’s a growing segment of scientists that have declared themselves “global warming skeptics.” Get as much information as you can, but you will NOT get it from the mainstream media (MSM).  The MSM is in the business of whipping up fear (look at the recent swine flu story).  Stories that the world is heading toward a precipice are right up its alley.  Also, there is at least one corporate media owner (My note, not Bohnak’s: this is General Electric, owner of NBC) that has a high stake in seeing this bill passed.

A subtly brave statement by Bohnak, considering his station’s network affiliation. Good for him.

Those of us who post to this blog and others in the global warming debunkification (okay, I made that word up) movement are used to being ignored — or (usually) politely being humored first, and then ignored — but this experience from last week I thought was worth noting in the blogosphere.

Last week the Heartland folks referred a reporter to me from a Midwestern weekly newspaper, who had some questions about a greenhouse gas inventory her county was compiling and where she could expect public policy to go next. I had no idea where her sentiments were on the issue, but I gave her straight feedback based upon examples I’d seen elsewhere. What she did with it after that was up to her, and I did not care much either way what she did, given my past experience with environmentalist journalists.

Turns out she sought to do a balanced article, but her editor would have none of it. I usually like to name names with things like this, but I assume the reporter wants to keep her job so I will refrain. This is what she emailed me:

Paul:
Thank you so much for your responses. I did a story, but my editor removed all references to debate about climate change, global warming or whatever they are calling it now. He didn’t tell me, which is unusual when removing such a huge chunk of  a story, but I just discovered it today after it didn’t appear in our print edition.

It is online, but is not as I wrote it. I’m so sorry. I will still try to get both sides of all issues out. That’s all I can do. Thank you, and again, I apologize.

The Society of Environmental Journalists inbreeders reported earlier this week about another so-called climate report — “so-called” because it is yet another study that addresses everything except the core issue of whether there is still global warming, and if so, whether or not humans are causing it — released on Monday. This time it’s the Asian Development Bank sounding the alarm in an examination of the risks posed by AGW to five (why only five?) Southeast Asian countries: Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, Singapore, and the Philippines. I guess Cambodia, Laos and the others aren’t worth the trouble.

The report was funded by the Government of the United Kingdom (another why?) and the methodology used to conjure up all the devastating effects of AGW on SEA was the same used for the discredited Stern Review, named for alarmist bookseller Nicholas Stern. So it’s not surprising that Stern wrote the foreward for the ADB report:

The science is continuing to develop rapidly and as it does further possible impacts will be revealed and risks re-assessed. Interactions between impacts can multiply their effects. Many of the impacts from climate change are not in traditional economic sectors with the result that valuations of their effect is difficult and many are likely to be missed….It is important that the economic analysis on climate change measures what counts rather than merely counting what can easily be measured.

Translation: We reserve the right to continue to make crap up as we think of it.

The report also got a big push from Ursula Schaefer-Preuss, ADB’s obligatory sustainable development mouthpiece. The VP with the Bond girl moniker and the Judi Dench mug had this to say:

Despite the global and regional economic downturn, the Earth is still warming and sea levels are rising. The world can no longer afford to delay action on climate change, even temporarily. Countries must act decisively. The global economic crisis provides an opportunity for the world, and Southeast Asia, to start the transition toward a climate-resilient and low-carbon economy.

All-in-all another nice fictional addition to the climate alarmism theatrics.

Americans for Prosperity has launched an effort to get office holders to pledge not to vote for any climate change legislation that increases federal government revenue. AFP announced earlier this week that many in the Republican Congressional leadership have signed on. The text of the pledge:

No Climate Tax Pledge:
I, ______________________, pledge to the taxpayers of the state of _______________ and to the American people that I will oppose any legislation relating to climate change that includes a net increase in government revenue.

It’s a worthwhile exercise, and while I know you have to keep these things short and simple, here is what I would add to the pledge:

I will also oppose any legislation relating to climate change that:

1. Includes a net increase in revenues to rent-seekers like Al Gore.

2. Includes a net increase in revenues to research funding whores like university environmental study centers.

3. Coerces utilities and industries (and therefore their customers) to pay added fees and surcharges that are redirected to other useless, government-mandated programs such as energy efficiency and green jobs.

4. Prevents the construction of new fossil fuel-powered power plants.

5. Subsidizes costly, inefficient sources of energy at the expense of less expensive, more efficient ones.

6. Does not measure results of policies it advocates in terms of their affect on global average temperatures, rather than greenhouse gas emissions.

I could probably think of more but that’s a start.

Joe Romm of the liberalista Center for American Progress (posting at Climateprogress.org) has spent much time promoting the global warming environoia legislation of his facial and ideological likeness, Rep. Henry Waxman, during the last few days. But yesterday, marking the first 100 days of Obama, he became more reflective (appropriate for a lazy Sunday) over the historic significance of the first black/green president. While three months ago liberals and media formerly known as mainstream marveled simply over his election, Romm already places Obama high in the historical ranks while demoting others:

Obama has clearly demonstrated he has a serious chance to be the first President since FDR to remake the country through his positive vision.  Indeed, if Obama is a two-term president, if he achieves even half of what he has set out to, he will likely be remembered as “the green FDR.” (Romm’s emphasis)

As an interesting side note, President Reagan, who is held in some esteem with historians these days, will almost certainly be relegated to a second-tier, if not third-tier, president by the painful dual realities of global warming and peak oil.  After all, it was Ronald Reagan who put conservatives strongly and permanently on the pro-pollution, anti-efficiency, anti-clean-energy side, where they remain today. It is Reagan, more than anyone else, who put the GOP on the self-destructively wrong side of scientific reality (though Newt Gingrich is a close second).

Romm goes on to rebuke the “establishment” media who “doesn’t get global warming” (but Joe — they try so hard!). But that’s just Joe being Joe. Meanwhile, take a look again and dare to tell me that Romm and Waxman were not built from the same transparencies in the scaremongering Identikit.