On the Blog

The public relations campaign to support Medicaid expansion frequently uses testimony by patients with serious medical conditions who have lost their private insurance. It is assumed that once they qualify for Medicaid, they will easily get their chemotherapy, hepatitis c treatment, or defibrillator battery replacement.

“The messages talk only about coverage, not care,” states Jane Orient, M.D., executive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS). “But the real question is whether Medicaid provides access to care.”

An internet survey of AAPS members shows that about 47% of respondents think that it is more difficult for a Medicaid patient, compared with an uninsured patient, to get an appointment with a primary-care physician. Only 26% thought that the uninsured had more difficulty. For specialist appointments, 44% thought uninsured patients were better off, and 32% thought Medicaid patients were better off. Only 2% thought that Medicaid patients had “no problem” getting an appointment with a specialist.

When asked, “How easy is it for a Medicaid beneficiary to obtain drugs, medical equipment, or diagnostic tests?”, 48% said it could be “extremely difficult,” 27% said “moderately difficult at times,” and only 13% said it was “no problem.”

Of 166 respondents, 96 were physician specialists, 63 primary physicians, and 7 emergency physicians.

Open-ended comments were overwhelmingly negative about Medicaid. Rural patients who are unable to drive or travel may have no access to care at all except through charity. Some areas have no hand surgeons, endocrinologists, dentists, or rheumatologists who will accept Medicaid. Many cardiology tests, even echocardiograms on inpatients, are questioned or denied. Many drugs, even common generics, are unavailable without jumping through bureaucratic hoops. Treatment for chronic pain is especially difficult. It may be very challenging to get non-emergency surgery approved, no matter how necessary.

“Medicaid ends up as a jobs program for administrators and quasi-medical professionals,” writes one physician. “Very little of Medicaid money actually goes to the ‘health care’ part of the equation.” Another said that “poor customer service is the norm” and “excessive paperwork is routine.”

Because it may cost more to file a claim than a physician can hope to collect, physicians may lose on every Medicaid patient, and lose less if they just see the patients for free.

Stating that “denials were much more common than approvals for appropriate treatment options and diagnostic studies,” one physician concluded that “to expand such a horrendous program is insane.”

AAPS, which was founded in 1943, is a national organization representing physicians in all specialties.

[First published at the blog of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons.]

The CTIA just released its semi-annual statistics on the wireless industry’s performance, and its bad news for all those supposed data-driven, pro-regulation proponents who are in search of evidence or data to justify regulating wireless or wireless spectrum holdings.

The data are more powerful evidence of a competitive wireless industry. Hopefully, this data will nudge the FCC to begrudgingly conclude that the industry is indeed competitive, despite their blinders to the data.

Briefly, the U.S. wireless industry:

• Grew five-times faster than the U.S. economy — ~9% to ~1.8% in 2012;

• Invested $17.2b in capital investment in the last half of 2012 up 37% from the year before period;

• Showed real competitive losses to free broadband messaging, as paid SMS text messages were down 4.9% annually in 2012, down 7.1% for last six months of 2012, and 11.3% for the last month of 2012 (Competition works!);

• The amount of data usage increased 69.3% in 2012; and

• The number of smart phones in use grew 36.4% in 2012.

These are data of a vibrantly competitive and innovative industry, not one in need of preemptive net neutrality or spectrum cap regulation.

[First published at The Precursor Blog]

Host Jim Lakely interviews Steve Stanek, managing editor of Budget & Tax News and John Nothdurft, Director of Government Relations at The Heartland Institute, about the recent passage in the U.S. Senate of the Marketplace Fairness Act.

If the bill passes the House and is signed by President Obama, it would give states a vast new power over retailers outside their borders, including the imposition of auditing requirements. States would be allowed to create their own unique definitions of how and when items are taxed, increasing confusion for out-of-state sellers.

Jim, Steve and John discuss all those factors, and more, and look ahead to the prospects of the bill reaching the desk of President Obama. Read more coverage on this blog of the Marketplace Fairness Act here.

Roy Spencer is a climate scientist at  the University of Alabama-Huntsville who may be the world’s most important  scientist.   He has discovered scientific insights and theories that  cast great doubt on global warming doctrine.  That doctrine has always been  dubious and is often defended by attacking the integrity of anyone who dares to  raise questions.  Spencer is a rare combination of a brilliant scientist  and a brave soul willing to risk his livelihood and reputation by speaking  plainly.

The  global warming promoters say we must scrap the world’s energy infrastructure in  favor of green energy.  They say  that burning coal, oil and natural gas adds carbon dioxide to the atmosphere and  that will cause a global warming disaster.  The global warming believers  demand a massive investment in uneconomic  windmills and solar energy.  Their  demands are not exactly sincere, because their program is a utopian fantasy that  will never be implemented on the scale needed to achieve the ostensible  objectives.

The  coalition of environmentalists, scientists and politicians who are the promoters  of global warming inadvertently reveal their insincerity by the specifics of  their programs.  The much idolized Kyoto Protocol and associated Clean  Development Mechanism, lets the giant emitters of carbon dioxide, China and  India, off scot free for the simple reason that they would never agree to destroy the future of their countries by giving up fossil fuels.  No CO2  emissions credit is allowed for CO2-free nuclear power because it would  embarrass the environmental groups that spent decades denouncing  nuclear power.

The  scientific backing for the global warming scare comes from climate  science.  Climate science is a weak science.  The atmosphere is  chaotic and difficult to define with scientific theories.  Attempts to  predict the future of the climate and to quantify the effects of carbon dioxide  are speculative and influenced by ideological biases of the various  scientists.  In climate science there are strong elements attempting to  enforce uniformity of opinion.  Scientists that depart from the prevailing  climate political correctness are sanctioned.

Monster computer programs, called climate models, are supposed to mimic the Earth’s  climate.  The computer models do a poor job of mimicking the climate. One  proof of this is that the 20 or so models from different science groups disagree  considerably with each other about the amount of warming that will be caused by  adding CO2 to the atmosphere.  But, these inadequate computer models are  the basis for the predictions of global warming doom.  The emotional and  financial investment in computer models is so great that their creators have  lost objectivity concerning their creations.  The computer models are the  spoiled children of climate science.

Roy  Spencer is not a shrinking violet.  Spencer vigorously promotes his  ideas.  If he didn’t, the global warming establishment would happily ignore  him and his ideas would be nothing more than a ripple in the climate science  ocean.  He issues press releases.  He appears on television and  radio.  He is Rush Limbaugh’s “official” climate scientist.  Spencer  has written three popular books on climate science as well as a small book on  the principles of free market economics.   None of this endears him to  his more modest and more politically correct colleagues.

The  climate science establishment is irritated that Spencer has come up with highly  creative discoveries that the establishment did not think of first.  They  don’t like it that he openly contradicts climate celebrities like Al Gore and  James Hansen.  If that were not enough irritation, Spencer is a  Bible-following Christian, as is his boss at the university, John  Christy.  Christy, an ordained minister, was a missionary in Africa  before becoming a scientist.  Obviously Christy and Spencer are not the  only scientists who are serious Christians, but they don’t seem to care if  everyone knows it.

I  don’t claim and never would claim that the climate establishment is a conspiracy  of scientists to create false science to promote their own careers, even though  it may appear that way at times, and even though some of the biggest doomsday  promoters have had the greatest career success.  The advocates of global warming do believe what they say.  But, sincerity is not a substitute for critical thinking or common sense.

How  the climate establishment turns the output of the disagreeing computer models  into predictions of climate doomsday is obscurantist alchemy.  They take  the average prediction of the models as the most probable future and assume that  the truth likely is somewhere within the range of predictions exhibited by the  various models.  None of this is more than rank speculation,  scientifically.  The climate science establishment is less than open with  the public concerning the shortcomings of their approach to climate  forecasting.  At times the public presentations of climate science descend  into outrageous  advocacy.  If you press the scientist-promoters of global warming they  will say their methods are the best they can do given what they have.  For  public consumption computer alchemy is turned into solid science by the  operation of the publicity machine and the United Nations’s Intergovernmental  Panel on Climate Change.

Even  though Spencer is a bit of an outlaw, he is still a climate scientist in more or  less good standing.  Like cops, Marines, or members of fraternities, once  you’re a climate scientist, you’re one for life, contingent on reasonably good  scientific behavior.  Remember that climate scientists go through a lengthy  acculturation as graduate students, postdocs and junior scientists.  His  fellow climate scientists may diss him in writing but there remains a line they  won’t cross.  For example, Christy and Spencer still have their government  research grants.  At a climate science dinner that I attended, I noticed  that the scientists were very protective of Judith Curry, an accomplished  climate scientist who, like Spencer, has gone over to the dark side and become  openly skeptical about the doomsday claims.  I attribute this to the  fellowship among climate scientists that is stronger than scientific or  ideological differences.

Like  the climate, group opinion among climate scientists is chaotic, meaning that the  potential exists for a sudden transformation, perhaps an ideological ice age or  a psychological warming.  Spencer, Christy, Curry and the many other  skeptic scientists are outliers, but if a tipping point is reached, climate  science might undergo a rapid change of collective opinion.  This could  leave the civilian camp followers and the manufacturers of windmills dangling in  the wind.

The  pressure that is building on climate doctrine is the failure  of the Earth to warm, a trend that has now continued for 16 years.  The  longer warming is stalled, in the face of constantly increasing CO2, the harder  it becomes for the believers to continue believing.  Compounding the  failure of the Earth to warm is the failure of the oceans to warm for the  last 10 years.  Normally, failure of the Earth to warm would be explained  by saying that the ocean is sucking up the energy flux that would cause the  atmosphere to warm.  But if the ocean is not warming either, that  explanation won’t work.  (Some persistent believers in ocean warming are  now searching for the missing warmth in the deep ocean, a part of the ocean that  is largely beyond the vision of most monitoring  systems.)

Roy  Spencer at some point had an epiphany that resulted in new insights. The central  question about global warming, that climate science tries to answer, is what is  climate sensitivity.  Climate sensitivity is formally a number that  describes the amount of warming or cooling the Earth experiences in response to  a change in the energy flow.  Various things can change the energy flow,  including adding CO2 to the atmosphere.

If  scientists were gods and able to control the energy output of the sun, climate  sensitivity could be measured via an experiment.  On the average the energy  flow on to the Earth from the sun is about 240 watts per square meter.  The outward flow of energy, on the average, is the same, resulting in a stable,  average Earth temperature of about 14 degrees Celsius or 57 degrees  Fahrenheit.  If energy flow could be throttled up, to say 244 watts per  square meter, and we observed the resulting change in the Earth’s temperature,  this experiment would get us the climate sensitivity.  According to the  climate establishment increasing the energy flow by 4 watts per square meter  would cause the earth to warm, averaged over the seasons and different  locations, by about 3.25 degrees Celsius.  The climate sensitivity is  expressed by the ratio (3.25 degrees/ 4 watts per square meter) = 0.81 degrees  per watt per square meter.  A climate sensitivity of 0.81 represents a very  sensitive climate.  If the climate is very sensitive, then adding CO2 to  the atmosphere could be a problem.

Given  the establishment’s belief in a highly sensitive climate, doubling CO2 in the  atmosphere should increase the average temperature of the Earth by 3 degrees  Celsius.  Adding CO2 to the atmosphere effectively changes the net energy  flow from the sun because CO2 inhibits the outward escape of energy via long  wave radiation.

Scientists  are not gods, no matter what they may think, so they can’t change the energy  output of the sun for an experiment.  But they do have computer models that  supposedly mimic the Earth’s climate and they can use the computer models to  perform experiments that are impossible to perform on the actual Earth.   Using the admittedly poor models and glossing over the fact that the models  disagree with each other, the establishment claims that the Earth has a very  delicately balanced climate that will be disrupted by CO2 emissions.  You  would think that at this point they would demand that we switch to a CO2-free  nuclear economy.  But the establishment gives away its ideological bias by  demanding that we switch instead to a windmill and solar panel  economy.

Roy  Spencer’s science specialty is the measurement of the Earth’s temperature by  satellites.  Spencer and Christy keep track of changes in the Earth’s  temperature by analyzing data from certain satellites that measure microwave  radiation that originates in oxygen molecules.  There are other  satellite-based instruments that measure the energy flows into and out of the  Earth via long and short wave radiation – heat radiation and  sunlight.

Due  to random fluctuations from changes in weather, clouds and temperature, the  average temperature of the Earth and the energy flows into and out of the Earth  wander by a small amount over months.  Spencer constructed what are called  phase space graph that show this random wandering.  An example is  below.

This  graph is constructed by placing a dot for each day, the dot placed at a point on  the graph that represents the average radiation flux and the average temperature  over 91 days.  These quantities are measured by satellites looking at the  Earth.  As the radiation or energy flux and the temperature wander the  trail of dots traces a path.  Rather than being a completely random path,  it is evident that there is a suggestion of structure.  At times the trail  of dots traces a diagonal line.  Spencer called these diagonal lines  striations.

Spencer  discovered convincing evidence that the slope of these striations is a measure  of climate sensitivity.  In the graph above the diagonal lines follow the  striations and indicate that the Earth’s climate sensitivity is about 0.11, or  about 7 times less than the 0.81 that the establishment claims.  The  convincing evidence is that Spencer created simple simulations of climate, with  known climate sensitivity, and used data from the simulations to create phase  space plots.  The climate sensitivity measured from the plot agreed with  the known climate sensitivity built into the simulation.  Spencer then made  phase space plots using data from the establishment’s monster climate models,  and found, at least for some models, that the same relation held.  Let’s  not claim that Spencer discovered a law of nature comparable to the general  theory of relativity, but he has made a genuine discovery of considerable  originality.

In  a blog posting, modestly titled “Has the Climate Sensitivity Holy Grail Been Found,” Spencer described his discovery of the striations as  follows:

“These  linear striations in the data were an accidental finding of mine.  I was  computing these averages in an Excel spreadsheet that had daily averages in it,  so the easiest way for me to make 3-monthly (91 day) averages was to simply  compute a new average centered on each day in the 6-year data  record.”

Spencer  depicts his discovery as a flash of insight, like Fleming’s discovery of  penicillin, where he noticed that mold accidentally introduced into a petri dish  was killing bacteria.  Spencer’s description of his discovery makes a  memorable story.  This is the type of story that is too good to check, but  I decided to check it anyway.  In the hallway at a scientific meeting  between presentations I asked Christy about this.  The expression on his  face told me more than anything he said.  Spencer’s discovery wasn’t that  easy.

Other  scientists have tried to use the satellite data to measure climate  sensitivity.  Often they came up with obvious overestimates.    For example, in the phase space plot above there is a near horizontal line that  is a simple fit to the cloud of dots.  The slope of that line corresponds  to a climate sensitivity of 1.6, an implausibly extreme climate  sensitivity.  Richard  Lindzen of MIT has also devised similar methods of estimating climate  sensitivity from measured data.  Stephen  Schwartz, a government scientist at the Brookhaven National Lab, has  investigated climate sensitivity with approaches similar to  Spencer.

The  small wandering changes in the energy balance come from random changes in clouds  as well as an assumed feedback from temperature changes that affect clouds,  water vapor and outgoing radiation.  Temperature changes, in turn, come  from changes in energy flow as well as other causes such as energy exchanges  with the oceans.  It is this tangling up of cause and effect that make it  difficult to deduce climate sensitivity from the noise in the system that causes  the small deviations in the energy balance in the atmosphere.  Spencer’s  work essentially revolves around understanding and untangling these  effects.

Spencer  and his co-author William Braswell published their ideas in a peer reviewed  scientific paper that appeared in the Journal of Geophysical Research in August of 2010.   The road to publication was long  and tortuous and some of his claims had to be watered down to get past the  reviewers.  It might be that the reviewers were hostile to Spencer because  he was upsetting the global warming apple cart or perhaps they thought that  Spencer’s claims were too broad for the evidence he had.  In any case  scientists habitually complain about reviewers of their papers.  A clear  case of establishment bias against Spencer’s ideas would come  later.

In  July 2011, Spencer published another paper in a fairly obscure European journal Remote Sensing.  This paper incited an  unusual angry outburst from important elements of the climate  establishment.  It’s a bit difficult to know why they were so angry.   The paper is an extension of Spencer’s previous work and answers some of the  criticism of his 2010 paper.  Remote Sensing offers rapid peer review and  publication, no doubt an attractive feature for Spencer, previously subjected to  long delays and false starts from trying to publish in more traditional climate  science venues.  The establishment anger may have been triggered because  the establishment probably didn’t know about the article until it was published  and secondly because the article highlighted faults in the establishment’s  climate models by comparing model output to satellite observations of the  Earth.  Spencer’s paper made the models look pretty bad.  Spencer’s  article received huge publicity due to a Forbes column by Heartland Institute fellow James Taylor.  This surely added to the upset  of climate establishment grandees.

A remarkable, no holds barred attack was made on Spencer on the website The  Daily Climate.  The Daily Climate article contained statements such as  this:

“Over  the years, Spencer and Christy developed a reputation for making serial mistakes  that other scientists have been forced to  ncover.”

This  is not the sort of things that scientists say about each other, at least not in  print.   Besides it was a complete  lie, because Christy and Spencer are known to be very competent and careful  scientists.  More interesting than what was said, is who said it.   Kevin Trenberth was the first author.  The two other authors were John  Abraham and Peter Gleick.  All three of these scientists are aggressive  defenders of global warming catastrophe theory.

Let’s  take Kevin Trenberth first.  By general acclaim, Trenberth is one of the smartest climate scientists alive.  Trenberth is a Distinguished Senior Scientist at the  National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado.  Ironically,  Trenberth is a strong critic of climate models, for example here and here,  yet he defends the alarmist predictions that are rooted in climate  models.

John  Abraham is a professor of mechanical engineering.  He is one of the  leaders of the Climate Science Rapid Response Team.  This  is a group set up to rapidly refute criticism of global warming alarmism.   Activists became alarmed that the global warming skeptics were getting a  foothold and the activists decided that the problem was that the media wasn’t  getting good information in a timely manner.  Thus the rapid response team  is a counter propaganda outfit.  The problem is that if people are starting  to doubt what you say, screaming louder may not solve the  problem.

Peter Gleick, the  third author of the attack on Spencer, is a water scientist and a self  proclaimed climate scientist.  He is a member of the National Academy of  Sciences and the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation genius award.  He is  also a criminal,  albeit one that avoided prosecution due to good political associations.   Approximately six months after the Daily Climate blast at Spencer, Gleick  impersonated a board member of the Heartland Institute, a libertarian Chicago think tank with global warming skeptic tendencies.  Perhaps believing his  own propaganda, he thought that if he could get the confidential packet of  documents distributed at the Heartland board meeting, he could prove that  Heartland had a nefarious agenda funded by the fossil fuel industry.  When  that confidential information turned out not to be incriminating, he forged  additional documents designed to discredit the Heartland Institute.  (He  claimed the forged documents were sent to him anonymously in the mail.) He  “leaked” everything to the global warming advocacy blogosphere.  But Gleick  was an amateur criminal and was quickly exposed.  One of his mistakes was  to feature himself in the forged documents, making it appear that Peter Gleick  was a person of great concern to the Heartland Institute.  Gleick used a  fake email account to execute his crime.  He clearly violated the federal  wire fraud statue (18 USC 1343).  Gleick’s lies were widely disseminated  and greatly damaged the Heartland Institute.  In spite of strenuous  requests by the victim Heartland Institute, the administration’s U.S.  Attorney in Chicago has refused, so far, to prosecute.  Gleick was quickly  rehabilitated, returned to his position as the president of the Pacific Institute and given the honor of an invited talk at the 2012 Fall Meeting of the  American Geophysical Union.  Maybe the MacArthur Foundation will give him  another genius award for escaping prosecution and professional  shame.

The pushback to Spencer’s Remote Sensing paper became more bizarre when the editor of Remote Sensing, Wolfgang Wagner, resigned and apologized to Kevin Trenberth  for publishing Spencer’s paper.  In his letter  of resignation Wagner made it clear that there was no impropriety in the  publishing of the paper.  Peer review was properly conducted by qualified  reviewers.  Why would an Austrian professor and the editor of a journal  published in Switzerland apologize, for not doing anything wrong, to a  government scientist in Colorado?  Obviously because the establishment was  displeased by the paper and the implied criticism of the establishment.   Apparently the influence of the climate establishment is powerful and world  wide.  If they say jump, scientists everywhere say how high.   Presumably the apology was directed to Trenberth acting in his capacity as a  leader of the climate establishment.

Steve  McIntyre, a prominent skeptical scientist and blogger said this:

“Like  most of us, I’ve been a bit taken aback by the ritual seppuku of young academic  Wolfgang Wagner, formerly editor of Remote Sensing, for the temerity of casting  a shadow across the path of climate capo Kevin Trenberth.  It appears that  Wagner’s self immolation has only partly appeased Trenberth, who, like an  Oriental despot, remains unamused.”

Besides  the slander and power plays against Spencer described above, the establishment  also commissioned a scientific paper to debunk Spencer’s work.  The  scientist chosen to do this was Andrew Dessler, a professor in  the atmospheric sciences department at Texas A & M  university.

Texas  A&M has a large atmospheric sciences department.  On their website  there are 22 tenured and tenure track faculty.  What is really unusual  about the department is that all the regular faculty are seemingly required to  sign a global warming loyalty oath called the climate  change statement.  Every faculty member except one new arrival has  signed.  None of the lowly adjunct faculty’s names  appear.

The  Texas A&M atmospheric sciences department is part of the College of  Geosciences.  That college also houses the department of Geology and  Geophysics that operates practically as a satellite of the Texas energy  industry.  Texas A&M has a large endowment, heavily invested in energy  industries, and of course, the revenue of the state of Texas is heavily  dependent on carbon burning energy industries.  There are strange  bedfellows in the Texas A&M College of Geosciences.

Andrew Dessler wrote his paper attacking Spencer’s paper.  It zoomed through peer review in 19 days, a  remarkable speed record.  It was published in Geophysical Research Letters,  a favored journal of the global warming establishment.

It  probably didn’t matter what Dessler’s paper said or how objective it was.   All that really mattered is that the climate establishment could say to the  world of media and politics that Roy Spencer had been refuted.  Spencer had  a response on his website within 24 hours of receiving a preprint of the paper.  One  problem for the establishment is that Dessler is prone to go a bit wobbly and  lose focus as to the main task.  The main task is making skeptics like Roy  Spencer look like incompetent idiots.  Dessler entered into a dialog with  Spencer and accepted suggestions from Spencer to correct errors and otherwise  improve the paper attacking Spencer himself.  Spencer felt this was a great  step forward from establishment figures ignoring him or taking potshots from  afar.

The  global warming scientific establishment is starting to look like the final days  of the Soviet Union.  On the surface it appears impregnable and the  dissidents are a minor problem.  But the huge soviet edifice quickly  collapsed when people lost their fear of the system and the functionaries  stopped following orders.  There came a point when everyone decided to stop  living a lie.  I can’t believe, for example, that every faculty member at  Texas A&M is really happy about signing a climate loyalty oath.

The  lie the scientist believers in global warming are living is that the climate  models reliably mimic the Earth’s climate and are suitable for predicting the  future.  Roy Spencer has developed a theory to compute climate sensitivity,  using real data, data that does not invoke the monster climate models.  His  theories may or may not stand the test of time, but the climate establishment  should stop acting like a science mafia protecting its turf.  New ideas  should be allowed to circulate freely, not be strangled at  birth.

[First published at The American Thinker]

The cover of the May 2 issue of Nature promises a feature story on “GMOs. The promise. The reality.” Inside is a series of articles about genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

This is interesting because the editors have to be pro-GMO because so many of the journal’s readers (If not the editorial writers) are real scientists, and science overwhelmingly documents the safety and benefits of GMOs. But the editors (as I’ve pointed out in past posts here, here, and here) are left-liberals who parrot the environmental movement’s messaging on most issues. So what to do?

Here’s how they solved the problem:

• Give the articles ambiguous or misleading titles that hide the fact that they are pro-GMOs: “Tarnished Promise,” “A Hard Look at GM Crops,” “Africa and Asia Need a Rational Debate on GM Crops.”

• Toss around the ugly word “Frankenfoods” without rebuttal and never mention by name any of the prominent defenders of GM crops such as Mischa Popoff, Jay Lehr, and Henry Miller.

• Mention only in passing that many environmental groups are on record opposing GM foods, but never admit that all environmental groups drank the Kool-aid on this issue and have said and continue to say outrageous things plainly contradicted by real science. Quote only one or two of them in the entire series of articles… better to not offend or embarrass your friends by calling them out.

• Be sure to mention that the highly regarded PG Economics’s study is “industry funded” but describe the anti-GMO propaganda-front Center for Science in the Public Interest as “a consumer group in Washington, DC that monitors the regulation of GM Food.” Who funds them? The editors clearly don’t think it matters.

•  Report frequently but feign ignorance about the source of public distrust of the biotech and GMO industries. Portray it as a spontaneous uprising of concerned mothers, when it is in fact the result of anti-technology leftists co-opting the organic foods movement and using it to wage an ideologically-driven war on two industries that are saving lives and benefiting the environment. (See Popoff’s excellent Is It Organic? for the full story.)

• Focus on just three issues – herbicide resistance, the spread of transgenes to wild crops, and a weird one, that GM somehow has caused a wave of suicides in India – and ignore or downplay the most important issues in the debate that clearly go in the pro-GM direction, such as consumer safety, yields, and economic and environmental benefits.

• Say, ridiculously for a science journal, that “the truth is somewhere in the middle” (p. 26).  No, it’s overwhelmingly on the side of GM crops and against environmental extremists on all the issues that matter. GMO’s supporters, many of whom are relentlessly demonized by the environmentalists Nature fails to identify, have been vindicated, while its critics have paid no price at all for their lies and exaggeration, despite having slowed the adoption of new technologies that could have saved many lives.

But alas, Nature just can’t bring itself to say any of that.

U.S. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) “wants to let [cable and satellite TV] customers buy their pay channels on an a la carte basis,” The Wrap reports. That is certainly an option many customers would like to have, but McCain’s bad idea is to use the heavy hand of government to make it happen.

At present the market does not provide this option, the Wrap report notes, because the providers of popular content (such as ESPN, the Discovery Channel, and the like) force the cable and satellite distributors to take less-popular channels along with the more desirable ones. This raises prices for everybody. The Wrap’s wording implies that cable companies like this arrangement, though I greatly doubt that they do:

Under the current system, cable companies charge customers for bundles of channels. In turn, media companies package their content to cable providers so that they are forced to pay for  less popular channels in order to get access to more desirable ones like ESPN or AMC.

Instead of letting the market sort this out—which technological change is making inevitable as people’s TV viewing increasingly is done via the Internet instead of or in addition to cable, satellite, and/or broadcast services—McCain wants to put the burden mainly on one party, the cable and satellite providers:

The Arizona Republican is preparing legislation that would let cable customers buy channels individually, according to a report in The Hill.

That phrase “would let cable customers buy channels individually” is both telling and inaccurate. It’s revealing in the use of attractive wording to describe a government mandate, and it’s false in the implication that government can “let” cable customers do this. It cannot; it can only force cable companies to let cable customers buy the channels individually. That is a very different thing altogether, and it will have additional consequences, as we shall see.

McCain’s bill would put some pressure on some programming providers. It would forbid broadcast networks from forcing cable operators to buy the broadcasters’ non-broadcast cable channels in order to get the broadcast channels, thus making it easier to sell them separately. It would also end the sports blackout rule and pull the licenses of broadcasters who remove their programming from broadcast airwaves in order to avoid it being picked up for free by Internet redistributors, which some are considering doing.

McCain’s plan is certainly well-intended, but it would just be more clumsy government intrusion in things that don’t respond well to brute force. Requiring cable operators to offer channels individually, without also requiring allcontent providers (not just broadcast networks) to unbundle their programs will at best have no effect on prices and at worst will drive up prices and reduce access to programming. In fact, forcing unbundling will almost certainly reduce cable consumers’ access to programming.

Consider the microeconomics of the matter: the cable operator will have to offer the channels individually, but it will still have to pay for many channels en bloc, which means that someone will still have to eat the cost of the unpopular channels. That unlucky party will be the consumer, because what the cable operator will have to do is price the individually offered channels and/or customized tiers at a level that will ensure a profit or go out of business.

That means the customers will still end up paying for the unpopular programs, or the cable companies will shut down, reducing availability of the services. And to the extent that the scheme is successful in forcing unbundling, it will certainly reduce access to programming because the less popular channels will have much less appeal for the cable provider. That consequence, you may be sure, will result in further government intervention to force cable operators to provide the less-popular channels. Prices will “necessarily skyrocket,” in then-Sen. Obama’s famous words, or cable operators will have to leave the business altogether.

A more sensible approach would be for Congress to remove broadcast exclusivity, must-carry, and other such market-distorting laws and regulations and allow the providers and customers to determine what is offered and at what price points. That would provide the best services, lowest prices, and broadest access to programming, but it would require lawmakers to acknowledge that they’re not smarter than the cumulative choices of nearly 300 million people. Hence, it’s exceedingly unlikely.

The Barack Obama Administration has nominated Tom Wheeler to replace Julius Genachowski as Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman.  (Wheeler awaits Senate approval.)

Wheeler has – Heaven forfend – actually held pertinent private sector gigs:

Wheeler served as president of the National Cable Television Association (NCTA), and later as CEO of the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association (CTIA).

Many on the Left find Wheeler’s real-world experience and knowledge troubling:

Senator Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent (umm, he’s a Socialist), (said)… “I…am troubled that President Obama would appoint the former head of two major industry lobbying associations to regulate the industry.”

Many on the Left find it very troubling:

(M)ore than two dozen public interest groups (umm, they’re government interest groups) wrote to Obama expressing alarm that the president was considering a candidate “who was the head of not one but two major industry lobbying groups.

“After decades of industry-backed chairmen, we need a strong consumer advocate and public interest representative at the helm….It’s time to end regulatory capture at the FCC and restore balance to government oversight.”

“Industry-backed chairmen?”  Let’s take a brief look at how Genachowski has treated the industry.

FCC Passes Net-Neutrality Rules Over Strong Opposition

Opposition from whom?

Verizon Sues FCC Over Net Neutrality Power Grab

Metro PCS Follows Verizon in Suing FCC to Overturn Net Neutrality Rules

But wait…that’s the industry – suing to overturn the unilateral decision of “industry-backed” Chairman Genachowski.  Hmmm….  How else has this Chairman “backed” the industry (into a corner)?

FCC’s Genachowski Defends Data Roaming

And how did the industry like that?

Verizon Sues FCC Over Data Roaming Rules

Never before have so many trial lawyers made so much money during the “regulatory capture” rule of an “industry-backed” Chairman.

Now comes Wheeler.  Who will inherit amongst other terrible policies these oppressive Net Neutrality regulations – and the lawsuits pending to undo them.  The FCC doesn’t have the authority to impose Net Neutrality – the D.C. Circuit Court has already once ruled they don’t.

Court: FCC Has No Power to Regulate Net Neutrality

And that same Court will likely rule that way again.

Chairman-to-be-Wheeler – why continue this unilateral regulatory and litigative folly?  Why not move to withdraw these unlawful Net Neutrality rules?  After all, We the People are paying for both sides of the lawsuit to undo this power grab.

As Taxpayers, we are paying for the government’s lawyers to defend the defenseless.  And as Internet users, we are all paying again.  All the time, money and effort the industry has to waste attempting to undo the FCC’s overreach could and would be much better spent improving for us their goods and services – and thus the Internet.

It’s always amusing to have Leftist power grabs force these uber-expensive lawsuits – while Leftists complain about industry’s allegedly high prices, inflated by the companies having to pass along to us the costs of these lawsuits and lawyers.

We already have a much better way to deal with Net Neutrality violations.  On a case-by-case basis – rather than a top-down, all-encompassing regulatory approach.  The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has on its side what the FCC does not - existing law, authority and expertise.

(W)e (at the FTC) are up to the task of addressing competition and consumer protection issues arising in Internet markets generally, and more specifically, of applying our considerable experience and expertise in analyzing the vertical issues to the net neutrality context.

That is, when Net Neutrality violations actually occur – which Genachowski admits they aren’t.

FCC Boss: No Network Neutrality Complaints

And Chairman-to-be-Wheeler – would you please close your predecessor’s Internet reclassification order, which has now been open for nearly three years?

FCC Boss (Genachowski)…May Push for Title II ISP Reclassification if Rules Overturned

This is a terrible idea.

Title II is how the FCC over-regulates land line telephone lines – you know, that bastion of innovation lo these last seventy-plus years. Title II opens up the Pandora’s Box of uber-regulation of the Internet.  But wait – there’s more. 

Under Title II, President Obama can also begin to tax the Internet.  Just as the Feds tax landlines.  Just as they already tax the living daylights out of your wireless Internet - checked your cell phone bill lately? It’s 17.4% – and climbing, an $8 billion total take in 2010 – and hurtling ever upward. 

Chairman-to-be-Wheeler, you could do immense good for the American people’s wallets and freedom – and the continued uber-advancement of the Internet – if you ended your predecessor’s existing and prospective power grabs, and kept the FCC within its legal authority limits.

It would be a welcome, refreshing change of the way Washington usually does business.

[First Published at Red State]

In 1965, almost no parents put their three-year-olds in nursery school. Now, two in five three-year-olds attend, and two-thirds of four-year-olds do. Government preschool enrollment has doubled in the past ten years, to nearly a third of the nation’s small children. This indicates two bad things: More tots getting pre-remediation and conservative lawmakers joining their liberal colleagues in addressing this at the fruit rather than the root.

As President Barack Obama runs about trying to engage states in another “the feds will tax and indebt your people more now so we can all tax them even more later” scheme with his Medicare-like preschool proposal, it’s time for Republicans to start thinking as much about small children as they are about illegal immigrants.

In short, Republicans have been capitulating to the idea that preschool is the next entitlement our country needs and getting nothing worthwhile in exchange for voting for such programs. The conversation has been “How big should the program be?” rather than “Why do we need this?”

It is well-known that children from middle- and upper-income families do not need preschool. Their parents teach them to recognize capital letters and count. Such families use preschool as essentially a luxury, a way for mommy or daddy to get some sanity time or work done, or so the little people can have super play time. But lifestyle preferences are not a valid reason for taxpayer subsidies.

More responsible governments sponsor preschool on the grounds that some children need it to compensate for families who cannot or do not help with reading and adding. This assumes, however, that the schools such children attend cannot fill in these deficiencies in the other 12 to 13 years they spend on education. In that case, why send poor kids to school at all?

This is the same point eminent literacy expert E.D. Hirsch made back in the 80s when debunking the myth that poverty determines children’s intellectual ability. Rags-to-riches powerhouses such as Thomas Sowell, Oprah Winfrey, and Frederick Douglass proved this a myth long before the research did. Thanks to Hirsch and prominent experimental charter schools like KIPP, though, we now know good schools can close achievement gaps in as little as three to four years.

This is very hard work, however, and it requires a very strong school support structure and real teaching talent, so it’s important to deal with the root cause of a rising need for remedial education at age three: those troubling distracted families.

Back in 1965, less than one in ten children were born to unwed mothers. Now, half of all U.S. children are born to a life with no committed father, and the divorce rate has doubled. The evidence is indisputable that children living in cohabiting, never-married, or divorced homes are far more likely to be poor and far more likely to have trouble learning. The reason is obvious: There’s one-half as many grown-ups at home to read to these kids and talk to them.

Family breakdown and school incompetence are traditional conservative drums. Both have coincided to rain all over the futures of needy children. Putting an expensive, ineffective patch on these kids’ gaping intellectual wounds just so lawmakers can claim they solved the problem is cowardly and shameful. Real problem-solvers will require, at least in trade for targeted preschool, measures that address the heartbreaking reasons demand for it is rising.

[First Published at Human Events]

If ponies rode men and grass ate cows,

And cats were chased into holes by the mouse …

If summer were spring and the other way round,

Then all the world would be upside down.

Once in a long while, an event evokes one of my favorite historical images: the British Army band, at Lord Cornwallis’ surrender at Yorktown which sealed the Americans’ revolutionary victory, playing “The World Turned Upside Down.”

In this case, the event is the dramatic change over the past two weeks in the “mainstream” media’s coverage of President Obama.

From reporters to opinion writers, from newspapers to television, after a mere four and a half years of economic fecklessness, foreign policy failure, unseemly narcissism, and a Nobel Prize for deeds to be named later, prominent liberal-leaning pundits and organizations may have finally realized that reality, if not journalistic ethics, demands a more clear-eyed look at the president they have been so deeply invested in.

Or maybe they’ve just noticed that their fawning and sycophancy has meant declining circulation and viewership.

But whatever the reason, the dominant establishment mass media’s turn is as remarkable as it is welcome.

The first major crack in the dike may have come from New York Times opinion columnist Maureen Dowd in an April 20 piece entitled “No Bully in the Pulpit” in which she bemoans President Obama’s inability to pass restrictions on gun rights. It is not the liberal writer’s anger over the outcome that is surprising; it is that instead of the usual “it’s all the Republicans’ fault” meme, she lays the blame directly at the feet of the previously Teflon-coated president:

It’s unbelievable that with 90 percent of Americans on his side, he could get only 54 votes in the Senate. It was a glaring example of his weakness in using leverage to get what he wants. No one on Capitol Hill is scared of him. Even House Republicans who had no intention of voting for the gun bill marveled privately that the president could not muster 60 votes in a Senate that his party controls.”

Dowd’s criticism of Obama was, by N.Y. Times standards, withering:

• “President Obama thinks he can use emotion to bring pressure on Congress. But that’s not how adults with power respond to things.”
• “When you go into a fight saying you’re probably going to lose, you’re probably going to lose.”
• And most to the point, “Unfortunately, [Obama] still has not learned how to govern.”

Apparently, Maureen Dowd gave other reporters and columnists a “permission structure” to tell their cloistered liberal readers what much of the rest of the country has long understood. Over the ensuing two weeks, they’ve used that permission, raining down a deluge of criticism of Obama.

On April 30, Dana Milbank — a liberal columnist for the Washington Post who recently asked in writing “Is there nobody who can tell Ted Cruz to shut up?” (Dana, I suggest you walk over there and try it yourself) — called Barack Obama “A presidential bystander.”

This was in response to Obama’s press conference that morning in which “The president was out of sorts from the start.…He didn’t attempt to set the tone for the event.…And he often found himself remarking on the difficulty of his job.”

Milbank closed his note with this advice for Obama: “[L]ively leadership is the way to resuscitate a moribund presidency.”

Also in response to Obama’s disastrous press conference performance, another liberal columnist, Frida Ghitis, says that the president is “failing on moral leadership.”

Ms. Ghitis argues that “The president is smart and eloquent. But leadership, especially for someone who has achieved that level of power, requires three elements: It must communicate a clear vision and a commitment to its realization; it must mobilize and inspire others into action; and it must produce results.” On a wide range of issues, she seems to believe Obama is accomplishing none of those things — and, regardless of political viewpoint, who could disagree?

Her conclusion echoes those of Milbank and Dowd: “Of course, the problems he has to deal with are difficult and often offer choices between bad and worse. But the time is right for a new display of conviction, of effectiveness, of leadership.”

It’s not just opinion writers but also reporters who suddenly seem willing to criticize President Obama’s abilities or leadership or favored programs and policies.

The highlight (or for Obama, the lowlight) of the April 30 press conference was a question by ABC News’ Jonathan Karl: After laying out a list of Obama’s political failures including gun control and the sequester, Karl asked “So my question to you is do you still have the juice to get the rest of your agenda through this Congress?” No, that wasn’t Fox News’ Ed Henry, but the White House reporter for one of the three old-line broadcast networks who dared to ask such a question.

In typical Barack Obama style, the response was a 9-minute passionless sermon best described by Tom Lehrer’s description of Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic operas: “Full of words…and signifying nothing.”

No doubt asking hard questions of a man so richly deserving of them was a liberating renewal for Mr. Karl and maybe part of a new permission structure for his Obama-adoring colleagues: “Oh, now I remember why I went to journalism school.” But perhaps I am too optimistic.

On April 25, N.Y. Times reporter Sharon LaFraniere published a remarkable piece of investigative journalism in criticism of a fraud-infested race-based scheme used by Democrats to buy elections. When I mentioned to Ms. LaFraniere how impressed I was to see this story in the Grey Lady, she responded “the NYT really wants to uncover the truth. There are no sacred cows.” Frankly, when it comes to Times management, I don’t believe it…though I believe LaFraniere does, and she can rightly point to the fact that she was allowed to publish a 5,300 word, front-page story which must have caused many Democrats, including Times editors and President Obama, to cringe.

A week later, a group of four Times reporters published another front page article — a dagger in the heart of what little foreign policy credibility President Obama has left, even among the left. In that story, readers learn that Obama’s infamous “red line” regarding the use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime in Syria was an unscripted ad-lib which came “to the surprise of some of his advisers” and which “defined his policy in a way some advisers wish they could take back.”

By putting his foot in his mouth, by implicitly committing to some substantive American response to a particular event that may now have happened, Obama may have cornered himself into taking an action that he doesn’t want to take, namely “providing lethal assistance to the Syrian rebels” — which is, despite Congressional chicken hawks’ pleas to go down that very road, a truly terrible idea.

In short, the article suggests that by not understanding the significance of his words, the president has narrowed his options, possibly forced his own hand, and impacted the already jaundiced eye that America’s allies and enemies alike turn toward any American foreign policy statements of this administration. Obama has through his egocentrism and naïveté added instability to an already dangerously unstable world. May I remind you: this was the New York Times.

And last week, following a “sunny speech in Mexico,” reporters at the Los Angeles Times penned an article stating that “audience members didn’t necessarily agree with [Obama’s] assessment” of Mexico’s current situation and likely future progress.

The article corrected several Obama claims on issues like immigration and an emerging Mexican middle class, noted that “many among the several hundred people in attendance said he seemed too upbeat about their country” and quoted audience members with reactions like “Obama is fantastic, but I believe that today he was talking about another country, not ours.”

Particularly when it comes to foreign affairs, Barack Obama is no longer the adoringly-fêted citizen-of-the-world who, on July 24, 2008 spoke in Berlin to 200,000 adoring, mindless fans, in a speech that German magazine Der Spiegel called “People of the World, Look at Me.”

To be sure, not all of the usual suspects in the liberal media have changed their tunes. Former CBS News anchor Dan Rather, still bitter over losing his job in an attempt to smear George W. Bush with a forged document, says that Obama’s Republican opponents “want to cut his heart out and throw his liver to the dogs.” (One wonders what they want to do with the heart.)

But when reporters and columnists from the N.Y. Times to the Washington Post, L.A. Times, CNN, ABC News, and others have suddenly come out of their Obama-critique group-laryngitis and are telling the world that the president is a reckless, feckless, spineless non-leader, the political world has indeed turned upside down.

[First published at the American Spectator]

We’ve heard it from the Left for years.  Europe allegedly has much better, faster and cheaper Internet service than does the United States – because the European Union and individual governments are far more involved in regulating and even funding service providers.

Why is European Broadband Faster and Cheaper? Blame the Government

New York Times Three-Part Series:

The Broadband Gap: Why Is Theirs Faster?

The Broadband Gap: Why Is Theirs Cheaper?

The Broadband Gap: Why Do They Have More Fiber?

The Left’s “solution?”  Get the U.S. government far more involved.

The Left constantly complains that there aren’t enough U.S. service providers – so they want the government to get in the service providing business.

(2009) Stimulus Bill Includes $7.2 Billion for Broadband

And how’s that worked out?

GAO: Broadband Stimulus Vulnerable to Waste, Fraud, Abuse

The Internet ‘Stimulus’-Just as Destructive as the Rest of the ‘Stimulus’

Yet Another Terrible Internet ‘Stimulus’ Project

More Waste: Stimulus Spent $7 Million Per Household on Montana Broadband Access

The Left wants the Internet and cellular market much more heavily regulated – like they do in Europe.  Again, the Barack Obama Administration is (in unilateral, Congress-free fashion) delivering.

(Federal Communications Commission) FCC Votes 3-2 to Regulate Internet Via Net Neutrality

FCC Approves Mandatory Data Roaming Rules

Executive Order: Obama’s Cyber Security Power Grab

As the Administration and the Left remake our Internet and cell phone landscape in the image of their sainted Europe – what is the Old World doing?

Realizing their model is an utter disaster, and looking to roll back the types of regulations the Obama Administration is piling on.

Are more regs and providers a good idea?  Not so much.

When the bosses of global mobile operators meet in Barcelona this week, there will be an elephant in the room: the widening gap between fast-growing and richly-valued U.S. telecoms companies and their ailing European counterparts.

An overcrowded market, tough regulations and recession are hampering European telcos’ ability to invest in faster networks, increasing the risk that the region’s flagging economy falls further behind the United States and parts of Asia….

The gap reflects differences in the competitive landscape. Europe has about 100 mobile firms to the United States’ six, as well as harsher rules that have sapped profitability and contributed to four straight years of revenue decline.

Not really at all.

Consumers could face arbitrarily high costs just to call a neighboring state or town. Businesses wanting to sell service nationally through mergers or network-sharing arrangements could be impeded by a patchwork of conflicting market rules….

(W)ith economic growth in the bloc near the top of policy makers’ agenda, the Continent’s balkanized telecommunications industry is coming under new scrutiny, which may create an opportunity to dismantle some of the structural obstacles to a single market.

Signs of those changes are beginning to appear.

So as the Administration and the Left continue to build here their Old World-esque uber-regulatory Internet fantasy, a newer Europe is seeing Reality set in – and heading in the opposite direction.

This Administration is, as usual, utterly impervious to Reality.

It’s going to be a very long second four years.

[First published at Red State]

Imagine that a panel discussion entitled “How to attack Kazakhstan to destroy their nuclear weapons” was held at a prestigious hotel in Canada’s capital. Coordinated by a hawkish right-wing think tank and chaired by an intellectual fellow traveler, the hypothetical panel consisted of five strategic experts who rigidly supported the notion that Kazakhstan still has nuclear weapons and are planning to use them against their neighbors. Discussion focused entirely on the best ways to attack Kazakhstan to disarm them ‘before it was too late’:

• Should we use air power or land forces?
• Should the attack be led by the UN or NATO?
• Should only conventional forces be used or would a nuclear strike be justified?
• How would Kazakhstan be ruled after the war?

No participant in the imaginary panel bothered to consider:

• The possibility that Kazakhstan may no longer have nuclear weapons*;
• Whether Kazakhstan had any intension of developing such weapons;
• Whether they had the technology and resources to develop them;
• The likelihood that Kazakhstan would attack anyone even if they did have nuclear weapons.

*Note: according the USAF Air University, “Kazakhstan had returned to Russia all the strategic nuclear warheads on its territory by April 1995. Kazakhstan does not possess, nor can it afford to acquire, the infrastructure needed to maintain and operate a nuclear force.”

And, of course, moderators of the imaginary Kazakhstan panel censored out questions from the audience that dared ask about any of these obvious, and exceptionally important, issues. This meeting was for true believers, only.

How would mainstream media cover such an event? Might they label speakers hot-headed and dangerous? Might the panel be dismissed as obvious propaganda based on beliefs that were clearly wrong? Might reporters point out that the meeting was hopelessly biased because it considered no alternative points of view or allowed questions about the underlying premise that Kazakhstan had nuclear weapons and were intent on acting belligerently?

Of course, they would. Presenters and the think tank organizers would be condemned by media who would, justifiably, dismiss the event as crazy.

Nevertheless, when an equally biased and unsubstantiated meeting was held yesterday in the real world, Canada’s “newspaper of record” gave them a free pass.

Here is what happened:

On Wednesday at Ottawa’s Château Laurier Hotel the group Canada 2020 hosted a panel discussion entitled “How to sell carbon pricing to Canadians”. With former CBC journalist Don Newman acting as host, the panelists included:

• The Hon. Jean Charest, former Premier of Quebec
• Kathryn Harrison, Professor of Political Science, University of British Columbia
• Elizabeth May, M.P., Leader of the Green Party of Canada
• Eric Newell, Chair of Alberta’s Climate Change and Emissions Management Corporation
• Bob Inglis, former U.S. Republican Congressman and Executive Director of the Energy and Enterprise Initiative of George Mason University

Much like our fictitious Kazakhstan panel, the speakers in the Canada 2020 event discussed various ‘weapons’—in this case economic, policy, technological and public relations—to compel Canadians to cut “carbon” to solve the supposed climate crisis. There was zero debate, or even discussion, about the actual evidence for a global climate crisis or whether humanity’s emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) are in any way responsible. Throughout the event, all participants, even Newman, wrongly labeled CO2 as “carbon”, at times even calling it “pollution”. The very existence of alternative science points of view about the causes of climate change was totally ignored.

Viewers got a preview of the biased nature of the event when they read in the advertisement on Canada 2020’s Webpage:

“The magnitude of the carbon crisis is such that every possible tool needs to be available to policy makers as they craft their response.”

For those in the alternative universe as represented by Wednesday’s panel:

• There has been no cessation in global warming for the past 17 years ago (even though there has).
• Global warming has caused a recent increase in the severity and frequency of extreme weather events in Canada and across the world (even though there has been no such rise–we are near a 30-year low in Accumulated Cyclone (hurricanes in the North Atlantic) Energy, for example).
• Forecasts of future climate change are reliable (even though no model forecast a 17-year pause in global warming and Environment Canada’s national seasonal forecasts are no more accurate than a throw of dice).
• All reputable scientists agree that we are causing a climate change crisis with our “carbon emissions” (even though, as demonstrated over the past two week by Reuters, The Economist and The Telegraph (London, UK) more and more climate scientists who used to believe in the climate scare are having second thoughts or changing sides entirely).
• It is better to spend billions of dollars retooling our energy infrastructure to quickly expand use of inadaquate wind power and other ‘green’ sources, thereby risking life-threatening electricity shortages, than to simply prepare for and adapt to future climate change.

Taken literally, the excited statement in the Canada 2020 ad was actually correct, but not for reasons organizers envisioned. If policy makers really want to spend massive amounts of money on CO2 reduction, even as the public come to understand that “The magnitude of the carbon crisis” is likely to be very small, then, yes, they will have to use “every possible tool” to “craft their response.” I don’t envy their speech writers.

Watching the two hour talkfest on line I wondered, how could panelists believe viewers would be swayed by their advocacy if they pretend that credible alternative points of view on the science do not even exist? Most of the public have seen and heard from at least some leading experts on the other side of the discussion and know about the intense debate concerning climate change causes. What else are they not telling us, the public would naturally wonder.

Since the organizers were taking questions via Twitter to be directed live to panelists, I tweeted my question:

“#can2020 – question: how can you expect the public to take your concerns seriously when you deny uncertainty in the climate science?”

The response was immediate. Ignoring May’s assertion that we need to “have a grown up conversation about climate change about the threats it imposes on Canada”, I was instantly labeled a dinosaur by fellow Tweeters, generally insulted and told to go away. My question was clearly beyond the pale for the august group of climate campaigners on stage and so was censored out by panel organizers.

Don’t expect mainstream media to point out the serious flaws in this event. Already, the Globe and Mail’s report is simply cheerleading, making no reference to the panel’s quasi-religious nature.

What Canada 2020 panelists and organizers seem to not understand is that all planning for the future involves sensible risk assessment. This includes considering, not just the possible impacts of climate change, but also the likelihood of them actually coming about. And that means dealing with uncertainties. Lecturing Canadians about fictional global warming certainty when future climate states are actually unknown, does us all a disservice and, in the long run will sway no one not already committed to the scare.

Seen in that light, perhaps the propagandic nature of Canada 2020’s “How to sell carbon pricing to Canadians” was a blessing in disguise. After all, the last thing we want is for anyone to take attack-Kazakhstan-like activists seriously.

[First published at New.Ideas@Frontier]

Timing is everything.

That’s why, Tom Wheeler, the President’s nominee for Chairman of  the FCC, could become one of the most consequential FCC leaders in American  history.

As a longtime communications industry leader and also an  accomplished historian, he appreciates more than most anyone the hinge in time  in which he now finds himself.

The FCC is in the throes of a seminal historical transition. Like  the 1913 Kingsbury Commitment that created a national telephone monopoly. Like  the 1934 Communications Act that created the FCC and mandated universal telephone service. And like the 1996 Telecom Act that mandated competition  policy replace monopoly regulation.

Today, companies and consumers have adapted to, and enjoy the  benefits of, the transition to the competitive Internet marketplace that we all  live in today. In contrast the Government, particularly the FCC and Federal  holders of radio spectrum, have not made the transition.

And to make matters worse, they are inherently hostile to  transitioning their mission, methods and mindset to the new competitive Internet era.

Common carrier regulation ended for: railroads 37 years ago;  trucking and bus-lines 33 years ago; and airlines 29 years ago. Why does the FCC  still cling to 1887 common-carrier railroad regulation for communications when  it became obsolete in every other industry?

Common carrier regulation of communications is unnecessary and  irrelevant, given the Internet, robust facilities-based competition, and the  mobile broadband revolution of smart-phones and tablets.

Why can’t the FCC make the transition to the modern reality where  competition, consumer choice and innovation wildly out-perform regulation?  Market forces have delivered universal availability of both wire line and wireless broadband in less than a decade when it took the FCC several decades  longer to deliver universal availability of telephone service.

Under FCC regulation the telephone changed little for over a half  century. In seventeen years of competition policy, consumers and businesses have  enjoyed the vast choice of: hundreds of Internet- enabled devices and several  broadband providers offering different technology options.

Still there are many inside and outside of the FCC that stubbornly deny market reality. They define “the public interest” to be what the few think  is best for the many, rather than letting the many continue to choose what’s best for themselves from the panoply of choices in the competitive Internet  marketplace.

As the Administration’s point person responsible for the DTV  transition from analog to digital television four years ago, Mr. Wheeler  understands big transitions and has successfully led one. His proven transition  leadership skills and experience will be essential given the many strategically  important transitions currently in train that need to be successfully led at the  FCC.

First, the FCC transition must be led. The FCC can no longer ignore  reality and torture obsolete statutes, precedents and regulations to  procrastinate and avoid the needed FCC transition to the competitive Internet  reality.

If the courts tell the FCC they do not have the statutory authority  to do what they believe is necessary, the FCC should either appeal, or propose  to Congress the legislative authority that they believe they need to operate as  a modern FCC.

Continuing to ignore the courts, Congress, and the Constitution is  not a sustainable or productive FCC policy. It is akin to holding one’s breath  until one gets one’s way.

The FCC transition requires strategic leadership to navigate from a  legacy-dependent, backward-looking, self-centered institution to a more modern,  humble, nimble and externally-focused institution able to keep up with the  times.

The FCC is in desperate need of a leader that understands that the  FCC can’t be the only part of the communications ecosystem that is not modern.  The American consumer and competitive, innovative industries deserve better.

Second, the IP transition must be led from the obsolescent monopoly  telephone price regulation regime to an enforcement regime of consumer  protection. This transition cannot be ignored as the number of subscribers to  the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) has fallen by two thirds due to  competition and wireless/Internet substitution.

And during Mr. Wheeler’s expected tenure that number of legacy  subscribers to the PSTN is expected to drop to ~10% of Americans, similar to the  number of legacy over-the-air broadcast consumers.

Continuing to operate a system designed for everyone, when only  ~10% may still use it, makes no sense.

Third, the spectrum transition must be led from the Government  controlling ~85% of the nation’s radio spectrum suitable for wireless broadband, to about 20%  over the next decade or two.

Controlling ~85% of spectrum makes no sense when the Federal  Government only uses 1% of the nation’s energy; provides 8% of the nation’s employment; produces 12% of the nation’s GDP; and gets by with 30% of the nation’s land.

Leadership is desperately needed to transition the Federal  Government from wasting valuable radio spectrum to applying modern,  good-government, management and accountability practices to spectrum.

Fourth, the public safety transition must be led to ensure that the  9-11 recommendation for an interoperable public safety network finally happens,  and does not fall on its face again because of avoidable FCC implementation  mistakes.

In sum, this is an exceptionally consequential hinge in time for  the FCC. Mr. Wheeler has the opportunity and challenge to lead the FCC into the  modern era, so the FCC can return to being part of the solution and not the  problem for consumers.

Simply, the FCC can no longer kick the proverbial can down the  road; that road is ending.

[First published at the Daily Caller]

President Barack Obama and the Left have declared the government is now even more extensively in the economic “fairness” business.

Obama Unveils Budget With Call for ‘Fair’ Economy

Obama Calls for Economy Where ‘Everyone Does Their Fair Share’

Giving Everyone a Fair Shot (on BarackObama.com)

They have even in Orwellian fashion so-named a terribly unfair bill.

9,646 Reasons to Dislike the ‘Marketplace Fairness Act’

As with most things government, the more it does to make things fair, the more unfair things get.

Obama’s ‘Fairness’ Economy Has Backfired

Obama Blames Economy on ‘Bad Decisions’

Bad decisions like…the 2009 $819 billion “Stimulus.”

Obama’s Stimulus: A Documented Failure

The Final Verdict On The 2009 Stimulus: A Failure

How is it “fair” to conscript into debt our great-grandchildren and beyond at all – let alone for a plan that failed so utterly (and predictably)?

Again, when the government gets involved, “fairness” begets unfairness.  And failure – for everyone but government, which always succeeds in getting bigger in the unfair, failed process.

It is also unfair for the government to tax businesses – and use that money to create or fund competitors to said businesses.  Of which the “Stimulus” did a whole lot – most expressly in the $7.2 billion broadband Internet “stimulus.”

The Internet ‘Stimulus’-Just as Destructive as the Rest of the ‘Stimulus’

Take what is happening in Hays, Kansas and its surrounding areas. Eagle Communications, a small broadband provider, had already invested its own considerable coin to build out broadband Internet access for and to their customers in these parts of the state.

Only now the government has given $101 million to another provider – which they are going to use to “overbuild” – on top of Eagle’s network. “Overbuild” meaning – build service with government money to Hays, Kansas – an area that already has access to service via Eagle.

Yet Another Terrible Internet ‘Stimulus’ Project

Lake County (Minnesota also) wanted to get in on the government broadband gravy train… There are already four private broadband providers serving large swaths of these areas… So most of…Lake County…already ha(d) broadband service.

And all four private providers are doing it for less money than Lake County will charge.

Was this destroy-the-private-sector result the intent of government broadband money?  Of course not.

(T)he purpose…(wa)s to deliver service to people who don’t already have it.

Shocker – government screwed up.  Over, and over, and….  This is terrible – not just for the companies and areas directly affected, but the entire country.

(These companies are) now facing…newly government-dug ten-foot hole(s), and looking at possible bankruptc(ies)….

(And p)rivate broadband companies that were considering building out to un- or underserved areas will now most likely not do so – for fear of a government-funded competitor coming in and landing on their heads.

Is there a solution?  Yes – get the government the heck out of the broadband business.

Sadly, that’s way too much to ask of Washington.  What we are getting instead is a Farm Bill reauthorizing this ridiculous status quo – and an amendment from Virginia Democrat Senator Mark Warner, which he pathetically, proudly proclaims:

(P)rovides meaningful broadband access for unserved rural communities by requiring that at least 25 percent of households in a proposed project area qualify as unserved or underserved.  The Secretary of Agriculture will have discretion to reduce the percentage to not less than 18 percent for project areas covering 7,500 or fewer people, and 15 percent for areas covering 5,000 or fewer.  

So 75% of private-sector-broadband homes can get a government competitor any-and-everywhere the Leviathan wants.  Unless the area is even harder and more expensive to serve – in which case the government can overbuild at an even greater level.

Meaning in the areas you most want and need private sector investment – the more the government can do to drive out the private sector.

This is government “reform.”  And please save us from a government looking to legislate ‘fairness.’

[First Published at Red State]

In a feeble attempt to rebut my arguments as to why the EPA must be stopped in its pernicious efforts to over regulate and stifle what little economic growth our country currently exhibits, one of my critics recently pointed to the Stern Review as a definitive work linking the effects of purported man-made climate change to future global economic cataclysm.

On one level, one should first dispel the belief in the underlying premise that anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is in fact occurring. By way of any number of studies from highly accredited scientists, the facts show that the causal linkage between CO2 and temperature change is tenuous at best (if anything, temperature increases precede increases in C02). In fact, given the last 16 years of continued growth in CO2 levels without a corresponding increase in global temperatures, the alarmist community is starting to become … well, I guess you could say, alarmed.

Their global circulation models held up as the consummate forecasting tools are currently being challenged as the current flat-lining trend in global temperatures threatens to pierce the lower end of the model-predicted temperature ranges. This issue was highlighted in a recent piece in The Economist [“A Sensitive Matter,” March 30, 2013] as the United Kingdom (and frankly much of Europe) emerged from a brutal winter that brought record cold and snowfall. Without going into a detailed discussion on the underlying science, it should suffice to say that other variables such as solar cycles, multi-year atmospheric oscillations and other factors in the climate equation should be given greater attention relative to the impact of the trace gas CO2.

Refocusing our attention on the Stern Review, one needs to first understand the backdrop for this study before assessing its legitimacy or lack thereof. In short, the 700-page study was commissioned by British government in July 2005 and released in October 2006.  The study was, at the time, revered by many who worshipped at the altar of the IPCC (the United Nations’ backed Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) and Gaia-embracing environmentalists.

Unfortunately for this crowd, the flaws revealed in the study, even by many fellow AGW believers, largely undermine its credibility. Its author, Nicholas Stern, was an economist with solid academic credentials. Nonetheless, his study calling for significant and prompt spending for CO2 remediation to prevent the damaging effects (his opinion) of climate change did not hold up under scrutiny by his peers.

One fellow environmentalist, Robert Mendelsohn, noted several flaws within the study, most notable among these being:  1) the questionable use of a low 1.4% discount rate that inflated the present value of societal damages from climate change , 2) the ignorance of offsets to the costs of climate change through human adaptation, 3) the blind extrapolation of existing trends in weather and the forecast of increased  extreme weather event occurrences  and  4) the understatement of the negative impacts of remediation costs.

A number of other flaws have been cited in various studies critiquing the Stern Review, though one of the most glaring critiques came from environmental economist Richard Tol who stated the following: “If a student of mine were to hand in this report as a Masters thesis, perhaps if I were in a good mood I would give him a ‘D’ for diligence; but more likely I would give him an ‘F’ for fail. There is a whole range of very basic economics mistakes that somebody who claims to be a Professor of Economics simply should not make…”

Back in the post-Katrina period when the alarmist community had many believing that 2005 had established the new standard for hurricane occurrence (there were 28 named storms that year in the Atlantic Basin), the Stern Review seemed to carry great appeal. But in 2013, after sixteen years of flat trends in global temperatures, it has become increasingly apparent that other factors besides CO2 levels are at work in determining climate trends.

Perhaps it is time that the OECD countries, many drowning in debt with flagging economies and unemployment levels making new highs, reconsider the wasteful spending on carbon credits, uneconomic green technologies and other remediation measures. I would also like to recommend to my detractors that they spend a few years updating their understanding of climate change science, and then come back to the debate when they are better prepared.

Last week Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid successfully pushed to the Senate floor a major online tax bill originally titled the Marketplace Fairness Act, bypassing the committee process. The proposal, which passed the Senate with a vote of 69 to 24, expands the ability of state governments to force out-of-state retailers to collect sales taxes for online and mail-order sales, even if the seller has no physical presence in the state.

If the bill passes the House and is signed by President Obama, it would give states a vast new power over retailers outside their borders, including the imposition of auditing requirements. States would be allowed to create their own unique definitions of how and when items are taxed, increasing confusion for out-of-state sellers.

Proponents of the bill have recently begun an effort to sway Republican votes by distributing material outlining support of the bill from several conservative legislators and commentators. In fact, outside of a small group of conservative legislators, the majority of support for the Marketplace Fairness Act comes primarily from legislators seeking new tax revenue or interest groups using the government to undermine their competition by imposing a tax on their online competitors.

The Marketplace Fairness Act violates the key tax principle requiring a physical presence to impose a tax and is inconsistent with conservative tax values.

The Heartland Institute has compiled a list of legislators, journalists, and think tank leaders across the conservative and libertarian spectrum that strongly oppose the Marketplace Fairness Act. It is available online here: http://heartland.org/no-net-tax.

Heartland‘s James Taylor speaks with Willie Soon, physicist at the Solar and Stellar Physics Division of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

Solar scientist Willie Soon explains how the sun continues to be the primary driver of global temperatures.  Dr. Soon also emphasizes he is more than happy to debate alarmists who have the courage to engage in open and honest public debate.

Heartland‘s Steve Stanek speaks with Roy Cordato, Vice President for Research and resident scholar at the John Locke Foundation.

Time and time again, businesses and industries looking for government handouts have produced studies that predict big paybacks. Roy Cordato of the John Locke Foundation says there’s a great reason to take these studies with a shaker or two of salt: They look only at benefits and ignore the high costs of such handouts.

During the 2008 campaign, when candidate Obama was seeking our votes, he pledged in Dover, New Hampshire on Sept. 12, 2008:

“I can make a firm pledge. Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes.”

During a nationally televised Vice-Presidential debate in St. Louis on Oct. 3, 2008, candidate Biden repeated the pledge:

“No one making less than $250,000 under Barack Obama’s plan will see one single penny of their tax raised whether it’s their capital gains tax, their income tax, investment tax, any tax.”

Once elected, in an address to a joint session of Congress on Feb. 24, 2009, President Obama restated the promise yet again:

“If your family earns less than $250,000 a year, you will not see your taxes increased a single dime. I repeat: not one single dime.”

But now before the Senate is the so-called Marketplace Fairness Act, which would authorize each state to force sellers in other states to collect and pay sales taxes on anything they sell over the Internet to anyone in any other state. The seller may operate exclusively in Hawaii, and not own or operate any property, or employ any workers, in any other state. But it would be liable for the sales taxes in every one of the other 49 states for anything it sells over the Internet in any of those states.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Quill Corporation v. North Dakota in 1992 that a state could not impose any sales tax obligations on sellers that did not own or operate any property or employ any workers within the state. Enacting taxes on out of state businesses would violate the Interstate Commerce Clause of the Constitution, which was originally enacted precisely to prevent states from passing protectionist tax and regulatory burdens on out of state businesses. But the states can get around that ruling if the Congress passes authorization for them to impose sales taxes on out of state businesses, under the federal power to regulate interstate commerce.

The problem for Obama, Biden and the Democrats who ran on their platform is that folks in families who earn less than $250,000 a year buy stuff over the Internet too. And Obama, Biden and associated Democrats pledged that these families would not “see any form of tax increase,” nor “one single penny of their tax raised,” (not “any tax”), nor see any of their taxes increased “a single dime.” Voting for and signing a bill authorizing states to impose their sales taxes on internet sales would be the most brazen violation of the Obama/Biden/Democrat no tax increase pledges to the middle class, working people and the poor. And, no, that is not an existing tax that people already owe, because the Supreme Court ruled in Quill that they don’t already owe it.

I immediately knew that these promises were just “calculated deception” to fool gullible voters, as soon as I heard them. The Democrat Party is the party of taxes, as we have seen since 2008. And after they were elected, sure enough, Obama, Biden and Democrat associates happily began raising taxes on the middle class, working people, and the poor in violation of their pledge.

One of the first acts under the new Obama/Biden Administration, and its totally Democrat controlled Congress, was to raise the cigarette tax by 62 cents. Memo to Democrats: people who make less than $250,000 a year buy cigarettes too. They were promised that none of their taxes in any form would be raised a single dime, or even a single penny.

Then the hyperpartisan Obamacare bill imposed 7 new taxes that also applied to people making less than $250,000 a year, including new taxes on health insurance, health savings accounts, medical devices, and itemized health services. Indeed, the Obamacare Individual Mandate requiring all citizens to buy the expensive health insurance Obamacare requires is itself effectively a tax on the middle class, enforced by a tax penalty on the middle class, working people and the poor who do not comply. Obamacare is consequently another brazen violation of the Obama/Biden tax pledge.

Politicians break their promises all the time. But when their promise is so central to their election campaigns, brazenly violating it should be subject to serious consequences. When President George H.W. Bush violated his famous 1988 Republican Convention pledge, “Read my lips, no new taxes,” he was summarily voted out of office with just 38% of the vote, and quite rightly so. Personally, I would favor removing Obama/Biden from office for violating their tax pledge which was central both to their 2008 and 2012 campaigns. If we don’t hold politicians accountable for what they say to get elected, then we will not have a real democracy.

The original Quill decision was wise because state politicians would face no consequences for the tax burdens they place on out of state businesses. Neither the businesses nor their employees would be in any position to hold them democratically accountable. As famed anti-tax activist Grover Norquist told Stuart Varney of the Fox Business Network on April 25, “There are tremendous abuses that would flow from politicians taxing businesses that can’t even vote against them. That’s why the politicians at the state level love this! It’s ‘free money!’ they think. But by opening it up, the voters in their states will get mugged by 49 tax collectors in the other states.”

Internet sales taxes would consequently be a modern form of Taxation without Representation. Remember, the American people once fought a Revolution against that.

We don’t want the 50 states engaging in protectionist mercantilism against each other. The founders saw how unworkable that was under the Articles of Confederation that preceded the Constitution. The free and open national market established by the Constitution has been central to world leading American prosperity ever since.

And once interstate taxation is opened up for sales taxes, the state and local governments will be back to Congress asking for authority to impose income taxes across state lines, where the real money is. New York City has its own city income tax, and it is jealous of the income earned by residents of New Jersey and Connecticut within the city that they take back home. New York state will join the city when it goes to Congress to ask for authority to impose income taxes on residents of the neighboring states.

We see the same in the District of Columbia, which long has lusted for income tax authority over residents of Virginia and Maryland that work within the District. And what about residents of New Hampshire that go to work in Boston, or the residents of any of the 9 no state income tax states that go to work in any of the surrounding states?

Currently, the states are subject to tax competition to keep their taxes competitive. But interstate state taxation would create a competition in taxing non-residents in other states more and more. Taxation without Representation would consequently grow and grow. This is literally un-American.

Moreover, subjecting the Internet to state and local sales taxes would impose the tax burdens of over 9,600 jurisdictions nationwide, with widely varying sales tax regimes. How can any business, especially small businesses, possibly comply with all of those varying requirements, definitions (particularly what is subject to the sales tax and what not in each jurisdiction), and interpretations, not to mention varying rates. Internet sellers all across America, including the smallest kitchen table operations, would also be subject to audits from each of these 9,600 jurisdictions. The days of mom and pop enterprises starting out on the Internet would be over.

The main argument for the Internet sales tax is supposed to be fairness. Not fair we hear for businesses that operate stores, warehouses, and offices within a state to be subject to the state sales tax, while their entirely out of state competitors that sell into the state over the Internet are not. Those out of state competitors would have an unfair competitive advantage.

But those out of state competitors do not use and enjoy the in state government services that in state stores, warehouses, and offices do. The physical in state businesses all benefit from the state and local police, jails, courts, fire departments, roads and highways for their customers to get to and from the stores, and all the other state and local government services that keep their geographic areas and neighborhoods up and running. That is why these physical in state businesses should be paying their taxes and cooperate in collecting them. Out of state businesses not only do not use these services, they cannot even participate in the state and local elections that determine tax burdens, and even the quality of those services. It is the Taxation Without Representation of Internet sales taxes what would be unfair.

Moreover, sales over the Internet are subject to another cost that sales at physical in state stores do not bear. Internet sales are subject to shipping costs that are usually higher than the sales tax that does not have to be paid. So there is really no unfair competitive advantage.

Ultimately, this fairness argument can backfire. While the federal government can authorize state and local sales taxes on interstate sales, it does not have the power to authorize that on international sales. So instead of equalizing sales taxation of physical in state companies with Internet companies, it may redistribute more sales to tax free, foreign, Internet sellers beyond the reach of Congress or the states.

The Internet has flourished as a generally tax free zone. Even the physical in state stores sell on the Internet too, both within the state, and across all 50 states, and even beyond. The booming Internet has consequently been an enormous boon to our entire economy. We should keep it that way.

[First published at Forbes]

The interminable war on drilling, fracking and the Keystone XL pipeline has taken some bizarre turns. Now it’s getting worse, as opponents grow more desperate, and the moon again grows full.

Deepwater drilling, 3-dimension and 4-D seismic (the ability to visualize 3-D over many years), deep horizon horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, and other technological marvels have obliterated environmentalist claims that the United States and the world are running out of oil and gas – and therefore we need to switch to subsidized, land-hungry, job-killing wind turbines, solar panels and biofuels.

Thanks to free enterprise innovation on state and public lands – and no thanks to President Obama, who has made nearly the entire federal onshore and offshore estate off limits to leasing and drilling – U.S. oil and natural gas production has set an all-time record. The world is on the verge of doing so, as well.

Long-running geopolitics have been turned upside down, as OPEC, Russia and other oil superpowers wonder what hit them. Plastic and chemical manufacturers, steel makers, bus and fleet vehicle operators, and now long-haul truckers are already cashing in on the natural gas bonanza. So are electric utilities, especially with EPA continuing its war on coal, with more unnecessary heavy-handed air and water rules.

Global warming/climate change hysteria is also foundering on the rocks of reality. Average global temperatures haven’t risen in 16 years, seas aren’t rising any faster than 100 years ago, and storms, floods and droughts are no more frequent or severe than over multi-decade trends during the past century.

Evidence and reality simply are not cooperating with IPCC and Mann-made climate models. “Trust the computer models!” the alarmists plead. “If reality doesn’t comport with our predictions, reality is wrong.”

The U.S. State Department has (yet again) said the Keystone XL pipeline poses few environmental problems and should be approved, to bring Canadian oil sands petroleum to Texas refineries – creating thousands of construction and permanent jobs, and billions in economic growth and government revenue.

Unacceptable! rants the Environmental Protection Agency. “State underestimated KXL’s potential impact on global warming and needs to do its studies all over again,” says EPA. Never mind that oil sands production would add a minuscule 0.06% to US greenhouse gas emissions and an undetectable 0.00001º C per year to computer-modeled global warming, according to the Congressional Research Service. Do it over, until you get the answers we want, demand EPA and environmentalist ideologues.

Some 70% of Americans and 60% of Canadians support Keystone – and energy security (and jobs) outrank greenhouse gas reduction as a national priority by a 2-1 margin among Americans – says Canadian pollster Nik Nanos.

However, haters of hydrocarbons, modern living standards, free enterprise and personal liberty are not ready to surrender. They’ve launched a blitzkrieg flanking attack. This time they are outraged that some Keystone oil could be refined into diesel and other products and exported! to Europe or Asia – while some frack-based natural gas might be converted to LNG and likewise exported! around the globe.

Well, yes. When U..S refiners transform crude oil into gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, heating oil, asphalt, waxes and petrochemicals, they ship some of these products overseas. Since Americans use less diesel than refineries manufacture (some parts of each barrel of crude can be converted only into diesel), refiners also export their excess diesel to Europe, which uses more diesel than gasoline, and Europeans ship their surplus gasoline to the USA, mostly to East Coast consumers. It’s a win-win arrangement that will be buttressed and safeguarded by Keystone pipeline transport of Canadian oil.

And yes, Cheniere Energy and other companies want to ship liquefied natural gas to foreign markets. It’s hardly surprising that anti-fracking activists would seize on this as yet another excuse for opposing this game-changing technology. It is hardly remarkable that Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), Congressman Ed Markey (D-MA) and other far-Left legislators would sponsor bills to block LNG exports.

What is shocking is that Dow and Huntsman Chemical, Alcoa Aluminum, Nucor Steel and other companies are joining the no-export campaign. They have convinced themselves that such exports will hurt their own selfish economic interests – and for PR reasons have packaged that notion into assertions that exporting any U.S. natural gas is against America’s and the public’s economic interests. Nonsense.

America has barely begun to tap its vast shale gas and conventional natural gas deposits. It has not yet touched its methane hydrates. Together, these deposits will likely last a century or more. In addition, other countries are racing to develop their own conventional, shale and hydrate deposits – while still others will eventually recognize the folly of keeping their own deposits off limits. All this will gradually reduce demand for U.S. natural gas exports, slow and prolong extraction, and keep gas prices low.

This interplay will also help ensure that more factories and power plants in more countries burn natural gas, thereby replacing coal and providing the economic wherewithal to enable China, India and other nations to install modern pollution abatement technologies on their now dirty power plants. That will greatly improve air quality and human health in countless cities, while reducing carbon dioxide emissions and reducing consternation among steadily dwindling numbers of climate alarmists.

American oil and gas development – and exports – will also provide an opportunity for our nation to “give back” to the world community for all the petroleum that our anti-leasing, anti-drilling policies have caused us to take from the world’s petroleum supplies for decades. All this activity will also spur further innovation in technologies to unlock still more energy. It will spur job creation, economic growth and government tax and royalty revenue collection here in the United States … and abroad.

Some 23 million Americans are still unemployed or underemployed; 128 million are dependent on various government programs, including 47 million on food stamps; and the United States is more than $16 trillion in debt. Unemployment in the construction trades is 14.7 percent. Black unemployment was 12.7% when President Bush left office; it soared to 16.7% by September 2011 under President Obama, and remains stuck at 14% today for black adults – and an astronomical 43% for black teenagers!

Drilling, fracking and exports can reverse these horrendous, intolerable, unnecessary statistics.

Misguided industrialists should stop railing against exports. They would do themselves and our nation far more good by putting their lobbyists and public relations staffs to work demanding an end to leasing, drilling and fracking bans that continue to dominate eco-liberal thinking, U.S. energy policy (especially under the current administration).

Of 1.8 billion acres on our nation’s Outer Continental Shelf, only 36 to 43 million acres are under lease. That’s barely 2% of the OCS. Offshore territory equal to 78% of the entire U.S. landmass (Alaska plus the Lower 48) is off limits! Even the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill cannot justify that.

Onshore, it’s just as bad. As of 1994, over 410 million federally controlled acres were effectively off limits to exploration and development. That’s 62% of the nation’s public lands – an area nearly equal to Arizona, Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming combined. The situation has gotten progressively worse, with millions more acres – and vast energy, mineral and economic bounties – locked up in wilderness, park, preserve, wildlife refuge, wilderness study, Antiquities Act and other restrictive land use designations, or simply made unavailable by bureaucratic fiat or foot-dragging.

Drilling opponents claim to be protecting the environment. In reality, they simply detest hydrocarbons, modern living standards, free enterprise and personal liberty. Commonsense policies will rejuvenate our economy, put Americans back to work, and help fund government programs that Messrs. Obama and Reid profess to care so much about – while safeguarding ecological values we all cherish.

[First Published on CFACT.org]

Last month, Earth Day came and went. Perhaps you missed hearing about it. For 2013, the theme was “The Face of Climate Change.” Other than a change in the Post Office cancellation mark on your letters from the usual wavy lines, to the four stick-like wind turbines and a sun symbol, there was little note of what was once an event celebrated by 20 million Americans. Tim Wagner, Utah representative for the Sierra Club’s Our Wild America Campaign, groused: “Media coverage of global warming has virtually disappeared.”

According to EarthDayCentral.com, one of the goals of Earth Day is to help you “Discover what you can do to save the environment.”

Perhaps, people no longer see the need for planetary salvation.

The Christian Science Monitor offered an Earth Day 2013 report card on global warming. The author starts with: “When Earth Day observances first began in 1970, Cleveland had recently doused a pollutant-fueled fire on a section of the Cuyahoga River. Cities were often shrouded in thick blankets of smog. And large portions of Lake Erie were so fouled by industrial, farm, and sewage runoff that sections of the 241-mile-long lake were pronounced dead.” And later, he reports: “Since that first Earth Day, the air over major cities is cleaner. Lake Erie is healthier. So is the Cuyahoga River, which groups in Cleveland would like to turn into a centerpiece of urban life. The improvements have come with ‘yes, but…’ as other environmental challenges have elbowed their way to the fore. But for the most part, tools are in place to deal with them.”

As Patrick Moore, a co-founder of Greenpeace, explains, the ‘80s ushered in the age of environmental extremism. The basic issues, for which he and Greenpeace fought, had largely been accomplished, and the general public was in agreement with the primary message. In order for the environmentalists to remain employed, they had to adopt ever more extreme positions. Moore says: “What happened is environmental extremism. They’ve abandoned science and logic altogether.” Their message today is “anti:” anti-human, anti-science, anti-technology, anti-trade and globalization, anti-business and capitalism, and ultimately, anti-civilization.

Moore’s view helps understand how the environmental movement has gone from trying to save the planet to killing the US economy.

The American economy has some basic problems. We need more well-paid jobs, increased revenue, and our trade balance is out of whack. Each of these issues could be easily addressed, but environmentalists are doing everything they can to kill potential solutions. Three such examples are coal mining and exporting; natural gas extraction and conversion to liquefied natural gas (LNG) that can then be exported; and the Keystone pipeline—all of which face extreme opposition from environmentalists.

COAL

The US has the world’s largest economically recoverable coal resources—with more than one-fourth of the world’s reserves. Unfortunately, our policies have stymied growth in the mining industry. Bill Bissett, President of Kentucky Coal Association, told me: “Our industry is accustomed to market fluctuations and competition with other fuel sources, but having a federal government place additional regulations on one geographic region (Eastern KY and WV) and one industry (coal mining) is absolutely unfair.”

Last month, environmental groups (including the Sierra Club and Greenpeace) sent a letter to newly-confirmed Interior Secretary Sally Jewell calling for a moratorium on the leasing of federal lands for coal mining in the Powder River Basin (PRB) of Montana and Wyoming—which accounts for about forty percent of US coal reserves. The results of a recent lease sale in Wyoming, offers insight regarding the economic importance of leasing these federal lands for coal mining. Peabody Coal paid nearly $800 million to the US Government for the rights to expand an existing coal mine and maintain their current workforce. The $800 million was a “bonus payment” and gives them the right to lease the coal and pay 12.5% of the sales price as a royalty. According to data from the Bureau of Land Management, 13 active coal mines in the Wyoming portion of the PRB alone, employ more than 6800 workers.

While, as Bissett addressed, policy under this administration has harshly singled out coal and the coal miners for punishment, coal’s low cost and abundance continues to make it a highly preferential fuel for power generation in developing countries like China and India. And, as I’ve previously written, even Europe is increasing its use of coal for electricity generation, as they’ve discovered the prohibitively high cost of renewables. In 2011, exports to European and Asian markets represented 76% of total US coal exports—up 31% compared to 2010.

Currently, US coal is easily shipped to Europe from ports on the east coast, but the US is missing out on the important Asian market—now being met by more expensive Australian competitors—due to infrastructure opposition from environmental groups. In the Los Angeles Times (LAT), Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org and a legend in the world of climate activism, wrote: “Those exports can’t really take off, however, unless West Coast ports dramatically expand their deepwater loading capacity. … Environmentalists are trying desperately to block the port expansion.” Addressing the situation, the Wall Street Journal states: “there are now no major coal exporting facilities on the US West Coast. Washington State, with its proximity to coal-rich Wyoming and Montana, is seen as the best place to start.” PRB coal is being shipped to China and India through Vancouver. Additionally, the countries’ needs are being filled by Australian and Indonesian coal—so environmentalists’ fears that shipping US coal will undermine “everything we’ve accomplished,” as Sierra Club spokesman David Graham-Caso says, are wrong. The coal is being shipped and used—but the US is losing out on the jobs (which would be mostly union jobs), the revenue, and the benefit to the trade deficit. The LAT/McKibben piece cites KC Golden, policy director of Seattle’s Climate Solutions group: “Can you imagine standing at the mouth of the Columbia River, watching ships sail in from Asia carrying solar panels and electric car batteries and plasma TVs, passing ships from America carrying coal?” Worse, can you imagine all those goods coming in—manufactured using Australian coal-fueled electricity, and nothing going out? That’s what we have now.

A report from the Energy Policy Research Foundation states: “US production will merely replace higher cost production. … Neither net world coal combustion nor GHG emissions will change as a result of an expansion of US coal exports.” The report concludes:  “The higher net value received is in effect a wealth transfer from foreign consumers to US producers and the national economy. This net gain to the national economy shows up in higher returns to invested capital, greater employment opportunities from expanded investment, higher revenues to state, local and federal governments, and higher lease values on coal reserves from federal and state lands.”

But environmental groups don’t want this “net economic gain to the national economy.” Apparently, they’d prefer that we continue to borrow from China’s Australian coal-fueled economy.

LNG

LNG faces a similar problem. Natural gas was once the favored choice of environmentalists—until privately funded hydraulic fracturing (or high pressure drilling) advancements made it plentiful and, consequently cheap. The low-cost fuel snatched away the fossil fuel-free dream that seemed to be almost within reach. Now environmentalists oppose natural gas as well. The Sierra Club’s Beyond Natural Gas site claims: “Increasing reliance on natural gas displaces the market for clean energy.”

Many countries want US natural gas. Unlike coal, natural gas cannot just be put on a ship and sent to the awaiting customer. It must first be liquefied—hence the term LNG. The liquefaction process requires costly facilities, which, for economic reasons, need a large customer base—many with which the US does not have free trade agreements (though the Energy Department can permit them, provided it determines that such ventures are consistent with the public interest). The International Business Times, on March 1, 2013, reports that: “As of this date, 17 applications for multibillion-dollar facilities to turn the commodity into liquefied natural gas, or LNG, for export are under review by the Energy Department.” Let’s hope they don’t take as many years and as many reviews as the Keystone pipeline.

LNG exports could have a tremendous positive impact on the US economy. A recent IHS global insight report concluded that LNG exports would “result in the creation of over 100,000 direct, indirect, and economy wide jobs and have an immediate economic impact resulting in $3.6 to $5.2 billion in potential annual revenues.”

And, LNG exporting would not only create jobs and increase revenue, it would also reduce trade deficits. A just-released report from the Rio Grande Foundation states: “The United States currently runs a $6 billion trade deficit with Japan. That nation is particularly eager to import LNG from the US due to the nuclear accident at Fukushima.”

Once again, environmentalists oppose jobs, revenue, and trade-deficit reduction. Earlier this year, more than 40 groups and individuals took out a half page ad in the New York Times that said: “Exporting Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) to overseas markets will mean more drilling and fracking on US land, which are dirty and dangerous practices.”

KEYSTONE

Like coal mining and export, natural gas extraction, liquefaction, and export, the Keystone pipeline would create thousands of union jobs and increased service employment in supporting communities; benefit local and state economies, and provide additional revenues to the federal coffers; and help balance the trade deficit, as some of the refined product would be exported. But once again, environmental opposition has targeted the pipeline—causing delay after delay that has now postponed the economic benefit of the pipeline.

Last week, Russ Girling, TransCanada, CEO, said: “I believe that those that are fundamentally opposed to our pipeline are getting louder and more shrill as we move towards a decision.” He announced that the potential start date must be moved from the previously planned late 2014 or early 2015 to late 2015.

The Keystone pipeline saga is the same song, another verse.

These are just three current examples of how the influence of environmental organizations is driving policy in the name of planetary salvation that is, in reality, resulting in economic devastation that could lead to humanity’s ultimate starvation. Environmental motivations are less about saving the planet and more about killing the global economy—while enriching themselves taxpayers’ expense.

 [First Published at TownHall.com]