The debate about allowing Creationism and other religious pseudo-sciences is over. It wasn’t a good idea to begin with. Instead,  at Portland’s East End Community School, religion is allowed in the classroom, in particular the religion of parroting Al Gore’s pseudo-science on global warming and climate change.

Using the fearsome title “Pending doom: Global warming crisis” it goes on to say;

A group of fourth-graders in Portland creates a list of priorities to stop global warming. Our school study of global warming started with lots of questions. What is global warming? What is happening now? What might happen in the future? What can each of us do to help? Why should we care? What will the future look like?

But when you get into reading the article you will find that the answers to the questions are simple a regurgitation of Al Gore’s global war on independent thought.

Related articles: 

Comparing global warming with religion
Michael Crichton on Environmentalism as a Religion
Anthropocentric Global Alarmism
Church to merge with Global Warming Religion
Not the End of the World as We Know It
Sin Independence Day
Replacing the bible with Al Gore’s book
The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming and Environmentalism
The Theology of Global Warming

Source: CNS
Call it green pollution. The ethanol industry, which is marketed as environmentally friendly and has been called a “cornerstone of America’s energy policy,” is dirtying air and water supplies across the heartland, according to a Cybercast News Service investigation. And industry watchers said pollution is going to get worse.

“There seems to be this mad rush toward expansion of the alternative fuels industry without sufficient due diligence,” said Bill Becker, executive director of the National Association of Clean Air Agencies (NACAA). The Renewable Fuels Association, a major industry lobbying group, lists 119 working ethanol refineries in the United States, with another 77 refineries being built as of June 1. Federal and state environmental agencies are responsible for monitoring the plants and making sure they follow local and national clean air and water guidelines. Those agencies have been busy.

A Cybercast News Service analysis of EPA records found 73 biorefineries - more than 60 percent of those operating - were cited by state or federal agencies for environmental violations in the last three years. The vast majority involve state or federal clean air laws. “They’ve brought the enforcement actions against a number of ethanol companies and refineries for essentially sidestepping the law,” said Frank O’Donnell, president of the non-partisan Clean Air Watch. “Ethanol refineries have the potential to pollute quite a bit.” Most of the companies have not been fined by state or federal government agencies, though some of the biggest ownership groups have been forced to pay millions for cleanup and anti-pollution devices. “Ethanol has been dramatically oversold as a green energy source,” said O’Donnell.

Fordland, Mo., bed and breakfast owner Larry Alberty agreed. He and his rural neighbors are fighting a proposed ethanol plant in nearby Rogersville. They fear the plant’s proposed 12-acre wastewater holding pond will seep into groundwater - the plant will be built on top of a major aquifer - and that the project will harm tourism in the area with its smokestacks and noise. “Eleven million people visit this area [each year],” Alberty said. “People aren’t going to want to come to the bed and breakfast and hear the noise and the light pollution … it has an impact there and we’re very concerned about it.” Becker predicted that these “not in my backyard” (NIMBY) battles will happen more frequently as the industry rushes to expand capacity.

Most ethanol plants are built in rural areas and are sold as major job-producing engines, but Becker said the tons of pollution the plants churn out will have a major impact on the heartland’s air quality and, consequently, the area’s quality of life. “It’s very important that the rural areas, the clean areas grow judiciously and allow industrial growth in such a way that it doesn’t kick the air quality into a dirty area,” he said. Failure to do so could cause all industries in the area to install pollution controls, make drivers go through emissions tests for vehicles, and make it more difficult for future development, he argued. The pro-ethanol lobby said there is substantial support for expanding the industry.

“For every NIMBY group and every project that runs into opposition from the community, you’re seeing half a dozen communities that want an ethanol plant,” said Geoff Cooper of the National Corn Growers Association. Cooper said Cybercast News Service’s analysis is not surprising, but he said things are getting better. “Some of the older plants that have been around for a decade or longer were built at a time when the regulatory regime for these types of facilities wasn’t completely ironed out,” he explained. “Some of those older plants are having to do some things to get up to code.”

Cooper said any problems with pollution are offset by the environmental benefits of renewable fuels being used in U.S. vehicles. “When you look at the carbon footprint and ethanol’s ability to reduce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, the industry’s track record speaks for itself,” he said. Cooper also noted that many powerful environmental groups, including the Natural Resources Defense Council, are strongly in favor of ethanol. “Where you’re seeing most of the opposition in terms of air quality is the fringe groups,” he said. But Becker, who represents a group of state and local environmental regulatory agencies, said the ethanol industry’s green credentials have been blackened. At one time, those agencies viewed the renewable fuels industry as a natural ally in environmental protection - but not anymore.

“I don’t think they would qualify as green today,” said Becker.

Incentives for ethanol production and distribution are a significant part of the Senate’s omnibus energy bill being debated this week. Repeated requests for comment from one of the most powerful pro-ethanol lobbying groups, the Renewable Fuel Association, went unreturned, as did requests for comment from Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) - both of whom have been outspoken advocates for ethanol. Aides for Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) reviewed the Cybercast News Service analysis and declined to comment.

Cybercast News Service Correspondent Katherine Poythress contributed to this article.

Source: John Brignell
John compares global warming to a religion.

Source: Indystar
ROME — Soaring demand for biofuels is contributing to a rise in global food import costs, increasing the burden for developing countries already struggling to feed their populations, a United Nations food agency said last week.

Global expenditure for imported foodstuff in 2007 is expected to top $400 billion, almost 5 percent above last year’s record, while developing countries are expected to face a 9 percent increase, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization said. The Rome-based agency’s “Food Outlook” report blamed most of the increase on price hikes of up to 13 percent for coarse grains and vegetable oils, the commodities that are more heavily used in biofuel production. Last month, an agency report said that biofuels like ethanol can help reduce global warming and create jobs for the rural poor. But it warned that the benefits may be offset by higher food prices for the hungry.

Biofuels, which are made from corn and other agricultural products, have been seen by many as a cleaner and cheaper way to meet the world’s soaring energy needs.

Source: China View
BEIJING, June 12 (Xinhuanet) — A researcher from the United States and another from Austria say using Africa’s Mount Kilimanjaro to illustrate the effects of global warming is misleading. Philip Mote of the University of Washington and Georg Kaser of the University of Innsbruck say Kilimanjaro’s ice has been melting away for more than a century, and most of that melt occurred before 1953. That’s before the period where science begins to be conclusive about atmospheric warming in that region.

And because Kilimanjaro is a tropical glacier, the processes contributing to ice melt are different than those on other mid-latitude glaciers located closer to the Earth’s poles. Mid-latitude glaciers become warmed and melted by surrounding air in the summer, while the air around Kilimanjaro’s 19,340-foot (6,447 m) peak (the tallest in Africa) is generally well below freezing. Ice melt on Kilimanjaro is the result of sublimation, which turns ice directly into water vapor at below-freezing temperatures.

Author and anthropology expert Michael Crichton explains why he believes Environmentalism has become a new form of Religion and why that spells bad news for any real environmental threat facing the planet.

Source: London Times
The government’s policy of promoting biofuels for transport will come under harsh attack this week from one of its senior science advisers. Roland Clift will tell a seminar of the Royal Academy of Engineering that the plan to promote bioethanol and biodiesel produced from plants is a “scam”.

Clift, professor of environmental technology at Surrey University, sits on the scientific advisory council of Defra, David Miliband’s environment department. He will tell the seminar that promoting the use of biofuels is likely to increase greenhouse gas emissions. Clift’s comments will amount to a direct challenge to Miliband, who has published a strategy promoting biofuels. It coincides with a surge of anger among environmentalists over the weak pledges on climate change that emerged from last week’s G8 summit. The audience on Thursday will also include Howard Dalton, Miliband’s chief scientist at Defra, who is expected to speak in defence of biofuels.

Clift said: “Biodiesel is a complete scam because in the tropics the growing demand is causing forests to be burnt to make way for palm oil and similar crops. We calculate that the land will need to grow biodiesel crops for 70-300 years to compensate for the CO2 emitted in forest destruction.” Clift will also condemn plans to produce British biodiesel from rapeseed, pointing to research showing the crop generates copious amounts of nitrous oxide – an even more powerful global warming gas than CO2. The attack comes as the government increases its support for biofuels. Next year it will introduce a requirement for 3% of all fuel sold on UK forecourts to come from a renewable source.

Across the EU the renewable transport fuels obligation will increase this to 5% by 2010, with the British government pushing for a target of 10%. Miliband wants British farming to diversify into biofuels. “It is an important part of our vision for a diversified farming sector,” he said in a recent speech. The UK Biomass Strategy published last month is, however, also critical of turning crops into transport fuels, pointing out that this is the least efficient way of using them. It says that it is most efficient simply to burn them. Clift is not the only government science adviser calling for a rethink on biofuels. Roger Kemp, who advises the Department for Transport on energy use in transport, told a conference last week that using biofuels in transport would have no impact on cutting emissions. In his submission to the Institute of Engineering and Technology’s climate change committee he warned that Britain produced 200m tonnes of CO2 a year in transport emissions.

On current trends that will double by 2045 – whereas the government has pledged to reduce transport emissions to around 90m tonnes by that date. “We would need to plant a land area twice the size of Britain to get enough biofuel crops to halve our emissions,” said Kemp, professor of engineering at Lancaster University. “The numbers simply do not add up.” Kemp and Clift point out that the surging global interest in biofuels derives from a “false belief” among politicians that there must be a technical solution to climate change. Kemp said: ”Underlying all this is the assumption that we have to preserve the mobility and freedom to travel that we now enjoy at all costs. However, when you look at the science of climate change it is clear there are no such simple solutions. Humanity has to accept that.”

A similar message was this weekend emerging from environmentalists as they denounced the G8 industrialised nations for failing to take action on climate change at last week’s summit. Tony Juniper, director of Friends of the Earth, accused the G8 of being little more than a “talking shop”. He said: “The G8 has a record of putting the short term interests of rich countries before those of the environment and developing countries and this year was no exception.”

FACTS OF ‘GREEN’ FUEL

• What are biofuels? Biofuels come from plants: bioethanol from sugars and starches, biodiesel mainly from rapeseed and palm oil. They are blended with normal fuels, making up about 5% of the product.
• What are the benefits? The carbon in biofuels comes from the atmosphere so when they burn that carbon is simply rereleased and there is no increase.
• What are the concerns? Biofuel crops take land from growing food and create pressure for deforestation. Burning forests generates vast amounts of CO2.

Source: Maggie Gallagher
Al Gore calls it, ‘The Assault on Reason,’ but his brand of environmentalism sounds a lot more like a new form of faith. Science is an open, nonideological endeavor, which means scientific truths are constantly being revised. Only some of these scientific truths end up entering the cultural bloodstream. Maggie Law: The amount of scientific evidence needed to establish a moral truth is inversely proportional to the degree to which this truth is congruent with liberalism’s moral ends.

Efforts to cut off the scientific debate and to malign the characters of nonconforming scientists are another disturbing sign. If opposition to global warming measures is to be portrayed as an “assault on reason,” then the voices of reason who oppose them must be shut down. The thing is, for Al Gore and his followers, global warming is just such a doggone convenient truth. [more]

Source: Socrates Academy
Archimedes said, ‘Give me a lever long enough and a proper fulcrum, and I shall move the Earth.’ Liberals today see world government as the leverage to institute their ill-considered policies. They have found their fulcrum in the issue of Global Warming.

By asserting that mankind is endangering the climate, liberals are using time-worn techniques of psychological manipulation in an attempt to gain control over economics, institute a measure of world government, and show a triumph of science over theology. Blaming capitalism for all the world’s ills as they do, in Global Warming they see a chance to lay at its feet the price, and exact tribute for their cause. They insist that the cures for Global Warming require subverting both the nation and prosperity before the needs of “the planet”. And since traditional religions did not predict climate changes, and don’t offer solace for this problem, Global Warming is an opportunity to demonstrate the superiority of the atheistic world view.

Whether we call it Anthropocentric Global Warming (AGW), Anthropocentric Climate Change, or whatever (ACCOW), or something else, the concept is both simple, and bizarre. The path by which the idea of AGW has arrived at mainstream acceptance is the usual one: a weird theory is proposed, which masks incredible complexity with apparent simplicity, along with the alleged potential for disaster. So by repeatedly having a cow over having ACCOW, liberals are using the technique of the Big Lie: repeated assertions take on the aura of truth. [more]

Also read the first part of this series.

Source: Onlineopinion, By Ben-Peter Terpstra
Disturbingly, ’saving the environment’ crusades are often characterised as a battle between the ‘evil’ forces of conservatism, and the ‘angelic’ forces of socialism. Further, war metaphors are used to rouse the troops. The earth is always melting, or burning.

Amid all the hyped-up prophecies, however, there is reason to be concerned, and I’m not talking about melting icecaps or frozen beaches here. I’m talking about history. The record is clear: media ideologues, movie stars, and would-be presidents, are using bad history to support bad science. This is unethical. Working class jobs are on the line.

How many times, for instance, does Al Gore denounce his critics as “flat-earthers” in a year? Yes, he believes that in the so-called Dark Ages, angry Catholics trekked around Europe denouncing men of science as “globe-earthers,” no doubt. But history paints an entirely different picture. In the Politically Incorrect Guide to Science, Tom Bethell, an Oxford graduate, points out that: “The claim that medieval scientists and theologians believed the earth is flat was concocted in the nineteenth century.”

Likewise, Jeffrey Burton Russell, an emeritus professor of history at the University of California states: “In the first fifteen centuries of the Christian era [only!] five writers seemed to have denied the globe, and a few others were ambiguous and uninterested in the question.” Today’s lesson: Al Gore likes attacking dead Catholics because they can’t speak back. For more facts, you can read Inventing the Flat Earth. Nevertheless, there are no primary sources to support Gore’s spin that there was a huge war between “flat-earthers” and “globe-earthers”. While I’m at it, what is it with these scaremongers and their obsession with reinventing histories? But there’s hope. I contend that a basic understanding of history will enrich students of science, and protect us all from alarmists.

Here’s another example of how history can correct misinformation. In The Politically Incorrect Correct Guide to Global Warming and Environmentalism, Christopher C. Horner states: “One key alarmist tactic is to redefine the word ‘Arctic’.” For example: “The Artic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA), which has served as the basis for serial, breathless stories about a melting Arctic in recent years chose to expand the Arctic Circle by 450 miles in all directions.” Curiously, they didn’t advertise their new maps as well as their new temperature readings. Naturally, a student of history will not be surprised to learn that when one expands traditional boundaries - by about 50 per cent in this case - one can colour temperature readings. Imagine for argument’s sake if I told you that Melbourne was getting hotter, but forgot to mention that I expanded the city’s borders to encompass, say, Mildura.

Colouring temperature readings is an old trick. Still, no account of bad history supporting bad science is complete without reference to Leonardo Di Caprio’s green sermons. But to summarise: Bush is a meat-eating, rainforest rapist.

The former Santa Barbara soap star turned Titanic heartthrob, asserts in one of his stirring fan site essays that: “The alarm bells are ringing across the globe (e.g., the melting Arctic, parts of Antarctica breaking off, the disappearing glacier on top of Mt Kilimanjaro, etc.).” Also, Bush kills pretty flowers. So, the glacier on top of Mount Kilimanjaro is disappearing because of global warming? History begs to differ.

In the International Journal of Climatology, 2004, for example, G. Kaser asserts: “Retreat from a maximum extent of Kilimanjaro’s glaciers started shortly before Hans Meyer and Ludwig Purtscheller visited the summit for the first time in 1889,” and this was “caused by an abrupt climate change to markedly drier conditions around 1880”. In addition to pointing to inconvenient historical facts and observations (made during two fieldwork trips to Kilimanjaro), Kaser’s findings can’t be overruled by know-nothing movie stars. “Positive air temperatures, have not contributed to the recession process on the mountain so far,” maintains the scientist. More than ever before, crusading actors are manipulating histories. I could go on. And, in addition to using bad history to support bad science, they do not care for fieldtrips.

From Pieter “illustrator of nature” Brueghel’s Hunter’s of the Snow painting (February, 1565), to extreme weather periods cited in the ancient Torah, or the Christians’ Old Testament, history, after all, is replete with examples of harsher conditions. I would encourage all free minds to not only challenge the global warming industry, but to see this as an opportunity to stand up for history. In some ways, we’re mere ants in this unfolding picture called Life. Weather is weather. Acting is acting. And, falsifying temperature readings is a dirty scam concocted by fat cat, eco-socialists.

Source: OpinionEditorials.com
The global warming scam has been proclaimed by its operators to be irrefutable—no more debate necessary. They have all the evidence they need to force government policies on us; the unsuspecting marks. After reading this article by Prof. Cahoon, I, a skeptic about the hype over global warming, am even more skeptical. I’m not willing to wager money in the phony betting parlor set up by environmentalists to perpetuate this scam. Odds are, I’d lose.

Source: News Busters
There’s a huge financial scam being cynically perpetrated on the people of the world that, for the most part, American media are not reporting: the Kyoto Carbon Con. What makes this silence so astounding is that the press love stories about corporations and governments bilking people out of their life savings.

Take for example the media’s fascination with Enron in the early part of this decade, or more recently all of the focus on oil company profits and supposed price gouging at the pumps. Yet, despite the predictable media mania for such financial schemes, press outlets have largely ignored the con game involved with anthropogenic global warming irrespective of the billions of dollars at stake. Fortunately, as has been addressed before, foreign media seem much more willing to expose the charlatan behind the curtain. For example, England’s the Guardian reported Saturday in an article entitled “Truth About Kyoto: Huge Profits, Little Carbon Saved”

Source: The Guardian
A Guardian investigation has found evidence of serious irregularities at the heart of the process the world is relying on to control global warming. The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), which is supposed to offset greenhouse gases emitted in the developed world by selling carbon credits from elsewhere, has been contaminated by gross incompetence, rule-breaking and possible fraud by companies in the developing world, according to UN paperwork, an unpublished expert report and alarming feedback from projects on the ground. One senior figure suggested there may be faults with up to 20% of the carbon credits - known as certified emissions reductions - already sold. Since these are used by European governments and corporations to justify increases in emissions, the effect is that in some cases malpractice at the CDM has added to the net amount of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. [more]

Source: Examiner
Ethanol is the fuel of the future — or so we are being led to believe. In the wake of the top three U.S. automakers’ pledge to build 50 percent of their products as flex-fuel vehicles, some industry experts say consumers are being misled about its benefits.

“It’s a total scam,” said Dan Becker, director of the Sierra Club’s global warming program. “The automakers are trying to shield themselves from having to make more efficient vehicles. They’re avoiding the path to cutting oil dependence, curbing global warming, saving consumers money and ultimately saving Detroit from competitors like Toyota.” The reality is that ethanol, an outgrowth of the Alternative Motor Fuels Act, has done more to spawn a billion-dollar industry than to lessen the total cost consumers will pay at the pump, said David Friedman, research director for the vehicles program for the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Under the act, automakers receive credit for building vehicles that run on alternative fuel, but the vehicles are not fuel-efficient. Ethanol is a win because it costs manufacturers only $50 per vehicle to make it a flex-fuel vehicle. However, the end product is a gas-guzzling, fuel-inefficient vehicle that will actually create more greenhouse gases than those that run on gasoline, Friedman said. [more]

Source: Pete’s place on Global Warming
This is just the kind of financial scandal I’ve been predicting is going to happen with the ongoing push to stop global warming and climate change. The idea of an individual or corporation buying “carbon offsets” (like planting trees, installing solar or wind power) so they can continue “polluting” (releasing carbon dioxide) is just about the most ridiculous thing I can think of.

There are numerous flaws in this concept. First, is the notion that you can “sin all week long”, as long as you go to Church on Sunday and put a hefty contribution into the collection basket. Does that mean the rich are the only people who are going to be forgiven? Are people really that shallow that they can soothe their guilty consciences this way? Secondly, it is very clear that reducing carbon dioxide emissions has a near-zero hope of stopping global warming and climate change. Does anyone not realize that these costs are going to be passed on to the consumer? Think again, this will just like an added, hidden tax. Finally, do you know who is going to benefit from this? The middle-man, the broker, the sellers of the “carbon credits”. And of course the makers and installers of solar panels and windmills will benefit. So a lot of people stand to make money from this, so there will be supporters. A lot of people make money selling “snake oil” too. Is this a fraud and a scam, or what? [more]

Source: Thisismoney
Making money by taking advantage of inefficiencies and pricing anomalies in the new green financial markets surrounding carbon trading is the next big thing in the hedge fund industry, the giant Man Group indicated today.

Man, the world’s largest listed hedge fund manager, was reporting a 24% surge in funds under management to $61.7bn (£31bn) in the year to 31 March and profits 13% higher at $1.3bn and cranked up the dividend by 40% in dollar terms to 20 cents. Chariman Harvey McGrath said Man’s performance was in line with a vintage year for hedge funds which saw $165bn of new money raised from financial institutions and world’s super wealthy. McGrath admitted the industry is becoming ever more competitive with new managers setting up all the time but added: ‘There is still significant further development to come as we look at new emerging strategies like those in the green space.’

Source: ABC News
NASA administrator Michael Griffin is drawing the ire of his agency’s preeminent climate scientists after apparently downplaying the need to combat global warming. In an interview broadcast this morning on National Public Radio’s “Morning Edition” program, Griffin was asked by NPR’s Steve Inskeep whether he is concerned about global warming. “I have no doubt that a trend of global warming exists,” Griffin told Inskeep. “I am not sure that it is fair to say that it is a problem we must wrestle with.”

“To assume that it is a problem is to assume that the state of Earth’s climate today is the optimal climate, the best climate that we could have or ever have had and that we need to take steps to make sure that it doesn’t change,” Griffin said. “I guess I would ask which human beings — where and when — are to be accorded the privilege of deciding that this particular climate that we have right here today, right now is the best climate for all other human beings. I think that’s a rather arrogant position for people to take.”

Griffin’s comments immediately drew stunned reaction from James Hansen, NASA’s top climate scientist at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. “It’s an incredibly arrogant and ignorant statement,” Hansen told ABC News. “It indicates a complete ignorance of understanding the implications of climate change.”

Hansen believes Griffin’s comments fly in the face of well-established scientific knowledge that hundreds of NASA scientists have contributed to. “It’s unbelievable,” said Hansen. “I thought he had been misquoted. It’s so unbelievable.” News media inquiries to NASA headquarters about Griffin’s comments prompted the space agency to make the unusual move of issuing a news release late Wednesday night.

“NASA is the world’s preeminent organization in the study of Earth and the conditions that contribute to climate change and global warming,” Griffin said in a statement. “The agency is responsible for collecting data that is used by the science community and policy makers as part of an ongoing discussion regarding our planet’s evolving systems. It is NASA’s responsibility to collect, analyze and release information. It is not NASA’s mission to make policy regarding possible climate change mitigation strategies. As I stated in the NPR interview, we are proud of our role and I believe we do it well.”

Hansen, featured prominently in Al Gore’s global warming documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth,” has been warning of the potential dangers of climate change since the 1980s. In late 2005, he accused NASA of trying to improperly censor him after he warned that Earth’s climate might be approaching a dangerous “tipping point.” The agency later fired a public affairs employee, a political appointee of the Bush administration, over the incident.

Last year, many NASA scientists were upset when reports surfaced that the agency had quietly deleted the phrase “to understand and protect our home planet” from the NASA mission statement. The scientists believe research on issues like climate change will suffer as NASA shifts priorities toward exploration missions to the moon and Mars.

“Earth has always been central to NASA’s science,” Hansen said.