Energy Video III: Bill Barnet


B
ill Barnet is the former business leader who helped start the education accountability movement before he ran a write-in campaign at the very last minute for mayor of Spartanburg … and won.

He’s one of those guys who doesn’t need his job, and in fact doesn’t need politics at all. He does it to try to make the world a better place. That’s why he came to see us with Joe Riley to talk about global warming.

24 thoughts on “Energy Video III: Bill Barnet

  1. Lee

    The only group of scientists who have ever met and agreed that there was global warming in need of draconian laws was the recent one held by the UN, which hand-picked those who agreed with this point of view.
    Every annual meeting of the world’s top climatologists and meterologists has rejected these notions.

  2. Ready to Hurl

    Every annual meeting of the world’s top climatologists and meterologists has rejected these notions.

    Care to back this statement up with facts?

  3. Lee

    15,000 Scientists Urge Congress to Reject Global Warming Treaty
    May 1, 1998
    More than 15,000 basic and applied American scientists, two-thirds with advanced degrees, have signed a petition calling on the U.S. government to reject the global warming agreement negotiated last December in Kyoto.
    Signatures are continuing to accumulate, as some 4,200 of the initial signers have requested more petitions to distribute to their colleagues.
    “This petition marks the beginning of the end of the global warming scare,” commented Joseph L. Bast, publisher of Environment News and president of The Heartland Institute, an independent research institute that has been critical of the science behind the global warming scare. “Those who continue to predict catastrophic global warming can no longer claim to represent ‘mainstream science.’ They are, and always have been, an extreme minority voice in the scientific community.”
    Real Scientists
    Signers of the petition so far include approximately 2,100 physicists, geophysicists, climatologists, meteorologists, and environmental scientists who are especially well qualified to evaluate the effects of carbon dioxide on the Earth’s atmosphere and climate. Signatures have also been gathered from another 4,400 scientists whose fields make them especially well qualified to evaluate the effects of carbon dioxide on the Earth’s plant and animal life.
    Nearly all of the initial 15,000 signers have technical training suitable for the evaluation of the relevant research data, and many are trained in related fields. In addition to these 15,000, approximately 1,800 individuals have signed the petition who are trained in fields other than science or whose field of specialization was not specified on their returned petition.
    The significance of the petition’s 15,000 signers is far greater than the “2,500 scientists” who allegedly endorse the 1996 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). A survey of IPCC scientist-contributors and reviewers, conducted by the Science and Environmental Policy Project in 1997, found that about half did not support the Policymakers Summary, which famously claimed to have found evidence of a “discernible human influence” on global climate.
    Other surveys of climatologists have similarly found less than half subscribe to what Vice President Al Gore and other environmentalists call “mainstream” views on global warming. A Citizens for a Sound Economy investigation into the credentials of “2,600 scientists” cited by Gore as being supportive of global warming shows that 90 percent of them are unqualified to comment on the issue. For example, just one climatologist appears on the list, which was developed by the advocacy group Ozone Action.
    No Corporate Funding
    The costs of the petition project have been paid entirely by private donations. No industrial funding or money from sources within the coal, oil, natural gas, or related industries has been utilized.
    The petition effort is being spearheaded by the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine. The petition’s organizers, who include some faculty members and staff of the Institute, do not otherwise receive funds from such sources, and the Institute itself has no such funding. Also, no funds of tax-exempt organizations have been used for the project.
    Dr. Arthur B. Robinson, president of the Institute, noted in an April 14 news release that “the signatures and the text of the petition stand alone and speak for themselves. These scientists have signed this specific document. They are not associated with any particular organization. Their signatures represent a strong statement about this important issue by many of the best scientific minds in the United States.”
    Details of the project, along with a periodically updated list of signatories, are available the project’s Web site, http://www.oism.org/pproject/.

  4. Ready to Hurl

    “This petition marks the beginning of the end of the global warming scare,” commented Joseph L. Bast, publisher of Environment News and president of The Heartland Institute, an independent research institute that has been critical of the science behind the global warming scare.

    Founded in the early 1990s, Heartland Institute claims to apply “cutting-edge research to state and local public policy issues.” Additionally, Heartland bills itself as “the marketing arm of the free-market movement.” http://www.capitalresearch.org/search/orgdisplay.asp?Org=HEA100
    From ExxonSecrets:The Heartland Institute sponsors http://www.climatesearch.org, a web page ostensibly dedicated to objective research on global warming, but at the same time presenting heavily biased research by organizations such as the American Petroleum Institute as an FAQ section. The Heartland Institute networks heavily with other conservative policy organizations, and is part of the State Policy Network, a member of the Cooler Heads Coalition (as of 4/04), and co-sponsored the 2001 Fly In for Freedom with the Wise Use umbrella group, Alliance for America. Heartland also co-sponsored a New York state Conference on Property Rights, hosted by the Property Rights Foundation of America. The Institute puts out several publications, including “Environment & Climate News” which frequently features anti-environmentalist and climate skeptic writing. They also published “Earth Day ’96,” a compilation of articles on environmental topics. The publication, distributed on college campuses, featured “Adventures in the Ozone Layer” by S. Fred Singer, and “the Cold Facts on Global Warming” by Sallie Baliunas. The articles denied the serious nature of ozone depletion and global warming. Walter F. Buchholtz, an ExxonMobil executive, sits on Heartland’s Board of Directors. (4/04)
    Heartland Institute has received $561,500 from ExxonMobil since 1998.
    1997
    $unknown Mobil Corporation
    Source: Heartland material, present at 3/16/97 conference
    1998
    $30,000 ExxonMobil Corporate Giving
    Source: ExxonMobil 1998 grants list
    2000
    $115,000 ExxonMobil Foundation
    Climate Change
    Source: ExxonMobil Foundation 2000 IRS 990
    2001
    $90,000 ExxonMobil Foundation
    Source: ExxonMobil 2001 Annual Report
    2002
    $15,000 ExxonMobil Foundation
    Source: ExxonMobil 2002 Annual Report
    2003
    $7,500 ExxonMobil Corporate Giving
    19th Aniversary Benefit Dinner
    Source: ExxonMobil 2003 Corporate Giving Report
    2003
    $85,000 ExxonMobil Foundation
    General Operating Support
    Source: ExxonMobil 2003 Corporate Giving Report
    2004
    $10,000 Exxon Corporation
    Climate Change Activities
    Source: Exxon Giving Report 2004
    2004
    $15,000 ExxonMobil Foundation
    Climate Change Efforts
    Source: Exxon Giving Report 2004
    2004
    $75,000 ExxonMobil Foundation
    General Operating Support
    Source: Exxon Giving Report 2004
    2005
    $29,000 ExxonMobil Foundation
    Source: ExxonMobil 2005 DIMENSIONS Report (Corporate Giving)
    2005
    $90,000 ExxonMobil Corporate Giving
    Source: ExxonMobil 2005 DIMENSIONS Report (Corporate Giving)

  5. Ready to Hurl

    From SourceWatch.org:
    The Oregon Petition, sponsored by the OISM, was circulated in April 1998 in a bulk mailing to tens of thousands of U.S. scientists. In addition to the petition, the mailing included what appeared to be a reprint of a scientific paper. Authored by OISM’s Arthur B. Robinson, Sallie L. Baliunas, Willie Soon, and Zachary W. Robinson, the paper was titled “Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide” and was printed in the same typeface and format as the official Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Also included was a reprint of a December 1997, Wall Street Journal editorial, “Science Has Spoken: Global Warming Is a Myth, by Arthur and Zachary Robinson. A cover note signed “Frederick Seitz/Past President, National Academy of Sciences, U.S.A./President Emeritus, Rockefeller University”, may have given some persons the impression that Robinson’s paper was an official publication of the academy’s peer-reviewed journal. The blatant editorializing in the pseudopaper, however, was uncharacteristic of scientific papers.
    Robinson’s paper claimed to show that pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere is actually a good thing. “As atmospheric CO2 increases,” it stated, “plant growth rates increase. Also, leaves lose less water as CO2 increases, so that plants are able to grow under drier conditions. Animal life, which depends upon plant life for food, increases proportionally.” As a result, Robinson concluded, industrial activities can be counted on to encourage greater species biodiversity and a greener planet:
    As coal, oil, and natural gas are used to feed and lift from poverty vast numbers of people across the globe, more CO2 will be released into the atmosphere. This will help to maintain and improve the health, longevity, prosperity, and productivity of all people.
    Human activities are believed to be responsible for the rise in CO2 level of the atmosphere. Mankind is moving the carbon in coal, oil, and natural gas from below ground to the atmosphere and surface, where it is available for conversion into living things. We are living in an increasingly lush environment of plants and animals as a result of the CO2 increase. Our children will enjoy an Earth with far more plant and animal life as [sic] that with which we now are blessed. This is a wonderful and unexpected gift from the Industrial Revolution.
    In reality, neither Robinson’s paper nor OISM’s petition drive had anything to do with the National Academy of Sciences, which first heard about the petition when its members began calling to ask if the NAS had taken a stand against the Kyoto treaty. Robinson was not even a climate scientist. He was a biochemist with no published research in the field of climatology, and his paper had never been subjected to peer review by anyone with training in the field. In fact, the paper had never been accepted for publication anywhere, let alone in the NAS Proceedings. It was self-published by Robinson, who did the typesetting himself on his own computer. (It was subsequently published as a “review” in Climate Research, which contributed to an editorial scandal at that publication.)
    None of the coauthors of “Environmental Effects of Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide” had any more standing than Robinson himself as a climate change researcher. They included Robinson’s 22-year-old son, Zachary, along with astrophysicists Sallie L. Baliunas and Willie Soon. Both Baliunas and Soon worked with Frederick Seitz at the George C. Marshall Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank where Seitz served as executive director. Funded by a number of right-wing foundations, including Scaife and Bradley, the George C. Marshall Institute does not conduct any original research. It is a conservative think tank that was initially founded during the years of the Reagan administration to advocate funding for Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative–the “Star Wars” weapons program. Today, the Marshall Institute is still a big fan of high-tech weapons. In 1999, its website gave prominent placement to an essay by Col. Simon P. Worden titled “Why We Need the Air-Borne Laser,” along with an essay titled “Missile Defense for Populations–What Does It Take? Why Are We Not Doing It?” Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, however, the Marshall Institute has adapted to the times by devoting much of its firepower to the war against environmentalism, and in particular against the “scaremongers” who raise warnings about global warming.
    “The mailing is clearly designed to be deceptive by giving people the impression that the article, which is full of half-truths, is a reprint and has passed peer review,” complained Raymond Pierrehumbert, a meteorlogist at the University of Chicago. NAS foreign secretary F. Sherwood Rowland, an atmospheric chemist, said researchers “are wondering if someone is trying to hoodwink them.” NAS council member Ralph J. Cicerone, dean of the School of Physical Sciences at the University of California at Irvine, was particularly offended that Seitz described himself in the cover letter as a “past president” of the NAS. Although Seitz had indeed held that title in the 1960s, Cicerone hoped that scientists who received the petition mailing would not be misled into believing that he “still has a role in governing the organization.”
    The NAS issued an unusually blunt formal response to the petition drive. “The NAS Council would like to make it clear that this petition has nothing to do with the National Academy of Sciences and that the manuscript was not published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences or in any other peer-reviewed journal,” it stated in a news release. “The petition does not reflect the conclusions of expert reports of the Academy.” In fact, it pointed out, its own prior published study had shown that “even given the considerable uncertainties in our knowledge of the relevant phenomena, greenhouse warming poses a potential threat sufficient to merit prompt responses. Investment in mitigation measures acts as insurance protection against the great uncertainties and the possibility of dramatic surprises.”
    Notwithstanding this rebuke, the Oregon Petition managed to garner 15,000 signatures within a month’s time. S. Fred Singer called the petition “the latest and largest effort by rank-and-file scientists to express their opposition to schemes that subvert science for the sake of a political agenda.”
    Nebraska senator Chuck Hagel called it an “extraordinary response” and cited it as his basis for continuing to oppose a global warming treaty. “Nearly all of these 15,000 scientists have technical training suitable for evaluating climate research data,” Hagel said. Columns citing the Seitz petition and the Robinson paper as credible sources of scientific expertise on the global warming issue have appeared in publications ranging from Newsday’, the Los Angeles Times and Washington Post to the Austin-American Statesman, Denver Post, and Wyoming Tribune-Eagle.
    In addition to the bulk mailing, OISM’s website enables people to add their names to the petition over the Internet, and by June 2000 it claimed to have recruited more than 19,000 scientists. The institute is so lax about screening names, however, that virtually anyone can sign, including for example Al Caruba, a pesticide-industry PR man and conservative ideologue who runs his own website called the “National Anxiety Center.” Caruba has no scientific credentials whatsoever, but in addition to signing the Oregon Petition he has editorialized on his own website against the science of global warming, calling it the “biggest hoax of the decade,” a “genocidal” campaign by environmentalists who believe that “humanity must be destroyed to ‘Save the Earth.’ . . . There is no global warming, but there is a global political agenda, comparable to the failed Soviet Union experiment with Communism, being orchestrated by the United Nations, supported by its many Green NGOs, to impose international treaties of every description that would turn the institution into a global government, superceding the sovereignty of every nation in the world.”
    When questioned in 1998, OISM’s Arthur Robinson admitted that only 2,100 signers of the Oregon Petition had identified themselves as physicists, geophysicists, climatologists, or meteorologists, “and of those the greatest number are physicists.” This grouping of fields concealed the fact that only a few dozen, at most, of the signatories were drawn from the core disciplines of climate science – such as meteorology, oceanography, and glaciology – and almost none were climate specialists. The names of the signers are available on the OISM’s website, but without listing any institutional affiliations or even city of residence, making it very difficult to determine their credentials or even whether they exist at all. When the Oregon Petition first circulated, in fact, environmental activists successfully added the names of several fictional characters and celebrities to the list, including John Grisham, Michael J. Fox, Drs. Frank Burns, B. J. Honeycutt, and Benjamin Pierce (from the TV show M*A*S*H), an individual by the name of “Dr. Red Wine,” and Geraldine Halliwell, formerly known as pop singer Ginger Spice of the Spice Girls. Halliwell’s field of scientific specialization was listed as “biology.” Even in 2003, the list was loaded with misspellings, duplications, name and title fragments, and names of non-persons, such as company names.

  6. Dave

    Hurl, what do you have against plants? They need their CO2 just like we need our oxygen. Give them a break, will you? And if Dr. Red Wine supported it, and Ginger “Snaps” Spice, how could it be wrong?

  7. Lee

    Hurl thinks he can paste a lot of facts which do not dispute us, in the hope that no one will read it, and just think he has all this research to back up the silly notion of global warming.
    It is the typical liberal faux argument: the facts can be dismissed because they were gathered and published by people funded by some evil corporation like Exxon.

  8. Uncle Elmer

    Lee, whatever RTH is thinking, your article does have something pretty funny in it:
    “More than 15,000 basic and applied American scientists, two-thirds with advanced degrees…”
    One third did NOT have advanced degrees? I didn’t know you could be a scientist without one. I always wanted to be a scientist, can I be one too?
    Regardless of the stature of the brains on either side of the “debate,” anybody with sense would urge moving this country off its dependence on fossil fuels. Are we all forgetting that Indian and Chinese demand is just going to keep making these things more expensive? That fossil fuel based technologies (particularly petroleum) fund regimes that we don’t like? The global warming arguments are old news. People who want to see the US stay a powerhouse should all agree that energy independence is essential, even if they can’t agree on climate change.

  9. Mark Whittington

    I watched all three videos and I do happen to agree with most of the observations of the participants. It strikes me though how these people are capable of carrying out intelligent, rational discussion on this issue, yet they fail to proclaim the obvious on other issues.
    I’d love to hear a discussion among the participants about how Globalization and free market capitalism have benefited SC and the US at large (in their view). Perhaps they would like to comment on the recent nationally televised, supposed image-boosting commercials from the Payday Loan and Pharmaceutical associations. I wonder if when Sen. Graham, Mr. Barnett, and Mr. Riley pass down any road, anywhere, they see an ugly land of innumerable strip malls and flagrant commercialism as do I, or do they see something else entirely. How can one understand the detrimental effects of global warming on the one hand, yet be in total denial about nearly everything else? How can you on the one hand talk about bipartisanship and cooperation for the benefit of the people, but when it comes to policy on the other hand you do everything possible to enervate, subjugate and exploit the workers (the people) whom you claim to serve? It’s a strange dichotomy indeed.

  10. LexWolf

    “Regardless of the stature of the brains on either side of the “debate,” anybody with sense would urge moving this country off its dependence on fossil fuels.”
    If anything is “settled”, I think it’s the need to become independent of foreign energy sources, whether fossil or not. However, that’s not going to happen overnight or even within the next decade or so. In the meantime, we should be building nuclear plants as if they’re going out of style, building wind farms everywhere (even within 10 miles of Ted Kennedy summer dacha), and drilling for oil everywhere we can. While that’s going on maybe technological progress will make renewable energy sources more feasible, affordable and competitive than they are now (= not at all without massive subsidies). It’s a serious fallacy, however, to think that we should just give up on fossil fuels right here and now, before we have alternate energy sources ready to go.

  11. Dave

    Most have probably read recently where the poor in Mexico are being priced out of their staple food supply, corn. But the quick fix crowd that is pushing the corn for ethanol nonsense should think twice before engaging on some massive government funded conversion boondoggle. Then again, the peasants should get off the carbs and get on the South Beach diet anyway, so who cares. And lots of grant monies await the university gurus to find out how to produce high octane ethanol. Nonsense.

  12. Ready to Hurl

    Lee, you’re a champion of denial. Too bad that it’s not an Olympic sport.
    The source for your denial of global climate change caused by human activity is a mom ‘n pop “think tank” in the boondocks of Oregon. Hawk-Eye from the TV show “M.A.S.H.” is one of the “scientists” who’s professional opinion you value so highly.
    The “think tank” and the “independent research institute” that you lean on to counter legitimate, international organizations of scientists are PR fronts funded by the same industry that made billions in profits last year. The Heartland Institute even whored for Big Tobacco before jumping on the Big Oil gravy train.
    Here’s what I’m really thinking: you’re either hopelessly blinded by ideology or you’re just a stubborn idiot.
    Wait. That’s not really an “either/or proposition,” is it?

  13. LexWolf

    I’m always very leery when I see a bunch of politicians jumping on a bandwagon, any bandwagon.

    The Big Green Fuel Lie
    George Bush says that ethanol will save the world. But there is evidence that biofuels may bring new problems for the planet
    By Daniel Howden in Sao Paolo
    Published: 05 March 2007
    The ethanol boom is coming. The twin threats of climate change and energy security are creating an unprecedented thirst for alternative energy with ethanol leading the way.
    That process is set to reach a landmark on Thursday when the US President, George Bush, arrives in Brazil to kick-start the creation of an international market for ethanol that could one day rival oil as a global commodity. The expected creation of an “Opec for ethanol” replicating the cartel of major oil producers has spurred frenzied investment in biofuels across the Americas.
    But a growing number of economists, scientists and environmentalists are calling for a “time out” and warning that the headlong rush into massive ethanol production is creating more problems than it is solving……
    In Brazil, that switch is more advanced than anywhere in the world and it has already substituted 40 per cent of its gasoline usage…….
    But there is a darker side to this green revolution, which argues for a cautious assessment of how big a role ethanol can play in filling the developed world’s fuel tank. The prospect of a sudden surge in demand for ethanol is causing serious concerns even in Brazil.
    The ethanol industry has been linked with air and water pollution on an epic scale, along with deforestation in both the Amazon and Atlantic rainforests, as well as the wholesale destruction of Brazil’s unique savannah land.
    Fabio Feldman, a leading Brazilian environmentalist and former member of Congress who helped to pass the law mandating a 23 per cent mix of ethanol to be added to all petroleum supplies in the country, believes that Brazil’s trailblazing switch has had serious side effects.
    “Some of the cane plantations are the size of European states, these vast monocultures have replaced important eco-systems,” he said. “If you see the size of the plantations in the state of Sao Paolo they are oceans of sugar cane. In order to harvest you must burn the plantations which creates a serious air pollution problem in the city.”…….
    While Brazil’s tropical climate allows it to source alcohol from its sugar crop, the US has turned to its industrialised corn belt for the raw material to substitute oil. The American economist Lester R Brown, from the Earth Policy Institute, is leading the warning voices: “The competition for grain between the world’s 800 million motorists who want to maintain their mobility and its two billion poorest people who are simply trying to stay alive is emerging as an epic issue.”
    Speaking in Sao Paolo, where the ethanol boom is expected to take off with a US-Brazil trade deal this Thursday, Fabio Feldman, said: “We must stop and take a breath and consider the consequences.”….

  14. Lee

    Yes, uncle elmer, you can be a scientist without a postgraduate degree, even without an undergraduate degree, if you actually PRACTICE science, because the act of being a scientist is to follow the methods of science.
    An engineer can work as a professional scientist, just as a lot of persons with advanced degrees in sciences like mathematics, chemistry, physics and biology work as engineers. Texas Instruments used to have a lot of biologists working as computer scientists and computer engineers.
    In this case, 15,000 scientists who work in areas like meterology and climatology say the global warming scare has no foundation in science. On the other side, are a handful of scientists who BELIEVE that it MIGHT be occurring, but cannot prove it, much less prove man’s activities as the primary cause.

  15. Lee

    The controlling driver of global temperature fluctuations, according to Dr. Benny Peiser of England’s John Moore’s University, is solar ray activity. “Six eminent researchers from the Russian Academy of Science and the Israel Space Agency have just published a startling paper in one of the world’s leading space science journals. The team of solar physicists claims to have come up with compelling evidence that changes in cosmic ray intensity and variations in solar activity have been driving much of the Earth’s climate,” Peiser was quoted as saying in the May 17 National Post.
    Moreover, reports Peiser, Jan Veizer, one of Canada’s top earth scientists, published a comprehensive review of recent findings and concluded, “empirical observations on all time scales point to celestial phenomena as the principal driver of climate, with greenhouse gases acting only as potential amplifiers.”
    Added Peiser, “In fact, the explicit and implicit rejection of the ‘consensus’ is not restricted to individual scientists. It also includes distinguished scientific organizations such as the Russian Academy of Science and the U.S. Association of State Climatologists, both of which are highly skeptical of the whole idea.”

  16. Uncle Elmer

    Lee I don’t agree with you I’m afraid. I see a MD for medical problems, a JD for legal needs, and so on, because I generally think people trained in a field are better at it. That applies to scientists too; I just don’t know any armchair scientists who impress me much more than Cliff Clavin did. Maybe you hang out with a smarter crowd. I would have told the TI story differently; my recollection was that they were justly famous for retraining people to approach problems in computer science from the perspective of their “home” discipline, which is significantly different than what I thought you were implying (costs a lot more too). However whatever they did, more power to them; I note on their webpage they consider global warming a problem of significant concern so I guess they’re training those biologists up right :-).
    As far as the good Dr. Peiser..his primary appointment is in the School of Sport and Exercise Science. I’m sure his articles on soccer hooliganism are great…but I do tend to check credentials and I don’t think the ones on climate science are nearly as good. Guess I’m an elitist.
    And that’s not even the point! I try not to post on this blog because it’s so easy to get drawn into the silliness about whose source is bigger. The point I really wanted to make was that reliance on fossil fuels is a dumb long term strategy. We have seen how politics, war, and natural disaster can screw up supply and put this country in an absolute tailspin. I don’t WANT that anymore; I feel we need to address energy independence seriously and that there is no source too small to be at least checked out. I wish any of these candidates were articulate about how to spur the development of non-fossil sources. I hope Brad challenges every single one that comes by begging for endorsements to address this point.

  17. Lee

    So you call all these full-time degreed scientists “armchair”, eh?
    What does that make you and the nontechnical Gorebots down at the local coffeehouse?

  18. Lee

    The only inconvenient truth about global warming, contends Colorado State University’s Bill Gray, is that a genuine debate has never actually taken place. Hundreds of scientists, many of them prominent in the field, agree.
    Gray is perhaps the world’s foremost hurricane expert. His Tropical Storm Forecast sets the standard. Yet, his criticism of the global warming “hoax” makes him an outcast.
    “They’ve been brainwashing us for 20 years,” Gray says. “Starting with the nuclear winter and now with the global warming. This scare will also run its course. In 15-20 years, we’ll look back and see what a hoax this was.”
    Gray directs us to a 1975 Newsweek article that whipped up a different fear: a coming ice age.
    “Climatologists,” reads the piece, “are pessimistic that political leaders will take any positive action to compensate for the climatic change. … The longer the planners delay, the more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic change once the results become grim reality.”
    Thank God they did nothing. Imagine how warm we’d be?

  19. John Hartz

    On January 22, 2007, the U.S. Climate Action Partnership (USCAP) released a landmark series of principles and recommendations calling for the federal government to quickly enact strong national legislation to achieve significant reductions of greenhouse gas emissions.
    The USCAP is an unprecedented alliance of leading non-governmental organizations and major corporations. This very diverse group of business and environmental leaders have come together to call for mandatory action, with a comprehensive approach involving near-, mid-, and long-term targets, and a range of effective policies.
    Members of USCAP
    Alcoa
    BP America, Inc.
    Caterpillar, Inc.
    Duke Energy
    DuPont
    Environmental Defense
    Florida Power & Light
    General Electric
    Lehman Brothers
    Natural Resources Defense Council
    Pew Center on Global Climate Change
    PG&E Corporation
    PNM Resources
    World Resources Institute

  20. Lee

    Yes, those who would be able to sell “pollution rights” are all in favor of such legislation.

  21. LexWolf

    Gotta love all this global warming hysteria. After 2 congressional hearings into global warming had to be called off because of winter storms, now we have an expedition to the North Pole called off because it’s much colder than expected. Why can’t the weather cooperate with the hysteria?
    a href=http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070312/ap_on_sc/polar_trek_1>Frostbite ends Bancroft-Arnesen trek
    MINNEAPOLIS – A North Pole expedition meant to bring attention to global warming was called off after one of the explorers got frostbite. The explorers, Ann Bancroft and Liv Arnesen, on Saturday called off what was intended to be a 530-mile trek across the Arctic Ocean after Arnesen suffered frostbite in three of her toes, and extreme cold temperatures drained the batteries in some of their electronic equipment…….
    Then there was the cold — quite a bit colder, Atwood said, then Bancroft and Arnesen had expected. One night they measured the temperature inside their tent at 58 degrees below zero, and outside temperatures were exceeding 100 below zero at times, Atwood said…..

  22. LexWolf

    Gotta love all this global warming hysteria. After 2 congressional hearings into global warming had to be called off because of winter storms, now we have an expedition to the North Pole called off because it’s much colder than expected. Why can’t the weather cooperate with the hysteria?
    Frostbite ends Bancroft-Arnesen trek
    MINNEAPOLIS – A North Pole expedition meant to bring attention to global warming was called off after one of the explorers got frostbite. The explorers, Ann Bancroft and Liv Arnesen, on Saturday called off what was intended to be a 530-mile trek across the Arctic Ocean after Arnesen suffered frostbite in three of her toes, and extreme cold temperatures drained the batteries in some of their electronic equipment…….
    Then there was the cold — quite a bit colder, Atwood said, then Bancroft and Arnesen had expected. One night they measured the temperature inside their tent at 58 degrees below zero, and outside temperatures were exceeding 100 below zero at times, Atwood said…..

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