Thanks to the technological miracle of “fracking,” America now has the proven reserves to be the world’s number one producer of oil, number one producer of natural gas, and number one producer of coal. Imagine what that would be like for America’s own economy to include the world leading industries of all three of these crucial sources of energy.
America would then be the Saudi Arabia of oil, the Saudi Arabia of natural gas, and the Saudi Arabia of coal, all within just one economy. That would mean hundreds of thousands of good paying, blue collar jobs in those three industries alone.
But the mighty rivers of reliable, low cost energy those three industries would produce would also mean the renaissance of world leading American manufacturing, because manufacturing thrives on reliable supplies of low cost energy. That would add up to millions more good paying, blue collar jobs, and the revival of America’s world leading middle class. America would be great again!
In a new study, Heritage Foundation economist Steve Moore estimates the market value of America’s proven reserves of oil and natural gas alone as 50 trillion! That is more than three times America’s entire economy, and three times all of America’s national debt.
But the geniuses at 350.org, led by Middlebury College Professor Bill McKibben, think they have a better idea for all of that oil, natural gas, and coal. Leave it in the ground!
They want to deny America the modern energy that fueled the industrial revolution, and forcibly shift 100 percent to windmills and sunbeams to power today’s modern American economy. 350.org is leading a coalition of environmental activist groups in sponsoring a series of “Break Free From From Fossil Fuels” training sessions and protests nationwide this month.
That fits perfectly the thinking of today’s modern Democrat Party, which used to think of itself as the champion of blue collar workers. Not any more. Democrats today like Hillary Clinton have new hip friends, like crony socialist billionaires posing as renewable energy moguls reaping billions in taxpayer corporate welfare.
McKibben went to jail in 2011 for the murder of the Keystone XL pipeline, even though co-conspirator and fellow career rabble rouser Barack Obama got away scot free. A former staff writer for New Yorker magazine, he is the author of the 1989 book The End of Nature, which McKibben’s website brags “is regarded as the first book for a general audience about climate change.” Substantively, however, the book is simplistic, emotional, unreasoned, hysterical propaganda.
But the book developed into quite a shtick for Professor McKibben. His website further brags that his co-conspirators at Foreign Policy “named him to their inaugural list of the world’s 100 most important global thinkers.” But McKibben is actually the world’s leading Lysenkoist (Google “Lysenko”).
The name of McKibben’s organization, 350.org, derives from a statement from the fevered James Hansen, formerly of NASA, that the safe upper limit for carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere (alleged source of global warming which results from burning fossil fuels) is 350 parts per million. Years ago, the atmospheric concentration of CO2 marched past 400 parts per million.
Yet, U.S. satellites measuring atmospheric temperatures 24/7 have found no global warming for 19 years now. During those 19 years, mankind has produced one-third of all CO2 emissions since the industrial revolution began in the 18th Century.
Soon, the period of no global warming will be longer than the period of actual global warming, which lasted only 20 years, from the late 1970s to the late 1990s. Before that was 30 years of global cooling.
Global temperatures have not varied with human emissions of CO2, but with longstanding cycles of natural causes, primarily heat circulation cycles in the oceans, and cycles of solar activity, such as sunspots. Both indicate we are entering a new decades long cycle of pronounced global cooling, similar to the Little Ice Age which prevailed from about 1350 A.D. to 1850 A.D.
Carbon dioxide is no toxic industrial gas, but a natural component of the atmosphere, essential to the survival of all life on the planet. CO2 intensifies photosynthesis in plants, increasing their growth. Without CO2, plants would die, and without plants, there would be no food for animals. This is why real greenhouses trying to grow plants more quickly pump in sharply increased concentrations of CO2, 2 to 3 times current atmospheric concentrations.
Indeed, the only documented effect of increased atmospheric CO2 is increased global agricultural output, a true greening of the planet. There has been no increased polar ice cap or global glacier melting, or accelerated sea level rise. Natural proxies for historic atmospheric CO2 (tree rings, deep ice core samples, historic stalactite/stalagmite growth) show past CO2 concentrations several times greater than today. This is why when you hear someone calling carbon dioxide “pollution,” you know you are dealing with fraud or ignorance.
Over the past year, the scientific arguments for potentially catastrophic, man-caused global warming have been demolished by publication of three 1,000 page volumes of double peer-reviewed science by the Heartland Institute, international headquarters of skeptical science regarding climate change. Check it out for yourself under the name Climate Change Reconsidered II at the Heartland Institute website – Heartland.org. This source documents all of the above facts.
Real world leading scientists at the forefront of catastrophic global climate change skepticism include Richard Lindzen, atmospheric physicist, formerly Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, former IPCC author and contributor, with over 220 scientific, peer reviewed, published papers and books; William Happer, Cyrus Fogg Brackett Professor of Physics at Princeton; Roy Spencer, Principal Research Scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, U.S. Science Team leader for NASA’s Aqua satellite measuring global temperatures 24/7, former Senior Scientist for Climate Studies at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center; Fred Singer, emeritus Professor of Environmental Science at the University of Virginia, founder and first director of the U.S. National Weather Satellite Service; Patrick Michaels, formerly Research Professor of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia, past president of the American Association of State Climatologists; Willie Soon, Solar Physicist, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics; and Judith Curry, Professor and former Chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, among many others.
These are not former staffers at New Yorker magazine, comedians like Bill Nye the Science guy, or street agitators and community organizers. The climate change hysterics are trying to deceive you to justify vastly expanded government power and control to “Save the Planet,” or billions of taxpayer-financed, crony socialism payoffs. That includes coveted, world government powers for the money and power grasping U.N., which sponsors the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), international headquarters for Climate Change hysterics.
Those who are sacrificed by these deceiving frauds include coal miners and their coal company employers targeted by Obama and Hillary, America’s blue collar workers and their families, America’s declining middle class, the poor who cannot afford more expensive gas and electricity, and millions worldwide suffering in energy poverty with no electricity, resulting in early death.
Peter Ferrara is Senior Fellow for Budget and Entitlement Reform at the Heartland Institute, Senior Policy Advisor to the National Tax Limitation Committee and Foundation, and Principal for the Raddington Group, an international economic consulting firm. He served in the White House Office of Policy Development under President Reagan, and as Associate Deputy Attorney General of the United States under President George H.W. Bush.
