Global warming hysteria is collapsing of its own hubris and ideological machinations. Whether or not carbon and other emissions are causing some warming, the movement was always more about politics–the establishment of an international governing technocracy, allowing favored insider to feast at the sumptuous table of grants and handouts, and frankly, taking the USA down a peg through radical wealth redistribution–as much as it was about the climate.

But now, in the resulting vacuum, voices are being heard that present a far more common sense approach to transitioning our economies to greater earth friendliness without the wrenching dislocations–economical and political–that the Copenhagen Crowd seeks. From a column by global warming believer Bjorn Lomborg, author of Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming:

It is important to understand the two key reasons why the Copenhagen summit broke down. First, developing nations have no intention of letting the developed world force them to stop using carbon-emitting fuels… Second, even for developed economies such as Canada, trying to force drastic cuts in carbon emissions makes no economic sense. All the major climate economic models show that, to achieve the much discussed goal of keeping temperature increases under two degrees, we would need a global tax on carbon emissions that would start at $106 per ton (or about 25 cents per litre of gasoline) – and increase to $4,200 per ton (or $9.83 per litre of gasoline) by the end of the century. In all, this would cost the world $42-trillion a year. Most mainstream calculations conclude that, all in all, this spending would be 50 times more expensive than the climate damage it seeks to prevent.

If these figures are accurate, Kyoto/Copenhagen is terminal.  But which way forward? Invest a lot more money in new technologies.

A significant increase in research and development investments a year is needed to produce a real technological revolution. Spending 0.2 per cent of global GDP product – roughly $100-billion a year – on green energy R&D would produce the kind of game-changing breakthroughs needed to fuel a carbon-free future. Economists Chris Green and Isabel Galiana of McGill University calculated the benefits – from reduced warming and greater prosperity – of this sort of investment, and conservatively concluded that each dollar spent on this approach would avoid about $11 of climate damage…Not only would this be a much less expensive policy than trying to cut carbon emissions, it would also reduce global warming far more quickly.

Governments have a role to play:

Public funds are needed because we cannot rely on private enterprise alone. As with medical research, early innovations will not reap significant financial rewards, so there is no strong incentive for private investment today. Carbon taxes could play an important supplementary role in funding research and development, but they are not the primary fix. Indeed, putting a high price on carbon first, then hoping that alternative technology will catch up, is not a sound policy. Until the technology is ready to compete on its merits, carbon taxes will simply bleed the economy, while providing no real benefit to the climate.

This transition will take decades.  And to accomplish it, we will need strong economies. That means “drill baby drill,” as we help gestate alternative energy to birth so that we can eventually cap the wells.  Not impoverishing ourselves will also provide the resources to mitigate damage caused by AGW–if it exists, and if they occur. The time has come to fire the discredited IPCC, ignore Al–the debate is over–Gore, and begin to listen to the Bjorn Lomborg’s of the world.

For weeks, NOW and other pro choice activists have had the vapors about a pro life ad, in which the mother of football hero Tim Tebow was allegedly to say she is glad she refused a doctor’s advise to have an abortion.  (Other supporters of abortion rights, such as the New York Times editorial page, did not oppose the ad.) But she doesn’t even do that much. She just says she is so glad she had her son, who enters and givers her a big and loving hug.

The ad is below.  This is cause for screaming and gnashing of teeth?

The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society is one of the most radical environmentalist groups around. Not only is its leader Paul Watson anti human–once calling us the “AIDS of the Earth”–but the Shepherds engage in dangerous interference activities aimed at preventing legal hunting–most particularly seal pup harvesting and whaling.

This year, it is engaging in unsafe navigation practices to harass Japanese whalers in the open oceans off of Antarctica, resulting in one of its inflatables sunk and a collision between its Bob Barker and a whaling ship at sea. From the story:

The anti-whaling Sea Shepherd Conservation Society said at 12.09pm today the Yushin Maru 3 intentionally rammed the Bob Barker penetrating its hull and endangering the lives of its crew.  No-one was injured.

The collision follows a collision between the space age carbon fibre trimaran Ady Gil and the Japanese whaling ship Shonan Maru 2 on January 6.  The skipper of the trimaran powerboat Capt Pete Bethune accused the Japanese ship’s crew of “attempted murder” by “deliberately ramming their boat” into the Ady Gil but the Japanese denied they were at fault saying the Ady Gilturned deliberately in front of them.  The Ady Gil has since sunk.

Sea Shepherd society said today’s “intentional ramming” occurred about 180 miles off Cape Darnley in the Australian Antarctic Territory. Video of the collision, which is on Sea Shepherd’s website appears to show both vessels left taking evasive action until too late.  The society said the Bob Barker had been actively blocking the slipway of the Nisshin Maru, the Japanese whaling fleet’s factory ship.

That’s just nuts.  If they keep this up, somebody is going to be seriously injured or killed.

Many oppose whaling.  I certainly do because the kills often aren’t quick and the need for harvesting is questionable at best.  (The excuse is scientific research, but that is a ruse.)  But the essential point here is that what the Japanese are doing is legal, and preventing the deaths of small number of whales is not worth the sacrifice of one human life, whether of a whaler trying to earn a tough living, or a Shepherd putting his or her body between whales and their hunters.

The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society is acting recklessly and dangerously–and I presume, illegally–by intentionally harassing ships at sea.  Before this confrontation ratchets one notch higher, international authorities should step in and threaten the licenses of the captains of the Shepherd ships and the organization’s ability to sail.  And the Japanese whalers should sue their ships right out from under them.

Ending whaling should be done legally, not by such human life-threatening so-called direct actions.

When I started Secondhand Smoke, I thought I was providing a good forum for learning and discussion. I had no idea it could be dangerous. From the story:

You really can be bored to death, scientists discover

Boredom could be shaving years off your life, scientists have found. Researchers say that people who complain of boredom are more likely to die young, and that those who experienced ‘high levels’ of tedium are more than two-and-a-half times as likely to die from heart disease or stroke than those satisfied with their lot.

I apologize sincerely to the families of SHSers whose lives may have been cut short by reading this blog.

Drip. Drip. Drip. Another day, another blow to the credibility of the IPCC Nobel Peace Prize-winning report.  This time, a claim that global warming would soon lead to a terrible reduction in corn production in north Africa turns out to have been as specious as the Himalayan glacier melt by 2035 nonsense.  From the story:

A leading British government scientist has warned the United Nations’ climate panel to tackle its blunders or lose all credibility. Robert Watson, chief scientist at Defra, the environment ministry, who chaired the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) from 1997 to 2002, was speaking after more potential inaccuracies emerged in the IPCC’s 2007 benchmark report on global warming. The most important is a claim that global warming could cut rain-fed north African crop production by up to 50% by 2020, a remarkably short time for such a dramatic change. The claim has been quoted in speeches by Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC chairman, and by Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general. This weekend Professor Chris Field, the new lead author of the IPCC’s climate impacts team, told The Sunday Times that he could find nothing in the report to support the claim.

All of these hyped claims are badly undermining the IPCC’s credibility:

The African claims could be even more embarrassing for the IPCC because they appear not only in its report on climate change impacts but, unlike the glaciers claim, are also repeated in its Synthesis Report. This report is the IPCC’s most politically sensitive publication, distilling its most important science into a form accessible to politicians and policy makers. Its lead authors include Pachauri himself. In it he wrote: “By 2020, in some countries, yields from rain-fed agriculture could be reduced by up to 50%. Agricultural production, including access to food, in many African countries is projected to be severely compromised.” The same claims have since been cited in speeches to world leaders by Pachauri and [UN General Secretary] Ban.

Heads should roll (figuratively), starting with the startlingly immature Pashauri–who, as I mentioned in an earlier post, urged warming skeptics to rub their faces with asbestos for daring to doubt global warming hysteria. (Ouch! That hurts.)

This is the caliber of person we want to guide our international future? Feeling the heat from his own misfeasance and arrogance, IPCC head Rajendra Pachauri has lashed out at his critics.  From the story:

Rajendra Pachauri, the besieged head of the U.N.’s International Panel on Climate Change, told the Financial Times on Wednesday that he is the victim of a “carefully orchestrated” campaign to block climate change legislation. “I would say [there are] nefarious designs behind people trying to attack me with lies, falsehoods,” he told the paper, swatting away allegations that his India-based climate institute, TERI, has benefited from decisions made by the IPCC, which he also chairs. Climate change skeptics “are people who deny the link between smoking and cancer; they are people who say that asbestos is as good as talcum powder,” he said. “I hope that they apply it (asbestos) to their faces every day.”

Oh, the maturity. Oh, the hate. Pachauri is just upset that his own ineptitude helped destroy Al Gore’s “the debate about climate change is over” meme, so that the world is now less likely to allow itself to be governed by UN global warming plutocrats like him. To paraphrase Harry Truman, if you can’t stand the heat of democratic participation, Mr. Pachauri, get out of the kitchen.

Back in the heady days of summer, President Obama and the leaders of the House and Senate wore arrogance about passing Obamacare like a stylish coat. Ram it through, was the order of the day, as the mounting protests from the grassroots were dismissed and denigrated as just “tea baggers,” or “racist haters,” but absolutely nothing about which to be concerned. So, “the process” as our political technocrats like to call it, was shoved through, bloated to an obese 2700 pages, and completed with crass backroom deals.

I began to sense they were wrong, not about the racist haters part–that was always ridiculous–but about the nothing about which to be concerned part, back in August. As recounted here, I was invited on very short notice to speak to a town hall meeting in Louisville. I expected maybe 150 people–and 1500 turned up, the air crackling with democratic determination.  It was then that I knew something big was really up–especially after Harry Reid called such committed democratic participants “evil mongers.”

Over the next several months, President Obama got creamed in the healthcare debate, with Obamacare now approved in several polls by a mere 35 or so percent of the people, and the Senate seat in MA going to an unknown Republican who explicitly ran on the plank of defeating the bill. So now, after his political hat has been handed to him, Obama wants openness and a fair vote. From the story:

At the fund-raiser for the Democratic National Committee later on Thursday, however, Mr. Obama said that once Congressional Democrats had worked out their differences and settled on a final bill, he would push for a vibrant, public debate over the health care legislation. He said he planned “to call on our Republican friends to present their ideas.”

“What I’d like to do is have a meeting whereby I am sitting with the Republicans, sitting with the Democrats, sitting with health care experts and let’s just go through these bills,” Mr. Obama said. “Their ideas, our ideas. Let’s walk through them in a methodical way, so that the American people can see and compare what makes the most sense. And then I think that we have got to move forward on a vote. We have got to move forward on a vote.”

Too late. A bill with those kind of changes should receive full committee workups and analysis, not just inserted clauses and a vote, particularly since Obamacare’s benefits–as opposed to its costs–wouldn’t begin until 2014 anyway.

If POTUS and company had really wanted a measured and centrist reform, this approach should have been taken from the beginning. Now, it is just a means of trying to save face by cramming through something–anything. Better to wait until after the mid terms and then introduce targeted reform that doesn’t seek to remake the entire health care system. Obamacare is too flawed, its supporters already on record as wanting it as a shell in which to later reinsert all the bad stuff, to permit it to pass now that it has been soundly defeated in the public square.

I received an advance copy of my new book by mail today.  (It will be generally available in about 2 weeks.) This is my 12th, and it never ceases to be a thrill to hold in your hands the product of countless hours of research, thinking, and writing.  Thanks to all who helped bring years of effort to this fruition.

The issue of our relationship to animals is extremely emotional and important.  I obviously hope that everyone will read the whole book.  But I know some can’t or won’t.  So, from time to time, I will post some short excerpts here, to give a nutshell overview of what I write and advocate over 249 pages of text.

Let’s start with the writing of someone else–the conclusion to the brilliant, almost mystical preface, by novelist Dean Koontz:

When we self-blind ourselves to the Truth of the world’s magnificent complexity and mystery–of which we are a fundamental part –we do not only cut a thin wedge from the roundness of existence and convince ourselves that this one theory or ideology is the whole Truth. In our narcissism, we also insist that those who refuse to wear our blinders are villainous and depraved and corrupt. In this regard, an ideologue is no different from a member of a religious cult who has carved a sliver off the body of Christian theology and has made it his end-all and be-all. But the entire truth of a vast forest is not embodied in a single leaf.

A recognition of the world’s complexity requires an acceptance of the truth that intentions and nuance matter. Puppy mills are an outrage and should be shut down because they horribly abuse breeder dogs for no purpose but profit. This isn’t the same as a scientist, following merciful protocols (as most do), using lab rats in search of cures for disabling diseases. A sound argument might be made for the cruelty of denying a wide-ranging and undomesticable animal like an elephant the freedom to roam, keeping it chained to a stake for no purpose but to entertain us with clever tricks in the circus; though a well-designed zoo park might not be cruel at all. Training a dog to do tricks is not cruel, because dogs are pack animals and consider us members of their pack, because they would rather be with us than elsewhere, and because their natural inclination to play makes learning tricks a joy for them.

Among other things, this book is a rational, reasonable argument for the need to accept the nuanced complexity of the world and to resist the dangerous simplifications of antihuman ideologies. Wesley  J. Smith knows too well that if the activists ever succeeded in their goals, if they established through culture or law that human beings have no intrinsic dignity greater than that of any animal, the world would not be a better place for either humankind or animals. Instead, it would be a utilitarian nightmare in which the strong would destroy the weak, in which power-crazed leaders would destroy everyone who loved peace, in which the wealth of the world would be concentrated in the hands of a murderous few, in which mercy would be unknown and the only virtue would be the ability to survive, in which the only right would be the right to die.

Yes, animal rights is inextricably connected to the importance of human exceptionalism, and with it, human freedom and dignity.  Grazie mille di cuore to Dean for his contribution, friendship, and support.

The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) is the richest animal rights organization, I think, in the world, with assets of more than $200 million. Unlike the SPCAs around the country and other humane societies that have no connection to HSUS, it is not an animal welfare organization that merely seeks to improve the treatment of animals.  It is animal rights all the way.

But it is also very cleverly hides its true goals.  HSUS’s leader, Wayne Pacelle, is very professional.  He wears suits, he speaks softly, and unlike PETA’s alpha wolf Ingrid Newkirk, he doesn’t openly spout the animal rights dogma.  But he is a true believer, and HSUS–which owns no [update: pet] shelters–is in a cold war of attrition against all animal industries, albeit one that employs legitimate tools of democracy, such as the lawsuit and public democratic initiative, to make life difficult for animal industries.  (This isn’t to say HSUS is always wrong. Sometimes, it is right, such as when it exposed the abuse of “down” cattle by a stockyard, although even then, it may have allowed its animal rights agenda to interfere with its duty to protect public safety.  Businesses that don’t meet the highest standards of legal treatment for their animals, not only act in a morally odious manner, but play into the hands of implacable enemies who seek their destruction.)

HSUS representatives don’t spout advocacy terms such as, “A rat, is a pig, is a dog, is a boy”–the title of my about to be released book, which I took from a famous Newkirk quote–striving to appear as benign as the local SPCA.  But its raison d’etre is ultimately animal rights.  And here’s some evidence.  HSUS is producing dog food with no meat products, allowing owners to turn carnivores into vegans.  From the story:

The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) has entered the pet food market with the launch of its Humane Choice dog food. The non-profit organization is marketing the product as a cruelty-free, all-natural dog food that does not contain animal-based proteins or support the factory farming industry. “Americans are concerned about the food we eat, and it just makes sense that we’d be concerned about the food we provide to our pets,” said Wayne Pacelle, president and CEO of the HSUS. “Humane Choice is a nutritious, environmentally friendly and ethically responsible food for our best friends. Every bag of Humane Choice helps us celebrate the pets we love, and provides us with additional resources to help animals through our programs.”

Here’s the thing: Dogs are natural carnivores and, were they capable of choice, would never choose a meat free diet.  Unlike cats however, they can survive on specially blended vegetarian fare–cats go blind–but it isn’t natural to them.  And it strikes me: HSUS providing a product to help make dogs vegans has nothing to do with the welfare of canines, which thrive on dog food containing meat.  Rather, the product reveals Pacelle and company’s true inner Newkirk. Ironically, since animal rights ideology holds that there should be no domesticated animals, if HSUS, PETA, and their fellow travelers ultimately prevailed in remaking society, there would be no dogs left to be made into vegans.

Where is the American media?  The global warming hysteria  infrastructure is collapsing, and mostly we get silence.  But the UK press are acting like journalists–even though most papers editorially support radical efforts to fight supposed AGW. 

Now, the Telegraph reports that India is on the verge of leaving the IPCC.  From the story:

India has threatened to pull out of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and set up its on climate change body because it “cannot rely” on the group headed by its own Nobel Prize-winning scientist Dr R K Pachauri. The Indian government’s move is a snub to both the IPCC and Dr Pachauri as he battles to defend his reputation following the revelation that his most recent climate change report included false claims that most of the Himalayan glaciers would melt away by 2035. Scientists believe it could take more than 300 years for the glaciers to disappear…

Mr Ramesh effectively marginalised the IPC chairman even further. He announced that the Indian government will establish a separate National Institute of Himalayan Glaciology to monitor the effects of climate change on the world’s “third ice cap”, and an “Indian IPCC” to use “climate science” to assess the impact of global warming throughout the country. “There is a fine line between climate science and climate evangelism. I am for climate science. I think people misused [the] IPCC report … [the] IPCC doesn’t do the original research which is one of the weaknesses … they just take published literature and then they derive assessments, so we had goof-ups on Amazon forest, glaciers, snow peaks. I respect the IPCC but India is a very large country and cannot depend only on [the] IPCC and so we have launched the Indian Network on Comprehensive Climate Change Assessment (INCCA),” he said

What a debacle. From undeserved Nobel Peace Prize to international punching bag.  Time to pull the plug on the IPCC and start anew with a thorough house cleaning.