Articles Tagged "Paul Driessen"

My article this week reflects on the increasingly politicized state of global warming science...and government-funded science generally at America?s universities and other research institutions. The steady flow of money, coupled with the dominant view that research results should advocate a particular point of view on energy and environmental issues, has created a tendency to skew results, manipulate data and peer reviews, and pressure journals to exclude professional papers that challenge politically favored positions.

Even worse, when cheating is discovered or alleged, the scientists and institutions tend to look the other way, circle the wagons, actively discount or even hide the transgressions, and conduct superficial investigations that whitewash the offenses and even penalize whistleblowers.

The latest example is Pennsylvania State University’s nearly complete exoneration of Dr. Michael Mann, following an “investigation” that did not even permit the introduction of contradictory evidence, statements by adverse witnesses, or cross-examination of Dr. Mann or anyone with knowledge of his alleged misconduct.

Yet another investigation makes Tom Sawyer proud - and promotes alarmist climate legislation.

Climate chaos is fading as a “central organizing principle for mankind.” However, the United Nations and radical greens have launched a new eco-scare.

The real threat to the planet, they now assert, is the impact of modern energy technologies and civilization on BIODIVERSITY. They intend to counter this new threat by controlling not just land and energy use, but all human activity.

To accept these claims, one would need to believe in the IPCC – and a UN system that will suddenly ensure honesty, transparency, and accountability for misfeasance, misrepresentation, and adverse impacts on people and wildlife. One would also have to ignore this critical fact.

The real threats to the world’s species are environmentalism, misguided environmental policies, and anti-technology zealotry.

President Obama’s June 15 oil spill speech has been roundly criticized, and for good reason. It was long on blame, effusive with green energy promises, but devoid of any substantive plan for cleaning up the mess in the Gulf and ushering in the era of wind and solar utopia. The speech raised far more questions than it answered.

My column this week asks some of the tough questions that the President and his allies refuse to raise, much less answer.

Perhaps you can help stir up the kind of debate we so clearly need.

A few questions for President Obama

How exactly does the President plan to create his new Green Jobs Economy?

Image source

My friend and colleague, former astronaut and US Senator Harrison Schmitt, has written a perceptive and informative article comparing the Administration’s efforts in response to the Gulf blowout to NASA’s responses to the Apollo 13 accident and the tragic Apollo 204 fire.

He and I hope you will post it – and thank you for considering it.

All the best,

Paul

Paul Driessen

The chasm between Apollo and the Gulf

There is no valid analogy between the Gulf spill and Apollo 13 - H. Harrison Schmitt

President Obama’s Administration and its supportive media repeatedly say our 1970 Apollo 13 experience is analogous to the effort to contain and cap the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Not hardly!

The rescue of Astronauts Jim Lovell, Fred Haise and Jack Swigert, after an oxygen tank explosion on their spacecraft, illustrates how complex technical accidents should be handled, in contrast to the Gulf fiasco. Nothing in the government’s response to the blowout and explosion on the Deepwater Horizon and its aftermath bears any resemblance to the response to the Apollo 13 situation by the National Aeronautic and Space Administration and its Mission Control team at the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston.

My commentary for tomorrow addresses Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli’s investigation of former University of Virginia professor Michael Mann.

The American Association of University Professors and a substantial number of Virginia scientists and academics oppose Cuccinelli’s investigation. However, the article recaps some of the misconduct that Mann is accused of, argues that the investigation is essential and that Cuccinelli, and states that law-abiding citizens should insist on transparency, integrity, credibility and accountability in the climate change arena.

Paul

Ken Cuccinelli v. 810 academics

Special Bulletin: Academic freedom is not a license to commit fraud

Paul Driessen

We’re often asked, "What really causes all these alarms about global warming disasters?"

As scientists and policy analysts who’ve studied our ever-changing climate for a combined 65 years and attribute the changes primarily to natural forces, we’ve wondered that ourselves and also asked: Why is warming always framed as bad news? Why does so much “research” claim a warmer planet “may” lead to more childhood insomnia, more juvenile delinquency, war, juvenile delinquency, violent crime and prostitution, death of the Loch Ness Monster – and even more Mongolian cows dying from cold weather?

We’re not making this up. In fact, this is just the tip of the proverbial melting iceberg of climate scare stories chronicled at Number Watch. Clearly, too much money is being spent on one-sided global warming advocacy cloaked as “research,” not enough on natural causes and adaptation. Despite the best of intentions, too much money can corrupt, or at least skew the science.

As they say, follow the money. Remember Indiana Jones’ immortal words: “Fortune and glory.”

The new Kerry-Lieberman climate bill mandates a 17% reduction in US carbon dioxide emissions by 2020. It first targets power plants that provide reliable, affordable electricity for American homes, schools, hospitals, offices and factories. Six years later, it further hobbles the manufacturing sector itself.

Like the House-passed climate bill, Kerry-Lieberman also requires an 80% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2050. Once population growth and transportation, communication and electrification technologies are taken into account, this translates into requiring US emission levels last seen around 1870!

House Speaker Pelosi says “every aspect of our lives must be subjected to an inventory,” to ensure that America achieves these emission mandates. This means replacing what is left of our free-market economy with an intrusive Green Nanny State, compelling us to switch to unreliable wind and solar power, and imposing skyrocketing energy costs on every company and citizen.

Meanwhile, the Environmental Protection Agency is implementing its own draconian energy restrictions, in case Congress does not enact punitive legislation.

It’s time to ask these politicians some fundamental questions.

First American Ann Bancroft and Norwegian Liv Arnesen trekked off across the Arctic in the dead of the 2007 winter, “to raise awareness about global warming,” by showcasing the wide expanses of open water they were certain they would encounter. Instead, icy blasts drove temperatures inside their tent to -58 F, while outside the nighttime air windchills plunged to -103 F.

Open water is rare at those temperatures, the intrepid explorers discovered. Facing frostbite, amputated toes and even death, the two were airlifted out 18 miles into their 530-mile expedition.

Next winter it was British swimmer and ecologist Lewis Gordon Pugh, who planned to breast-stroke across open Arctic seas. Same story. Then fellow Brit Pen Hadow gave it a go, but it was another no-go.

This year Aussie Tom Smitheringale set off to demonstrate “the effect that global warming is having on the polar ice caps.” He was rescued and flown out, after coming “very close to the grave,” he confessed.

Hopefully, all these rescue helicopters were solar-powered. Even hardened climate disaster deniers wouldn’t want these brave (if misguided) adventurers to be relegated to choppers fueled by hated hydrocarbons. They may be guilty of believing their own alarmist press releases - and the likes of Al Gore, James Hansen, the IPCC and Michael Mann, father of broken hockey sticks and Mann-made global warming. But missing digits or ideological impurity is a high price to pay.

“Climate change prevention” policies advanced by President Obama and his Administration are often in direct conflict with his energy, economic and human welfare goals. Perhaps nowhere is this more starkly apparent than in Africa. Their vision and intentions may be admirable, but their policies often undermine their desired outcomes. And yet, the news media and even African leaders have failed to point out this clear disconnect.

This informative article summarizes these errors and oversights … and the need for reform.

We hope you will post the column, to help initiate policy changes that would do much to improve life and reduce disease and mortality for hundreds of millions of people in Africa and other impoverished regions.

If you could use the bio included with this article, we would greatly appreciate it. The bio will appear with all future Roy and Niger Innis columns.

Thank you for posting it, and helping to lead lifesaving, prosperity-building reforms in America’s energy and foreign policies.

Paul

Paul Driessen

Senior policy advisor, Congress of Racial Equality

We are not weighing in on the climate debate. We are not opining on whether the world’s climate is changing, at what pace or due to what causes, Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Mary Shapiro insisted on announcing the SEC’s new “interpretive guidance” on climate change.

The Commission’s two Republican members objected that the Obama Administration was using the Commission to promote its global warming and renewable energy agenda (along with the EPA, NASA, Defense and Interior Departments and others). It’s true, but irrelevant.

Environmentalists and “ethical investing” groups had pressured the Commission for years to require corporate disclosure on climate matters. Now, as the SEC steps in, the Copenhagen treaty negotiations have collapsed in disarray. Cap-and-trade has bogged down over senators’ fears of further damage to the economy and their reelection chances. The Environmental Protection Agency has decreed that plant-fertilizing carbon dioxide is a “dangerous pollutant,” because senators are increasingly reluctant to micromanage the economy, companies and families, but the regs are likely to go nowhere.