Are Politicians Just Parrots?

It’s been a while since I wrote about shenanigans in the political arena and Obama’s recent inaugural speech provides some fodder linking my two pet subjects, the “Politicization of Climate Change and CO2” (http://nzclimatescience.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=374&Itemid=1).

In his 2100-word inaugural speech Obama said “ .. We, the people, .. will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations. Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires and crippling drought and more powerful storms. The path towards sustainable energy sources will be long and sometimes difficult.  But America cannot resist this transition, we must lead it.  We cannot cede to other nations the technology that will power new jobs and new industries, we must claim its promise.  That’s how we will maintain our economic vitality and our national treasure -- our forests and waterways, our crop lands and snow-capped peaks.  That is how we will preserve our planet, commanded to our care by God.  That’s what will lend meaning to the creed our fathers once declared .. ” (http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/01/21/inaugural-address-president-barack-obama).

Passionate words indeed which Obama’s speech writers might hope would be enough to make even the most sceptical of “climate deniers” repent of their sins when denying the “truth” made known to us all by scientists such as Dr. James Hanson amd Dr. Michael Mann.

In his slightly longer inaugural speech in Jan 2009 Obama was not quite so lyrical on the subject of climate change. He simply generalised about the threats to the USA and the world “ .. That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood .. These are the indicators of crisis, subject to data and statistics .. Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real, they are serious and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this America: They will be met .. ” and slipped in “ .. each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet .. We will restore science to its rightful place .. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories .. we'll work tirelessly to .. roll back the specter of a warming planet .. ” (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/20/us/politics/20text-obama.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0). 

Here is a sample of the scare-mongering fodder fed to Obama by Dr. Hanson in his 4-page “Tell Barack Obama the Truth – the Whole Truth” missive that Dr. John Holdren passed to Obama’s speech writers ahead of his first inauguration in Jan. 2009 QUOTE: .. 

.. Now our planet itself is in peril.  Not simply the Earth, but the fate of all of its species, including humanity 

.. The danger is that special interests will dilute and torque government policies, causing the climate to pass tipping points, with grave consequences for all life on the planet

.. Mountain glaciers are receding worldwide and will be gone within 50 years if CO2 emissions continue to increase

.. Coral reefs, home to a quarter of biological species in the ocean, could be destroyed by rising temperature and ocean acidification due to increasing CO2

.. Dry subtropics are expanding poleward with warming, affecting the southern United States, the Mediterranean region, and Australia, with increasing drought and fires

.. Arctic sea ice will disappear entirely in the summer, if CO2 continues to increase, with devastating effects on wildlife and indigenous people

.. Intensity of hydrologic extremes, including heavy rains, storms and floods on the one hand, and droughts and fires on the other, are increasing

.. extermination of a large fraction of the species on the planet

.. ice sheet disintegration and sea level rise, out of humanity’s control, eventually eliminating coastal cities and historical sites, creating havoc, hundreds of millions of refugees, and impoverishing nations. 

.. UNQUOTE (see http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2008/20081229_DearMichelleAndBarack.pdf and http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2008/20081229_Obama_revised.pdf). 

Well, that sure is a scare story that would be welcomed by any politician, especially as Hansen, after espousing the merits of renewable and nuclear sources of energy, goes on to point out how it can be used to collect lots of money from the already hard-pressed tax-payer with the taxpayer’s blessing! Obama and his buddies must have loved it.

Following his 2nd inaugural speech the media, as usual, duly blew it into something way out of all proportion to what it warranted, e.g: “ .. 

.. Obama Promises a Big Push on Climate Change - The president appears determined to confront climate change, with or without the help of Congress .. Obama devoted the biggest single section of his second inaugural address to the problem of climate change. He has clearly decided to make confronting climate change a central objective of his second term ..  (http://reason.com/archives/2013/01/22/obama-determined-to-make-confronting-cli), 

.. Obama inaugurates renewed energy on climate change - That the president put climate change so high on his second-term agenda surprised many. But action must follow words .. Obama included a call to action on climate change in his inaugural speech on 21 January, surprising those who believed gun violence and immigration reform would take top billing. It's not the first time he's talked about the issue, by any means, but few thought he would return to it with such emphasis now .. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/21/obama-inauguration-climate-change), 

.. Inaugural address: Obama puts climate change back on the agenda - So has Barack Obama rediscovered climate change? After saying little on the subject for years – and remaining silent on it during the election campaign – he made it a centrepiece of his inauguration address .. the President seems to have backed his daughters over his less enthusiastic advisers and put climate change back high on his agenda .. (http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/geoffreylean/100199196/inaugural-address-obama-puts-climate-change-back-on-the-agenda/). 

Surprisingly the BBC doesn’t seem to have had much to say this time round. All that I could find was a video of Obama's speech with a few references to other media reports (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-21117466) and surprisingly subdued comments (for the BBC) on the subject by Mark Mardell’s “ .. Adding climate change to his already long "to do" list shows this man does not expect a quiet life .. He told them there had to be less drama. He said that all this couldn't be at the expense of plans for immigration reform, gun laws or legislation on climate change” (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-21147392 and http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-20886430).

Perhaps the recent hiatus over Jimmy Saville (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-19946626) has made the BBC a little more cautious about its distorted reporting in support of the CACC scare-mongering. These days the BBC News doesn’t show very many back-drops of those cooling towers pouring out that vile pollutant WATER VAPOUR. It was a different story not many months ago when a belching tower was there in the background every time weather or climate were mentioned.

Perhaps it is surprising that the Telegraph should go along with this scare-mongering rather than challenging it. After all, climate realist Christopher Booker is a regular contributor to the Telegraph of his excellent articles exposing the political scare-mongering about our increasing use of fossil fuels leading to Catastrophic Anthropogenic Climate Change (CACC). Following Obama’s first inaugural speech Booker was quick to comment in his article “BBC abandons 'impartiality' on warming - Again and again the BBC has been eager to promote every new scare raised by the advocates of man-made global warming .. It was ironic that, last week, while the BBC was refusing to show an appeal .. on the grounds that this might breach its charter obligation to be impartial, a rather less publicised row was raging over Newsnight's doctoring of film of President Obama's inaugural speech, which was used to support yet another of its items promoting the warming scare. Clips from the speech were spliced together to convey a considerably stronger impression of what Obama had said on global warming than his very careful wording justified .. ” (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/4413474/BBC-abandons-impartiality-on-warming.html).

Talking of scare-mongering and Christopher Booker brings to mind his excellent 2007 book “Scared to Death – from BSE to Global Warming .. ” co-authored with Richard North (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Scared-Death-Global-Warming-Costing/dp/0826476201). Chapter 14 “Saving the Planet” deserves a careful read because its 70 pages expose many of the political shenanigans behind the CACC propaganda, including the 1970's scare stories about a new and imminent ice age. At the time the book was released many leading politicians were proclaiming how climate change was the greatest threat to mankind and Booker drew attention to some examples, including " ..

.. Now the Pentagon tells Bush: climate change will destroy us - · Secret report warns of rioting and nuclear war · Britain will be 'Siberian' in less than 20 years · Threat to the world is greater than terrorism .. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2004/feb/22/usnews.theobserver),

.. We must pay now to avoid climate disaster, says Blair - Tony Blair today said that the world was facing "nothing more serious, more urgent, or more demanding of leadership" than climate change and that Britons must be prepared to pay now to avoid future disaster .. ” (http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2006/oct/30/greenpolitics.economicpolicy),

.. Climate Change Must Be Addressed -  .. Gro Harlem Brundtland, a former prime minister of Norway, said the seriousness of global warming is no longer under debate and the moment for rapid action has arrived. .. "It is irresponsible, reckless and deeply amoral to question the seriousness of the situation," she said. "The time for diagnosis is over. The time to act is now." (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/09/AR2007050901946_pf.html),

.. How Much Reality Can You Take? - .. climate change denial now looks as stupid and as unacceptable as Holocaust denial .. (http://www.monbiot.com/2006/09/21/how-much-reality-can-you-take/).

Booker left out the best bit of those efforts on 26th September 2006 by the Guardian’s chief climate scare-monger George Monbiot  to frighten the readership, i.e. his reference at the end of the article to his book “Heat: how to stop the planet burning”. Here’s what his promotional page has to say “ .. We know that climate change is happening. We know that it could, if the worst predictions come true, destroy the conditions which make human life possible. Only one question is now worth asking: can it be stopped? .. ” (http://www.monbiot.com/2006/11/07/heat/).

Hopefully no taxpayer’s money was wasted by our government in making that scare-mongering booklet available to try to indoctrinate our impressionable schoolchildren in the way that Al Gore’s Nobel Peace Prize winning nonsense “An Inconvenient Truth” was (http://grist.org/article/ait/).  

Perhaps now is opportune for Christopher Booker to re-publish “Saving the Planet” as a stand-alone educational booklet for use in our schools. It would be invaluable for helping our teachers do their job of providing our children with impartial guidance instead of political indoctrination.

Recent dramatic weather-related events such as the heat-wave in Australia, floods in the UK and Pakistan, drought and snowstorms in Russia, etc. etc. are used by our politicians, the environmental activists and the media to promote the scare that we are causing catastrophic climate change through using fossil fuels. A pertinent question is what evidence is there to justify this or does the evidence refute it? If the record of past weather events presented in the recently issued publication "A 
Chronological
 Listing
 of
 Early Weather Events" 6th 
Edition by James 
A. 
Marusek (http://www.breadandbutterscience.com/Weather.pdf) is reliable then the answer seems to be a resounding NO! 
(Hat-tip to Australian Helen Dyer of the Climate Sceptics Party).

Maybe, at long last, common sense is infiltrating the media. A new film "Climate Crimes - Environmental crimes in the name of climate protection"  is due for release in the UK this month. QUOTE: ..   If you are one of the skeptics, much of the film probably will be familiar to you. But if you’re a devout environmentalist who has been reading and believing all the climate propaganda put out by “environmental” and “climate protection” groups and institutes, then you may want to have an ambulance ready outside the cinema. It might be really tough to take. Be sure to bring your environmentalist friends to see this film. Their reaction will be most interesting as it will reveal if they are truly open to the truth. Face it, there’s a huge industrial lobby behind the “green” movement too .. UNQUOTE (http://notrickszone.com/2012/12/19/new-german-film-blasts-green-climate-movement-climate-protection-environmental-crimes/).
(Hat-tip to Rev. Philip Foster of St. Mattews Press, UK publisher of "Slaying the Sky Dragon .. " as well as co-founder and Compliance Officer of blogging group Principia Scientific International - http://globalpoliticalshenanigans.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/spotlighton-principia-scientific.html).

What a shame that we see so few signs of common sense within the ranks of our politicians. All that they seem capable of doing is parroting what they are told by their scientific advisors.

Best regards,