As of now, I am in control here, in the White House

Tag Archives: global warming

Bernie Sanders Promotes Abortion to Save us from Climate Change

Posted on by • 8 Comments

Uh, that seems to be what’s going on here. Have a listen.

He’s asked about, you know, what liberals have been talking about for at least half a century, about the planet not being able to support population growth. And specifically, whether “empowering women and educating everyone about the need to curb population growth ” should be “a key feature of a plan to address climate catastrophe.”

So Bernie dives right in, talking about the need for abortions, particularly in poor countries. I’m sorry not abortion, “women’s right to control their own bodies and make reproductive decisions.” My bad.

Have a listen. It used to be abortion should be “legal, safe, and rare.” Now it’s a strategy to combat climate change.

CNN Seeks to Drive Ratings Even Lower with 7-Hour Global Warming Town Hall

Posted on by • 4 Comments

I’d say there is no better way to make people not care about global warming than to run seven hours of programming about it with the Democratic candidates.

Anyway, that’s what CNN is doing. This long national nightmare started around 5 pm ET and goes until midnight.

Even if you think climate change is going to destroy the earth, can you listen to seven hours of it? Can listen to seven hours of this group of candidates? Can you?

You can’t.

Looks like Julian Castro is first. The leading candidates, the stars of our show, are on during prime time. Cory Booker got slotted last, around 11:40 pm, at which five exhausted viewers will be watching.

Surprise: The United States is the Leading Reducer of Carbon Emissions

Posted on by • 8 Comments

Oh, that terrible Trump. He withdrew us from the Paris climate accords, and now icebergs untethered from Antartica will soon float up the Mississippi River and destroy St. Louis.

The Europeans are contemptuous of our decision not to join their One-World Government and submit our economic future to the incomparable IQs of the central planners in Brussels. And yet, who is doing the most, right here, right now, to reduce carbon emissions and whatever effect they have on global warming?

The United States of America. You know, the bad guys.

From a June 2016 article in Forbes:

The U.S. also leads the world in reducing carbon emissions for the most recent 5- and 10-year periods. Over the past 5 years U.S. carbon dioxide emissions have fallen by 270 million tons. In 2nd place for that period was the UK, with a 93 million ton decline. Over the most recent 5-year period, China led the world with a 1.1 billion ton increase. India was in 2nd place with a 540 million ton increase.

U.S. emissions have fallen at about the rate of those of the entire European Union, even as our economic growth — and hunger for carbon molecules — has far outpaced theirs. And yet you would never know that given the opprobrium heaped on us from our far-more-enlightened — and over-regulated — friends on The Continent.

Why are we doing so well? Let me introduce another commonly known dirty word, to go alongside “America.” That is, “fracking.”

As Forbes notes, the biggest contributor to our carbon emissions decline is not Barack Obama running around spinning windmills. It’s the growing production of natural gas.

The Washington Examiner explains where that’s coming from:

As the Wall Street Journal reports, fracking-based energy firms in Texas’ Permian Basin are finding a useful side-benefit to their innovation: gas comes up alongside the oil! The consequence: a growing glut of cheap natural gas. This gas is the golden ticket. It offers American businesses and families access to cheap energy, and an alternative to polluting energy sources . . . it is cheaper and far more emissions-efficient than coal, and it doesn’t require massive public expenditures. In the coming years, more consumers and utilities will choose gas over coal. And indirectly, total carbon emissions will fall. Along with new technologies such as battery-based vehicles, this gas is the path to a lower carbon emissions future.

Could it be that the future of stemming the earth’s warming does not come from bankrupting Western economies, but from private sector spending on basic energy research and innovations that get more out of fossil fuels, with cleaner and more efficient results?

Sure, we should continue research on renewables. But these technologies are mostly not ready to be deployed. Let’s allow Bill Gates to invest all he wants in cars that plug into wall sockets, and if you want to risk freezing beneath your solar panels while the sun don’t shine, that’s your business.

Meantime, American entrepreneurs will continue to figure out surprising new ways to create efficiencies and new technologies that reduce the cost of energy and the emissions that result.

Trump to Exit Paris Climate Change Deal: Report

Posted on by • 11 Comments

President Trump is keeping a campaign promise to exit the Paris climate change accords, a decision that suggests conservatives in the White House continue to hold strong sway with the president.

According to Axios:

Details on how the withdrawal will be executed are being worked out by a small team including EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt. They’re deciding on whether to initiate a full, formal withdrawal — which could take 3 years — or exit the underlying United Nations climate change treaty, which would be faster but more extreme.

Trump has apparently rejected the advice of moderates like Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner, National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn, and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. Steven Bannon, Pruitt, and others had argued forcefully that Trump needed to get out.

Trump’s decision is one of the most significant signs that he was serious about changing the way business is done in Washington, rejecting a treaty that members of the establishment on both sides of the aisle had embraced.

And it shows Trump is unaffected by criticism from German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who said after Trump’s visit last week to Europe that the continent would need to do more on its own, without America. In fact, given Trump’s propensity to push back, Merkel’s comments may well have cemented his decision.

UPDATE: Washington Post White House reporter Phil Rucker says, not so fast.

Cohn: Trump’s Views on Paris Climate Accord “Evolving”

Posted on by • 17 Comments

Uh oh. You know what that means. When a president’s views are “evolving,” that means he feels he needs to take his time flip flopping so that it doesn’t look too much like he flip flopped.

You know, like George H.W. Bush’s views on abortion “evolved” so he could be Reagan’s vice president. And Barack Obama’s views on gay marriage “evolved” once he felt it wouldn’t keep him from winning elections.

During the campaign, as you know, President Trump was completely clear about withdrawing from the Paris climate change agreement, which requires countries to slash their carbon emissions.

Trump at the G7 in Italy May 26, 2017
Trump at the G7 in Italy May 26, 2017

But now, he’s in the White House, and Trump has surrounded himself with moderate Republicans and Democrats like National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn, and so he’s getting lots of new information.

“His views are evolving, he came here to learn and get smarter,” Cohn told reporters in Italy where Trump is meeting with G7 leaders. I’ve never heard an aide suggest a president needed to “get smarter,” but there you go.

Somehow, I’m pretty sure his views are not evolving towards hating the Paris accords even more.

“He said, ‘I would rather take my time and understand the issues and then get to the right decision on that,'” Cohn said.

And as you and I know, once he understands the issues and is aware of all the settled science lying around, he will come to the “right” decision.

Coal miners be damned.

UPDATE: Cohn also said that coal “doesn’t really make that much sense anymore as a feedstock,” and that by exporting more natural gas and investing in wind and solar energy, the United Staates “can be a manufacturing powerhouse and still be environmentally friendly.”

Trump to Gut Centerpiece of Obama Climate Change Agenda

Posted on by • 11 Comments

This keeps Trump promise to the coal miners who helped him win the election. And it helps reverse Obama’s radical environmental agenda that was raising energy prices on poor and middle class Americans. 

President Trump will sign an executive order Tuesday to roll back the centerpiece of the Obama administration’s climate change agenda, the Clean Power Plan, and cancel what Trump says are unnecessary rules on coal, oil and natural gas production that are harming economic growth, the Washington Examiner reported.

The executive order is seen as central in meeting the president’s campaign promises to help coal country rebound from the tens of thousands of job losses that the industry blames, in part, on restrictive environmental regulations.

A senior administration official told reporters on a call Monday that the order has the “twin goals” of both moving forward while also looking backward.

It “looks forward” by setting the stage for the “beginning strategy” in devising an energy policy framework for the nation, said the senior official. And it looks backward by eliminating regulations from the previous administration that hinder growth and energy production.

It will call on all agencies to conduct a comprehensive review of all rules to determine those that inhibit energy production, and report back to the White House in 180 days.

Baked Alaska: Obama heads North to Sell Climate Change

Posted on by • 57 Comments

President Barack Obama departs Monday on a three-day voyage to Alaska to try to drum up excitement for his massive, unilateral climate change agenda.

With support lacking in Congress for a “cap-and-trade” carbon reduction program, Obama decided to take matters into his own hands and is using the Clean Air Act to regulate carbon emissions. A regulation issued earlier this month by the Environmental Protection Agency requires a 32-percent cut in power plant emissions by 2030 from levels that existed in 2005.

Obama views climate change as a “legacy” issue and hopes to go down in history as the president who seriously addressed it and, to his mind, saved the planet. His more immediate goal is to generate support for an international climate change deal he hopes to strike this December in Paris, with America’s carbon cuts leading the way.

Obama’s aggressive Arctic global warming push comes as he is being accused of being a hypocrite by environmentalists for allowing Royal Dutch Shell to drill in the Arctic waters off Alaska’s northern coast.

The trip this week includes a “hike” on Tuesday to Exit Glacier and a boat tour of Kenai Fjords National Park, all so that he will “have the opportunity to view the effects of climate change firsthand,” according to the White House.

Before that, however, the White House will showcase the “victims” of climate change. Obama on Monday will be in Anchorage where he will meet with “leaders from the Alaska Native community” whose “way of life” is threatened by global warming, the White House says.

“Higher average temperatures are diminishing the range of winter sea ice, allowing heavy storm surges that sea ice once kept at bay to batter the Alaskan coastline, and interrupting the winter hunting season for Alaska Natives,” the White House said in a statement. “Rising ocean temperatures and increasing acidity are affecting marine life, including the fish, shellfish, and marine mammals on which generations of Alaska Natives have depended.”

On Wednesday, Obama will travel to Dillingham, Alaska, where he will meet with more victims — local fishermen and their families.

Showcasing those supposedly adversely affected by the failure to implement presidential priorities is a classic White House PR device. White House reporters, forced to cover such carefully staged events, refer ironically to such people trotted out by the White House as “the sob stories.”

While in Anchorage, Obama will also deliver a speech on climate change to an assembly of scientists, policymakers and foreign ministers from Arctic nations and other “key” countries, the White House said.

While in Alaska, Obama plans to use the opportunity to announce he is renaming America’s tallest mountain, Mount McKinley, declaring it will henceforth be known by its original Native American name, Mount Denali.

The Alaska trip is part of a concerted effort by the White House to highlight the climate change issue. The president referenced it during his trip to New Orleans last week to mark the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, although there is no evidence the hurricane had anything to do with climate change.

He also plans to discuss climate change during his meeting in September with Pope Francis.

This article first appeared on PoliZette.

A Lobster in Every Pot

Posted on by • 43 Comments

If President Obama is really focused on helping the middle class, why would he want to deny them a chance at cheap lobster? Why, if he really cares, would he consign us to forever purchasing the Louis Kemp lobster-flavored processed fish meat? No doubt he and Michelle feast ceaselessly on lobster and other unfortunate crustaceans while… Continue Reading

Kerry: God Wants Me to Save Muslim Countries from Global Warming

Posted on by • 62 Comments

No really. That’s what he said. Secretary of State John Kerry today deployed logic to the effect of, God “created the heavens and the earth” and therefore God wants him to stop global warming and especially to do this to help Muslim countries, which are particularly imperiled. Now, you ask me, has Kerry gone . .… Continue Reading