Environmentalist Lunacies: Billions to go Waterless

Part of the renewed environmentalist frenzy caused by the upcoming IPCC report, one headline was present through all the media: Billions to go Waterless in Climate Shock! I'm struggling to grasp the idea behind the headline (I'm not talking about logic, or fact, but just the idea that came out of some wacko mind). How can anybody on our planet go waterless?? The Earth is 71% covered by water. The human body is 72% water. There is water everywhere. Just live with this: we'll never run out of water! More than this, the doomsday theories say that ocean levels will rise considerably with the global warming. You understand what that means? It means even more water!

Hollywood Values

Very well said by our friends at Libertas, about the real values of Hollywood:

Save a tree, kill a baby. Ban cigarettes, legalize pot. Screw the Iraqi’s, save Darfur. McCarthy is bad, Castro is good. Bush is Hitler, Che is a hero. Save the planet, live in a mansion.

On "Greed" and Economic Success

Two articles drew my attention today. First one is Thomas Sewell's The “Greed” Fallacy which counters the Marxist-inspired viewpoint that equivalates business success with greed. It explains that the labor market for CEO's is what's driving compensations so high (to the outrage of the socialists). And in the end he turns to oil prices: Every time oil prices shoot up, there are cries of “greed” and demands by politicians for an investigation of collusion by Big Oil. Now that oil prices have dropped big time, does that mean that oil companies have lost their “greed”? Or could it all be supply and demand — a cause and effect explanation that seems to be harder for some people to understand than emotions like “greed”?

In An Excellent Economic State of the Union, Larry Kudlow tries to point out something that the media is struggling to avoid: that the economy is doing exceptionally well. Jobs continue to boom. So do real incomes, productivity, and profits. Economist Michael Darda points out that real wages over the first five years of the Bush expansion are actually growing more rapidly than over the first five years of the Papa Bush/Bill Clinton boom. Meanwhile, unemployment today is only 4.5 percent. Federal, state, and local tax collections are soaring through the roof. Budget deficits are plunging. Inflation-adjusted GDP is averaging just more than 3 percent. Family wealth stands at a record of slightly more than $54 trillion. Total employment is at a record 146 million.

Then, defying the liberal dreams that America doens't matter in the world anymore, he says that in fact, this America boom is spearheading a global economic surge. While the American free-market model is often derided as “cowboy capitalism,” imitation remains the sincerest form of flattery. And it isn’t just China, India, and Russia who are acquiescing to the worldwide spread of American capitalism. It’s also Eastern Europe and parts of South America. Heck, even the socialists in Old Europe — like France and Germany — are getting into the act by reducing individual and corporate tax rates to promote growth. Mr. Kudlow takes on Kyoto as well: As for the global-warming alarmists, imposing carbon caps or carbon taxes won’t do anyone any good. On the economic side of things, this will severely depress production and employment. And for what? An estimated global temperature reduction of 4/100ths of 1 degree Fahrenheit?

Al Gore afraid to debate his Junk Science with Scientists

While in Denmark to promote his environmental lunacies, Al Gore had the opportunity to debate it with an actual scientist, not the regular activists who create the "global warming consensus". Bjorn Lomborg, a famed European scientist and expert climatologist was supposed to publicly debate Al Gore, but Gore withdrew from the planned meeting. Flemming Rose, the Jyllands-Posten culture editor, penned an interesting expose of the former VP ducking out on the Wall Street journal's Opinion Journal site today taking the former VP to task. How many other papers do you think will mention Gore's cowardice?

Among the specific facts that Rose pointed out are:

• Gore says global warming has increased malaria in Nairobi, but the World Health Organization says the country is considered malaria free, unlike in the 1920's and 30's when it had epidemics regularly.
• Gore says that Antarctica is melting and presents picture to "prove" it, but those pictures are from only 2 percent of Antarctica whereas 98 percent of the continent has actually COOLED over the last 35 years.
• Gore says seas will rise 20 feet, but the U.N. climate panel only thinks it will be 1 foot. Also seas rose only 1 foot over the last 150 years already with little real trouble world wide.
• Gore says the heat of global warming will kill "2,000" people in the U.K., but freezing temperatures will kill 20,000 more without such "warming". Why are the 2,000 killed by warming more important than the 20,000 who would be killed by freezing?

The Case for Global Warming

With these warm temperatures in the Northeast, you start hearing all the reputed weather experts, from Al Gore and Barbara Boxer to Matt Lauer and Matt Damon warning us about the big dangers of global warming. They are ignoring the non-stop storms in the Rockies, 1 foot of snow in New Mexico, snowstorms in Israel, snowflakes in Florida and 6 feet of snow in my native Romania, but this is not the point I'm trying to make.

Let's suppose that we, the Americans (this is a very important detail, since Europeans, Chinese, Russians, Indians and South Americans seem to have 0 impact on the climate), are causing global warming. Let's also suppose that temperatures this century will raise 5 degrees, not the 2 degrees prophecied by Al Gore. And now let's see what this will mean. It will mean nicer weather, fewer snowstorms, fewer winter accidents, lower energy consumption, better resource conservation, decreased oil prices, bigger crops, less famine, less floods caused by spring thawing. It will also mean cheaper gas, lower heating costs, a superbowl at Giants Stadium, better agricultural yields, less traffic jams during the winter, less ice-related accidents.

OK, the global warming nuts will scream ocean levels will rise! Well, if you smart-ass liberals would have actually attended high-school, you'd have learned that when ice turns into water, it reduces its volume... so much for those icebergs meltdown resulting in higher oceans. Plus, while higher temperatures would melt some icebergs, they would also cause evaporation at lower latitudes, which would further compensate for the alleged oceans rise. And if the waters will really rise, as those polito-metheorologists are preaching: As long as one third of the Netherlands is situated up to 2 feet below sea level, believe me, a few American cities will somehow find a way to cope with 3 inches of water.

Debunking the 'Peak Oil' theory

Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA) published a report which argues that the 'peak oil' theory used by some groups to scare us about our energy future is based on faulty analysis (and mentions that this is the 5th time that 'peak oil' is 'announced' by liberal 'scientists'). CERA says that 'peak oil' won't be reached until 2050, even at current production increase rates, and there will be plenty of time afterwards to find energy alternatives.

Cultural degeneration and anti-war sentiment in Europe

Thomas Sowell had a very interesting article yesterday, titled Going Quietly? It's about the decline of the European society as it's losing it's worldwide power. Here are some excerpts from Mr. Sowell's article:

Two generations of being insulated from the reality of the international jungle, of not having to defend their own survival because they have been living under the protection of the American nuclear umbrella, have allowed too many Europeans to grow soft and indulge themselves in illusions about brutal realities and dangers. The very means of their salvation have been demonized for decades in anti-nuclear movements and protesters calling themselves "antiwar." But there is a huge difference between being anti-war in words and being anti-war in deeds. How many times, in its thousands of years of history, has Europe gone 60 years without a major war, as it has since World War II? That peace has been due to American nuclear weapons, which was all that could deter the Soviet Union's armies from marching right across Europe to the Atlantic Ocean. Having overwhelming military force on your side, and letting your enemies know that you have the guts to use it, is being genuinely antiwar. Chamberlain's appeasement brought on World War II and Reagan's military buildup ended the Cold War. The famous Roman peace of ancient times did not come from negotiations, ceasefires, or pretty talk. It came from the Roman Empire's crushing defeat and annihilation of Carthage, which served as a warning to anyone else who might have had any bright ideas about messing with Rome. Only after the Roman Empire began to lose its own internal cohesion, patriotism, and fighting spirit over the centuries did it begin to succumb to its external enemies and finally collapse. That seems to be where Western civilization is heading today.

The achievements of Western civilization are buried in histories that portray every human sin found here as if they were peculiarities of the west. The classic example is slavery, which existed all over the world for thousands of years and yet is incessantly depicted as if it was a peculiarity of Europeans enslaving Africans. Barbary pirates alone brought twice as many enslaved Europeans to North Africa as there were Africans brought in bondage to the United States and the American colonies from which it was formed. How many people have any inkling that it was precisely Western civilization that eventually turned against slavery and began stamping it out when non-Western societies still saw nothing wrong with it?