Sen. Boxer: CO2 Is National Security Threat

Via Hot Air:



Ed Morrissey adds "This hyperbole comes from a desperate attempt to get her colleagues to push her cap-and-tax bill forward in the Senate, and the ridiculous claim that CO2 will somehow outweigh a nuclear Iranian mullahcracy and a global Islamist network for national-security concerns shows just how desperate Boxer has become."

All indications are that global warming has lost its "crisis" epithet.

But the economic "crisis" is still picking up steam.

As Federalist 63 says,

As the cool and deliberate sense of the community ought, in all governments, and actually will, in all free governments, ultimately prevail over the views of its rulers; so there are particular moments in public affairs when the people, stimulated by some irregular passion, or some illicit advantage, or misled by the artful misrepresentations of interested men, may call for measures which they themselves will afterwards be the most ready to lament and condemn. In these critical moments, how salutary will be the interference of some temperate and respectable body of citizens, in order to check the misguided career, and to suspend the blow meditated by the people against themselves, until reason, justice, and truth can regain their authority over the public mind? What bitter anguish would not the people of Athens have often escaped if their government had contained so provident a safeguard against the tyranny of their own passions? Popular liberty might then have escaped the indelible reproach of decreeing to the same citizens the hemlock on one day and statues on the next...

It is evident that the Senate must be first corrupted before it can attempt an establishment of tyranny. Without corrupting the State legislatures, it cannot prosecute the attempt, because the periodical change of members would otherwise regenerate the whole body. Without exerting the means of corruption with equal success on the House of Representatives, the opposition of that coequal branch of the government would inevitably defeat the attempt; and without corrupting the people themselves, a succession of new representatives would speedily restore all things to their pristine order.

The 17th Amendment corrupted the Senate. America moves from one crisis to another in order to prevent the people from uniting against their own corrupt government.

Senate Reveals New Energy Bill

"It will create millions of jobs! It'll end dependence on foreign oil! It'll feed the poor! It'll cut the deficit! It'll cure baldness and impotency! And it won't cost you one red cent!"

Politicians will make all kinds of idiotic promises to sell their schemes. We can get rid of all the demagogues and snake-oil salesmen (and saleswomen) by repealing the 17th Amendment.

Senate Global Warming Hearing Cancelled Due To... Snow

Really.

I guess it's not the planet-destroying threat Al Gore hyped it as.

John Stossel on ClimateGate

I'm not an O'Reilly fan, but Stossel makes a lot of sense here. There's no point in spending trillions and trillions on a ghost of a chance when there are tens of millions dying of malaria, poverty, and malnourishment.

The global warming cult is killing people. This is just a call for a more powerful, centralized government.

And the really bad thing is that, by their discrediting science and crying "wolf" all the time, people become deaf to real problems that kill real people.

Quis Custodiet Ipsos Climate Scientists?

When those who deem themselves our betters can't persuade people to support their ideas, they will lie, cheat, and manipulate in any way they can. When we allow others to make our decisions for us, who oversees them?

The furor over these documents is not about tone, colloquialisms or whether climatologists are nice people. The real issue is what the messages say about the way the much-ballyhooed scientific consensus on global warming was arrived at, and how a single view of warming and its causes is being enforced. The impression left by the correspondence among Messrs. Mann and Jones and others is that the climate-tracking game has been rigged from the start.

According to this privileged group, only those whose work has been published in select scientific journals, after having gone through the "peer-review" process, can be relied on to critique the science. And sure enough, any challenges from critics outside this clique are dismissed and disparaged.

Chris Booker calls this "the worst scientific scandal of our generation."

James Taranto calls it a "corruption of the peer-review process."

Ed Morrissey says that "The AGW movement has been exposed as a religious belief and a political cash cow, not science."

The inevitable parodies are showing up too.

And now we find out that some of the raw data used to make their calculations has been destroyed. Welcome to ClimateGate:

The admission follows the leaking of a thousand private emails sent and received by Professor Phil Jones, the CRU’s director. In them he discusses thwarting climate sceptics seeking access to such data.

In a statement on its website, the CRU said: “We do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added (quality controlled and homogenised) data.”

The CRU is the world’s leading centre for reconstructing past climate and temperatures. Climate change sceptics have long been keen to examine exactly how its data were compiled. That is now impossible.

Roger Pielke, professor of environmental studies at Colorado University, discovered data had been lost when he asked for original records. “The CRU is basically saying, ‘Trust us’. So much for settling questions and resolving debates with science,” he said.

If the science is so settled, measuring the data again shouldn't be a problem. Science is all about testing and retesting. The whole point of peer review is to allow others to make their own measurements and run their own experiments.

However, a peer-review process which excludes those who can't be trusted to arrive at the appropriate conclusion doesn't satisfy that purpose. Real scientific advances have been made chiefly by those who were willing to buck the consensus.

The fact that they have so much faith in their own good intentions is why they think it's okay for them to lie, cheat, and manipulate in order to get their way. But as Daniel Webster said, "Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority. It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions."

Ronald Reagan said it even better, "Trust, but verify."

This is why we do not allow unaccountable groups of people to wield great political power. Setting up watchmen to shoulder the responsibility that properly belongs to the people of controlling the government will always corrupt them into using the government for their own purposes. And who watches over them?

Decentralizing power is the only way to keep it accountable. Repealing the 17th Amendment is the best way to do that.

Here's John Stossel debunking the myths about climate science:

Tax Foundation: Cap and Trade

This is a catchy video Tax Foundation put out that's worth sending around:



Hat tip: Hot Air

Cooling Off

Update: The climate change bill passed the House. Just as a reminder, if there were no 17th Amendment, this bill wouldn't stand a chance in the Senate.

Original post:

As much as I'd like to reprint this entire article, I'll just tease you with this nugget:

Steve Fielding recently asked the Obama administration to reassure him on the science of man-made global warming. When the administration proved unhelpful, Mr. Fielding decided to vote against climate-change legislation.

If you haven't heard of this politician, it's because he's a member of the Australian Senate. As the U.S. House of Representatives prepares to pass a climate-change bill, the Australian Parliament is preparing to kill its own country's carbon-emissions scheme. Why? A growing number of Australian politicians, scientists and citizens once again doubt the science of human-caused global warming.

Among the many reasons President Barack Obama and the Democratic majority are so intent on quickly jamming a cap-and-trade system through Congress is because the global warming tide is again shifting.

Today's the big day. Make sure to call and threaten your Senators (with legal repercussions, of course)!

Update: I just found this video of Peter Schiff discussing this legislation on Glenn Beck: