POWER TO THE PEOPLE

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Politicians, bureaucrats will be forced to reject climate change propaganda

James D. Kellogg

FROM-Glenwood Springs Post Independent

Less than a decade after the painfully dry year of 2002, the Upper Colorado River Basin is laden with snowpack that's 160 percent of average. Total runoff this spring and summer will be huge, potentially swelling creeks and rivers to record volumes. Flush with inflows, reservoirs will fill and spill.

An Associated Press article from Dec. 5, 2008, asserted, “Western U.S. states will face more water shortages in the years ahead as climate change exacerbates the strains drought has put on the Colorado River.”

Apparently, the “scientific consensus” doesn't have a clue about climate. Or maybe it does. To show warming trends, models used by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) depend on the assumption that climate change is man-induced. At the same time, U.S. government-funded research by Dr. Roy Spencer and others is providing mounting evidence that climate change is natural and cyclical.

Undeterred, well-funded environmental special interests claim the debate is over; fossil fuels are changing the climate in ways harmful to human health and the environment. Junk science and misrepresentation of data have conjured an environmental crisis.

Environmental groups are lobbying for limits on Constitutional liberty and economic prosperity to enable aggressive government action to save the Earth. Maurice Strong, advisor to former United Nations secretary-general Kofi Annan, bluntly stated, “The only way to save the world will be for the industrial civilization to collapse.”

One scheme to engineer America's economic collapse is “cap and trade” legislation. Under the pretense of halting devastating climate change, the federal government would dictate drastic reductions in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, particularly those from use of fossil fuels. Companies that emit more CO2 than legal limits would have to buy carbon credits or face stiff penalties and fines. Many would be forced to reduce production, move operations abroad, or go out of business altogether.

A cap-and-trade bill passed in the US. House of Representatives in June 2009, but never came to a vote in the Senate. Americans understood that it was a massive energy tax and voiced strong opposition.

Predictably, environmentalists made an end run around American voters. In 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in Massachusetts vs. EPA that CO2 is a pollutant and that the “EPA no doubt has significant latitude as to the manner timing, context, and coordination of its regulations.” In effect, the court usurped congressional authority and wrote new law to expand powers of the presidency beyond constitutional limits.

When cap and trade failed, the Obama administration simply exploited the power granted by the court. The EPA made a carbon endangerment ruling, decreeing that CO2 is indeed a pollutant requiring stringent regulation.

Now the EPA is engaged in a campaign to drive coal-fired power out of existence and stymie natural gas production. Mr. Obama promised, “Under my plan of a cap-and-trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.” Our standard of living is set to decline. Ultimately, carbon purging will expand like a contaminant plume, victimizing schools, farms, homes and everything else. It sounds so benign under the guise of saving the planet.

On April 6, 2011, Republican-sponsored legislation to overrule the EPA power-grab failed to garner a supermajority vote in the Senate. But as more Americans learn the truth, politicians and bureaucrats will be forced to reject climate change propaganda. Restrictions on individual freedom, limitations on mobility, and hindrance of economic growth won't be sacrificed for pseudo-science that empowers anti-capitalist collectivism.

The drought of skeptical science and intellectual honesty in the green movement will eventually be washed away by a torrent of public backlash. It's like the Colorado River. If you ignore the flood warnings, you're going to drown.

James D. Kellogg of New Castle is a professional engineer and the founder of LiberTEAWatch.com and WriterBalm.com. Contact him at jamesdkellogg@yahoo.com.