Freedom Line Blog

Last week, in her first debate with U.S. Senator Scott Brown (R-MA), Democratic challenger Elizabeth Warren tried to nationalize their contest in terms designed to solidify her support from Bay State environmentalists:

“Senator Brown has been going around the country, talking to people, saying, you’ve got to contribute to his campaign because it may be for the control of the Senate.  And he’s right.  …  What that would mean is if the Republicans take over control of the Senate, Jim Inhofe would become the person who would be in charge of the committee that oversees the Environmental Protection Agency.  He’s a man that has called global warming ‘a hoax.’  In fact, that’s the title of his book.”

To be fair to Senator Inhofe, who, as the Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works is in line to lead the panel if Republicans become the majority, the full title of his book is The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future.

The hoax Inhofe describes is the use of Climategate-manipulated science to legitimize massive increases in taxes and regulation.

In its war on coal, the EPA has been at the forefront of the environmentalists’ push to tax and regulate an entire industry out of existence; most specifically by requiring coal operators to adopt expensive and experimental manufacturing techniques that are already making it necessary to lay off workers and close down plants.

By parsing Inhofe’s insight about how global warming alarmists politicize science to justify liberal policies, Warren was trying to substitute Inhofe’s complete rejection of global warming for Brown’s position on the issue.  In fact, Brown thinks global warming/climate change/something is happening.  But like Inhofe, he thinks that getting the job market growing again trumps spending billions of dollars on policies built in part on scientific fraud.

Brown shouldn’t shy away from this issue so long as he frames it correctly.  The environmental activists that Warren was playing to won’t be voting for him anyway.  But the independents that put Brown in office two years ago know that job-killing taxes and regulations don’t make sense; especially in an era of chronic unemployment.

March 2000:  Charles Onians of Britain’s The Independent penned a global-warming doomsday warning entitled “Snowfalls Are Now Just a Thing of the Past”:

Britain’s winter ends tomorrow with further indications of a striking environmental change:  snow is starting to disappear from our lives…  According to Dr. David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia, within a few years winter snowfall will become ‘a very rare and exciting event.’  ‘Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,’ he said.”

Does “the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia” ring a bell?  It was at the center of last year’s “Climategate” scandal in which global warming alarmists were shown to have manipulated their research and plotted against scientists whose views differed from their own.

Fast forward ten years, to December 2010, and a report from Britain’s Mail Online entitled “Coldest December Since Records Began as Temperatures Plummet to Minus 10 C Bringing Travel Chaos Across Britain”:

Swathes of Britain skidded to a halt today as the big freeze returned – grounding flights, closing rail links and leaving traffic at a standstill.  And tonight the nation was braced for another 10 inches of snow and yet more sub-zero temperatures – with no letup in the bitterly cold weather for at least a month, forecasters have warned.  The Arctic conditions are set to last through the Christmas and New Year bank holidays and beyond as temperatures plummeted to -10 C (14 F).  The Met Office said this December was ‘almost certain’ to become the coldest since records began in 1910.”

Thanks to Al Gore’s amazing Internet, which provides us a record to test the amazingly ludicrous assurances that he and his fellow climate change alarmists have made.

Remember “Climategate,” which exposed the flawed and doctored data behind global warming alarmists’ partisan agenda?

We may have a new equivalent with the Obama Administration’s persecution of for-profit colleges.  A “Collegegate,” if you will.

CFIF has detailed the Education Department’s unjustified demonization of for-profit colleges, which provide working Americans the opportunity to improve their educations, obtain critical job skills and make themselves more marketable amid a tight employment market.  We also detailed how Senators Tom Coburn (R – Oklahoma) and Richard Burr (R – North Carolina) have inquired into allegations that the Education Department “may have leaked the proposed regulations to parties supporting the Administration’s position and investors who stand to benefit from the failure of the proprietary school sector.”

Now, compounding the shamefulness of this federal persecution, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has just admitted that its August 4, 2010 report alleging undercover recruiting violations was defective.  This is significant, because only 1% of GAO reports receive revisions, suggesting substantial error in this particular instance.  Predictably, the GAO says that it stands by it’s “central finding,” but so did the United Nations and other global warming activists following the Climategate disclosures.  The implications are serious enough that Senator Mike Enzi (R – Wyoming) has written GAO chief Gene Dodaro regarding “a number of troubling questions” that “undermine many of the allegations” that the GAO has leveled in its campaign against for-profit colleges.

So on top of a transparently partisan Obama Administration attack against career colleges and allegations of insider trading, we now have the federal government admitting that its supposed “sting” report was defective.  It’s time to get to the bottom of this debacle, which is already humiliating for the Obama Administration.  It appears as though it’s only about to get worse…

One month ago, we sat down with famed climate realist Bjorn Lomborg and published our commentary “‘Cool It’ – Bjorn Lomborg’s New Cinematic Rebuke to Global Warming Alarmists.”  Well, the movie’s debut finally arrives this week, and all of us who believe in individual freedom and oppose the worldwide effort to limit freedom and prosperity in pursuit of the extremist climate change agenda should make sure to see it.  The film is a remarkable rebuttal to, and debunking of, Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth,” and we guarantee you’ll both enjoy and appreciate it.

It is important to support those who, like Lomborg, place their careers and even safety in pursuit of truth, so please take your friends along.  We’ve seen the film, and can guarantee you won’t regret it.  You can view the brief trailer, and locate cities and theaters here.  Enjoy!

Last month’s “Climategate” revelations exposed thousands of emails between global-warming activist scientists, who sought to conceal and distort climate data, blackball other climate scientists who rebutted their claims and discredit scientific journals.

Now, UK authorities have concluded that they also broke the law.

According to the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the climate researchers at the center of Climategate were requested in 2007 and 2008 to submit data on which they based their global warming contentions.  Those contentions were in turn a basis on which the United Nations and global warming alarmists around the world issued their latest doomsday predictions.  The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) also relied upon them in issuing their reckless carbon dioxide regulations.

Under the UK’s Freedom of Information Act, however, those researchers were required to disclose the data on which they claimed to rest their conclusions.  The Act also prohibits deliberate concealment of requested information, which these activist scientists did.  According to a statement issued by the ICO, the information requests were “not dealt with as they should have been under the legislation.”

Talk about understatement.

Phil Jones, who directed the unit at the center of the Climategate scandal, stepped down following the revelations.  Yet, bizarrely, he claims that the team’s efforts at distortion and concealment were “taken completely out of context.”

Not exactly the defense one would expect from a man with a clear conscience…

A hat tip to James Delingpole of The Daily Telegraph (UK) is in order for his continuing coverage of the metastasizing Climategate controversy. The Russians are now weighing in with charges that global warming alarmists used only 25% of data reported by Russian scientists; intentionally leaving out information showing no signs of warming. Much of this doctored research was in turn folded into the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) report, the definitive statement supporting the calls for international regulation of energy consumption. (For a counter-argument using all the available climate data, see this report published by the Heartland Institute.) With the Copenhagen climate conference degenerating into anarchy and finger-pointing soon there may be another appellation added to “discredited” and “fraudulent”: convicted.

As Lord Christopher Monkton explains in this interview, he and another climate skeptic are requesting prosecution of the researchers responsible for destroying information sought through Britain’s version of the Freedom of Information Act. Others are calling for investigations into whether there is a case for criminal fraud against scientists using government grants to produce misleading reports. Many of the people who’ve profited from this scurrilous research are present or arriving in Copenhagen. When looking back on the group photos a few years from now, one wonders how many of them will be behind bars, owing millions in damages, or drummed out of office. Most likely, not enough.

barbaric:   (1) Of, relating to, or characteristic of barbarians.   (2) Crude or unrestrained in taste, style, or behavior.

Perhaps California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is simply desperate to retain some element of his fading spotlight as he drifts toward political retirement?  After all, we live in the age of reality TV, in which even self-embarrassment such as White House party-crashing is an acceptable price for publicity.

Sadly, that possibility would be preferable to the possibility that he’s simply lost what remained of his intellectual bearing.

Appearing today on ABC’s Good Morning, America, Schwarzenegger attempted to outdo even the Obama White House on the topic of climate change absurdity.  Even though he has presided over California as it has hemorrhaged jobs and descended to economic basket-case status, partly due to costly state environmental policies, he denied any contradiction between the global warming agenda and economic prosperity, saying, “we in California have proven it over and over that you can protect the economy, and you can protect the environment.  I don’t think you have to choose.  I think it is nonsense talk to say ‘let’s talk first about the economy.'”

Apparently oblivious to the Climategate scandal surrounding the global warming activists at Britain’s University of East Anglia, he went so far as to say that on the issue of global warming, we should “pay more attention to the universities.”  And ignoring California’s catastrophic loss of jobs to surrounding business-friendly states, Schwarzenegger continued, “in California, the biggest job creation is in green technology, we have seen an increase there of over 36%, we have been increasing the amount of jobs in all those different areas.”

Perhaps most preposterously, the man who played Conan the Barbarian had the audacity to label anyone who rightfully questions man-made global warming hysteria as “still living in the Stone Age.”

No, Governor Schwarzenegger, you’re the one who has continuously regressed back to the Stone Age with such profoundly mindless comments as these during your tenure.  What a sad, sad spectacle for a once-promising political newcomer and purported reformer.

What do Obamanomics and global warming hysteria have in common?

A numbers hoax.

As anyone outside the deepest redoubts of the Daily Kos and MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann knows, the foundation underlying the global warming agenda is crumbling.  This is the result of revelations of politically-correct climate scientists explicitly attempting to distort data, blacklist opposing viewpoints and redefine what constitutes scholarly publication on the subject.  Even the shameless Al Gore has been embarrassed enough to avoid the climate change summit taking place in Copenhagen this month.

In a similar manner, the data trumpeted by the Obama White House to justify its “stimulus” efforts has been exposed.  Last week, the chief of the board tracking stimulus spending announced that inspectors will review the data underlying Obama’s claim that he “saved or created” approximately 650,000 jobs.  This number was announced in October of this year, only to be quickly refuted.  Among other things, the estimate included non-existent Congressional districts, and dozens of jobs purportedly created by grants of less than $1,000.

Although these two news items have received well-deserved attention, few people have connected them.  The simple fact is that two of the greatest icons of liberal thought – global warming and government spending – have been exposed as reliant upon fraudulent data.  When the White House wonders why its poll numbers continue to plummet to unprecedented lows and voters begin to smell the coffee, perhaps they merely need to read the news.