Somewhat Reasonable

States across the country continue to be fiscally-suffocated by debt from health entitlement programs, especially Medicaid.

The State of Illinois has sought ways to curb it’s deficit, but few have actually  proven to be real reforms that lower costs while empowering patients.

One attempt to reduce the state’s Medicaid debt was to increase the state cigarette tax by $1 per pack, and use that increase to supplement Medicaid costs.

Yet, according to a Research & Commentary written by John Nothdurft, Director of Government Relations and Budget and Tax Specialist at The Heartland Institute, this will not be of much help.

“Such an increase  fails to address the structural problems of the Medicaid program and would disproportionately burden low- and moderate-income Illinoisans and create numerous unintended consequences. The continuing need for new revenue sources shows the real problem in Springfield is inefficiency and lack of spending restraint, not insufficiently high taxes.”

And while many within the state legislature continue to advocate against the implementation of the federal health law, Gov. Pat Quinn has proposed legislation that would actually quicken its implementation.

The bill includes drastic Medicaid payment rate cuts, eliminates Illinois Cares Rx, a state program that helps approximately 200,000 of Illinois’ elderly get prescription medication, and expands Medicaid eligibility per Obamacare requirements. 

Not only does this action endorse the federal health law but, according to John Stephen of the Illinois Policy Institute, it will increase costs. Therefore, in a press release, the Institute proposes other reforms such as “enforcing Medicaid eligibility rules,  implementing case review, intensive case management and care coordination for high-cost cases, and aggressively managing the use of pharmaceutical drugs, which includes expanding the use of generic drugs.”

According to Stephen:

“Instead of cutting rates, cost-shifting and expanding a program that is already unsustainable – which will raise the cost of health insurance for all and cost taxpayers – Illinois should look to other states’ efforts and bring innovation and best practices to Medicaid. All states need to reform Medicaid so that it is a 21st century program available to those who are truly eligible and truly in need of quality services.”

A vote in the House on Gov. Quinn’s bill  is expected on Wednesday or Thursday of this week.

Pentti Linkola, Environmental Activist

(EDITOR’S NOTE: Before we get into this revelation of the environmental left, let me first present The Heartland Institute’s Seventh International Conference on Climate Change as the place to counter what is outlined below. We’ll be live-streaming from May 21 -23 here.)

When you use the word “fascism” in a blog headline, a reader’s first impulse is: “C’mon. Stop exaggerating.” But as a writer with the nom de plume Tyler Durden notes at the Zero Hedge blog, such a term is not an exaggeration when it comes to “prominent” Finnish thinker Pentti Linkola.

Linkola is convinced that the earth is doomed unless its human population is slaughtered to number just 500 million, the humans who are left abandon modern technology (but, apparently, not condoms), and any thoughts of economic growth and prosperity be abandoned. (In Linkola’s Utopia, a punishment of death for such a crime seems logical.)

As Zero Hedge notes, Linkola likens Earth today to an overflowing lifeboat:

What to do, when a ship carrying a hundred passengers suddenly capsizes and there is only one lifeboat? When the lifeboat is full, those who hate life will try to load it with more people and sink the lot. Those who love and respect life will take the ship’s axe and sever the extra hands that cling to the sides.

Nice. So what is Linkola’s dream society? You get three guesses, and the first two don’t count:

Any dictatorship would be better than modern democracy. There cannot be so incompetent a dictator that he would show more stupidity than a majority of the people.The best dictatorship would be one where lots of heads would roll and where government would prevent any economical growth.

First hands. Then heads. Whatever it takes to save the planet. So what are Linkola’s model societies from history? Again, you only get one guess.

We will have to learn from the history of revolutionary movements — the national socialists, the Finnish Stalinists, from the many stages of the Russian revolution, from the methods of the Red Brigades — and forget our narcissistic selves.

One man’s annoying narcissism is another man’s … what’s the phrase? Oh yeah , the right to live. But, hey! We’ve got to cover the Earth in a protective omelette, and there’s eggs to crack. Or something. Genocidal socialism didn’t work when Stalin did it — only because his plan wasn’t global. If we can pull that off, we get to paradise, right?

Like all who dream of Utopian society, Linkola has trouble with those pesky individuals who have historically mucked up the works with their desire to run their own lives — in a word, liberty.

A fundamental, devastating error is to set up a political system based on desire. Society and life have been organized on the basis of what an individual wants, not on what is good for him or her.

Ah, yes. Me, you, your spouse, your kids, your best friend, the guy who hands your receipt after you swipe your check card at the convenience store … everyone you love and everyone you can interact with in the world does not know “what is good for him or her.” Those who do are on high, and have all the answers about how you should live your life. And you — the individual who cares only about taking care of yourself and your family — lack the “proper” sense and viewpoint on life. And, logically, your existence has no value. So you must be made to submit to your betters.

Just as only one out of 100,000 has the talent to be an engineer or an acrobat, only a few are those truly capable of managing the matters of a nation or mankind as a whole. In this time and this part of the World we are headlessly hanging on democracy and the parliamentary system, even though these are the most mindless and desperate experiments of mankind. In democratic coutries the destruction of nature and sum of ecological disasters has accumulated most. Our only hope lies in strong central government and uncompromising control of the individual citizen.

As the socialist “Utopias” around the world have proved, those who thought they had the “talent” to run our lives have come up short. But, like Stalin, they were able to kill most of those who would point that out … at least long enough to cling to their dictatorships to survive to old age.

Surely, you say, Linkola is a nut. And you’d be right. Surely, you say, he is an outlier. Again, correct. Surely, you say, that is not the real agenda of the environmentalist left. Well … the aims are similar, of not the means. As written by Tyler Durden at Zero Hedge:

Now Linkola is just one fringe voice. But he embodies the key characteristic of the environmental movement today: the belief that human beings are a threat to their environment, and in order for that threat to be neutralized, governments must take away our rights to make our own decisions and implement some form of central planning.

The goal of “mainstream” environmentalists is to limit our liberty — but through the democratic process. Kyoto? The world’s democracies tried their best, and failed. Cap-and-trade? Failed in Europe, never embraced in the U.S. President Obama’s dictates via the EPA on emissions? Well, that’s just quasi-democratic, but currently “law.”

The goal of the environmental left has always been to cede our economic and individual liberty to central planners. The argument now is only about tactics.

Dave Appell at the Quark Soup blog has uncovered a year-old episode of “Climate Challenge” featuring Bill McKibben, the founder of 350.org, one of the world’s leading climate alarmist organizations.  350.org created a group called Forecast the Facts in January 2012 to attack TV meteorologists who refuse to toe the alarmist line and scare viewers about catastrophic man-made global warming.

Lately, however, the Forecast the Facts project has focused exclusively on attacking The Heartland Institute — pounding on us with fake indignation and harassing donors exposed by Peter Gleick’s admitted theft of our internal budget and fundraising documents. The irony here, of course, is that McKibben would never dream of revealing his donors because that might open his groups up to the same underhanded tactics. But as this video shows, McKibben says  he has no idea who funds his organization, beyond a start-up gift from the Rockefeller Brothers years ago. Even the simpatico interviewer finds that hard to believe.

As Appell writes:

Would you believe that Bill McKibben doesn’t know who funds his organization, 350.org? No, I wouldn’t either. But here he is on video, about a year ago (jump to the 13:15 mark), saying — not very convincingly — that he doesn’t know, even though he says they have 7 full-time employees.

McKibben is President and Co-Founder of 350.org. He’s in charge. Presidents of nonprofits usually know who funds them. He doesn’t seem to want to say. To her credit, Karyn Strickler, the interviewer, presses him on it and expresses her incredulity, even though she is sympathetic to 350.org’s mission.

What is with these environmental organizations (Center for American Progress is another one) who expect transparency from their foes but won’t provide it themselves?

Good question. Watch the video below. The relevant clip starts at about the 13:13 mark.

Several friends of Heartland have expressed trepidation about continuing their long-time associations with us. This is my reply to one of those scholars, which shines a little more light about what’s going on around here since Peter Gleick confessed to creating the “Fakegate” scandal:

Dear John,

Sorry you feel this way.

For 28 years, The Heartland Institute has tried to stay “above the fray,” producing high-quality research and commentary and staying focused on the issues, even as the political dialogue became more and more polarized and corrosive. Almost alone among think tanks, we focus on communicating with people who do not already agree with us. We rely on research and reason, not rhetoric and emotion, and still do.

In February of this year, when a climate scientist named Peter Gleick stole Heartland documents and circulated a fake memo purporting to reveal our “secret strategy” on climate change, the tone of debate took a terrible turn for the worse, and environmental extremists started to use tactics that had never been used before in the public policy arena. Virtually all of the mainstream media reported the event as a major expose of a “climate denier” organization, deliberately overlooking nuances of our position on climate change, and deliberately lying about our funding sources. The stolen documents didn’t expose us, they exonerated us from charges that we are a “front” for the fossil fuel industry.

Regarding tactics, since the “Fakegate” scandal, Greenpeace has contacted the employers of every scientist who works for us, demanding that they be fired for having the temerity to question the official dogma of global warming. Can you imagine a more egregious attack on free speech and open academic debate? Donors to Heartland in the past two years have been the subject of hate mail, letter-writing and telephone campaigns, and online petitions demanding that they stop funding us. All of this happened BEFORE we ran a controversial billboard for a single day a few weeks ago.

Finally, regarding the billboard, after 15 years of being the target of vicious ad hominem attacks, we decided to punch back instead of stand back. Our billboard was factual: The Unabomber was motivated by concern over man-made global warming to do the terrible crimes he committed. He still believes in global warming. We simply put his picture on a billboard, pointed out the “inconvenient truth,” and asked, “do you?”

The mainstream media, which has tolerated and even promoted people who call global warming skeptics “Nazis” and “traitors’ and called for the death penalty for skeptics, now pretends to be “outraged” by this billboard. We took it down immediately and admitted that it was in poor taste and a mistake, but they continue to promote madmen on the other side of the issue including Michael Mann and Bill McKibben, and hypocritically pound on us for our “ethical lapse.” This is fake indignation, being staged by ideological extremists as part of the ongoing attack on us and our donors. It is not sincere, it is not accurate, and it is not ethical.

So John, I’m disappointed that you would side with folks who would use such tactics. if you want to stand up for truth seeking and honesty, for taking an unpopular stand against prevailing wisdom, then you should be speaking up for me and The Heartland Institute, not abandoning us in this moment of need. I hope you will reflect on what is really going on, reconsider your position, and let me know if you’ve changed your mind.

Joe

Marc Morano of Climate Depot — a proud cosponsor of our Seventh International Conference on Climate Change in Chicago May 21- 23 — shared with us today his observations on the mainstream media’s double standard for tolerating provocative communication strategies when it comes to the climate.

Marc’s views are his own — and, as always with him, an invigorating read. Those who are subject to easily getting the vapors over such things should probably not heed the advice “click to continue” below. For the rest, here is the full-and-raw Marc Morano, who called out — and answered — some egregious examples of global warming alarmists using “provocative communications” about skeptics that the MSM seems to have missed:

“This is so silly. Every day now, skeptics are compared to Holocaust deniers and the media yawns. But Heartland does an edgy billboard accurately reflecting the views of those featured in it and the media acts as though they are offended?

“Here are a very few examples of this week’s Holocaust denier comparisons and other nasty stuff by warmists – just this week!  Please show some balance!”

Warmist Holocaust survivor Prof. Tomkiewicz: ‘I am using the term ‘denier’ to make a point…Hitler was clear about what he wanted to do in Mein Kampf –why did people not pay attention?’

Tomkiewicz: ‘These [Hitler] ‘deniers’ might as well have been called skeptics in their day…I could not and would not ‘cheapen’ a genocide that killed most of my family and deprived me of my childhood’

Climate Depot Response: ’Your skeptic/Holocaust denier comparisons do ‘cheapen’ a genocide that killed most of your family.’ You are not exempt from being offensive due to your horrible suffering’

Warmist Prof. Micha Tomkiewicz, who survived the Holocaust, doubles down on skeptic Holocaust denier link: ‘Why Am I ‘Dragging’ the Holocaust into the Climate Change Debate?’

Tomkiewicz: ‘I make my ‘climate change denier’ claim for one reason. It’s easy today to teach students to condemn the Holocaust, but it’s much more difficult to teach them how to try to prevent future genocides…I don’t want my grandchildren to die in a climate change genocide that we could have helped head off’

Yet another warmist compares skeptics to Holocaust Deniers — Warmist Prof. Andrew Glikson also claims AGW is ‘the greatest threat humanity and nature are facing’ 

Prof. Andrew Glikson, Andrew Glikson of Australian National Univ. rips skeptical climate play: ‘ I wonder whether such a show, if concerned with denial of the holocaust of WWII, would have been conceived?…I suggest the show ‘The Heretic’…can only lead to trivialization & further denial of what the scientific world regards as the greatest threat humanity & nature are facing’

A Review of Peter Jacques’ ‘A General Theory of Climate Denial’ — ‘Belief that ‘climate science’ shows that the ‘world political economic structure’ is ‘irreparably unsustainable’

Peter Jacques seeks to argue that ‘denier’ is an appropriate label for those who question the theory of catastrophic global warming, and further, that comparisons with holocaust denial are indeed valid’

Holocaust denial and Climate denial: ‘What makes some of these warmists so fond of the holocaust line? Only recently Clive Hamilton wrote a vitriolic rant about this subject’

Another Academic Says Climate Skeptics Criminals Against Humanity: Prof. Donald Brown puts skeptics ‘into the company of such noted transgressors as Mao, Stalin, Pot’ – ‘Brown thought that showing his publicly available email and head shot—which are not hidden and are trivially easy to find at Penn State—represented ‘intimidation.’…But Morano himself hauls in plenty of scathing missives daily, as do others who run blogs expressing doubt that we should let government ‘solve’ climate change’

New article by Prof. Peter J. Jacques compares ‘climate denial’ to ‘Holocaust denial’ — Published in MIT Press Journal pjacques@mail.ucf.edu

Prof. Jacques: ’The question at hand is, ‘Why is there a social counter-movement that rejects climate change?’ This article begins by first naming this counter-movement ‘climate denial’ and working through the various apparent options by specifically looking at scholarship on Holocaust denial for insight. Through this insight, we can understand the counter-movement as a reactionary force working to sow confusion for ideological reasons that promote a specific privilege’

Penn State ‘Climate Ethics’ Prof. Donald Brown says skeptics are guilty of a ‘new crime against humanity’ for delaying action on global warming — ‘It is really evil stuff. It is nasty’ – Brown attacks Climate Depot for posting his email: [Climate Depot] puts my picture and my personal email and within 48 hours you get hundreds of really nasty [emails], some of them are up here, death threats, hate mail’

Flashback 1972: Green Guru David Suzuki: Humans are just ‘maggots’ that ‘defecate all over the environment’

BBC: Male Climate Change Deniers Are Like Terrorists, Paedophiles, And Slave Owners

BBC’s John Bell: ‘The people who are most vocal in denying human responsibility for the disastrous effects of climate change are mostly male. The people who control factories of wage slaves in the developing world are almost exclusively men, as are the commanders of terrorist regimes. Leaders who threaten or declare war are mostly men as are those involved in paedophile gangs’

“Green Power Failure” is a May 10, 2012 article by Canadian columnist Lawrence Solomon for Canada’s Financial Post.

The article is a warning for the United States of pitfalls from adopting renewable electricity sources of solar and wind. Quoting Mr. Solomon, ”Global-warming-related catastrophes are increasingly hitting vulnerable populations around the world, with one species in particular danger: the electricity ratepayer. In Canada, in the U.K., in Spain, in Denmark, in Germany and elsewhere the danger to ratepayers is especially great, but ratepayers in one country — the U.S. — seem to have weathered the worst of the disaster.”

Mr. Solomon then addresses situations in the U. K., Germany, Denmark and other countries which have adopted sizable amounts of solar and wind electricity generation that has led to electricity rates so high that 15 percent of households or more are in “fuel poverty”–ten percent or more of household income goes to electricity or gas. Many of these countries pay electricity rates triple the U. S. average.

Mr. Solomon further cites the U. S. Energy Information Administration forecasts starting next year U. S. electricity rates “dropping by more than 22 % by the end of the decade.”

Due to the U.S. large electricity generation system, the more than 40,000 megawatts of wind energy and several thousand megawatts of solar energy has not caused appreciable increases in electricity rates. However, there are exceptions.

Mr. Solomon may be unaware that California is going down the road to higher electricity prices by adopting renewable energy standards of 20 percent electricity coming from solar and wind by December 31, 2013 and 33 percent by 2020. As of May 2011, the all sector cost of electricity in California was 13.39 cents per kilowatt-hour compared to a national average of 9.87 cents–36 percent higher than the national average. Hundreds of megawatts of solar power are under construction or scheduled for construction around San Diego, in the Mojave Desert, and Nevada that will add to the misery of California residents when they go on-line.

The EPA is forcing shutdown of coal as a fuel which may cause increased electricity rates due to increasing natural gas demand and no competition from lower priced coal. In addition, EPA’s First Carbon Pollution Standards for Future Power Plants could be modified to further reduce or eliminate fossil fuels for electricity generation. This would require dramatic increases in renewable energy sources for electric power generation.

The U. S. advantage of low electricity rates is not that certain with the political climate existing today. High electricity rates is making manufacturing non-competitive in California and the E. U.

A commentator on CNBC recently made a point on discussing the economic situation in North America and Europe, “The U. S. is like the best house in a bad neighborhood.” Lets keep it at least that good!

This is a brief list of attacks on skeptics of man-made global warming, which despite their vulgarity saw preferential tolerance from the mainstream media.

Know of any others? Email me at tsmith@heartland.org

Brad Johnson (Forecast the Facts)

“Norway Terrorist Is A Global Warming Denier”

Although Breivik’s conspiracy theories are insane, they are in line with mainstream opinion among American conservatives.

http://thinkprogress.org/security/2011/07/25/277564/norway-terrorist-is-a-global-warming-denier/

10:10 (British global warming campaign) video, featuring exploding children

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfnddMpzPsM

James Hansen:

Put oil firm chiefs on trial

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jun/23/fossilfuels.climatechange

Think Progress defends Hansen’s coal train/death train analogy, ironically says “no apology necessary”

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2007/11/26/202133/hansen-stands-by-coal-traindeath-train-analogy/

“This is analogous to the issue of slavery faced by Abraham Lincoln or the issue of Nazism faced by Winston Churchill”

http://sistertoldjah.com/archives/2009/12/03/james-hansen-compares-global-warming-to-slavery-nazism/

Al Gore:

Threat of climate change as urgent as that from the Nazis

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2009/07/al-gore-likens-global-warming-to-nazi-threat.html

Global warming skeptics are this generation’s racists

http://dailycaller.com/2011/08/28/gore-global-warming-skeptics-are-this-generations-racists/

Sen. Bernie Sanders

Compares climate skeptics to Nazi deniers

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0210/33371.html

Chris Huyne (Energy and Climate Minister):

Defying climate deal like appeasing Hitler-UK minister

http://af.reuters.com/article/energyOilNews/idAFL6E7IL0MF20110721?pageNumber=2&virtualBrandChannel=0&sp=true

CBS’s Scott Pelley:

Warming skeptics like Holocaust deniers

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/jeff-poor/2008/01/21/cbs-airs-conspiratorial-global-warming-special-hosted-reporter-who-likene

Paul Krugman:

“As I watched deniers make their arguments, I couldn’t help thinking that I was watching a form of treason – treason against the planet”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/29/opinion/29krugman.html?_r=1

Grit’s David Roberts:

“…we should have war crime trials for these bastards – some sort of climate Nuremburg”

http://grist.org/article/the-denial-industry/

Bill McKibben (350.org founder):

Global warming is responsible for Hurricane Katrina

http://dailycaller.com/2011/08/26/bill-mckibben-global-warming-to-blame-for-hurricane-irene/

Thomas Fingar (Chairman of National Intelligence Council):

Global warming will lead to more terrorism

http://articles.cnn.com/2008-06-25/politics/climate.change.security_1_climate-change-global-warming-international-migration?_s=PM:POLITICS

Ellen Goodman (Boston Globe)

Likened climate skeptics to Holocaust deniers

http://www.climatescam.com/rich_text_13.html

Have any to add to the list? Email me at tsmith@heartland.org

Not that we expect the clowns and criminals who run state government in neighboring Illinois to care, but we do hope, for a moment at least, they cast their collective gaze north of the border to Wisconsin.

Something is happening there that Illinois’ governor and most of its legislators no doubt will hardly be able to grasp. Ditto for legislators in California, New York and other fiscally dysfunctional states.

Wisconsin recently has been holding down spending and taxes, and the state has gone from a budget deficit of more than $3 billion to a projected budget surplus.

Imagine! Setting spending priorities and stopping further raids on the pocketbooks of businesses and individuals has achieved what more spending and higher taxes could not.

The Wisconsin-based MacIver Institute has the story, based on the Wisconsin Department of Administration’s latest budget projections.

Russell Cook notes over at The American Thinker how The Heartland Institute’s one-day Unabomber billboard along a highway near Chicago “was a gift to alarmists on a silver platter.”

Noted. It was a mistake on our part. Sorry about that.

Cook gives us our lumps in his American Thinker post. But he also makes some other key points that put what some call the “Climate Wars” into perspective.

[The billboard] was illustrating absurdity with absurdity that backfired because global warming alarmists weren’t put into a defensive position of explaining why the issue is on the verge of total collapse. As Rush Limbaugh noted recently, “you never descend to the level of your opponent or they win.”

The billboard clearly did not advance the skeptic position, but it at least illustrates how the best defense is to go on the offense.

Cook faults Heartland for allowing climate alarmists to continue playing their “shell games” that “keep the public from fully comprehending the enormous faults in the idea of man-caused global warming.” Again: Guilty as charged.

But the larger story here, writes Cook, is that “alarmists have failed for nearly 20 years to prove the science is settled or that skeptics are unworthy of public trust, but they’ve only accomplished this by avoiding any debate about those assertions.”

And that gets us back to the shell game of distraction and propaganda the climate alarmists have been playing for years — with diminishing results. Writes Cook:

When a shell game tactic is the only thing global warming alarmists have to rely on to keep their issue alive, it speaks volumes about their agenda.

Read Cook’s whole piece here. Learn more about Heartland’s upcoming climate conference — May 21 – 23 in Chicago — at this link. That is the place to hear the “debate about those assertions” the alarmists are avoiding.

It is not too late — but it’s getting there — to register at the conference as media/blogger or in the general audience. We’ll also be live-streaming the event, so bookmark this link.

States and school systems around the country have been reformatting cafeteria menus, partly pushed by Michelle Obama’s 2010 “Healthy, Hunger Free Kids Act,” which essentially has taxpayers triple-paying for the food schools serve under wild and conflicting nutrition regulations, and partly pushed by a desire to be politically correct. This has led to some outrageous incidents, including the recent North Carolina incident where a teacher forced a child to swap her homemade lunch for the school’s chicken nuggets, a Michigan state child obesity registry and tracking system, and now a new set of rules in Massachusetts that forbid school vending machines, bake sales, door-to-door candy fundraisers, and snacks at after-school events and parties.

The state’s justification is “an obesity epidemic.” And, to be fair, lots of American kids are fat–not pudgy, fat. But does this justify blanketing schools with often conflicting and nonsensical food requirements? Massachusetts State Sen. Susan Fargo thinks so.

“If we didn’t have so many kids that were obese, we could have let things go,” she said. “But this is a major public health problem and these kids deserve a chance at a good, long, healthy life.”

Ah, yes, government. Giver of good, long, healthy lives!

These regulation-happy state officials don’t seem to understand the law of unintended consequences, and this action has several. The problem for them is that some of the unintended consequences pit government regulation against government regulation, with the not-unlikely possibility the public begins to notice the Kafka-esque absurdity of it all.

In first place, public schools depend on private fundraising to fill in many holes in their budgets (even though Massachusetts spends $15,000 per pupil each year, on average; a figure most private schools can only dream of nabbing) such as for band trips, sports equipment, events like prom, and in some cases even new textbooks and classroom supplies. As Massachusetts mom Maura Dawley says, “The goal is to raise money. You’re not going to get that selling apples and bananas.” How will moms like her feel when their kids can’t raise the money to have extra-school activities parents are willing to pay extra to support?

Second, government food programs may have actually contributed to the obesity epidemic school officials are now trying to target. As Mark Bittman pointed out in the New York Times, hunger and obesity are two sides of a coin. Hungry people are much more likely to become obese because they overeat when they suddenly have a stable food supply.

“Of the two edges of the sword of America’s malnutrition — hunger and obesity — the latter is by far the more prevalent and deadly,” Bittman writes. “In New York City perhaps 2 percent of children have “very low food security,” which might mean vitamin deficiencies, a day without food, a loss of weight, a month of being hungry. Meanwhile, 40 percent of New York’s public school students are overweight or obese…”

Bittman criticizes a New York program that gives kids the option of two breakfasts–one in the cafeteria, one on their desks–in an effort to end the stigma of receiving “government cheese.” It can also be fairly noted that kids can also come from homes that have food (whether provided by a parent or another government program) and also eligible be to eat again, taxpayer-paid, when they get to school. More double-eating.

Third is the complete impossibility of officials being able to decide, from their thousand-mile-away government thrones, exactly what school lunch configurations will work for every one of America’s 55 million K-12 students. Hm, perhaps this is why parents used to make their kids’ school lunches. What a  novel idea!

First, they came for the lemonade stands. Then, they came for the ice cream makers. Then, they came for the bake sales…

Image by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Heartland Senior Fellow for Environment Policy James M. Taylor was interviewed for part of a story on PBS Newshour last night about the teaching of climate change in Americas’s public schools. It was biased heavily toward the views of climate alarmists, which was hardly a surprise. But since The Heartland Institute has been gaining attention for our plans to craft climate curriculum, the PBS producers reached out to us for “balance.”

Below are James’ quick thoughts on the piece, and the video of the story. These folks really need to attend Heartland’s Seventh International Conference on Climate Change (and so should you!). The idea that sound climate science backs up the alarmist narrative is a stubborn myth.

Skepticism is essential to science itself. It is deeply disturbing that many public school teachers bemoan such skepticism in their students rather than celebrate such intuitive adherence to scientific principles.

The heart of the alleged global warming crisis is predictions of future warming from computer models that have consistently predicted too much warming in the past. Importantly, scientific data have shown that the two most important assumptions of such computer models – that modest warming due to carbon dioxide will be substantially exacerbated by changes in cloud formation and atmospheric humidity – are not occurring in the real world.

When real-world data and evidence contradict a scientific theory, the proper scientific response is to proceed with caution rather than vilify those who present the real-world data and evidence.

All that would have been nice to see in this PBS Newshour story last night about the teaching of climate change in America’s public schools. Alas,

Watch Teachers Endure Balancing Act Over Climate Change Curriculum on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.

America’s fixation on diversity is logical. We are a nation of immigrants, a great “melting pot” of ethnicities, nationalities and cultures, brought together by a choice to be an American made by us or our ancestors, and by a shared commitment to a unique set of values that constitute what George Will has called the “catechism” of America’s civil religion.

To acknowledge and appreciate our national diversity is to embrace our American heritage and culture. But diversity itself pales in comparison to the values that all Americans share; we come together as Americans not because we respect everyone’s differences, but because we are commonly invested in a core set of beliefs enumerated in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. These ideals transcend diversity.

But when it comes to acknowledging diversity, an increasing number of universities are taking an aggressive approach in mandating “diversity education” classes and programming. Shoving multicultural programming down students’ throats accomplishes little — an understanding of diversity comes through interactions and real life relationships — and while classes on diversity may be sufficient academic introductions to the subject, there is little need to mandate these courses in collegiate curricula.

Businesses have long been struggling with the question of compulsory diversity training, and have come to the conclusion that such initiatives are a waste of time and money. And as college tuition rates continue to climb higher and higher, mandating such classes is a burden families can’t afford to shoulder.

In Best Practices or Best Guesses? Assessing the Efficacy of Corporate Affirmative Action and Diversity Policies, researchers from Harvard, Berkeley and Minnesota conclude that diversity initiatives are popular not because they work, but because they create a legal safety net for employers. Indeed, courts have traditionally accepted the existence of such programs as shows of “good faith” in commitment to minimizing discrimination.

The study goes on the conclude that:

…although inequality in attainment at work may be rooted in managerial bias and the social isolation of women and minorities, the best hope for remedying it may lie in practices that assign organizational responsibility for change.

This is, of course, the same organizational responsibility that businesses avoid through meaningless diversity programs. And it is important to note that both the business and collegiate environment, inequality may be the result of differences in skill, and motivation rather than bias and social isolation.

University of Arizona sociologist Alexandra Kalev questions the impact of the compulsory nature of diversity programs in the workplace:

When attendance is voluntary, diversity training is followed by an increase in managerial diversity. Most employers, however, force their managers and workers to go through training, and this is the least effective option in terms of increasing diversity. . . . Forcing people to go through training creates a backlash against diversity.

Employment economist Marc Bendick has used surveys to gauge the effectiveness of diversity training, and agrees that while some degree of training can be useful, it will have the most impact in an environment invested in becoming more diverse. As for existing corporate diversity training, he is not optimistic:

If you ask what is the impact of diversity training today, you have to say 75 percent is junk and will have little impact or no impact or negative impact.

Granted, college classes on diversity have a slightly different objective; diversity training in business cannot be directly compared to diversity-focused coursework. The University of Southern California describes its own “Diversity Requirement” as an effort to:

…provide undergraduate students with the background knowledge and analytical skills necessary to understand and respect differences between groups of people…Students will increasingly need to grapple with issues arising from different dimensions of human diversity such as age, disability, ethnicity, gender, language, race, religion, sexual orientation, and social class.

The already ambiguous and intangible notion of inequality that businesses address takes on an even broader and vaguer context when applied in the classroom. What is the goal of a university diversity class? USC seems to be content with “respect” and “understanding”, while Providence College yearns for an understanding of “differences within the human community.” Students will undoubtedly have to contend with these and other areas of diversity, but is first approaching them from a mandatory academic perspective wise?

Indeed, part of the beauty and uniqueness of American society comes through the diversity that is woven into our national fabric. It is an intrinsic part of the American experience, something that is not taught or shoved down our throats, but experienced in day to day interactions.

It is important to note that typically these classes are not singularly based on “diversity education.” Rather, they are history, sociology or other liberal arts classes that are specifically geared towards an examination of “diversity.” USC’s list of options for the diversity requirement runs the gambit of choices, from “Men and Masculinity” to “Questions of Intimacy” and “Race, Gender and, Sexuality in Contemporary Art.” Indeed, although these courses may be entirely valid as electives, to justify their placement on a mandatory list is another matter entirely.

USC and Providence are not merely anomalies in regards to their requirements — Cornell, The University of Massachusetts, and many more mandate coursework in “diversity.” In fact, sixty-three percent of colleges and universities report that they either have in place a diversity requirement or they are in the process of developing one, according to the Diversity Digest.

This is not to say that such courses are useless; undoubtedly they provide an important insight into the study of gender and ethnic disparity. But at a time when the U.S. lags behind its competitors in math and science aptitude, students’ already packed schedules could be much better augmented with a STEM area of study, language training, or better yet, a class on Americanism. Heartland Institute Senior Fellow George Clowes points to a study by the nonpartisan, nonprofit group Public Agenda, which found that parents firmly believe that schools should place more emphasis on teaching children more about American tradition, culture and society; essentially, what it means to be an American. Says Clowes in the Heartlander:

That view is overwhelmingly shared by parents from all demographic groups–white, black, or Hispanic; immigrant or native-born. While parents support teaching students about the experiences, traditions, and histories of ethnic and national groups other than their own, they object strongly to lessons or courses that demean the United States or encourage divisiveness and diminish a shared American identity.

The potential for divisiveness, as well as the ambiguity of purpose surrounding such programs also raises questions on what students truly derive from such initiatives. Business efforts to address diversity issues have largely failed even with specific mandates; educational endeavors seeking to “explore” diversity allow little room for measuring success or failure.

There is a difference between acknowledging cultural and ethnic differences and mandating “training” on such differences. As a nation born of immigrants, a conglomeration of cultures and nationalities were fused together to form our unique American identity.  To presume to confine a cultural awareness as broad and deep as ours to the classroom is to arbitrarily place limits upon that understanding.

Rather, students should be encouraged to experience American diversity authentically; through their daily interactions and relationships with other. Through such contact, we transcend stereotypes and preconceptions; we look beyond prejudices and presumptions and learn to truly value people for who they are.

In his “I Have a Dream” speech, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. challenged America to live up to the ideals of the Declaration of Independence — to honor the sacred obligation, the “promissory note” of “unalienable Rights” of “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” True diversity comes through accepting and sharing these beliefs, not mandating classes on multiculturalism.

The Heartland Institute today released more evidence that Pacific Institute President Peter Gleick was the likely author of a fake “climate strategy memo” that Gleick originally claimed came from a “Heartland insider,” and later said he received “in the mail” from an anonymous source.

Heartland released a computer forensics report, conducted by Protek International, which states: “We conclude that the Memo did not originate on the Heartland System. It was not created on the Heartland System and was never present there prior to its February 14 posting online.”

The new report contradicts disgraced climate scientist Gleick’s claim to have received the memo from someone affiliated with The Heartland Institute and adds to a growing body of evidence pointing to Gleick’s guilt. A month ago, Juola & Associates, the premier provider of expert analysis and testimony in the field of text and authorship, said “it is more likely than not that Gleick is in fact the author/compiler of the document entitled ‘Confidential Memo: 2012 Heartland Climate Strategy,’ and further that the document does not represent a genuine strategy memo from the Heartland Institute.”

Heartland Institute President Joseph Bast said: “The Protek International forensic report is one more piece of evidence that Peter Gleick created the fake document with the intent of defaming us and the scientists we work with. He and his coconspirators are so desperate to discredit anyone who disagrees with their alarmist views on man-made global warming that they are willing to lie, steal, and even defraud their own friends and allies in the media.”

Bast added: “We once again call on Gleick to make a full confession, and on the Pacific Institute and its allies to stop defending Gleick and his unethical and illegal conduct.”

Background:

On February 20, Gleick, a prominent climate scientist, confessed to being the anonymous party who obtained confidential corporate documents from The Heartland Institute and circulated them along with a document titled “Confidential Memo: 2012 Heartland Climate Strategy.” While confessing to using fraud to obtain the stolen documents, he claimed to have received the “climate strategy” memo anonymously in the mail.

Since “Fakegate” occurred, ThinkProgress, Greenpeace, 350.org, and other radical environmental groups have been using the stolen and fake documents to attack Heartland’s corporate donors and the scientists who work with it.

The Protek investigation was conducted by Protek co-founder Daniel Bellich, a 27-year veteran of the FBI and former supervisor of the Chicago Division’s Special Operations Group, and Keith G. Chval, former chief of the High Tech Crimes Bureau of the Illinois Attorney General’s Office and president of the Chicago Chapter of The American Society of Digital Forensics and Electronic Discovery. Both men signed the report on April 20, certifying they would swear to its findings in a court of law.

For more information about the global warming scandal and the complete forensic report from Protek International, visit Fakegate.org or contact Director of Communications Jim Lakely at jlakely@heartland.org and 312/377-4000.

The Heartland Institute is a 28-year-old national nonprofit organization with offices in Chicago, Illinois and Washington, DC. Its mission is to discover, develop, and promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems. For more information, visit our Web site or call 312/377-4000.

EPA Regional Director Al Armendariz

The blogosphere is all atwitter this week after the disclosure of  the “crucifixion” video, in which the director of U.S. EPA Region 6 in Texas urged his staff to “crucify” oil and gas companies in enforcement actions.

In the video, disclosed by U.S. Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), Regional Director Al Armendariz said:

It was kind of like how the Romans used to conquer little villages in the Mediterranean. They’d go into a little Turkish town somewhere, they’d find the first five guys they saw and they’d crucify them. And then you know that town was really easy to manage for the next few years. And so you make examples out of people who are in this case not compliant with the law. Find people who are not compliant with the law, and you hit them as hard as you can and you make examples out of them, and there is a deterrent effect there.

Sen. Inhofe calls this a “’rare glimpse’ into the Obama administration’s mindset” and is launching an investigation. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said: “I have spoken to Dr. Armendariz, I have made clear to him that I am glad he apologized because his comments were disappointing, they are not representative of the agency, they don’t reflect any policy that we have, and they don’t reflect our actions over the past two years.”

Don’t make me laugh.

Armendariz’s language was unusually blunt and candid. But, as I discussed on the Charlie Sykes radio program Thursday on WTMJ-AM in Milwaukee, Armendariz’s enforcement strategy is nothing new for EPA, which has been crucifying its enforcement targets for decades. These targets include many of the clients I’ve represented in 25 years of practicing environmental law.

“Your client is a baby-killer,” one EPA lawyer told me.

We were meeting about 14 years ago to discuss resolving my client’s alleged environmental violations. What were those violations? The client was a small-scale rental apartment management firm, required by law to hand out lead-based paint warning booklets to every tenant at the lease-signing and document each hand-out on a particular EPA form.

There was no evidence of flaking lead paint or other risky circumstances in the apartments. My client still had to hand out the booklets, though – and had handed out thousands of them. They even had the photocopying invoices to prove it.

But the firm made a mistake. It had tenants put their initials in the place on the form where EPA required full tenant signatures and had tenants sign their full names where EPA required only initials. The result? EPA wanted millions of dollars in penalties.

Around the same time, EPA targeted a landfill in a city in northern Indiana, where municipal waste was disposed of. Almost every business in the city was notified of their potential liability, including the grocery store which had thrown away wilted lettuce and the stationary store which had tossed old greeting cards. My client had thrown away textiles identical in composition to the polyester pants my father always wore after he retired. EPA sued dozens of such businesses, though. And the judge made it plain he thought all the parties were “polluters” and said he’d deny any defenses we tried to raise in court. My client was nailed for $150,000.

EPA targeted the scrap metal industry ten years ago, in which scrap dealers purchase scrap metals and extract metals like stainless steel, brass, copper, aluminum, lead, zinc, nickel, iron, and steel. These are then sold for recycling. This was a $65 billion industry in 2006, and it conserves energy and natural resources.

But EPA began numerous enforcement actions against participants in this industry under the Superfund laws, which impose strict liability on those who arrange for disposal of hazardous waste or do the actual disposing. In EPA’s view, companies selling scrap metal for recycling were actually “arranging for disposal” of hazardous substances at a Superfund site.

In this case, the property of a scrap metal aggregator who collected scrap metals from dozens of dealers had become contaminated with metals the aggregator carelessly stored. And scrap metal dealers were disposing of hazardous substances by selling them to the aggregator.

My client, a mom-and-pop scrap dealer who sold metals to the aggregator, got tagged for a $50,000 share of the costs of cleaning up property owned by the aggregator. They went bankrupt paying it.

“And then we wonder why aren’t you investing more tin this country why aren’t you creating jobs in this country?” Sykes said.

Exactly.

After largely sitting out the pitched political battle that has been waged over flood insurance reform virtually since the moment the last long-term authorization of the National Flood Insurance Program was signed in 2004, the Federal Emergency Management Agency – the federal agency that actually administers the NFIP – has chosen to break its silence and actually weigh in.

To say that their comments are not particularly helpful would be a mammoth understatement.

Despite an overwhelming 406-22 U.S. House vote in July 2011 to pass a five-year NFIP reauthorization that includes substantial reforms; despite a unanimous vote by the Senate Banking Committee to report a very similar bill to the floor in September 2011; despite a bipartisan group of 41 senators signing a letterurging a Senate floor vote on the measure; despite even the support of the White House itself; FEMA has decided that – with the goal line in sight after nearly a decade of the painstaking work of building coalitions and finding appropriate compromises that serve to fix the program – the best thing to do right now would be to scrap all that and extend the existing, insolvent program for the next two years.  As FEMA put it:

In recent years, a series of short-term reauthorizations and temporary suspensions of the NFIP have had a negative impact on the confidence in the program among citizens and stakeholders, including state governments, tribal governments, local communities, individual policyholders, mortgage lenders, and the private insurance industry. FEMA is asking Congress to support a two year reauthorization and affirm its commitment to citizens, communities, and private sector partners that the federal government will continue to support our nation’s efforts to manage flood risk.

Let’s grant this upfront: The current program is set to expire May 31 and another NFIP lapse would not benefit anyone. Ever since its last long-term authorization expired in September 2008, the program has been kept alive through a series of 12 short-term extensions (sometimes as part of a full Continuing Resolution, sometimes on its own) and there have been numerous lapses. The four lapses in 2010 alone amounted to 53 days that the NFIP could not write or renew policies.

So even though, in the long run, we at The Heartland Institute would like to see the NFIP privatized, we’re with David Miller, FEMA’s associate administrator for the Federal Insurance and Mitigation Administration, when he says “reauthorizing the National Flood Insurance Program is the prudent thing to do.”

The problem is that a so-called “clean” reauthorization of the program’s current structure would be anything but. It would, instead, be a perpetuation of an unsustainable program that is $18 billion in debt, that subsidizes development in risk-prone and environmentally sensitive floodplains, that massively underprices risk and that puts taxpayers on the hook. The reform efforts that have passed the House and the Senate Banking Committee don’t go far enough, by our measure, but they do certainly start moving the program in the right direction by phasing out premium subsidies, stepping up enforcement and providing authorization for FEMA to begin transferring risk to the private reinsurance and capital markets. That’s nothing to sneeze at.

Moreover, if the goal is providing the housing market with the certainty that a longer extension offers, then A) The five-year extension included in the reform bills provides more of that than a two-year extension would, and B) There is no reason whatsoever to suspect that a new, two-year reauthorization bill offers any more expedient path to passage than what’s already on the table. Indeed, one of the reasons the program has lapsed so often in the past is that it has proven extraordinarily difficult to get Congress to agree even to a six-month extension.

What’s especially strange about FEMA’s choice to speak out here is that it seems to mark a notable breach in the chain of command. FIMA Administrator Miller reports to FEMA Director W. Craig Fugate. Fugate reports to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. And Napolitano, of course, reports to President Barack Obama.

But the Obama White House has already made its position on flood insurance reform crystal clear – they’re for it. In a July 2011 Statement of Administration Policy, the White House voiced support for the House-passed H.R. 1309 and noted that it “looks forward to working with the Congress on further reform to strengthen the NFIP.”

The Administration is pleased that the bill would provide the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) with greater flexibility to set premium rates. The bill provides improved protection for American taxpayers by requiring FEMA to use actuarial principles in determining full flood risk rates for certain properties. The bill would also phase in changes to let policyholders and communities adjust. The bill would authorize studies and pilots to test alternative approaches to flood insurance that is sustainable and cost-effective.

That’s well-said and we couldn’t agree more. Now, if only someone at the White House would place a call to their subordinates at FEMA repeating that same message.

A new group has recently released a video advocating free-market policies from a whole new perspective, and the result is very compelling.

The group is called Free Market America, and its stated mission is to defend economic freedom, particularly from environmental extremism.

The video puts the viewer in the perspective of someone who wants to dismantle the country, and walks them though what they would do to accomplish it. Throughout the video, the viewer becomes aware of how many of today’s ideas match the destructive actions learned through this perspective.

What makes this argument compelling is that this sort of connection cannot be built from anything other than concrete evidence. Leaving the viewer to digest the sobering truth once the video ends.

After watching the video, feel free to read the transcript below if you would like a closer look at the video’s points.

If I wanted America to fail …

To follow, not lead; to suffer, not prosper; to despair, not dream — I’d start with energy.

I’d cut off America’s supply of cheap, abundant energy.  Of course, I couldn’t take it by force.  So, I’d make Americans feel guilty for using the energy that heats their homes, fuels their cars, runs their businesses, and powers their economy.

I’d make cheap energy expensive, so that expensive energy would seem cheap.

I would empower unelected bureaucrats to all-but-outlaw America’s most abundant sources of energy.  And after banning its use in America, I’d make it illegal for American companies to ship it overseas.

If I wanted America to fail …

I’d use our schools to teach one generation of Americans that our factories and our cars will cause a new Ice Age, and I’d muster a straight face so I could teach the next generation that they’re causing Global Warming.

And when it’s cold out, I’d call it Climate Change instead.

I’d imply that America’s cities and factories could run on wind power and wishes.  I’d teach children how to ignore the hypocrisy of condemning logging, mining and farming — while having roofs over their heads, heat in their homes and food on their tables.

I would never teach children that the free market is the only force in human history to uplift the poor, establish the middle class and create lasting prosperity. Instead, I’d demonize prosperity itself, so that they will not miss what they will never have.

If I wanted America to fail …

I would create countless new regulations and seldom cancel old ones. They would be so complicated that only bureaucrats, lawyers and lobbyists could understand them.  That way small businesses with big ideas wouldn’t stand a chance — and I would never have to worry about another Thomas Edison, Henry Ford or Steve Jobs.

I would ridicule as “Flat Earthers” those who urge us to lower energy costs by increasing supply.  And when the evangelists of commonsense try to remind people about the law of supply and demand, I’d enlist a sympathetic media to drown them out.

If I wanted America to fail …

I would empower unaccountable bureaucracies seated in a distant capitol to bully Americans out of their dreams and their property rights.  I’d send federal agents to raid guitar factories for using the wrong kind of wood; I’d force homeowners to tear down the homes they built on their own land.

I’d make it almost impossible for farmers to farm, miners to mine, loggers to log, and builders to build.  And because I don’t believe in free markets, I’d invent false ones.  I’d devise fictitious products — like carbon credits — and trade them in imaginary markets.  I’d convince people that this would create jobs and be good for the economy.

If I wanted America to fail …

For every concern, I’d invent a crisis; and for every crisis, I’d invent the cause.

Like shutting down entire industries and killing tens of thousands of jobs in the name of saving spotted owls.  When everyone learned the stunning irony that the owls were victims of their larger cousins — and not people — it would already be decades too late.

If I wanted America to fail …

I’d make it easier to stop commerce than start it — easier to kill jobs than create them — more fashionable to resent success than to seek it.  When industries seek to create jobs, I’d file lawsuits to stop them.  And then I’d make taxpayers pay for my lawyers.

If I wanted America to fail …

I would transform the environmental agenda from a document of conservation to an economic suicide pact.  I would concede entire industries to our economic rivals by imposing regulations that cost trillions.

I would celebrate those who preach environmental austerity in public while indulging a lavish lifestyle in private.  I’d convince Americans that Europe has it right, and America has it wrong.

If I wanted America to fail …

I would prey on the goodness and decency of ordinary Americans.  I would only need to convince them … that all of this is for the greater good.

If I wanted America to fail, I suppose I wouldn’t change a thing.

Recently “Color of Change,” Common Cause, the Center for Media and Democracy, and other extreme leftist groups’ have attempted to defame a group called the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). These attacks are not surprising considering the groups that are making them. Rather than discussing and debating actual policy, these groups resort to ad hominem attacks and bullying tactics. What is downright shameful is their use of a tragedy like Trayvon Martin’s death to dishonestly attack an organization with which they disagree on policy.

Like ALEC’s corporate donors, The Heartland Institute’s supporters are under fierce attack by the same left-wing groups using the same tactics. While “Color of Change” uses the Trayvon Martin tragedy as cover for its ideological campaign, “Forecast the Facts” and its allies are using  our efforts to bring sound science to the debate over global warming. Such tactics have no place in the national debate over public policy.

Despite what these fringe groups want you to believe, ALEC is not involved in any black helicopter conspiracy. ALEC is in fact a very effective and respected public-private partnership that brings together state legislators, members of the private sector, the federal government, and general public to openly discuss public policy and free-market solutions. It does not hide that its stated mission is to advance “Jeffersonian principles of free markets, limited government, federalism, and individual liberty.”

As Georgia Senate Majority Leader Chip Rogers put it, “I stand with ALEC, and together we stand ready to defend our guiding principles of free markets and limited government, which is what our nation needs now more than ever.”

The Heartland Institute stands with ALEC in support of free enterprise, limited government, and federalism, and asks that you do so as well.

We’re doing it again … because it’s necessary to “think globally and act locally” about the climate — but with the truth, not propaganda and politicized reports passed off as rigorous science.

The Heartland Institute is hosting a conference aimed at having a real debate about the causes, consequences, and policy implications of climate change. And this year’s conference in Chicago May 21 – 23 dovetails nicely with the NATO summit in the Windy City (which ends as ours begins, on May 21). Vaclav Klaus, president of the Czech Republic, will be our dinner speaker the first night.

Heartland has invited dozens of scientists who believe man is chiefly responsible for the fluctuations of the climate to debate those who disagree … again. We will be joined by dozens of think tank cosponsors and hundreds of scientists who understand the need to educate the public, and fellow scientists and educators, about what’s really happing to the planet’s climate. The world’s media will be there — and, we hope you will join us. Registration information can be found here.

Get Twitter updates of the conference by following @HeartlandInst and the hashtag #ICCC7.

This year’s conference theme is:

Real Science, Real Choices

The program features approximately 60 scientists and policy experts speaking at plenary sessions and on three tracks of concurrent panel sessions exploring what real climate science is telling us about the causes and consequences of climate change, and the real consequences of choices being made based on the current perceptions of the state of climate science.

Major developments on the science front since the last ICCC took place last summer in Washington, DC include publication of a new report by the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) updating its 2009 report, Climate Change Reconsidered, and a new report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on extreme weather events and climate change.

The past year was marked by major retreats in the U.S. and other developed nations from government subsidies and investments in solar and wind power. The widely publicized bankruptcies of companies including Solar Trust of America and Solyndra, and slow economic growth and fiscal crises afflicting many European countries, have forced policymakers around the world to reconsider the costs and consequences of basing energy choices on fear of man-made global warming.

Climategate and Fakegate

On November 22, 2011, a second batch of emails among scientists working at the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit was released by an unknown whistle-blower. “Climategate II” revealed prominent scientists concealing data, discussing global warming as a political cause rather than a balanced scientific inquiry, and admitting to scientific uncertainties that they denied in their public statements.

Like an earlier release of emails on November 19, 2009, on the eve of the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Climategate II caused an uproar in the scientific community and a further drop in public belief in man-made global warming. But a series of friendly investigations of the Climategate affair, along with the timely expiration of the statute of limitations for the offense of failing to comply with Freedom of Information Act requests, spared the scientists involved from any legal penalties.

On February 20, 2012, another global warming scandal broke, this one involving criminal behavior that is likely to be much more difficult to cover up. Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute and an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, confessed to using fraud to obtain confidential corporate documents from The Heartland Institute and arranging for them to be posted online. The scandal became known as Fakegate because Gleick also circulated a fake memo he claimed outlined Heartland’s “climate strategy.”

In his confession, Gleick said “a rational public debate is desperately needed.” We agree, which is why we have repeatedly invited scientists with wide-ranging views to speak at these conferences. Indeed, we even invited Peter Gleick to speak at a Heartland event, an invitation he turned down on the very day he began his fraud.

ICCC History

Past conferences have taken place in New York City, Chicago, Washington DC, and Sydney, Australia and have attracted nearly 3,000 participants from 20 countries. The proceedings have been covered by ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox News, the BBC, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Le Monde, and most other leading media outlets.

Past ICCCs have featured presentations by members of Congress, the president of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Klaus, and scientists who view themselves as “skeptics” as well as “alarmists.” Atmospheric scientist Scott Denning, who believes in man-made global warming, spoke at ICCC-4 in 2010 and ICCC-6 in 2011. Hear his remarks here.

Attendance Information

ICCC-7 is open to the public. Registration is required. More information is available at the conference Web site.For media credentials, register here or contact Tammy Nash at tnash@heartland.org or 312-377-4000. For more information about The Heartland Institute, visit our Web site or contact Jim Lakely at jlakely@heartland.org or 312/377-4000.

Those words, on a banner that hung in the Mission Evaluation Room at the Space Center in Houston, continues to be imprinted on the minds of many of the ex-NASA scientists that are now retired but certainly not expired! (Some of them, including me, will be at The Heartland Institute’s Seventh International Conference on Climate Change in Chicago May 21 – 23.)

Their thirst for another mission together has caused them to develop a team committed to evaluating another important challenge; that of trying to examine the reliability of the data available to the two sides of the global warming or global climate change “debate.”

They know it is not the amount of data but the reliability of the data that counts. Accustomed to weighing life and death situations, their assessment and risk determination skills have been well tested. Today they are able to bring a refreshing level of objectivity to evaluating what the two sides bring to the table because none of the team members are receiving pay from NASA.

All of this began following a presentation on empirical evidence derived from proxy studies of Earth’s past climates that, among other things, can approximate the old temperature and CO2 levels. Upon ending the presentation and tossing questions and observations around, it became apparent that over 90% of the ex-NASA scientists shared significant concerns about the “man-made CO2 is the major cause of global warming” claims being announced by NASA and particularly by the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS). It was suggested that the group should consider contacting NASA’s headquarters with a letter to the current administrator, Charles Bolden. A second such presentation at the Space Center in Houston confirmed the prevalence of the concern within the ex-NASA body.

The signatories and the letter to Administrator Bolden can be found here (PDF). The team has major concerns about the quality of the data being used by NASA to support both written and verbal releases that have indicated a certainty or finality that man-made carbon dioxide is the major cause of climate change. The catastrophic forecasts, coming mainly from the GISS, are based on complex computer models that contain many assumptions of varying quality that are chosen at the discretion of the modeler or senior management.

Basing statements indicating such certainty on the output of such complex computer models is foreign to most of the data driven members from the old Apollo era. Of paramount concern is that the uncertainties of the model outputs are seldom revealed in a way that is easily understood by the administration, the EPA, and the policymakers and leaves them with an inordinate trust in the NASA-GISS announcements.

The team will be interviewing climate experts with data and views on both sides of the issue. If it is ultimately determined that the data being relied upon by NASA is deficient relative to generating good, science quality projections of future impacts of man-made CO2, the team will publish a report stating why they have made such determination. Alternatively, if they feel the data is of reliable quality, they will so state that opinion. Stay tuned!

One of the most dreaded days of the year is approaching … tax day. This year Tuesday, April 17 will be the last day people can file their taxes. It is also the Tax Foundation’s Tax Freedom Day, which calculates that Americans had to work more than a quarter of the year just to pay all the nation’s taxes for the year.

According to the Tax Foundation, Tax Freedom Day arrives “four days later than last year due to higher federal income and corporate tax collections. That means Americans will work 107 days into the year, from January 1 to April 17, to earn enough money to pay this year’s combined 29.2% federal, state, and local tax bill.”

The Tax Foundation says that it “is a vivid, calendar-based illustration of government’s cost, and it gives Americans an easy way to gauge the overall tax take. Conceived by Florida businessman Dallas Hostetler in 1948, he deeded the concept to the Tax Foundation upon his retirement in 1971. In 1990 sufficient data became available to calculate a separate Tax Freedom Day for each state.”

In an article for Budget & Tax News, Joseph Henchman of the Tax Foundation explains, “We assume the nation starts working on January 1, earning the same amount each day and spending nothing. When the nation has finally earned enough to pay all the taxes that will be due for that year, Tax Freedom Day has arrived. This year, Americans will pay $2.62 trillion in federal taxes and $1.42 trillion in state-local taxes, for a total tax bill of 29.2 percent.”

If Americans were forced to pay the taxes necessary to pay off the $1.014 trillion budget deficit, Tax Freedom Day wouldn’t be until May 14. That means Americans would have to work 27 days just to cover the amount of borrowing due to over-spending our federal government has done for 2012.

The way to help workers work more days for themselves rather than for government is to implement solutions that help government run more efficiently and eliminate unnecessary government spending.