Canada, criticized by environmentalists for not adequately
protecting polar bears from the effects of climate change, said on
Thursday it will take more time study its next step.
A scientific panel on Thursday released detailed findings of an
April review that classified the bear population as a "special
concern," but not endangered or threatened with extinction.
The government has created a national round table to consult with a
variety of groups, including residents of the Arctic, on how best to
protect the bears, Environment Minister John Baird said.
"Protecting the polar bears is something we are committed to, but we
going to base it on science and with input and collaboration with Inuit
and northern people," Baird told reporters in Inuvik, Northwest
Territories.
Al Gore’s speech July 17th in Washington, D.C. challenged the nation to
switch to 100% renewable energy sources within 10 years. He stated that
it is entirely possible to overhaul our current electricity system to
use only solar and wind energy to meet the nation’s growing energy
demand. A vital factor Al Gore overlooked is the logistics of the
country running on solar and wind power alone. Gore’s dream of 100%
renewable energy for America is unrealistic and illogical.
It should be easy to see that relying on solar and wind power cannot
provide America with reliable power. Solar power is not able to provide
a base power load because of its intermittent fuel source, due to the
daily rotation of the earth and cloud cover. Wind power is also highly
intermittent due to the natural variability of wind. Fossil fuel power
plants have always backed up solar and wind generation by operating in
spinning standby mode. The use of these renewable sources has yet to
put a fossil fuel power plant out of operation. In fact, the use of
more renewable energy spawns the use of more fossil fuel plants to
balance the power load.
When the Supreme Court ruled in Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agencythat
carbon dioxide was a pollutant, the implications were clear. Rather
than waiting for the Congress and President to agree on federal climate
change policy, presumably built around an economy-wide cap & trade
system or a carbon tax, the Court told the EPA that it had all the
authority it needed under the Clean Air Act to order emitters of
greenhouse gases to cut back--regardless of the wider repercussions.
Now a lawsuit filed
by the Attorneys General of New York and eleven other states seeks to
force the EPA to implement this ruling on emissions from US oil
refineries. But unlike a comprehensive approach, such a selective
effort would greatly worsen the nation's energy security, while having
very little impact on overall US greenhouse gas emissions.
Students who are being taught climate science are being
indoctrinated into a narrow viewpoint of climate science [thanks to Ben
Herman and Phil Krider for alerting us to this article]. The article
below published by the American Association of Physics Teachers documents this bias.
Michael D. Mastrandrea and Stephen H. Schneider, 2008: Resource Letter GW-2: Global Warming. American Journal of Physics, Volume 76, Issue 7, pp. 608-614
This article is a “Resource Letter” whose mandate is described below:
Resource Letters are guides for college and university
physicists, astronomers, and other scientists to literature, websites,
and other teaching aids. Each Resource Letter focuses on a particular
topic and is intended to help teachers improve course content in a
specific field of physics or to introduce nonspecialists to this field.
The Resource Letters Editorial Board meets at the AAPT Winter Meeting
to choose topics for which Resource Letters will be commissioned during
the ensuing year. Items in the Resource Letter below are labeled with
the letter E to indicate elementary level or material of general
interest to persons seeking to become informed in the field, the letter
I to indicate intermediate level or somewhat specialized material, or
the letter A to indicate advanced or specialized material. No Resource
Letter is meant to be exhaustive and complete; in time there may be
more than one Resource Letter on a given subject. A complete list by
field of all Resource Letters published to date is at the website
www.kzoo.edu/ajp/letters.html. Suggestions for future Resource Letters,
including those of high pedagogical value, are welcome and should be
sent to Professor Roger H. Stuewer, Editor, AAPT Resource Letters,
School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Minnesota, 116 Church
Street SE, Minneapolis, MN 55455; e-mail:
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Americans For Prosperity is an organization that says it is
non-partisan and non-political but admits to having a conservative
message.
That message was on display Monday when the group held
a forum called “Beating Climate Alarmism: Cost is the Key” at the
Stillwater Community Center.
The group was represented by Stuart Jolly and Pam Pollard, the state director and associate state director.
Also speaking was U.S. Rep. Frank Lucas, a Republican who represents Oklahoma’s Third District.
The
forum was about what AFP calls the “dangerous” Warner-Lieberman Climate
Security Act. The Senate bill introduced by Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., and
John Warner, R-Va., is designed to reduce carbon emissions through a
cap-and-trade system that would set a limit on the emissions of a
company with businesses that are going to exceed their limit able to
buy more credits on Wall Street.
Wikipedia, the community-edited encyclopedia that anyone can revise,
is one of the Web's biggest success stories. What you may not know is
that it also has become an important player in the political world.
Started
in 2001 on a shoestring budget, Wikipedia now ranks as the ninth most
popular Web site in the U.S., according to Internet ratings company
Alexa.com, outpacing such "old media" stalwarts as CNN, ESPN and the
New York Times. (It's even more popular worldwide, where it is
currently the seventh most-read site.)
This popularity
makes Wikipedia very interesting in a political context, particularly
because its pages are highly regarded by most Internet search engines.
Chances are, if you look up the name of most any state or national
politician, the Wikipedia entry on him or her will be in your top three
results. In some cases, such as those of President Bush or Vice
President Cheney, Wikipedia's article actually beats out the official
government biography pages.
When you add to its popularity the fact that Wikipedia has more than
10 million articles and great search-engine placement, it's pretty hard
to avoid the conclusion that Wikipedia is one of the most influential
publications in American politics.
Politics / Propaganda 
