The provision of electrical power nationwide has become the chosen battleground for environmental groups laboring night and day to insure there will not be enough of it to meet our needs.

The U.S. Department of Energy predicts that overall energy demand will grow by 45% between now and 2030.

The effort to insure Americans will not have enough electricity is deadly serious. Take, for example, the exultant news release (Jan 17) from the Rainforest Action Network, “Proposed Coal Plants Losing Steam” celebrating “59 coal plants cancelled or shelved in 2007.”

Since coal-fired utilities provide over 50 percent of the electricity generated in America, the need for additional plants would seem obvious. A May 2007 Business Week article about coal noted that, “Today, making electricity from coal can cost half as much as using cleaner-burning natural gas.” Half as much at the plant translates to half as much in the monthly energy bill to homeowners and others.

The Greens, however, using the utterly bogus “global warming” hoax and asserting the false notion that carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions will transform the climate of the earth, are successfully denying Americans electrical power.

There is no global warming and CO2 constitutes about 0.038% if the earth’s atmosphere. In past eras there was a lot more CO2 and the result was the lush vegetation that kept a lot of dinosaurs munching away for several million years.

“It is difficult to believe that even idiots ever succumbed to such transparent contradictions, to such gaudy processions of mere counter-words, to so vast and obvious nonsensicality ...” --H.L. Mencken

I recently interviewed Mark Lynas, author of ‘Six Degrees Could Change The World’. He was promoting the two hour world premier on the National Geographic Channel of the documentary based on his book. I watched the DVD he had sent along with his book and was incensed to hear Alec Baldwin announce “the debate is over.” BULLFEATHERS!

The debate is NOT over. The sycophant supporters of Al Gore’s ‘the sky is falling’ rhetoric just flat out refuse to discuss any and all facts or evidence that contradicts their preconceived opinions, prejudices and gospel.

Scientists, real scientists, continue to debate the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of ‘global warming’ and specifically the significance (or insignificance) of man’s contribution to impacting the planet.

Investor’s Business Daily is far from being a fringe rag. “Founded in 1984…IBD editorials are rigorously researched, presenting under-reported - or simply unreported - facts that give you a better insight into the truth behind the headlines. 

Like I’ve said before, when your work becomes known, people start sending you things to look at. Such is the case here. An email from a Mr. Arnie Lerma was forwarded to me by Jim Kingsley that contained a NOAA-17 POES satellite photo and discussion about what it meant. The plume to the left was identified as Mount Erebus, but the plume to the right was simply referenced as “new” with no label as to the landmark. There was also the query “What do you think?” Initially my first thought was “wow”, but then I started thinking it was probably just another Internet hoax or something misidentified, or simply “volcanic business as usual” there and the folks at McMurdo Base knew all about it. 

Here is the photo below that started it all:

The lights may soon go out in Washington, D.C. — and it could happen where you live, too.

"Electric power has already become painfully expensive in Washington and its suburbs. Now, local utilities, say, it could become something even worse: scarce," The Washington Post reported this week.

Maryland, for example, may face rolling blackouts as early as 2011 or 2012 on summer days. The core of the problem is that the region’s ability to meet its ever-increasing demand for electricity is being short-circuited by environmental activists who are doing everything they can to make it as difficult as possible to generate and transmit power.

"Environmental groups say the region should try harder to save energy before it goes out looking for more," the Post reported.

"The cheapest power plant out there is the one you never have to build," one activist told the Post. The euphemism the environmentalists use for this strategy is "conservation." But "rationing" is perhaps the most honest descriptor.

[Emphasis added throughout] In what can only be described as frightening and akin to terror on a new level, it seems that our angry, enviro-martyr Al Gore is regularly whispering into Obama's ear, telling him that he needs to 'get started' now on global warming (GW), and not when he's sworn into office. It appears to be working . According to this Reuter's article,

Global warming has become a key issue in the race for the White House, with the top candidates in both political parties seeking to put a cap on greenhouse gases blamed for rising global temperatures. 

Obama, an Illinois senator who is battling New York Senator Hillary Clinton to become their party's presidential nominee, said he would start developing the U.S. position on a pact to replace the Kyoto Protocol before the general election in November. 

"I've been in conversations with former Vice President (Al) Gore repeatedly, and his recommendation, which I think is sound, is that you can't wait until you are sworn into office to get started," Obama told a news conference in Seattle.

Last December, Dr. David Whitehouse wrote a number of articles about the tardiness of Sun cycle 24 and its potential impact on Earth’s Climate. He noted that the apex of solar activity at the end of last century corresponded with the periods’ unusually high temperatures and that temps have been flat since activity abated.

Whitehouse created quite an outcry among climate hysterics when he suggested that not only had global warming ended, but that we may be entering into a new solar cycle which would begin a period of global cooling. The Sun expert reminded readers that a similar sunspot holiday in the 17th Century (The Maunder Minimum) corresponded with the coldest temperatures of that millennium (The Little Ice Age).

Luckily for the doctor, heretics are no longer burned for blasphemy.

But an article in yesterday’s IBD, cleverly titled The Sun Also Sets, reported that Canadian scientists are seeking emergency funding for equipment to better observe our Sun. To study Global Warming, you’d expect, right? Not quite.

It’s already well known that the Remote Sensing Systems satellite-derived temperature data has released the January figures: the finding is that it’s colder this January than it has been for some time. I wanted to look more carefully at this data, mostly to show how to avoid some common pitfalls when analyzing time series data, but also to show you that temperatures are not linearly increasing. (Readers Steve Hempell and Joe Daleo helped me get the data.)

First, the global average. The RSS satellite actually divides up the earth in swaths, or transects, which are bands across the earth whose widths vary as a function of the instrument that remotely senses the temperature. The temperature measured at any transect is, of course, subject to many kinds of errors, which must be corrected for. Although this is not the main point of this article, it is important to keep in mind that the number you see released by RSS is only an estimate of the true temperature. It’s a good one, but it does have error (usually depending on the location of the transect), which most of us never see or few actually use. That error, however, is extremely important to take into account when making statements like “The RSS data shows there’s a 90% chance it’s getting warmer.” Well, it might be 90% before taking into account the temperature error: afterwards, the probability might go down to, say, 75% (this is just an illustration; but no matter what, the original probability estimate will always go down). 

We have had several requests from people wanting to know what they can do about the climate change information their children are receiving in school. We feel the best approach is to write a personal letter to you child's teacher.

A paper letter has far more impact than email, don't trust it to your child's backpack actually mail it to the teacher in care of the school. Or hand it to them yourself on your next visit. But even an email message would be better than nothing. To that end we have prepared an example letter to a teacher that you can use to get started. You can either copy and paste the web text or download the attached MS Word document. Be sure to personalize it with at least your name, your child's name, and the teacher's name.

The important thing is to educate your child's teacher. Most teachers aren't stupid but they too are only being educated by people who believe man is responsible for global warming. It starts in college where they often receive an education that is biased against man, against America, against our military, against oil companies, against "the right", against big corporations, against almost anything that is status quo. Of course they're taught growing up and in college that we must protect our environment at all costs. Combine those two influences and only surround yourself with others that have had the same influences and you get a teacher that knows nothing about natural climate change. All they understand is what self-absorbed charlatans like Al Gore teach them. Gore's movie "An Inconvenient Truth" is very emotionally based and has had a huge impact on a lot of young teachers. All you can do is try to appeal to their intellect. 

"Good Morning America" weatherman and resident global warming alarmist Sam Champion wondered on Friday if climate change could cause "the ultimate climate disaster" and force humanity to abandon Earth and live in space. Throughout the program, various GMA hosts filed reports on space, astronauts and the effects of living in an environment with no gravity.

So, as a transition to yet another piece on liberal environmental issues, Champion segued, "And now to our series "Global Warming: Global Warning." Could global warming one day force us into space to live?" (The ABC weatherman appeared in a pool as part of a previous space segment on weightlessness.) Champion used the segment to preview a new documentary called "Six Degrees" that will air on the National Geographic Channel on Sunday. He also failed to inform viewers that the author upon which the special is based on, Mark Lynas, is a hard-left environmentalist who once threw a pie in the face of Bjrrn Lomborg at a reading of Lomborg's book, "The Skeptical Environmentalist."

Speaking of the famous pie throwing incident, Lynas, in other public comments, has justifed attacking someone who disagreed with him: "I wanted to put a baked Alaska in his smug face, in solidarity with the native Indian and Eskimo people in Alaska who are reporting rising temperatures, shrinking sea ice and worsening effects on animal and bird life."