A story this week on WRAL announced that Gov. Pat McCrory will seek federal funds to help the state "partner" in constructing "offshore energy" -- that's liberalspeak for "windfarms".  Our liberal Republican Governor has, for many, many years, been involved up to his neck in progressive radical environmentalist and U.N. causes, organizations and projects.  Even though he ran as a pretend conservative, it's really hard for an old zebra to change his stripes....

Windmill technology is finally becoming recognized for the wildly wasteful and impractical boondoggle that it really is.  In the past, wind farms have tied up enormous amounts of otherwise productive farmland or worse, denuded timberland.  Even genuine environmentalists who are actually concerned about the environment and not massive control agendas, are opposed to wind farms because they kill so many birds, they introduce noise that disrupts the wildlife and natural environment, they destroy habitat and natural beauty, and so on.  More energy is expended in the production of equipment, construction of the wind farm, and recurring maintenance than will ever be produced.  More toxic waste is produced and released during the production of these windmills and the massive battery installations which must accompany them than will be saved through the operational life cycle.

Drive up the Appalachian chain and you will find example after example of abandoned or mothballed windfarms dotted along the ridges.  Why?  Because each wind mill generator must be given a massive overhaul every five years.  There are huge stresses on the bearings and arms of these monsters.  The batteries will begin to weaken and fail after ten years or so of operation, and must thereafter soon be replaced.  This is why you will typically see a wind farm operate for roughly five or six years and then go mothballed.  The "green energy" firm has taken taxpayer subsidy to build the pink elephant, and then that firm milks the profits until the massive maintenance bills start pouring in.  Once the cream has been skimmed at taxpayer expense, the firm abandons the now worthless "investment" and applies for a new grant on a new project.  It's all a scam where some get rich or richer off our "collective" tax contributions.

It also happened extensively in the ethanol boondoggle.

These are simply the whimsical fantasies of naive minds -- or the corrupt connivance of nefarious men.

Well, if you think recurring maintenance costs are severe and impractical for a wind farm in the mountains, desert, or plains -- just wait until you see the wear and tear on wind mills constructed over salt water and subject to severe oceanic storms.  This harebrained scheme won't last half as long.  Just ask any homeowner on the coast how rough the sea environment is on his house, auto, and exposed equipment.

But common sense means nothing to liberal pseudo-environmentalists.  Gov. Pat loves big projects like "rapid rail" and "green energy" boondoggles.  Gov. Pat is just slightly less progressive than was his Democrat opponent.  He is Democrat-lite.  He was "the lesser of two evils" all over again.

And this mess demonstrates how much we need to reform the Republican Party.  It has become nearly identical so often to the Democrat-Socialist "New" Party.  I wish Gov. Pat would wise up, but he probably won't.

Scores of boondoggle green energy failures.  Abandoned windmill farms and solar farms scarring the landscape.  Yet Barry in his SOTU speech proposes even more wasteful throwaway spending on his crony supporters in the "green" "renewable" energy industry.

The latest scandall is a British-owned scam -- LG was supposed to produce batteries for electric and hybrid vehicles.  These are the toys of the leftists who imagine that they will prove economical, attractive, and somehow practical for consumers in the real world.

Surprise!  Another boondoggle!  Another gross waste of your and my tax dollars -- and, since >40₵ of every dollar is borrowed or printed by the Federal Reserve out of "thin air", this is another gross generational theft from your grandchildren!  Shame on this out-of-control, insane government.  And shame on us in the electorate for enabling this insanity.


Bill Cochrane

Over the past several weeks, there has been a good deal of global warming news, some that focused on the year immediately passed — 2012 — and some that focused on years to come.  But in all probability the only headline you have seen regarding any of this read something like this one from The Weather Channel:  “2012: Warmest Year on Record for U.S.”  Several weeks ago this news covered the pages of newspapers.  All the networks spread the same idea.

But, as noted, over the past several weeks there have been other global warming-related stories, and the one regarding 2012 temperature in the lower 48 states of the United States was probably the least important.  After all, the issue is global warming, not warming in the U.S., and on that score the news was quite different.

So here’s a headline you probably didn’t see:  “2012: 9th Warmest on Record Globally Since 1979.”  The reason why you didn’t see this or a similar headline in any major media outlet is because, as far as I’ve been able to tell, the story, while completely true, went unreported.

But according to the satellite temperature record, kept since 1979, 2012 was only the ninth warmest year on record.  Here are the years since 1979 ranked by average global temperature — warmest to coolest.

1979 through 2012, ranked from warmest to coolest:

1. 1998
2. 2010
3. 2005
4. 2002
5. 2009
6. 2007
7. 2003
8. 2006
9. 2012
10. 2011
11. 2004
12. 2001
13. 1991
14. 1987
15. 1995
16. 1988
17. 1980
18. 2008
19. 1990
20. 1981
21. 1997
22. 1999
23. 1983
24. 2000
25. 1996
26. 1994
27. 1979
28. 1989
29. 1986
30. 1993
31. 1982
32. 1992
33. 1985
34. 1984

But wait:  There’s more news that you probably missed.  Now this is a headline that did appear, but not in any venue that you are likely to have noticed:  “Met Office Forecasts No Global Temperature Rise.”  This headline appeared on a pretty obscure website called “The Observatory”.  And who is the Met Office?  It is the United Kingdom Met Office, and Met is short for “Meteorological.”  The UK Met Office is heavily relied upon by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, both for climate data and climate forecasts.

So what is the Met Office predicting? No warming for at least the next five years.  This is on top of its own data showing that there has been no warming for the last 15 years.  According to the Met Office, the planet is looking at 20 years with no warming trend.

The graph below, published here by the Met Office, would have been an interesting one to spread across the front pages of newspapers across the country — or at least on page 62.  But, alas, not many people have seen it.  So here's your chance.

The Observatory interprets the graph as follows:  “The UK Met Office has revised its global temperature predictions as a result of a new version of its climate model and climate simulations using it.  It now believes that global temperatures up to 2017 will most likely be 0.43 deg C above the 1971-2000 average, with an error of +/- 0.15 deg C.  In reality, this is a forecast of no increase in global temperatures above current levels.”

Now you have a more complete picture of the latest climate news.



Dr. Roy Cordato

Based on the lies of Global Warming/Climate Change, the Obama Administration has handed out huge sums of money during the so-called "Stimulus" programs and other grants to all kinds of "green" "renewable" energy companies.  The favorite boondoggles were in solar and wind power pipe dreams.  But the government largesse with taxpayers' money extended to poorly conceived electric cars and the batteries for them.

Obama and his fellow cronies liked to call these throwaways "investments".  He liked to portray these sham ventures as "research and development" into "tomorrow's technologies".  Truth is, for anyone who takes the time to research it, electric cars are older technology than gasoline powered vehicles.  They came first.  And in spite of all the improvements in motor, battery, and materials technology, the range, speed, reliability, and durability has not increased at all since the early 1900's.

And the overall efficiency when you consider the multiple power conversions (first at the power plant, then to battery storage, then to battery drain, then to mechanical power, then to kinetic motion) is far, far worse than using gasoline or natural gas.  Thus, the pollution is greater.  And the toxic wastes produced in the battery production and vehicle manufacture are greater than those for more familiar vehicles.  It's a boondoggle.

Same with solar.  No matter how much the solar cell technology improves, solar will never be viable for more than small portable power needs.  There is simply not enough energy in sunlight falling on a given area to ever be economically viable for power production.  And then, to be useful, once again you have to store the energy in banks of batteries -- and you're back to the efficiency problems and technology limitations of batteries.  Not to mention again that to manufacture solar cells generates far more pollution and toxic waste than batteries.

But the worst part of all this foolishness was that Obama's green energy program was really much more about rewarding crony supporters than anything else.  All of the companies upon which he has squandered our money were headed by friends, campaign bundlers, major contributors or political allies.  This was another redistributionist scheme, but this one benefitted his friends.

The following list is of the 34 "green energy" companies that were subsidized with Federal money and have either gone out of business, or are in bankruptcy and likely to go out of business.  Together, they represent a cool $80B of our money -- all for NOTHING!  No new techology.  No new jobs.  No progress toward energy independence.  No new products.  Only more national debt.  Only more deficit spending.  Only more squandered money.  Only more enriched crooks.

Over 1900 investigations have been launched, but nothing will come from them.  The political subterfuge is too deep.  The only thing we can do now is get more people to awaken and demand a stop to the lies and deceptions.  Demand a stop to the wasteful schemes.  Demand real and substantial cuts in real spending.  Demand government policies which encourage all forms of inexpensive energy without government interventions.  We can do it!

Source:  Heritage


Bill Cochrane

The Save Our Sandhills organization held their July meeting at the Southern Pines Civic Club beginning at 7:00 P.M.  The meeting featured Ellen Marcus, Democrat candidate for Moore County Board of Commisioners who is running against Nick Picerno, Republican candidate.

Save Our Sandhills Chair Joe McDonald opened the meeting and gave a very interesting introduction and explanation of how S.O.S. operates.  After approving the last minutes and hearing the Treasurer's report, Mr. McDonald introduced Democrat candidate for Moore County Board of Commissioners, Ellen Marcus.

Mrs. Marcus gave a speech covering her selections of Moore County history and her perceptions of proper development policies, Moore County Board of Commissioners mistakes, improper zoning and land use, and abuse of limited Moore County resources. Mrs. Marcus espouses the idea that everything is so limited that it is about to be exhausted, that we have so abused the environment and nature that we are about to doom ourselves, and that while centrallly planned government-controlled development (as long as it is the "correct" government party) is good, this evil, free-market, competitive development is "bad".   She even makes the charge that a developer can, time after time, fund failed developments which are "left half-unoccupied" and still be somenow successful!

Mrs. Marcus does indeed present the voters of Moore County with a real and stark choice this November.


Billl Cochrane

In 1517 Martin Luther set off the Protestant revolution against the Catholic Church that led to the spread of the then-new movement as a response to the corruption of the Church.  It took time for it to establish itself as an alternative and was greatly aided by the invention of printing and spread of literacy, but mostly because ordinary people had grown weary of the Church’s extravagance, poor governance, and resistance to change.

The selling of worthless “indulgences” as a means to wipe one’s sins clean was the final straw.

Environmentalism has become a modern religion and its “cap and trade” scheme to sell worthless permission slips for the emission of so-called “greenhouse gases” — based on United Nations Kyoto Protocol calling for a reduction of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the Earth’s atmosphere — is being rejected by many nations .

As it has become common knowledge that CO2 is vital to all life on Earth and plays no role in affecting the climate, ordinary people have concluded that global warming in particular and environmentalism in general is a giant fraud.

No one argues that nations should not attend to the basic maintenance of clean air and water.  That view predates the environmental movement, but the stranglehold on nation’s economies and the ability to engage in any form of commerce has reached a breaking point.  The fact is, the U.S. has made great strides over the years and there are limits to how “clean” the air and water can or even should be.  The EPA wanted to regulate “dust” at one point until Congress put an end to that insanity.

The lies required to maintain environmentalism and its vast matrix of laws and regulations are being publicly rejected and a recent example is a letter sent to NASA administrator by fifty present and former astronauts, scientists, and engineers who work for NASA is a seminal moment, not unlike Martin Luther’s 95 theses nailed to the door of the castle church in Wittenberg.

The NASA employee’s letter demanded that its Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) “refrain from including unproven remarks in public releases and websites.  We believe that the claims of NASA and GISS, that man-made carbon dioxide is having a catastrophic impact on global change are not substantiated, especially when considering thousands of years of empirical data.”

It should be noted that the global warming hoax can be dated to testimony by James Hansen before Congress in 1988 and he is still the GISS administrator!  His apocalyptic predictions helped launch a U.S. response currently seen in the Environmental Protection Agency power-grab, based on the false CO2 claims, that will eliminate one fifth of the coal-fired plants providing electricity to a large swath of the nation and likely end the building of new comparable facilities.

On April 9th, Rasmussen Reports, a polling organization, release the results of a poll that found that 52% of likely voters “think there’s a conflict between economic growth and environmental protection, though 31% disagreed".  Rasmussen stated that “support for investing in fossil fuels like oil and gas is also at a new high amidst near-record gas prices and the on-going development of the Keystone XL pipeline which President Obama blocked for environmental reasons".

The following day, April 10th, Rasmussen released results of another poll that found that 44% of likely voters “believe, generally speaking, that the EPA’s regulations and actions hurt the economy. Just 17% disagree".

On February 21st, Steve Milloy of JunkScience.com, was published in The Washington Times in an opinion about EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson’s testimony before Congress writing that:  “Over the past three years, the Obama EPA has conducted a scorched earth campaign against fossil fuel producers and users, especially the coal-fired power industry, with multi-billion-dollar rules that provide no meaningful environmental or public health benefits.”

The environmental revolution — a Communist agenda — is being resisted piece by piece by scientists and others who no longer will submit to its utterly false “science” and its UN-inspired Agenda 21 plans to impose control over all aspects of life on planet Earth.  A June Rio conference will largely abandon the fear-mongering of global warming in favor of “sustainability”, a matrix of controls that will enslave the world’s population with the worst totalitarian precepts since the rise of Communism and Nazism in the last century.

Agenda 21 has been at work in America for decades at this point and few have any idea what it represents.  It is destroying property rights in America and that’s just for starters.

On Earth Day — April 22nd — the birthday of Vladimir Lenin, the dictator who imposed Communism on Russia in 1917, the various elements of the environmental movement will flood the world with propaganda.  The connection between these two events should not be ignored.

Environmentalism should be soundly rejected and the emerging movement to overthrow it should redouble its efforts.


Alan Caruba