“Social Justice” (Socialism) is what warmists yearn for … not global cooling

The forebodings the Jews of Europe had as they were herded onto cattle cars to an unknown destination are the same feelings of helplessness I have as the Copenhagen Climate Summit reaches its conclusion. It is the concern that unaccountable, unelected and unresponsive individuals will seal my fate and squander my assets to bring “social justice” to the world.

Make no mistake, global warmists are more interested in achieving an agenda of undoing Westernism than cooling the planet. It is Westernism that has brought unbridled prosperity to most of the world, and where it doesn’t exist (North Korea, Cuba, Myanmar for instance) it leads to abject poverty and suffering. Yet it is our very prosperity they seek to destroy.

I’m not sure what “social justice” is precisely, other than it is preached from the pulpit of the likes of the Reverend Wright when he attacks “rich white people.” And it is being preached from the pulpits of liberal newspapers. I think it is what Joe the plumber objected to. But most of all I don’t understand how transferring the world’s treasure to corrupt regimes will ever alleviate poverty in those countries. It hasn’t before and there is no reason to believe it will in the future.

But read a sample of the misguided logic from the liberal Guardian:

Social justice demands that the industrialized world digs deep into its pockets and pledges cash to help poorer countries adapt to climate change, and clean technologies to enable them to grow economically without growing their emissions. The architecture of a future treaty must also be pinned down – with rigorous multilateral monitoring, fair rewards for protecting forests, and the credible assessment of "exported emissions" so that the burden can eventually be more equitably shared between those who produce polluting products and those who consume them.

When Zimbabwe, once the breadbasket of Africa, found it couldn’t feed itself because Mugabe’s racist policies forced productive white farmers off their farms, the UN came to the rescue. It provided free maize (corn) to the government to feed its people. But then the government of Zimbabwe sold this gift to acquire foreign exchange. When the UN insisted its personnel oversee the distribution of its largesse to the hungry, Mugabe kicked them out. All efforts to alleviate misery were stymied unless it enriched the corrupt regime.

Haiti’s population has so denuded its countryside to find kindling to cook with, they face destructive mudslides when any tropical storm passes by. Countless foreign aid teams have addressed the problem. And millions of dollars in financial assistance, both private and governmental, have not been able to stop it. The government has been run by a series of corrupt strong men. It is unreasonable to expect money will solve the problem. It will just add to some Swiss bank account’s balance.

The folks who run the UN’s IPCC (located in Switzerland) simply want to establish and maintain control over our lives. Their “social justice” is no more than a form of government imposed on unwilling East Europeans over 60 yeas ago. Global Warming is only a pretext for doing it.

I have always been a believer that the thirst for freedom is universal, that it can never be quenched. Those who have had it stolen from them will forever seek to have it returned. My generation grew up watching Soviet Socialism take over large chunks of the world. The first of the rebellions against it occurred in East Germany in June 1953, a workers protest against the heavy handedness of the newly imposed Communist government. A photo of two men facing off against a tank (above) electrified the world. It appeared on the cover most news and pictorial magazines of the day.

It has lived in my memory. It is a reminder that those who want freedom should never give up.

Department of useless information: Lake Lanier is at Full Pool … Global Change is over.

Symbolic of Global Change in the Southeastern US have been the record low levels of Georgia’s Lake Lanier near Atlanta. They were caused by drought conditions that affected northern Georgia and the western Carolinas for the past several years. Lake Lanier is now at “full pool,” a level not seen since September 2005. It dropped to a record low of over 20 feet down in December 2007. And it took two Global Change events to reach Global Normal. They were downpours that caused major flooding in the area three weeks ago and heavy rains over the past three days.

1970s The Population Bomb … 2009 Global Warming. Settled Science Then and Now?

Zombietime has unearthed some truly loathsome writings that Obama’s new Science Czar, John Holdren, coauthored with Anne and Paul Ehrich (of The Population Bomb fame). The book, published in 1977: Ecoscience, Population, Resources, Environment is filled with the same fearmongering the global warmists are promoting today. It alleges with certitude, if nothing is done rapidly and forcefully, humanity will be doomed to mass starvations. The rhetoric is eerily similar to the doomsday predictions of global warming. From the Holdren’s book: Humanity cannot afford to muddle through the rest of the twentieth century; the risks are too great, and the stakes are too high. This may be the last opportunity to choose our own and our descendants' destiny. Failing to choose or making the wrong choices may lead to catastrophe. But it must never be forgotten that the right choices could lead to a much better world. The solutions are draconian, including forced abortions: Indeed, it has been concluded that compulsory population-control laws, even including laws requiring compulsory abortion, could be sustained under the existing Constitution if the population crisis became sufficiently severe to endanger the society. And taking babies from mothers: One way to carry out this disapproval might be to insist that all illegitimate babies be put up for adoption—especially those born to minors, who generally are not capable of caring properly for a child alone. If a single mother really wished to keep her baby, she might be obliged to go through adoption proceedings and demonstrate her ability to support and care for it. Adoption proceedings probably should remain more difficult for single people than for married couples, in recognition of the relative difficulty of raising children alone. And birth control chemicals added to drinking water: Adding a sterilant to drinking water or staple foods is a suggestion that seems to horrify people more than most proposals for involuntary fertility control. Indeed, this would pose some very difficult political, legal, and social questions, to say nothing of the technical problems. No such sterilant exists today, nor does one appear to be under development. To be acceptable, such a substance would have to meet some rather stiff requirements: it must be uniformly effective, despite widely varying doses received by individuals, and despite varying degrees of fertility and sensitivity among individuals…. All enforced by an all knowing Planetary Regime: The Planetary Regime might be given responsibility for determining the optimum population for the world and for each region and for arbitrating various countries' shares within their regional limits. Control of population size might remain the responsibility of each government, but the Regime would have some power to enforce the agreed limits. Of course none of the dire predictions occurred. There were no mass starvations. What famines happened were primarily from wars or political oppression, such as North Korea, Sudan, Somalia and the Congo. Settled Science was wrong then, as it is now. The purveyors of warming pseudo science, now prefer to call it Global Change as major areas in the US and Europe shiver during a summer without a summer. Somehow snow in June in the Dakotas doesn’t conjure up an image of an overheated planet. The purpose of both these scenarios was and is to establish absolute power in the hands of those who think they have our best interests at heart -- those with infallible knowledge to do good. But as with the monarchies of old, these elites simply want the power to control those they look down on. Read the passages over again, read the book. Is this the world we want to live in? This country rid itself of absolutist rule over two hundred years ago. We don’t need it now.

Arctic sea ice not disappearing … Global Warming or Global Cooling?

Arctic ice coverage, far from disappearing, is currently (04/26/2009) at the highest level for this date since 2002. It is nearly at the 1979-2000 average. Global sea ice (Arctic and Antarctic combined) is nearly a million square kilometers over the 1979-2000 average. Question. Is this caused by Global Warming or Global Cooling?

Red River floods, global warming or cooling? The Word according to Obama

President Obama declared the Red River floods in North Dakota and Minnesota a wake up call to take global warming seriously. As with most global warming alarmists, he opened his mouth before checking the facts. In reality North Dakota and Minnesota, the sources of the Red River, had a much colder than normal winter (Dec-Feb). For North Dakota it was the 18th coldest and for Minnesota the 19th coldest in the past 114 years. From the Minneapolis StarTribune: President Obama used the flooding in the Red River Valley to insist that society needs to take global warming seriously. In a White House interview with a handful of reporters, including Janell Cole of the Forum of Fargo, the president said the current flooding cannot necessarily be blamed on global warming, but he said it should be a signal to act. But here are the facts (First map is temp anomalies, despite the incorrect title, and the second is state rankings): In reality the flooding comes from a heavy snow pack and a spring thaw, compounded by the northward flow into a still frozen river downstream. I wish the alarmists would tell us in advance whether global warming causes droughts or floods, whether it will cause Great Lakes levels to go up or down. Every trend away from the norm seems to be caused by global warming. Ask them what global cooling would do and you get a very blank look.

Three Great Lakes freeze over

Update: To follow these charts at their new location go to a more recent Island Turtle post here. Coinciding with the effort of the new administration’s efforts to fight global warming, we find three of the five Great Lakes are almost totally frozen over. Lake Erie is totally frozen, Superior about 98% and Huron about 85%. This is an extreme rarity. Perhaps the NY Times and Time Magazine were right in 1974. Perhaps we are entering the new Ice Age.