Being an early riser, I often switch on the TV to catch Fox News or CNBC first thing in the morning. Usually the TV is tunes to channel 483 or whatever we were watching the night before, and early morning TV is a wasteland of 30-minute infomercials selling Rock Hard Abs! or No Money Down Real Estate! (My personal favorite is the seemingly ubiquitous Is Colon Detox Hype?, but that’s the subject of another diary on another blog. You’re welcome.)

This morning, however, instead of TMI! relative to John Wayne’s terminal blockage, there was an infomercial I hadn’t seen before: these kind folks are selling a book (”Not available in stores! As seen on TV!”) with the title The Green Millionaire, subtitled “A Practical Guide to Achieving Real Wealth While Helping to Save the Planet”. By following its easy steps, you can:

• Learn how to keep your gas tank full for free.
• Get big dollars to “green” your home, even if you rent.
• Get your share of the billions that will go unclaimed in Government “green” money.

One of the “tips” they offered for free: You can save money while saving the planet by not buying bottled water! Who knew?! Of course, saving the environment is not without its risks.

Most people talk big about being “green”, but they feel they’ve done their part toward saving the planet if they let a hotel guilt trip them into using the towels twice.

Bottom line, this is just another “get rich quick” scheme a la Matthew Lesko, or even the Nigerian 419 scams, but with a green twist. Government money is not “free money”, no way, no how.

Even though Iron Eyes Cody, the Crying Indian, was a fake, he had a point: America in the 60’s had become a nasty place. You used to see people throw all kinds of litter out of their cars; nowadays the only socially-acceptable forms of automotive litter are cigarette butts and dirty diapers. No longer do babbling brooks foam from phosphates. Emissions from cars and coal plants are cleaner, making it easier for all of us to breathe. For this, the EPA deserves at least some of the credit.

But the EPA has become the type-section for bureaucratic mission creep. Not content with a reasonable balance between economic growth and environmental impact, the EPA has followed the First Commandment of Bureaucracies: Expand the Mission. Or, rather, Expand the Budget by Expanding the Mission.

It would be one thing if they confined themselves to regulating dangerous pollutants and species that would actually be missed if extinct. Instead, the environmental extremists within the agency have set their sights on eliminating any human activity that has a measurable impact on the natural environment, no matter how negligible.

They have declared the polar bear “threatened”, with the polar bear population is at its maximum in recent history, in order to block any commercial development of the North Slope of Alaska, including offshore.

Carbon dioxide, essential for life on our planet, has been declared a dangerous pollutant, subject to EPA regulation.

Now, in the ultimate reductio ad absurdum, the EPA is blocking new coal permits in Appalachian Coal Country because of supposed negative impact on the population of mayflies.

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So there’s this Canadian fellow named Steve McIntyre, who works with an organization called Climate Audit. Climate Audit’s interest is not in debunking Global Warming. Rather, they audit the data in an effort to make sure the conclusions derived are unassailable. To that end, Steve contacted the Climactic Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia, the repository of the data that underlie the “overwhelming scientific consensus” in the Climate Science community. He requested the original raw data behind their temperature trend conclusions, to wit:

CRU

You’d expect scientists who are so sure of their conslusions to welcome this type of scrutiny. Instead, Steve got the Heisman Treatment - the big stiffarm - because he’s “not an academic”.

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Gotta put this up front too. — Erick

My boss brought me a present when he returned from a vacation to California. Green soap.

You know the little sliver of soap that’s left when you use a bar down to the end? You know how our landfills are absolutely clogged with millions of those little slivers? You know how baby seals, endangered sea turtles and polar bears end up choking on the little slivers that accidentally wash down the drain? Well, the advanced thinkers on the Left Coast have put their collective heads together and come up with a solution to that problem. Behold:

“This innovative ergonomically shaped “waste reducing” soap has been designed to eliminate the unused center of traditional soap bars. This soap is cruelty free and contains no animal fat or byproducts. This carton is made from natural recycled packaging printed with soy based inks.”

As Jethro Bodine would say, “Sha-zam!”

H/T Dave ATN

The Commerce Department is running away from Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke’s statement this past weekend in China. While there, the Wall Street Journal reports, Locke said the United States should pay for China’s carbon emissions.

In his own words, Locke said:

“It’s important that those who consume the products being made all around the world to the benefit of America — and it’s our own consumption activity that’s causing the emission of greenhouse gases, then quite frankly Americans need to pay for that.”

In other words, China would have to do no carbon emission offsets. American consumers instead would cover the costs because China is making products for us.

That was Locke in his own words. We don’t always articulate what we mean. None of us do. Sometimes we say things we don’t mean. The problem for Locke is that the idea is gaining steam among prominent global warming priests that the administration pays attention to.

Not willing to let Locke’s comment become a distraction, his office later put a smoke screen around his comments, telling the Wall Street Journal

“Secretary Locke has been very clear on emphasizing the importance of fair trade as a part of the United States’ relationship with China. He believes U.S. companies should not be disadvantaged by Chinese imports not bound by responsible policies to reduce carbon emissions. China and the US must work together to ensure a level playing field and reduce our carbon footprints. The Secretary’s trip to China demonstrated his commitment to fair trade and his belief that both the United States and China can benefit from shared investments and cooperation in clean energy that will lead to commercial and environmental benefits for both countries.”

Of course, they did not actually deny that Gary Locke said what he said and meant what he meant.

In today’s “Weekly Republican Address,” House Republican Leader John Boehner asks, “Where are the jobs?”

It’s a good question. After all, to justify spending trillions of borrowed money on President Obama’s so-called stimulus, energy and health care bills, Obama and the Democrats promised the unprecedented spending would create jobs:

The president and Democrats in Congress claim this spending binge is necessary to put Americans back to work. They promised unemployment would not rise above 8 percent if their trillion-dollar stimulus was passed.

But our nation has lost nearly three million jobs this year. Unemployment has soared above 9 percent. And now the president admits that unemployment will soon reach double digits.

After all of this spending, after all of this borrowing from China, the Middle East, our children and our grandchildren, where are the jobs?”Where are the jobs?”

You can watch Leader Boehner’s address in the following video:

Here’s another question. Why do Congressional Democrats continue to pursue economic, health care, energy, and  environmental policies that will destroy more American jobs and drive future generations into deeper debt?

The Minerals Management Service (MMS), the Department of the Interior agency charged with regulating offshore oil and gas production, notified operators this week that it has been using European Space Agency (ESA) satellite images to spot night time flares in the Gulf of Mexico for the last three years.

Flaring of natural gas in small quantities is sometimes necessary for testing new wells (subject to MMS approval), and may happen from time to time if there is a problem in a processing facility, but it is hardly routine. If there is flaring going on, the MMS wants to know about it.

So they check the ESA website every day, and if they spot flaring activity at an oil and gas installation, they send out a little nasty-gram:

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Promoted from the diaries by Skanderbeg.  Do be sure to read down to the tabulation of the incipient green oligopoly that’s trying to coalesce around all this “AGW” nonsense….

After the “global warming” terminology morphed into “climate change”, the EPA dedicated a large section of their website to the issue. With EPA now able to provide the comprehensive information, the challenge to curtail “climate change” is now up to the Obama Administration.

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…for the first time since Gallup started asking the question.

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