The globular worming fanatics aren't giving up . . .

It seems that they're particularly active (and being particularly obnoxious) in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Fox News reports:

Going green will not be optional in Cambridge, Mass., if the Cambridge Climate Congress has its way. It will be mandatory.

There will be congestion pricing to reduce car travel. Curbside parking will be eliminated. There will be a carbon tax "of some kind," not to mention taxes on plastic and paper bags. And the Massachusetts city, home of Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will advocate vegetarianism and veganism, complete with "Meatless or Vegan Mondays."

Those are just some of the proposals put forth by the Congress, which was created in May 2009 to respond to the "climate emergency" plaguing Cambridge. Once the Congress settles on its recommendations, they will submitted to the City Council.

"This emergency is created by the growth of local greenhouse gas emissions despite the urgent warnings of climate scientists that substantial reductions are needed in order to reduce the risk of disastrous changes to our climate," the Climate Congress reported in proposals issued on Jan. 23. "This proposal is made in the belief that an effective local response is, if anything, made more urgent by so far inadequate global agreements and federal policies for emissions reductions. It is made in the belief that our City should lead by example."

. . .

Dr. Ken Green, a resident scholar on environment and energy at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative Washington-based think tank, said he found an "overall redundancy" in the proposals, specifically regarding a carbon-based tax coupled with congestion pricing, increased parking meter rates and parking tickets.

"That's just a revenue-raiser for the city," said Green. "There's an overall incoherence of having a carbon tax and three or four indirect taxes."

. . .

Green also said the proposal to ban the production and distribution of plastic bags and bottled water in city limits is as "heavy-handed as government can get" and questioned Cambridge's proposal to institute disincentives for the purchase of non-regional food.

"Trying to grow something out of season in a greenhouse locally may produce more greenhouse gas emissions than having the same food shipped in from a place where it grows naturally," he said. "Studies do not come down uniformly on the side that local is better."

But Richard Rood, a professor of atmospheric, oceanic, and space sciences at the University of Michigan, praised Cambridge's proposal to create a "temperate zone" program, in which building are neither heated nor cooled during the fall and spring.

"That is a place where you might make a difference," said Rood, who writes a blog for Weather Underground.

He also praised the city's proposal to advocate vegetarianism and veganism.

"From a climate point of view, eating less meat would have a climate impact," said Rood, citing increased deforestation, methane production, fertilizer use and greenhouse gases associated with maintaining that land. "Eating less meat is [good] for the environment in many ways.

There's more at the link.

Unfortunately for the Cambridge Climate Congress and Dr. Rood, a study in England would seem to contradict at least part of their thesis. The Daily Mail reports:

Environmental activists and vegetarians have long taken pleasure in telling those who enjoy a steak that livestock farming is a major source of harmful greenhouse gases.

But research has shown that giving up meat may not be as green as it seems.

The Cranfield University study found that switching from British-bred beef and lamb to meat substitutes imported from abroad such as tofu and Quorn would increase the amount of land cultivated, raising the risk of forests being destroyed.

Production methods for meat substitutes can be energy intensive and the final products tend to be highly processed, the report, which was commissioned by the environmental group WWF, found.

The researchers concluded: 'A switch from beef and milk to highly refined livestock product analogues such as tofu could actually increase the quantity of arable land needed to supply the UK.'

Again, there's more at the link.

Oh - and remember those tear-jerking pictures of polar bears 'stranded' on a 'shrinking ice-floe', apparently in imminent danger of drowning, that Al Gore and his ilk used to try to frighten us?




That was a hoax, too. This TV report explains how that photograph was taken, and subsequently misused.

As for all the predictions of a collapse in the polar bear population: they're flat-out wrong, if not deliberate lies. Polar bear numbers are exploding!

The worldwide population of polar bears has doubled in the past thirty years. But don’t take my word for it. Here’s the gist of a report by the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee released on January 30, 2008:

The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service estimates that the polar bear population is currently at 20,000 to 25,000 bears, up from as low as 5,000-10,000 bears in the 1950s and 1960s. A 2002 U.S. Geological Survey of wildlife in the Arctic Refuge Coastal Plain noted that the polar bear populations “may now be near historic highs.”

Better yet, let’s listen to a scientist who has been studying polar bears for the past thirty years, both as an academic and as the Canadian government’s director of wildlife research in its most important polar bear habitat, and who is widely regarded as the world’s top authority on the creatures. Here’s Canadian scientist Dr. Mitchell Taylor’s take on the matter:

It is just silly to predict the demise of polar bears in 25 years based on media-assisted hysteria … There aren’t just a few more bears. There are a hell of a lot more bears. Scientific knowledge has demonstrated that Inuit knowledge was right.

Inuits, by the way, are what most of us call “Eskimos,” which is to say: the people who actually live among polar bears (rather than those who concoct computer models about them from high-rise corner offices). Inuits have been scoffing at the global-warming wizards and their polar bear hogwash for years.

And yet, despite all of the above, on May 14th 2008 U.S. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, invoking the U.S. Endangered Species Act, proclaimed polar bears as a “threatened species,” in effect threatening more of them with death by decreasing their value (stick with me here.)

In 1972 polar bears had already lost value in the U.S. when the Marine Mammal Protection Act prohibited their hunting in Alaska. (And no, it’s not the hunting ban that has caused their increased numbers; they proliferated equally in Canada which continued the polar bear season.)

So after 1972 U.S. hunters started hunting polar bears in Canada. But Kempthorne’s proclamation (upheld by Interior Sec. Salazar in the current administration) means that U.S. hunters will be barred by law from bringing their trophy bear skins into the U.S. So, again, polar bears have lost value.

Lately hunters (primarily from the U.S.) had been paying $30,000 for the chance of whacking a polar bear during a grueling hunt in the Canadian arctic on dog-sleds and in sub-zero weather ... most of the $30,000 spent by the hunter for his foolproof conversation piece went to Canada’s Inuit (Eskimo) communities whose members had served as his guide, cooks, outfitters, etc, during the hunt. The Eskimos also got the polar bear meat, which has been a historic staple in their diet.

“It’s Inuit food,” says Canadian Inuit Jayko Alooloo in an interview with Canada’s CTV, “like cows for you southern people.”

In keeping with the overwhelming consensus among his people, Alooloo regards the newly-designated status of polar bears as “endangered” as a complete crock.

“They’re actually increasing every year.” he says. But what does he know? He only lives among them. Whereas, from his Washington D.C. office, former U.S. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne relied on computer weather model to predict that in fifty years, due to “global warming’s” effect on the arctic ice fields, polar bears will decrease in numbers. My own weatherman’s computer models rarely get it right for the next four days.

. . .

In fact, these hunts being such an integral part of their culture, a few Inuits elect to retain the tags for themselves to do the killing. The new ruling means that now they’ll probably keep them all. A recreational hunt lasts a few days and—like all hunting–does not always climax with [a] kill. But the tag is considered used once it’s sold to a recreational hunter, kill or no kill. On the other hand, Inuit hunters always kill a bear because they have months to fill that tag. So now that U.S. recreational hunters are barred by U.S. law from bringing home their conversation-piece rug, the Inuits have no choice but to keep their tags, assuring that more polar bears will be killed.

Again, there's more at the link.

I suspect the eco-weenies will continue to nag us for years to come: but if we're armed with the facts, we should be able to keep them at arm's length. In areas where voters 'drink the Kool-Aid' and embrace 'green' laws, measures and regulations, or elect politicians who'll do so, our answer should be to vote with our feet and move to someplace more rational!

Peter