London’s Daily Express reports this morning on what Western Tradition Partnership has been telling Americans for three years — the “green” agenda is based on an anti-scientific hoax.

Pat Michaels, past president of the American Association of State Climatologists, writes in today’s Wall Street Journal the supposedly “independent” investigation into climate research fraud at East Anglia University is a whitewash intended to cover up serious academic fraud and preserve the gusher of taxpayer funding currently flooding into “global climate research.”  Read the entire column here.

Last November there was a world-wide outcry when a trove of emails were released suggesting some of the world’s leading climate scientists engaged in professional misconduct, data manipulation and jiggering of both the scientific literature and climatic data to paint what scientist Keith Briffa called “a nice, tidy story” of climate history. The scandal became known as Climategate.

Now a supposedly independent review of the evidence says, in effect, “nothing to see here.” Last week “The Independent Climate Change E-mails Review,” commissioned and paid for by the University of East Anglia, exonerated the University of East Anglia…

…This purportedly independent review comes on the heels of two others—one by the University of East Anglia itself and the other by Penn State University, both completed in the spring, concerning its own employee, Prof. Michael Mann. Mr. Mann was one of the Climategate principals who proposed a plan, which was clearly laid out in emails whose veracity Mr. Mann has not challenged, to destroy a scientific journal that dared to publish three papers with which he and his East Anglia friends disagreed…

…Readers of both earlier reports need to know that both institutions receive tens of millions in federal global warming research funding (which can be confirmed by perusing the grant histories of Messrs. Jones or Mann, compiled from public sources, that are available online at freerepublic.com). Any admission of substantial scientific misbehavior would likely result in a significant loss of funding…

Read Dr. Michaels’ entire column here.  Dr. Michaels is also program chair for the Committee on Applied Climatology of the American Meteorological Society. Michaels was also a research professor of Environmental Sciences at University of Virginia for thirty years. Michaels is a contributing author and reviewer of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007.

His writing has been published in the major scientific journals, including Climate Research, Climatic Change, Geophysical Research Letters, Journal of Climate, Nature, and Science, as well as in popular serials such as the Washington Post, Washington Times, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Houston Chronicle, and Journal of Commerce. He was an author of the climate “paper of the year” awarded by the Association of American Geographers in 2004

WTP asks Grayson to explain his left-wing ties
Grayson touts association with liberal international think tank calling for national energy taxes

WASHINGTON — America’s largest grassroots opponent of environmental extremism called on Kentucky Secretary of State Trey Grayson Friday to explain his association with a left-wing think tank calling for national energy taxes.

Founded in 1950, the Washington, D.C.-based Aspen Institute hosts numerous conferences and speakers claiming capitalist activity is causing the planet to heat up. Grayson, running for the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by the retiring Sen. Jim Bunning, was named an Institute Fellow in 2005 and has promoted his intensive training by the group.

“With radical greens calling for a job-slaughtering national energy tax, why is Trey Grayson proud of the fact he was trained by the left-wing activists behind it?  Trey Grayson should come clean with Kentucky and tell citizens why he’s working with these anti-jobs activists,” said Donny Ferguson, WTP National Director of Media and Public Relations.

Institute President Walter Isaacson was a prominent figure in the “Arctic Expedition for Climate Action 2008,” a political insider event hosted on a luxury cruise ship that Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, former President Jimmy Carter, Service Employees International Union President Andy Stern and disgraced openly socialist former Obama advisor Van Jones coordinated strategy to promote legislation aimed at reducing America’s economic output.
 
“9/11 truther Van Jones?  ‘America is evil’ Jimmy Carter?  Obama’s right-hand man Andy Stern?  Who else is Trey Grayson proud to pal around with?,” asked Ferguson.

On March 27, 2009 the Institute later gave Jones, Obama’s “Special Advisor for Green Jobs,” its Energy and Environment Award.  Jones was later forced to resign from his White House position after it was revealed he was involved in organizations claiming the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks were staged by the Bush administration.

Grayson also redistributed Institute press releases on the taxpayer-funded Secretary of State website.  Other members of his 2005 class included liberals Florida Congressman Kendrick Meek, then-Colorado House Speaker Andrew Romanoff and then-New York City Councilwoman Eva Moskowitz.

Meek and Romanoff are also working to pass national energy tax legislation.

Its Business and Society Program “is dedicated to developing leaders for a sustainable global society.”  The “sustainable society” movement is based on the false premise that capitalism, specifically the affluent United States, is destroying the planet, and the only way to sustain human life is to suppress economic activity, beginning with the U.S.

Supported by grassroots members, WTP is a fast-growing, grassroots-supported non-profit organization dedicated to fighting environmental extremism and promoting responsible development and management of land, water, and natural resources.  For more information, go to http://www.westerntradition.org.  For more information on this issue, or to schedule an interview, contact Donny Ferguson at 703-200-3669 or at donny.f@westerntradition.org.

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WTP’s Earth Day Countdown: Environmentalism’s Seven Biggest Scams, Hoaxes, Myths and Frauds

#1 – “Man-made global warming”

So after decades of junk science, scare tactics, alarmist wailing and calls for the death of capitalism, what is the single biggest hoax in environmentalist history?

“What we’ve got to do in energy conservation is try to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, to have approached global warming as if it is real means energy conservation, so we will be doing the right thing anyway in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.” — Timothy Wirth, former U.S. Senator (D-Colorado)

And you are wrong, Tim.

When the “population bomb” fizzled in the 1970s and “global cooling” was proven to be another lie in the 1980s, environmentalists needed a new vehicle to drive their calls for centrally planned economies and controls on human population.

The solution?  Scratch out the word “cooling” on all their alarmist materials and write in the word “warming.”  They didn’t even bother changing much else.

The Obama administration has jumped in with both feet, declaring the carbon dioxide you exhale a “pollutant” and calling for a “cap and tax” system that places a price on carbon dioxide and forces Americans to pay a tax for the CO2 they emit.

So is the earth warming and is it caused by humans producing carbon dioxide?

No.  That’s silly.

“It is now known that both Atlantic and Pacific temperatures can get ‘stuck,’ for a decade or longer, in relatively warm or cool patterns. The North Atlantic is now forecast to be in a cold stage for a decade, which will help put the damper on global warming. Another Pacific temperature pattern is forecast not to push warming, either…we have simply overestimated the amount of warming that results from increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide.” writes internationally distinguished climatologist Pat Michaels of the independent Cato Institute.

This isn’t the first time environmentalists have made wildly inaccurate claims human activity is causing global climate change, and the end of capitalism is the only answer.

“The battle to feed humanity is over. In the 1970s, the world will undergo famines. Hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. Population control is the only answer.” — Paul Ehrlich – The Population Bomb (1968)

 “The continued rapid cooling of the earth since WWII is in accord with the increase in global air pollution associated with industrialization, mechanization, urbanization and exploding population.” — Reid Bryson, “Global Ecology; Readings towards a rational strategy for Man”, (1971)

“This cooling has already killed hundreds of thousands of people. If it continues and no strong action is taken, it will cause world famine, world chaos and world war, and this could all come about before the year 2000.” — Lowell Ponte “The Cooling”, 1976

“If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder by the year 2000…This is about twice what it would take to put us in an ice age.” — Kenneth E.F. Watt on air pollution and global cooling, Earth Day (1970)

“This [cooling] trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century.” — Peter Gwynne, Newsweek 1976

Forty years later, Earth Day alarmism falls on deaf ears
Opposition to the environmentalist agenda growing stronger

WASHINGTON — Despite an all-out attempt by the environmentalist lobby and mainstream media to blame Americans for supposed man-made climate change new polling finds rational thought and scientific literacy are winning out on the fortieth anniversary of Earth Day, a grassroots advocate of property rights and economic progress warns officials Thursday.

“The ‘man-made global warming’ hoax is going the way of bloodletting and witch burning,” said Donny Ferguson, Western Tradition Partnership’s National Director of Media and Public Relations.  “Americans know environmentalism is nothing more than discredited socialism hiding behind a mask of junk science.”

Rasmussen Reports polling released this week finds belief in so-called “man-made global warming” and support for environmentalist legislation at all-time lows.  The polls were conducted independently by Rasmussen and were not conducted or paid for by any group or individual.

A Rasmussen poll released Tuesday finds only 16 percent of adults say national leaders should focus on stopping global warming instead of creating jobs. A whopping 72 percent of adults say creating jobs is the bigger priority.

“This should be a warning to any public official considering voting for carbon taxes, land grabs or other environmentalist schemes.  The American people are on to you.  They know advocating capitalism and protecting private property are best for the Earth and humans,” said Ferguson.

The poll also found 59 percent of Americans are aware there is significant scientific disagreement with the politically-motivated theory of “man-made global warming.”  Only 25 percent think scientists agree on the issue.  Sixty-five percent of adults who consider themselves politically independent say there is no scientific consensus in favor of supposed “man-made global warming.”

Another Rasmussen poll released Monday finds the number of voters who consider global warming a serious problem has dropped eight percent from a year ago.

Rasmussen finds “43 percent now say global warming is not serious…the number who say global warming is not serious at all is at its highest level measured in regular tracking in over a year. The overall number of voters who question the seriousness of global warming crossed into the 40s for the first time in January. Forty-eight percent (48%) of voters say global warming is caused by long-term planetary trends, while only 33% blame human activity.”

The poll found 48 percent of voters say any climate change is the result of natural planetary trends, a statement backed up by billions of years of scientific data.  Only 33 percent think human activity like lightbulb use can cause long-term, global-scale climate change.

“Belief that human activity is the primary cause of global warming has declined significantly. In April 2008, the numbers were nearly the mirror image of the current findings. At that time, 47% blamed human activity, while only 34% named long-term planetary trends as the reason for climate change,” Rasmussen reported Monday.

“Americans oppose the radical environmentalist agenda, and they want their public officials to agree with them,” said Ferguson.

WTP is a fast-growing, grassroots-supported non-profit organization advocating rational, responsible natural resource development and land use policy.  For more information, go to http://www.westerntradition.org.  For more information on this issue, or to schedule an interview, contact Donny Ferguson at 703-200-3669 or at donny.f@westerntradition.org.

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Video Spoofing Michael Mann Removed by YouTube – Bogus Reason Given

St. Paul — At a Washington DC press conference yesterday, the No Cap and Trade Coalition announced a new video spoofing prominent ‘climategate’ scientist, Dr. Michael Mann and his infamous ‘hockey stick chart’ showing rapidly increasing global temperatures in recent decades. The video was posted on YouTube until Wednesday afternoon, when the Google-owned video site removed the video, citing non-existent copyright claims by Jib Jab as the reason. The video was produced in response to a cease and desist demand from Michael Mann’s attorney over an older video produced by Minnesotans for Global Warming. The original Hide the Decline video they created used some Jib Jab-provided animation, under their general license and with their expressed written consent, but the new video, recently removed by YouTube contains no such content.
 
Spokesman for the No Cap and Trade Coalition, Jeff Davis said, “It looks like Dr. Mann has gone into overdrive trying to hide ‘Hide the Decline,’ since the new video was launched and began to spread like wildfire across the internet.” In the span of less than a day, the video had been linked on over 1,000 websites, including News Busters, Junk Science, and the American Spectator. It was going viral fast and the press was calling when YouTube pulled the plug.
 
According to the No Cap and Trade Coalition, Jib Jab has no rightful claims on the new video, titled ‘Hide the Decline II.’
 
“They have no basis for this copyright claim. It’s outrageous that they would claim ownership of content we produced, if that’s indeed what’s happened, as YouTube claims in the removal notice,” said Davis.
 
Although YouTube has decided to stifle the popular new satirical video, it’s still available through other venues and can be viewed at NoCapAndTrade.com.
 
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Minnesotans for Global Warming (M4GW) uses humor to illustrate the absurdity of anthropogenic global warming fears. Their slogans are “Turn your snow shovels into lawn chairs,” and “Nothing would be green without CO2.”  – M4GW.com
 
The No Cap and Trade Coalition consists of over 40 state and national organizations that are opposed to cap and trade legislation. For more information, see NoCapAndTrade.com

Press release from the No Cap and Trade Coalition.  WTP is a proud member of the No Cap and Trade Coalition.