I sent the following letter to the self-avowed socialist, U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, when I noticed the irony of a picture posted on his official website. The picture showed some happy revelers in Washington DC having a rare snowball fight in front of the Capitol building during a snowstorm. It may have been an old photo, but of course DC has had snow this year and temperatures well below average as have much of the rest of the country. Bernie Sanders is one of the leading voices in the crusade to end humanity’s use of fossil fuels to prevent global warming. (I don’t know what he thinks will replace fossil fuels anytime soon since “green” energies like wind and solar still only supply less than 5% of all U.S. Energy).
Funny thing is – a few minutes after I emailed my letter to Senator Snowball I could no longer find the photo on his website. Coincidence?
The letter:
Dear Senator Sanders:
I love the photo posted on your website of the snowball fight in front of the Capitol. It’s proof of catastrophic man-made global warming! Quick – we need to legislate more taxes and regulations on coal, propane, oil and natural gas so that we make it more expensive for people to heat their homes or do anything for that matter since everything we do and buy or consume requires energy.
Of course, I’m being sarcastic, because the Earth has not had any statistically significant warming now for about 17 years despite the run up of CO2 and other greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere. The climate scientists’ assumption that CO2 raises temps X amount in a complex climate system are wrong. We know this to be true because the results have been coming in and the climate model predictions do not match actual temperature data as the graph here shows. (Shown below.)
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/CMIP5-73-models-vs-obs-20N-20S-MT-5-yr-means1.png
Please do not allow President Obama to squander taxpayer $$ on climate schemes that will do little to prevent global warming or cooling. The climate has always warmed and cooled in the past. It’s better to spend our $$ adapting to climate change regardless of what drives the change. We have to be smarter about where we build. The oceans have been rising for thousands of years – duh!
I have heard that China is building a Thorium nuclear reactor, which may be safer and produces little nuclear waste. The only reason the US used plutonium and uranium reactors was because we used those same materials to build bombs. Perhaps Thorium reactors could solve some of our energy problems. Will you look into it? That could be real progress.
This graph was created last year by Dr. Roy Spencer, a climate scientist at the University of Alabama, Huntsville. It shows IPCC climate model predictions vs. actual temperature data. The thick black line is the average of the climate model predictions. The divergence between the models and reality is growing, because the models are flawed and are predicting too much warming. No catastrophic global warming in the real world! In fact global temps have been flat for about 17 years now.
Frotho
Higher Revolution: 
Unless we all recognise that AGW is but a gentle softening up for Agenda 21, we will lose the real battle and that is against Agenda 21 and its policies, which not only encompass AGW, but threaten our rights as individuals and families, self determination and even our right to exist.
I wrote a little about it at http://www.thedemiseofchristchurch.com
But most of all read Ian Wishart’s book ‘Totalitaria’ whose research is far more in depth than mine.
His book has made a significant impact at the UN causing the revamp of their website and the removal of references to the Lucis Trust, probably their most influential NGO.
Cheers
Roger
Roger, Sorry it took me so long to review your comment and thank you for bringing Agenda 21 to our attention. I read the Exemplar you linked to in your article and came away thinking it is full of a lot of nonsense. Sure, some of it may be true, but its purpose is to form a world view based on many things that simply are not true. For instance, it glorifies some “Native American” philosophy of looking at the world. That there was some singular Native American philosophy that all aboriginal tribes lived by is simply not true. They did not create some peaceful, idyllic, superior, sustainable society.
Since I am from the U.S. and know a little about American Indians, I can speak to this. Many native American tribes were hostile to one another and would skirmish, attack and even kill each other when their paths crossed. The Mohawk of New York were ruthless to their enemies, if they didn’t torture and kill them (and sometimes literally eat their hearts) they would enslave them.
In another example, many anthropologists who study the question as to why the Anasazi abruptly abandoned the Four Corners region approximately 700 years ago theorize that it was a combination of population growth, climate change and land use practices. In other words, the Anasazi did not have the technology to adapt to climate change or even that they negatively impacted their regional climate through poor land use practices, which we would consider “unsustainable.” This notion that somehow their is a Native American way of living in the world and that it is superior to the Western/Judeo-Christian/Capitalist world view is just preposterous.
Let’s look at an example of capitalism. International Paper Corp. is a for profit company. I guarantee they will never run out of trees because they are at least “greedy” enough to understand that if they don’t continually plant trees they would one day go bankrupt when their supply of wood pulp ran out. Technology and capitalism has made them sustainable and profitable. The two are simply not mutually exclusive as the radical environmentalists want us to believe. International Paper profits when they act as responsible caretakers of their forest land.
Was not the United States, a Judeo-Christian country, one of the first to preserve large tracts of wild land for future generations? There are so many examples that can be given to blow holes in this notion that the Native American view of the world (and a singular comprehensive Native American philosophy doesn’t even exist) is superior and the European/Western view inferior that no one with the ability to think critically should fall for such sophistry. Some of the ideas that are attributed to Native American philosophy are actually good ones. So is the Buddhist idea that everything is interconnected – I believe this Buddhist understanding is instructive in how we deal with the world around us.
Two more points: this idyllic life that many of the roaming tribes lived in North America is fiction. Many tribes went through yearly cycles of feast and famine. And it was of course much worse before the European Christians introduced the horse as a mode of transportation. Since they were hunter-gatherers, the winter months were brutal and often brought starvation and death to the weakest among them. Perhaps that is what some modern day environmental radicals mean by sustainable living – a constant thinning out of the population by denying the poorest among us the technology to survive. If that is not their explicit intent at least it is a consequence. The other problem with a system with no “western” rule of law and where no one has title of ownership (like the pre-European, American Indian way) is that no one has the good incentive to develop and invest in permanence (as in sustainable) because all it takes is someone stronger to come along and steal it or destroy what another has built. It would be viewed as a waste of time and resources to invest so much in something that can be so easily taken away. This is where the anti-capitalists always go wrong. And much of the environmental movement is anti-capitalist. They don’t get human nature. They need to read and absorb Adam Smith’s explanation as to why the brewer, the butcher and the baker refresh and feed their fellow men. One can find this in Smith’s brilliant book “Wealth of Nations” written way back in 1776. The leftists have not absorbed this lesson even though they have had over 235 years to study it.
Let me say that I do believe that all cultures probably have some valuable things to teach us. But we need to look at them realistically and not pretend or make stuff up like some non-existent, homogenous philosophy to make us feel good and to convince others that we have discovered some utopian world view, that if adopted willingly or by force will make Earth some sort of paradise.
Eburke93,
Thanks for your comments,
Everything you say is true, and in fact it is difficult to find anything actually factual in that exemplar.
Incidentally, the base documents for that course include UN Agenda 21 and the Brundtland Report.
It does not say much for the UN does it?
Have you heard this quote? Its not from the UN but in terms of the intentions of Agenda 21 and the UN it might well be.
“When an opponent declares,’ I will not come over to your side’, I calmly say, ‘your child belongs to us already. A people lives forever. What are you? You will pass on. Your descendants, however now stand in the new camp. In a short time they will know nothing else but this new community.'”
Scary thought isn’t it but just think which way the children taking this course will vote once they reach voting age.
Cheers
Roger
ps. That quotation is from a certain former corporal in the German army who was wounded in 1916 and again in 1918.
Roger, I presume that would be corporal Hitler you are speaking of. Traditionalists are losing the battle in the U.S. mainly because the left dominates 3 things: the news media, pop culture and academia from pre-school to post-graduate. I hate to sound defeatist, but mass media has become so expert at manipulating and brainwashing a large mass of the population that it looks difficult to turn things around.
“The very media, founded on communications and automata, especially television, can communicate illusion as well as reality, and that is all right as long as we know the difference.” Excerpt of a speech given at Northwestern University on July 12, 1976 by Dr. William O. Baker, patriot genius and former leader of research at Bell Labs.
The undoing of the U.S. is coming from within – just look at U.S. Attorney Eric Holder who fights tooth and nail to prevent any progress in the fight against voter fraud. Now he is even pushing to restore voting rights to those who have served jail time for committing the most serious crimes against their fellow men – felons – that includes murderers, child molesters, rapists, etc.
As Edmund Burke once said of these types of radicals – “They have no respect for the wisdom of others; but they pay it off by a very full measure of confidence in their own. With them it is a sufficient motive to destroy an old scheme of things, because it is an old one. As to the new, they are in no sort of fear with regard to the duration of a building run up in haste; because duration is no object to those who think little or nothing has been done before their time, and who place all their hopes in discovery. … Their attachment to their country itself is only so far as it agrees with some of their fleeting projects; it begins and ends with that scheme of polity which falls in with their momentary opinion.” (From “Reflections on the Revolution in France,” 1790)
“La démocratie et le socialisme ne se tiennent qu par un mot, l’égalité; mais remarquez la différence: la démocratie veut l’égalité dans la liberté et le socialisme veut l’égalité dans la gêne et dan la servitude.” – “Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word, equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in constraint and servitude.” Alexis de Tocqueville.
Roger, Are you a New Zealander? What is your present administration like? What is the national debt there? Debt to GDP ratio? We can continue this conversation via email if you like. Mine is ripken1@gmail.com
Best,
Frotho Canutus (Brian)
Brian,
Our economy on paper looks in reasonable shape http://www.tradingeconomics.com/new-zealand/government-debt-to-gdp with a debt gdp ratio of 35.9% last year which I believe is better than the US right now which I understand is about 73%.
However, putting this in context, NZ is naturally a very wealthy country with a fertile soil, benign climate, abundant natural resources and an educated skilled populace. We should be the most wealthy country in the world. However poverty statistics are basically 3rd world with, for example, 20% of children in poverty according to the OECD. http://www.3news.co.nz/OECD-One-in-five-Kiwi-kids-lives-in-poverty/tabid/423/articleID/250874/Default.aspx .
Housing is expensive to purchase-build-rent mainly because of socialist national and local government policies on land zoning and minimum standards for new housing.
The government here is overly large with intrusion into almost every walk of private life and effectively most people receive some relief from the taxpayer in some form or another. In our case, like many, we also have private health insurance because the government system is good on A&E but poor on routine non emergency but essential treatment, so for instance if you need a hip operation, you will most likely need to wait until it is an emergency.
I have observed personally on a number of occasions that our government and its agencies are prepared to exceed their statutory powers thus even the rule of law is being bent.
Taxes are correspondingly high and of course there is no rebate for having your own insurance or using private schools for instance.
What is most concerning is our continual slide to the political left. Even our ‘conservative’ government at present uses minimum wages, ETS and refuses to tackle the key causes of the over expensive housing, such as removing city zoning, green type resource planning bureaucracy, and lessening the power of local governments.
Agenda 21 is of course rife in our legislation, local government and education. (I take it you have read my blog on this.)
Ironically, our current PM was in my university economics class, but he and his party are definitely chasing the vote rather than anything else.
So it appears there is little to stop UN Agenda 21 objectives in NZ. In fact probably every day you will read of groups or individuals lobbying the government for some sort of improvement.
In my experience, even educated people here believe that government can print money at will, and are ignorant that it is really only their own money, or a portion of it that the government will ever spend on their account.
We are very fertile ground for green initiatives which are of course touted by the government as being ‘free’ or ‘inexpensive’, which they would not be if the tax payer subsidy was disclosed.
So there you have it. How a beautiful wealthy country can be ruined by its own citizens with covert help from its unprincipled government.
I know we are not the only country in the world with these problems, but NZ always prides itself in being a world leader, ignoring how futile any effect must be from such a small country.
Will email you my email address.
Cheers
Roger
http://www.thedemisefchristchurch..com
Roger,
Thanks for putting it in a nutshell. It’s always interesting to hear what is going on elsewhere from the people who actually live there. I am not sure I received an email yet with your email address. Thanks.
Brian