I was extremely pleased with John Kerry’s recent speech given in Indonesia on the subject of global warming. We have rarely seen to date a sitting high-level government official give such a strong speech on this subject in which he made clear the critical need for immediate international action concerning our emissions of greenhouse gases. You can either read or listen to his entire speech at http://www.state.gov/secretary/remarks/2014/02/221704.htm?utm_medium=App.net&utm_source=PourOver
In response to what I just said some might be thinking “wait a minute – how about Al Gore?”. Wasn’t he the first politician to sound the alarm on climate change? I will remind you, therefore, that Al Gore became a prominent leader of the climate change movement in the years following his exit from politics in 2000. Prior to then, Al Gore and the President he served, Bill Clinton, were relatively quiet on the subject. Thus, that recent speech by John Kerry constitutes a milestone event for sitting American politicians.
One might think it would be a waste of time to try to recall a similarly strong statement ever made by an American Republican – and it indeed would be. This was evidenced in the last Republican nominating process prior to the presidential election of 2012. Only one Republican aspirant even recognized the existence of a climate change problem and John Huntsman’s candidacy finished near the bottom partially for that reason. The issue of climate change has never even been listed as an area of concern on the platform of the Republican Party.
Thus, in order to find a standing Conservative Leader who had sufficient scientific savvy and a sufficient sense of responsibility to the overall good of the public that elected them, we have to look beyond the borders of our own country. In that search, however, we have only to look to Great Britain and guess who we find there? None other than the leading Conservative of the late 20th Century, the so called “Iron Lady”, Margaret Thatcher, who was the Prime Minister of Great Britain between 1979 and 1990. Although she was the first and only female Prime Minister ever elected in GB, she took more pride herself in the fact that she was the first and only research scientist to ever become Prime Minister of Great Britain. She had previously received a degree in chemistry from Oxford University and had done research in British industries while simultaneously immersing herself in local and then national politics.
Thatcher was clearly unique among the conservatives of her time and place and certainly would be among her American counterparts today. She actually held the fields of science in high regard and actually did pay attention to the consensus views of scientists when dealing with issues involving science. Thus, by the end of her term as Prime Minister, about 25 years ago, she was already very concerned about the rising emissions of greenhouse gases and became the first high level public official anywhere to sound the alarm of greenhouse gas warming (see her speech delivered to the UN General Assembly in 1989 at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnAzoDtwCBg). We can be sure that she was also labeled an “alarmist” by the business-as-usual forces of her time. Knowing Margaret as we now do (if you don’t, see the recent movie “The Iron Lady” with Meryl Streep), we can be sure she wore that alarmist label as well as did her favorite British politician, Winston Churchill, when he sounded the alarm concerning Nazi expansion in Europe during the 1930’s.
Thus, when I say I am proud of John Kerry for his recent statement on the greatest problem of our time, I am sure that Margaret Thatcher would have been also. Nevertheless, we can be sure that Kerry’s speech will be ridiculed by our modern American set of so called, “conservatives” and that does bother me. I think the minds of conservatives today are continuously shrinking due to their self-righteous focus on narrow ideological points and trivial goals – almost always related to the embarrassment and removal of the person who was fairly and squarely elected in our last presidential election. Unfortunately, the present leadership of conservative party does not include a Margaret Thatcher who is both scientifically literate and socially responsible – as the Democratic Party now clearly does. It is ironic as well as sad to watch the conservatives of today doing their very best to confuse and delay the actions on climate change that their own leader did her best to initiate 25 years ago.
ericgrimsrud 
Kerry or Gore? The Oscar goes to Gore because his name is most associated with “climate change” – more even than Dr. James Hansen. The Nobel Peace Prize 2007 was awarded jointly to Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Albert Arnold (Al) Gore Jr. “for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change”
(Response from EPG: Dave, as usual you don’t listen to your younger brother beyond his first sentence. You will find why I highlighted Kerry in this post and not Gore in my 2nd paragraph. )
By: David A Grimsrud on March 3, 2014
at 11:06 pm
(Response from EPG: Dave, as usual you don’t listen to your younger brother beyond his first sentence. ……) Eric, have you not figured out yet that the reason Dave does not listen to you is because he obviously knows you?
By: jdouglashuahin on March 7, 2014
at 8:41 pm
John Kerry has never impressed me. Just another arrogant hypocrite like Al Gore or Prince Charles who wants to tell us little people how to live.
His Indonesia speech cited above is beneath contempt so I find it hard to believe that a scholar (e.g. Eric Grimsrud) could fawn over it.
Anyone who has studied Maurice Strong knows he is just another Malthusian in a long line of such people who are always wrong but will never admit it.
Kerry suggests that “Climate Change” is as predictable as gravity:
“When an apple separates from a tree, it falls to the ground. We know that because of the basic laws of physics. No one disputes that today. It’s a fact. It’s a scientific fact.”
So what is Kerry’s “Climate Change”? He is careful not to say whether temperatures will go up or down. If he picked one or the other we would be able to test his hypothesis. Whatever the climate does he will claim he was right!
“When 97 percent of scientists agree on anything, we need to listen, and we need to respond.” Anyone who makes “Ex Cathedra” arguments like that has no clue about how science works.
“Climate change also means water shortages.”
Yes it does…………and it also means floods. Maybe Kerry should give his speech again in the UK where they would appreciate a water shortage.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I saw with my own eyes what the Philippines experienced in the wake of Typhoon Haiyan and I will tell you it would be absolutely devastating if that kind of storm were to become the normal thing that happens every single year in many places.”
By every measure hurricanes and typhoons are below average and have been ever since 2005 when Al Gore claimed that “Global Warming was increasing their severity.
You have to love the “Gore Effect”. Mother Nature has a wicked sense of humor.
By: gallopingcamel on March 4, 2014
at 9:06 pm
Margaret Thatcher, the Iron Lady was one of the early Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming proponents. You can find an account here:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100211031/margaret-thatcher-godmother-of-global-warming/
Over time she realized that CAGW was being exploited by “Green” politicians to promote global socialism. To her credit she had the courage to change her mind. She encouraged Christopher Moncton and made a series of speeches warning us about supra-national socialism. Here is an excerpt from one of them:
“The doomsters’ favourite subject today is climate change. This has a number of attractions for them. First, the science is extremely obscure so they cannot easily be proved wrong. Second, we all have ideas about the weather: traditionally, the English on first acquaintance talk of little else. Third, since clearly no plan to alter climate could be considered on anything but a global scale, it provides a marvellous excuse for worldwide, supra-national socialism. All this suggests a degree of calculation. Yet perhaps that is to miss half the point. Rather, as it was said of Hamlet that there was method in his madness, so one feels that in the case of some of the gloomier alarmists there is a large amount of madness in their method.”
By: gallopingcamel on March 4, 2014
at 9:35 pm
I thank the rapidly moving camel for posting this link because it saved me from having to look up what the REAL fact behind MRS. Thatcher’s early stand on anthropogenic global warming, that she obviously did not believe in because she was very bright and intelligent person, unlike some that now shudder over this trace gas, CO2, and how it is “destroying” the earth when they have no experiment that shows that CO2 drives the earth’s climate or even provide the mathematical derivation of CO2 forcing.
“One of the more cynical theories is that Mrs. Thatcher’s early adoption of the “climate change” issue was rooted in Realpolitik. After the challenge to her power posed by the 1984 Miners’ strike, she wanted to ensure that never again could Britain be held hostage by the National Union of Mineworkers. By posing it as a global environmental issue quite beyond the realm of party politics, she could cunningly reduce Britain’s reliance on coal without provoking further confrontation with the miners.
What’s more, she could use CO2 reduction—just as Swedish Prime Minister Olaf Palme did in the mid-70s—as an excuse to justify a push for otherwise unpopular nuclear energy.”
[…]
“Third, since clearly no plan to alter climate could be considered on anything but a global scale, it provides a marvellous excuse for worldwide, supra-national socialism.”
By: jdouglashuahin on March 7, 2014
at 9:00 pm
I suffered through this mindless diatribe and now wonder just what chance the US has to ever survive with some one like John Kerry doing the bidding of his boss, Obama, and the mind set that Kerry seemed to lay out regarding an odorless, colorless benign trace gas that is .04% of the atmosphere and essential for all life on earth, CO2. To hear this idiot call it “carbon pollution” is indicative of the total stupidity that these people operate with and to imagine that these two speak for the United States of America is frightening. With people like these, we have no chance of ever surviving unless the few that know the truth make it known to all that seem to be too stupid to even want to look for the truth. Another truth is that Indonesia has cut so much of the old growth forest on Borneo to plant palm oil plantation that the old growth forest have been destroyed and with that all of the plants and animals that use to depend on them to survive.
“There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such trifling investment of facts.” Mark Twain
Prevarication
pre·var·i·ca·tion
[pri-var-i-key-shuhn] Show IPA
noun
1.
the act of prevaricating, or lying: Seeing the expression on his mother’s face, Nathan realized this was no time for prevarication.
2.
a false or deliberate misstatement; lie: Her many prevarications had apparently paid off; she was free to go.
By: jdouglashuahin on March 7, 2014
at 8:29 pm
Eric, were you also invited to this function like your neighbor DR. Ed Berry was?
“You are invited to attend my reply to the Climate Change nonsense on Friday, March 7, at noon at the Pachyderm meeting in Kalispell’s Red Lion Hotel. I will use no slides and incorporate an open Q&A.”
[…]”Jeff Mow did not tell us Glacier National Park promotes the climate change fraud in its exhibits, employee talks, and Glacier Institute programs.”
“On February 21, Jeff Mow, Superintendent of Glacier National Park, told Pachyderm attendees that glaciers are melting because our carbon dioxide is causing climate change. Jeff Mow did not tell us the truth that nature, not our carbon dioxide, caused GNP glaciers to shrink.
Jeff Mow told us his claim is supported by Nobel Prize winners and implied that this authority confirmed the truth of what he claimed about climate change.”
It appears that to be a “good employee” under this corrupt administration, it is required that first one check their brains in at the gate and that they have done but I’m sure that Eric wholeheartedly favors this kind of conduct in the ranks of the government.
“Sally Jewell doesn’t want any climate deniers at Interior”
“Obama has staffed his second-term team with a couple of kickass women ready to take the lead on climate action. Two days after EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy called bullshit on the notion that environmental regulations kill jobs, Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell, in an address to her employees, made clear that she won’t tolerate any debunked theories, either. “I hope there are no climate change deniers in the Department of Interior,” she said.”
http://grist.org/news/sally-jewell-doesnt-want-any-climate-deniers-at-interior/
By: jdouglashuahin on March 7, 2014
at 9:24 pm
jdouglashuahin,
I voted for Maggie Thatcher even though I knew it would hurt my electro-optics business. The pain my business suffered in the short term was more than offset by long term benefits.
Thatcher’s takedown of the miner’s union was paralleled by Reagan’s takedown of the air traffic controllers. Both countries benefitted immensely from these initiatives for decades. Too bad there are no leaders of similar calibre today.
As you assert CO2 is not driving “Global Warming”. CO2 has lagged temperature for at least the last 850,000 years. There is plenty of hard evidence. Here is one of my essays on the subject:
http://diggingintheclay.wordpress.com/2013/05/04/the-dog-that-did-not-bark/
So why do governments around the world cling to the crazy notion that we must reduce CO2 emissions?
The Maggie Thatcher speech I quoted above reveals that proponents of global socialism need problems that require “Global” solutions. CAGW (Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming) is a problem that only globalists can solve.
Around the world, governments, supported by lick spittle academics and hordes of useful idiots focus on our wallets. The money they extract is being used to subsidize uneconomic ethanol, wind, wave and solar energy sources, thus increasing the prices we pay for gasoline, electricity and food.
Fighting CAGW sounds like a noble cause but is it real or is it another “Holy Grail” that will inspire the best of our citizens to do amazing and heroic things that in hind sight will be seen as meaningless? The great pyramid at Giza was a heroic achievement based on ideas that seem quaint today.
I believe that government and academia promoting ethanol, windmills and solar panels is an example of wasted heroism. None of this could have come about but for the “Greenie” movement that has somehow achieved real political power.
By: gallopingcamel on March 7, 2014
at 9:42 pm
gallopingcamel: ” The money they extract is being used to subsidize uneconomic ethanol…..” I would think time and money spent on this nonsense of anthropogenic global warming could be better applied to other proven problems on earth and in his capacity of pretending to be the Secretary Of State, John Kerry should know this better than the average person. In 2007 I spent 6 weeks in Sabah and Sarawak on the island of Borneo and what is being done to the old growth rain forest on this third largest island on earth is sickening. I understand that it is worse yet in the Indonesia portion of Borneo. It is being cut and destroyed and replaced with palm oil plantations that can be used for bio-fuel production that I assume that Kerry encourages. With the rain forest goes the habitat for the orangutan, the pygmy elephant, the rhinoceros and also the proboscis monkeys plus the unique plant life that occurs no where else on earth. This is all promoted by the ignorant “greens” that have no idea about what happens in the real world and only look to the likes of Al Gore and James Hansen and now it seems John Kerry for guidance. It is not strange that because of their oil production, Brunei seems to have a good conservation plan and is trying to save their rain forest.
This is just another area where this green revolution destroys rather than saves but the naive “greens” of the world can pat themselves on the back for “saving the planet”. A side note, as with ethanol, it takes more energy to produce this bio-diesel than what is derived from the burning of it and how can humanity be so stupid to believe that it is practical to use a food crop such as corn to make a fuel out of?
“Science News
… from universities, journals, and other research organizations
Study: Ethanol Production Consumes Six Units Of Energy To Produce Just One”
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/03/050329132436.htm
By: jdouglashuahin on March 8, 2014
at 8:45 pm
jdouglashuahin,
It is indeed a topsy-turvy world we live in. Fortunately, reality eventually bites and the crazy schemes collapse when subsidies run out. That link you quoted is priceless. Here are a couple of my essays on energy policy issues:
http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/05/15/solar-power-in-florida/
http://diggingintheclay.wordpress.com/2013/06/02/electric-power-in-florida/
Not all academics are deranged leftists. You may enjoy the work and wisdom of Jack Chambless at Valencia College. My youngst son is attending his Microeconomics course. The guy is so good that he got death threats following his comments during a discussion of the Katrina disaster on Fox News.
http://jackchambless.blogspot.com/
By: gallopingcamel on March 9, 2014
at 7:27 am
gallopingcamel: Thanks for the links that I went through and the information reinforced my view derived from much study that wind and solar are no good and could not exist with out government subsidizes. I have been to New Zealand three times and seen what should be promoted for renewable energy sources in the US and that is geothermal; but, I guess since it has been proven to work, the Obama administration would rather spend money on things that do not work but that has not always been the case for the government, it seems.
“Currently, two geothermal power plants at China Lake are the only ones on military lands. A private company, which built, owns, and operates the power plants at China Lake, sells the electricity to a utility company and pays the Navy royalties on these sales as well as other types of compensation.”
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-04-513
What follows is what Eric favors and how he could imagine that the world will be powered by such fantasy elixirs of his imagination, as well as windmills, needs some clarification.
“To be sure, the costs have been coming down. The Navy is paying $12 million for 450,000 gallons of biofuel to power a carrier strike group off the coast of Hawaii this year. That $26.6-per-gallon purchase is nowhere near the $2.50 the service pays for each gallon of petroleum. (It has been stated that it would be about $16 per gallon if it were mixed with standard jet fuel.) But it can be considered a good deal when compared to what the Navy paid biofuels supplier Solazyme Inc. under a previous contract.
The service in 2009 spent $8.5 million for 20,000 gallons of algae-based fuel. That works out to $425 per gallon. In the fall of that year, the Defense Logistics Agency paid Montana’s Sustainable Oils $2.7 million for 40,000 gallons of fuel from the camelina plant. That’s about $67.50 per gallon.
http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/archive/2012/June/Pages/BiofuelsIndustryatCrossroadsasMilitaryWaitsforLowerPrices.aspx
I wonder if Eric asked what energy was used to prepare the ground, plant it and then harvest the crop and get it to where ever it was processed and finally foolishly utilized if it wasn’t a fossil fuel that did so?
Here are a couple of FACTS about wind:
“If we now multiply the 22 acres by the 6,668 wind turbines, we get 146,696 acres,
which is 229.21 square miles (about three times the size
of the metropolitan Washington, D.C. area). So it ap-
pears that it will take 146,696 acres of land covered
with wind turbines, compared to the 4,000 acres of land
for the nuclear power plant (which includes a cooling
lake used to provide water to the cooling towers).
Click to access Windmills.pdf
Wind farm turbines wear sooner than expected, says study
Britain’s wind farms are wearing out far more rapidly than previously thought, making them more expensive as a result, according to an authoritative new study.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/windpower/9770837/Wind-farm-turbines-wear-sooner-than-expected-says-study.html
By: John Swallow on March 12, 2014
at 4:35 am
Awewsome research. I have bookmarked those links.
By: gallopingcamel on March 12, 2014
at 8:54 pm
We need to thank the Danes, Brits and Germans for demonstrating the futility of wind power. As a result we won’t have to syphon billions of taxpayer dollars into bank accounts owned by T. Boone Pickens or his wife.
Let’s also thank the Germans (again) and the Spanish for demonstrating the harm done by Solar power. Hopefully there will be no more Solyndras:
Click to access 090327-employment-public-aid-renewable.pdf
By: gallopingcamel on March 12, 2014
at 8:53 pm