Here’s Michelle Malkin with the quote of the day in response to some Congressional Democrats attempting to classify supposed man-made climate change (i.e., junk science) as a national security threat.

Inconvenient truth: Ethanol subsidies ushered in famine, food riots, and rising greenhouse gas emissions. Can we classify Al Gore as a national security threat, too?

Amen. In the words of Nigel Calder, “When politicians and journalists declare that the science of global warming is settled, they show a regrettable ignorance about how science works… Meanwhile humility in face of Nature’s marvels seems more appropriate than arrogant assertions that we can forecast and even control a climate ruled by the sun and the stars.”

Pretty funny stuff from comedian-commentator Steven Crowder. I’ve posted him before — his short film on Canadian health care was a can’t miss. This time he parodies the notion promoted by leading Democrats that all these anti-ObamaCare protests are “unpatriotic,” angry mobs, “bused in” by insurance companies. (Say, I thought dissent and protesting was supposed to be the highest expression of liberty, Ms. Pelosi.)

They’re crazy. Absolutely crazy.

[Live Science Journal] For people who are looking for ways to reduce their “carbon footprint,” here’s one radical idea that could have a big long-term impact, some scientists say: Have fewer kids.

A study by statisticians at Oregon State University concluded that in the United States, the carbon legacy and greenhouse gas impact of an extra child is almost 20 times more important than some of the other environment-friendly practices people might employ during their entire lives — things like driving a high mileage car, recycling, or using energy-efficient appliances and light bulbs.

“In discussions about climate change, we tend to focus on the carbon emissions of an individual over his or her lifetime,” said study team member Paul Murtaugh.

We can only hope and pray that these environmental extremists take their own advice… It’s amazing. It smacks of Statism — one cannot imagine anything less free than a government dictating how many children one can have. But, say THESE scientists, “we’re not advocating policy.” Oh, it always starts thus, with such innocently misguided intentions, from Nazi euthanasia — for “humane purposes” — to China’s current “one child” policy.

The funny thing is, we’re almost there without the climate change hysteria. The Western populations are shrinking at an alarming rate. As Mark Steyn noted in his book America Alone, the West is in many cases just at or much lower than the “replacement rate” of 2.1 children per family. The US is right at 2.1, but Japan, Italy and Russia are particularly low, dangerously and unprecedentedly low. (17 European nations are at a 1.3 fertility rate. Australia 1.7; Canada 1.48; Europe as a whole 1.38; Japan 1.32; Greece 1.3; Italy 1.2; Russia 1.14; Spain 1.1; Scientists consider 1.3 births per couple the lowest-low birth rate from which no society has ever recovered.) Most of Europe and Canada are likewise well below the 2.1 figure. Even India and China are below the replacement rate. Their populations are actually shrinking.

Purposely limiting the brainpower of a society is hardly a way to solve that society’s problems. Consider England, circa the 1800s. This tiny island ruled the planet economically, militarily and culturally due to a population explosion that rivaled its competitors. Had they taken the advice of the “environmentally conscious” they’d have been crushed by a rival power.

And all this fearmongering is based on the most propagated junk science ever pushed.

Here’s Marlo Lewis to underscore that point and close this post:

However, the main era of “anthropogenic” global warming supposedly began in the mid-1970s, and ongoing research by retired meteorologist Anthony Watts leaves no doubt that in recent decades, the U.S. surface temperature record–reputed to be the best in the world–is unreliable and riddled with false warming biases.

Watts and a team of more than 650 volunteers have visually inspected and photographically documented 1003, or 82%, of the 1,221 climate monitoring stations overseen by the U.S. Weather Service. In a report summarizing an earlier phase of the team’s investigation (a survey of 860+ stations), Watts says, “We were shocked by what we found.” He continues:

We found stations located next to exhaust fans of air conditioning units, surrounded by asphalt parking lots and roads, on blistering-hot rooftops, and near sidewalks and buildings that absorb and radiate heat. We found 68 stations located at wastewater treatment plants, where the process of waste digestion causes temperatures to be higher than in surrounding areas.

In fact, we found that 89 percent of the stations–nearly 9 of every 10–fail to meet the National Weather Services’s own siting requirements that stations must be 30 meters (about 100 feet) or more away from an artificial heating or radiating/reflecting heat source. In other words, 9 or every 10 stations are likely reporting higher or rising temperatures because they are badly sited.

Read the rest.

In the words of Michael Goldfarb, the Obama Administration officially “certified” the Iranian “election.” Nice.

“He’s the elected leader,” says Obama press secretary Gibbs. Elected? Really? Who elected Ahmadinejad? Does a council of 12 unelected religious clerics with absolute omnipotence over all legislative and judicial ability make an election? Every time the Obama administration attempts to coddle the Iranian theocracy all they do is undercut the will and influence of the Iranians who risk their lives to thwart that illegitimate regime.

John Stossel adds to the evidence that President Obama’s Cash for Clunkers program damages the economic environment in unseen ways — indeed, it doesn’t help the poor, it actually hurts the poor:

If you can only afford $500 – $1,000 for a car, you’ll find many of these vehicles are now unavailable.  They have been sent to the junk yard thanks to this program…The Blogger News Network points out that junk yards that demolish the clunkers aren’t allowed to pull engines and other parts before they’re crushed, making parts for older cars harder and more expensive to get.

Once more, nothing is more deadly than a politician who has vast power over the economy but who knows little of economics.

Gwen Ottinger of the Chemical Heritage Foundation’s Center for Contemporary History and Policy in Philadelphia — and boy is that a mouthful — appears to be one of those rare environmentally conscience persons who also happen to have common sense. “Keep your clunker,” says Gwen, it’s better for the economy and the environment:

First, even when new cars and appliances are more efficient than the ones they replace, the act of replacing them entails environmental costs not accounted for in the stimulus programs. Building a new car, washing machine or refrigerator takes energy and resources: The manufacture of steel, aluminum and plastics are energy-intensive processes, and some of the materials used in durable goods, especially plastics, use non-renewable fossil fuels as feedstocks as well as energy sources. Disposing of old products, a step required by most incentive and rebate programs, also has environmental costs: It takes additional energy to shred and recycle metals; plastic components often cannot be recycled and end up as landfill cover; and the engine fluids, refrigerants and other chemicals essential to operating products end up as hazardous wastes.

Policies that encourage purchases of energy-efficient products may also increase, rather than decrease, energy use by confusing efficiency with consumption. For example, Energy Star refrigerators, which now qualify for rebates in many states, are certified to be 10 to 20 percent more efficient than “standard” models. Yet the Energy Star rating is awarded overwhelmingly to refrigerators far larger than would have been the norm two decades ago, and smaller models of refrigerator, which use less energy simply because they have a smaller volume of air to cool, were not even included in the Energy Star program until 2002. Consumers who wish to benefit from environmentally friendly stimulus money, then, are pushed toward purchasing “efficient” but relatively large models rather than being encouraged to opt for the smallest refrigerator, with the smallest energy demands, that meets their needs.

Beyond these concrete environmental drawbacks, product-replacement policies also send a message that old things are dirty and inefficient, while new ones are necessarily green and efficient. Under the Cash for Clunkers program, for example, old cars must be traded in for new ones. Yet plenty of used cars exceed the required 22 mpg: The Toyota Prius hybrid, on the market since 2001, gets upward of 40 mpg, and even a 15-year-old Honda Civic gets 28. By assuming that only new products can be environmentally friendly, these policies lead us to discount the environmental gains that could be made through well-established and low-tech means, such as smaller refrigerators. They also reinforce the idea that all products, even “durable goods,” quickly become obsolete — a notion that leads to overwhelming amounts of environment-despoiling waste.

All good points, and reminiscent of the 19th century’s “Broken Window” policy, which Frédéric Bastiat debunked in That Which Is Seen and That Which Is Unseen — the boy who breaks the shopkeeper’s window, went the fallacy, is actually helping the economy because the shopkeeper must replace the window, helping out the vendors for that, who in turn spend that profit on other needs, etc.

Bastiat:

It is not seen that as our shopkeeper has spent six francs upon one thing, he cannot spend them upon another. It is not seen that if he had not had a window to replace, he would, perhaps, have replaced his old shoes, or added another book to his library. In short, he would have employed his six francs in some way, which this accident has prevented.

And so, it is not seen that the now proposed $3 billion dollar program takes from the taxpaying population $3 billion they might have spent on other things. The folly of Keynesian economics continues…

If you want to know what Obama’s pledge to “save or create” 4 million jobs would look like if the stimulus weren’t a total bust, consider what “good news” means in an Obama-sized state: A couple of years back, I happened to catch an intriguing headline up north. “The Canadian economy is picking up steam,” reported the CBC. Statistics Canada had just announced that “the economy added 56,100 new jobs, two-thirds of them full time.” That’s great news, isn’t it? Why, the old economy’s going gangbusters, stand well back.

But I was interested to know just what sectors these jobs had been created in. And, upon investigation, it emerged that, of those 56,100 new jobs, 4,200 were among the self-employed, 8,900 were in private businesses, and the remaining 43,000 were on the public payroll. “The economy” hadn’t added those jobs; the government had: That’s why they call it “creating” jobs. Seventy-seven percent of the new jobs were government jobs, or “jobs,” paid for by the poor schlubs working away in the remaining 23 percent. So the “good news” was just more bad news, just a further transfer from the vital dynamic sector to the state.

– Mark Steyn.