Here’s a hoot, the U.S. Justice Department announced it will begin a fishing expedition to see if there was any criminal activity in the British Petroleum’s (BP) Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

“If we find evidence of illegal behavior, we will be extremely forceful in our response,” Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. said in New Orleans after viewing spill damage, which he described as “heartbreaking to see.”

Hmmm. A good place to begin investigation might be President Obama’s energy secretary, Steven Chu. While at the Energy Biosciences Institute Mr. Chu received, according to a rare honest piece of reporting at the New York Times, “the bulk of a $500 million grant from the British oil giant BP to develop alternative energy sources.”

But who would dare insinuate that the Obama energy secretary was a little too cozy with BP and the oil industry? That’s crazy talk!

Dr. Koonin, who followed Dr. Chu to the Energy Department and now serves as under secretary of energy for science, is recused from all matters relating to the disaster because of his past ties to BP, said Stephanie Mueller, an Energy Department spokeswoman.

Dr. Chu, she said, “has never had a financial interest in BP.” [except $500 million...]

Ms. Mueller added, “No one in their right mind would suggest that Dr. Chu is beholden to oil companies, especially since he’s spent the past decade working to cut America’s dependence on oil and move us toward a clean-energy economy.” [thanks to a payment from BP for... 500 million dollars!]

Well I can think of 500 million reasons why someone might be in a right mind to suggest that Mr. Chu is beholden to oil companies. After all, has the brilliant Ms. Mueller not stopped to consider that the oil companies just might be the very same companies who one day also own the “alternative” energies? Or has that possibility not crossed her brilliant Beltway intellect?

Did you know that the Department of the Interior’s Mineral Management Service the Summer before the Deepwater accident gave the rig an award for safety, or that BP was “one of three finalists for a federal award honoring offshore oil companies for “outstanding safety and pollution prevention.”"

Better yet, perhaps Eric Holder could investigate President Obama, since the prez himself is the #1 recipient of money from BP’s political contributions in 20 years! Wait, wait, I thought oil was evil. I thought corporations were evil. Isn’t that what the Left always tells us? But they’ll take their money like the rest of us, eh?

Now I write all this tongue in cheek, of course, although the ties between our energy secretary and BP are quite interesting, aren’t they?

But the hypocrisy here is staggering, truly embarrassing, absolutely extreme. That is, almost as bad as the hypocrisy of say the lack of coverage of Iranian police bashing in the skulls of students during a pro-democracy march to, say, I don’t know, the overblown and totally slanted coverage of Israeli soldiers defending themselves during an attempt to search a ship of militant, crowbar- and knife-wielding “peace activists” who clearly had a single goal of provoking a violent response.

Were we to replace the words Obama and Chu with Bush or Cheney and BP with Haliburton or, heck, just keep the word BP, and you can bet dollars to navy beans that the press would be screaming about how our government is beholden to oil and corporations, and how secretive this all was, and how evil Cheney was, and how the Justice Department investigation would be like the fox guarding the hen house, and Bush was playing golf while Rome burned, and what a sham it was that the federal government had been passing out safety awards to BP, etc., ad nauseum.

One last word. As Charles Krauthammer has pointed out, why not investigate why BP needs to drill 5,000 feet under water. Isn’t that the first question? Why do we feel it necessary? What have these lawsuit-happy environmentalists and legislators bought us by blocking oil drilling on shore, or gee, at least closer to shore. In most ways, as we’re now learning, drilling 100 miles off shore is far more environmentally dangerous than drilling 5 miles off shore. Got a leak 5 miles off (and a couple hundred feet down)? No problem. Divers can fix that. Got a leak 5,000 feet down? You’re screwed. Much harder to fix. Did I mention that the current leak is 5-G.D.-thousand feet down? Thanks envirowackos!

Hillary Clinton recently lamented that the American “rich” don’t pay enough in taxes. One wonders where she gets her data from, because the IRS and CBO numbers show the opposite.

“The rich are not paying their fair share in any nation that is facing the kind of employment issues [America currently does] — whether it’s individual, corporate or whatever [form of] taxation forms,” Clinton told an audience at the Brookings Institute, where she was discussing the administration’s new National Security Strategy.

Clinton said the comment was her personal opinion. “I’m not speaking for the administration, so I’ll preface that with a very clear caveat,” she said.

Clinton went on to cite Brazil as a model.

“Brazil has the highest tax-to-GDP rate in the Western Hemisphere and guess what — they’re growing like crazy,” Clinton said. “And the rich are getting richer, but they’re pulling people out of poverty.”

According to the Congressional Budget Office the top 1% of wage earners in the United States pay almost 39% of federal taxes (Income taxes, Social Security, Medicare, etc.) Note: Just federal. We’re not yet even discussing how much state and local taxes add to that.

So, my first question to Madam Secretary would be, “How much would you consider a fair share?”

We’ve created the very economic majority-rule system of which our founders warned — a system where some 60% of the American public receive benefits even though they pay zero dollars in federal income tax, and just 7.65% to a Social Security system, never intended for more than beyond a few years — 5 or so — of post-retirement benefit; a system in which the top 20%, 10% and 5% of income earners pay 69%, 73%, and 60%, respectively, of ALL Federal taxes!

By contrast, the top 1% of wage earners in the UK pay 25% of all federal taxes. In other words, simply by our “rich” moving across the Atlantic they could receive a 15% tax cut.

These Top Percenters are the very people who create the startup businesses and add jobs in our country and, thus one sees the relationship between our extremely high income tax (not to mention corporate tax rate) and our high unemployment rate — there’s no incentive to risk adding new jobs with the Hillary Clinton economic model.

And mind you, these aren’t the uber-rich such as (now) Bill Gates, George Soros, or Warren Buffett, who don’t rely on income but instead wealth. Understand the difference — The uber-rich, such as those three highly fiscal liberal persons mentioned, care not if income tax rises because they long ago made their fortunes, not through income but through stock and other wealth creation schemes.

One need also remind Hillary Clinton that the United States imports 365,000 barrels of oil from Brazil every day. Brazil is #8 in our list of top petroleum importers (behind Canada, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Venezuela, Nigeria, Angola and Iraq).

This leads to the second question for Madam Secretary: “If the U.S. is to copy Brazil’s economic model should we not commit to domestic oil drilling as Brazil has done?”

I think we all know how Hillary would answer that question.

I’m a little behind on the Earf Day stuff, but here’s John Stossel:

Every Earth Day brings out new scaremongering from silly people.

This year, one scare is that BPA, a chemical in plastic, causes “obesity, breast cancer, to prostate cancer, diabetes, brain disorders, such as attention deficit, hyperactivity disorder, liver disease, ovarian disease, disease of the uterus, low sperm count in men.” That’s according to a new documentary called “Tapped.” So you better not drink bottled water!

Yes, huge amounts of BPA fed to rats cause problems, but there’s no good evidence that tiny amounts, locked into plastic, hurt people. In fact BPA saves lives, by stopping botulism.

“Tapped” claims that many other dangerous chemicals poison bottled water. Toxicologist Dr. Stephen King says in the film that we should be “horrified” at all the chemicals in bottled water. But when we called him, he sent us a study that says: “testing” reveals a surprising array of chemical contaminants in every bottled water brand analyzed — at levels no different than routinely found in tap water.

The director of Tapped, Stephanie Soechtig, claims that cancer rates are up as a result of these chemicals, but that’s another myth. Cancer incidence rates are flat. They would have declined, if not for new screening methods.

Life spans are up, too.

So ignore the Earth Day alarmism. Economic progress is what makes life better.

Tapped also suggests that because bottled water companies take water from the earth, the world will run out of water! But over the last 20 years, thanks to economic progress, a BILLION people GAINED access to improved drinking water, according to the WHO.

Even if we were running out off fresh water, modern technology would be the answer, not the problem. One desalinization plant in Florida converts 9 billion gallons a year – more than is used for all the bottled water sold in the US.

“Tapped” does get one thing right: bottled water is a waste of money. Tests I’ve done show it’s not healthier or better-tasting.

By the way, how do we get plastic? Polymers from evil, evil petroleum!

Below are some very interesting points made by Univ. of California Professor Eric Smith:

From 1971 to 2000, offshore facilities and pipelines were responsible for only 2 percent of the oil in U.S. waters. The bulk of it (63 percent) came from natural seepage, and 22 percent came from municipal and industrial runoff. Worldwide, natural seepage is the largest source (47 percent) of oil in water, followed by spills from ocean transportation (33 percent). In short, the risk of oil spills from platforms is small.

In contrast, there are relatively high environmental costs associated with importing oil as opposed to producing it in the United States. There are three problems with importing oil: First, spills from tankers and barges are the largest human-caused source of oil in the oceans. Oil is more likely to be spilled from a tanker than from a platform, and tankers have the potential to cause catastrophic spills. The groundings of the Exxon Valdez (off Alaska), the Castillo de Bellver (South Africa), the Amoco Cadiz (France), the Irenes Serenade (Greece) and the Torrey Canyon (Britain), to name a few, all had severe effects on local ecosystems.

Second, the countries from which we import oil have lower environmental standards than the United States has. In particular, many foreign oil producers choose to vent methane — a powerful greenhouse gas — directly into the atmosphere rather than spend extra money to capture or flare it. Mexico, for example, produces less than half the oil that the United States produces but emits six times as much methane.

Third, shipping oil to the United States requires burning a huge amount of diesel oil, the exhaust from which is greenhouse gas pumped into the atmosphere. Just as environmentalists argue that eating locally grown food is better for the planet because it saves transportation costs and energy, locally produced oil has less of a negative impact. Depending on the country of origin and the tanker size, 1 percent to 3 percent of the oil in every tanker is consumed merely for delivery.

Great commentary. But here’s one the professor didn’t mention regarding domestic off-shore drilling: right now, countries like China are drilling in those same waters which so many people deny our own companies access to. Those foreign countries, in turn, sell that oil to the very countries from whom we purchase foreign oil.

We’re not protecting our environment, but simply ensuring that we pay more for oil.

[ABC NEWS] ABC News Thomas Giusto and Lindsey Ellerson report:

Conservative author Jason Mattera launched a relentless revolt today against President Obama and the leftist agenda, mocking Obama loyalists during remarks made at the Conservative Political Action Conference.

… Not only did Mattera hit Obama for his acknowledged drug use as a youth, but he went on to ridicule feminism, diversity and homosexuals.

“The allegiance to political correctness on the college campus goes a long way toward explaining how young people in their heart of hearts actually believe that a scrawny street agitator turned presidential candidate could save mankind, renew our faith in American politics, stop glaciers from melting, curb racism, end all wars, tackle terrorism, provide us health care, pay for our college tuition, and oh while he’s at it, Barack promises to send a government unicorn down to the sky to fly us up to the left’s world where people dance across the streets of government owned gold, eating FDA approved candy canes, and where MSNBC is programmed on every channel,” chided Mattera.  “Buyers remorse is setting in, heck even the slutty Obama girl said her crush has faded.”

Read the entire article and you’ll have no doubt that Mattera’s shtick seems obnoxious (albeit no different than a conservative Keith Olbermann).

But more curious is that I’ve read this a couple times in a row and I’ve yet to find the part where Mattera allegedly “went on to ridicule feminism, diversity and homosexuals.” Huh?

All he’s doing is pointing out that Obama proclaimed himself as the chosen one — saying at his own nomination that we’d remember it as the moment “that the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal” — and now, just one year later, people are finding it’s just not so.

He’s not a messiah. He’s not even half as deft as he thinks he is. He’s just the latest reincarnation of disproven, ineffective, stale, Marxist-Wilsonian socialist ideas. For thee, not for me! ‘If ONLY evil corporations would stop pursuing profits,’ summarized Obama in his $7 million NYT’s best-selling book, et cetera, and so on. It is to laugh. Obama is everything the far left has stood for and failed at for decades, and makes Jimmy Carter look like Barry Goldwater.

But for pointing this out, albeit crudely, says ABC News, Mattera MUST BE a gay-hating, misogynist racist. Ah, yes, THAT media bias…

Paging Eric Alterman!

I had a laugh out loud moment this Sunday night, flipping channels and stopping on the FX network showing (yet again) of The Day After Tomorrow, an apocalyptic global warming movie filled with gratuitous scenes of our destruction.

I imagine the folks at FX programming probably would never have guessed that this weekend one of the chief global warming proponents and researchers would be forced to admit that he “lost” all of the data he used to produce the infamous “hockey stick” computer model predicting global temperature increases due to carbon output. This comes after the professor, Phil Jones, stepped down as director of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit in the wake of scandal over e-mails showing that researchers were manipulating climate change data (i.e., Climategate).

Whoopsie! I lost my data. Of course, a more skeptical person might say Jones “destroyed the data.” And an even more cynical person might say the good professor “made up” or “fabricated” the data.

Professor Jones also conceded the possibility that the world was warmer in medieval times than now – suggesting global warming may not be a man-made phenomenon.

And he said that for the past 15 years there has been no ‘statistically significant’ warming.

The admissions will be seized on by sceptics as fresh evidence that there are serious flaws at the heart of the science of climate change and the orthodoxy that recent rises in temperature are largely man-made.

Gosh… one would think that all scientists and policy makers, skeptics or not, would want to ensure that the facts and data were sound. One would think, that is, if this were really about science. But it’s really about control and social engineering by taxing and regulating the one thing that ensures a healthy and productive society: energy consumption.

Nonetheless, Professor Jones’ admissions are just more bad press for the global warming folks. What’s a social engineer who sucks on the government grant money tit to do? How will the likes of Duke Energy ever make billions off carbon trading now? How will the Congress ever institute a fraudulent VAT tax if there is no warming?

In just the last few weeks we’ve had: Climategate e-mails followed by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was forced to admit that it relied on faulty science in a claim that Indian glaciers would disappear by 2035, that it was wrong about 1998 being the warmest year on record (1934); that it accidentally confused feet and inches in a report regarding sea level rise in Fl0rida (18 inches not feet).

Fear not, though, warming freaks!

The Obama administration isn’t going to let something as simple as the truth or facts get in the way of regulating the number of farts you make and miles you drive — they’re promising that the EPA, a gang of unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats, will by totalitarian fiat force we American consumers to, well, consume less.

[AFP] The Netherlands has asked the UN climate change panel to explain an inaccurate claim in a landmark 2007 report that more than half the country was below sea level, the Dutch government said Friday.

According to the Dutch authorities, only 26 percent of the country is below sea level, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will be asked to account for its figures, environment ministry spokesman Trimo Vallaart told AFP.

The incident could cause further embarrassment for the IPCC, which recently admitted a claim in the same report that global warming could melt Himalayan glaciers by 2035 was wrong.

IPCC experts calculated that 55 percent of the Netherlands was below sea level by adding the area below sea level — 26 percent — to the area threatened by river flooding — 29 percent — Vallaart said.

“They should have been clearer,” Vallaart said, adding that the Dutch office for environmental planning, an IPCC partner, had exact figures.

Correcting the error had been “on the agenda several times” but had never actually happened, Vallaart said.

The UK Globe and Mail piles on:

And now, the science scandals just keep on coming. First there was the vast cache of e-mails leaked from the University of East Anglia, home of a crucial research unit responsible for collecting temperature data. Although not fatal to the science, they revealed a snakepit of scheming to keep contradictory research from being published, make imperfect data look better, and withhold information from unfriendly third parties. If science is supposed to be open and transparent, these guys acted as if they had a lot to hide.

Despite widespread efforts to play down the Climategate e-mails, they were very damaging. An investigation by the British newspaper The Guardian – among the most aggressive advocates for action on climate change – has found that a series of measurements from Chinese weather stations were seriously flawed, and that documents relating to them could not be produced.

Meantime, the IPCC – the body widely regarded, until now, as the ultimate authority on climate science – is looking worse and worse. After it was forced to retract its claim about melting glaciers, Mr. [IPCC head Rajendra] Pachauri dismissed the error as a one-off. But other IPCC claims have turned out to be just as groundless.

For example, it warned that large tracts of the Amazon rain forest might be wiped out by global warming because they are extremely susceptible to even modest decreases in rainfall. The sole source for that claim, reports The Sunday Times of London, was a magazine article written by a pair of climate activists, one of whom worked for the WWF. One scientist contacted by the Times, a specialist in tropical forest ecology, called the article “a mess.”

Worse still, the Times has discovered that Mr. Pachauri’s own Energy and Resources Unit, based in New Delhi, has collected millions in grants to study the effects of glacial melting – all on the strength of that bogus glacier claim, which happens to have been endorsed by the same scientist who now runs the unit that got the money.

Following the ClimateGate scandal the global warming scaremongers couldn’t get more unhinged, could they? Get a load of these recent articles putting the warmers in the spotlight. You can’t make this stuff up, except, well, they did make it up.

UK Times: The United Nations’ expert panel on climate change based claims about ice disappearing from the world’s mountain tops on a student’s dissertation and an article in a mountaineering magazine.

… In its [United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] most recent report, it stated that observed reductions in mountain ice in the Andes, Alps and Africa was being caused by global warming, citing two papers as the source of the information.

However, it can be revealed that one of the sources quoted was a feature article published in a popular magazine for climbers which was based on anecdotal evidence from mountaineers about the changes they were witnessing on the mountainsides around them.

The other was a dissertation written by a geography student, studying for the equivalent of a master’s degree, at the University of Berne in Switzerland that quoted interviews with mountain guides in the Alps.

Oh, it gets better. Honest mistake, one may say. Well, turns out the UN knew of the source issues prior to publishing their report, but they published it anyway. Just how stupid do they thing people are?

UK Times: The chairman of the leading climate change watchdog was informed that claims about melting Himalayan glaciers were false before the Copenhagen summit, The Times has learnt.

Rajendra Pachauri was told that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment that the glaciers would disappear by 2035 was wrong, but he waited two months to correct it. He failed to act despite learning that the claim had been refuted by several leading glaciologists.

The IPCC’s report underpinned the proposals at Copenhagen for drastic cuts in global emissions.

Mr. Pachauri was sent several e-mails questioning the data as early as November of last year, but disregarded the critics saying, “I don’t have anything to add on glaciers.” Perhaps because he’s received hundreds of thousands of dollars in grant money..?

Among some other errors by the IPCC:

[WSJ] … that 1998 was the warmest year on record in the United States (it was 1934); that sea levels could soon rise by up to 20 feet and put Florida underwater (an 18-inch rise by the year 2100 is the more authoritative estimate); that polar bears are critically endangered by global warming (most polar bear populations appear to be stable or increasing); that—well, we could go on without even mentioning the climategate emails. For the record, most Himalayan glaciers do seem to be retreating, and they have been “since the earliest recordings began around the middle of the nineteenth century,” according to a report from India’s ministry of environment and forests.

Finally, you’ll never believe who’s become a global warming jihadist! Literally!

CAIRO (AP) – Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden has called for the world to boycott American goods and the U.S. dollar, blaming the United States and other industrialized countries for global warming, according to a new audiotape released Friday.

In the tape, broadcast in part on Al-Jazeera television, bin Laden warned of the dangers of climate change and says that the way to stop it is to bring “the wheels of the American economy” to a halt.

Right, because Indians and Chinese don’t use a lot of energy… well, nobody ever accused bin Laden of being rational. Apparently, he values the lives of polar bears more than people. After all, he has no problem blowing people out of the sky or collapsing buildings upon them. Sounds like your everyday Earth Liberation Front sociopath to me. Maybe extreme leftists have more in common with jihadists than we first thought.

What’s remarkable about this article is just how unapologetic and brazen the UN is about making claims — and thus promoting expensive, uneconomic policies — that aren’t remotely based on science. This is precisely the pattern that was fortified from the ClimateGate e-mails.

[Wall Street Journal] An influential United Nations panel is facing growing criticism about its practices after acknowledging doubts about a 2007 statement that Himalayan glaciers were retreating faster than those anywhere else and would entirely disappear by 2035, if not sooner.Rajendra Pachauri, head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, said Monday that the U.N. body was studying how the 2007 report “derived” the information about glacier retreat, according to a spokesman at the Energy and Resources Institute in New Delhi, where Dr. Pachauri is the director. Dr. Pachauri said glaciers were melting, but the 2035 date was in question, the spokesman said.

It was unlikely that these revelations about the IPCC report would overturn the scientific consensus on glacial retreat, but they raised questions for the IPCC about how the data on Himalayan glaciers were collected and reviewed.

“There’s a failure to review this data adequately by qualified experts,” said J. Graham Cogley, professor of geography at Trent University in Ontario, who is one of the first people to track down some of the apparent errors.

The IPCC report stated that the total area of Himalayan glaciers would likely shrink from 500,000 square kilometers to 100,000 square kilometers by 2035. The report cited a 2005 study by the World Wildlife Fund, an environmental advocacy group. That study cited a 1999 article in New Scientist magazine that quoted Indian glacier expert Syed Hasnain as saying Himalayan glaciers could disappear “within forty years.”

Dr. Hasnain presented a report on Himalayan glaciers in the summer of 1999, but it made no reference to 2035.

Earlier this month, Dr. Hasnain said in another New Scientist article that his previous assertions were based on “speculation,” rather than firm science.

Here’s Skeptical Environmentalist Bjorn Lomborg on the folly of trying to reduce carbon emissions:

Two points underlie the issue of global warming: First, developing nations have no intention of letting the developed world force them to stop using carbon-emitting fuels. They are understandably wary of any policy that might curtail the domestic economic growth that is allowing their populations to clamber out of poverty. And that is precisely what drastically reducing their carbon emissions would do.

Second, even for more-developed economies, trying to force drastic cuts in carbon emissions makes no economic sense. All the major climate economic models show that to achieve the much-discussed goal of keeping temperature increases under 2 degrees Celsius, we would need a global tax on carbon emissions that would start at $102 per ton (or about 90 cents per gallon of gasoline) — and increase to $4,000 per ton (or $35.51 per gallon of gasoline) by the end of the century. In all, this would cost the world $40 trillion a year. Most mainstream calculations conclude that this is 50 times more expensive than the climate damage it seeks to prevent.

In other words, trying to force cuts in carbon emissions is a solution that will cost far more than the problem it is meant to solve.