The
Rational Argumentator
Firestorm in Spokane
In March, 2009, I
traveled to Spokane, Washington to address the annual Republican Lincoln Day
Dinner. I reprinted my speech (Part 1, Part 2) in the April issue
of The DeWeese Report (Vol. 15, Issue 4), under the tile, “The Wrenching
Transformation of America.” That speech caused a firestorm in Spokane as I
detailed exactly how an organization called the International Council for Local
Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI) is operating in more than 600 American communities
(including Spokane). That group is guiding the local officials to impose
Sustainable Development, the UN monster that transforms their community into a
little soviet, with top-down control, robbing people of their private property,
as it operates through non-elected boards and councils.
I explained in detail how ICLEI used the excuse of Climate Change to enforce
these polices. Several people from my audience attended the Spokane City
Council just two nights after my speech and confronted their local officials
about what I had said. To their amazement, they found that every word I said
was true. In fact, that very night, the city council was having the first
reading of a sustainability plan for the community that ICLEI had helped
prepare. It had been a year in the making and was now ready to be rammed
through city council – unopposed.
That’s when the
firestorm ignited. Warned by me, the local residents did everything they could
to warn the community and block the plan. In the end, they lost in a vote of 5
– 2, but they were heard loud and clear and the battle is far from over.
One effort to stop the
ICLEI plan was made by a physicist, Dr. Edwin Berry, from Bigfork, Montana. Dr.
Berry attended my identical speech in Kalispell, Montana, just one week prior
to the Spokane speech. We met and had a wonderful talk. After the firestorm hit
Spokane, he volunteered to go there and make several speeches, adding his
scientific expertise to follow up my talk. He also sent a letter to the Spokane
city council, strongly urging them to vote no on the ICLEI proposal. I reprint
his letter here in the hopes it will help other communities to understand the
monster they face in implementing sustainable policy. I will also tell you what
I told the audiences in Spokane and Kalispell – If ICLEI is in your town – run
them out of town on a rail with some high-quality tar and feathers.
Open Letter to the City
of Spokane
By Edwin X. Berry, PhD
We are partying on the
train to Auschwitz
Spokane signed on to the
United Nations ICLEI Climate Protection Campaign in 2001. Since then, the city
has spent money, resources, and time attempting to comply with the requirements
of ICLEI. The rationale for the program was to comply with the United-Nations-sponsored
Kyoto Protocol to reduce GHG emissions.
The basis for the
rationale is the United Nations Summary Reports for Policymakers of several
years. The City of Spokane assumed that the United Nations IPCC made truthful
statements about the effects of GHG emissions and especially carbon dioxide
emissions on the earth's climate.
We now know without a shadow of doubt that the UN IPCC lied and is still lying
about the effects of our carbon dioxide and other GHG emissions on climate.
Most blatantly, the IPCC represented to the City a chart of the supposed carbon
dioxide content of our atmosphere for the last 10,000 years.
This chart claims carbon dioxide concentration was below about 280 ppm until
present times and suggests that only recently have human emissions caused the
carbon dioxide concentration to increase dramatically to the present 385 ppm.
The IPCC further claims our emissions, if not curtailed, will cause carbon
dioxide concentration to continue to increase, with the result being a
significant increase in global temperature.
These IPCC claims are lies and a fraud.
The truth shows that the City has been subject to this fraud of the highest
order. This fraud has causing significant damage and harm to the citizens of
Spokane, and if continued, it will cause very serious damage. Indeed, it is the
opinion of this writer that the City has a legal basis for a cause of action
against those who have perpetuated this fraud.
To respond to the carbon
dioxide claim, true scientific data show that we had higher concentrations of
carbon dioxide in 1820 and 1940 than we do now.
True atmospheric science shows that we had periods in the last 10,000 years
when carbon dioxide was much higher than shown on the IPCC ICLEI chart. True
atmospheric science shows that ocean temperatures, not human emissions, control
our earth's carbon dioxide concentrations. True atmospheric science shows that
carbon dioxide has negligible effect on climate, does not drive climate, but
only piggybacks on natural climate change.
Prior to the promotion of the global warming fraud, the UN IPCC had access to
scientific information that disproved its hypothesis that human carbon dioxide
causes significant global warming.
Nevertheless, the UN IPCC produced Summary Reports for Policymakers that
ignored and contradicted the input of scientists. The IPCC claimed to have a
"consensus" of scientists on its side when it did not and does not.
Participating scientists who were betrayed by the UN IPCC Summary Reports wrote
an Open Letter to the IPCC which states the scientific truth.
Here is a summary of the 2007 Open Letter signed by 101 scientists:
1. UN IPCC reports do not represent the input, views, or consensus of
scientists.
2. Changes in glaciers, sea-level, species, etc., are not evidence of
abnormal climate change.
3. Climate models cannot predict climate (even IPCC reps agree).
4. Significant peer-reviewed research has discredited the global
warming hypothesis.
5. We need more low-cost, reliable energy to adapt to natural climate
change.
6. There is no scientific basis to cut CO2 emissions.
7. It is not shown that CO2 alters climate.
8. It is not possible to stop climate change.
9. The “precautionary principle” is irrational.
10. Reducing CO2 emissions is a tragic misallocation of
resources.
11. Reducing CO2 emissions will decrease our ability to
adapt to climate change.
12. Reducing CO2 emissions will increase human suffering.
Here are the 2009
conclusions of the Japanese Science Society:
1. The earth’s warming is not due to CO2.
2. Solar activity drives global temperatures.
3. The 1500-year solar cycle is confirmed.
4. The Pacific Decadal Oscillation, not CO2, drives
temperatures.
5. We are now entering 20-30 years of cooling.
6. The IPCC global warming hypothesis is invalid.
The UN IPCC, ICLEI, and
all supporting groups like the Sierra Club, knowingly and purposely perpetuated
a fraud upon the citizens of the City of Spokane. Their purpose is their own
political agenda.
This sustainability proposal, and its companion proposals in some 400 cities
across America, is but a small step to brainwash Americans into believing they
must give up their abundant energy sources in order to save the planet. This is
an evil delusion.
Once these small steps are locked in, the agenda of our enemies will continue
with the help of our laws, some lawyers, our brainwashed citizens, and our
elected politicians.
This agenda, my dear friends, is nothing less than to dramatically reduce the
standard of living of America and turn America into a third world country. The
seemingly nice, feely-goody sustainability proposals are evil steps leading
America to self-imposed destruction.
Here are some of the invalid assumptions built in to the sustainability
proposal:
1. natural is optimal (natural is not defined)
2. climate is fragile
3. climate change can be mitigated
4. our carbon dioxide emissions change our climate
5. carbon dioxide is bad and dirty
6. oil is bad
7. oil is going to disappear soon (peak oil)
8. green is good
9. green jobs are good
10. alternative energy is good
11. wind energy is good
12. by omission, nuclear is bad
13. packing people in a city is good
14. living outside a city is bad
15. energy costs are world-controlled
16. we cannot produce cheap, reliable energy in America
These assumptions are
not supported by science or technology. These assumptions are brainwashing.
Sustainability is built on a foundation of sand. It consists not of truth but
of feelings.
Sustainability is a religion. Governmental enforcement of a religion is against
the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America.
Sustainability forces decisions to be made on unfounded criteria. It forces
decisions to favor more costly alternatives. In the end it will help destroy
our economy.
The false assumptions in the sustainability proposal are used to support the
following scientifically false and economically costly conclusions:
1. emphasizing renewable energy
2. replacing hydrocarbon fuels with ethanol, even though it emits
more CO2 than using hydrocarbon fuels, and it increases food costs
3. promoting and tracking carbon sequestration
4. making it expensive for people to outside a city
5. arguing that the energy-saving value of packing people in a city
trumps the personal desire to live outside a city
6. incentivizing green jobs and green businesses
7. reducing a city's oil consumption and GHG emissions
8. reducing vehicle size
9. using electric vehicles
10. establishing reporting systems and bureaucracies to monitor GHGs
11. hiring sustainability officers
12. coordinating sustainability efforts
13. aligning efforts with federal efforts
14. creating a culture of sustainability
All of the above are costs that can be
eliminated from government. They should be eliminated because they waste voters’
money.
Damages from the fraud include all the direct costs to implement the ICLEI GHG agenda.
They include indirect costs of the lost time and resources to pursue proper
economic goals because of the diversion of the ICLEI agenda. They include the
indirect costs of promoting wind energy as a substitute for coal, oil, and
nuclear. Wind energy would not be cost-competitive without federal income tax
credits. But the tax credits merely shift the cost burden from an electric bill
to federal taxes. They transport wealth from the middle class to the super-rich.
A hidden cost of wind energy is the steel, concrete, and transmission lines.
A hidden cost is the investment necessary for utilities to rebuild their
facilities to accommodate wind's unpredictable, variable power source on the
electric grid. A hidden cost is the permanent damage done to the land.
If renewable means the ability to return nature and land to its original state,
then wind farms do not meet the definition of renewable.
All these costs are ignored by the sustainability delusion.
Do you see where this is leading?
On May 11, the New York Times announced that China has emerged as a leader
in clean coal technology. And "clean" does not here mean carbon
sequestration. Clean means achieving 44% fuel efficiency, while the best
America has done to date is 40%.
Clean means removing all the particulates, sulfur, and undesirable emissions,
with the exception of carbon dioxide, which is not really undesirable anyway.
It helps plants grow and return the oxygen back to our atmosphere. Sequestered
carbon dioxide never returns the oxygen back to our atmosphere.
While the Sierra Club brags about stopping 82 of 150 of America's planned
coal-electric power plants since the year 2000 on the basis of the global
warming fraud and boasts it will easily stop the rest under Obama, China is
building one super-efficient coal power plant per month.
Do you understand what is happening?
America could shut down today and stop all its carbon dioxide and other GHG
emissions. Americans could disappear off the face of the earth. China,
meanwhile, will continue to build its energy resources, and emit far more
carbon dioxide than America saved by committing suicide. And in the year 2100
the self-destruction of America and China's carbon dioxide will not have
changed the global temperature by 0.0001 degrees from whatever nature has
planned for the earth. The only thing that will have changed is America. It
will be gone.
Do you understand how to take control of a country?
The way to destroy a country is to take away its energy production, remove
its will to resist its own destruction, and to dumb down its citizens. We are
so brainwashed, we are allowing these to happen. The final step will remove our
ability to prevent our own destruction. At some point, we will be unable to
defend our country and our homes.
Get off the train now before it reaches its destination.
You elected officials of the great City of Spokane have two clear choices:
You can vote YES to perpetuate the global warming fraud, to sponsor an earth-worship
religion, and to send Spokane and America to its eventual destruction. Or you
can vote NO to become the first city in America to reject the sustainability
fraud and send Spokane and America on a path to enlightenment and recovery.
NO is a vote for Good. YES is a vote for Evil.
Spokane, you can save America.
Click here to return to TRA's Issue CCI Index.
Learn about Mr. Stolyarov's novel, Eden against the Colossus, here.Read Mr. Stolyarov's comprehensive treatise, A Rational Cosmology, explicating such terms as the universe, matter, space, time, sound, light, life, consciousness, and volition, here.