America's colleges and universities used to take pride in "free speech" -- but today, billionaires and power brokers have conspired to pressure the halls of academe to stifle any dissent to the mantras of the Far Left. Hopefully, today's students will be wise enough to consider that something so feared that it cannot even be mentioned might just be more of a threat to the powers that be than to their own understanding of reality.
Pope Francis, some say, has joined with enemies of the Catholic Church to endorse the global warming agenda. CFACT policy analyst Marita Noon reports on how other Christians are convinced this is a bad move.
The American people are increasingly not buying into the global warming (er, climate change) scary scenarios, but the Green Left, led by Al Gore, is responding by turning up the heat -- and increasingly seeking to silence opposition they cannot control. That this is a losing technique escapes notice because they believe that nobody cares enough about stopping them to resist and overcome the firings, threats of prison time, and even worse from the shrill sirens of statism.
Heather Richards may have resigned from her job with the Piedmont Environmental Council, but she is in a position of even greater authority now as chair of the Land Trust Accredication Commission -- and one wonders whether other land trusts are also abusing power as the PEC clearly did. As for Richards, she cannot even seem to tell the truth about her upbringing.
Fueled by subsidies and mandates, the new rooftop solar-leasing market industry has engaged in “deceptive marketing strategies” to sucker unsuspecting homeowners into misleading zero-money-down teaser loan deals. Many customers are unaware they must include these units in their homeowners insurance policies, the units may stop working long before the 20- to 30-year lease expires (and they are liable for maintenance and replacement of defective parts), and the solar companies may place a lien on the entire property, not just the solar equipment, making it more difficult to transfer ownership via sale. There are numerous other pitfalls, including a serious fire hazard from defective units.
The proposed "Forest Legacy Management Flexibility Act” would, according to its supporters, promote conservation of private forestlands by reducing administrative burdens for states. Conservation easements under the federal Forest Legacy Program could be held by accredited land trusts rather than state agencies. CFACT advisor Bonner Cohen says the cost to the public of this bill would be incalculable. Far better than the landowners ignore these land trusts and manage their own property and pass it along to their heirs.
The Climate Crisis industry, says CFACT Senior Policy Analyst Paul Driessen, is rich from government grants, foundation grants, and other money from special interest groups, all betting tyhey can convince the public that climate change is so horrific they must accept a complete government takeover of the entire society (or thereabouts). They turn white when polls show climate skeptics are well received and their research is convincing. To counter this, because they cannot or will not even try to debate the science, they resort to ad hominem attacks and other assaults on tghe character (and thus the science) presented -- and they are willing to stretch or completely fabricate the "truth" about those whose work threatens them and thend eny them any chance to correct the narrative.
The secret has been out for some time, yet nobody on the Left or the mainstream media is really talking about it -- that "global warming" has always been little more than a smokescreen for worldwide wealth redistribution overseen by bureaucrats at the United Nations -- picking the bones of a tired, weak, and shamed America unwilling to defend itself or to flex its economic muscles. But will they succeed? Stay tuned!
The enemies of fracking, the Keystone pipeline, and other fossil fuel related activities start with wild-eyed "Deep Green Resistance" types who oppose the entirety of Western civilization (even agriculture), include those with vested interests in alternative energy sources, and even include foreign governments (like Putin's Russia), who recognize that cheaper oil and gas prices will hurt their economies and weaken their grip on nearby dependent countries. Naming enemies empowers those who want to defeat them.
President Obama will soon have to decide whether to please big labor or Big Green -- and his risk is that if he chooses Big Green over big labor and then the labor unions push Democrats who depend on their votes to vote to override his veto of the Keystone Pipeline authorization, he loses big time. The clock is ticking -- and the stakes are high. Meanwhile, President-in-waiting Hillary Clinton is silent ... perhaps fearing the same Hobson's choice. The huge drop in the oil price -- which some now claim is a further reason to ignore Keystone -- is on the verge of a quick rebound thanks to Obama's feckless foreign "policy." Stay tuned!
Is it merely a coincidence that millions of dollars of Russian money have been laundered and forwarded to anti-fossil fuel radical environmentalists to fight exploration and development by the United States of Alaska's vast oil and gas and minerals reserves? While Russia plans to seize the entire Arctic for its own use, the United States shuts down all future development over nearly 20 million acres of land and sea -- for absolutely zero environmental benefit, especially since Russia will likely be able to exploit much of that same territory anyway. Just as bac, Obama did this despite universal opposition from Alaska's elected officials -- robbing the state of much-needed jobs and revenues. Hopefully, this theft and giveaway to Russia can be reversed.
CFACT Senior Policy Advisor Paul Driessen shines the light of financial truth on those who have viciously attacked Harvard scientist Dr. Willie Soon and other authors of a devastating new report, published in the January 2015 Science Bulletin of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, which concluded that, once discrepancies in IPCC computer models are taken into account, the impact of CO2-driven manmade global warming over the next century (and beyond) is likely to be “no more than one-third to one-half of the IPCC’s current projections.” Because these well-heeled "made men" scientists cannot attack the evidence, they are reduced to killing the messengers -- showing that the billions and billions of dollars spent -- including money funneled from Putin's Russia -- to hide these truths and buy off or bludgeon dissent from the party line is not working out that well.
Dr. Roy Spencer asks some tough questions regarding the pronouncement by NASA that 2014 was the warmest year on record.
Once again, the EPA is emerging as a chief jobs killer for the Obama Administration (which apparently wants most Americans unemployed and dependent upon government for their very existence). The proposed new ground-level ozone standard -- whether it is 60, 65, or even 70 parts per billion, will kill jobs, weaken our national and local economies -- and increase the power of the Executive Branch to rule as a dictatorship.
The EPA has entered into more than 60 sue-and-settle agreements in just the last 4 years -- as part of a widespread collusion with radical environmentalist groups who use this back-door process to avoid public scrutiny of their confiscatory plans until it is too late for the public, let alone lawmakers, to intervene to find a better solution to the alleged problems being addressed through such lawsuits. It is time to stop this incestuous relationship between federal employees and their once and future colleagues who currently work for radical environmental groups.