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RUSH: We have the obligatory audio sound bites from Senator McCain’s speech on the environment yesterday in Oregon. Yeah, I’m going to torture you with these. You gotta hear these. I’m gonna tell you something, folks, when it comes to global warming and the hoax and the fixes for this hoax, the solution, we do not have one of the three presidential candidates who differs from each other. We are cooked. Our goose is cooked on this. It doesn’t matter who you vote for, for president, we’re going to get a liberal Democrat approach to fixing something that doesn’t exist. It’s going to add up to more taxes. It’s going to add up to the destruction of wealth. It’s going to infuriate people. When you find out how much this is going to cost you, and after it has cost you what it costs you, when you then learn that it’s not going to make a bit of difference in whatever climate changes, if any, are happening, you are going to be fit to be tied, just as they are now in the UK.

They are revolting against liberals over there because they’ve had all these carbon tax increases, all these other various tax increases to stop global warming, and yet the news every day brings news of more destruction. So all these new taxes these people are paying are not mattering a hill of beans, and they are revolting and they are throwing the bums out. In the UK I really don’t know if it’s enough, if it’s accurate to say that the population there is fed up with liberals. I think they’re fed up with the status quo, and they did install the opposition, the Tories, which are the conservatives, the new mayor and a number of seats in parliament.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Okay, now, Senator McCain was out in Oregon yesterday standing next to a Democrat governor, Ted Kulongoski, I’m not sure how he pronounces it. We have audio sound bites, ladies and gentlemen, and I have to say that some of this sounds like — we have a montage here — Senator McCain sounding more like he’s trying to position himself as a vice presidential candidate for Obama rather than as a Republican presidential candidate.

MCCAIN: We know that greenhouse gases are heavily implicated as a cause of climate change.

RUSH: We don’t know that.

MCCAIN: And we know that among all greenhouse gases, the worst by far is the carbon dioxide that results from fossil fuel combustion.

RUSH: We don’t know this.

MCCAIN: In the year 2012, we will seek a return to 2005 levels of emission. By 2020, a return to 1990 levels, and so on until we have achieved at least a reduction of 60% below 1990 levels by the year 2050.

RUSH: None of that has been proved, none of it, none of it, ladies and gentlemen. Among all greenhouse gases, the worst by far is the carbon dioxide that results from fossil fuel combustion? That’s no different than the carbon dioxide we exhale. We know that greenhouse gases are heavily implicated as a cause of climate change? Implicated? May be implicated, may be suspected, but proven? No. And they’ve been sounding this alarm for over 20 years. It hasn’t gotten warmer in the last eight or maybe ten, and even now it’s predicted that temperatures are going to cool through 2012 because of La Nina and other variables such as ocean currents in the Atlantic. Now, this is the portion of the speech where Senator McCain wants to let the free market handle things.

MCCAIN: For all of the last century the profit motive basically led in one direction, toward machines, methods and industries that used oil and gas. Enormous good came from that industrial growth and we are all the beneficiaries of the national prosperity it built. But there were costs that we weren’t counting and often hardly noticed. And these terrible costs have added up. Now in the atmosphere, in the oceans, and all across the natural world there are no longer sustainable or defensible or tenable.

RUSH: What is he doing?

MCCAIN: What better way to correct past errors than to turn the creative energies of the free market in the other direction. Under the cap-and-trade system, this can happen. In all its power the profit motive will suddenly begin to shift and point the other way toward cleaner fuels, wiser ways, and a healthier planet.

RUSH: Oh, man, ladies and gentlemen, I’m really conflicted here. I have not faced this situation before. I have not faced a situation where a major Republican presidential candidate sounds just like a liberal Democrat and I know of no other thing to do here than to tell you the truth about this. This is embarrassing, and it is frightening. The Wall Street Journal today has a piece about this very cap and trade thing. Let me read you two paragraphs from the Journal, and I think this will put this in perspective.

‘So a chemical manufacturer, say, would pay an industry not covered by the program — most notably, agriculture — to reduce its emissions. Or it could pay a coal plant in China for plucking low-hanging efficiency fruit, like installing smokestack scrubbers. In other words, US consumers would be paying higher prices for energy in return for making Chinese industries more efficient and competitive. Europe is in the midst of that experience now under the Kyoto Protocol, and most of its reductions so far have been illusory. The compliance bookkeeping for this new ‘market’ is vastly complex, and a McCain Administration would create a public-private ‘Climate Change Credit Corporation’ to oversee it all. This new regulatory body is likely to morph over time into an ‘Energy Fed,’ similar to the one Warner-Lieberman would create. Such an agency would set the price of energy indirectly by fiddling with carbon levies, which will undoubtedly lead to economy-wide distortions.’

Let me translate this for you, explain the program. Let’s say you have a coal-fired power plant or some industry somewhere, and the federal government, some arbitrary federal agency is going to announce, is going to proclaim what its permissible carbon emissions are, on a yearly basis, daily basis, I don’t know how they’re going to do it, monthly, probably yearly. If they exceed those emissions, then they will be taxed, they will be punished. However, what they can do is they can go out and they can find another industry that is not using up all of its allowed carbon emissions and buy them, and thereby stay legal in the eyes of friendly Big Government. In either case, whether the original business exceeds its emissions — in both cases it exceeds its emissions, it’s going to pay somebody for it. It’s either going to pay itself or it’s going to pay somebody else. In either case, it’s going to raise prices, and these prices are not just going to be absorbed. They are going to be passed on, as always, to the end of the line, which is the user, the consumer. And you will have nothing to say about these carbon emissions that these industries are engaging in, but you are going to end up paying for it, all of us are. Under a false premise!

Under a false premise that this is going to refuse, revert, whatever climate change is supposedly happening out there. And none of this has been established. Now, here’s where it really gets bad. Roy Spencer, our official climatologist here at the EIB Network, wrote a piece at National Review Online today. He says this: ‘What worries me is the widespread misperception that we can do anything substantial about carbon emissions without seriously compromising economic growth. To be sure, forcing a reduction in CO2 emissions will help spur investment in new energy technologies. But so does a price tag of $126 for a barrel of oil. Finding a replacement for carbon-based energy will require a huge investment of wealth, and destroying wealth is not a very good first step toward that goal. When the public finds out how much any legislation that punishes energy use is going to cost them–‘ and that really cuts it to the nub. We are going to penalize people for energy use, and, at the end of the line, you pay for it.

‘When the public finds out how much any legislation that punishes energy use is going to cost them, with no guarantee that anything we do will have a measurable impact on future climate, there will be a revolt just like the one now materializing in the UK and the EU. At some point, as they are faced with the stark reality that mankind’s requirement for an abundant source of energy cannot simply be legislated out of existence, the public will begin asking, ‘Just how sure are we that humans are causing global warming?’ And this is where the science establishment has, in my view, betrayed the public’s trust. … But McCain has made it clear that the science really does not matter anyway because, even if humans are not to blame for global warming, stopping carbon-dioxide emissions is the right thing to do. And if we had another choice for most of our energy needs, I might be willing to accept such a claim as harmless enough.

‘But carbon dioxide is necessary for life on earth, and I have a difficult time calling something so fundamentally important a ‘pollutant.’ Maybe the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is higher now than it has been in hundreds of thousands of years. So what? I am increasingly convinced that its influence on climate pales in comparison to the influence that natural climate events like El Nino and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation have on regional climate. Indeed, most of the warming we’ve seen in the last century might well be due to these natural modes of climate variability alone. The trouble is that no one has been funded by the government to investigate such a possibility, and the mandate for the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is to address manmade climate change — not natural climate change. So, here we are with bad science ready to support bad policy,’ leading to big increases in the cost of energy, which is going to lead to the production of less.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Now back to McCain. I don’t know. You people at the GOP and the RNC, do you have any idea what you’ve done here? Do you have the slightest idea what you’ve done here? Here’s McCain taking his swipe at Bush yesterday.

MCCAIN: I will not shirk the mantle of leadership that the United States bears. I will not permit eight long years to pass without serious action on serious challenges.

RUSH: I gotta tell you something. I’ve never heard him so fired up. He’s more fired up about this than he’s fired up about anything I’ve heard him speak about. He’s actually got some energy in this, and it sounds like this is something he actually cares about. He takes that swipe at Bush, we’re not going to shirk our responsibility for eight years anymore, so he’s done it all, in one package here. He’s embraced hard-core liberalism, including their disgust and dislike for George W. Bush. So he’s made the break clean here, and he has made it possible so that there’s no difference between himself and Obama or Hillary or anybody else on the left, in terms of what to do about global warming. The New York Times is all excited about this, folks. Headline today, story by Elisabeth Bumiller and John Broder: ‘McCain Differs with Bush on Climate Change.’ The New York Times is all excited because the three candidates left all embrace the hoax.

‘McCain’s break with the Bush administration means that the three main presidential candidates have embraced swifter action to fight global warming.’ The reason the Times is excited is because what that really means is they have embraced swifter action to raise taxes and grow government and limit individual freedom. They quote McCain from his speech yesterday: ”Instead of idly debating the precise extent of global warming, or the precise timeline of global warming, we need to deal with the central facts of rising temperatures, rising waters, and all the endless troubles that global warming will bring,’ he said at a Vestas wind turbine manufacturing plant in Oregon, where the environment is a central issue for voters. ‘We stand warned by serious and credible scientists across the world that time is short and the dangers are great.” I go back and parse this quote. Instead of idly debating the precise extent of global warming — now, wait a second. Isn’t that somewhat important? Isn’t the precise extent of global warming somewhat crucial here when massive new policy changes that restrict liberty, grow government and raise taxes are concerned? Instead of idly debating the precise timeline of global warming — doesn’t that kind of matter?

You know why he’s saying ‘let’s not debate the precise extent,’ is because nobody can tell him, and nobody can tell you, nobody can tell anybody when all of this destruction is going to happen. They cannot prove it! And so of course we cast that aside. (doing McCain impression) ‘That’s right, Limbaugh, we’re not. We’re not going to waste time on that because I got taxes to raise.’ We need to deal with the central facts of rising temperatures. You know, I’m very proud of my brain, folks, I want to be very honest, I’m very proud of my brain and I’m proud and honest with you, the time I spent learning things, becoming educated and informed. But I’ll be damned. It offends me that a man running for the president of the United States knows 10% of what I know about this. It offends me. In the case of Obama and Hillary, they know what their spewing is a bunch of BS. They know they’re spouting lies. I don’t know what McCain is doing here, but if he honestly believes this, then it is offensive. I’m not supposed to be smarter than the guy running for president, neither are you. We’re not supposed to be able to know as much as those people do about things. We don’t have access to intelligence reports, all kinds of things that they do. They get to talk to far many more people than we do. And the people they’re talking to are just as politicized and agenda-oriented as they happen to be.

But this is pure common sense. It can’t be proved. Temperatures are not rising. Water levels, what is it, rising temperatures, rising waters? Waters are not rising! They are not rising! Antarctica ice is not melting! We had the story last week, everybody shocked and stunned, it isn’t happening. All the endless troubles that global warming will bring? Who’s to say? Who’s to say that right now, right here, right now is the ideal temperature for this planet? What kind of vanity do we have, the human beings who are but mere specks of indistinguishable dust, compared to the life span of this planet, who the hell do we think we are to say that right now, right here, when we are alive, this is what’s ideal? Do you remember the Vikings? The Vikings came and they gave us Minnesota. Well, they gave us the people of Minnesota. Do you realize they would not have been able to make that trip in today’s climate? You know why? Because it’s too cold. It is too cold today. The Atlantic Ocean is too rough. They couldn’t make it today. They came when Greenland was green and had thriving civilizations, because it was warmer then than it is now.

The Vikings could not make it across the Atlantic in the same ships that they did back then today because it’s too cold, much colder than what it was when they made it. The endless troubles? Tell that to the people that lived in Greenland and thrived, that the earth, when warmer than it is today. And tell them now when we’re finding relics of their civilization under ice, tell ’em that it’s better today. Who are we to assume that this is ideal? I would submit to you that the climate on this planet changes every day, that it’s not the same from one day to the next. Well, one thing I do know, I’m 57 years old, and every winter that I’ve been alive, it’s been cold. And every spring when I’ve been alive, the leaves on the trees and the sprouts in the bushes and so forth grew. And ever since I’ve been alive, every summer I have sweated myself silly outside in high humidity and high temperatures. Every fall, for 57 years, I’ve seen leaves fall off the trees after turning brown. And every winter I have seen snowstorms and ice storms, and I have seen it hotter in the past than it is today. I’ve seen it colder in the past than it is today. I’ve looked at weather records, and I’ve seen record cold in 1921 and record heat in 1908. I’ve seen stronger hurricanes, records of stronger hurricanes and tornadoes 50 years ago than we see today. It is embarrassing, it’s frustrating as it can be that people running for the presidency of the United States are less informed than I am and most of you on something that is crucial.

*BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Go back to this McCain quote in the New York Times. ‘Instead of idly debating the precise –‘ he doesn’t even want to debate this. You know, this is typical of the global warming crowd: No, there’s no debate, we don’t have time to debate. They refuse to debate. Algore will not debate. He won’t debate, because he can’t. And McCain doesn’t want to debate now, and of course Obama doesn’t want to debate. This is Obamaesque. Obama says if you nitpick anything, if you disagree with anything about what he says or does, why, it’s a distraction. McCain is essentially saying the same thing here. And then at the end of the story: ‘McCain’s proposal in his prepared remarks to impose tariffs on industrializing countries like China and India is also made in the Lieberman-Warner bill and reflects concerns by both industry and labor in the United States and elsewhere in the industrialized world. It would mandate punitive duties on products from any country that did not participate in a global carbon-reduction system, to balance the lower cost of producing goods using dirty energy sources.’

Well, I guess this is a market-based feature? This is a free market based feature where you’re going to demand that companies around the world do all this? Do you think the ChiComs are going to sit still for this? Punitive duties on products from any country that didn’t participate, like China and India. Who do we think we are? We might have been able to get away with this kind of stuff years ago, but after so many years of liberal dominance, of running around like we’re embarrassed of ourselves, they’re just going to laugh at us because we don’t have the guts to back up any of this stuff. We’re too interested in what the ChiComs think of us. The minute they object, McCain or somebody, ‘Oh, oh, oh, oh, okay, sorry, didn’t mean to offend you. We’ll go back to the drawing board.’ Same thing with India. Same with anybody. We’re going to dictate to these — I thought we couldn’t do that — oh, I know, we’re going to restore our reputation in the world. That’s right. We’re going to restore our reputation in the world by doing everything the socialist liberal countries in the world are doing, that’s how we’re going to do it, I see now.

We’re going to get our reputation restored by becoming just like those little pansy countries who couldn’t defend themselves if their lives depended on it. But we’re going to become like them, that’s how we’re going to get our respect back, and the Republican Party is behind this effort. Sorry to pound on the desk. I know it irritates some of you people, but the more I think about this, the more outraged and angry I become, all on the basis of no science, none whatsoever. By the way, I’m getting — and I expected this — I’m getting e-mails, not from subscribers, but from the public e-mail address, ElRushbo@eibnet.com, from the libs, ‘What is this, you hypocrite, recommending this new Tahoe from GM that’s a hybrid. What do you mean, Limbaugh? You’re no different than McCain. You’re out there telling people don’t buy hybrids, have nothing to do with global warming and so forth.’ I knew this was going to happen. This is an SUV, an SUV hybrid, a hog hybrid, fine and dandy with me. We’ve got one here. Dawn’s been driving it around. Snerdley’s been driving it around. Dawn loves this thing because it’s got this little gauge in it that tells you when you’re on hybrid, when you’re on a battery and when you’re on gasoline, and the guy that drove it down here for us from Orlando, when he delivered it, the GM guy, ‘Oh, this is cool, only a quarter tank of gas to Orlando,’ and it’s a huge SUV, it’s a Tahoe.

It is a General Motors product, and it says hybrid right along the side, Snerdley’s been driving it, fine car. There’s nothing chintzy about it. There’s nothing white wine and Brie about this thing. This is a car. (laughing) Dawn came in yesterday, said it’s a man magnet. She’s been driving it around to the malls and so forth, and these guys and so forth — and the fact that it’s an SUV hybrid, that’s cool, folks. We’re not asking people to drive around these little matchbox things that are hybrids. This is a car. In fact, Snerdley said, ‘Even when you turn the thing off you can hear it clicking. Something’s going on in there.’ I said, ‘Ah, it’s just the car reporting in its usage to Algore.’ But you really ought to go check this thing out. I knew people were going to give me grief about this. I knew it. But I was prepared. I’ve met with Bob Lutz. In fact, I saw the mock-up of this car last spring when I was there. And Bob Lutz explained to me, ‘Look, this is what customers want, and we’re in the business of giving our customers what they want, so we decided we would go SUV hybrid in the Tahoe.’ And from our experience so far, it does use a lot less gasoline, and it gets around at the same speeds, and it attracts men just as much as any other car does, if you’re a woman driving this thing. Go to GM.com\explore, check it out, the Chevy Tahoe hybrid. It is a mean machine!

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