(playing I Started a Joke song)
That makes me chuckle. ‘I showed them my slides.’ So we had this new prime minister elected in Australia, Kevin Rudd, and one of the first things he did, said, (paraphrasing) ‘We’re going to sign on to Kyoto. This global warming is a problem and we’re going to sign up.’ Last night, Kevin Rudd, prime minister of Australia, ‘did an about-face on deep cuts to greenhouse gas emissions, days after Australia’s delegation backed the plan at the climate talks in Bali. A government representative at the talks this week said Australia backed a 25-40 percent cut on 1990 emission levels by 2020. But after warnings it would lead to huge rises in electricity prices, Mr. Rudd said the Government would not support the target.’ In other words, this socialist, which is what he is, said, (paraphrasing) ‘I am not going to sign on to something that’s going to destroy my economy. It’s just that simple.’ So they’re out.
In one of the most absurd stories on global warming I’ve ever seen, and that’s saying something because most of them are: ‘Australian scientists are trying to give kangaroo-style stomachs to cattle and sheep in a bid to cut the emission of greenhouse gases blamed for global warming,’ by virtue of the expelling of gas. Kangaroo gas expelations do not contain methane, and as such, they are considered eco-friendly. You could say eco-friendly kangaroo farts, ladies and gentlemen, could help global warming, according to scientists. Thanks to special bacteria in their stomachs, kangaroo flatulence contains no methane, and scientists want to transfer that bacteria to cattle and sheep who emit large quantities of the harmful gas. When I see stories like this, I know it will never happen, I just have this fantasy that one of these days God’s going to show up in a totally believable way and tell these people, ‘Stop messing around with what I did here. Who the hell do you think you are, messing around with my kangaroos and my cattle and my sheep? Keep your hands off of them.’
If this keeps up, God’s going to end this planet, folks. It’s got to be an embarrassment for him up there to look down and see what’s going on here, despite the efforts of some to talk sanity into this. ‘Athol Klieve, a senior research scientist with the Queensland state government, said, ‘Fourteen percent of emissions from all sources in Australia is from enteric methane from cattle and sheep.’ I don’t even know what to say. It’s just insane. These people are literally insane. Now, I mentioned earlier in the program one of the best op-eds I have ever read about what’s going on in Bali, and what the environmental movement is all about in the first place, appears today in the Financial Post in Canada. It’s by Peter Foster. Let me read you just some excerpts.
‘The fate of the Earth hangs in the balance in Bali, but the issue is not whether humanity will succumb to a ‘climate crisis,’ or how the international community might craft a successor to the tattered Kyoto Accord. (Let’s call it KyoTwo.) The real theme of this United Nations gabfest — like that of its 12 predecessors, and of the hundreds, if not thousands, of related meetings — is whether globalization and trade liberalization will be allowed to continue, with a corresponding increase in wealth, health and welfare, or whether the authoritarian enemies of freedom (who rarely if ever recognize themselves as such) will succeed in using environmental hysteria to undermine capitalism and increase their Majesterium. Any successor to Kyoto will be rooted in hobbling rich economies, increasing the poor world’s resentment, unleashing environmental trade warfare, and blanketing the globe with rules and regulations that benefit only rulers and regulators. Bali is not about climate; it symbolizes the continued assault on freedom by those who seek — or pander to — political power under the guise of concern for humanity.’ Bali is not about climate; it symbolizes the continued assault on freedom by those who seek political power under the guise of concern for humanity.
‘Just at the point where Marxism was being consigned to the dustbin of history, the more or less concealed power lust that had fed it found a new cause in the environment.’ I just loved reading that because I told you, I warned people many moons ago that the environmental movement was just the new home of communism once the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union ceased to exist. ‘Just at the point where Marxism was being consigned to the dustbin of history, the more or less concealed power lust that had fed it found a new cause in the environment. The fact that the UN’s 1992 Rio conference followed hard on the collapse of the Soviet Union represented almost the passing of a poisoned baton.’ Get this next one, folks, because this is brilliant writing: ‘Capitalism had once been the enemy because it was alleged to make people poor. Now it was the enemy because of the alleged side effects of making them rich. The emissions of carbon-based industrial society would lead to a climate in turmoil: We would be beset by Biblical plagues of floods, droughts and monster hurricanes.
‘This simplistic narrative depended on carbon dioxide being the main driver of climate. Scientists who pointed that there were likely other more important factors, that climate science was in its infancy and that Earth’s climate had varied dramatically long before the invention of the steam, internal combustion or jet engine, were not scientifically refuted; they were howled down as ‘deniers’ or industry shills. The environmental left, centered in the UN, has achieved stunning success in building and pushing the climate change/sustain-ability bandwagon. They have done this first by funding, then hijacking, scientific research via the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. They have also promoted and allowed access to an ever-proliferating group of activist NGOs (Bali, significantly, is overrun by the non-elected ‘representatives’ of scores of radical organizations, who have in turn forced similar numbers of industry representatives to follow them). NGOs have also had great success in pushing their alarmist message through a sympathetic media and thus — along with more direct lobbying — in achieving grossly disproportionate influence with democratic politicians.’
And the last excerpt I want to read here is this: ‘But that criticism misses the real significance of Kyoto and KyoTwo. They are not about effectively addressing specific problems, they are about exploiting ignorance about climate science, and continuing to demonize capitalism, in order to make ecocrats feel good, make others feel bad, pad incomes, and expand travel schedules.’ This is so on the money. I couldn’t have written this better, and that makes me jealous. They are not about effectively addressing specific problems. They are about exploiting ignorance. As I said yesterday, the most expensive commodity in this country is ignorance. We pay more for ignorance than anybody could dare calculate. They are exploiting that ignorance about climate science. They demonize capitalism. ‘Democratic governments have no choice but to cater to the ignorance/alarm/hypocrisy engendered in their electorates. This catering in turn reflects greater or lesser degrees of cynicism, skepticism, or moralistic bloviation.’
Now, what is meant by that is, here we’re a democracy, and people run for office and they get elected. This onslaught of hoax that is global warming, which thrives on the ignorance the average American has about the climate and climate science, forces Democratic governments to kowtow to it. The people want it, the people think we’re destroying the planet, we’ve gotta put kangaroo guts inside sheep and whatever, then their hands are tied, theoretically. Leadership, of course, could reverse this. But that’s basically what the passage means when he says Democrat governments have no choice but to cater to the ignorance if it becomes a majority. That is why ignorance is the most expensive commodity in this country. We will link to this piece at RushLimbaugh.com later this afternoon. One other thing, a group of reporters representing the conservative newspaper Environment and Climate News were refused press credentials to attend the climate meeting in Bali. The paper’s publisher, the Heartland Institute, issued a statement saying that (paraphrasing), ‘You guys are skeptics. We’re not letting you in here.’ Skeptics not permitted, at a UN conference on climate in Bali.