California has a huge state debt, and Washington has a huge national debt. But that does not discourage either Gov. Jerry Brown or President Barack Obama from wanting to launch a very costly high-speed rail system.

Most of us might be a little skittish about spending money if we were teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. But the beauty of politics is that it is all other people’s money, including among those other people generations yet unborn.

The high-speed rail system proposed for California has been envisioned as a model for similar systems elsewhere in the United States. A recent story in the San Francisco Chronicle used the high-speed rail system in Spain as an analogy for California.

Spain is about the same size as California and has a similar population density – and population density is the key to the economic viability of mass transportation, from subways to high-speed rail.

It so happens that I have ridden on Spain’s high-speed rail system. It was very nice, especially since I did not have to pay the full costs, which were subsidized by the Spanish taxpayers.

While the Spanish government has been subsidizing the passengers on its high-speed rail system, the European Union has been subsidizing the Spanish government. Someone once said that government is the illusion that we can all live off somebody else. Spain’s high-speed rail system is not even covering its operating costs, never mind the enormous costs of setting up the system in the first place. One reason is that half the seats are empty in the high-speed trains in Spain.

That is what happens when you don’t have the population density required for passengers to cover the operating costs. You would need the hordes of Genghis Khan riding the high-speed rail system to cover the additional costs of the rails and the trains.

An economics professor at the University of Barcelona says that Spain “has not recovered one single euro from the infrastructure investment.”

The most famous high-speed rail system is that in Japan, one of the most densely populated countries in the world. The “bullet train” between Tokyo and Osaka has 130 million riders a year. Tokyo alone has more than three times the population of San Francisco and Los Angeles put together.

In California, an element of farce has been added to the impending economic tragedy, if the envisioned high-speed rail system actually materializes.

The first leg of the system is planned to run between Fresno and Bakersfield. If those names don’t ring a bell with you, there is a reason. They are modest-sized communities out in the agricultural San Joaquin Valley, well removed from San Francisco or Los Angeles.

You can bet the rent money that high-speed rail traffic between Fresno and Bakersfield will never come within shouting distance of covering the operating costs. Some people have analogized putting such a rail line between these two towns to the infamous “bridge to nowhere” in Alaska.

Why are they doing it? Because they can.

If they began this project where they want it to go – between San Francisco and Los Angeles – they would run into so much opposition from the environmentalists, and from local politicians influenced by the environmentalists, that the delays could take the high-speed rail advocates beyond the time limit for using the federal subsidy money. But the green fanatics have not yet taken over politically out in the San Joaquin Valley.

The only reason for even thinking about building a high-speed rail line between Fresno and Bakersfield is just to get the project under way with federal money, making it politically more difficult to stop the larger project for a similar rail line between San Francisco and Los Angeles.

In other words, they are going to start wasting money out in the valley, so that they will be able to waste more money later on, along the coast. This may not make any sense economically, but it can make sense politically for Jerry Brown and Barack Obama.

An old song ended, “You’ve been running around in circles, getting nowhere – getting nowhere very fast.” On high-speed rail.

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Hoover Dam has become something of a liberal icon these days. President Obama points to it as an example of the sort of federally funded projects that once “unleashed all the potential in this country” — potential that his next round of stimulus will unleash again. MSNBC commentator Rachel Maddow has pointed to the 726-foot-high, 660-foot-wide dam as proof that some projects are just too big for private enterprise. “You can’t be the guy that built this,” she tells the TV screen. Only government can, is the implication.

Well, that would come as a surprise to the guy who did build it – or, rather, the guys who did, with their private companies. In the five-year process they discovered, even back then, that the biggest obstacle they faced in Black Canyon wasn’t nature or the Great Depression, but New Deal Washington.

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The politics of economic obstruction

Occupy Oakland strike promoter Boots Riley, who penned “5 million ways to kill a CEO,” celebrates the attack on the World Trade Center

My new column spotlights the Occupiers’ “general strike” action scheduled for today — and climaxing tonight in an anticipated shutdown of the Port of Oakland (Calif.). Many of the same old agitators I’ve covered over the past decade are behind the latest manufactured chaos. I refresh your memories below of the Bay Area Left’s violent Oakland port shutdown in 2003 and the ignominious Oakland agitator and strike leader Boots Riley, and also connect the dots between Riley, Oakland’s Van Jones, Occupy Oakland, and the violent ILWU thugs and their supporters who kicked off the Day of Rage warm-up show in Longview, Washington in September.

Related reading: Here’s the scathing open letter from Oakland’s police union blasting the quivering Democrat mayor Jean Quan. She’s a UC Berkeley-bred moonbat now more interested in restoring her prog credentials than in cleaning up her dysfunctional city and standing up for law-abiding businesses and taxpayers. The organizers have distributed their chants for the day, including:

“Strike, Occupy, Shut it Down! Oakland is the People’s Town”
“Every Hour, Every Day! The occupation is here to stay!”
“Occupy Everything! Liberate Oakland”
“Politicians & Bankers, Liars & Thieves, We’re taking it back! We’re not saying please!”
“No more cops, we don’t need ‘em! All we want is total freedom”
“Shut Down OPD! Not the Public Library!”
“Let’s Go Oakland! Let’s Go!” clap clap

Perhaps they’ll throw some of Boots Riley’s violent rap lyrics into the mix, too.

The mob enablers in Oakland’s city government — and the voters who keep putting these stooges in office — have only themselves to blame for disgracing their basket-case city. Shame.

***

Occupy Oakland’s dangerous “strike” follies
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2011

The next stage of the Aimless Occupation of America is upon us: On Wednesday, rabble-rousers in the San Francisco Bay Area will walk off jobs they don’t have and encourage everyone else around the country to abandon work to protest high unemployment.

The Occupiers are calling their organized day of inaction a “Mass Day of Action.” The Carpenters Local 713, the Service Employees International Union, the United Auto Workers, and the Industrial Workers of the World have all endorsed the “general strike.” Longshore workers and their union agitators are rooting for the shutdown of the Port of Oakland. Teachers’ unions will push students and educators to play hooky. Their posters urge: “No Work. No School. Occupy Everywhere.”

A city suffering from chronic poverty, out-of-control crime, a $76 million budget deficit, and a 15 percent unemployment rate (nearly 50 percent for Oakland’s youth) can hardly afford such social justice follies. But a pushover Democratic mayor and an overwhelmed police force have left what’s left of gainfully employed Oakland taxpayers at the mercy of professional freeloaders and anti-capitalism saboteurs.

Instead of unequivocally condemning efforts to paralyze downtown commerce, Oakland city officials have all expressed sympathy for the protesters. For a brief moment, the city council president fretted meekly about the city’s image after a violent clash between Camp Chaos inhabitants and law enforcement officers last week. Nevertheless, city leaders — or rather, city enablers — have informed public employees they can use vacation or other paid time to ditch their offices and raise their fists in solidarity with the Occupiers.

Instead of targeting local bank branch managers and private-sector entrepreneurs, the protesters should be camping out at government offices asking where all the tens of millions in federal Obama stimulus funding for Oakland went over the past two years – including $40 million from the Department of Health and Human Services, nearly $30 million from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, $26 million from the Department of Justice, $24 million from the Transportation Department, $15 million from the Department of Education, and $5.3 million from the Environmental Protection Agency.

One local analysis found last year that the Oakland Housing Authority squandered nearly $11 million in federal project renovation and clean-up stimulus grants to create a measly 10.7 jobs.

It would all be an amusing object lesson on the impotence of the welfare state, if not for the looming shadow of violence that hangs like stubborn Bay Area fog over the movement. In 2003, a like-minded mob of police-provoking anarchists, anti-war organizers, and progressive activists descended on the Port of Oakland to coordinate a “Day of Action.” They hurled concrete, wood, and iron bolts at cops while attempting to block military shipments to soldiers in wartime – then whined about police brutality.

Fast-forward eight years. This week’s “Day of Action” is spearheaded by the likes of Oakland rapper Boots Riley, a militant, self-declared “communist” who penned “5 million ways to kill a CEO” (“Toss a dollar in the river and when he jump in/If you find he can swim, put lead boots on him and do it again”) and “Lazy Muthaf**kas” (“You ain’t never learned to drive or tie your shoe/I got my ear to the street and my eye on you/… You’re a lazy ********** ! Lazy **********!). After the 9/11 attacks, I reported on Riley’s appalling album cover depicting him partying in front of a doctored image of the World Trade Center being blown up.

Like fellow Occupier, 9/11 conspiracy theorist, and Oakland community organizer Van Jones, Boots Riley has long stoked anti-police grievances. In “Pork and Beef,” he rapped: “If you got beef with c-o-p’s/Throw a Molotov at the p-i-g’s.”

Add to this toxic mix the thugs of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union. The planned march on Oakland’s port is being billed as an expression of “solidarity with longshore workers in their struggle” against grain importer EGT. In Longview, Washington, wildcat union workers cut train brake lines, smashed windows, dumped grain, and took hostages earlier this fall to protest the company’s decision to employ not non-union workers, but workers from a competing shop. A federal judge fined the ILWU $250,000 after it defied a court restraining order; even Obama’s National Labor Relations Board was forced to issue a complaint against the union’s “violent and aggressive” actions.

The unapologetic local union president vowed: “It’s going to get worse before it gets better.”

Mark those words.

***

UPDATE: Men’s Wearhouse = moonbats.

Thousands “strike”…

Thousands of Wall Street protesters marched in the streets of Oakland on Wednesday as they geared up with labor unions to picket banks, take over foreclosed homes and vacant buildings and disrupt operations at the nation’s fifth-busiest port.

Demonstrators as well as city and business leaders expressed optimism that the widely anticipated “general strike” would be a peaceful event for a city that became a rallying point last week after an Iraq War veteran was injured in clashes between protesters and police.

Embattled Oakland Mayor Jean Quan, who has been criticized for her handling of the protests, said in a statement that she supported the goals of the protest movement that began in New York City a month ago and spread to dozens of cities across the country.

…Nurse, teacher and other worker unions are taking part in the protests, and Oakland is letting city workers use vacation or other paid time to take part in the general strike. About 5 percent of city workers took the day off Wednesday, according to City Administrator Deanna Santana.

About 360 Oakland teachers didn’t show up for work, or roughly 18 percent of the district’s 2,000 teachers, said Oakland Unified School District spokesman Troy Flint. The district has been able to get substitute teachers for most classrooms, and where that wasn’t possible children were sent to other classrooms, he said.

The day’s events in Oakland began with a rally outside City Hall that by midmorning drew more than 1,000 people who were spilling into the streets and disrupting the downtown commute.

About three dozen adults with toddlers and school-age children formed a “children’s brigade, gathering at Oakland Public Library for a stroller march to the protest in downtown Oakland. Demonstrators handed out signs written as if in a children’s crayon that read “Generation 99% Occupying Our Future,” which the marchers attached to their baby backpacks and strollers.

The protests were expected to culminate with a march to the Port of Oakland, where organizers said the goal would be to stop work there for the 7 p.m. shift. Organizers say they want to halt “the flow of capital” at the port.

Stay tuned.

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In a Friday bad-news dump that was a whopper even by its own standards, the Obama administration added to the announcement of a near-record annual deficit and an escalation of undeclared war in Uganda the news that the CLASS Act, an ill-conceived adjunct of the Affordable Care Act, is no more. The upshot is this: Obamacare just got a whole lot more expensive than advertised, and there is reason to believe that its Democratic architects have long known this would happen.

The Community Living Assistance Services and Support Act was the brainchild of the late senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, and it was supposed to be a kind of Social Security that provided long-term care for the elderly. It figured heavily into the Democrats’ dubious accounting of the cost of the Affordable Care Act, and at the time of passage was expected to account for $70 billion out of a total $143 billion in “deficit reduction” claimed in the bill.

Keep reading this post . . .

**Written by Doug Powers

Last month Democrat Rep. Ed Markey from Massachusetts touted a wonderful side-effect of government regulations: more jobs. The EPA agrees and is trying to run with it more aggressively than ever.

From the Daily Caller:

The Environmental Protection Agency has said new greenhouse gas regulations, as proposed, may be “absurd” in application and “impossible to administer” by its self-imposed 2016 deadline. But the agency is still asking for taxpayers to shoulder the burden of up to 230,000 new bureaucrats — at a cost of $21 billion — to attempt to implement the rules.
…
The EPA is asking taxpayers to fund up to 230,000 new government workers to process all the extra paperwork, at an estimated cost of $21 billion. That cost does not include the economic impact of the regulations themselves.

“Hiring the 230,000 full-time employees necessary to produce the 1.4 billion work hours required to address the actual increase in permitting functions would result in an increase in Title V administration costs of $21 billion per year,” the EPA wrote in the court brief.

That 230,000 number will probably become 345,000 as soon as somebody realizes that an additional regulator position will need to be added in order to regulate every two new regulators hired. After all, what’s the point of an unregulated regulator?

The EPA regards itself as a job creator, but not without the responsible creation of offsets. Even though these proposed new regulatory jobs may seem to take away from the other two areas the administration claims creates jobs — food stamps and unemployment checks — they wouldn’t. Any current White House economist worth his or her salt would tell you that in the Keynesian circle of economic life, these regs would create good paying government jobs, but the regulations themselves would wreak havoc on the private sector. If the number of people forced to go on economy-boosting food stamps and unemployment checks because of the regs is the same as those who got jobs enforcing the regs, symmetry in the delicate balance required for a healthy economy (according to numerous DC Democrats) would be preserved. And if it wasn’t, our hypothetical White House economist would just go back to work at the university.

Update: Herman Cain flashback from the GOP debate in Orlando: “Scrap the EPA and start over.”

Agreed.

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

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‘This Congress, they are accustomed to doing nothing, and they’re comfortable with doing nothing, and they keep on doing nothing,” President Obama whined at a September 15 Democratic National Committee gathering in a private Washington residence.

Now that his “Blame Bush” hobby horse finally has retired to the glue factory, Obama resorts to pinning America’s woes on the “Do-Nothing Congress.” If only these parliamentarians would stop taking endless lunches, sipping cocktails at Capitol Hill happy hours, and napping at their desks, America might have some chance of returning to normal.

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Obama’s presidency lurches from fad to fad — from gays in the

military to “green jobs” to the “Buffett rule.” Hyped as a profound
presidency, it has turned out to be an embarrassingly frivolous
one. Sober historians of the future, not cowed by political
correctness, will no doubt look back and say that Obama fiddled
while America burned, indulging his sophomoric socialism,
environmentalism, and social engineering at a time of terrorism and
economic crisis.

The weighty and thoughtful orator of Democratic mythology
looks more like a glib used car salesman, and in his case most of
the used cars are electric. It is fitting that his hawking of cheap
environmentalist propaganda would lead him into the first major
scandal of his presidency. The Solyndra debacle is exactly what one
would expect from an administration determined to push the politics
of environmentalist conjecture at the expense of the American
taxpayer and economy.

Out of Obama’s implausible ideological insistence that
“green jobs” would bolster the economy, and the political need to
prove that claim, came a hasty loan to a dubious solar panel maker
that promised to create them. Obama leaves the American taxpayer
with a bill of over half a billion dollars for this environmental
lark, and it is only the most recent bill. His “green jobs” loan
guarantee program has been a bust, costing taxpayers tens of
billions for the creation of a pitifully small number of
jobs.

The Solyndra scandal stands as a symbol of the
administration’s reckless and unserious approach to the economy,
undermining job creators while propping up job destroyers. Needing
to divert people’s attention from the greed and irresponsibility on
display in the scandal, Obama now turns back to raw class warfare,
hoping to egg the poor and middle class into an idle hatred of the
rich. The great unifier seeks to set secretary against
boss.

Obama says his gimmicky “Buffett rule” is not class
warfare but simple math. Maybe he means the “new math” taught in
public schools. Senator Charles Schumer of New York must not have
received the “simple math” talking point; he admits openly that
Obama’s proposal is timed to capitalize on potential class
resentments in a bad economy. “When everybody went up, it was a lot
harder to make this argument,” he told the press. “I think the time
is ripe again. And I think the president sensed that.”

Obama’s half-baked Marxist musings with Joe the Plumber
remain his deepest thoughts on the purpose of taxation. He still
feels entitled to seize wealth and “spread” it around. When he says
that the rich aren’t paying their “fair share,” all he is saying is
that their money belongs to the government automatically for
redistribution. But that’s just theft masquerading as taxation. The
true principle of taxation is not the redistribution of wealth but
the financing of legitimate government activity, and under that
principle the rich are paying more than their fair share, as they
carry a disproportionate amount of those costs. Republicans should
resist the Buffett rule not just because it will inhibit job
creation and consumption but because it is a bald act of
theft.

America’s “jobs president” is more like a crooked Robin
Hood. Economic decline is not so much a crisis for him as a policy
and a pretext for ideological opportunism. Given the choice between
liberal ideology and the creation of jobs, he consistently selects
the former. He chooses unions over jobs, environmental regulations
over jobs, and trivial tax-hike gimmicks over jobs.

Obama’s blasé attitude about Solyndra, shrugging off an
enormous loss to taxpayers as no big deal, is part of this
ideological blindness and complacency. No failure ever prompts any
reflection on the wisdom of a liberal scheme; he just moves
forward, trying out new ways to present failed ideas as a boon to
the common good.

A popular slur among liberal pundits is to say that
Republicans oppose Barack Obama’s economic ideas because they want
the economy to stay sluggish before the election. The slur makes no
sense. If that were the Republicans’ crass calculation, they would
be supporting his ideas, as they are sure to make a bad economy
worse.

But it is not enough for Obama to damage the economy. He’s
also proud of shaking up the military. Just as he is making life
harder on businessmen through new taxes and regulations, so he now
makes life harder on generals through social engineering. The
media’s coverage of the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell has been
laughably propagandistic, designed to leave the impression that
everyone is thrilled with the change. The reality is that it
creates new headaches for generals who already have too many of
them. And there is no end in sight to the politicized struggles to
come. According to the Washington Post, gay activists have
a new cause to press upon a hidebound military — the “unknown
number of transgender troops serving in uniform without formal
recognition.” Perhaps this cause will dovetail with Obama’s next
likely innovation for the military, a full-blown women in combat
policy.

After all, he owes feminists a favor, having allowed,
according to author Ron Suskind, a “hostile workplace” for women to
fester in the White House. One would have thought Bill Clinton’s
presidency might have triggered that complaint. Instead, “I feel
like a piece of meat”-style complaints comes from Obama’s. Life in
the workplace has grown difficult everywhere under Obama, including
in his.

View original article.

 

In an effort to highlight the need for the American Jobs Act, which would provide billions in new infrastructure funding, the president will deliver a speech within sight of a “functionally obsolete” bridge on the Ohio River.

Though the president disavowed “political grandstanding” in an address to Congress earlier this month, even the communications staff at the White House could not deny the political motives behind the visit. “This was on a long list, but it was notable because it connects . . . Ohio and Kentucky,” White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer told the Cincinnati Enquirer on Tuesday, referring to the home states of House speaker John Boehner (R.) and Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R.) respectively. “It says a lot that the bridge that would connect the states of two such powerful leaders would be considered functionally obsolete.”

Keep reading this post . . .

For some time now, I and others have been documenting the relentless assault on economic growth by the EPA under President Barack Obama.  I feel like a broken record at times trying to beat this drum and get people to realize that while Obama doesn’t keep all of his campaign promises, destroying the coal industry is one that he has done everything he can to stay true to.

For anyone that paid attention during the 2008 presidential cycle, Obama made it clear that it was his intention to bankrupt the coal industry through regulation and legislation.  Think it’s hyperbole?  Listen to it from the horse’s mouth.

Obama’s dreams of green jobs have run into some snags lately.  The bankruptcy of solar panel companySolyndra, which received half a billion dollars in loan guarantees, is not good for the goal of greenifying our lives.  Objectively speaking, there is one simple reason that companies like Solyndra just couldn’t make ends meet: the prices that they need to charge for their products are simply too high to create true market demand.

However, market demand can also be altered by a lack of choice.  For instance, if there was a cheaper form of liquid that could fuel my car, I’d most certainly gravitate towards it as opposed to the $3.50 per gallon price I’m currently paying for gasoline.

Unfortunately for me, no alternative liquid exists that is as cost effective as plain old gasoline, and unfortunately for the green industry, gasoline exists.

In the world of energy and power plants, the big kids on the block are coal and fossil fuels.  They currently power the overwhelming vast majority of the country and despite rumors to the contrary, there’s still plenty of it to go around.  This poses a problem for Obama’s green agenda and unfortunately for him, his Cap & Trade initiative fell flat in the Senate and in this political climate, no one dares bring it up again.

So since that kills his ability to approach this from a legislative standpoint, President Obama has moved to his old standby: Regulatory.

For instance, the EPA’s Utility Maximum Achievable Control Technology rule (MACT) requires all coal-fired plants to reduce emissions of specific toxic air pollutants like mercury emissions.  The problem with this is that it would “require coal-fired power plants to install equipment that in some cases is too expensive to afford and in other cases does not currently exist commercially.”

So essentially, borrowing a phrase from President Obama, “If someone wants to build a coal-fired power plant, they can, it’s just that it will bankrupt them.”  This is not some reading between the lines to figure this out, as noted above, this is the actual words spoken by candidate Obama and the MACT rule is the perfect example of it in action.  The requirements aren’t just onerous, they’re in some cases impossible to meet which of course results in massive fees levied against the company.

So what is the result of this?

Well this one rule could force enough coal-fired power plant shutdowns to equal about 30-70 gigawatts of electricity across the country.  That means that businesses and families will need to move towards more expensive alternatives for energy to keep the lights on.  This explains why the administration was so intent on investing in solar energy to the point of ignoring due diligence in favor of “hurrying up.”  This standard will lead todouble-digit increases in rates in keeping with another famous quote from President Obama where he acknowledged that under his plan “power bills would necessarily skyrocket.”   For families that will mean tightening their belts in an economy which they can ill afford to do so.  For businesses, it will also mean tightening belts which means cutting corners and yes, cutting jobs.

But MACT isn’t the only rule with alarming implications.  The EPA’s Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR) will also target coal-fired power plants.  This time it’s to prevent polluted air from crossing state lines.  As is the case with MACT, it doesn’t accomplish this in a sensible way that allows the companies managing the plants to stay in business and continue providing power while implementing the changes.  Again, it’s overly stringent with unrealistic timelines that are designed to be virtually impossible to comply with.

Brian Shaw of the Washington Examiner notes:

This rule will impose onerous new costs on coal-fired power plants, causing many to shut down, and threaten electrical generation reserve capacity all over the country. These reserve margins are needed to avoid power disruption during times of peak demand. Even temporary loss of reserve capacity risks dangerous blackouts.

In terms of job losses, CSAPR is ahead of the game causing job losses even prior to its actual implementation.  Luminant, a Texas energy company, announced a wave of shutdowns and layoffs as the rule’s compliance deadline moves closer.

CEO David Campbell said:

[M]eeting this unrealistic deadline also forces us to take steps that will idle facilities and result in the loss of jobs.

According to Ken Blackwell of the Cincinnati Ohio News, “various outside analysts seem to agree that, at minimum, the 10 major rules that the EPA issued in 2010 could cost the economy at least $23 billion and nearly one million jobs.”

These regulations are onerous and unneeded.  The EPA has studies which have made clear that air pollutants they are trying to regulate pose no risk.

The health benefits claimed by the EPA for these proposed regulations are actually for pollutants that are already controlled through other existing regulations.

Even more galling, the industry was in fact doing quite well at dealing with pollutants in a way that didn’t simultaneously cause blackouts, job losses and billion of dollars:

By 2015, the coal-fired power generation industry will have invested $125 billion in coal utilization technologies that burn coal cleaner and with more efficiency.

Power plant emissions are already down nearly 80 percent since 1970. A coal-fired power facility built today is, on average, 90 percent cleaner than the one it replaces, according to the National Energy Technology Laboratory. Ironically, the ability to build those new plants is next to impossible due to even more stringent EPA regulations.

Both CSAPR and MACT made Eric Cantor’s list of the top 10 job-killing regulations in the U.S.  I know he’s just a partisan right? How can his word be trusted on this?

Well, he’s not alone in this conclusion.  Both rules were included in a list of regulations that are projected to cost over $1 billion dollars annually (that’s each, not together).   Where’s this list come from?  None other thanPresident Obama himself.

Nobel prize winner for physics in 1973 Dr. Ivar Giaever resigned as a Fellow from the American Physical Society (APS) on September 13, 2011 in disgust over the group’s promotion of man-made global warming fears. Climate Depot has obtained the exclusive email Giaever sent titled “I resign from APS” to APS Executive Officer Kate Kirby to announce his formal resignation.

Dr. Giaever wrote to Kirby of APS: “Thank you for your letter inquiring about my membership. I did not renew it because I cannot live with the (APS) statement below (on global warming): APS: ‘The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring. If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth’s physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.’

Giaever announced his resignation from APS was due to the group’s belief in man-made global warming fears. Giaever explained in his email to APS: “In the APS it is ok to discuss whether the mass of the proton changes over time and how a multi-universe behaves, but the evidence of global warming is incontrovertible? The claim (how can you measure the average temperature of the whole earth for a whole year?) is that the temperature has changed from ~288.0 to ~288.8 degree Kelvin in about 150 years, which (if true) means to me is that the temperature has been amazingly stable, and both human health and happiness have definitely improved in this ‘warming’ period.”

Giaever was one of President Obama’s key scientific supporters in 2008. Giaever joined over 70 Nobel Science Laureates in endorse Obama in an October 29, 2008 open letter. In addition to Giaever, other prominent scientists have resigned from APS over its stance on man-made global warming. See: Prominent Physicist Hal Lewis Resigns from APS: ‘Climategate was a fraud on a scale I have never seen…Effect on APS position: None. None at all. This is not science’

Giaever, a former professor at the School of Engineering and School of Science Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, has become a vocal dissenter from the alleged “consensus” regarding man-made climate fears. He was featured prominently in the 2009 U.S. Senate Report of (then) Over 700 Dissenting International Scientists from Man-made global warming. Giaever, who is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and won the 1973 Nobel Prize for Physics.

Giaever was also one of more than 100 co-signers in a March 30, 2009 letter to President Obama that was critical of his stance on global warming. See: More than 100 scientists rebuke Obama as ‘simply incorrect’ on global warming: ‘We, the undersigned scientists, maintain that the case for alarm regarding climate change is grossly overstated’

Giaever is featured on page 89 of the 321 page of Climate Depot’s more than 1000 dissenting scientist report (updated from U.S. Senate Report). Dr. Giaever was quoted declaring himself a man-made global warming dissenter. “I am a skeptic…Global warming has become a new religion,” Giaever declared. “I am Norwegian, should I really worry about a little bit of warming? I am unfortunately becoming an old man. We have heard many similar warnings about the acid rain 30 years ago and the ozone hole 10 years ago or deforestation but the humanity is still around,” Giaever explained. “Global warming has become a new religion. We frequently hear about the number of scientists who support it. But the number is not important: only whether they are correct is important. We don’t really know what the actual effect on the global temperature is. There are better ways to spend the money,” he concluded.

Giaever also told the New York Times in 2010 that global warming “can’t be discussed — just like religion…there is NO unusual rise in the ocean level, so what where and what is the big problem?”

This is not the first climate induced headache for the American Physical Society. It’s strict adherence to man-made global warming beliefs has created a stir in the scientific community and let to an open revolt of its scientific members.

On May 1, 2009, the American Physical Society (APS) Council decided to review its current climate statement via a high-level subcommittee of respected senior scientists. The decision was prompted after a group of over 80 prominent physicists petitioned the APS revise its global warming position and more than 250 scientists urged a change in the group’s climate statement in 2010. The physicists wrote to APS governing board: “Measured or reconstructed temperature records indicate that 20th – 21st century changes are neither exceptional nor persistent, and the historical and geological records show many periods warmer than today.” An American Physical Society editor conceded thata “considerable presence” of scientific skeptics exists.

In October 2010, the APS suffered more scientific woes when another one of its prominent physicists resigned. The late Physicist Hal Lewis, who died in May of 2011, excoriated the APS leadership for its strict dogmatic like adherence to man-made global warming beliefs. See: Prominent Physicist Resigns: ‘Climategate was a fraud on a scale I have never seen…Effect on APS position: None. None at all. This is not science’ & See: Prominent Physicist Resigns From American Physical Society: ‘Global warming is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life’ — APS President Curtis Callan ‘seems to have abandoned most ethical principles…APS has become a corrupt organization’ & see: APS responds to resignation of Dr. Hal Lewis — AND Dr. Lewis Responds Back To APS!

APS President has been under fire as well. See: ‘APS President Callan didn’t even bother to discuss the ClimateGate and the petition inspired by it with Will Happer and Robert Austin’

Below is the full text of Dr. Ivar Giaever’s full letter of resignation to the APS:

From: Ivar Giaever [ mailto:giaever@XXXX.com]

Sent: Tuesday, September 13, 2011 3:42 PM
To: kirby@aps.org
Cc: Robert H. Austin; ‘William Happer’; ‘Larry Gould’; ‘S. Fred Singer’; Roger Cohen
Subject: I resign from APS

 

Dear Ms. Kirby

Thank you for your letter inquiring about my membership. I did not renew it because I can not live with the statement below:

Emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities are changing the atmosphere in ways that affect the Earth’s climate. Greenhouse gases include carbon dioxide as well as methane, nitrous oxide and other gases. They are emitted from fossil fuel combustion and a range of industrial and agricultural processes.
The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring.
If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth’s physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.

In the APS it is ok to discuss whether the mass of the proton changes over time and how a multi-universe behaves, but the evidence of global warming is incontrovertible? The claim (how can you measure the average temperature of the whole earth for a whole year?) is that the temperature has changed from ~288.0 to ~288.8 degree Kelvin in about 150 years, which (if true) means to me is that the temperature has been amazingly stable, and both human health and happiness have definitely improved in this ‘warming’ period.

Best regards,

Ivar Giaever

Nobel Laureate 1973

 

PS. I included a copy to a few people in case they feel like using the information.

*******************
Ivar Giaever
XXX XXX
XXX
USA
Phone XXX XXX XXX
Fax XXX XXX XXX

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End Reprint of Giaever’s email.

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Climate Depot Note: Other Nobel winners have declared their global warming skepticism as well.

One of the other signers of the APS skeptical petition was Nobel Prize winner in Physics E.O. Lawrence.

E. O. Lawrence, Award in Physics 1985 Oliver E. Buckley Prize (APS) 1986 Nobel Prize in Physics 1998 Member National Academy of Sciences; Fellow AAAS

Lawrence signed on the statement that read in part: “As current and past members of the American Physical Society, we the undersigned petition the APS Council to commission an independent, objective study and assessment of the science relating to the question of anthropogenic global warming.”

Other Nobel Prize-Winning scientists featured in Climate Depot’s more than 1000 international scientists who have declared their skepticism include:

Nobel Prize-Winning Stanford University Physicist Dr. Robert B. Laughlin, won the Nobel Prize for physics in 1998, and was formerly a research scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, rejected global warming orthodoxy in 2010. ―Please remain calm: The Earth will heal itself — Climate is beyond our power to control…Earth doesn’t care about governments or their legislation,‖ Laughlin wrote in July 2010 in The American Scholar. Earth has suffered ―all manner of other abuses greater than anything people could inflict. Yet, the Earth is still here. It’s a survivor…Earth doesn’t care whether you turn off your AC, refrigerator and TV. It doesn’t notice when you turn down your thermostat and drive a hybrid car,‖ Laughlin wrote. ―You can’t find much actual global warming in present-day weather observations,‖ he added. ―Climate change is a matter of geologic time, something that the earth routinely does on its own without asking anyone’s permission or explaining itself,‖ Laughlin explained. He continued: ―Global warming forecasts have the further difficulty that you can’t find much actual global warming in present-day weather observations. In principle, changes in climate should show up in rainfall statistics, hurricane frequency, temperature records, and so forth. As a practical matter they don’t, because weather patterns are dominated by large multi-year events in the oceans, such as the El Niño Southern Oscillation and the North Pacific Gyre Oscillation, which have nothing to do with climate change. In order to test the predictions, you’d have to separate these big effects from subtle, inexorable changes on scales of centuries, and nobody knows how to do that yet.

Renowned agricultural scientist Dr. Norman Borlaug, known as the father of the “Green Revolution” for saving over a billion people from starvation by utilizing pioneering high yield farming techniques, is one of only five people in history who has been awarded a Nobel Peace Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom ,and the Congressional Gold Medal. Borlaug also declared himself skeptical of man-made climate fears in 2007. “I do believe we are in a period where, no question, the temperatures are going up. But is this a part of another one of those (natural) cycles that have brought on glaciers and caused melting of glaciers?” Borlaug asked, according to a September 21, 2007 article in Saint Paul Pioneer Press. The article reported that Borlaug is “not sure, and he doesn’t think the science is, either.” Borlaug added, “How much would we have to cut back to take the increasing carbon dioxide and methane production to a level so that it’s not a driving force?” We don’t even know how much.”