"Global Warming" No Longer Politically Correct?

Oh global warming, we hardly knew ye...

It was just a matter of time before liberals started to run for the hills away from the global warming hysteria. In a laughable article by the New York Times' Thomas L. Friedman, America's "confusion" about climate change is being blamed for China's future success as a green superpower. Confusion about climate change? You mean there's a new debate in town?

Remember, ever since the 1990's, through celebrated events like the Rio de Janeiro "earth summit," global warming was the hot-button issue. Al Gore's book, Earth in the Balance, was about the impending doom of global warming, not just climate change. In fact, if you wrote or spoke about "climate change" at any of the myriad earth summits since Rio, you would have been looked at as a weirdo. No, the "debate" that was supposedly over all these years was about global warming. Period. End of Story. Conservative skeptics are "flat earthers" because they challenged global warming. So what gives?

Speaking of weirdos, Friedman has a great idea. What was that term people used to use about the planet? What was it, global warming or something? We intelligent liberals have to once again teach those silly little conservatives, those insufferable children, how to think and act. So let's coin a phrase even those small little minds can grasp:

"global weirding".

You know, when it snows like heck just when you thought the planet was burning up? Liberal minds understand it, but our poor dumb conservative brothers are, well, conservative.

One of Friedman's ideas is, "...the climate-science community should convene its top experts — from places like NASA, America’s national laboratories, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford, the California Institute of Technology and the U.K. Met Office Hadley Centre — and produce a simple 50-page report. They could call it “What We Know,” summarizing everything we already know about climate change in language that a sixth grader could understand, with unimpeachable peer-reviewed footnotes". He is more concerned that "climate confusion" (my term) would lead to inaction: on clean tech investments, green jobs, and less dependence on oil.

So the answer is re-education. Avoid the phrase "global warming" and use climate change instead. When you're talking to fellow liberals, of course. When you absolutely must scold a pouty-lipped conservative, use "global weirding." Don't waste your time trying to explain why we need the new phrase. When you say things like "political correctness" it makes their little heads explode. And don't tell them about climate-gate, or how the entire past few decades of global warming activism has to be erased from everyone's mind. After all, what counts is the results, not any fictitious debate about the climate warming, changing or weirding. We need sensible action now: bigger government, heavy taxes followed by heavier global taxes, and a green jobless economy.

Welcome to the world of weird science.

U.S. Climate Service: Once Again Bending to the UN's Will

The Obama administration recently heralded in yet another big government bureaucracy, the Climate Service. It was created under the auspices of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

According to one article, the service is to be a "one stop shop" for consumers of climate information. Of course, the Obama administration assumes Americans need big government to tell them all about climate change and global warming. According to them, Americans are clamoring for a service of this kind. What can a government do but to give them what they want, right?

Well, almost right. People have been clamoring for this "service" to be created. Only it's not so much that Americans are clamoring for such an agency. It's more like a mandate from the largest socialist think-tank in the world, the United Nations.

You see, on September 1, 2009 a UN conference opened in Geneva, Switzerland. It was called the The World Climate Conference-3, and was convened to concoct a "Global Framework for Climate Services". According to another article from the same news source, this conference was "intended to meet accelerating demands for useful information on the impacts of climate change." Of course, the article assumed that "The climate forecasting system will require the participation of all countries, as well as the United Nations and many international partners."

Enter the Obama administration. The U.S. delegation to Geneva was none other than Dr. Jane Lubchenco, an under-secretary and administrator of the NOAA, the agency now overseeing our new Climate Service. And, of course, Lubchenco buys into all the hysteria from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The true intent of the agency is clear from Lubchenco's comments. Talking about government decision-makers, she is quoted as saying, "In a rapidly changing world these decisions cannot be made based on weather of the past; decision-makers need to know what to expect in the next 20 to 50 years to plan effectively." This "effective" planning no doubt will have an expensive price tag for American taxpayers.

This is an example of U.S. bureaucracies created under false pretenses to serve a socialist agenda. It was presented as a response to the legitimate need of its citizens. It really was created to fulfill the utopian delusions of the United Nations. Selling the global warming hysteria is an important part of this delusion. If the UN can control the information and distribute it according to its agenda, even the United States of America can be subjugated and made to conform to its goals.

If you're looking for a balanced debate on the merits of global warming at the new Obama Climate Service, or at the NOAA, save yourself the trouble. The United Nations has already been there. And they liked what they saw.

Why "Climate-Gate" Matters

Can anyone guess how many of the 2500 volunteer scientists and other "experts" doing the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have a dissenting (or "minority" opinion, for the sake of argument) view of climate change? If that doesn't concern you, imagine the Supreme Court, for example, deciding not to publish a minority opinion. Any wonder that there is now such a thing as "climate-gate?"

In the United States of America, dissenting opinion is still a necessary cog in the republican democracy. Scientific integrity, likewise, depends on the due diligence of its researchers. It comes into play not only through the objective scientific method, but also in a peer-review process that does not taint the scientific process. In the case of the IPCC, not only is the science debatable, but the peer-review process is a mockery. For the IPCC, a "peer" simply means that its reports on climate change received the stamp of approval by like-minded left-leaning ideologues. This way, the IPCC can fast-track pre-ordained results to its parent, the United Nations. The UN, in turn, can claim a scientific consensus and move on to unrealistic and tax-heavy proposals like the Kyoto protocol and its successor, the recent Copenhagen talks.

Climate research is toxic right now, excuse the pun.

Senator Inhofe (R-OK) knows this all too well. In his newsletter, he points out that the list of dissenting scientists regarding global warming has currently swollen to over 700:

http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.PressReleases&ContentRecord_id=d6d95751-802a-23ad-4496-7ec7e1641f2f&Region_id=&Issue_id=

The bottom line is that the climate "debate" has never even begun. The United Nations is standing in the way of scientific integrity. Some are wondering what, if anything, should be done to reform the IPCC in light of climate-gate and inaccuracies in their reports?

How about allowing dissenting opinion on the international panel to lend some scientific integrity to it?

Green Police is Already Here

Audi's Super Bowl ad, featuring a twist on rock legend Cheap Trick's hit "Dream Police," was as entertaining as it was frightening.

I don't believe the foreign car manufacturer just stumbled onto a clever marketing ploy to sell its product. Is it possible the car company was reflecting a reality we American consumers have not yet realized?

Few Americans know about the concept of "greenwashing." According to
an article by Scientific American, greenwashing refers to a marketing strategy by companies that may include overstating claims of eco-friendly products they are trying to sell. The bottom line to accepting this as an "unacceptable" practice is to convince consumers that they need government to "protect" us from companies that may not be as eco-friendly as the government thinks they should be.

This, of course, requires everyone to accept the dubious global warming hysteria as gospel. And it means putting the regulatory "cart" before the scientific "horse." Ultimately it means, lookout taxpayers.

Audi's ending statement in the Super Sunday ad was their motto, "truth in engineering." That may be because the Green Police already exists in the Federal Trade Commission. Another Scientific American article explains that, "Section 5 of the FTC Act authorizes the agency to intervene when businesses are misrepresenting their practices to clients -- in other words, turning greenwashing into fraud."

Strong arm tactics may well be on the way, courtesy of our government bureaucracy. The article celebrates that the FTC is looking to update its greenwashing guidelines to crack down on the evil industrial machine. It doesn't matter that fraudulent claims seem to be rampant about global warming itself in academic circles. We recently saw this in the e-mail scandal involving a UK research facility sanctioned by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). That kind of fraud is okay, because it serves the liberal agenda of global wealth redistribution and government intrusion into our everyday lives.

Using Capitalist Success Stories to Champion Wealth Re-distribution?

In the online article Failure Writ Small on frontpagemag.com, author Andrew Cline exposes the typical doublespeak by the President concerning how capitalists should behave. In this example, Obama tries to persuade people in a speech that start-up companies need taxpayer "seed money" for America to remain competitive in the global marketplace.

The only problem was that the start-up company he used as an example didn't use any federal money to reach market success. They competed using their own private funding.

This article exposes the impossible logic the President, and other socialist activists, use to champion big government. It sheds light on the true goal in speeches like this: government must control wealth and redistribute it to suit their socialist agenda. Green jobs, universal health and other social programs need capitalist wealth to make them possible. Capitalists are made to feel shame at their ability to create wealth. But socialism cannot exist without the wealth created by capitalism. The solution? Shake down big banks and big business, but don't kill them off: they're still useful. At least until big government controls it all. Then we have utopia.

GOP Senate Candidate Marco Rubio Comments on Stimulus Costs

A "post-racial" American comments on the growing cost of President Obama's stimulus legislation. Diversity of opinion is what makes up a post-racial America, after all.

Bin Laden Solves Global Warming

Bin Laden says the only way to solve global warming is to break the U.S. economy...look out, EPA chief Lisa Jackson- your job may not be so safe after all with that kind of competition!

Post-racial America?

It's fascinating to hear Hardball's Chris Matthews refer to President Obama as a "post-racial" president. He and his left-wing colleagues seem to be stuck in a1960's Civil Rights time warp. While he and others constantly preach about a utopian "post-racial" America, many African-Americans, Asian-Americans and Mexican-Americans like myself have already been living in a post-racial America their whole lives.

It's ok for a white liberal like Matthews to designate a minority as being "post-racial." It's quite another for a minority to act in a post-racial manner, especially if they don't vote for liberals. Left wing pundits have a special term for those minorities: Sell-outs.

Entrepreneurship and Learning English

I recently tried researching scholarly papers concerning rates of entrepreneurship among Mexican Americans. All the statistical methods and mathematical analyses of the comparative rates of entrepreneurship according to ethnicity led to nothing but headaches. I realized that, since I'm not a statistician nor a student working on a dissertation, this was not the way to contribute knowledge of the subject. My strength in speaking to this subject lies, instead, on direct experience. Specifically, I am an American of Mexican descent, and I am a small business owner. This is the background that allows me to share my perspective on the prospects of entrepreneurship.

My father, a second generation American of Mexican descent from San Antonio, married a Mexican woman and, after ensuring that her "papers" were in order, moved to the Chicago area to stake out his opportunities. Modest as his eventual economic success was, I am enormously in debt to him for one very simple reason. He took a daring gamble: he saw to it that his kids were assimilated. It involved two steps. The first, everyone had to learn English. The best ideas usually are so simple. Second, he went the extra mile and thought "out of the box" by living in integrated neighborhoods. Many Americans may not realize why this was such a courageous step to take. From what my mother told me, we were spanish-speaking toddlers. My father pushed her to take classes to learn English. Moving into neighborhoods that were already integrated (in our first single family home, our neighbors were Americans of Swedish descent) had to be intimidating to my parents. We were children, blissfully unaware of the dynamic around us.

My father was determined. He was proud of his background. He believed, however, that assimilation was the path to opportunity. He did not believe in using the government welfare system. He didn't see a viable future going down that path. He knew that success wasn't a guarantee, even in the United States. He just wanted to put his children in a position to succeed. The rest, he perceived, was up to us.

Education is a vital part of assimilation. The Center for Immigration Studies previously published a paper that, among other findings, points to education as a crucial indicator for meaningful employment in the U.S. This was found true for immigrants of all ethnicities. They do not conclude that lack of success is the result of being ethnically "different." They make it a point to say that education, not race, is the principal determinant of economic self-sufficiency. Many immigration advocates point to CIS as anti-immigrant. I've read enough articles from this organization to know that they want all legal immigrants to succeed. Not learning English, as I can attest to, is detrimental to economic opportunity and success.

Does racism exist? Of course it does. Is America a racist country? It would be absurd to cling to that as truth. Every American, including the recent legal immigrant, that goes into business for himself is fortifying the backbone of the American economy. Entrepreneurship is not for everyone. It wasn't in my plans for many years, until I resolved that it was indeed possible. The only true obstacle was my own previous lack of confidence and foresight. There is nothing more crippling to a prospective small business owner than to focus on why he might fail. This applies to business funding, business acumen and business growth. This negative attitude also applies to perceptions of racism. Racism is less of a factor in America than the paralyzing apprehension of it.

It is incumbent on every integrated American, myself included, to show incoming legal immigrants what is possible. Everyone can assume a role in this regard. Some may feel they have to advocate for poor immigrants. Others may have more to contribute as an entrepreneurial "mentor." The goal should be to integrate every willing citizen-to-be into the fabric of the most prosperous nation in the world. You can be proud of your origins and still make a positive contribution to the greatest legacy of free enterprise in world history.

I can never repay the debt I owe to my parents. They wouldn't want it paid back. They would say that doing the same thing for our children was repayment in full. My effort, however, doesn't have be as ground-breaking or "risky" as his. I think this was precisely his intention. Most fathers like to think that they can leave their children in a better position than they were. I can only put forth my experience as a small business owner and my modest success. There are plenty of moderately and highly successful Americans of ethnic descent who can show the way to creating opportunities. The point is to be able to define your share of the American dream, not have it defined for you. There are too many liberal politicians who think government should define opportunity and success. They don't have enough confidence in free enterprise or capitalism. It's easy to see, therefore, why they prefer to keep Mexican immigrant students from learning English as soon as they start school. I started learning English in kindergarten. That was the best approach; it laid the groundwork for future participation in the American dream. I can't offer statistics to back up what I'm saying. I can only offer my point of view as a fully integrated American. And by the way, as much of a headache as reading statistics was, try filling out an application for a business loan.