Common Sense In The Midst Of Hysteria

Yesterday The Daily Caller reported that the Latino Coalition, a “leading, national non-partisan advocacy organization representing Hispanic businesses and consumers,” has released a statement in support of the nomination of Judge Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.

The article includes the statement:

“Judge Brett Kavanaugh is an exemplary individual and an extremely qualified legal constitutionalist with a record of ruling against the kind of regulatory overreach that can be chilling to America’s entrepreneurs,” said TLC Chairman and former U.S. SBA Administrator Hector Barreto. “The Latino Coalition urges the Senate to put partisanship aside in order to quickly confirm Judge Kavanaugh. We believe he will protect the rights of all Americans, including the small-business owners who suffer most when government goes beyond its constitutional bounds.”

The article concludes:

Meanwhile, liberal advocacy groups like Think Progress continue to proclaim the various ways in which the sky will fall if Kavanaugh is confirmed, as evidenced by this piece published Monday titled “If Kavanaugh is confirmed, you can kiss the right to vote goodbye.”

Does anyone actually believe the garbage about Judge Kavanaugh being put out by the political left?

If You Can’t Beat It, Charge For It

The quest for individual energy independence has increased as utility rates have risen due to the environmental policies of the Obama Administration. If the Obama Administration continues its war on coal, we can expect electricity rates to go even higher. As that happen, people are looking for ways to generate their own electricity and cut their utility bills. Well, not so fast.

Think Progress, a progressive organization, posted an article yesterday reporting that Oklahoma will be charging consumers who provide their own energy through solar panels or windmills an additional fee (read “tax”).

The article reports:

On Monday, S.B. 1456 passed the state House 83-5 after no debate. The measure creates a new class of customers: those who install distributed power generation systems like solar panels or small wind turbines on their property and sell the excess energy back to the grid. While those with systems already installed won’t be affected, the new class of customers will now be charged a monthly fee — a shift that happened quickly and caught many in the state off guard.

“We knew nothing about it and all of a sudden it’s attached to some other bill,” Ctaci Gary, owner of Sun City Oklahoma, told ThinkProgress. “It just appeared out of nowhere.”

The article further reported:

The bill was staunchly opposed by renewable energy advocates, environmental groups and the conservative group TUSK, but had the support of Oklahoma’s major utilities. “Representatives of Oklahoma Gas and Electric Co. and Public Service Co. of Oklahoma said the surcharge is needed to recover some of the infrastructure costs to send excess electricity safely from distributed generation back to the grid,” the Oklahoman reported.

Adding the surcharge is not smart. The advantage of people adding individual solar panels or windmills to their homes is that the panels can generate electricity during peak use times and prevent utility companies from having problems meeting the demand at those times. Obviously, the surcharge will discourage people from adding either panels or windmills. I suspect that a single small windmill does not create some of the problems that a large wind farm causes.

Allowing people who choose to add alternative power to their homes should not be a political issue. If the addition conforms to community standards, the use of alternative energy should be welcomed. If the utility companies have become so powerful that they can prevent the individual from becoming energy independent, it is time to elect people to government that will stand up against those companies. I don’t want to deny anyone a profit, but I also don’t want to see people denied the opportunity to become energy independent.

Sometimes conservation measures are not welcomed by bureaucrats. In the small town we used to live in, residents were asked to conserve water. After we had done our best to do that, the residents were told that because we were using less water, the Water Department was forced to raise the water rate to cover expenses. Simply speaking, that is not fair.

 

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When The Media Manufactures A Story

There have been a number of incidents of data being altered by scientists claiming that global warming will kill us all yesterday. It is good to remember that these are many of the same scientists who in 1985 warned us of the coming Ice Age. Well, we are still here, and the weather warms and cools as it always has. Well, now some of the media people who support the theory of global warming have really gone over the edge.

On Thursday the Daily Caller posted a story about a blog called ThinkProgress that posted a picture of melting street lights in Oklahoma and claimed that the melting was due to global warming. It turns out that the melting was caused by a nearby dumpster fire–global warming had nothing to do with it, but the story didn’t end there. ThinkProgress corrected the story when they were informed of the truth. However, according to WattsUpWithThat Yahoo, which also ran the story, did not bother to correct it.

This is the related press release from Senator Inhofe of Oklahoma. The source is the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works. The heading of the Press Release (dated August 2) is “Inhofe Exposes Another Epic Fail by Global Warming Alarmists.”

Washington, D.C. – Today the far-left blog Think Progress posted a photo (originally posted on KFOR‘s facebook page) of street lights in Oklahoma that had melted, they claimed, because of extreme heat. Global warming alarmist Bill McKibben took to Twitter immediately to publicize what he believed to be proof of global warming, tweeting to Senator James Inhofe (Okla.), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, “Senator Inhofe, God may be trying to get your attention. Check out this picture.”

Not long after the picture surfaced, Oklahomans posted comments on Think Progress’ blog saying that these lights had melted due to a fire – which makes sense considering that the two front lights were melted while the two back lights remained unscathed. Once this news came to light, Think Progress immediately removed the post and provided an update that reads: “After we published this piece, we saw reports from people on the ground in Stillwater that the melting streetlights were due to a nearby fire. The person who took the photo, Patrick Hunter, described the scene: ‘Being the person that actually took this photo, I’d say that this was due to a fire semi-close by coupled with the unbelievable heat we are experiencing.’ Still an amazing photo and not fake as many are saying on here. Enjoy!”

This afternoon, KFOR confirmed that the melted lights in the photo were not caused by hot temperatures but a nearby dumpster fire.

“Poor Bill McKibben – he’s been trying to get something to melt for ages but it keeps backfiring,” Senator Inhofe said. “These alarmists never learn their lesson. Remember Bill McKibben was the one who was going to melt a giant ice sculpture in the shape of the word ‘hoax’ on the national mall, but his group had to cancel because there wasn’t enough interest. Now, after proclaiming that street lights in Oklahoma are melting because of global warming, we have confirmation that a fire caused this scene.

“Amid the resurgence of hysteria from my friends on the left, I appreciated climatologist Dr. John Christy who testified this week before the Environment and Public Works committee saying that instead of proclaiming this summer is ‘what global warming looks like’ it is ‘scientifically more accurate to say that this is what Mother Nature looks like, since events even worse than these have happened in the past before greenhouse gases were increasing like they are today.’

“This isn’t the first time alarmists have tried these stunts and it certainly won’t be the last – when will they finally realize they’ve lost this debate?”

After a while, you being to wonder why those who support global warming are willing to go to such lengths to prove their case even after much of their research has been proven wrong.

 

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