BEEF COUNTRY OF ORIGIN RETAIL PLACARD

                                              Land And Water USA

P.O. Box 155 La Salle, CO  80645

www.LandAndWaterUSA.com    (970) 284-6874

Dear Colorado House Agriculture Committee, 

Rep. Jeni James Arndt, Chair  - Rep. Diane Mitsch Bush, Vice Chair     

Rep. Jon Becker, Rep. Perry Buck, Rep. Jessie Danielson, Rep. Daneya Esgar, Rep. Chris Hansen, Rep. Steve Lebsock   Rep. Hugh McKean, Rep. Lori Saine, Rep. Donald Valdez, Rep. Yeulin Willett                                        

Regarding: HB 17-1234 Beef Country of Origin Retail Placard

Please consider this our wholehearted support for HB 17-1234.

We appreciate and thank Senator Vicki Marble and Representative Kimmi Lewis, for sponsoring a bill that wholly considers the Consumer.

In short, it will provide essential information and food safety to Colorado Consumers!

Our research has borne out the fact that Consumers have become more educated about their food choices. Their appetite for safe, nutritious delicious food equals their appetite for knowledge about it.

Here are some reports:

2007: Consumer Reports poll revealed “92 percent of Americans want to know where their food comes from and, in fact, the COOL regulations, as originally conceived, were to apply to meat, fruits, vegetables and peanuts. But legislative battles and political wrangling derailed full implementation of COOL.

For example, groups like the National Farmers Union—a coalition of family farmers and ranchers—fought for COOL labeling, believing Americans would support locally grown and raised products. But alliances of food processors and meat packers, such as the American Meat Institute and National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) balked at the burden and expense of complying with such compulsory labeling.”

To our knowledge, since its passing in 2002, COOL was never fully implemented, for NCBA was successful in keeping this critical information from Consumers.

2014: “People overwhelmingly tell Consumer Reports they want to know where their food comes from in national survey after survey after survey.”

Consumers will be able to look over the meat, and see right up front exactly where the beef comes from. This is a service we believe retailers will be happy to provide their customers.

Passing HB 17-1234 will ensure Colorado Consumers an informed choice.

We respectfully ask members of the Agriculture House Committee to please vote “Yes” on HB 17-1234 Beef Country of Origin Retail Placard.

Thank you,

Roni Bell Sylvester

Co-Founder Land And Water USA

www.LandAndWaterUSA.com

EXPRESS YOUR VIEWS IN LEGISLATIVE HEARINGS

M E M O R A N D U M
January 17, 2017
TO: Interested Persons
FROM: Legislative Council Staff
SUBJECT: Public Participation in the Legislative Process Summary Legislative committees are a very important part of Colorado's legislative process.
At a legislative committee hearing, citizens have an opportunity to express their views and have them incorporated into the official legislative record.
In Colorado, every bill receives a public hearing by one of the legislature's committees. This memorandum provides guidance to the public in participating in the legislative process. Role of a Committee
The Colorado State Constitution requires that every bill be heard on its merits. 
When a bill is introduced in either the Senate or the House, it is sent to a Committee of Reference comprised of 5 to 13 legislators for review and public comment. The committee determines if the proposal should go forward in the legislature. After the committee considers any proposed amendments, it may vote to favorably recommend the bill to the Committee of the Whole, refer the bill to another committee, or postpone the bill indefinitely. Committee schedules.
When the legislature is in session, committees generally meet in regularly scheduled rooms at regularly scheduled times. However, they will occasionally meet in different rooms at varying times to accommodate a large audience or remote testimony. Monday mornings (typically 10:00 a.m. until noon) and Friday mornings (typically 9:00 a.m. until noon) are reserved for floor work.
Committees with hearings in the morning meet from Upon Adjournment of floor work until noon. At the chair's discretion, morning committees may also meet from 7:30 a.m. until 9:00 a.m.
Afternoon committees generally meet at 1:30 p.m. Click here for links to the committees' schedules and membership lists for the 2017 Legislative Session. Room 029 State Capitol, Denver, CO 80203-1784 (303) 866-3521 • FAX: 866-3855 • TDD: 866-3472 leg.colorado.gov/lcs E-mail: lcs.ga@state.co.us
Contacting a Legislator: Contact information for every legislator, including office location, office phone number, e-mail address, and committee assignments, is located in the legislative directory. Tracking a Bill Online bill information. The full text of bills, resolutions, and memorials, and their history, votes, fiscal notes, and committee reports are available online. Bills are named according to the house where there were introduced and the year. For example, Senate Bill 17-001 is the name of the first bill introduced in the Senate during the 2017 Legislative Session. Click here for an explanation of the bill names, or versions, based on where they are in the legislative process. The bill status sheet is used to track legislation as it moves through the General Assembly. Bill scheduling. The chair of each committee determines when a bill will be heard. The House and Senate calendars, published daily, show the scheduled committee hearings and calendared bills. Both the full House and Senate meet in their respective chambers daily during session, generally at 10:00 a.m. on Mondays, and at 9:00 a.m. Tuesday through Friday.
Changes to the published calendar are announced during these floor sessions and tweeted through the committee's Twitter feed. Online Video and Audio Resources Floor proceedings. The Colorado General Assembly's House and Senate live floor proceedings are available in audio and video format on The Colorado Channel. Archived sessions are also available here.
Committee proceedings. All committee hearings are recorded and available live on the General's Assembly's webpage under Live Legislative Audio. In the left-hand column, select Year-Round, House, Senate, Interim, or Other Committees to reveal a list of upcoming committee events.
If the committee hearing is in progress, a link titled "Listen to Event" will be available to the right of the "Calendar" link. Links to archived audio for each committee category are listed lower on the page. Committee Protocol The purpose of a committee hearing is to gather information so that the committee can make an informed recommendation on a given bill or resolution.
Public input is an important part of this process. As elected officials, committee members appreciate hearing the perspective of citizens and organizations on issues.
Preparing to testify. When preparing your testimony, plan to present in less than five minutes and be prepared to summarize the main points in one minute. If you have a personal experience related to the legislation, your story can provide valuable information for the legislators. However, be aware that the bill sponsor may propose amendments when presenting to the committee that may change your position on the bill. If you would like to suggest an amendment, it is best to speak with the bill sponsor prior to the committee hearing. It is a good idea to bring a copy of the bill with you to the hearing, and strongly recommended that you bring copies of your -2- written testimony for the committee members, bills sponsors, and staff. If you are not sure how many copies to bring, 20 copies will be sufficient.
Signing in. Hearings usually start on time, but it is best to arrive 30 minutes early, especially for committees that meet Upon Adjournment. In order to testify, it is important that you sign in at the beginning of the hearing or as soon as possible. Each bill on the agenda will have a sign-in sheet that is located on or near the committee table. Fill out all of the information including whether you are in support of the bill, against the bill, or neutral. If you are not representing an organization, write that you are representing yourself.
If you have any questions, please ask a member of Legislative Council Staff, who wear red name badges. If you have handouts or copies of your testimony for the committee, give these to staff at the beginning of the hearing or before you speak.
Testifying. The order of bills to be heard is posted outside the door of each committee that is meeting. The chair will announce each bill, after which the bill's sponsor will address the committee. The chair may then ask for testimony from proponents and opponents. Hearings are conducted using formal parliamentary procedure.
You may find the following recommendations to be helpful. • Begin your presentation by stating, "Mr. or Madam Chair ___, members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to present to you today. My name is ____, representing ___, and I am here to support/oppose this bill because . . ." • Do not read your testimony word for word. • Be brief and avoid repeating what other witnesses have said. Try to focus on points that have not been mentioned. • At the end of your testimony, thank the committee members and offer to answer any questions. • If a member asks a question, wait for the chair to prompt you, then state your name followed by, "Chair ___, Senator/Representative ____, the answer to your question is . . ." If you do not know the answer, it is always okay to say that you do not know. If you promise to follow-up, be sure to do so in a timely manner. • Do not be offended if committee members come and go during a hearing. They have other commitments, including the presentation of bills in other committees that are meeting simultaneously. • At a hearing with a large number of witnesses, there may not be time for everyone to testify. • Cell phones and other electronic devices should be on a silent setting. • Food and beverages are prohibited in the committee rooms. • The chair has the discretion and authority to limit testimony, ask the sergeant-at-arms to remove a disruptive person from the committee, and clear the public from any hearing in the event of a disturbance which is disruptive to legislative proceedings.
Remote testimony. During the 2017 legislative session, five sites will be available for remote testimony for specific bill hearings: Colorado Mesa University in Grand Junction, Otero Junior College in La Junta, Fort Lewis College in Durango, Trinidad Junior College in Trinidad, and Adams State University in Alamosa. Any legislator may request remote testimony for a bill, but the request must be approved by legislative leadership. If you wish to testify remotely, you will need to sign up through the General Assembly's registration website. Bills available for remote testimony will be indicated on the registration website, as well as the House and Senate calendars. In order for a remote testimony site to be available for testimony, at least one witness must be registered to testify at the site at least 24 hours before the hearing on the previous business day. The deadline is 10:00 a.m. for committees scheduled to meet Upon Adjournment.
If at least one -3- witness is registered by the deadline, additional witnesses may continue to sign up on-line to testify remotely until one hour before the scheduled hearing time and may sign up at the remote testimony site until public testimony on the bill concludes.
Please note that there is no guarantee that all witnesses, including remote witnesses, will be permitted to testify on a bill, or that remote witnesses will be able to testify at a specific time.
The Information Center The Information Center is located in the Joint Legislative Library, Room 048 in the basement of the State Capitol. Copies of bills, calendars, and journals can be obtained there between 7:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. Information on the scheduling of a particular bill is also available by calling the Information Center at 303-866-3055.

https://leg.colorado.gov/sites/default/files/create_a_public_participation_in_the_legislative_process_document1915134322_2.pdf

BEEF! BORN AND RAISED IN THE USA!

Dear Friends, Rep. Kimmi Clark Lewis, a Republican member of the House Agriculture Committee, needs your help to bring Country of Origin Labeling for beef products produced and sold in the state of Colorado. HB 17-1234 is a simple proposal. The bill merely states that any retail store selling fresh beef products within the state of Colorado must provide a placard indicating the Country of Origin in which their beef was produced.  If your local grocers know where the beef is from, they must provide that information on to you, the consumer. Consumers want to know where and how their food is made and where it comes from... ...and we, proudly, wish to know that customers want to buy USA raised beef! We need to stand up for the American Rancher, a group that has been given the short end of the stick by both parties. Stand with Rep. Lewis and call on the other members of the Colorado House Agriculture Committee asking to pass a bill that equalizes the beef market to become a more competitive one for hard working Americans, not foreign "big-beef" monopolists.   Contact the House AG Committee Members Here: Rep. Jeni James Arndt, Chair - 303-866-2917, jeni.arndt.house@state.co.us Rep. Diane Mitsch Bush, Vice Chair - 303-866-2923, diane.mitschbush.house@state.co.us Rep. Jon Becker - 303-866-3706, jon.becker.house@state.co.us Rep. Perry Buck - 303-866-2907, perrybuck49@gmail.com Rep. Jessie Danielson - 303-866-5522, jessie.danielson.house@state.co.us Rep. Daneya Esgar - 303-866-2968, daneya.esgar.house@state.co.us Rep. Chris Hansen - 303-866-2967, chris.hansen.house@state.co.us Rep. Steve Lebsock - 303-866-2931, steve.lebsock.house@state.co.us Rep. Hugh McKean - 303-866-2947, hugh.mckean.house@state.co.us  Rep. Lori Saine - 303-866-2906, lori.saine.house@state.co.us Rep. Donald Valdez - 303-866-2916, donald.valdez.house@state.co.us Rep. Yeulin Willett - 303-866-2583, yeulin.willett.house@state.co.us HB 17-1234 is set to be heard by the House Agriculture Committee on Monday, April 3rd, at 1:30pm at the State Capitol. We will provide more details on location and bill order when they become available.  Please come and show your support for USA BEEF.  Regards, Team Kimmi Lewis

For further reading: HB 17-1234 - Beef Country Of Origin Retail Placard Act, Sponsored by Rep. Kimmi Clark Lewis and Senator Vicki Marble

THE SOCIAL COST OF CARBON REGULATIONS

The social cost of carbon regulations

Anti-fossil fuel SCC relies on garbage models, ignores carbon benefits and hurts the poor

Paul Driessen and Roger Bezdek

“If you could pick just one thing to reduce poverty, by far you would pick energy,” Bill Gates has said. “Access to energy is absolutely fundamental in the struggle against poverty,” World Bank VP Rachel Kyte and Nobel Prize Laureate Dr. Amartya Sen agree.

The UN Development Program also calls energy “central to poverty reduction.” And International Energy Agency Executive Director Dr. Fatih Birol notes that “coal is raising living standards and lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty.” In fact, all fossil fuels are doing so. 

Indeed, fossil fuels created the modern world and the housing, transportation, other technologies and living standards so many of us take for granted. They are essential for electricity and life, and over the past 250 years they more than doubled average life expectancy in countries that took advantage of them.

But the Obama Administration and radical environmentalists despise fossil fuels and used every tactic they could devise to eliminate them. One of their most important schemes was the “social cost of carbon.”

Federal agencies used the SCC to calculate the “hidden costs” of carbon dioxide emissions associated with fossil fuel use, by assigning a dollar value to every ton of CO2 emitted by power plants, factories, homes, vehicles and other sources. However, the entire process was little more than junk science and Garbage In-Garbage Out forecasting.

First, each ton of U.S. emissions averted would initially have prevented a hypothetical $25/ton in global societal costs allegedly resulting from dangerous manmade climate change: less coastal flooding and tropical disease, fewer droughts and extreme weather events, for example. But within three years regulators arbitrarily increased the SCC to around $40/ton.

That made it easier to justify the Clean Power Plan, Paris climate agreement, and countless Obama Era actions on electricity generation, fracking, methane, pipelines, vehicle mileage and appliance efficiency standards, livestock operations, carbon taxes, and wind, solar and biofuel mandates and subsidies.

Second, the supposed bedrock for the concept is the now rapidly shifting sands of climate chaos theory. New questions are arising almost daily about data quality and manipulation, the degree to which carbon dioxide affects global temperatures, the complex interplay of solar, cosmic ray, oceanic and other natural forces, and the inability of computer models to predict temperatures, sea level rise or hurricanes.

Meanwhile, as the 2015-16 El Nino dissipated, average global temperatures rapidly fell back almost to their 1998-2014 level, according to Britain’s Met Office and other experts. That means there has been no measurable planetary warming for 18 years. Nor are other predicted disasters happening in the real world.

That means the very notion that U.S. emissions impose major climate costs is increasingly indefensible. Moreover, developing nations are burning fossil fuels and emitting carbon dioxide at many times the U.S. rate; that means even eliminating their use in America would have no effect on atmospheric CO2 levels.

Third, the SCC scheme blames American emissions for supposed costs worldwide (even though U.S. CO2 emissions are actually declining). It incorporates almost every conceivable cost of oil, gas and coal use on crops, forests, coastal cities, property damage, “forced migration,” and human health, nutrition and disease. However, it utterly fails to mention, much less analyze, tremendous and obvious carbon benefits.

That violates a 1993 Bill Clinton executive order requiring that federal agencies assess both benefits and costs of proposed regulations. It is also irrational, and completely contrary to human experience.

Fossil fuels created the modern world and lifted billions out of destitution and disease. They supply over 80% of the energy that powers United States and other modern civilizations; they will continue doing so for decades to come. They generate up to $70 trillion in annual global GDP.

Using readily available data on global living standards, economies, disease, nutrition, life spans and other benefits – and the government’s own SCC cost figures and methodologies – we estimate that carbon benefits exceed costs by orders of magnitude: at least 50 to 1 and as much as 500 to 1!

The U.S. Energy Information Administration forecasts that fossil fuels will provide 75-80% of worldwide energy through 2040 – when the total amount of energy consumed will be at least 25% greater than today. That means these notable benefit-cost ratios will continue. The Obama Era SCC ignores all of this, too.

Fourth, SCC schemes likewise impute only costs to carbon dioxide emissions. However, as thousands of scientific studies verify, rising levels of this miracle molecule are “greening” the Earth – reducing deserts, and improving forests, grasslands, drought resistance, crop yields and human nutrition. No matter which government report or discount rate is used, asserted social costs of more CO2 in Earth’s atmosphere are infinitesimal compared to its estimated benefits.

Fifth, government officials claim they can accurately forecast damages to the world’s climate, economies, civilizations, populations and ecosystems from U.S. carbon dioxide emissions over the next three centuries. They say we must base today’s energy policies, laws and regulations on those forecasts.

The notion is delusional and dangerous. The rate of change in energy generation and other technologies has become exponential over the past several decades, with forecasting ability declining at an equal rate. Uncertainties over man and nature-driven climate changes during the next 300 years are equally colossal. Combining all the SCC assumptions, methodologies, fabrications and omissions, and injecting its absurd predictions into high-speed computer models, just means bogus forecasts are generated more quickly.

Finally, the most fundamental issue isn’t even the social cost of carbon. It is the costs inflicted on society by anti-carbon regulations. Those rules replace fossil fuel revenues with renewable energy subsidies; reliable, affordable electricity with unreliable power that costs two to three times as much; and mines, drill holes, cropland and wildlife habitats with tens of millions of acres of wind, solar and biofuel “farms.”

Anti-carbon rules are designed to drive energy de-carbonization and modern nation de-industrialization. Perhaps worst, their impacts fall hardest on poor, minority and blue-collar families. Those families spend proportionately three to ten times more of their incomes on energy than families earning $50,000 to $250,000 a year. They have little discretionary income and face the greatest risk of having their electricity cut off – as happened to 330,000 families during 2015 in ultra-green Germany. Worldwide, billions of people still do not have electricity – and the SCC would keep them deprived of its benefits.

Bureaucrats, activists, scientists and corporate rent-seekers certainly welcome the SCC mumbo-jumbo. They have profited the most from the countless billions that Obama regulatory agencies lavished on them every year, and from the tens of billions that Mr. Obama stashed in dozens of agencies, programs and crannies throughout the government, so they couldn’t easily be found or cut.

Above all, they would profit massively from the $93 trillion that the Financial Stability Board’s climate task force says the world must spend in low-carbon infrastructure programs over the next 15 years, as part of the Obama-UN-FSB-Climate Crisis, Inc. plan to de-carbonize and de-industrialize the planet.

Taxpayers, consumers and families would be hammered if the Climate Cabal got even more power over energy policies, economic growth, livelihoods and living standards. Thankfully, eliminating the social cost of carbon and programs implemented under it requires little more than applying the same rules and standards that government regulators have imposed on Volkswagen, Fiat and Wall Street dishonesty.

That is why the Trump Administration is challenging the SCC, climate cataclysm deception, and the bloated EPA budget behind so much of it. It’s why the House Science Committee’s Environment and Oversight Subcommittees held a hearing on the SCC, and why we and other experts will eviscerate it during the upcoming Heartland Institute 12th International Climate Conference in Washington, DC.

It’s time to rescind and defund the SCC – and replace it with honest, objective cost-benefit analyses.

Roger Bezdek is an internationally recognized energy analyst and president of Management Information Services, Inc. Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow and author of books and articles on energy, climate change and human rights.

A SERIOUS CLIMATE OPPORTUNITY

A serious climate opportunity

Why does government refuse to do the one thing that would help our forests and climate?

Greg Walcher

For years, politicians have waged war on coal, stifled oil and gas production, and advocated carbon taxes and other extreme measures to reduce carbon dioxide, while ignoring one of the most important things they could do to help.

It reminds me of my own lifelong battle with weight and the associated health issues. I get so frustrated that I sometimes swear I would do anything – anything! – to lose weight. Well, anything except eat less and exercise. But anything else.

That same kind of hypocrisy surrounds rants about our carbon dioxide emissions. Even people who are “deeply concerned” about dangerous manmade climate change drive cars, heat their homes, and sometimes even turn on lights. They embrace modern living standards, while also embracing faddish environmental claims and policies that contribute mightily to problems they insist disturb them greatly.

A popular bumper sticker screams, “TREES ARE THE ANSWER.” Yet when it comes to managing our national forests, many of those same advocates look away, while millions of acres of once healthy trees die, fall down, rot or burn up.

It’s ironic, because those forests provide the world’s greatest resource for cleaning carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere; because the rotting and fires themselves emit greenhouse gases; and because atmospheric carbon dioxide makes all plants grow faster and better and with improved tolerance to drought.

As Colorado State Forester Mike Lester testified recently before a state legislative committee, “When so many trees die and large wildfires follow, our forests quickly turn from a carbon sink into a carbon source.” Trees absorb carbon dioxide as people absorb oxygen, and that balance is critical to sustaining life, as we all learned in grade school.

Yet instead of doing everything in our power to make sure we have abundant thriving forests of healthy trees, we allow them to die and burn and thus belch millions of tons of carbon dioxide into the air.

Lester’s excellent testimony accompanied the release of the Colorado State Forest Service’s annual Report on the Health of Colorado Forests. This year’s assessment is the worst ever, and hardly anybody noticed. There was no outcry from global warming alarmists around the world, as there should have been. In fact, their silence on this issue is deafening. And it’s not just Colorado. It’s every state, and beyond.

The more concerned people are about climate change, the more they should be interested in active management to restore forest health. Yet many of the groups pushing urgent climate policies are the same groups that continue to fight logging, tree thinning and other management necessary for healthy forests. The result is more of the same disasters we have seen unfolding for over 20 years: dead and dying forests, catastrophic wildfires, habitat devastation, loss of human property and lives, and destruction of wildlife.

The new forest health report shows that over the last seven years, the number of dead standing trees in Colorado forests increased almost 30 percent, to an estimated 834 million dead trees. There are billions across the other Rocky Mountain States.

The report makes clear that this continuing trend of tree mortality can lead to large, intense wildfires that totally incinerate and obliterate forests, soils and wildlife. In fact, it is only a matter of time before this happens, if the U.S. Forest Service does not act.

Ironically, the most productive forest health restoration projects in Colorado have been partnerships of the State Forester with water providers like Denver Water, Northern Water Conservancy District and Colorado Springs Utilities. That’s because 80 percent of Colorado’s population depends on water that comes from the national forests.

However, the U.S. Forest Service, which owns almost all of the forestland in the State, continues to work with its hands tied behind its back, its timber programs woefully underfunded and vast sums syphoned off every year for fire suppression. Fire control ought to be funded separately, so that active management of healthy forests is not the perpetually lowest priority.

The Forest Service spends a fortune on planning, writing reports, and defending itself against environmental lawsuits, leaving few funds for what it is really supposed to be doing.

What a golden opportunity for the new Congress and Trump Administration. Reversing this demoralizing trend would restore forests, protect and increase wildlife, bring back thousands of forest products jobs, revitalize rural economies, and do more to reduce carbon dioxide than any previous policy.

The previous Administration created the Office of Sustainability and Climate Change, and Regional Climate Change Hubs, maintained a Climate Change Adaptation Library, mapped drought frequency and intensity, and created massive reports blaming humans for climate change. One study was a vulnerability assessment for the Southwest and California, titled “Southwest Regional Climate Hub and Climate Subsidiary Hub Assessment of Climate Change Vulnerability and Adaptation and Mitigation Strategies.”

All this activity is impressive, and scientific study will always play a role. But none of it actually affects climate change. Growing healthy trees would. Can we get back to that?

Or like me and my weight problem, are we willing to do anything to address climate change and improve our forests and wildlife habitats, except the one thing that might help the most?

Greg Walcher is president of the Natural Resources Group and author of “Smoking Them Out: The Theft of the Environment and How to Take it Back.” He is a former secretary of the Colorado Department of Natural Resources.

DIOGENES SEARCHING FOR HONEST POLICIES

Diogenes searching for honest policies

Renewable energy is defective solution in search of a problem, money and power

Paul Driessen

The Greek philosopher Diogenes reportedly carried an oil lamp during the daytime, the better to help him find an honest man. People everywhere should join Congress and the Trump Administration in search of honest energy and climate policies – as too many existing policies were devised by special interests seeking money and power, and often using imaginary problems to justify their quest.

The health and environmental impacts from fossil fuels are well documented, though often exaggerated or even fabricated by activists, politicians, bureaucrats and companies with lofty agendas: securing climate research grants, and mandates and subsidies for renewable energy projects to replace fossil fuels; reducing economic growth and living standards in industrialized nations; and redistributing the world’s wealth, fundamentally transforming the global economy, and telling impoverished countries what kinds of energy and what level of economic development they will be permitted to have. 

More often than not, proponents justify these agendas by insisting we must prevent dangerous manmade global warming and climate chaos, prevent unsustainable resource consumption, and safeguard people against purported technological risks. My multiple articles on the catechism of climate cataclysm … sustainability realities, absurdities and duplicities … and selective application of precautionary pabulum address the conceptual fallacies of these interchangeable, agenda-driving mantras.

All three are routinely defined, twisted, used and abused to block technologies that activists despise, and promote technologies and policies that advance their agendas and fill their coffers.

But beyond their glaring, often insurmountable conceptual problems are the practical issues. With what, exactly, will these agitators replace fossil fuels? Applying the same health and environmental standards they use against oil, natural gas and coal – just how clean, green, Earth-friendly, sustainable, climate-stabilizing, healthy, and human rights/social justice-oriented are their renewable energy alternatives?

If their alternatives are so wondrous, why do they still need permanent mandates, renewable portfolio standards, investment tax credits, production tax credits, feed-in tariffs, myriad other subsidies, exemptions from endangered species and other regulations, and laws requiring that utility companies buy their electricity whenever it is produced (even if it is not needed)? Why must they build and run fossil fuel “backup” power plants for the 50-85% of the time that wind and solar are not producing?

The following brief examination will hopefully guide more rigorous analyses of the impacts of these “technologies of the future” – aka wind, solar and biomass technologies that served mankind rather poorly for countless generations, until the fossil/nuclear era began, and now are supposed to serve us once again.

Probably the biggest single problem with any supposedly renewable, sustainable alternative is its horrendously low energy density: the amount of energy produced per acre. We can get far more electricity or fuel from a few dozen, hundred or thousand acres of oil, gas or coal production operations than we can from millions or tens of millions of acres of renewable energy projects.

Moreover, fossil fuel operations can often be conducted in the middle of farm fields or wildlife habitats – or the land can be reclaimed and returned to those uses once the energy has been extracted. Offshore oil and gas platforms actually create thriving habitats for marine life. Most renewable energy operations displace food crops or destroy wildlife habitats – and must do so in perpetuity.

And so we have corn as high as an elephant’s eye, across an area the size of Iowa (36 million acres) to produce ethanol that replaces 10% of US gasoline but also requires vast quantities of water, fertilizer, fuel and pesticides to grow the corn and turn it into fuel – instead of feeding hungry people.

We find bright yellow canola fields across more millions of acres in Montana, Saskatchewan, Germany and elsewhere, to produce biodiesel – and still more acreage devoted to switchgrass for ethanol and algae ponds for “advanced biofuels.” In Brazil, it’s millions of acres of sugarcane for ethanol, and millions more for other biofuels from palm oil, from areas that once were rainforests, “the Earth’s lungs,” as environmentalist groups like to say. Once teeming with wildlife, they are now monoculture energy plantations – so that we don’t have to desecrate Mother Earth by drilling holes in the ground to produce oil and natural gas: nature’s own biofuels, created over millions of years and stored for mankind’s benefit.

Of course, when these expensive, environment-intensive alternatives are burned, they send more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, the same as fossil fuels do – on top of the CO2 that was burned by fuels and released from soils and clear-cut trees to produce the “climate-friendly renewable” energy.

Meanwhile, American and Canadian companies are cutting down millions of acres of forest habitats, and turning millions of trees into wood pellets that they truck to coastal ports and transport on oil-fueled cargo ships to England – to be hauled by truck and burned in place of coal to generate electricity. The pellets cost more than coal (which Britain still has in abundance), so utility companies receive huge taxpayer subsidies to make up the difference. One power plant received £450 million ($553 million) in 2015.

The financially and environmentally unsustainable scheme is justified on the ground that trees are renewable; so the scam helps Britain meet its climate change and renewable fuel obligations under various laws and treaties. Even though the trees-to-pellets-to-power process emits more carbon dioxide and pollution than coal-based power generation, the “wood fool” arrangement is considered to be “carbon neutral,” because growing replacement trees over the next century or two will absorb CO2.

If this sounds freaking dishonest and insane, it’s because it is freaking dishonest and insane. Diogenes must be turning summersaults in his grave. But there’s more.

On top of all this biofuel lunacy, we also have tens of thousands of wind turbines towering above fields, lakes, oceans and homes – butchering millions of birds and bats, and impairing the health of thousands of humans whose wellbeing is sacrificed to Big Wind profits. We’ve also got millions of solar panels sprawling across countless acres of desert and grassland habitats, to produce well under 1% of the world’s electricity. Their expensive, intermittent power reaches distant urban areas via thousands of miles of high-voltage transmission lines. They all require greenhouse gas-emitting backup power plants.

Those turbines, panels, transmission lines and backups require millions of tons of steel, copper, concrete, rare earth and other exotic metals, fiberglass and other materials – much of it produced under nonexistent health and environmental laws in faraway countries, where injury, illness, child labor and death run rampant … and are ignored by local, national and United Nations authorities and human rights activists.

Removing all these worn-out turbines and solar panels will cost billions of dollars that state and federal governments don’t have, and developers have rarely had to cover with bonds. 

Finally, the energy produced from all these “planet-saving” enterprises is far more costly than what could be produced using fossil fuels. Poor families are hit hardest, as they must spend a much larger portion of their incomes on energy than middle class and wealthy families. Businesses, factories, hospitals and schools also face rising energy costs, and must lay off workers, reduce services or close their doors.

The impacts ricochet throughout communities and nations, adversely affecting living standards, nutrition, health and life spans. We are reminded once again: Corporate fraud affects a limited number of customers; government and activist fraud affects every taxpayer, citizen and consumer.

The essence of all these renewable fuel programs is embodied in the notion that we must capture methane from cow dung, to safeguard Earth’s climate from this “potent greenhouse gas.” The operable term is BS.

The US Congress and Trump Administration could become world leaders in returning honesty and sanity to energy, climate, economic and environmental discussions and policies. Let’s hope they do.

Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power - Black death.

SCIENCE DENIERS IN THE WIND INDUSTRY

Science deniers in the wind industry  

The human health consequences of manipulated measurements

By Helen Schwiesow Parker, PhD, LCP                

Like the tobacco industry before it, the wind industry has spent decades vehemently denying known harmful consequences associated with its product, while promoting its fraudulent feel-good image. Dismissing or denying the serious health impacts of industrial-scale wind turbines is wishful thinking, akin to insisting that tobacco is harmless because we enjoy it.

The problem with wind energy is not just its costly, subsidized, unreliable electricity; the need to back up every megawatt with redundant fossil-fuel power; or its impacts on wildlife and their habitats.

Infrasound (inaudible) and low-frequency (audible) noise (slowly vibrating sound waves collectively referred to as ILFN) produced by Industrial-scale Wind Turbines (IWTs) directly and predictably cause adverse human health effects.  The sonic radiation tends to be amplified within structures, and sensitivity to the impact of the resonance increases with continuing exposure.

These facts have been known to the wind industry and the US government since the 1980s when it became a ‘hot topic,’ with numerous studies presented and published by acousticians working under grants from the Departments of Energy, Defense and NASA. The wind industry response? 

Deny the science.  Insist that “what you can’t hear can’t hurt you.” Claim that “neighbors will get used to it.” Measure only outside dwellings, and allow only noise measurements in the field that reflect the relative loudness perceived by the human ear, while drastically reducing sound-level readings in the lower frequencies that are known to cause problems.

From a distance, many view the massive turbines as majestic – as a clean, seemingly quiet and free source of endless energy. To untold thousands of families clustered within 2 kilometers (1.25 miles) or more of the pulsing machines, however, the IWTs bring strangely debilitating illness – increasingly incapacitating for some, yet scoffed at by wind proponents.

Common sense tells us that fifty-story-tall metal structures with blades as long as football fields moving at 180 mph at their tips would negatively impact quiet neighborhoods. But the extent and severity of the IWT’s effect on body, mind and spirit comes as a surprise to most people.

“When I’m at home I’m usually sick with headaches, nausea, vertigo, tinnitus, anxiety, hopelessness, depression. My ears pop a lot and I hardly ever sleep…. Suicide looks to be my only relief.  Land of the FREE Home of the BULLSHIT! … Million to one odds anybody contacts me back.” 

The primary pathway of turbine assault on human health is no mystery. The Israeli army has used low-frequency sound pulses as high-tech crowd control for years. People are made nauseous and confused, with blurred vision, vertigo, headaches, tachycardia, heightened blood pressure, pain and ringing in the ears, difficulties with memory and concentration, anxiety, depression, irritability, and panic attacks.

This also describes the Wind Turbine Syndrome (WTS), a constellation of symptoms first given a name by the brilliant young MD/PhD, Nina Pierpont. She followed her astute and compassionate observations of turbine neighbors around the world with epidemiological research, using a robust case-crossover statistical design: subjects experienced symptoms that varied with proximity to the turbines. When the same subjects were placed at a greater distance from the turbines, their symptoms abated; returning them to the scene brought the symptoms back.

Michigan State University noise engineers explain that “Inaudible components [ILFN] can induce resonant vibration in liquids, gases and solids … bodily tissues and cavities – potentially harmful to humans.” A subject in the groundbreaking Cooper study describes how the resonance shows up in a glass of water on her kitchen table, and in the toilet bowl, and how she feels it in her body.

Pierpont hypothesized that a significant pathway from ILFN to symptoms might include disruption to balance mechanisms located in the inner ear.

Dr. Alec Salt and colleagues, otolaryngologists at Washington University, later found that inaudible ILFN reaches the brain via inner ear Outer Hair Cell (OHC) displacement, leading indeed to unfamiliar and disturbing sensations paralleling WTS.

As turbine size trends upward, the sickening ILFN emissions worsen. There’s a lot of money riding on keeping the science under the radar of public awareness, and regulations to a minimum.

When Denmark’s EPA proposed tightening turbine noise regulations to protect turbine neighbors from increasing ILFN (May 2011), the Vestas CEO wrote the DEPA Minister, asserting: “It simply isn’t technically possible to curtail the ILFN output,” and “Increased distance requirements [setbacks from residences] cannot be met whilst maintaining a satisfactory business outcome for the investor.”’ DEPA folded, turning instead to looser standards that were “likely to be copied by other countries.”

Although alerted to the increased endangerment of turbine neighbors around the world, the press remained silent, and Big Wind’s central players ramped up their game plan undeterred.

In addition to the impact of ILFN radiation, turbine neighbors suffer from Turbine “Flicker” – a strobe-like effect caused by turbine blades alternately blocking and allowing sunlight to skim rhythmically and repeatedly across the land, or ricochet in bursts across interior walls and stairwells.

The direct impact extends to nearly a mile from the turbine – long after sunrise, and again long before sunset. It is mesmerizing, disorienting, and often brings on nausea, dizziness, lightheadedness, irritability, even panic, indoors or outside.

Repetitive sleep disturbance and stress-related symptoms are the most common health complaints of IWT neighbors.  The audible sound constantly fluctuates, described as akin to low-flying jets or the rumble of helicopters, “freakish, screeching sound sludge.”  It is unnatural.  People say the noise gets into your head, and you can’t get it out.

Advising the Falmouth, MA Board of Health, Dr. William Hallstein wrote: “All varieties of illnesses are destabilized, secondary to inadequate sleep: diabetic blood sugars, cardiac rhythms, migraines, tissue healing. Psychiatric problems intensify … all in the ‘normal’ brain. Errors in judgment and accident rates increase.”

As with seasickness, not everyone is similarly affected. But for many, the experience becomes literally intolerable. Devastated families and individuals around the world, having lost their health, jobs or farms, return their keys to the bank, sell their homes at fire-sale prices, or simply pack up and flee. Some never recover their health.

(For more details on this human health travesty, see my three-part series on MasterResource.org)

The continuing expansion of Big Wind is a tale of money and power shunting aside integrity and compassion, abetted by a disinterested news media, leading to an un-informed public, further betrayed by “human rights advocates” loathe to break ranks from popular positions.

The myth that “saving the world” requires tolerating the costs of Big Wind could not be further from the truth.  Responsible stewardship demands critical thinking, common sense and grade school science, not just following Big Wind’s Pied Piper and supposedly good intentions.

In fact, allowing wind into the energy mix squanders our non-renewable environment and taxpayer billions that are greatly needed elsewhere, wasting them on the most idiotic of engineering conceits. 

Reliance on wind actually increases emissions and fossil fuel use overall, due to inefficiencies introduced into the system. Big Wind eliminates none of the need for conventional capacity, but rather consumes vast quantities of additional fuel and raw materials, while spewing emissions during the manufacture, transportation, construction and maintenance of the enormous redundant turbines and their uniquely demanding infrastructure.

The Wind Game is nothing but an obscenely costly, mostly useless energy redundancy scheme. It funnels unimaginable profits from our taxpayer and rate-payer pockets to its inner circle, while knowingly ignoring its victims’ desperate pleas for relief – and indeed ridiculing them and trying to bury all the growing evidence of harm to their health and wellbeing.

We’ve witnessed three decades of this callous, mercenary assault, this arrogant denial of what is known to be true, this untold suffering of thousands of innocent victims around the world. It’s time to bring in the human rights and social justice referees – and call “game over.”

___________

Helen Schwiesow Parker, PhD, is a Licensed Clinical Psychologist and a Past Clinical Supervisory Faculty member at the University of Virginia Medical School. Her career includes practical experience in the fields of autism, sensory perception, memory and learning, attention deficit and anxiety disorders, including panic disorder and PTSD.

TRUMP ACCUSES OBAMA OF WIRE TAP

Trump Accuses Obama of Wire Tap

By Michael McCune 

In the United States election campaign that just won't die, President Donald Trump fired a broadside at past President Barack Obama March 4, 2017 at 0435 Washington time.

Anyone who has followed the Rant knows I have no use for Barack Hussein Obama. Never did, never will. The past President encouraged his loyalists in the bureaucracy to commit unlawful acts on a daily basis--Lois Lerner of the Internal Revenue Service is the poster child for this lawlessness--even if there was no direct-link smoking gun to show the Obama's Administration instigated the deceptive fraud against conservative-based groups seeking tax exempt status.

In his early-Saturday tweet charge, an irate Trump accuses Obama of wire-tapping his hotel, Trump Towers, in a fashion that would make Richard Nixon's invasion of Democrat headquarters in Watergate seem trivial. It seems the past Commander-in-Chief finally got the Donald's goat and methinks the hand-to-hand fighting is about to bust loose.

But look into the known 'facts' a bit and you find there has to be a chain of bureaucratic insiders who knew the score but went ahead anyway and committed treason after treason.

Obama's "investigators" originally went to the FISA court to obtain the warrant. When denied, they went to the NSA--yeah, old baldy, fore-head rubbing "I can't remember anything under oath" chief spy Clapper's group, and back-doored the wire tap process by having them go to FISA. Then, following the flurry of Executive ordered changes just prior to his leaving the White House, Obama paved the way for his minions to release this classified information without fear of legal proceedings.

Now political controversies are nothing new and have been growing at an alarming rate over the past four decades. But the Obama Administration, aided and abetted by a compliant media, took the internal war to new levels. Trump, as a non-politician, is understandably upset over being exposed to a new, much darker side, of our political government.

But what has this observer most concerned is the "civility" one usually expects from a losing side in an election has been conspicuously AWOL in this one.

Meetings with foreign dignitaries and representatives happen all the time, particularly among our official representatives and military people stationed abroad. I do not think anyone expects you to remember every individual's name, rank and other details. (As an auditor I met many CEOs, their legal reps and hundreds of employees, I probably can't put three names and the businesses they were associated with together now.)

As far back as I can remember there were concerns about Russian interests in our elections. Those born after 1976 probably have no recollection of a world in which the Berlin Wall was a major point of contention or in which the Iron Curtain played a daily role in millions of lives. Those born after 1960 in America probably have no recollection of school drills where you had to duck under your desk to simulate an air raid warning. The world changes. but Russian animosity for America has not waned.

In fact BHO's world apology tour where he publicly bowed to every two-bit leader in the world probably did more to bring back Russian interest in American affairs as anything. And the weakness of Obama's "red line in the sand in Syria" cemented the disdain for American leadership so they probably thought the time was ripe to try and exploit this election.

All the foreign interaction is mundane when placed against the backdrop of the on-going dispute.

This political war, more than anything since Abraham Lincoln's ascension to the Oval Office, threatens the fabric of America. The fabric is extremely worn and not nearly as strong as it was 156 years ago.

Even if the trail cannot be traced directly back to Obama, even if it is proven that Trump's campaign was in direct contact with the Russians, the strain on the fabric will be increased. Based on a biased free press, the ability to discern the truth by those on the outside looking in will be hampered more than ever before.

Obama and his minions have failed to take into account fully the depth of Donald Trump. He is not a mealy-mouthed politician but a hard-nosed, win-at-all-costs businessman. His training and background are outside Washington's knife-in-the-back-while-shaking hands ethics. To go to the length of publicly accusing the other side of a wire tap means Trump has plenty of fact to go on. The only thing this does is derail his 100-day plan by focusing energy elsewhere.

But in a head-to-head, no-holds-barred fight, figure Trump will best Obama who always hires his hit-men and never stood in the direct line of fire. This is a fight Obama has never had to wage before. He can't hide behind a community organizer's cloak. He has been called out directly by a person who has shown a propensity for action.

If Obama or the Democrat Party thought they had a bead on their main antagonist, they are now uncomfortably aware the target has no qualms about putting a bulls-eye on them either. All this war needs is for someone to sneeze at the wrong time.

"I have sworn on the altar of God eternal hostility to every form of tyranny over the mind of man."--Thomas Jefferson