Seattle Bows Down to the Carbon gods: Beach Bonfires Discouraged Due to Carbon Emissions

Didn't have much time for reading The Corner this week, but Anne of Idaho sends along an excerpt from a new carbon emissions story Jonah mentioned, followed by her own comments (with which I heartily agree). According to a memo on beach bonfires from the Seattle Parks and Recreation Dept. released this Thursday, "The overall policy question for the Board is whether it is good policy for Seattle Parks to continue public beach fires when the carbon ... emissions produced by thousands of beach fires per year contributes to global warming."

Anne: This can be likened to a dieter wiping sweet peas off the list of things he can eat while retaining ice cream and cake. Or a husband coming home with a set of new golf clubs after telling his wife she needs to have fewer manicures in order to help with household economies. Doesn’t anyone on these boards and committees and government entities ever raise the issue of rationality? There were nearly one million acres of forest land burned in Idaho last year due to past government policies about logging. I hardly think a few thousand beach fires, or even a few million, matter.

Andrew Stuttaford on NRO had this to say about the world's New Religion: The Seattle Sacrifice An entertaining story...and yet another example of how certain aspects of environmentalism are, in some ways, taking on the characteristics of a religion. You can read the banning of the beach bonfires both as ritual sacrifice and as no less ritual renunciation of pleasure. The whole thing is, in all likelihood, futile, but it generates a comfortably shared illusion that 'something' is being done, as well, of course, as providing an excellent opportunity for those in charge to demonstrate their moral superiority and for those beneath them to be bossed about. In its own remarkably petty way, it's perfect.

Don't Start Building Those Igloos Just Yet

If worries about climate change are keeping you awake at night, don't miss this Investor's Business Daily piece that reminds us of some of the dire predictions made on (or soon after) the first Earth Day in 1969. We'd do well to remember that 1970s environmentalists were predicting the next Ice Age and were screaming for preventative government policy before millions of American families starved to death in their igloos...which they said would happen within the next 30 years. Yet here we all are, in 2008: snug as a bug in a rug. I ask you: Why are weird Al Gorivich and the environmental Doomsdayers of today any more correct than they were back then?

Here's what they said:

At the first Earth Day celebration, in 1969, environmentalist Nigel Calder warned, "The threat of a new ice age must now stand alongside nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death and misery for mankind."

C.C. Wallen of the World Meteorological Organization said, "The cooling since 1940 has been large enough and consistent enough that it will not soon be reversed."

In 1968, professor Paul Ehrlich, former Vice President Al Gore's hero and mentor, predicted that there would be a major food shortage in the U.S. and "in the 1970s . . . hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death." Ehrlich forecast that 65 million Americans would die of starvation between 1980 and 1989, and that by 1999 the U.S. population would have declined to 22.6 million. Ehrlich's predictions about England were gloomier: "If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000."

In 1972, a report was written for the Club of Rome warning that the world would run out of gold by 1981, mercury and silver by 1985, tin by 1987 and petroleum, copper, lead and natural gas by 1992.

Gordon Taylor, in his 1970 book "The Doomsday Book," said Americans were using 50% of the world's resources and "by 2000 they (Americans) will, if permitted, be using all of them." In 1975, the Environmental Fund took out full-page ads warning, "The World as we know it will likely be ruined by the year 2000."

Harvard biologist George Wald in 1970 warned, "Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind." That was the same year that Sen. Gaylord Nelson warned, in Look magazine, that by 1995 "somewhere between 75% and 85% of all the species of living animals will be extinct."

And how about this one, from 1885:

In 1885, the U.S. Geological Survey announced that there was "little or no chance" of oil being discovered in California, and a few years later they said the same about Kansas and Texas. In 1939, the U.S. Department of the Interior said American oil supplies would last only another 13 years. In 1949, the secretary of the interior said the end of U.S. oil supplies was in sight. Having learned nothing from its earlier erroneous claims, in 1974 the U.S. Geological Survey advised us that the U.S. had only a 10-year supply of natural gas. The fact of the matter, according to the American Gas Association: There's a 1,000- to 2,500- year supply.

Patriot Post: Polar Bears or Political Pawns?

Interesting op-ed in the Patriot Post on the Left's use of endangered species to block various economic initiatives. Among other things, there is now a push to put the Polar Bear on the list of endangered species. Some proponents of opening ANWR to oil drilling say it is simply a political ploy designed to continue to block their efforts.

The Center for Biological Diversity, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and Greenpeace are suing the USFWS (of Spotted Owl fame) for delaying action to declare polar bears "threatened" and provide them protection. A 2007 U.S. Geological Survey report speculates that 60 percent of polar bears might perish by 2050 - IF global warming continues to melt Arctic sea ice.

Call Al Gore's Office: We've Got Major Devastation in Scandanavia!

Go ahead and add the devastation of Scandanavian gingerbread houses to the ever-growing and never-ending list of things we can blame on global warming. The Terra Daily reported that both wholesale manufacturers of ginger-houses and home-based amateur builders are suffering. One retailer received 40+ complaints from angry customers whose houses collapsed due to overly-moist gingerbread and icing that wouldn't dry and harden. "The damp weather spells immediate devastation for gingerbread houses," said a spokesperson for Sweden's leading gingerbread wholesaler. "The problem is the mild winter."

Ted Turner's Dire Predictions Lead to Discussion of Cannibalism at Dinner Table

Last week Mark Hemingway over at The Corner was kind enough to post this funny (actual) dialogue that took place during dinner at our house last week. This conversation followed Ted Turner's prediction that global warming will render the planet a barren desert and turn all of us into cannibals within a few decades. Thought I'd share it. (Our kids are pretty funny, if I do say so myself.)

12-year old Daughter: “So…which of us kids are you and Daddy going to eat first?”

Daddy: “Depends who’s getting the best grades and doing the most chores at the time.”

Daughter: “There won’t BE any grades because of the Failed State, silly!”

13-year old Son: “Anyway, I think the Father is supposed to sacrifice himself for his family…”

Daughter: “Yeah, that’s true. But we wouldn’t have to kill Daddy right away; we could just cut off one leg, then the other… We could probably keep him alive for a few extra weeks that way.”

Son: “What’s the point of dragging it out when Civilization will be in shambles anyway…?”