How did we let the big government crowd make our environment their ruse de guerre? This Earth Day we call on all people of good sense to retake our environment.

Earth Day is here again.  I’m sure we can expect the same old green blarney that sets your teeth on edge.  Yet, it would be a shame if we let tired propaganda distract us from some essential truths.  We share a passion for America.  Conservation is a natural for conservatives.   Preserving the beauty of our land is a duty for those of us who love liberty.  Passing our country and our planet down to our children, as good or better than we found it is hardwired into our bones.  How did we let this sacred obligation be co-opted?  How did we let the big government crowd make our environment their ruse de guerre?

Head outside (as we expect you already plan to do).  Take to our mountains, forests, rivers, streams and lakes.  Set sail on our oceans.  You’ll find more than your fair share of people who share your values, reveling with their families in America’s beauty.

In recent years Americans and their allies in the free, developed world have enjoyed significant environmental progress.  Our lands are cleaner and greener than they were not long ago.  Government deserves part of the credit for our cleaner circumstances for addressing the economic problems of “externality” (transferring production burdens such as pollution to society as a whole) and “the tragedy of the commons” (depleting shared resources).  Still more credit is due to the prosperity created through our free market system.  Reliable power grids and energy supplies eliminated the need for large-scale dependence on firewood leading to verdant swaths of mature trees all around, populating areas that not long ago were completely bare.  The incredible bounty derived from modern agriculture ensures enough food for all, requires less acreage, returns large areas to a wild state and makes hunting a matter of sport, rather than subsistence, permitting a tremendous rebound of wild species.

American conservation and environmentalism gave birth to our state and national parks and gave us the tools to clean up our rivers, air and reign in the litter that once lay all about us.  We have much to celebrate.

Sadly, many once constructive environmental organizations later succumbed to radicalism.  Joined by newcomers that were founded with radical expansion of government control over our economy and lives as their aim, they lost the guiding recognition that mankind is part of nature too.  Robert Heinlein observed that, “in declaring his love for a beaver dam (erected by beavers for beavers’ purposes) and his hatred for dams erected by men (for the purposes of men) the Naturist reveals his hatred for his own race — i.e., his own self-hatred.”

Today many environmental campaign organizations represent a dire threat to the basic freedoms and liberties that the United States was founded to secure.  Ironically, they now pose an equally dire threat to the natural environments and human well-being the protection of which should be their aim.  Their blinkered opposition to free market capitalism threatens to choke off the source of the prosperity that permits us to effectively steward our environment.  They thwart us from developing our domestic energy resources and leave us dependent on foreign nations that bear us no affection.  They dogmatically block the use of nuclear power despite its excellent safety record, low cost and inherently clean impact.  They advocate feel-good projects such as erecting giant wind turbines in unspoiled areas in a vain attempt to reign in CO2 emissions that were never a pollutant to begin with.  That the wind turbines produce subsidies for their developers, but no meaningful power for our communities is a fact they choose not to grasp.

For nearly twenty-five years CFACT has debunked the false claims made in the name of our environment and exposed the hidden agendas behind them.  We have been a patient and consistent advocate for real conservation and genuine stewardship of the earth.  We have taken the side of developing peoples against those who would trap them in poverty.

This Earth Day we call on all people of good sense to retake our environment.  We urge you to join us as guardians of the freedom, dignity and prosperity of all people.   The future of humanity and the natural environment of which we are part, depend on it.

David Rothbard serves as President of CFACT and Craig Rucker as Executive Director of CFACT.

ROTHBARD & RUCKER: Global warming’s weak links

Illustration: The world in chains by Greg Groesch for The Washington Times.

Delegates from around the world gather in Bonn this weekend to chart the future of a new global-

warming treaty they hope to sign in Mexico this fall or in South Africa in 2011 at the latest. This treaty would lock our nation into massive new taxation, regulation, subsidies and redistribution; take unprecedented control of our economy; and radically alter our way of life. Laws and regulations that increase the power of government are seldom repealed. Treaties are tougher still. The costs and burdens of the treaty these delegates hope to sign are so extraordinary, they cannot be justified unless every link in the chain of logic supporting the treaty is beyond reproach.

A chain, we all know, is only as strong as its weakest link. We must have extraordinary confidence in the integrity of every link before we trust it. Has the process been sound? Has the globe warmed? Are we humans to blame? Will any warming continue? Would the impacts be terrible? Would the proposed solutions do any meaningful good? Will the benefits exceed the costs? Let any link in this chain of questions fail, and the treaty cannot be justified. It would be all pain, no gain and should be scrapped.

The public's trust in the supposed scientific consensus took a blow when a vast body of e-mails from the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia came to light in what has been dubbed "Climategate." Climate scientists derided their critics, blocked access to peer-reviewed literature, withheld data from examination, planned to "hide the decline" in past temperatures and generally revealed themselves to be shaping their science to their politics rather than the other way around. Anyone who tells you climate science is settled is selling something. The climate is a vastly complicated system. The science that studies it is prone to error and was politicized before it could mature.

The treaty's advocates have long been challenging our credulity as they continually have made assertions people can judge for themselves to be false. You can't hold up every unseasonably hot day as evidence of global warming, dismiss every cold and calm day and hold the confidence of people educated enough to attribute both to natural variability. The treaty advocates hyped extreme tales of drowning bears, famine, plague, pestilence and flood. They flattened past warm and cool periods to make the trend look like a hockey stick. Is it surprising if people aren't buying? You can't demonize, ridicule and ignore opponents without begging the question: Why? Experts confident in their conclusions neither suppress, nor exaggerate.

Has the globe warmed? Most think that since the late 19th century, there has been some warming. The issue becomes muddled when you consider such factors as the reliability of the data sets, the selective use of the proxy data used to estimate historic temperatures and the way urbanization warms local weather stations.

Climate changed continually long before man's activities could have been a factor. It appears likely that man's contribution has been exaggerated and natural variability downplayed. The portion of carbon dioxide we can attribute to man is dwarfed by that which is produced from nature. There have been studies that have show that in the past, temperatures moved first and carbon dioxide followed. Which is the cause and which the effect remains unknown. Because carbon dioxide increased periodically in past millenniums, can we reliably conclude that any of the current increase has come from today's smokestacks and sport utility vehicles?

We had best hope the climate prophets have cried false, as the solutions being put forth in Bonn benefit narrow interests, with no gain for climate. Alternative energy sounds nice but in practice does more to generate fortunes from subsidies than it does meaningful power. Would-be carbon traders hope to reap huge bonuses from mandated markets the climate will never notice. Biofuels profit agribusiness, yet reduce natural habitats, make food scarce and offer little carbon change. Nations with stagnant economies seek handouts, while their citizens really need free elections, free markets and the rule of law.

President Obama recently demonstrated his willingness to ignore public opinion and force a health care bill through Congress while his party's majorities are still strong. It would be a mistake to do this on climate. The process must be reformed, public confidence restored and every link in our climate chain proved beyond reproach before we should agree to a climate treaty.

David Rothbard and Craig Rucker serve respectively as president and executive director of the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow.

Prof. Fred Singer presents the Report “Nature, not Human Activity, Rules the Climate” by the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change’(NIPCC) at CFACT’s International Climate Eco-Summit (I.C.E.) at the Center for Political Studies, Copenhagen, Denmark. December 11, 2009. The whole talk lasts for 45 minutes

Craig Rucker, Director of CFACT and Professor Niklas Nils-Axel Mörner, expert on world sea levels representing the voice of dissent against man-made climate change hysteria, spoke to Reuters at their own conference near the Bella Center, where the UN conference is currently taking place.

See the story and video clips on the Reuters website.

Dagsavisen, a national paper in Norway with close ties to the labor movement invited Lene Johansen to write on the political realities on climate change in the U.S. for the special section they will publish in climate right before Copenhagen. It is hard for foreign correspondents to wade too deep into the political realities of another country, but Johansen has experience enough from Washington, DC to explain the congressional opposition to Waxman-Markey in her native language, Norwegian.

“Det var i utgangspunktet lite sannsynlig at den amerikanske kongressen skulle gi klarsignal for kvotehandel. «Climategate» har lagt saken helt død. USA kommer ikke til å ratifisere noen avtale fra København eller forhandlingene neste år. Det er ikke politisk støtte blant velgerne.”

Read the entire piece here: Betydningen av Climategate

The CFACT Collegians group at the University of Connecticut hosted a screening of Not Evil Just Wrong this week. An alarmist student group decided to protest the screening due to the content of the movie, but they were not interested in seeing the movie themselves according to Daily Campus:

“Not everyone present debated the existence of global warming – many students from CFACT said they were more concerned with the way the government handles the issue.

‘I don’t care much about environmental issues. I care about the fact that people are dying because we’re trying to help global warming,’ said Matthew Darling, a 3rd-semester political science major. ‘They’re telling Africa to use solar power when the U.S., the industrialized nations, never had to. Telling them to [use alternative energy] is hypocritical.’

People in developing countries can’t afford to use these energy sources, Darling said.

‘I’m one who believes global warming exists and is caused by humans,’ said Phillip Ruffy, a 1st-semester management for engineering and manufacturing major and CFACT member. ‘I think that governmental regulations are not the way to solve the problem. I’m for free market. I’m a libertarian.’

CFACT members challenged the demonstrators, asking why they weren’t going in to watch the movie.

‘Are you aware of the facts in the movie?’ Ruffy asked Berthiaume. Berthiaume told him he’d seen the trailer, but was not interested in watching the film at this time.”

Read the entire story here: Groups with opposing viewpoints clash outside of presentation

CFACT’s own Paul Driessen commented on Climategate in the Washington Post today. He is calling for the political establishment to take the consequence of the fraud that has been uncovered in this case.

“Most important, the United States, Britain and all other responsible nations should slam the brakes on every proposed “climate crisis” treaty, agreement, bill, regulatory proposal, “endangerment” finding, and endangered species action. We must get to the bottom of this scandal and determine which data and claims are honest and accurate – and which are bogus, fraudulent and unfounded – before moving forward.”

Read the entire comment on the Washington Post Website: Pseudoscience cesspool