by John Huppenthal | May 13, 2023 | Opinion
By John Huppenthal |
Dr. Thomas Patterson’s “Climate Change Alarmism Is Not Supported by the Facts” on April 28 was very well done, accurately summarizing the Climate Change movement as an issue distracting us with predictions of catastrophe.
Citing published experts, the column rebutted critical points of the climate movement’s argument: forest fires, hurricanes, malnutrition from agricultural damage, the threat to polar bears, and the economic impact. Patterson pointed out that forest fire losses are much lower now than in the past, hurricane landfalls are fewer, not more; polar bear populations are at their highest levels in 60 years, and the economic damage predicted from global warming is tiny.
That’s all we need to know—the essence of the argument proving the entire premise of doom false. You can get lost in the weeds focusing on too much. But no matter how powerful, a single column doesn’t do this subject justice. The climate movement is massive and dangerous. Composed of four different strands:
- Some in the movement see climate as the tool to advance our journey to a communist state.
- Some, like Ted Turner, exemplify a “biocentric” strand with his desire to reduce the world population by 7.5 billion.
- Another group sees the movement as an opportunity to gain power and money.
- A final group genuinely believes the global warming crisis will destroy humanity.
We’re in a four-front war. All intend to impoverish our families if we take their words at face value. Others want to see us and our children dead or at least gone.
The climate movement has endless stories to fuel its “narrative.” For example, in 2012, drought hit Missouri hard, with corn production down 42 percent. Stories like this happen every year. It’s the nature of the weather. So, we must relentlessly supply the counter-narrative, one based on facts. Geological records show that, long before the industrial CO2 era, the Sahel region in Africa suffered a drought that lasted for hundreds of years. Climate change and weather have always been with us. In this instance, we can also point to United Nations data showing that current world cereal crop production (corn, wheat, soybeans, barley, oats, rye) is at a record. Fewer people are starving than ever before.
Further, it’s possible that not even a shred of the Green House Gas theory is correct. The idea: added Carbon Dioxide traps more solar radiation, further warming the oceans. Added ocean warming then releases more water vapor which also traps heat, amplifying the Green House Gas effect of CO2. NASA is testing this theory. At a cost of over $8 billion, we have put seven highly sophisticated measurement devices into orbit around the earth, devices called CERES. These devices began measuring solar radiation and the earth’s reflected radiation in 2000. We have over twenty years of measuring incoming and outgoing radiation to determine the theory’s correctness. Result? Not as the climate movement predicted and believes. Outgoing radiation is not only ever so slightly higher than incoming radiation, but the trend is also further negative at a time when CO2 emissions have been increasing rapidly and significantly. We are cooling—slightly. At least that’s what the $8 billion CERES instruments say.
Those instruments say we are losing heat, not gaining heat. Outgoing radiation is higher than incoming radiation, and the difference is trending even more negatively. The opposite of what the Green House Gas theory predicts. Based on these measurements, we need more CO2, not less.
So, where is the heat coming from? We know where it comes from in Maricopa County. With a population of over 1.7 million households and over 2 million tons of asphalt and 40 million tons of concrete, we have effectively eliminated winter by creating an urban heat island—an island that has made us the number one population growth county out of over 3,000 counties in the U.S. Urban heat islands have also rendered temperature measurements worldwide questionable. But, even with this huge effect, our record temperature remains 1990: 122 degrees—33 years ago. And March 2023 was our coldest March in 30 years.
Another big issue: is CO2 a pollutant? We know from experience and experiments that CO2 is not toxic to human beings. Crews live in submarines and the International Space Station for many months, with CO2 levels above 4,000 ppm CO2. By comparison, we won’t be up to 1,200 ppm for 300 years at current trends. They’ve even done experiments with CO2 at 40,000 ppm for weeks. They saw no ill effects in their measurements. The OSHA standard is 5,000 ppm. From a health standpoint, CO2 is not a pollutant, even though the climate movement would like us to confuse it with deadly carbon monoxide.
Just how completely wrong is the climate movement? Numerous research studies show the benefit of higher levels of CO2 for crops and forest growth. Because CO2 is essential for photosynthesis, below 150 ppm, all plant and human life would end. CO2 accelerates plant growth as it increases from 150 ppm until it hits 1,200 ppm, a level our atmosphere won’t see for 300 years at current trends. These benefits are immense. The CO2 growth dividend at 1,200 parts per million is an extra 150% over preindustrial levels of 280 ppm. That’s a lot of corn, wheat, barley, oats, and rye.
The climate movement is not going to quit without a fight. An estimated $630 billion is now being devoted worldwide to climate change spending on an annual basis—$60 billion for research alone. Not satisfied, the climate movement is looking at a bigger pot of loot, the so-called carbon tax. But it’s not a carbon tax. That always was a falsehood. It’s a tax on gasoline and electricity. They call it a carbon tax because they don’t want the middle class to know that they intend to increase taxes on them, a lot. The U.S. average price of gasoline stands at $3.71. But the average price in Europe is $7.67 per gallon. That difference of $3.96 per gallon applied to U.S. sales is a wallet-busting $500 billion per year out of the pockets of people making less than $40 per hour and into the pockets of people making more than $50 per hour.
This is going to be the proverbial fight to the death.
John Huppenthal was the Arizona Superinterndent of Public Instruction from 2011-2015. Prior to this role, John served as a member of the Arizona State Senate and the Arizona House of Representatives. You can follow him on Twitter here.
by Dr. Thomas Patterson | May 12, 2023 | Opinion
By Dr. Thomas Patterson |
There is a bitter fight brewing in Congress over work requirements for welfare recipients.
President Biden labeled “wacko” the Republican proposal in the debt ceiling bill to require able-bodied childless beneficiaries to either work, obtain job training, or do volunteer work. Our great uniter claimed, “Republicans are cutting benefits for folks they don’t seem to care much about.”
The welfare industry chimed in, saying poor people have no transportation options and job training was not available in some areas. Welfare recipients will be thrown into abject poverty if required to work, because apparently, they are incapable of self-sufficiency.
Reform advocates countered that not working is a choice and most people, including low-income people, have more satisfying lives when working and providing for their families.
So which side is correct? They can’t both be, and the answer is important to get right for the future of our nation.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could run an experiment, mandating work requirements in welfare programs to see what happens? Good news – that’s already been done.
In the 1990s, the Newt Gingrich-led Congress passed, and President Clinton, after extensive urging, signed a comprehensive welfare reform bill. The law required able-bodied adults to work or be in a job training program to receive benefits. It also placed lifetime limits on welfare.
By the 1990s, the War on Poverty had been waged for three decades. Many Americans were becoming disillusioned as they saw that poverty was winning.
LBJ’s welfare programs to wipe out poverty had been horrendously expensive and yet poverty levels hadn’t been dented. Instead, millions of low-income Americans had adopted welfare as a way of life, to be passed on through generations.
When the reforms were implemented, welfare recipients weren’t cast into the streets, as Senator Ted Kennedy had predicted. In fact, it was a stunning policy success. Welfare caseloads declined by 60 percent. 70 percent of those leaving began working.
There’s more. Government savings were $100 billion in today’s dollars. Best of all, the child poverty rate plummeted every year from 1994 to 2000. For people leaving the welfare plantation, income increases soon easily exceeded welfare benefits. Moreover, people with jobs enjoyed healthier lives, better marriages, and vastly improved financial futures than those stuck on welfare.
So, welfare reformers declared victory and moved on, unfortunately leaving the same entrenched bureaucracy as before to manage the system. Before long, clients were again being evaluated for program eligibility, not work readiness. Workarounds were offered for those who preferred not to work.
As the bureaucracy oozed back into control, work mandates weakened. Many states quietly removed them altogether, as Arizona did for its Medicaid program.
With the onset of the COVID pandemic, the Biden administration took the opportunity to eviscerate work requirements altogether in federal welfare programs. Thankfully, grocery clerks, truck drivers and cops stayed on the job, but not teachers or welfare recipients.
Now that the pandemic has officially ended, work requirements still have not been reinstated as promised. In fact, Biden refuses to consider such a proposal in the debt ceiling negotiations.
The ending of the pandemic and work requirements have been a boon for the welfare industry. In response to COVID, Congress also increased the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food stamps) benefit amount and banned states from removing people who were no longer eligible from the Medicaid roles.
As a result, welfare has become more pervasive than ever. 40 million people are now receiving food stamps, even though it’s common knowledge that taxpayers are funding a lot of chips and soda. Medicaid enrollment has soared to 85 million, now that it has been expanded to include working age men above the poverty line.
There are up to 4 million employable adults not working while 10 million job openings are available. This is a great opportunity to get more Americans back to work, yet Democrats seem more interested in keeping Americans dependent on government than in reducing poverty.
We should absolutely have a working safety net, but not a welfare system that keeps Americans mired in poverty. Why not learn from our own history and return again to prioritizing work over welfare?
Dr. Thomas Patterson, former Chairman of the Goldwater Institute, is a retired emergency physician. He served as an Arizona State senator for 10 years in the 1990s, and as Majority Leader from 93-96. He is the author of Arizona’s original charter schools bill.
by AZ Free Enterprise Club | May 6, 2023 | Opinion
By the Arizona Free Enterprise Club |
Next week, the COVID-19 national public health emergency is set to terminate, three years or 1,166 days after it was initially declared. Here in Arizona, the state of emergency was ended by Governor Ducey on March 30, 2022, just over two years or 749 days after it was initially declared. For those counting, that’s quite a bit longer than the promised 15 days to “slow the spread.”
COVID-19 brought with it unprecedented uses and abuses of emergency powers in every state, Arizona included. Businesses were arbitrarily shut down. Workers were told their jobs were nonessential. People were prevented from going to church, couldn’t visit their dying parents and grandparents in hospitals, and kids were put in masks and barred from their schools. Many questioned how these mandates were even constitutional. Lawsuits were filed, but executive emergency authorities were largely upheld – including in Arizona.
That’s why our lawmakers are currently considering a critical constitutional amendment sponsored by Representative Chaplik, HCR2039, to reign in these powers, provide proper legislative oversight, and ensure checks and balances to protect the rights of individuals…
>>> CONTINUE READING >>>
by Michael Infanzon | May 3, 2023 | Opinion
By Michael Infanzon |
Recently, there has been a lot of controversy surrounding the use of stabilizing braces on firearms, with some people suggesting that these braces make guns deadlier and easier to use in violent attacks. This belief has been perpetuated by some anti-Second Amendment politicians and advocacy groups, including Giffords Law Center, which claims that shooters have used stabilizing braces to “skirt the National Firearms Act and commit horrific tragedies.” But this claim is both misleading and inaccurate.
First, let’s discuss what stabilizing braces actually are. These accessories can be attached to certain firearms, such as pistols, to provide additional support and stability when shooting. They were originally designed to help people with disabilities or injuries to safely and effectively use firearms. But they have since become popular among gun enthusiasts and sport shooters as well.
Giffords and others claim that stabilizing braces are somehow responsible for enabling shooters to commit violent acts. But there is no evidence to support this claim. In fact, the vast majority of shootings in the United States are committed with illegally obtained firearms, rather than legally purchased guns that have been modified with accessories like stabilizing braces.
Furthermore, the idea that stabilizing braces allow shooters to “skirt” the National Firearms Act (NFA) is also misleading. The NFA regulates certain types of firearms, such as machine guns and short-barreled rifles, and requires owners to register these weapons with the federal government and pay a tax. However, the use of stabilizing braces on pistols is not a violation of the NFA and does not allow individuals to avoid the registration and tax requirements.
In fact, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) has issued guidance on the use of stabilizing braces, stating that “the use of a handgun stabilizing brace… does not change the classification of the firearm or impose any additional registration, licensing, or other requirements on the firearm or its owner.” The ATF has also made it clear that it will take action against individuals who use stabilizing braces to create a firearm that meets the definition of a short-barreled rifle, which is regulated under the NFA.
The claim made by Giffords and others that stabilizing braces make firearms deadlier and enable shooters to “skirt” the National Firearms Act is simply not true. There is no evidence to support this claim, and the ATF has made it clear that the use of stabilizing braces on pistols does not violate any federal laws or regulations. It’s important to separate fact from fiction when discussing issues related to firearms and public safety, and to base policy decisions on sound evidence and analysis.
That’s why the Arizona Citizens Defense League and the Arizona Firearms Industry Trade Association will continue to stand up for Arizona citizens and the firearm industry against unconstitutional laws and these types of lies.
Michael Infanzon is the Managing Partner for EPIC Policy Group and lobbies on behalf of groups like the Arizona Citizens Defense League and the Arizona Firearms Industry Trade Association.
by AZ Free Enterprise Club | Apr 30, 2023 | Opinion
By the Arizona Free Enterprise Club |
A special election is taking place right now in Tucson, and even if you’re not from the city, you should pay attention. At first glance, Prop 412 appears to be nothing more than a new agreement between the City of Tucson and Tucson Electric Power (TEP) to renew the Franchise Agreement for another 25 years using the current 2.25% fee. But just like anything government bureaucrats put out there nowadays, you need to keep reading.
Along with the renewed agreement, Prop 412 would add a 0.75% “Community Resilience Fee” to fund the costs associated with building underground transmission facilities—and projects that support the City’s implementation of its Climate Action Plan. Ahhh, there it is. The agenda behind Prop 412 finally comes out. This isn’t about renewing a franchise agreement. It’s about forcing hardworking taxpayers to start funding the estimated $326 million it’s going to need to address Mayor Regina Romero’s so-called “climate emergency.”
>>> CONTINUE READING >>>
by Dr. Thomas Patterson | Apr 28, 2023 | Opinion
By Dr. Thomas Patterson |
Americans are becoming neurotic worriers. COVID brought out the worst in us, as politicized medical leaders rushed us into a panic response that did far more harm than the disease itself without fundamentally affecting the net outcome of the pandemic.
But COVID is hardly the only example of Americans overestimating the dangers in their lives. We fret about everything from “Christian nationalism” arising due to court decisions protecting religious freedoms to alien-bearing UFOs.
Many Americans fear police officers kill unarmed Blacks by the thousands when the real number is about 10 to 20 annually. College students expect “trigger warnings” and “safe spaces” to provide protection from exposure to opposing opinions and the supposed physical harm they are thought to cause.
Part of the problem of imagining all these boogeymen is that real threats can get lost in the shuffle. Impending financial doom, a rapidly changing world order, and millions of unassimilated aliens crossing our borders could all use better focused attention.
There is no better example of the trivial deflecting us from the critical than climate change. Sixty percent of the developed world truly believes that it will spell the end of humanity.
The World Health Organization declared climate change the most important public health issue of the 21st-century. The savants of the World Economic Forum named climate action failure as the greatest policy risk of the next decade.
Third World countries, unfortunately for them, find most of their foreign aid these days linked with resources to address climate change, rather than more pressing needs like economic development, malnutrition, clean water, education, or healthcare.
The fact that some degree of warming is real and related to human activity hardly justifies the catastrophe narrative. Facts derived from official sources tell a different story, for example, that 98 percent fewer people are dying from climate related disasters than a century ago.
Those who express doubt about any aspect of the catastrophe narrative are dubbed “climate deniers” by the mainstream and depicted as science-adverse Neanderthals. Joe Biden claimed he could change their minds just by showing them the climate-related fires he had personally witnessed.
About those fires, Joe. The undisputed fact is that 4.2% of the land in the world burned yearly in the early 1900s. Today it has fallen to 3% due to less heating from open fires, better forest management, and more resources available for fire suppression. Tilting at climate change will produce far less harm reduction from fires than will common sense, risk management, and prevention.
Bjorn Lomborg, a Danish economist, gives other reasons to doubt that climate change deserves its reputation as an existential threat. Hurricanes, despite claims to the contrary, are not increasing. In reality, the number of hurricanes in 2022 was unusually low, the second weakest batch of hurricanes since satellite data became available in 1980.
Landfall hurricanes, the most accurate way of charting hurricane frequency, appear to have declined slightly since 1900. Hurricanes each year cost 0.04 percent of global GDP. Projections from the scientific journal Nature, taking into account changes in climate as well as improved ability to protect ourselves from hurricane harm, indicate that by 2100 the damage will be 0.02% even without new climate policies.
The WHO claims that 95,000 worldwide deaths annually from malnutrition will be attributable to unchecked climate change between 2030–2050. That sounds like a lot, but the global total of deaths from malnutrition is 30 million or so annually, a number that is sure to come down as crop yields increase and economic development improves.
Even polar bears, the subject of one of Al Gore’s apocalyptic predictions, are doing okay. Polar bear specialists estimate that, due to hunting limits, the worldwide population is 21,000 to 31,000, up from 12,000 in the 1960s.
Nobel prize winner William Nordhaus estimates that if we stand pat, climate change will cost 4% of GDP by 2100. But the UN predicts that global GDP will rise by 450% in that time, dwarfing the climate induced harm.
Big-government tyrants love crises because of the power and prestige they bring. Instead of impoverishing ourselves with impractical boondoggles, we need to bear down on economic growth and innovation to pull us through. That’s what Americans do best.
Dr. Thomas Patterson, former Chairman of the Goldwater Institute, is a retired emergency physician. He served as an Arizona State senator for 10 years in the 1990s, and as Majority Leader from 93-96. He is the author of Arizona’s original charter schools bill.
