By
Edwin Berry, PhD.,
(bio)
September 2009
On October 31,2009, the once largest aluminum
plant in the world will shut down. With it goes another American
industry and more American jobs. The Columbia Falls Aluminum Company
in Montana will shut down its aluminum production
because it cannot purchase the necessary electrical power to
continue its operations.How did this happen in America? America was once
the envy of the world in its industrial capability. America’s industrial capacity built
America into the most productive
nation the world had ever known. Its standard of living rose to
levels never before accomplished. Its currency became valuable and
powerful, allowing Americans to purchase imported goods at
relatively cheap prices.America
grew because of innovation and hard work by the pioneers of the
industrial revolution, and because America has vast
natural resources. A great economy, as America once was, is founded on the
ability to produce electrical energy at low cost. This ability has
been extinguished. Why?Columbia Falls Aluminum negotiated a contract
with Bonneville Power Administration in 2006 for Bonneville to
supply electrical power until September 30, 2011. But, responding to
lawsuits, the 9th US Circuit Court ruled the contract was invalid
because it was incompatible with the Northwest Power Act. Therefore,
the combination of the Northwest Power Act and a US Circuit Court
were the final villains that caused the shutdown of Columbia Falls
Aluminum.But the real reasons are much more complicated.
Why was it not possible for Columbia Falls Aluminum to find sources
of electricity other than Bonneville?We need to look no further than the many
environmental groups like the Sierra Club and to America’s elected
officials who turned their backs on American citizens and in essence
themselves, for they too are citizens of this country. These
officials bought into the green agenda promoted by the heavily
funded environmental groups. Caving to pressure, they passed laws
and the environmental groups filed lawsuits that began turning off
the lights in
America. The dominos started to fall.They began stopping nuclear power plants in the
1970’s. They locked up much of our coal and oil resources with land
laws. They passed tax credits, which forces taxpayers foot the bill
for billionaire investors to save taxes by investing in less
productive wind and solar energy projects.
In 1988, the Environmental Protection Agency
called a meeting of atmospheric scientists and others with
environmental interests. I remember well the meeting I attended in
the San Francisco Bay Area. The meeting was in a theater-like
lecture room with the seating curved to face the center stage and
rising rapidly toward the back of the room. Attending were many
atmospheric scientists whom I knew from Lawrence Livermore
Laboratory, Stanford Research Institute and some local colleges.
The room became silent when a man walked up to
the lectern. He told us that the next big national problem was
global warming. He explained how human carbon dioxide emissions were
trapping the earth’s radiation like a greenhouse and causing the
atmosphere to heat beyond its normal temperature. He said this will
lead to environmental disasters. He finished by saying the EPA will
now concentrate its research funding toward quantifying the
disasters that would be caused by our carbon dioxide.The room was silent. I was the first to raise my
hand to ask a question, “How can you defend your global warming
hypothesis when you have omitted the effects of clouds which affect
heat balance far more than carbon dioxide, and when your hypothesis
contradicts the paper by Lee * in the Journal of Applied Meteorology
in 1973 that shows the atmosphere does not behave like a
greenhouse?”He answered me by saying, “You do not know what
you are talking about. I know more about how the atmosphere works
than you do.”Not being one to drop out of a fight, I
responded, “I know many of the atmospheric scientists in this room,
and many others who are not present but I do not know you. What is
your background and what makes you know so much more than me?”He answered, “I know more than you because I am a
lawyer and I work for the EPA.”After the meeting, many of my atmospheric science
friends who worked for public agencies thanked me for what I said,
saying they would have liked to say the same thing but they feared
for their jobs.And that, my dear readers, is my recollection of
that great day when a lawyer, acting as a scientist, working for the
federal government, announced global warming.Fast forward to today. The federal government is
spending 1000 times more money to promote the global warming charade
than is available to those scientists who are arguing against it.
Never before in history has it taken a massive publicity campaign to
convince the public of a scientific truth. The only reason half the
public thinks global warming may be true is the massive amount of
money put into global warming propaganda.The green eco-groups have their umbilical cords
in the government’s tax funds. Aside from a few honest but duped
scientists living on government money, the majority of the alarms
about global warming – now called “climate change” because it’s no
longer warming – come from those who have no professional training
in atmospheric science. They are the environmentalists, the
ecologists, the lawyers and the politicians. They are not the
reliable atmospheric scientists whom I know.Nevertheless, our politicians have passed laws
stating that carbon dioxide is bad. See California’s AB32 which is based upon science
fiction. (For readers who take issue with me, I will be happy to
destroy your arguments in another place. In this paper, we focus on
the damage to
America that is being caused by those
promoting the global warming fraud.)In the year 2000, America planned 150 new coal-electric
power plants. These power plants would have been “clean” by real
standards but the Greens managed to have carbon dioxide defined
legally as “dirty” and this new definition makes all emitters of
carbon dioxide, including you, a threat to the planet. Therefore,
using legal illogic, the Sierra Club stopped 82 of these planned
power plants under Bush II and they expect it will be a slam dunk to
stop the rest under Obama.And now you know the real reason the Columbia
Falls Aluminum Company had to shut down. America stopped building new power
plants a long time ago. There is now no other source where the
company can buy energy. Our energy-producing capability is in a
decline and it is taking
America with it.I used to belong to
the Sierra Club in the 1960’s. It used to be a nice hiking club. In
the late 1960’s the Sierra Club began turning its attention toward
stopping nuclear power. Then I quit the Sierra Club. It continues
to prosper from the many subscribers who think they are supporting a
good cause. What they are really supporting is the destruction of
America brick by brick. The Sierra
Club and similar organizations are like watermelons – green on the
outside, red on the inside. They are telling us we have no right to
our own natural resources, and in doing so they are sinking
America.Inherent in ecology are three assumptions:
“natural” conditions are optimal, climate is fragile, and human
influences are bad. Physics makes no such assumptions. By assuming
climate is fragile, the global warming supporters have assumed their
conclusion. In fact, the climate is not fragile. It is stable. The
non-adherence to physical logic in the global warming camp is what
makes many physical scientists say that global warming is a
religion.So we have a new age religion promoted by
environmentalists, incorporated into our laws and brainwashed into
our people that is now destroying America from the inside.Like a vast ship, America is taking a long time to sink
but each day it sinks a little further. The fearsome day awaits,
when America, if not quickly recovered by
its real citizens, will tilt its nose into the water to begin a
rapid and final descent into oblivion … her many resources saved
for whom?
Posted with permission
Read other informative articles by Dr. Edwin
Berry, a respected atmospheric physicist, at
Climate Physics:
www.climatephysics.com/TurningOutLights.html
References:
* R. Lee: “The ‘greenhouse’ effect” J. Appl.
Meteor. 12, 556-557 (1973)Gerhard Gerlich and Ralf D. Tscheuschner:
“Falsification of the Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects Within The
Frame Of Physics,” Version 4.0 (January 6, 2009)International Journal of Modern Physics B, Vol.
23, No. 3 (2009) 275-364.http://www.worldscinet.com/ijmpb/23/2303/S02179792092303.html
Page 37: “Lee’s paper is a milestone marking
the day after which every serious scientist or science educator is
no longer allowed to compare the greenhouse with the atmosphere.”