How They Are Turning Off the Lights in America
by Edwin X Berry
October 24, 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 stated 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 1972 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 â– 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 onn 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?