Michael, if you're going to attempt to use facts with your arguments, the least you could do is buy a clue. The United States is the 3rd most populous country in the world behind China and India, and more than double the population of Russia. When China and India get a little further through their 2nd world status, they'll be using way more oil than we ever dreamed of using, not to mention the vast amounts of coal they're already burning.

Blah Blah Blah..... You guys kill me you sell a rainbow world with peace love and understanding which only works if everyone deals in hugs and kisses. You hide your policy flaws behind your social conscience all the while supporting a group of people who overspend and feed from the big business they publicly scorn. How can you even complain about dependency on foreign oil when your party has spent a decade voting to suppress domestic development and restrict nuclear advancement. How do you type such nonsense without feeling like the worlds largest hypocrite? AS to Brazil that's easy they drill in all areas where they can find it and they use it something you and your party will not allow here in this country. You want to take the lid off a box try your own pal you are the problem and the person complaining without even knowing it. You want a place of freedom and lack of persecution but you guys as a party cry about the war nonstop even though women vote and go to school now because of us where is your social conscience on this issue? Women would have lined up to sacrifice their life in this country for the right to vote and still you cry. I read your whole post all fluff and no practical answers typical.

Brent, so nice that you want to yet again pick and choose. if you read my entire post you would see that is only 1 issue we are facing as a nation, with 2 major concerns being the Economy and reducing our dependance on oil. There are many major studies and countries that do not depend on foreign oil with the largest Brazil. at 95% of all vehicles are ran off of ethanol, we as a country have to look at the larger picture. We as a country use 45% of the oil the world produces and yet we have one of the smaller populations when it comes to comparisons with China, Russia, India. I guess what you miss is that republicans right now are stuck in a box with the lid closed and taped shut. Living on old ideas, old notions, and the belief the world is not changing. Democrats used to be in the box republicans are in now and we are now thinking out side the box from renewable energy to stop the high demand on oil, to new jobs to drive a new economy that teaches us that we have to learn to live and sustain ourselves in what we have, to have a foreign policy that meets todays needs but also boost the hope all Americans have republican or democrat in all people should have freedom, to live a life free of persecution, to have a chance to have a home, a job they are happy at and know that the government works for them not big business. I guess that is the difference you choose not to live outside the box and have a hope for a better tomorrow but wish for a better yesterday.

tu you epitomize what I despise about the internet and the direction of our country. Thanks for never being interesting and or original hopefully it will lessen your chances of reproduction.

Maybe I am going about this all wrong. If you Liberals are going to buy into this nonsense so easily maybe I should be selling you guys crap. David Ponca City will someday be a beach according to your liberal gods you want to buy some poles to put your house on? Come on only have to store them for 10000 years they are real cheap free shipping you in?

David, the number of polar bears drowning is statistically insignificant compared to their total population, yet you take Algore's word as the prophecy. I can only imagine what else you fall for hook, line, and sinker.

Brock says Rice does not want to acheive energy independence. What a hoax. You must have gone to the Carl Rove school of polical science and fabrication.

What a contrast. Andrew Rice is a brilliant, Harvard educated, young man. Inhofe is an old codger who has been on the public dole for years, and lied about having a degree from Tulsa U. some years ago. He says global warming is the biggest hoax ever conceived. Andrew Rice has never said that global warming is caused by man, but it exists. Polar bears are drowning on the north pole. Look it up.

wow what a great story! go sooners!

wow what a great story! go sooners!

wow what a great story! go sooners!

wow what a great story! go sooners!

wow what a great story! go sooners!

Rice is part of the Doomsday Industry who will work in lock step with the Democrat party to lesson the liberties of the average American. He's a Ultra-lib that is blaming man for earths natural warming an cooling process. Because of his misconceived ideas, he will not allow Americans to supply energy for themselves which promotes payments to rogue nations that support radical Islam.

Andrew Rice is a leftist joke.Did you watch this pansy last night sweating at his pathetic results.His opponent didn't spend a dime and got 40%.Rice-Obama are big liberal losers.

Inhofe is a knucklehead and his time has come and gone. I also am in my 70's and my time has come and gone. He needs ro sit on his porce with his paper shoes on and listen and learn. Not a friend of science or common sense.

Matt your position on alternative fuels worked well in developing Ethanol we get 1 BTU at the cost of 1.5BTU and a food shortage. I wonder how much that cost the American tax payer to have that gem developed? Until you and your kind come up with a plan stop complaining about the situation. An uneducated voting populace does not get the government it voted for but the government it deserves.

Matt please site a source that supports your claim of "Hoax" concerning his stance.

If this issue of whether or not Global Warming exists is the cornerstone of debate this election, then fine. This state needs to have an open, intelligent discussion about what this country is losing by not solving this problem. The staunch Republicans will of course resort to name-calling (hippies, liberals, tree-huggers, etc.), when they can't come up with any solutions for renewable energy. Why would they want to? Inhofe's campaign is funded by Oil and Gas Corporations. His stance is that Global Warming is a hoax? Talk about avoiding responsibility for price-gouging oil money that busts our wallets, when we should be finding a new way. It makes economical sense to get off oil and other finite natural resources. Inhofe is a millionaire senator that will try to divide this state with name-calling instead of providing solutions to problems that face everyone in this state. Andrew Rice is an honest, educated, spiritual, selfless family man, who wants to represent Oklahoma's interests in Washington. Inhofe could care less about solving problems, he has special interests to answer to.

James-I didn’t write it or publish it I clearly listed the author and his sources something you guys never do when you quote liberal garbage as fact. Please read more carefully it might help with your decision making. Thanks.

Wow, Brent. That's quite a comment. There's even some elements of truth tangled up in that spaghetti bowl of extremist nonsense. Congratulations for finally getting "published"...

Inhofe is 72 years old and is a career politician and has been in DC for 22 years!!! Fire him now....time for change and time for some young blood to get in there with a different set of life experiences! Rice will make an excellent Senator and his dedication to Oklahoma is above reproach.

And finally one of my favorites I could go on all day please educate yourselves. Being an uneducated voter rouses the greatest fears of our forefathers and creates wet dreams for the liberal corrupters.-----Environmentalism vs. Human Life
Friday, April 20, 2001
By: Andrew Bernstein

Delivered at the National Press Club, Washington, D.C., on April 20, 2001.

The environmentalist movement is consistently antagonistic to the requirements of human life on earth. On issue after issue, the environmentalists hold viewpoints that oppose man's survival needs. Man's nature requires him to continuously reshape his environment, e.g., to clear land for agricultural development, build houses and cities, engage in medical research to cure diseases, and so forth. But the greens oppose every productive activity on which human survival depends. The leading current example of this is their crusade to block development of oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). ANWR is an area so abundant in oil that Senator Frank Murkowski of Alaska, chairman of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, states that it could produce oil for decades, adding as much as $325 billion to the U.S. economy and reducing imports by well over one million barrels per day. Though geologists claim that ANWR holds over seven billion barrels, enabling it to add significantly to American energy production, its exploitation is currently blocked by environmentalist restrictions imposed for the sole purpose of protecting the wilderness, the caribou, the ice floes. Simply put, the question is, ice or oil heat--which is more important? The environmentalists are right that there is a profoundly important moral issue at stake: the requirements of man's survival vs. the value of nature as an end in itself. Because man's right to live as man is the highest value on earth it is morally imperative that the environmentalists be defeated. Nor is the green opposition to the development of ANWR's oil the only issue on which their beliefs and actions harm human life. Environmentalist restrictions are largely responsible for California's current energy crisis. Environmentalist groups in the state have attacked every form of energy production. Every attempt to build nuclear power plants has come under years of prohibitively expensive litigation. The use of coal is attacked because it is too "dirty," hydroelectric power is criticized because dam construction threatens the existence of some obscure species, even the biomass industry, which employs timber chips and forest leftovers as fuel to produce electricity, has come under litigation. The Honey Lake biomass plant was shut down last year because a lawsuit against the U.S. Forest Service originated by the San Francisco-based Earth Island Institute caused the suspension of the logging operations that provided the company its fuel source. Prior to the shutdown, the 20 biomass companies in California could collectively have generated 600 megawatts of electricity per year. The reason environmentalists seek to deprive Californians of power? To protect the late-succession/old-growth forests that are home to the California spotted owl and the Pacific fisher. Because of birds, human homes, work places and hospitals are deprived of power and exposed to all the attendant dangers.

"Green activists have worked for decades to stop the construction of major power plants in California -- and have succeeded. As a result, California generates less power per resident than any other state, and "imports" about one-quarter of the energy it consumes. Since 1985 only minor power plants have been built in California, adding only 6,000 megawatts to the state's supply--hardly enough to meet an increased demand for 10,000 megawatts. If plants generating an additional 4,000 megawatts had been built in the last decade, there would be no energy crisis today. By preventing entrepreneurs from building power plants, environmentalists choked the supply of power and set the stage for crises like the current one."1

Further, environmentalists today continue their decades-long assault on the automobile. Yesterday, Earth Day Network coordinated an "Earth Car-Free Day" in countries around the world, an event whose goal was to keep people from using their cars and seek alternative means of transportation. "Across the world, people will be staying out of cars, riding bicycles, walking or participating in open-air festivals on streets blocked from cars as part of this event," said Eric Britton, head of The Commons, one of the green groups organizing the protest. Part of the purpose, say the leaders, is to protest against air pollution and global warming.

For decades, environmentalists have argued that the car pollutes the air and causes the depletion of the earth's resources. Today they add the claim that its widespread use leads to global warming. As far back as 1970, in an essay entitled, "Warning: The Automobile Is Dangerous to Earth, Air, Fire, Water, Mind and Body," environmentalist Kenneth Cantor claimed that "the automobile and the American public are locked in a life and death struggle." He stated that "sixty percent of all pollutants added to the air in the United States come from the internal combustion engine. In 1967, 87.4 percent of the 14,000 tons per day added to the air above Los Angeles came from gasoline-powered motor vehicles." Cantor concluded that "the atmosphere around us has truly become a garbage dump." He went on to make similar claims regarding the relationship between automobile use and an alleged reckless depletion of the earth's non-renewable resources.2

Among other proposals, Cantor recommended that people use bicycles instead of cars, hitchhike and pick up hitchhikers, support programs aimed at reducing automobile use to one-tenth of then-current levels, take political action to defeat such "public abominations" as new freeways and highway bridges, eliminate the federal highway program and replace it with increased public transportation, and tax the sale of all new automobiles to fund the recycling of all old car hulks after the usable parts had been removed.3 These sentiments are echoed wholeheartedly by the environmentalist movement today. The so-called Earth Liberation Front recently declared war on the SUV, setting fire to a car dealership in Eugene, Oregon. "We can no longer allow the rich to parade around in their armored existence, leaving a wasteland behind in their tracks," they said. "SUVs destroy the earth."

It is clear that the development of ANWR's oil, the widespread use of the automobile and the construction of California power plants are in the best interest of human beings. ANWR will supply the United States with a vast new source of oil; additional power plants in California will provide electricity for millions of human beings currently suffering from shortages and rolling brownouts; and hundreds of millions of people around the world will continue to get to work, play or family gatherings most conveniently by means of their cars. Why do the greens oppose these human advances? Why do they combat similar innovations that improve man's life? Why, for example, were they against use of the Pacific yew tree, even though its bark is a source of taxol, which was considered an outstanding new drug in man's war against cancer? Why did the EPA ban DDT, even though its own hearings established that the pesticide is harmless to man and animals, but deadly to malaria-carrying mosquitoes? Why do they oppose medical testing on laboratory mice, even though such methods were instrumental in winning the battles against polio and diabetes, and are similarly necessary for research seeking cures for heart disease, AIDS and other diseases fatal to man? The answer is that they are not lovers of man. They value every other life form on earth as being above him, no matter if insignificant or even lethal.

David Graeber, a biologist with the National Parks Service, made clear in a Los Angeles Times Book Review essay both his contempt for man and his reverence for the natural environment as an end in itself. He states that he and his colleagues in the green movement "value wilderness for its own sake, not for what value it confers upon mankind. . . . We are not interested in the utility of a particular species, or free-flowing river, or eco-system to mankind. They have intrinsic value, more value--to me--than another human body, or a billion of them. Human happiness, and certainly human fecundity, are not as important as a wild and healthy planet. . . . It is cosmically unlikely that the developed world will choose to end its orgy of fossil-energy consumption, and the Third World its suicidal consumption of landscape. Until such time as homo sapiens should decide to rejoin nature, some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along."4

And speaking of viruses, it seems that they have rights, too. According to Rutgers ecologist, David Ehrenfeld the world's remaining supply of the smallpox virus should not be exterminated, since it preys only on human beings.5

Graeber's claim that nature has "intrinsic value," that it is worthy of our esteem, even veneration, quite apart from any utilitarian purpose it might satisfy for us, is the key to understanding the environmentalist movement. Man, on this view, is an intruder, an eco-nuisance who inflicts harm on the sacred natural environment he inhabits. Observe the many attempts to turn environmentalism into a quasi-religion. Former New Left leader Tom Hayden taught a course at Santa Monica College entitled "Environment and Spirituality," in which he stressed that "we need to see nature as having a sacred quality, so that we revere it and are in awe of it." The Ecoforestry Institute, in a full-page ad opposing the logging of trees, claimed that trees have intrinsic value and argued that the protection of forests "is more than an economic or ecological issue. It is a spiritual one as well." Paul Ehrlich, notorious for his ceaselessly erroneous predictions of catastrophic death tolls from massive worldwide famines, predictably bases his claims in faith rather than science and reason. "It is probably in vain that so many look to science and technology to solve our present ecological crisis," he states. "Much more basic changes are needed, perhaps of the type exemplified by the . . . hippie movement--a movement that adopts most of its religious ideas from the non-Christian East. It is a movement wrapped up in Zen Buddhism, physical love and a disdain for material wealth." Carl Sagan issued a call for a religious crusade on behalf of environmentalist values. "We are close to committing -- many would say we are already committing--what in religious language is sometimes called Crimes against Creation," he said. Environmentalism "must be recognized as having a religious as well as a scientific dimension."6

The future of human civilization depends on understanding that the environmentalists are wrong--that they are mistaken systematically, on every point and issue. They are wrong scientifically, they are wrong logically and, above all, they are wrong morally. Take the scientific point first. Just as they were dead wrong regarding the alleged danger of DDT, they are similarly mistaken about both hazards they attribute to the automobile--the dual claims of increased air pollution and the waste of non-renewable resources. At the time that the Clean Air Act was passed in 1970, our air was becoming progressively cleaner, not dirtier, and had been doing so for a long time precisely because of industrial progress. According to Professor Matthew Crenson of Johns Hopkins University, sulfur dioxide pollution had been declining for decades. In 1971 he wrote, "In some cities the sulfur dioxide content of the air today is only one-third or one-fourth of what it was before World War Two." Measurements in 14 U.S. cities in 1931-32 showed an average particulate concentration of 510 micrograms per cubic meter. By 1957 it was down to 120 micrograms per cubic meter, and in 1969 the measurement stood at 92 micrograms per cubic meter. The major reason for this positive trend was the conversion to cleaner burning fuels, such as oil and gas, from coal or wood. Improvements in technology on a free market caused this trend, not environmentalist propaganda or governmental legislation.7

In keeping with this pre-environmentalist trend, auto emissions had also become cleaner. The auto industry had been working on the problem for years, and by 1968 cars with significantly improved emission characteristics were already being produced, and newer anti-pollution equipment was being tested. "By 1970, when the Clean Air Act was passed, auto emissions had already been reduced 70 to 80 percent from the level of two decades earlier." Indeed, environmentalist legislation worsened air quality in this country. It introduced the catalytic converter, which produces sulfuric acid. An EPA report in 1977 presented the results of a two-year study: a 25 percent drop in carbon monoxide emissions due to catalytic converters was accompanied by an increase of 50 percent in emissions of the oxides of nitrogen. A similar environmentalist travesty played out in the 1990s when the Clean Air Act of 1990 required many Americans to use gasoline oxygenated with MBTE and ethanol. MBTE produced so many complaints of headache and nausea from users that the governor of Alaska banned it after four weeks of use. The other additive, ethanol, produces ozone, which at low levels is a pollutant. "Even the EPA admits that ethanol produces more nitrogen oxides and hydrocarbons than regular gas."8

The environmentalist attack on the automobile has centered on carbon monoxide emissions. The myth they have created and spread is that the air was significantly purer before there were any automobiles or factories. This is false. An important point is that 90 percent of the world's automobiles are in the northern hemisphere, but there is no hemispheric difference in carbon monoxide levels. Nor are carbon monoxide levels increasing on a worldwide basis. In 1978 the EPA suppressed a scientific study showing that up to 80 percent of air pollution was caused by natural, not man-made phenomena. It took a lawsuit filed under the Freedom of Information Act to pry the report out of them. One of the leading sources of air pollution widely ignored by the greens is volcanoes. According to Dr. William Pecora, former director of the United States Geological Survey, just three volcanic eruptions in the last 120 years (Krakatoa, Indonesia, 1883; Katmai, Alaska, 1912; and Hekla, Iceland, 1947) produced more particulate and gaseous pollution of the atmosphere than the combined activities of all the men who ever lived. There are many such examples. Swamps are by far the greatest source of methane pollution, and Public Works, the official publication of Oregon's Environmental Protection Agency, states that burping cows rank as the number one source of air pollution in America, disgorging 50 million tons of hydrocarbons into the atmosphere each year. It must be made clear that Mother Nature, not man's automobiles or factories, is by far the greatest source of air pollution.9

The scientific facts regarding the alleged depletion of "non-renewable" resources also contradicts the environmentalists' accusations. Starting in the 1970s and continuing today, environmentalist doomsayers have advocated a "limits to growth" doctrine which claimed that the world supply of such resources as aluminum, iron, petroleum and others would be exhausted in a matter of decades. A brief study of the facts resoundingly refutes such nonsense. First, a minor point: the amounts of most of these natural resources existing in the earth's crust, as estimated by the United States Geological Survey, are sufficient to last for thousands of years, even at increased rates of consumption. But the most important point is that by far the greatest natural resource is man's reasoning mind that enables him to identify the properties and potential functions of raw materials. In medieval Europe, for example, charcoal from wood was the main source of energy. When wood began to grow scarce and consequently more expensive, people sought other means of fuel. They eventually found it in chunks of black rock previously thought useless--coal. Centuries later, in the mid-1800s, some people feared that man was running out of coal. When the price rose, innovators were encouraged to seek other energy sources. For years, farmers in western Pennsylvania had been troubled by the presence of a viscous black liquid that damaged their crops and pastures. Nobody saw any uses for it, but finally some entrepreneurs saw possibilities in it and, in 1859, formed the Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company of Titusville, Pennsylvania. Shortly thereafter, the firm was successful in digging for oil. Today we use fiber optic cables instead of copper wire for phone lines. Such glass fibers are derived from ordinary sand. Further, we know of the enormous resources contained in sea water, and of additional supplies buried beneath the ocean floor. We know of the huge supplies of fuel available from shale and tar sands Ocean thermal power, geo-thermal energy and bio conversion--methods of generating power from the sun-warmed surface waters of the ocean, from the enormous heat contained within the earth, and by converting organic materials, especially wastes -- are all feasible and represent the virtually unlimited power sources of the future.10

Environmentalists scoff that such claims are mere science fiction. These are the same mentalities who, centuries ago, could conceive of no possible uses for either coal or oil; who snickered at the thought that man might fly; who couldn't dream of space travel or nuclear power plants; and who would have regarded the idea that everyday sand could be employed to make fiber optic cables as the sheerest lunacy. The rational mind is man's greatest resource. When it has the freedom to innovate, it finds productive uses for every substance on earth, including waste by-products. Automobiles currently require gasoline, it is true, just as sailing ships required wood and canvas, and horses required hay and oats. What will be the transportation vehicles of the future--and what energy source will power them? Today, nobody could predict it, just as in 1700 nobody could predict automobiles, jet travel, nuclear-powered ships or manned missions to the moon. One prediction, however, is a certainty: if men possess the political/economic freedom provided by capitalism, then the innovations of the future will dwarf such recent advances as electrical power, television, rocketry and computer technology.

The environmentalists are mistaken logically, as well as scientifically. Their use of the term "environment" involves a deadly equivocation, an unwarranted switch in the term's meaning. "Logically, there can be no concept of an 'environment' that is not the environment of someone (or something). . . 'Environment' is a relational concept. It properly refers to the surroundings of some entity as they relate to that entity." But the theory of intrinsic value holds that the environment is to be valued, even worshiped, independent of its worth to man, indeed in contradiction to his interest. The environmentalist takes in the unwary with fallacious logic. "He initially counts on its correct meaning, so that people accept a need to care about the fate of the 'environment'--which they assume in some way is their environment and is linked to their fate. This is why the movement's focus is pointedly on the 'environment,' rather than on the non-relational concept 'nature.' But once a confused public has been taken in, environmentalists re-package 'environment' to denote something upheld as existing separately from human beings."11

Rationally, the environment is man's surroundings or milieu, to be used in accordance with his best interests. This leads to the moral error in environmentalism's argument, by far the most important issue of all. The intrinsic theory of nature's value holds that the environment is an end in itself, and that man's needs are to be sacrificed to it. So swamps, jungles, yew trees, spotted owls, snail darters, laboratory mice, chinook salmon, mosquitoes, even viruses are sacred, not to be disturbed; but human dams, houses, power plants are not to be built, and man's health and life expectancy are not to be protected. Environmentalism is the most virulent form of the self-sacrifice ethics ever spawned. Communists and Nazis claim that an individual must sacrifice himself to the people or the race, but at least they argue that it is other human beings who are to benefit from an individual's self-immolation. But the environmentalists argue that human life as such must be sacrificed to the interest of the non-human -- to the bugs, dirt and bacteria.

To fight the insanities of environmentalism it is necessary to recognize and uphold the right of an individual human being to his own life. Human life is the only moral absolute on earth. Anything else acquires worth only insofar as it benefits man. Trees are a value only because they provide man with shade, timber, fruit, beautiful vistas, and so on. Clean air is a value only because it promotes human health and longevity. Automobiles are a value because they greatly increase the personal range and comfort of a man's transportation. The extraction of oil from ANWR and the development of other natural resources are a value because they provide the raw materials with which to create modern industrial civilization. Science, technology and industry are valuable for one reason: they greatly raise man's standard of living and increase his life expectancy. The moral principle is that man's life is the yardstick by reference to which the worth of any object, person or event is judged.

By this standard, the value of science, technology and industry is enormous and indisputable. Developments in agricultural science and the creation of modern farming equipment has led to an abundance of food in the Western world and to the Green Revolution, which produced more rice and grain in many Asian countries. There has never been a famine in the history of the United States. When was the last time a famine occurred in any industrialized nation? Even raising such a question causes historians to scratch their heads, trying to remember. Yet a brief study of history reveals that famine was and remains a widespread occurrence in the non-industrialized countries. The great 20th century historian, Fernand Braudel, writes that France is believed to have suffered 10 general famines during the 10th century, 26 in the 11th, 2 in the 12th, 4 in the 14th, 7 in the 15th, 13 in the 16th, 11 in the 17th and 16 in the 18th. "Dearth and penury were continual. . . Famine recurred so insistently for centuries that it became incorporated into man's biological regime and built into his daily life." It was not wiped out in Western Europe until the close of the 18th century, i.e., during the period of the Industrial Revolution. In the non-industrialized nations of the Third World today the same heartbreaking conditions exist. According to various charitable organizations for children, though it takes but 72 cents a day to provide a child with adequate nutrition and medical care, 30,000 children die daily from malnutrition and preventable diseases related to it.12

Similarly, advances in medicine have steadily raised the human life expectancy. A female child born in the United States today has a life expectancy approaching 80 years; and a male child's is mid-to-high seventies. The human life expectancy in the industrialized nations is rising, the exact opposite of what would occur if any of the environmentalist scare stories regarding the harmful effects of industrialization were true. The life expectancy is significantly lower in the countries that are not industrialized.

Further, the inventions and innovations made possible only by technological progress have vastly enriched the men of the entire Western world. The electric light, the telephone, the automobile, the airplane, the radio, television, refrigerator, air conditioner, personal computer and Internet are merely some of the advances that have made us wealthy. The anti-technology, anti-industry nature of the environmentalist movement is what marks it as a phenomenon virulently anti-human life.

Since the good is that which benefits human life, the converse also holds true: whatever harms or destroys human life is evil. On this score, environmentalism is the most destructive doctrine ever devised. When put into actual practice, it causes harm, even death, to incalculable numbers of human beings. By conservative estimate, the ban on DDT and other pesticides has caused the death by malaria of tens of millions of human beings. The greens' war against taxol retards man's struggle to triumph over cancer, causing untold human deaths. The same will be true if they succeed in banning medical testing on laboratory rats and mice. Their restrictions on building power plants in California resulted in diminished electricity for hospitals, police stations, firehouses and other emergency facilities, threatening human life. Their fight against oil development in ANWR will result in diminished heating fuel, gasoline and other petroleum products upon which modern industrialized civilization and our living standard depends. As the most anti-human theory in history, environmentalism is necessarily the most inhuman. Its virulently anti-man essence leaves us with a stark choice: human life or environmentalism. There is no middle ground.

References

David Holcberg, "Why Greens Are to Blame for Blackouts," www.aynrand.org.
The Environmental Handbook, ed. by Garrett De Bell (New York: Ballantine Books, 1970), pp. 197-207.
Ibid., pp. 210-12.
David Graeber, "Mother Nature as a Hothouse Flower," Los Angeles Times Book Review, Oct. 22, 1989, pp. 1, 9.
Peter Schwartz, "The Philosophy of Privation," in Ayn Rand, Return of the Primitive (New York: Penguin, 1998), p. 221.
Ibid., pp. 230-31.
Edmund Contoski, Makers and Takers (Minneapolis: American Liberty Publishers, 1997), pp. 193-94.
Ibid., pp. 195-97.
Ibid., pp. 201-04.
Michael Sanera and Jane Shaw, Facts, Not Fear (Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing, 1996), pp. 76-7, 79-81; Julian Simon, The Ultimate Resource (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1981), p. 93; Herman Kahn, et. al., The Next 200 Years (New York: William Morrow and Co., 1976), pp. 68-76, 103-05.
Return of the Primitive, op. cit., p. 228.
Fernand Braudel, Capitalism and Material Life, 1400-1800 (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), pp. 38-40; literature from Childreach, www.childreach.org.

MARINA DEL REY, CA--The National Academy of Science's summary of its report on global warming is a lie, said a senior writer for the Ayn Rand Institute.

The actual report does not provide a valid scientific basis for global warming, nor does it show a scientific consensus on the issue," said Robert Tracinski, also a columnist for Creators Syndicate. "This alleged consensus on global warming is a rerun of a government fraud manufactured every few years. Here's how it works:

A government panel asks many scientists to submit their views on global warming--including global-warming dissenters.

The scientists' views are spelled out in a massive report--a report whose size and scientific minutiae assure that no one will ever read it.

Since no one reads the report--a handful of political operatives write the "summary," where they downplay or simply eliminate every scientific fact that does not fit their agenda.

Politicians and journalists then hype only the summary's most sensational sound bites--and attribute those views to a "unanimous" consensus of every scientific contributor to the report.


"This is the process by which scientists who do not agree with the global-warming hysteria are trapped into giving their stamp of approval to it," said Tracinski.

Are the Media Giving You the Whole Story on Global Warming?
By David Holcberg

Reports on global warming fill our screens and newspapers. Time magazine's April issue, for example, carried a sixteen-page special report on global warming, featuring a frying earth on its cover. "Global Warming Is Real and Not Going Away," declared a recent front page of USA Today. "Global Warming Is Getting Worse," announced a recent headline in the New York Times. Yet, despite the extensive coverage, there is much on global warming that is left unreported.

Take for instance the cooling trend in the lower five miles of the atmosphere, detected by weather balloons, and independently confirmed by NASA's orbiting satellites. This data, gathered from all over the globe, through precise microwave and radio measurements, shows an average drop of 0.19ºF in air temperature since 1979. The National Academy of Sciences finds this cooling trend, which conflicts with the global warming hypothesis, "so pronounced as to be difficult to explain."

Most media reports ignore the evidence for cooling and focus instead on records from land stations, which indicate a 1°F increase in surface temperatures during the 20th century. What they fail to report is that this increase was measured mostly in and around urban centers, and therefore indicates urban--not global--warming.

Also left unreported is the fact that 90 percent of this 1°F urban warming occurred before 1940. If carbon dioxide emitted by industries and cars was causing this warming, should not most of the increase in temperature have occurred after 1940, when industries and cars became more plentiful and, consequently, carbon emissions increased significantly?

Even more interesting, but also left unreported, is the fact that from 1946 until 1975, while industrialization expanded and carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere increased, urban surface temperatures actually cooled. At the time, many in the media feared a new ice age.

Such facts throw into question the belief that global warming exists and that industrialization is affecting the earth's temperature. Nevertheless, the New York Times recently stated: "Human activity is the dominant force behind . . . global warming."

If man is not the cause of climate change, what is?

Dr. Fred Singer, professor of environmental sciences and former director of the National Weather Satellite Service, explains that climate change is a natural phenomenon, which has been going on for hundreds of millions of years. Ice core samples from the Arctic, for example, show an 18ºF temperature variation during the last 160,000 years. Dr. Singer further notes that solar activity greatly affects the temperatures and the climate on earth.

But most reports in the media ignore the existence of dissenting views such as Dr. Singer's. According to Scientific American, "few scientists doubt the atmosphere is warming." Time magazine bluntly claims: "Scientists no longer doubt that global warming is happening."

Any reporter actively in search for the facts on global warming would easily discover that during the last three years more than 17,000 American scientists, including geophysicists, climatologists, meteorologists, and oceanographers, have signed the Oregon Petition declaring that "There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of . . . greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate." [http://www.oism.org/pproject/s33p357.htm]

Such omissions on the part of reporters are unjustifiable, and so are their irresponsible attempts to scare people. CNN warns of "disastrous weather changes" resulting in "more floods, droughts, storms, and hurricanes." Scientific American forecasts "death by drowning or starvation" and the "emergence, resurgence and spread of infectious disease."

But many scientists, among them Dr. Frederick Seitz, former president of the National Academy of Sciences, think that the catastrophic scenarios are mistaken, and that a warming of the earth would actually be beneficial to mankind and to life in general: "Warmer weather extends growing seasons and generally improves the habitability of colder regions." Furthermore, increases in carbon dioxide would boost the growth of crops and forests, which feed on this gas.

Given all this contrary evidence and scientific dissent, why is the bulk of reporting biased towards the belief in a disastrous, man-made global warming?

The answer is that the media have largely accepted the environmentalist premise that civilized man--by exploiting nature to fulfill his needs--is not the creator but the destroyer of human values. This non-objective premise is held with blind, religious fervor. Holding the premise dogmatically, the media have no eyes or ears for evidence against it. Their view of man as inherently destructive automatically leads them to distrust all that man creates. That is why most reporters unquestioningly report that factories, power plants, and cars are causing a catastrophic global warming. And that is why thirty years ago they unquestioningly reported that factories, power plants, and cars were causing a catastrophic global cooling.

If you want to know the truth about global warming--or acid rain, or the ozone hole, or any other environmental issue--you must keep in mind that the media are not giving you the true story. And the reason for that is very simple. They are reporting on the world as they see it: distorted through green lenses.

Woman in OKC if the ice melts in your glass of water does the glass spill over? NO!!!! Only the ice covering land masses would be of any concern all you hippies crying over the ice floating around the ocean melting didn’t pay attention in the sixth grade. Once again you are so self absorbed that you believe we have the ability to dramatically affect our surroundings when we are but a drop in the bucket in the big scheme.

Global warming is a fact. In a study of scholarly articles on the subject, there is no disagreement among scientists that human carbon emissions are responsible for higher temperatures (which have risen much more rapidly and gone well outside the predictable pattern of warm and cool periods over the last 650,000 years), and we're already seeing devastating effects of that warming on the north polar ice cap and now Greenland is beginning to see dramatic melting as well. We need to be ready to handle the effects of this warming, and Jim Inhofe's plan to stick his head in the sand and pretend its not happening is not the leadership we need right now. Elect someone who is ready to deal with the big issues that we as Oklahomans and a nation will be facing together in the coming years. Vote for Andrew Rice.

All of you liberal pansies out there need to get a clue. The corruption of this country and the detriment of your own personal comforts is affected the least by the President. The decline as you say the typical cycle as anyone with intelligence will argue starts and ends with the vast overstepping of power and corruption of purpose found in the judiciary branches of our system. Liberal ideas and propaganda only work as you people remain uneducated to their true goal of making you so dependant upon their handout you can’t afford to give them the boot. The politicians are the fodder the media its speaker box and the judiciary branch is the enforcer. Keep playing the shell game with them watching them spin and spin while your twenty dollars disappears.

Go Inhofe six more years, rice has no chance of beating inhofe, global warming is BS and Rice should have stayed a state senator

People want change, but are willing to leave someone in office for 22 years who cares little about his constituents. You want change, vote out the incumbents. Congress voted term limits for the President but not for themselves. Too much power in Congress.

Dear Andrew from Lawton,

You are stupid and wilfully blind.

This global warming "problem" is, well, a creation of the eco-fascists who want to tell us how to live our lives. Check out those CFL bulbs chock full o' mercury. Oh, that's really saving the earth, as the mercury escaping from a shattered CFL bulb kills your brain. Inhofe may be a knucklehead and Rice may be a fresh face but I'm with Inhofe on this hoaxsterism of the greenies.

Rice is funded by liberals and gay activists.

Jason in Oklahoma City: Thank you for making my point for me. Once religion lands in the lap of politics we are headed for an inevitable bloodbath. We are becoming what we are fighting in places like Afghanistan and Iraq by holding fast to issues religious in nature, about which we will never reach universal consensus. I defend your right to believe what you want to believe but you cannot do the same. You called into question my Christian faith because I do not agree with you about politics. Wise up, my friend. Do you want to live in a theocracy? Check it out. Visit Saudi Arabia and see how you like it.

Michael, in Yukon. Please tell me what the ideal temperature or climate should be for this 4 billion year old planet? Does you really believe that man is changing the Earth's climate any differently than the previous climate changes that have happened in the last 4 billion years? Please respond with facts not anecdotes. Consensus is not science! That is a fact.

lanez, the right to life is the ultimate right; a universal right. To subordinate the right to life to anything else is immoral.

Jason, economic and foreign policy issues ARE more important than pro-life issues. It's morally inept to say you care less about the people already EXISTING on this planet and in this country than those who are not yet born. Rice will be a great candidate. He has a very strong head on his shoulders and we need to get out of this quagmire our current leadership has us bogged down in.

If you really are a Christian then why would you ever vote for a man that believes the killing of innocent babies is okay? If you really believe that economic and foreign policy issues are more important than protecting the life of babies, you aren't a "christian."

I hope we don't find that Andrew Rice sounds a bit like Jim Inhofe once when we get to those debates he suggested. Right out of the gate he has started pointing out that some of his views are Conservative. Hmmm...do we have a budding turncoat on our hands? Where did our outspoken Liberal go? His first campaign commercial disturbed me a great deal. A Liberal addressing prospective constituents by discussing faith and his Christian missionary service along with why his opponent stinks, not what I wanted to hear at all. I am patiently waiting to hear about what Andrew Rice wants to do for the people of the State of Oklahoma. Experience is not on his side, so I would like to know how he intends to work to change the perception of Oklahomans as backward fanatical freaks with a homophobic agenda. I agree that it is time for Jim Inhofe to go but I implore of those working with Senator Rice to attend to his political base and not repackage him in an attempt to pander to the Christian Right. Some Christians think there is no place for religion in politics.

One thing we will see this year and we are already seeing it across this country. Is to have someone that we can believe in, can trust they are not going to fill us with loads of BS, contradict 99% of scientist that say we have a global environmental problem, that we will have cross platform bipartisan action that is not for the detriment of society but for the betterment of society, and have someone that we can have faith in that the work he or she does is honest. Jim Inhofe is non of those things. We need new leadership, we need leadership that will restore the faith in public service, the faith in compassion, and the faith that at the end of the day no matter how small the issue we can have faith it was done working for a solution and not against the solution. Andrew Rice is the Face of the new Oklahoma. We need to move past partisan politics and realize Oklahoma is in a renaissance, a change that we need to continue. We need to get those out of power that bring negative, hateful, party rubber stamp to those that want to get the real work done. Brining America back to relevance and a true beacon of hope to those in need and do it for all the right reasons not the wrong ones we have done in the past.

Ya,the the GOP has done a bang up job for this country...The deficit 490 billion dollars,the economy in the crapper and,we are still fighting a war that has gone on longer and has cost more money than WW2..Ya,great job Republicans....Vote Obama in 2008!!!

Inhofe wins this easily...Obama has no coattails in Oklahoma. 65% - 35% book it.

The Democrats in this race have some major delusions of grandeur, at least all the way up to the secretary of their party. Do they plan on putting themselves into hock again for a race they can't win? Please do.

Go Andrew Rice---!

John, welcome aboard. Contact the Rice campaign and they'll be glad to visit with you. Andrew's got a good head and a good heart. He'll be a remarkable Senator.

I have always voted for Inhofe, but my conscience will not let me this year. Inhofe has proved one too many times that he's an idiot. He has played a big part in getting this country in the condition its in. The economy, environment, foreign affairs, health care and bankruptcy reform to name just a few. How can we continue down the same path? Its time for a change. Republicans for Rice.

No doubt you do "feel" that way, Vesta, because you Democrats really care. That's why you're morally superior to the rest of us. If you "think" about things though, Jim Inhofe is one of few senators with enough spine to stand against the Congressional majority (and way too many limp-wristed Republicans) who are hell-bent on turning the federal government into everyone's daddy. Thank goodness for Inhofe and Tom Coburn. Six more years!

I feel Andrew Rice is by far a better candidate. He is the best representative for working across party lines. Inhofe has proven he is a party rubber stamp, even to the detriment of our veterans, environment, constitutional freedoms, and health coverage for children and senior citizens.
Vesta Edwards, Oklahoma City