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March 6, 2008 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:34
March 6, 2008, Thursday, Hour #3
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Now that's odd.
You don't see that every day.
Al Franken stuck his tongue to a pole and he's frozen there.
That's very, very odd.
Right out of a Christmas story, the Democrat Senate candidate up here and paying back 25 grand to the New York Workers' Comp Board because he, well, didn't pay it before.
Anyway, welcome back, everybody.
Third hour now up and running on the Russian Limbaugh program.
I am Jason Lewis.
Glad you could join us on this frigid March day.
Unless you are, of course, in the beautiful sunny South, out in the Southwest, down in beautiful Austin or Phoenix or Melbourne.
It doesn't matter.
You're enjoying spring.
The rest of the northern hemisphere is stuck in the coldest winter in years and years and years.
You know, you kind of wonder what these global warming types think.
I mean, are we really this stupid?
Could we just disabuse ourselves of this notion that there is a climate crisis?
Do you think it's a coincidence that all of these solutions for global warming turned out to be the very same solutions liberals have been peddling for 50 years?
Got to rein in suburban sprawl.
Got to raise the gas tax.
Raise taxes on the automobile.
Got to have energy conservation.
It's as though they finally found the question for their answer.
They've had the answer for half century.
We have got to destroy capitalism.
We've got to go after private property with a vengeance.
Western civilization has got to be done in.
But we can't convince people.
Oh, I know.
Here's the question for our answer.
Our answer is to all these rules and regulations, all these taxes on energy.
What's the question?
The question is, how do you stop global warming?
We found it.
It's always been an answer in search of a question, and global warming was just, well, dare we say, too convenient a question.
A few years ago, when hurricane researcher, in fact, I believe he was working at NASA, Chris Lancy, resigned from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
He said, quote, it's beyond me why my colleagues would utilize the media to push an unsupported agenda that recent hurricane activity has been due to global warming, close quote.
There is all of this media agit prop.
Obviously, the environmentalists are using global warming to fill their coffers.
They need a crisis, a manufactured crisis.
But what's happening here, and if you saw the conference of over 100 climate scientists who happen to be skeptics of the global warming crisis in New York this week that resulted in the Manhattan Declaration, I mean, you had some very esteemed PhDs in this group, peer-reviewed types.
And you're seeing the growing number of climate scientists now challenging the prevailing orthodoxy.
And they're not on the government's payroll.
They're not even on Big Oil's payroll.
The people who are using this for profit are the global warming, I don't know, the global warming scaremongers, those who engage in the activism, the hyperbole about global warming.
Do you think you're going to get another government grant if you say everything is fine?
Do you think James Hansen at NASA doesn't gain tangibly and intangibly from being the Galileo of global warming?
These people are the ones lining their pockets in so many ways, political and otherwise.
You don't think the Sierra Club coffers, environmental defense, the Natural Resources Defense Council, you don't think their contributions have gone up because people like a nation of sheep have been lulled into believing this nonsense?
And yet, their hypocrisy of their own carbon footprints, buying them off with carbon credits while the rest of us, poor souls, wallow in sin, that goes unreported.
Think about this for a moment.
I mean, what we're witnessing, one of the coldest winters we've had, there is now data coming from Professor Bob Carter, a geologist at, where is it, down in Australia, what's the university, James Cook University, I believe.
Astrophysicist David Whitehouse in the United Kingdom, they are now saying that they think temperatures have not only leveled off since 1998, they think an impending cooling is before us, which is going to be much more calamitous to mankind than warming.
But if you just consider the sheer absurdity of politicizing fluctuating climate patterns, this is bizarre.
This is a little bit like some liberal saying, you know, I think if the sun comes up in the morning, that's going to be living proof we need a tax hike.
Oh, sure enough, the sun came up.
Wow, how about that?
And it's going to keep coming up and coming up, almost like clockwork.
We've got to keep those taxes rolling in.
Well, if you can politicize changes in the weather, you've got it made.
It's like the old Groucho-Marx line, sincerity.
If you can fake that, you've got it made.
Of course, the weather changes.
And attaching some political meaning to it is a beautiful catch-22.
The earth warms, see the medieval warming period, then it cools, see the little ice age, and then it warms again.
And then you get the picture after a while.
Remember the scientific consensus in 1975?
After 30 years of global cooling, even though carbon dioxide emissions were going up in a dramatic fashion in the post-World War II growth period, we had 30 years of global cooling, really since 1940.
So in 1975, Newsweek magazine put out an issue saying there is now a scientific consensus that we are entering a new ice age, ice age.
You know, their models are wrong too, and that's a big problem with all this.
In a pure vacuum, if you throw in greenhouse gas into the atmosphere, you should get a rise in temperature.
Which, by the way, have you ever heard a global warming activist say, well, you know, these cold winters, that's evidence of global warming too.
So if it goes, you know, if it gets warmer, it's evidence.
It gets cooler, it's evidence.
It rains, it snows, the sun shines, it's evidence.
A perfect catch-22.
But the model only shows warming.
So they can't explain away the cold in the last year and in the last, frankly, 10 years in some ways.
But now if you take away or if you correct for the non-greenhouse gas influences such as El Nino, volcanic eruptions, things like that, there frankly has been very little global warming since about 1979, according to the geologist Bob Carter at James Cook University in Australia.
And the reason the models are wrong is they don't allow for negative feedback.
They don't account for El Niño.
They don't account for volcanic eruptions.
They don't account for water vapor, ocean currents, aerosols, solar radiation or lack thereof.
So all things being equal, in a laboratory, they can say their model's perfect.
All things are never equal.
And we're finding that out.
I mean, the hockey stick graph has been debunked thoroughly.
Polar bear populations have actually gone up and now might be, quote, near historic highs, close quote, according to a U.S. geological survey.
China enduring its coldest winter in 100 years.
Snowfalling in Baghdad.
Record-long cold spells from Vietnam to the United Kingdom.
I think Rush mentioned this the other day.
The UK's Hadley Climate Research Unit just reported that global temperatures have dropped so precipitously in the last year, it has nearly wiped out a century's worth of global warming when you just take a look at the rise.
And here's another aspect to all of this I want to remind you about.
Because the fact of the matter is, global cooling is much more deleterious to a 0.6 degrees Celsius rise in the temperature in a century.
And if we've had this rise over the last century, you know, 0.6 degrees Celsius rise.
The 20th century was pretty good for longevity, pretty good for the standard of living, pretty good for mankind.
It's not a crisis.
Even if you believe it, it's not a crisis.
But global cooling is.
Many more people die from the effects of cold and heat.
You know, I bet you're surprised to hear that.
It is absolutely unassailable.
And yet, nobody ever reports that.
Yeah, I wonder why.
It's almost as if we've got a bunch of eco-journalists out there.
So now we get what?
Australia speaking of down under, they've had their coolest summer in 50 years.
It goes on and on and on.
I'm telling you, the cost of this is what people need to consider.
And nobody's considering the costs.
On my local show up here in the Twin Cities the other day, I had an economist from the American Council for Capital Formation.
And she said that if you implement Kyoto, the Kyoto Accord, which the Clinton administration could have done and wisely did not, proving once again that even a blind squirrel finds an acorn every now and then.
If you implement the Kyoto Accord, it will cost the American economy, just the American economy, anywhere from $500 to $700 billion.
Because the only way to implement these things is through carbon taxes, is through restraints on energy use, renewable fuel mandates.
We've been talking about the way ethanol is driving up the price of groceries, telling utilities they've got to use wind power and solar power is going to elicit a massive increase in your electricity bill.
All of that coupled together is going to take off of the United States national income $500 to $700 billion, according to this economist from the American Council for Capital Formation.
For what?
Even if all the signatories agreed on Kyoto, we might lower the temperature 0.05, 0.05 degrees Celsius.
This is the greatest con, as the founder of the Weather Channel said, the greatest con ever being perpetrated.
And folks, it's by the usual suspects.
They want to control your lifestyle.
They want to control your energy use.
They want to control the way you live, where you live, and how you travel.
This is the fallacy of green conservatism.
If you want to be a greenie, go ahead.
But you cannot be a conservative and latch onto this environmental psycho babble.
And the next time you hear a pseudo-Republican tell you they can walk away with your wallet while you can.
17 after the hour.
I'm Jason Lewis.
We'll get to the phone calls at 1-800-282-2882 as the Rush Limbaugh program continues on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
All right, got to do my best, Rush.
Are you ready?
All right, here we go.
Hi, how are you?
How's that sound, guys?
I'm pretty good.
1-800-282-2882.
Cold enough for you out there, gang.
If you're above the Mason-Dixon line, you are freezing.
If you're in Baghdad, it's been snowing.
And yet, and yet, the egg on Al Gore's face keeps piling up.
We're going to have a buffet in Nashville pretty soon.
1-800-282-2882 to the phones we go this third hour on the Rush Limbaugh program in St. Petersburg, Florida.
John, you're on the EIB with me, Jason Lewis.
Hi.
Hi, Jason.
I'm sorry you're feeling bad.
I know this bug's been going around here, too.
Now, I'm not above the Mason-Dixon line.
I'm in Florida where we don't even have climate change.
It's just hot all the time.
So, tell me, how does the flu navigate in a beautiful climate like the Gulf side of Florida when windows are open in the winter, you don't have all this compressed?
You know what schools are in the north, don't you?
They're germ incubators.
That's all they are.
Well, let me tell you, I'm actually a senior at St. Petersburg High We have down here, and it's no different.
I mean, there's days I don't even go to school because I know the bugs are just flowing around.
So, that's everywhere.
Anyways, I wanted to.
I was listening to your show earlier today, and you made a comment about how we're getting record winters.
And yes, that is true.
Now, I'm not a scientist.
I don't claim to be, like I said.
High school senior, not a genius, got plenty to learn, but it's been my understanding that this cold air, especially in places like New York and on that coast, what's going on is the heat and the sunlight is melting, as you know, the glaciers and whatnot.
I'm sure that's something that's been swished around all over the place.
But that cold water is stopping, I think it's the it's not the Gulf Stream.
There's a current that runs up through Europe and North America.
Yeah, there's an ocean current up there they've been attributing it to, right?
Right, and that cold water, this is just from my understanding, is limiting the height or the latitude that that warm current reaches.
So, and that's like I said, that's just what I'm saying.
And the effects, and the effects are well, the effects are that it's not that that warm water is not reaching places like New York, it's not reaching as far north as it used to reach.
I'm sorry.
So, but see, here is the problem.
And by the way, did your teacher enlighten you on this?
No, I'm a National Geographic, and I try to keep the school stuff separate.
This gets to the point of what I was saying earlier about what scientists call negative feedback.
In fact, Dr. John Christie of the University of Alabama Huntsville pointed out in a book a couple of years ago that our atmosphere has so many variables that mitigate or reverse the effect of greenhouse gases.
Just looking at those and downplaying the negative feedback, the negative feedback would be something that mitigates the effect of global warming, as most of these models do.
Ocean currents being a part, that what are we supposed to believe?
We're supposed to literally take off trillions of dollars off the world economy for a theory that's going to warm the earth.
That is, unless ocean currents change.
Well, then everything's different.
All right.
I hear that.
But let's just not let ourselves believe, since it's getting colder, that there's no way the Earth is still warming.
I mean, I certainly, like I said before, not a scientist, don't want to confuse anyone, but as you said, that it's a very complicated system, you know, the attitude of ocean currents.
Which is certainly not.
Which is why putting people out of work, raising massive amounts of taxes, your utility bills are going up, is a silly thing to do for a system that, frankly, is very complicated and not very well understood.
I mean, let me just give you an example.
How is it possible that CO2, greenhouse gases, have been going up since World War II, and yet we endured 30 years of cooling immediately after that?
How is it possible now that we had some warming since 1979 to 1998, but now we may be cooling again?
Where you're confusing causation with correlation here?
That's true.
No, you're absolutely right.
As a student of stats too, I definitely hear where you're coming from, where it's tough to say, well, since it's getting cooler, there's not global warming.
Since it's getting warmer, there's global warming.
That's, you know, at that point, it's tough to do.
And, John, what would happen if, in fact, you looked at the data anew, as some climatologists are now, and they're finding that the rise in greenhouse gases may, in fact, be following the temperature rise, not causing the temperature rise.
That's true.
You know, there's, you know, there's, and especially now we have so many people in this field.
And even if we can't definitively say global warming is happening, a cooling's happening, mini-ice age, whatever it is.
I mean, 10 years ago, this kind of stuff wasn't on talk radio.
So if nothing else, I'm glad that, you know, this is now, I mean, it's a public.
But you've got to understand there are, I would be glad in a perfect world too that we all become, you know, viewers of better television.
We consume these great studies.
We become brainier.
We become more erudite because we are now all renaissance men and women focusing on these weighty things.
The problem is, this is a political movement, not a scientific movement.
There are those.
Why do you think it's a coincidence that the same groups who have espoused liberal command and control economies for decades are the ones who have latched on to global warming?
You're right.
There are plenty of ties that are unfortunately skewing science in both directions.
I'm not going to argue with that.
I got to go.
I would just urge you to remember that the most influential aspect on our climate is undoubtedly the sun.
And if the sun decides to emit fewer solar flares or there's less solar radiation, I don't care how much greenhouse gas you get.
We're going to get cooler.
And if we get cooler, people die.
Go back and study what happened during the little ice age.
There was not a good time for mankind or womankind for that matter.
So I just get very, very skeptical of a movement that wants to take away my liberty.
Tell me what kind of light bulb I can use in my house.
Have the government control my thermostat remotely on the basis of something that may or may not be true.
That scares the bejeebers out of me.
And I think it's really transparent when Al Gore is leading the charge, when a liberal news media is leading the charge, we need to wake up and realize what the ulterior motive is here.
You know, I upset a lot of people up here in the Twin Cities in the upper Midwest on my rants on ethanol.
But folks, this is what's driving the cost of gasoline because ethanol is very hard to refine, certainly very hard to ship.
And by the way, it consumes tons of water to make ethanol, not to mention all of the fertilizer to grow the corn.
It is not an efficient fuel source.
And two studies recently in science, one from the University of Minnesota, no less, said that ethanol, the production therein, actually emits more GHG greenhouse gas emissions, not that I care that much about that, than standard unleaded fuel in many cases.
There's the bottom line.
And right now, you've got a bunch of these governors, these Republicans that have thrown the towel in on real energy policy, and you know who they are, and figure out the governor of your state that, well, has a corn population.
And they're saying, now we want a 20% mandate of ethanol, not just a 10% mandate, as it exists, for instance, in Minnesota already.
We want every gas pump in the country to have to pump 20% ethanol.
Forget about your gaskets and forget about some of the rubber that gets eaten away by this stuff.
Forget about the refineries that have to take oil offline and now develop a fuel for 17 different formulas around the country from May to September.
And then you get a fire at a refinery or a pipeline shuts down and you can't replace one with another because of all these requirements for oxygenated fuels.
It is just not sound policy.
It is a farm policy.
It's the same reason we had a $286 billion farm bill when commodity prices are at all-time highs.
I know I'm traumatizing the Farm Bureau here, but sooner or later we've got to speak the truth.
And we are subsidizing people whose incomes, in many cases, are higher than yours.
We're subsidizing big agribusiness.
Why is that okay, but we've got to tax big oil?
Dr. David Pimental of Cornell University suggests that it takes actually more energy to produce a gallon of ethanol than the ethanol produces itself when it's done.
Is that a wise policy?
Now, in the process, because we've taken so much corn out of food production for ethanol, we've got a shortage in corn syrup.
We've got shortages to make food, and that's driving up the cost of everything from tortillas to meat.
Livestock farmers are livid now because the cost of grain has gone up so much.
Corn's at $5 a bushel.
This is a policy designed to appease a voting bloc in the upper Midwest to the detriment of the rest of us.
We were going through the oil figures earlier in the program.
We got more oil than we know what to do with.
$124 billion domestically.
And they'll say, well, it's an energy independence issue.
We get most of our oil in America from Canada and Mexico and South America.
That's where we get the bulk of our oil.
It's not an energy independence issue.
If it were an energy independence issue, this ridiculous move towards solar and windmills and biomass, we'd be going after oil in the Arctic Sea, offshore.
But Charlie Christ won't allow that in Florida.
Tim Polenti doesn't want to do that in Minnesota.
He wants more ethanol subsidies, more ethanol mandates.
Let me just tell you, it's as plain as the nose on your face.
If ethanol or biomass were as efficient as they think it is, and now they're saying there are new switchblade grass or there are new processes to make ethanol more efficient.
Well, we'll see.
But if it were efficient, you wouldn't have to mandate it and you wouldn't have to subsidize it.
If it were a more efficient, cheaper fuel, it would be brought to market.
The fact the government has to subsidize wind and solar and biomass and biodiesel and ethanol tells any economist one thing, that in a free market, nobody'd be dumb enough to invest in it.
To the phones we go once again, 1-800-282-2882.
Al in Indianapolis, Indiana, you're on the Rush Limbaugh program.
Oops, let's try John in Indiana.
You're up next.
Al, we'll get to you when we can.
Little technical glitch there.
John, fire away.
Yeah, hi, Jason.
You're doing a good job for Rush.
Thank you.
My big thing is I just want to hear one politician.
I don't care who it is.
You know, President Kennedy stated we could put a man on the moon in 10 years.
Why can't we build at least eight Canada new refineries in all the time zones drill for oil wherever we want, Pacific Atlantic, up in Alaska, down in the Gulf?
We can't touch this oil.
We don't even uncap the oil wells that we care back in the 80s from Oklahoma to Texas.
I mean, this is ridiculous.
We need energy.
There isn't a politician alive who is willing to take on the environmental lobby.
Why not?
Because they're cowards.
They are political cowards.
I tell you what, if you show me one politician that would adopt that policy, you know, to build new refineries and get oil wherever we can, you will find most of the American people will back that politician.
Look, if you want to know, in addition to, as I said earlier, the easy money policy coming out of the Fed, but if you want to know why gasoline is going to be $4 a gallon, if you want to know why grocery prices are spiking, commodity prices are spiking, you take a look at the deliberate policy of the United States government perpetrated by, of course, liberal Democrats, but also with the help of these Republicans who have gone south on the environment.
They're more interested in getting the endorsement, John, from the Sierra Club than they are fighting for private property.
They're more interested in bashing big oil to score political points than they are providing abundant energy.
The thing is, if you would adopt a policy to get more energy, you would create more jobs, you would lower more taxes, everybody would be happy.
The economy would just go gangbusters.
I mean, this is totally backward.
This makes no sense at all.
Well, you're right.
And there is no peak oil crisis, as I mentioned earlier.
I mean, let me quote the former head of the reservoir management division of Saudi Aramiko.
Article I believe was in the Wall Street Journal the other day.
He thinks there are 12 trillion unproven reserves of oil.
Now, what do we consume a day?
85 million in the U.S., I think.
I'm not quite certain on that.
But nevertheless, we've got more oil than we can shake a stick at.
We've got more natural gas offshore than we can shake a stick at.
And yet, you can't set up an oil rig 50 to 200 miles offshore Florida because of the environmental policy adopted by a lot of these Republican governors, who, by the way, are being mentioned as John McCain, John McCain's vice president nominee.
You're right.
I think this is the elephant in the GOP's living room.
I think McCain's in trouble from teaming up with Lieberman on a cap and trade system, which would be devastating to the economy.
A cap and trade system would tell every utility out there, if you're using traditional fossil fuels, if you're using coal, cheap, efficient coal to provide electricity, you're going to pay a tax that is then going to go to, the result of the monies are going to go to a windmill farm.
That's the cap and trade system, in effect.
Is that going to produce cheaper energy?
No, of course not.
They'll pass through the cost.
It is a policy of a deliberate, deliberate crisis in energy.
And it has a lot to do with the downturn in the economy right now.
You're right about that.
Ken and St. Cloud, that's St. Cloud, Minnesota for the uninitiated.
You're on the Rush Limbaugh program.
Hi.
Hey, Jason.
I've talked to you in the past.
You're doing a great job.
If Senator McCain wanted to give support of conservative Republicans, what he should do is announce that he's rethinking his position on global warming and ANWAR based on all of this current evidence.
That's exactly what he should do.
That really is exactly what he should do.
He's voted against drilling in ANWAR, where what's the latest figure in ANWAR?
There are 16 billion barrels.
And by the way, it's 19 million acres.
We could drill there with the new technologies on a 2,000-acre footprint.
And if he doesn't do this and if Hillary gets the nomination, I wouldn't put it past her to pull a switch.
She's a pretty sharp politician.
She just might pull the switch and come out and war these things.
I think you and the last caller are really onto something.
A lot of the conservative angst over the portside attitude or the drift leftward of the Republican Party and the incumbents is over energy and the environment.
You're smart enough to realize oil companies employ Americans.
They provide cheap, clean, efficient fuel.
There's not a crisis in global warming.
And yet, the Republicans who are reading the New York Times and the Washington Post and the Sierra Club press releases are totally disconnected from this.
And of course, the Republicans in the Midwest, as you well know, are more concerned about making certain the farm lobby's happy.
But even that's not working.
The livestock farmers are upset because the cost of grain's gone up.
So, you know, Ken, you bring up a great point, and I do think that has a lot to do with conservative angst over John McCain.
Unfortunately, you know, when it comes to vice presidential, maybe that's why the governor of Alaska might be worth a look.
She's certainly not going to be anti-oil in Alaska.
I'm Jason Lewis, in for Rush today on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
All right, wrapping things up on the Rush Limbaugh program for this Thursday.
I'll be back tomorrow for Open Line Friday, filling in for the gray one as he takes a couple of well-deserved days off.
Ah, yeah, somebody emailed me already.
You butchered the Rush impersonation.
It's hi, how you?
Hey, they're right.
I hate to admit that.
I'm wrong every leap here, and they're right on that one.
We will get back to the phones in just a moment.
Windmill farms are springing up everywhere.
Again, they would not be possible without subsidies.
According to the International Energy Agency in Paris, a wind farm or wind turbine farm costs between 4 and 14 cents to generate a kilowatt hour.
A clean, coal-fired, good old-fashioned power plant, about 2.5 to 5 cents.
You got to understand something, folks.
If you want to be green, that's fine.
But you're going to lower your standard of living.
Your kids are going to inherit less prosperity.
We're going to have less business growth, less economic growth.
Now, I don't think it's worth sacrificing our economic growth and your standard of living for theories that have yet to be proven.
I don't think it's worth sacrificing this for some sort of one-world utopian vision by a bunch of collectivists who think they've found the question to their answer of total control.
In Stanton, Virginia, Alex, you're on the Rush Limbaugh program.
Hi.
Yeah, I am so wanting to reiterate and amen those last two callers.
John McCain's got a year to woo me, or almost a year, but the one thing that's going to keep me from voting for John McCain, and I'll sit home, is this global warming shtick, this thing with Lieberman.
Because, you know, we can be all great on national security, but that thing is going to destroy us from within.
And it is insanity.
You hit the nail on the head.
This is all about political buying off the votes with the corn.
And at $106 a barrel, we can't produce enough corn to buy it away from the fuel use with the subsidy.
And it's going to destroy us.
McCain is going to destroy the Republican Party if he gets into office and goes forward with the cap and trade thing.
That's why the Alaskan governor, you know, you're right.
I'm telling you, and I've been saying this for months, that the elephant in the GOP's living room that they all want to ignore, it's not a problem, is the party going green.
You know, again, without traumatizing Newt Gingrich, green conservatism is an oxymoron.
You can't have it.
You can be one or the other.
Yep, and you're right.
It would be a brilliant political maneuver for McCain to reunite the base.
But we all know that McCain's instinct, the most strong instinct he has, is to throw us under the bus on things like this.
Well, or to, in fact, take the advice from the New York Times with greater import than the advice from the grassroots.
I mean, he's already got a problem with McCain find gold campaign finance, McCain-Kennedy immigration, with the estate tax, his waffling on the Bush tax cuts, which he now says he supports, with a gang of 14 and judges.
And I think you're right.
The McCain-Lieberman cap and trade massive.
This is no different than Al Gore's 1993 gas tax increase that Republicans fought against.
And I could hold my nose and I could make the effort and swallow those huge, nasty pills of campaign finance and the rest of it if he was rational on energy and global warming.
And he's not.
He's voted against ANWAR, which is insanity.
I mean, they're only going to drill in the wintertime.
They're going to use ice roads when the spring comes out.
It's dark.
Yeah.
It's dark 56 days out of the year up there.
You're right.
I got to go, but you're 100% right.
And you're right on an overarching philosophy there, too.
It doesn't do us any good to preserve the sanctity of life, to fight the bad guys overseas, the terrorists, if, in fact, we're not fighting to uphold freedom, but we're fighting to form some sort of green, you know, green vision of America that's going to take away our liberties.
You've got to have the whole picture here.
Anyway, Alex, great point.
I'm glad you made it.
Let's go to Tom in Troy, North Carolina.
You're up next on the program.
Hi, Tom.
How are you, sir?
I'm fine.
How are you doing, Jason?
Good.
I want to say mega ditto's from an EIB listener and student for the past 10 years now.
Good deal.
I'm sure Rush is proud.
Just wanted to bring up another point that proves the inefficiency of this ethanol.
I've been a petroleum carrier for a long time.
Ethanol being an alcohol, most petroleum products are pushed in a pipeline with a water product.
Right.
And alcohol cannot be pushed with water.
It'll mix with water.
So the only way to move ethanol is with the fossil fuel.
Move it by rail or by truck.
So it's basically a wash.
Anything you say, you've wasted it moving it somewhere.
Yeah, very difficult to ship.
Yep, it sure is.
It is, you know, again, if ethanol is the next coming, why do we have to have these massive subsidies for it?
Why is it that the federal government, you know, the oil companies paid $81 billion in 2006, the top 27 oil companies, $81 billion in income taxes in 2006.
Meanwhile, ethanol and big agribusiness, but ethanol enjoys what?
A 51 cent per gallon tax credit.
They get $500 million in new direct payments to ethanol producers.
The Senate Energy Bill gave them.
States like Minnesota and other states are pouring millions into this.
Well, why do you need to do that if it's such a wonderful product?
It should come to the market on its own, shouldn't it?
The only way these things can be sustained is with a government intervention.
I thought the Republican Party was the party of markets, not command and control economies.
I'm Jason Lewis, in for Rush, back after this.
What? What? What?
My thanks, as always, to Kid and Mike, controlling the board, controlling the show, producing the show.
Excellence as always.
I'm Jason Lewis.
Great pleasure to fill in for Rush.
I'll be back tomorrow for Open Line Friday.
The big guy back on Monday in Arlington, Virginia.
Brian, you're next on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
Be brief, please.
Hi, Jason.
You're doing a great job today.
Thank you.
I only hope that John McCain is listening and adopts what you're trying to educate the people about.
My part specifically is trying to clarify this idea of greenhouse gas as a specific as it involves carbon dioxide.
In high school chemistry, they teach them that carbon dioxide is a non-toxic gas, and carbon monoxide will kill you.
We're not talking about carbon monoxide.
When humans and beings breathe, they breathe in the oxygen because they need it to live, but they breathe out carbon dioxide.
That's CO2.
The carbon dioxide is taken in by vegetation, plants, flowers, trees.
They need that to live.
And what do they do?
They keep the carbon and breathe out the oxygen, which we're going to be.
So if we had more carbon dioxide, we'd have the greening of the planet.
You'd have more agricultural produce.
You would have, in some ways, a better Earth.
Why can't we get more people to understand that?
Well, because this is not about science, Brian.
This is about political science.
It's not about energy.
It's about a political policy, not an energy policy.
That's what's so difficult for those of us that still believe in freedom and that believe that markets should rule for the most case in the United States of America.
I'll see you tomorrow, folks, back here on the Rush Limbaugh program.
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