WE guess it goes without saying that humans were blamed for the original problem; nothing new here. It could have been our pesticides, our GMO crops, or something else completely natural. Yes, these things happen. WE're talking about colony collapse disorder. As in, honey bee colonies. 

A story in National Review, Bee-pocalypse Now? Nope. describes the situation:

The media love to hype the negative, especially as it applies to original sin of the Gaia religion.

Anybody up for another Silent Spring?

And, right on cue, facts not in hand, government comes galloping in to the rescue.

Ah, yes. The habitat. What habitat? Bee keepers love their bees. WE see bee boxes all over the place, and the bees are very well cared for. Pampered even, which brings us to this:

Well, there goes the neighborhood. In fact, one of our contributors told us of a honeybee migration into their front yard a couple of days ago. Millions of bees followed their queen to a juniper bush in the front yard. A call to a local pest control outfit put them in touch with a beekeeper, who enthusiastically responded within minutes. He located the queen, and moved her to a cardboard box. All the other bees dutifully followed her to the box, which the beekeeper set in the passenger seat of his car, and drove away. Honeybees are very docile if you treat them with respect. Those bees will be well cared for.

Not every problem requires a government solution. We're a resourceful lot. Humans and nature can exist together, for mutually beneficial ends. (Read the entire article...)

WE don't generally wander far from local, but the PJTV Trifecta (below) caught our collective eye.  Living next to Canada makes Border Patrol a part of daily life, 24/7.  WE like having a secure border, and national security is a truly enumerated federal duty.  Knock on wood we're probably safer than people on the southern border.

But there's a another program here that few citizens are aware of - regular and totally "un-warranted" photo surveillance that Whatcom County (and a slew of partner agencies) engage in on a regular basis.  This aerial surveillance now being done using Pictometry.  What once was merely "mapping" is something very invasive.

Pictometry is not garden variety aerial photography for mapping and measuring for public work.  Using airplanes, look-down and oblique photos are taken regularly and then compared to prior images using a specialized computer program to watch for changes, to see what people are doing.  Boy, if that doesn't fit the definition of "surveillance" WE don't know what does.

Who's watching?  All kinds of agencies are (see list after this paragraph), including the Lummi tribe. The whole purpose is to actively snoop on citizen activity, peering at everyone's home, yard, or farm by taking oblique photos periodically without having to establish "probable cause" or get a warrant.  If the Pictometry computer program flags some perceived activity or change to your property (from a long list of options)  you're subject to further investigation, or maybe even a knock on the door.  Who's privy to what extent of the photo bank isn't clear.  Do they all share everything?  Is there any protection from abuse?  Most importantly, is this much un-warranted surveillance justified?  What would a court say if a citizen objected?

Those involved:  Whatcom County (numerous departments), City of Bellingham, the Housing Authority, Blaine, Everson, Lynden, Sumas, PUD #1, the Conservation District, the "Council of Governments", the WTA, Lummi Nation, Ferndale, Lk Whatcom WAter & Sewer (and who knows how many more - the feds too?)

There were no public hearings about the adoption or expansion and continuation of this program.  There's never been a chance for the citizenry to weigh in over a number of years (4 or 5).  Pictometry is being renewed for 2015 (and perhaps longer), it was in the county budget.  For a taste of the terms, look at this agreement and a truckload more here.

And are these pictures public records?  Will "the people" be permitted to "see" the pictures and reports - Pictometry "product" - that our public servants see?  Not a chance. WE have good reason to expect access to be denied (records withheld) "to protect citizens privacy" (!) if you could believe the hypocrisy of such an oxymoronic excuse. These photos and reports ("product") is being held in the hands of a very tight circle of "interests."  Carefully read this stock clause in all of the Pictometry agreements:

How does all that cozy vendor-agency protection square with the Public Records Act, which says:

From time to time WE shares interesting little tales from the mainstream meed-yah.  Nags and nanny statists, take note that (drum roll)

Breakfast Downgraded From 'Most Important Meal of the Day' to 'Meal'

MSN News, Aug 22, 2014

"You didn't eat breakfast? Don't you know it's the most important meal of the day?"

In the bitterly divided world of breakfast habits, otherwise reasonable people become evangelists. Why is it acceptable to make people feel guilty about not eating breakfast, but it is not acceptable to slap those people?

This week health columnist Gretchen Reynolds at The New York Times did the slapping with science, reporting on two new nutrition studies. She concluded, "If you like breakfast, fine; but if not, don’t sweat it."

That's reasonable, sure, if apathetic. Nutrition science as a field has in recent years been bisected over the importance of breakfast. The research speaks with more nuance than the lay breakfast pusher. But the new studies land a weight of evidence thoroughly outside the realm of "most important meal."

In one study, 300 people ate or skipped breakfast and showed no subsequent difference in their weight gained or lost. Researcher Emily Dhurandhar said the findings suggest that breakfast "may be just another meal" and admitted to a history Breakfast-Police allegiance, conceding "I guess I won’t nag my husband to eat breakfast anymore."

Another small new study from the University of Bath found that resting metabolic rates, cholesterol levels, and blood-sugar profiles were the same after six weeks of eating or skipping breakfast. Breakfast-skippers ate less over the course of the day than did breakfast-eaters, though they also burned fewer calories.

“I almost never have breakfast,” James Betts, a senior lecturer at University of Bath, told Reynolds. “That was part of my motivation for conducting this research, as everybody was always telling me off and saying I should know better.”

One thing I've learned as a health writer is that a wealth of academic research is the product of personal vendettas, some healthier than others. The crux of the breakfast divide is a phenomenon known among nutrition scientists as "proposed effect of breakfast on obesity," or the PEBO. It's the idea people who don't eat breakfast actually end up eating more and/or worse things over the course of the day because their nightly fast was not properly broken.

Some studies have supported that idea, but a strong meta-analysis of all existing research last year by obesity researchers found that "the belief in the PEBO exceeds the strength of scientific evidence," citing poor research and bias in reporting.

Another study published last year researchers at Cornell had people go without breakfast for science, and those who skipped ended up eating less by the end of the day.

In a third study published last year, also in July—breakfast scientists might simply refer to as "the month"—a large study in the American Heart Association's journal Circulation found that eating breakfast was associated with significantly lower risk of heart disease. That remains the most persuasive pro-breakfast case to date.

"I refute the dogma that inevitably creeps into discussions of breakfast. Skipping breakfast can mean many different things," wrote David Katz, director of Yale University's Griffin Prevention Research Center, at the time. Katz introduced additional philosophical dilemmas: "Research about breakfast tends to divide the world into those who skip, and those who don't. But deferring and skipping are not the same. Skipping despite hunger, and deferring for want of it, are not the same. And clearly all breakfasts are not created equal."

For example, as Reynolds proposed, "Preparing a good breakfast can be as quick and easy as splashing some milk over cereal." You're definitely better off with no breakfast than with most cereals, which are primarily sugar, but another study from Harvard Medical School found that people who ate breakfasts of whole-grain cereals had lower rates of diabetes and heart disease compared to skippers.

If you ever visit the Internet's most-read site for health information, you'll see an articlepresumptuously titled "Why Breakfast Is the Most Important Meal of the Day," which mainly focuses on kids and the lore that they do better academically if they have eaten breakfast, but that's overblown and really not a clear conclusion. As Katz put it, "We have little information about adolescents, little information about the benefits of breakfast in well-nourished kids, and little information about how variation in the composition of breakfast figures into the mix."

But shades of grey do not satisfy my bitter-divide hypothesis. Let's still say there are two kinds of people in the world: Those who eat breakfast, and those who don't. If you're a breakfast deferrer who feels cowed by breakfast evangelists, a good way to stand up to them might be to echo Betts:

"More randomized experiments are needed before we can fully understand the impact of breakfast."

Or as a joke, "If you like breakfast so much, why don't you marry it?"

Or, with a very serious face, "Don't tell me how to live my life."

The executive branch, with an army of bureaucracies, professes to implement legislation passed by congress. The trouble is, these vast and callous government agencies have assumed the authority to make regulations having the force of law, without deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed: they're not elected! There's inadequate feedback. 

Yet, when designing the American form of government, our founders created a separation of powers, so that congress would have a check on the executive branch, and they gave the executive branch the veto power over congress. The way congress checks the executive branch is by refusing to fund it. There are several agencies that are in dire need of a reigning in of the purse strings. WE take you to Cle Elum, where citizens decided they'd had enough ... 

Continue reading ... 

Citizens should not have to take time off from their day jobs, don overalls and manually push back against our own government by hard labor. We should be able to prevail on our representatives in congress to defund our oppressors. Well, maybe not our representatives west of the Cascades, because they really like big, oppressive government, but you get the idea. 

The feds, the EPA - our eco-friendly overseers - they're here, they're there, they're everywhere.  In a wet place like Whatcom County, each day presents a new opportunity to snoop and harass the public.  Seems like any puddle may be enough to lord over.

Reposted from Pacific Legal Foundation's PLF Sentry
July 24, 2014 - "Troubled Waters"

When federal regulators at the EPA step out of line and assume power they don't lawfully possess, PLF hauls them into court to stop them - as we did in our unanimous 2012 victory at the Supreme Court in Sackett v. EPA.

Well, the EPA is at it again.  Last March the agency proposed a new rule to redefine "navigable waters" under the Clean Water Act.  The feds claim the new rule "clarifies" which waters are regulable without expanding the scope of the Act.  But PLF Principal Attorney Reed Hopper stated in a recent blog post* that "this is utter nonsense, which only the uninformed believe."

Be assured that PLF is watching the EPA's new rule like a hawk, and we're prepared to challenge it in the courts, if necessary.  Stay tuned.  

*[Here's that recent blog post] by  Reed Hopper, "More EPA Spin ..."

We have documented here and here how the EPA is misrepresenting its proposed rule to redifine “navigable waters” under the Clean Water Act.  The Administration unabashedly claims the new rule is compelled by Supreme Court decisions interpreting the Act and that the rule will not expand the government’s jurisdiction.  But this is utter nonsense, which only the uninformed believe.  So we give kudos to the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee for calling the EPA on its blatant misrepresentations.

Yesterday, the committee issued an interesting Fact Check showing how the actual language of the rule is contrary to the EPA’s claims about the rule, including such claims as;

The rule does not regulate new types of ditches;

The rule does not regulate activities on land;

The rule does not apply to groundwater;

The rule does not affect stock ponds;

The rule does not require permits for normal farming activities; and,

The rule does not regulate puddles.

The Fact Check is revealing.  Check it out here.

If you attempt to follow the mass of confusion evident in Whatcom County government these days (left or right), WE think you'll relate to this.  Whether you agree with Whittle or not about the issues he's describing (about what happens in Washington D.C.), this "Firewall" episode is about crazy-making as a tactic.  There's a very good chance that the  smoke, mirrors, and "process" that make it difficult for citizens in Whatcom County to know who's in charge of what (and accountable for what), what's being spent, and on what authority - all the fog related to "advisories" and overlapping regulations etc - serves those in control very well.  If you find government impossible to follow nowadays, perhaps "You're not crazy dear."  WE think a great deal of what happens is gaslighting, on a local scale.

WE were alerted to a new article at Freedom Foundation about Puget Sound Partnership's latest "environmental" project. It seems they just haven't been able to accomplish anything approaching the mission they were created to do, and so they decided re-branding would help. It reminds us of when the United States Postal Service was hemorrhaging money to UPS, FedEx and that newfangled e-mail thang. What did the post office do? Why, instead of solving their systemic problems, and maybe addressing the realities of a changing world, they redesigned their eagle logo, to make it faster looking. And raised the price of stamps.

So in the fine tradition of government agencies, Puget Sound Partnership is getting a new look, for $60,000.00, give or take. Now, WE realize that's less than one modest house in the Seattle area, but still. If the Puget Sound is really so all-fired threatened, it seems like a real, functional agency would want to spend every dime fixing that. Oh, yes, image does affect contributions, but this is taxpayer money we're sending down the rat hole, and contributions to PSP have never been great. 

WE only mention this because PSP has a nasty habit of poking its funnel into local Whatcom County government affairs all too frequently, politically molesting citizens who are happy the way things are, and just want to be left alone. 

So, what is this agency, and how effective are they? Well...

If you have the belly for it, you can find out how that re-branding is going to shape up. Continue reading...

Bless 'em all:  "People will do anything to save the world … except take a course in science”...

Despite the continuing performance failure of IPCC based university "ecology department" models and predictions, WA Governor Inslee keeps truckin' on with his big plan to change the world by dictum. See Executive Order 14-04 dated April 29.  It's loaded with a case of frights that sells best the uninformed, with little understanding of how science works. Demagogues thrive on ignorance, acquiring "power and popularity by arousing the emotions of persons and prejudices of the people."  The AGW crisis politic and its supporting eco-industry feed on true believers - who behave rather like cargo-cultists and the ouija board set - of which there are many in Whatcom County.

Physicist Howard Hayden’s one-letter disproof of global warming claims

OCTOBER 29, 2009 by STEPHAN KINSELLA

Physicist Howard Hayden, a staunch advocate of sound energy policy, sent me a copy of his letter to the EPA about global warming. The text is also appended below, with permission.

As noted in my post Access to Energy, Hayden helped the late, great Petr Beckmann found the dissident physics journal Galilean Electrodynamics (brochures and further Beckmann info here; further dissident physics links). Hayden later began to publish his own pro-energy newsletter, The Energy Advocate, following in the footsteps of Beckmann’s own journal Access to Energy  I love Hayden’s email sign-off, “People will do anything to save the world … except take a course in science.”  Here’s the letter:

***

Howard C. Hayden
785 S. McCoy Drive
Pueblo West, CO 81007

October 27, 2009

The Honorable Lisa P. Jackson, Administrator
Environmental Protection Agency
1200 Pennsylvania Ave., NW Washington, DC 20460

Dear Administrator Jackson:

I write in regard to the Proposed Endangerment and Cause or Contribute Findings for Greenhouse Gases Under Section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act, Proposed Rule, 74 Fed. Reg. 18,886 (Apr. 24, 2009), the so-called “Endangerment Finding.”

It has been often said that the “science is settled” on the issue of CO2 and climate. Let me put this claim to rest with a simple one-letter proof that it is false.

The letter is s, the one that changes model into models. If the science were settled, there would be precisely one model, and it would be in agreement with measurements.

Alternatively, one may ask which one of the twenty-some models settled the science so that all the rest could be discarded along with the research funds that have kept those models alive.

We can take this further. Not a single climate model predicted the current cooling phase. If the science were settled, the model (singular) would have predicted it.

Let me next address the horror story that we are approaching (or have passed) a “tipping point.” Anybody who has worked with amplifiers knows about tipping points. The output “goes to the rail.” Not only that, butit stays there. That’s the official worry coming from the likes of James Hansen (of NASA­GISS) and Al Gore.

But therein lies the proof that we are nowhere near a tipping point. The earth, it seems, has seen times when the CO2 concentration was up to 8,000 ppm, and that did not lead to a tipping point. If it did, we would not be here talking about it. In fact, seen on the long scale, the CO2 concentration in the present cycle of glacials (ca. 200 ppm) and interglacials (ca. 300-400 ppm) is lower than it has been for the last 300 million years.

Global-warming alarmists tell us that the rising CO2 concentration is (A) anthropogenic and (B) leading to global warming.

(A) CO2 concentration has risen and fallen in the past with no help from mankind. The present rise began in the 1700s, long before humans could have made a meaningful contribution. Alarmists have failed to ask, let alone answer, what the CO2 level would be today if we had never burned any fuels. They simply assume that it would be the “pre-industrial” value.

§  The solubility of CO2 in water decreases as water warms, and increases as water cools. The warming of the earth since the Little Ice Age has thus caused the oceans to emit CO2 into the atmosphere.

(B) The first principle of causality is that the cause has to come before the effect. The historical record shows that climate changes precede CO2 changes. How, then, can one conclude that CO2 is responsible for the current warming?

Nobody doubts that CO2 has some greenhouse effect, and nobody doubts that CO2 concentration is increasing. But what would we have to fear if CO2 and temperature actually increased?

§  A warmer world is a better world. Look at weather-related death rates in winter and in summer, and the case is overwhelming that warmer is better.

§  The higher the CO2 levels, the more vibrant is the biosphere, as numerous experiments in greenhouses have shown. But a quick trip to the museum can make that case in spades. Those huge dinosaurs could not exist anywhere on the earth today because the land is not productive enough. CO2 is plant food, pure and simple.

§  CO2 is not pollution by any reasonable definition.

§  A warmer world begets more precipitation.

§  All computer models predict a smaller temperature gradient between the poles and the equator. Necessarily, this would mean fewer and less violent storms.

§  The melting point of ice is 0 ºC in Antarctica, just as it is everywhere else. The highest recorded temperature at the South Pole is -14 ºC, and the lowest is -117 ºC. How, pray, will a putative few degrees of warming melt all the ice and inundate Florida, as is claimed by the warming alarmists?

Consider the change in vocabulary that has occurred. The term global warming has given way to the term climate change, because the former is not supported by the data. The latter term, climate change, admits of all kinds of illogical attributions. If it warms up, that’s climate change. If it cools down, ditto. Any change whatsoever can be said by alarmists to be proof of climate change.

In a way, we have been here before. Lord Kelvin “proved” that the earth could not possibly be as old as the geologists said. He “proved” it using the conservation of energy. What he didn’t know was that nuclear energy, not gravitation, provides the internal heat of the sun and the earth.

Similarly, the global-warming alarmists have “proved” that CO2 causes global warming.

Except when it doesn’t.

To put it fairly but bluntly, the global-warming alarmists have relied on a pathetic version of science in which computer models take precedence over data, and numerical averages of computer outputs are believed to be able to predict the future climate. It would be a travesty if the EPA were to countenance such nonsense.

Best Regards,

Howard C. Hayden
Professor Emeritus of Physics, UConn

Next week is candidate "filing week," that important window of time that kicks off election season. Left and right, once again a crop of wannabees will vie to win all sorts of offices - some powerful, most less-so.  But every contest will matter.

As we're subjected to months of low blows, breast beating and virtuous claims (again -from left and right) citizens must do their damndest to figure out who is most like the people, willing to represent and respect the wisdom of "the folks" ... and which characters are more or less hankering to rule.  Yes, rule.  WE don't care for elitism, particularly the kind of arrogant "we know better than you" elitism that relies on the command and control of a few to impose their brilliance on others. What's so pathetic is, elites that crave that much power are not quite smart enough to recognize that if it takes force to impose an idea, it may not be such a good idea.

Will another river of cash be pumped into Whatcom County to divide the community and poison our local election process?  That's a distinct possibility.  All successful cons repeat their tricks on the unattentative and trusting; a dime for every quarter that's the grifters code.

MAY 6, 2014 11:01 AM
Steyer Strikes Blow against Small-Town Unions 

The environmentalist tycoon pours money into a local election to kill a job-creating project. 

In 2009 — the immediately preceding time four  council seats contested last year in Whatcom County, Wash., were open — candidates spent less than $7,000 on their campaigns. But during the 2013 election cycle, spending skyrocketed, with outside groups forking over as much as $148,000 to campaign for a single council seat.

There’s one man primarily responsible for this precipitous spending hike: Tom Steyer, an environmental enthusiast, hedge-fund manager, California billionaire, and emerging Democratic kingmaker.

Steyer’s interest in these four obscure local races is simple. The Whatcom county council will ultimately decide the fate of a proposed coal-export facility on the West Coast. If it receives approval, it would be the largest such American facility on the West Coast, but Steyer and his green allies fervently oppose the use of coal, so they spent heavily to support council candidates likely to vote against the export facility. Their efforts were ultimately successful, with candidates perceived as green winning all four contested seats.

"I wouldn’t say [Steyer] was decisive, but he definitely moved the needle [in] the environmental candidates’ favor,” says Todd Donovan, a political-science professor at Western Washington University, which is located in Whatcom County. “He provided an unprecedented amount of money spent on behalf of the environmental candidates, and they all won — and they were fighting an uphill battle. . . . We’ve never seen anything like it.”

Steyer’s political action committee, NextGen Climate, gave $275,000 to the Washington Conservation Voters Action Fund, which in turn spent at least $210,000 on the Whatcom county-council elections. But it’s impossible to get an exact figure for how much Steyer money was spent in Whatcom County.

Randy Pepple, a Republican political strategist in Washington State, says Steyer’s lack of transparency was particularly alarming.

“Instead of Tom Steyer for NextGen PAC writing the checks, instead he wrote them to other organizations that were spending money, particularly the Conservation Voters,” he says. “He hid it. For all his challenges on Politico to be transparent, up here, he laundered money through political committees, so it was not entirely clear where he put all his money.”

Outside cash may have played an instrumental role in the Whatcom county-council elections, but that’s not the only development bothering some of its residents. In particular, union members in Whatcom County are concerned that, if the coal-export facility fails to garner council approval, there will be a huge economic cost.

The proposed Gateway Pacific Terminal would export up to 54 million metric tons each year, the majority of which would be coal extracted in Wyoming and Montana being shipped to buyers as far away as China. The export terminal would also pay more than $92 million in state and local taxes in the two-year construction period alone, and then contribute $11.2 million a year to the government’s coffers after the project’s completion.

Approval would result in nearly 4,500 construction jobs, as well as 1,250 permanent jobs in Whatcom County — no small matter in a region where unemployment in February 2014 was 7.4 percent. And many of the jobs the Gateway Pacific Terminal would provide are unionized, a fact that hasn’t escaped the notice of local labor leaders like Mike Elliott, a spokesman and lobbyist for the Washington State Legislative Board of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen.

“These are the types of jobs we want to create,” Elliott tells National Review Online. “We weren’t going to get on board with these projects unless they would use union construction people and union longshoremen to run the thing. But opponents brought in this billionaire environmentalist from California, and not just him — they’ve come up with a whole lot of money. They’ve got more resources than we will ever have, and it makes all the difference in the world. You shouldn’t be able to come in with a wheelbarrow full of money and influence the electoral process. I just think that’s wrong.”

In Whatcom County, Steyer’s big donations helped Democrat-affiliated groups outspend their Republican counterparts two-to-one. But he may well have created an interesting dilemma for Democrats during future elections. Steyer’s spending in Whatcom County pitted environmental groups against organized labor, creating a deep division among two of the Democrats’ key constituent groups.

Steyer’s spending may have a similarly divisive effect on the national stage. In February, he pledged to donate more than $100 million in support of environmentalist Democratic candidates. Just two months later, the Obama administration announced it would opportunely delay its decision on the approval of the Keystone XL pipeline, a project as reviled by environmental groups as it is beloved of Big Labor.

Ken Oplinger, a self-identified “business Democrat” who served as head of the Whatcom County Chamber of Commerce for a decade, tells NRO that while intra-party divisions may not be enough to win labor over to Republicans, they may well split the vote between Democratic candidates.

“In Whatcom County, because the coal terminal was such an all-encompassing issue, it really did play a role because it was the key issue for labor,” he says. “In places where economic development and jobs [are pitted against environmental concerns], you’ll see that happen, and it’s going to be on a case-by-case level. The blue-green connection is still there, and it’s still strong. But they’re going to disagree on some key issues, and when [they do], it may play a role in those races as it did in Whatcom County.”

— Jillian Kay Melchior writes for National Review as a Thomas L. Rhodes Fellow for the Franklin Center. She is also a senior fellow at the Independent Women’s Forum


- - - -
While Steyer's bio reads like Mr. Green, you can find out more about the guys actual corporate interests and investment strategy from this April 24, 2014 article at the Wall Street Journal:

Tom Steyer's Glass House

The anti-Keystone billionaire throws stones at the Kochs, but what about his motives?

The psychiatric world defines "projection" as the act of denying unpleasant qualities in yourself, while attributing them to others. Consider liberal billionaire Tom Steyer's riff this week about the libertarian billionaire Koch brothers.

Mr. Steyer took exception in a C-SPAN interview to comparisons between his big-dollar funding of Democrats with the Koch brothers' big-dollar funding of Republicans. The Kochs' priorities "line up perfectly with their pocketbooks—and that's not true for us," said Mr. Steyer, who is fighting against the Keystone XL pipeline. Moreover, he insisted, his politicking is "completely open," whereas the Kochs have "not been huge embracers of transparency."

Why is Mr. Steyer so touchy about motives and transparency? The media tend to give liberal spending a pass, since they assume its motives and aims are pure. Mr. Steyer's problem—and he knows it—is that his own purity remains hugely suspect, even among his allies.

It's old news that the billionaire reaped his fortune at hedge fund Farallon Capital, via investments in "dirty" oil and coal projects. Mr. Steyer, who retired from the firm in late 2012, has since publicly repented for his prior investment ways. But what many greens remember is that he didn't do so until he was caught.

Mr. Steyer had spent months fighting Keystone, attending anti-coal rallies and urging colleges to divest from "fossil fuels," before the press noted that his money was still parked at Farallon, still profiting from Kinder Morgan pipelines and coal projects. It was only then, last July, that Mr. Steyer issued a press release saying he'd directed his money be moved to a fund that didn't invest in "tar sands" or "coal" and pledged this process would be complete by the end of 2013.

And don't think that environmentalists failed to notice Mr. Steyer's specific divestment instructions. He did not say in that July press release that he was pulling his money from "fossil fuels"—only tar sands and coal. That may be because Mr. Steyer as recently as 2012 wrote an op-ed in this newspaper supporting more natural-gas extraction, and last year (as the Keystone debate raged) he helped fund a University of Texas study that supported fracking. Farallon over the years has held positions in natural-gas companies.

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