California continues its leading role as the national laughingstock of regulatory absurdity. This week, the California Air Resources Board (CARB), forged another link in its unbroken chain of disastrous environmental policies. New CARB regulations reflect a decision process heavily influenced by three primary sources: Joseph Stalin, Al Gore and Pee-Wee Herman.

Let's look at the latest batch of lunacy from those swell 'crats in Sacramento. As an added bonus, we read from SFGATE, the reliable Left Coast mouthpiece that happily shills for the hard left Democratic mouth breathers.

".... the California Air Resources Board unanimously approved strict vehicle emissions regulations that will mandate production of more than a million zero-emission vehicles."

Unanimously?  And you only thought I was kidding about the reference to Stalin.

"... the Advanced Clean Car program, will cut in half current greenhouse gas emissions by 2025. It means automakers will have to cut exhaust by two-thirds and begin mass-producing cars that do not run on gasoline."

"Although there may be some bumps in the road for individual vehicles, the steady drumbeat that is driving us to get off of petroleum continues." [Said Mary Nichols, the resources board chairwoman]

The new standards require 15 percent of new cars and small trucks sold each year in California to run on batteries, hydrogen fuel cells or plug-in hybrid technology within the next 13 years.

The new requirements will get increasingly stricter. By 2018, more than 70,000 cars and light trucks sold in California will have to run without spewing fossil fuel exhaust. An estimated 1.4 million zero-emission vehicles will be buzzing around the state by 2025.

By 2025, consumers will save an average of $4,000 over the life of a car compared with today - even though new vehicles will cost more, according to the Air Resources Board.

"Some bumps in the road for individual vehicles," "the new requirements will get increasingly stricter" and "new vehicles will cost more?"  And you only thought I was kidding about the reference to Stalin.

Here is the money paragraph. Inhale the pungent aroma of liberal steer droppings lobotomizing the logic pathways of your frontal lobes.

Scientists say the reductions in greenhouse gases that will result from the new rules are necessary for the world to avoid the most catastrophic effects of human-caused climate change. Regulators say the rules will also drive innovation and, therefore, job growth, reduce U.S. dependence on oil from hostile countries, and save people money on the cost of gasoline and medical care.

What mythical scientists are we talking about? Dr. Gore or Dr. Pee-Wee Herman? What mythical regulators? Perhaps a famous CARB bureaucrat with a fake degree who saddled taxpayers with millions of dollars of regulations? And how about that reduction of U.S. dependence on oil from hostile countries? Do you think they are referring to Canada and Keystone?  And what in blue blazes is that last bit about medical costs, kinda creepy huh?

So what is driving all this idiocy? Last year it was called global warming, now neatly repackaged as global climate change.  Let's look at today's article from the Daily Mail.

Met Office releases new figures which show no warming in 15 years.

The supposed 'consensus' on man-made global warming is facing an inconvenient challenge after the release of new temperature data showing the planet has not warmed for the past 15 years.

The figures suggest that we could even be heading for a mini ice age to rival the 70-year temperature drop that saw frost fairs held on the Thames in the 17th Century.

Based on readings from more than 30,000 measuring stations, the data was issued last week without fanfare by the Met Office and the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit. It confirms that the rising trend in world temperatures ended in 1997.

Meanwhile, since the end of last year, world temperatures have fallen by more than half a degree, as the cold 'La Nina' effect has re-emerged in the South Pacific.

Somehow the MSM overlooked this story; it must have been a busy news day. I'm just speculating here, but we won't see or hear about this on the major news networks any time soon.

Was global warming used as a wedge issue for the hard left to enact repressive and onerous governmental regulations to debase our freedoms and property rights?

Do you think that all this hooey from Al Gore and the global warming crowd what just a well orchestrated con game to scare taxpayers into funding billions of dollars of new bureaucracies? Was global warming just another consumer product, advertised and sold like mouthwash by the MSM to an indifferent and scientifically uneducated population?

Damn straight, that is exactly what happened.