- What the Obama administration has rammed through Congress
in the name of saving the environment is not only a hoax of draconian proportions
(that Carbon Dioxide is a harmful pollutant, responsible for Global Warming)
but also a means to mandating government control over all forms of energy
production. By implementing an arbitrary and restrictive cap on the production
of Carbon Dioxide (17 percent by 2020, compared to 2005 levels), and then
forcing high CO2 producers to buy carbon credits from zero or low CO2 producers
this bill will alter and distort the current cost structure of the markets
and not actually change the amount of CO2 put into the atmosphere at all.
In essence this is a massive wealth transfer scheme from efficient energy
producers to inefficient producers, and energy users everywhere will pay
for this multi-billion dollar boondoggle.
-
- MSNBC interviewed Pat Buchanan who was quick to point
out the fraudulent basis of this package in Congress:
-
- MSNBC's Witt: "Why doesn't anyone want to call it
a climate bill?
-
- Buchanan: "Well, because the science is suggesting
that maybe all of this [global warming] isn't really happening or it's
not really dangerous or it's not really man made. Barack Obama, the President
is right when he said we shouldn't be afraid of the future. [But] That
is exactly how this bill got passed--through fear. [Obama is saying:] 'We're
all going to change. The climate's going to change. The oceans are going
to rise. Our cities are going to be under water.'
-
- "But more and more scientists are coming forward
to say this is a hoax and a scam which is designed to transfer wealth and
power from the private sector to the government sector and from the government
of the United States to a world government. Which is what we're going to
get in Copenhagen when we get this Kyoto two agreement."
-
- One of the growing number of defectors from the Global
Warming camp of propagandists is Dr. David Evans, of the Australian Greenhouse
Office, (now Office of Climate Change), a top consultant who no longer
believes Carbon Dioxide has any major impact on global warming. Here are
excerpts from his recent article in The Australian.
-
- "I devoted six years to carbon accounting, building
models for the Australian Greenhouse Office. I've been following the global
warming debate closely for years. When I started that job in 1999 the evidence
that carbon emissions caused global warming seemed pretty good: CO2 is
a greenhouse gas, the old ice core data, no other suspects.
-
- "The evidence was not conclusive, but why wait until
we were certain when it appeared we needed to act quickly? But since 1999
new evidence has seriously weakened the case that carbon emissions are
the main cause of global warming, and by 2007 the evidence was pretty conclusive
that carbon played only a minor role and was not the main cause of the
recent global warming. There has not been a public debate about the causes
of global warming and most of the public and our decision makers are not
aware of the most basic salient facts:
-
- "1. The greenhouse signature is missing. We have
been looking and measuring for years, and cannot find it.
-
- "Each possible cause of global warming has a different
pattern of where in the planet the warming occurs first and the most. The
signature of an increased greenhouse effect is a hot spot about 10km up
in the atmosphere over the tropics. We have been measuring the atmosphere
for decades using radiosondes: weather balloons with thermometers that
radio back the temperature as the balloon ascends through the atmosphere.
They show no hot spot. Whatsoever.
-
- "If there is no hot spot then an increased greenhouse
effect is not the cause of global warming. So we know for sure that carbon
emissions are not a significant cause of the global warming. If we had
found the greenhouse signature then I would be an alarmist again.
-
- "When the signature was found to be missing in 2007
(after the latest IPCC report), alarmists objected that maybe the readings
of the radiosonde thermometers might not be accurate and maybe the hot
spot was there but had gone undetected. Yet hundreds of radiosondes have
given the same answer, so statistically it is not possible that they missed
the hot spot.
-
- "Recently the alarmists have suggested we ignore
the radiosonde thermometers, but instead take the radiosonde wind measurements,
apply a theory about wind shear, and run the results through their computers
to estimate the temperatures. They then say that the results show that
we cannot rule out the presence of a hot spot. If you believe that you'd
believe anything.
-
- "2. There is no evidence to support the idea that
carbon emissions cause significant global warming. None. There is plenty
of evidence that global warming has occurred, and theory suggests that
carbon emissions should raise temperatures (though by how much is hotly
disputed) but there are no observations by anyone that implicate carbon
emissions as a significant cause of the recent global warming.
-
- "3. The satellites that measure the world's temperature
all say that the warming trend ended in 2001, and that the temperature
has dropped about 0.6C in the past year (to the temperature of 1980). Land-based
temperature readings are corrupted by the "urban heat island"
effect: urban areas encroaching on thermometer stations warm the micro-climate
around the thermometer, due to vegetation changes, concrete, cars, houses.
Satellite data is the only temperature data we can trust, but it only goes
back to 1979. NASA reports only land-based data, and reports a modest warming
trend and recent cooling. The other three global temperature records use
a mix of satellite and land measurements, or satellite only, and they all
show no warming since 2001 and a recent cooling.
-
- "4. The new ice cores show that in the past six
global warmings over the past half a million years, the temperature rises
occurred on average 800 years before the accompanying rise in atmospheric
carbon. Which says something important about which was cause and which
was effect.
-
- "None of these points are controversial. The alarmist
scientists agree with them, though they would dispute their relevance.
The last point was known and past dispute by 2003, yet Al Gore made his
movie in 2005 and presented the ice cores as the sole reason for believing
that carbon emissions cause global warming. In any other political context
our cynical and experienced press corps would surely have called this dishonest
and widely questioned the politician's assertion.
-
- "Until now the global warming debate has merely
been an academic matter of little interest. Now that it matters, we should
debate the causes of global warming. So far that debate has just consisted
of a simple sleight of hand: show evidence of global warming, and while
the audience is stunned at the implications, simply assert that it is due
to carbon emissions.
-
- "In the minds of the audience, the evidence that
global warming has occurred becomes conflated with the alleged cause, and
the audience hasn't noticed that the cause was merely asserted, not proved.
If there really was any evidence that carbon emissions caused global warming,
don't you think we would have heard all about it ad nauseam by now?
-
- "The world has spent $50 billion on global warming
since 1990, and we have not found any actual evidence that carbon emissions
cause global warming. Evidence consists of observations made by someone
at some time that supports the idea that carbon emissions cause global
warming. Computer models and theoretical calculations are not evidence,
they are just theory.
-
- "What is going to happen over the next decade as
global temperatures continue not to rise? The Labor Government [of Australia]
is about to deliberately wreck the economy in order to reduce carbon emissions.
If the reasons later turn out to be bogus, the electorate is not going
to re-elect a Labor government for a long time. When it comes to light
that the carbon scare was known to be bogus in 2008, the ALP [Australian
Labor Party] is going to be regarded as criminally negligent or ideologically
stupid [not if the media continues to suppress the truth] for not having
seen through it. And if the Liberals support the general thrust of their
actions, they will be seen likewise.
-
- "The onus should be on those who want to change
things to provide evidence for why the changes are necessary. The Australian
public is eventually going to have to be told the evidence anyway [not
so--even as the world cools, they keep blaming any changes in any direction
on Global Warming], so it might as well be told before wrecking the economy."
-
- Dr. Evans doesn't understand that there are other hidden
agendas at work here that have nothing to do with solving any real problems.
This is not about saving the planet but all about creating a false crisis
that allows for government intervention and control of energy. The same
forces that have foisted this massive hoax upon the public will use their
ample resources and control of the media to ensure that the truth never
gets out. The PTB have very imaginative ways of explaining away almost
anything to a dumbed-down populace with marginal abilities to analyze.
-
- Even the claim that the Polar Bear population is declining
due to global warming is bogus. As the UK Telegraph reports, "Over
the coming days a curiously revealing event will be taking place in Copenhagen.
Top of the agenda at a meeting of the Polar Bear Specialist Group (set
up under the International Union for the Conservation of Nature/Species
Survival Commission) will be the need to produce a suitably scary report
on how polar bears are being threatened with extinction by man-made global
warming.
-
- "This is one of a steady drizzle of events planned
to stoke up alarm in the run-up to the UN's major conference on climate
change in Copenhagen next December. But one of the world's leading experts
on polar bears has been told to stay away from this week's meeting, specifically
because his views on global warming do not accord with those of the rest
of the group.
-
- "Dr Mitchell Taylor has been researching the status
and management of polar bears in Canada and around the Arctic Circle for
30 years, as both an academic and a government employee. More than once
since 2006 he has made headlines by insisting that polar bear numbers,
far from decreasing, are much higher than they were 30 years ago. Of the
19 different bear populations, almost all are increasing or at optimum
levels, only two have for local reasons modestly declined.
-
- 'Dr Taylor agrees that the Arctic has been warming over
the last 30 years. But he ascribes this not to rising levels of CO2 - as
is dictated by the computer models of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change and believed by his PBSG colleagues - but to currents
bringing warm water into the Arctic from the Pacific and the effect of
winds blowing in from the Bering Sea."
-
- As for the new legislation itself Peter Schiff weighs
in: "Today the House voted on 'cap and trade' legislation. Disguised
as an environmental bill, this proposal would merely be another gigantic
tax. The lion's share of the new revenue is already committed to politically
connected special interests that will reap windfalls at everyone else's
expense. To make matters worse, the bill before Congress amounts to a blank
slate, with the EPA empowered to draft the details in any manner they see
fit. If Congress is going to shoot the economy in the knee, they should
at least be required to pull the trigger themselves.
-
- "'Cap and trade' will do nothing to reduce pollution
[even assuming CO2 is a pollutant, which it is not], yet it will drive
up production costs throughout the economy - rendering us even less globally
competitive that we are today. In addition to the huge cost of paying the
tax, its enforcement involves the creation of an entire new bureaucracy,
the costs of which will be borne by American consumers in the form of higher
[utility] prices.
-
- Peter Orvetting calls the "American Clean Energy
and Security" Act a "rip-off," and reveals the typical political
machinations that go on in Congress to get bad bills passed. "On Friday
evening, the House of Representatives passed the American Clean Energy
and Security Act (ACES), a well-intentioned but misbegotten Frankenstein
monster of a bill intended to combat climate change. Republicans Mary Bono
Mack, Mike Castle, Mark Kirk, Frank LoBiondo, John McHugh, Dave Reichert,
and Chris Smith joined 211 Democrats to put the bill over the top 219-212.
Showing the profiles in courage typical to elected politicians, about three
dozen Democrats hung back during the roll call until passage was certain,
waiting until they could safely vote no without riling their party's leaders
[a typical tactic of politicians who want to later be seen as having opposed
something they go along with but know is eventually going to turn out bad].
-
- "As its sponsors struggled to make it palatable
to representatives from energy-producing states, the bill swelled from
942 pages to just over 1,200, leaving undecided members little time to
digest the new material. This brings to mind Rep. John Conyers's admission
to Michael Moore that members of Congress 'don't really read most of the
bills' they vote for, because it would 'slow down the legislative process.'
-
- "Two weeks after his election as president, Barack
Obama said, 'Few challenges facing America and the world are more urgent
than combating climate change. The science is beyond dispute and the facts
are clear.' Shortly thereafter, more than 100 scientists signed a newspaper
advertisement responding, "With all due respect Mr. President, that
is not true.' The scientists [actually, numbering over 30,000] from places
as varied and esteemed as Los Alamos National Laboratory, the American
Physical Society, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, Princeton University, and the University of Pennsylvania,
said the case for alarm regarding climate change is grossly overstated.'
-
- "But even many who are not skeptical about global
warming found things to dislike in ACES. Rep. Dennis Kucinich, who voted
against it, said, 'It won't address the problem. In fact, it might make
the problem worse.' Kucinich faulted the bill's 'Enron-style accounting
methods' and allocation of $60 billion for Carbon Capture and Sequestration,
'a single technology which may or may not work.' Kucinich faulted the corporate
welfare embedded in the bill, saying that the 'trillion dollar carbon derivatives
market will help Wall Street investors,' with any benefits 'passed through
coal companies and other large corporations, on whom we will rely to pass
on the savings [an important point, and demonstrates how the big boys always
find a way to profit from government perverse incentives].'
-
- "'I take climate change seriously,' libertarian
economist Megan McArdle wrote last week. But she said the projections for
ACES's 'effect on global warming are entirely negligible,' and any hope
that U.S. passage of the bill will 'persuade China and India to get on
board' is 'entirely wishful thinking on the part of American environmentalists.
China is not going to let its citizens languish in subsistence farming
because 30 years from now, some computer models say there will be some
not-well-specified bad effects from high temperatures. Nor is India.'
-
- "While the Congressional Budget Office says ACES
will drive up the average family's energy bill by about $175 per year by
2020, that does not take into account the larger economic cost. A Center
for Data Analysis study concludes ACES will hurt the gross domestic product
by $9.4 trillion by 2035 and cost the average family $1,241 per year. That's
because, as the Wall Street Journal put it last week, 'the whole point
of cap and trade is to hike the price of electricity and gas so that Americans
will use less. These higher prices will show up not just in electricity
bills or at the gas station but in every manufactured good, from food to
cars.' A British analysis finds the average family there is paying nearly
$1,300 a year for carbon-cutting programs that were introduced just a few
years ago.
-
- "As Obama himself said during his run for the Democratic
presidential nomination, 'Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity
rates would necessarily skyrocket. Businesses would have to retrofit their
operations. That will cost money. They will pass that cost onto consumers.'
Meanwhile, reductions in consumer spending will necessarily mean a decline
in production which could eliminate more than 1.1 million jobs. This is
an awful lot to pay for legislation that will not reduce global warming
and will not encourage other major economic powers to become more environmentally
conscious. Maybe next time, Congress should read the bill before voting
on it."
-
- Tim Ball writing for the Canadian Free Press covers why
alternative energies are a long way from replacing cheap and effective
nuclear and fossil fuel technology.
-
- "On June 23 Obama said, 'This energy bill will create
a set of incentives that will spur the development of new sources of energy,
including wind, solar, and geothermal power.' These currently produce only
3.9 percent of US energy. Wind and solar have severe limitations because
they require 100 percent back up from conventional sources. They cannot
replace a sufficient portion of current energy needs to supply even a dramatically
reduced demand [and the cost per unit of generating power is so much higher
than fuel or nuclear generating plants, that it is extremely inefficient
to look to these technologies as a total replacement].
-
- "Obama's said, 'At a time of great fiscal challenges,
this legislation is paid for by the polluters who currently emit the dangerous
carbon emissions that contaminate the water we drink and pollute the air
we breathe." This is false. He incorrectly substitutes carbon for
CO2 which is not a pollutant for air or water; it occurs naturally in both.
It's true that industries producing CO2 will initially pay through Cap
and Trade but they will pass the costs to the consumer. A critical question
is who pays when all the 'polluters' are out of business?
-
- "Coal currently produces 46.8 percent of US energy.
Obama identified it as his main target during the campaign. 'What I've
said is that we would put a cap-and-trade system in place that is more--that
is as aggressive if not more aggressive than anybody else's out there,
so if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can, it's just
that it will bankrupt them because they're going to be charged a huge sum
for all that greenhouse gas that's being emitted.' If they go out of business
as Obama expects, the economy will collapse as industries dependent on
the energy disappear. Ironically alternative energies will also suffer
because the 100 percent backup they require will not be available.
-
- "A report from Britain about attempts to replace
traditional energy with renewables notes, 'Britain is already struggling
to meet its ambitious target of supplying 10% of electricity needs from
renewables by 2010 and 15% by 2015. Today's figure is about 2%.' Once you
realize the renewable strategy is not working how quickly can you recover?
-
- "The big question is whether the UK can act fast
enough to tackle the looming crisis. Even if the government's nuclear plans
remain intact, it could be at least 10 years before the first new nuclear
station is ready. A typical coal or gas-fired project could take between
three and five years to construct. Recovery potential is worse in the US
because regulations extend construction time for nuclear plants and environmentalists
will do everything to block coal plants. Meanwhile economies of these countries
suffer even though they didn't do anything as drastic as Obama proposes.
Recovery can't possibly occur within Obama's first term, which may make
it his last.
-
- "Will the Obama policy work any better? NO, because
it is based on the same lie other countries used that CO2 is a problem
and made worse by using deception of inaccurate scientific terminology.
He then guarantees failure with policies that have already failed. So D.
H. Lawrence was wrong in Obama's case. You can't trust the teller or the
tale. There is no question Obama is clever but as Goethe said, 'A clever
man commits no minor blunders.' His climate and energy policies are blunders
of devastating proportions" Well said!
-
- I'll let Congressman Ron Paul have the final say: "The
Cap and Trade Bill HR 2454 was voted on last Friday. Proponents claim this
bill will help the environment, but what it really does is put another
nail in the economy's coffin. The idea is to establish a national level
of carbon dioxide emissions, and sell pollution permits to industry as
the Catholic Church used to sell indulgences to sinners. HR 2454 also gives
federal bureaucrats new power to regulate a wide variety of household appliances,
such as light bulbs and refrigerators, and further distorts the market
by providing more of your tax money to auto companies. The administration
has pointed to Spain as a shining example of this type of progressive energy
policy. Spain has been massively diverting capital from the private sector
into politically favored environmental projects for the better part of
a decade, and many in Washington apparently like what they see. However,
under no circumstances should anyone serious about economic recovery emulate
an economy that is now approaching 20 percent unemployment, where every
green job created, eliminated 2.2 real jobs and cost around $800,000 each!
The real inconvenient truth is that the cost of government regulations,
taxes, fees, red tape and bureaucracy is a considerable expense that has
to be considered when companies decide where to do business and how many
people they can afford to hire. Increasing governmental burden directly
causes capital flight and job losses, as Spain has learned. In this global
economy its easy enough for businesses to relocate to countries that are
more politically friendly to economic growth. If our government continues
to kick the economy while its down, it will be a long time before it gets
back up."
-
- This entire Global Warming series of solutions will exacerbate
and make worse the prospect for economic recovery. But that, of course,
will merely allow for yet further government intervention. As Harry Browne,
the former Libertarian Party candidate for president, used to say: "the
government is great at breaking your leg, handing you a crutch, and saying,
'You see, without me you couldn't walk.'
-
- End Excerpt
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- World Affairs Brief - Commentary and Insights
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