"This is a good article, identifying many of the key issues. The only thing I take exception to is the concluding sentence: "If the 'warmists' have their way, the result will be suppression of freedom and a criminal waste of resources." No, Jonathan, it's much more serious than that. The prospect of global totalitarianism is terrifying."
Peter
| Global Warming Industry Meets Reality |
| Written by Jonathan DuHamel, Tucson Citizen |
| Monday, November 30 2009 10:38 |
| It seems that there really is “Mann”-made global warming. It is made of fraud, data manipulation, collusion, squelching dissent, hiding data, deleting data, and punishing scientific journals that dared to publish papers challenging the carbon cabal. The global warming industry is very big business and there is a huge vested interest in maintaining the myth that human carbon dioxide emissions are dangerous. “He who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future.” George Orwell, 1984. The upcoming Copenhagen meeting sponsored by the United Nations had hoped for a global redistribution of wealth over the next 20 years of between $6 trillion and $10.5 trillion, according to the draft treaty, to “Compensate for damage to the less developed countries’ economy and also compensate for lost opportunities, resources, lives, land and dignity, as many will become environmental refugees.” Third world governments see dollar signs. In the U.S., the Treasury Department estimates that the president’s cap-and-trade approach would “generate federal receipts on the order of $100- to $200 billion annually.” The Congressional Budget Office reports that a 15 percent CO2 reduction would cost an average household $1,600 a year. The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is a bureaucrat’s paradise that exists solely to perpetrate the myth, while enjoying frequent meetings at exotic venues throughout the world. Many governments maintain bureaucracies just to “study” the myth. In the U.S., it’s the Global Change Research Program. NOAA, the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, the National Climate Change and Wildlife Center of the USGS, and the EPA are just a few other federal agencies feeding at the trough. Over the last 20 years, the US government spent $32 billion on climate research, yet has failed to find any evidence that carbon dioxide emissions significantly affect temperature or represent a danger. Government agencies, the private sector, and universities were the recipients of this money. These organizations have a vested interest in maintaining the myth. The feds also spent another $36 billion for development of climate-related technologies in the form of subsidies and tax breaks. Solar and wind-power generation of electricity can be a supplemental supply, but these methods could not compete with fossil fuels without a subsidy. These industries have a vested interest in maintaining the myth. The ethanol industry is founded solely on the myth that we must reduce our use of fossil fuels, even though the U.S. has abundant supplies. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (Bailout bill) contained $3.4 billion for research and experimentation in the area of carbon sequestration – burying carbon dioxide generated by fossil fuel plants. There are also, really wild schemes for geoengineering, schemes to block the sun with mirrors, or seed the atmosphere with sulfur to produce more clouds. On the world commodities market, trading carbon credits generated $126 billion in 2008, and big banks are collecting fees, and some project a market worth $2 trillion. Al Gore’s venture capital firm, Hara Software which makes software to track greenhouse gas emissions, stands to make billions of dollars from cap-and-trade regulation. If the myth is destroyed, this market will evaporate. Back in 2007, a coalition of major corporations and environmental groups formed the U.S. Climate Action Partnership (USCAP) to lobby for cap & trade. The companies planned to profit (at least in the short term) from either the cap-and-trade provisions or from selling high-priced, politically-favored (if not mandated) so-called “green” technology to the rest of us — whether we need it or not, and regardless of whether it produces any environmental or societal benefits. Corporate USCAP members include: Alcoa, BP America, Caterpillar Inc., Dow Chemical, Duke Energy, DuPont, FPL Group, Exelon, General Electric, Lehman Brothers, John Deer & Co, PG&E Corporation, and PNM Resources. Has science been co-opted by greed and ideology; has government been co-opted by scientific elitists? In his farewell address, Dwight D. Eisenhower gave this warning: “Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers. The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present — and is gravely to be regarded.” “Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.” “It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system — ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.” The Obama administration, which promised to “restore science to its rightful place,” is ignoring events and sailing its ideological titanic to Copenhagen. The vested interests are strong and many. Is the global warming industry “too big to fail?” It remains to be seen whether those interests, and political ideology will triumph over truth and common sense. We should suspend any further consideration of cap & trade schemes and carbon taxes until there is a thorough investigation and re-analysis of the science, costs, and benefits. We also need the government to re-examine energy policy. We need to examine our system of research grants to universities which seems to have been biased toward the politically correct, rather than seeking scientific truth. The global warming industry is predicated on manipulated computer modeling rather than observational data. The touted “consensus” has been shown to be the result of suppression of dissenting voices, and fueled by greed, power seeking, and the perversion of the scientific method. If the “warmists” have their way, the result will be suppression of freedom and a criminal waste of resources. |
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