Friday, October 5, 2007

Political Global Warming

The Groupthink Global Initiative appears to have as it's agenda the implementation of costly and drastic life-style changes mandated by Political Solutions Worldwide. Political Solutions to the Global Warming Crisis which may not be a crisis. And even if it were a crisis, Global Warming may be something which we can do almost nothing to prevent. Global Warming is one of those issues that could prove that the cure is worse than the illness. So much worse that the patient (Earth) could die from the effects of the Political Cure.
One would expect some diversity of opinion at a gathering of heads of government, CEOs and nonprofit organizations from different sides of the political spectrum. That was not the case at the Clinton Global Initiative meeting last week, devoted mostly to climate change. From the CEO of Duke Energy Corp. to the president of the Natural Resources Defense Council to Al Gore, everyone agreed on the need for draconian limits on carbon emissions worldwide. The proposals varied from taxes on a carbon "cap and trade" system, but the assumptions on which they were all basing them were the same -- and they seem somewhat premature. No one was too concerned with the costs that a blanket limit on emissions worldwide could inflict on millions of desperate people trying to pull themselves out of poverty. [emphasis mine]
Carbon Dioxide (CO2) is widely claimed to be the cause of Global Warming. But there are 2 facts make it obvious that CO2 is not a significant contributor to Global Warming. First, most of the increase in CO2 occurred after 1950. Second, 5 of the 10 warmest years occurred before 1940. These two facts illustrate the need to question the Global Warming Alarmists insistence that Immediate, Drastic, Costly Life-Style Changes are needed Worldwide to avert their doomsday predictions. It is therefore hard to explain that the cause follows the effect rather than precedes the effect. Real World events require the order to be Cause first, Effect second.

Global Warming crisis predictions are inconsistent and vary widely due to computer generated predictions of future conditions. The widely different projections are the result of insufficient Historical data. Simply put, the programs do not have enough historical data to make accurate consistent predictions of future Climate Change. And Inconveniently for the Global Warming Alarmists, recent studies are tending to show that current Global Change is well within Normal variance.
Finally, everyone seemed to assume that government imposition works better than voluntary action. They kept citing the case of the European Union, where a cap and trade system establishes a general limit on carbon emissions and allows companies to exchange carbon "rights." However, in the last 10 years the rate of growth of carbon emissions has been much lower in the United States, where there is no federal limit, than in Europe. There was even a reduction of 1.3 percent in carbon emissions in the United States last year. [emphasis mine]
Seems to be another case of the Private Sector being able to do things better and usually cheaper than the Government. And here's more proof that Private is better than Government in this case.
Corn is a much less efficient source of ethanol than is sugar cane. Private companies are well ahead of the politicians with regard to the environment. They are investing in new technologies, making more efficient use of energy and beginning to develop financial instruments that will provide liquidity to nascent ecological markets. For instance, Jeff Bortniker, the CEO of Equator Environmental, is creating financial assets and carbon credits linked to reforestation in Brazil that can then be traded internationally. "The market is by far a better solution," he tells me, "and we are already showing that without bureaucratic interference we can create value and at the same time protect the environment." Brazilians will appreciate it -- they have lost nearly 150,000 square kilometers of Atlantic forest since 2000, not to mention the hundreds of thousands of Amazon rain forest lost in recent decades because no one felt the need to protect land that was nobody's property. [emphasis mine]
If you take nothing else from this post, remember this quote.
Governments need to look at the science more closely before taking actions that could have damaging consequences. We also must remember that, when it comes to protecting the environment, private enterprise can be more successful than governments.
It is very telling that Al Gore, The Leading Spokesperson for Global Warming Alarmists, will not debate the inconsistencies and falsehoods in his Inconvenient Truth. Chilly reception for debate offer asks the question, Why won't Al Gore or his representative debate the facts of Global Warming? The Heartland Institute will spend $1.2 Million by next March in an attempt to get Mr. Gore to debate the issues which are not settled. There are many recently completed scientific studies which present facts and draw valid conclusions that are in direct conflict with the claims made in Al Gore's Movie, "An Inconvenient Truth".
"We have tried, repeatedly, to contact Gore directly, with registered letters and calls to his office, and have never received a reply," says Joseph Bast, Heartland president.
It appears Mr. Gore may be avoiding the issue. One could easily assume that his reasoning for not debating the issue, is he knows he can't win.
A spokeswoman for Gore told me by e-mail that Heartland is an oil-company-funded group that denies that global warming is real and caused by human activities.

"The debate has shifted to how to solve the climate crisis, not if there is one,"
said Kalee Kreider. "It does not make sense for him to engage in a dialogue with them at this time." [emphasis mine]
The oil-company-funding is an often repeated attempt to discredit any and all conflicting results as biased. But Mr. Gore and the other Global Warming Alarmists fail to note that significant amounts of their funding comes from agenda biased groups too.
As for the Gore camp's statement about Exxon funding, Bast says those contributions are too little to control Heartland policy and amount to "far less than what Heartland spends speaking out on climate change."
But the real head-scratcher is the fact that the debate has shifted from if to how to solve the problem. It seems to me that if there is no Global Warming Crisis, there is no need to solve a problem which doesn't exist. Mr. Gore is still claiming that "It is settled" in the face of mounting evidence to the contrary.

According to the Heartland Institute there is no crisis requiring a Costly, Political action in the immediate future.
The issue is a bit more complicated than that. What Bast wants is for Gore to debate one of three authorities who dispute the former vice president's assertion that global warming is a crisis that requires an immediate, hugely expensive response potentially damaging to the U.S. and world economies.

One of the Heartland experts is Dennis Avery, an economist, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and co-author, with Fred Singer, professor emeritus of environmental science at the University of Virginia, of the book Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years. As you might guess from that title, Avery sees global warming as a natural phenomenon in which "there may be a human factor but if so it's small." He describes the warming as "moderate" and says there's been no warming since 1998. "Where's the crisis?"
Good question. Where's the Crisis, Mr. Gore? Please explain your insistence on claims in dispute, and overwhelming facts which conflict with your Inconvenient facts.
The Heartland case is not the first time Gore has ducked a forum. Earlier this year he canceled an interview with Denmark's largest newspaper when he learned it would include questions from Bjorn Lomborg, respected author of The Skeptical Environmentalist. "Gore's sermon is not one that will stand scrutiny," says Christopher C. Horner, another one of Heartland's debate candidates, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming and Environmentalism.
It may be that soon the warmest place on Earth will be the "Hot Seat" on which Mr. Gore rests during the mounting clamor for grilling explanations.

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