Global Humbug IV

The House of Representatives has just narrowly passed a so-called "Cap and Trade" bill that mandates carbon-reduction goals of 83% by 2050 (14% by 2020). The push is on to ram it through the Senate. The methodology of these reductions is primarily to price conventional energy sources out of the market by heavily taxing sources of carbon emissions. This is intended to increase the cost of home and industry energy consumption, including electricity, natural gas and car and truck fuel, to force a reduction. It is a 1200 page document with 300 pages of amendments, passed at 3:00 A.M. by a bare majority of Representatives very likely including no-one who had read the whole thing.

Many conflicting estimates of the cost of this thing are flying around, but what is clear is that it will cost the consumer dearly. Any tax on industry is passed on in total to the customer. The only benefactor will be the federal government which collects the taxes and dumps them into its coffers. The justification for this economic whack upside the head is to reduce global warming by decreasing carbon dioxide and other so-called greenhouse gas emissions, oblivious to the scientific facts that CO₂ in the atmosphere is of so low a concentration as to be an extremely minor contributor to the greenhouse effect, and there has been no global warming since the industrial revolution despite a many-fold increase in carbon emissions. The primary effect of atmospheric CO₂ is to encourage plant growth.

Seven hundred scientists have gone on record as expressing skepticism about whether global warming is occurring and questioning the role of carbon dioxide. A group of 54 noted physicists, as opposed to environmental biologists and anthropologists, issued a letter stating that the so-called science supporting global warming theory is badly flawed and very doubtful. Two major scientific journals, including Science magazine, refused to publish the letter.

According to a report by CBS News, an EPA staff researcher, Alan Carlin, was the primary author of a 98-page report stating that global warming theory is "... based on a scientific hypothesis that does not appear to explain most available data." His boss, EPA center director Al McGartland, quashed the report, stating "... the [Obama] administration has decided to move forward ... and your comments do not help the legal or policy case for the decision."  Carlin told CBS News that, "It was his [McGartland's] view that he either lost his job or he got me working on something else. That was obviously coming from higher levels." So much for scientific objectivity.

The facts are, despite what is being published, that not only is there no global warming, there is clear evidence that we are experiencing slight global cooling. The Polar ice cap last winter was as large as it has ever been and the polar bear population is increasing. A sophisticated network of 3000 high-tech ocean buoys distributed in the worlds oceans every 3^o (300 km) and designed to measure water temperature and salinity over 2000 meters depth, a system called ARGOS, has surprised and disconcerted NASA and other environmental researchers by reporting that, instead of the expected warming, a slight cooling of ocean waters is occurring. NASA is discounting this data as "insignificant".

We are being mislead into believing that "alternative energy" technology is advanced, practical and nearly cost-effective. This is false. The state of the art, despite years of government-funded research and development, is fraught with problems--including the beloved windmills--and nowhere near cost-effective despite heavy government subsidy. Two recent environmental horror stories underscore the level of practicality of the current available technology.

Raoul Surcouf and Richard Spink recently set off on a "carbon-neutral" voyage to Greenland in a 40-foot sailing yacht equipped with solar panels and a wind turbine. The trip was monitored by schoolchildren world-wide. Two weeks into the voyage, after capsizing several times in storms and losing their solar panels and wind turbine generator, they called "Mayday" and were rescued (you can't make this up) by a large oil tanker carrying nearly 700,000 barrels of crude oil.

Troy, MI, built a new Community Center designed as an example of green construction. It was completely solar-powered with no connection to outside energy sources and was intended for year-round use. The solar power system even had sufficient capacity to support an electric vehicle. Unfortunately, Mother Nature refused to cooperate and during the first winter, heating the building completely depleted the reserve power battery system. The result was frozen pipes causing the concrete floors to buckle and be destroyed. The building has never been used.

Global warming alarmism has reached the level of a religion. Blasphemy is punished and dissent suppressed. Our president is determined to ram an economy-wrecking environmental nightmare down our throats without a rational basis. Liberals who pride themselves on secular objectivity should be outraged.

When pigs fly.