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Dr. John Ray's
GREENIE WATCH
Carbon: The New Pork!"
Posted on 05/16/2007 2:53:02 AM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
On the "The News Hour with Jim Lehrer" recently, a global-warming expert was discussing how cap-and-trade agreements might work, and while she was perfectly pleasant, there was something in her cool, technocratic description that made me feel I might be glimpsing a terribly oppressive future.
The scheme she spoke of is often presented as a free-market means of curtailing fossil-fuel consumption, but listen carefully and you realize it would instead be a vast bureaucratic arrangement controlling significant operations of whole industries. In setting the terms for some businesses to sell a portion of their allotment of gas emissions to other businesses, it would amount to an unrelenting regulatory regimen.
It's only part of what we might face in a world whose leaders are increasingly in agreement that our planet is doomed if we don't reduce the release of greenhouse gases -- mainly carbon dioxide -- into the atmosphere. To thwart the coming apocalypse, many seem prepared to institute restrictions affecting virtually every aspect of our lives while seriously risking the productivity of modern, relatively undirected economies that have done so incredibly much in alleviating human misery.
Among those signing up for this mission are a majority of our Supreme Court justices, who recently ruled that greenhouse gases are pollutants under the law -- they aren't -- and that the Environmental Protection Agency must therefore regulate them or explain why not in terms the court finds acceptable. To legitimize one aspect of this ruling, the court had to say a failure by the agency to lower tailpipe emissions of these gases could result in damaging rises of sea levels. It's a laughable, absurd proposition with no more scientific backing than the existence of unicorns.
But because of that decision, President Bush had to do something, and so he recently announced that he was ordering four federal agencies to study ways to cut greenhouse-gas emissions from motor vehicles and to have a plan ready by the end of 2008, as his term concludes. In other words, as his Democratic opponents correctly concluded, all he has come up with is fancy footwork signifying nothing on his watch. What they incorrectly concluded is that this is bad. It's bad only if you applaud rules that achieve nothing but higher costs for consumers.
The Democrats themselves are becoming so eager to have other issues revolve around the issue of warming that some in the House are even planning to use a portion of intelligence funds for study of the phenomenon, rerouting them from such mundane purposes as spying on terrorists. If the party captures the White House in '08 while also extending its power in Congress, watch for cap-and-trade regulations and a host of other coercive interventions intended to mark America as a leader in the fight against global warming.
Even if you buy the idea of a preventable, human-induced catastrophe headed our way, there are better answers, such as a straightforward, simple carbon tax, or looking to voluntary actions and technological innovations while plowing billions into research, as Bush has done. We can help solve other problems with some such moves, such as making the country less dependent on outside energy sources, and they work. A report from the Congressional Budget Office has said a tax could be more effective than regulation, and the Bush administration, it's worth noting, has reduced the rate of greenhouse-gas emissions more than some of the European signatories of the Kyoto accords.
Meanwhile, there are those who argue that while Earth is indeed warming, there is no direct evidence that greenhouse gases are primarily responsible. Solar activity is the major factor, contend some scientists, who add that climatology cannot begin to take account of all the variables, making it impossible to predict what happens next. One theory is that we are at the tail end of a solar cycle and will soon be cooling off, a possibility that brings me to a final, irritating thought.
Suppose natural causes do in fact usher in cooler weather around the world, but that the alarmists were first able to put all their unnecessary impositions in place. As chillier days dawn, they will be like the fabled rooster that crows and watches the sun rise and supposes himself responsible.
The “global warming is caused by man” campaign is an attack on American Capitalism. America cannot be defeated militarily, this could work.
The liberals constantly claim they care so much. If they truly cared they would be defending Capitalistic economic system, a true gift from God. How many hundreds of millions of people around the world are being lifted from poverty because of others practicing capitalism? Oh yeah, greedy people are getting rich expoiting the poor. (sarcasm) Was that tag really necessary?
It should be obvious by now to all thinking people that Global Warming is a total scam. The real purpose is to create a massive, unelected, global bureaucracy that will regulate industry to death and redistribute wealth (to the Third World and themselves). It is the perfect issue being used to scare the sheeple into acquiesence. Children are being taught from birth on the Global Warming is the #1 threat to humanity. Only a beneign, “all wise” global government can save us from our selves. All scientific evidence to the contrary will be suppressed via thugery and the MSM. You have to hand it to them—its brilliant.
The day they come after me for my “carbon tax” is the day I install geothermal in my home.
Brilliant and WORKING!
That won't work either. By then they will be taxing more than carbon. Once the socialists are in complete control they will just take all your "excess money" and give it to some member of a protected group.
No propaganda coming FROM the democrats FOR the democrats to attack Bush? The democrats voted AGAINST Kyoto 100% UNDER CLINTON. The DEMOCRATS opposed Kyoto because they knew it would destroy the economy under their watch. As soon as it was no longer “their economy” they could attack Bush through Kyoto with impunity.
No (liberal) enviro international socialists pushing for global UN taxes on US?
No global warming. Period.
In fact, I was ruminating yesterday at the liklihood of being forced to choose between a totalitarian system run by environmentalists, and one run by Islamists. Which would you choose ?
I'd take the Islamist one any day, since at least the basic drives of human beings to have children, to have men be masculine and women feminine, to provide for one self and family - these are acknowledged as acceptable, and even good. The environmentalists, on the other hand, seem virulently anti-life.
One of the most effective charts I have seen recently depicting the actual DATA (I keep coming around to that) and comparing it to the “computer models” the IPCC and the alarmists so depend on to "Prove Man is Responsible for Global Warming/ Climate Change" was posted by “Climate Watcher”
http://climatewatcher.blogspot.com/
I have it below -— Briefly, one of the BEST “Models” was run for periods that we actually have decent DATA for, and the model’s expectations were compared to the actual DATA ... “Climate Watcher” did a great service with his graphical description, I think.
There is a passing similarity in some parts of the model’s predictions to the actual DATA, but anyone believing we ought to gamble on the order of 5% or more of the world’s economy based on this type of flimsy evidence “tilting at windmills” that won’t be built for many decades needs to have their head examined. SOMETHING is clearly not right with the way these models are now programmed. The fact that they only include about 15% of the Sun’s output that hits the earth as affecting temperatures, clearly to me, suggests that as highly likely be a fruitful avenue for further exploration.
“The upper left panel is from the NASA GISS model E output of temperatures from 1995 through 2006. The trends include known forcings to 2003 and follow the A1B scenario forcings after 2003.
“The upper right panel depicts observed temperatures since 1995 from the UAH MSU.
The lower right panel depicts observed temperature change from the RSS MSU record since 1995.
The lower left panel depicts temperature change in the radiosonde data (RATPAC) since 1979.”
Altitude (by pressure in millibars) is on the vertical scale.
Latitude (from equator - Arctic on the right) is on the horizontal scale.
“... I was ruminating yesterday at the liklihood of being forced to choose between a totalitarian system run by environmentalists, and one run by Islamists. Which would you choose ? ...
I’d take the Islamist”
Hmmm... very interesting thoughts.
I’d take the Islamic control: Pay the religion tax, and continue living as best possible.
The enviro’s want to kill all the people and love all the animals.
The Islamic cult at least recognizes profit and reality: they want to tax all the people (Jews excepted) and eat the all the animals (pork excepted). 8<)
In a land not far away, a once powerful and vain "soothsayer"- a predictor of the future, called out to the people in the town square and bade them listen to his tale of dire portent.
"A great wrong has been done me when I was deposed as your leader, and continues to be done to this very land." he said. "You must atone for these crimes, and bow before me as your lord and protector."
The crowd fell silent. "As proof of what I say, and as a taste of the punishment that can be visited upon this land, I shall cause the sun to dim and then grow dark before your eyes this day." The people murmured, then openly scoffed at this.
But just then, the sun did actually grow dim, and then turned quite dark. The land was bathed in an eerie pallor, and the stars appeared at midday. The people gasped, and then fell to their knees supplicant to the soothsayer's will.
They could not dismiss the soothsayer's power and the wisdom they perceived, and in an instant they were like sheep in his control. High above, the Moon slowly passed from in front of the Sun, and the light of the star shone again upon the land.
Though anyone with knowledge of the heavens could have told you that the darkness at Noon was none of the soothsayer's doing, it was far too late to change this belief amongst the rabble in the street. The land had a new lord, much to the people's sorrow and regret, as they eventually realized.
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