This was supposed to be a debate about whether global warming was man-made or not and whether man can control climate change. Mixing in energy policy muddies the waters. Newt not only conceded that man is responsible for global warming but that we must take urgent action to address it. He said he was ashamed of his own party and what was needed was a Green Conservative. Kerry and Newt were just discussing the means to control global warming and not the underlying assumption that global warming is man-made and that it can be controlled by limiting and eventually eliminating carbon based energy sources.
The fact is that the science is not settled about the causes of global warming and whether carbon dioxide is the result or cause of it. Moreover, the hubris involved in believing that man can attach some sort of thermostat to the earth's climate and maintain an ideal temperature is just plain nuts. We are being asked to make a huge investment of resources in something, which may not have any effect at all on climate change.
Newt aided Kerry and Gore in their stampede for us to take action immediately on global warming. They are asking us to hobble our economy while China, the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases, ignores any such regulation. As it grows more affluent, the demands for energy and consumer goods will rise. In order to compensate for China's increased pollution, the US and Western Europe must reduce its energy use and increase the costs of goods and services to its populations, not to mention making itself less competitive in the global economy.
"While in Beijing there are still 2.4 million people who ride their bicycles to work every day, nearly 1,000 new cars hit the streets daily. China's roads are expected to be clogged with 170 million vehicles by 2020 says the World Bank -- by which time the country would have surpassed the United States in total car ownership."
Seven million cars are sold in China each year. That means China this year left Japan behind to become the second-largest car market in the world after the U.S., where more than 16 million cars are sold annually.
Such phenomenal growth has had analysts rushing to calculate the environmental consequences if every Chinese family realised its dream of owning a car.
Emissions from cars in the U.S. alone now account for about five percent of worldwide carbon dioxide emissions, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. If China matched the U.S. in per capita ownership, the country's vehicles would make a huge contribution to global carbon dioxide output, dwarfing any cuts in the emissions that the rest of the world can make.
And then there is India....
the world is getting warmer. there’s good scientific evidence to suggest that the reason the world is getting warmer is that the sun is shining brighter.