We also learned that China is making its large presence known in Ecuador where it is doing extensive work to develop oil fields which, according to global warming theorists, would increase the global warming threat. This effort underlined our assertion that unless China, and other developing economies, get their global warming acts together, anything the U.S. does, e.g. cap and trade, would be meaningless.
Let’s continue our discussion today, where I continue to be a believer in science but a global warming doubter:
1) On February 18, 2013, the Space and Science Research Center (SSCR), located in Orlando, Florida, issued is annual Global Climate Status Report for 2013. According to this organization’s website, the Mission of the SSRC is “to provide an independent un-biased resource for governments, media, corporations, and the people on important areas of scientific research, in particular the cause and effects of climate change, and to serve as an objective resource for the planning and analysis of the next climate change - predicted to be one of decades of record cold weather.”
What? A climate research group of scientists is predicting a coming a global COOLING period ahead, not global warming???? How can that be, Al Gore said that ALL climate scientists agreed that global warming was an oncoming issue? How dare the SSCR differ from Al!
I do not know anything about the SSRC. For all I know, they could be a front for the oil and coal industries and their research is pure propaganda. However, they apparently do deserve a hearing, a peer review of their findings to either verify or refute their findings and conclusions. That is what science is all about.
Because, if they are right, and a global cooling/ice age is about to hit us, that is a whole different set of problems and agendas vs. global warming. Remember, just two generations ago, in the mid-1970s, the mainstream media and climate scientists were predicting a new ice age, a prediction that never came about. In light of that missed forecast, who is to say whether cooling or warming is in our future, especially in light of this research and the suppressed EPA report that the Obama administration never let get published.
The SSRC website and scientific credentials can be found at:
http://www.spaceandscience.net/index.html
2) The International Herald Tribune reported on March 2, 2013, that citizen level concerns about global warming and major environmental issues are at all time lows and trending downward. These are the results from a huge international study involving thousands of people across almost two dozen nations:
“Scientists report that evidence of environmental damage is stronger than ever — but our data shows that economic crisis and a lack of political leadership mean that the public are starting to tune out,” said Doug Miller, the chairman of GlobeScan, the company that carried out the study.
The study shows that survey respondents clearly still had serious environmental concerns but fewer people were “very concerned” about various environmental issues than at any point in the last 20 years. The sharpest decrease in global concern occurred over the last two years. Thus, maybe the citizens of the world are also becoming skeptical about global warming claims that never come true.
3) A February 20, 2013 article in Forbes magazine:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2013/02/20/as-the-consensus-among-scientists-crumbles-global-warming-alarmists-attack-their-integrity/
reported on a recent survey of over 1,000 geoscientists and engineers regarding global warming. The survey was done by peer-reviewed Organization Studies.
The bottom line results found that only 36% of those surveyed agree with the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change claim that human activity is causing a serious global warming problem. A majority of scientists in the survey believe that nature is the primary cause of recent global warming and/or that future global warming will not be a very serious problem.
The article goes into detail defending the results and comparing the findings to assertions of global warming advocates who, rather debunking these findings with science, seem more content to attack the integrity of the survey and those who participated in it.
Again, I do not have the answers but at least in this group of scientists, far from 100%, sorry Al Gore, disagree with the theory of man made global warming.
4) One of the supposed ways to save the climate and mankind from the dangers of global warming is through massive, and massively complex, so-called cap and trade programs. As I understand cap and trade, these programs set up a process where companies pay extra when they create certain types of global warming gases using credits as payment.
Companies that are energy efficient and do things that allow them to not use their allotted cap and trade credits, can then sell those credits to companies that need them because of their climate impacting activities. I assume that the basis of this system is to have the cost causer, those companies that contribute to global warming, to be the cost payer for those activities.
The value of those credits, once they are issued, is to be determined by the free market so that the prices charged between credit buyers and credit sellers can vary over time. The trick of such a convoluted process, is to have the exact right amount of credits in the market. If there are too few credits, economic activity is stifled since companies cannot expand.
If there are too many credits available, the economic laws of supply and demand take over, driving down the cost of the credits. Low credit costs results in low costs to doing activities that theoretically contribute to global warming, defeating the whole purpose of the credits to begin with. I am sure there are more elegant, more correct ways of describing the process but you get the idea.
According to an article from the April 1, 2013 issue of Business Week, the cap and trade effort in Europe is about to collapse. Highlights of the article, “Europe’s Carbon Market Is Crashing,” include:
- Slower economic growth in Europe is stifling business growth, resulting in less expansions and need for the credits, reducing the value of the credits.
- The lower prices is not spurring industries to make the necessary investments in clean energy to offset global warming.
- Earlier this year in Europe, it was possible to offset 581 TONS of emissions, about what one average European citizen generates during an 80 year lifetime, for about $30.
- At such a cheap cost, it does not pay for an industry or company to do the “right” thing for global warming since the cost to do so is much higher than the cost of the credits to offset their behavior.
- When the program started, central planners expected the final price of credits to settle between 25 and 30 euros per ton. However, in January, the cost to offset the aforementioned 581 tons was just over 23 Euros, total.
- Thus, according to the director of ClimateCare in Oxford, England: “It’s (cap and trade) is not spurring large emitters to make investments in reducing emissions.”
- The European Union is scheduled to take up the issue by considering a number of remedies but many members are opposed to these remedies, making a solution doubtful.
In light of all this cap and trade failure, President Obama wants the U.S. to implement a cap and trade process. Europe is proving such a process cannot be managed to the desired results but Obama still wants it.
Three international economic competitors will not hamstring their industries and economies but Obama will hamstring ours.
China is doing nothing in this area, especially considering the following point, but Obama wants only the U.S. to do something.
And while there is now so much doubt about global warming, Obama is willing to ignore that side of the argument to screw the American economy with little to no effect on the environment, given what the rest of the world is doing. This is not leadership, this is economic suicide.
5) Speaking of China, consider an article from the March 25, 2013 issue of Business Week. According to the article, China has a bunch of large, energy hungry cities in the eastern part of the country and a western region where most of the natural resources, particularly coal, are located. The challenge has been how to best get the energy and value locked up these western natural resources to the benefit of the large eastern metro areas.
Their approach will be as follows to solve this energy problem:
- The government plans to build 14 massive energy bases in the western part of the country by 2015.
- These hubs will combine coal mining operations with energy power plants.
- Note: the article points out that China generates about 80% of its energy needs via burning coal, a no-no when it comes to global warming advocates.
- These hubs will create energy onsite that will then be sent over a series of transmission wires and facilities to the east for use in the metro areas.
- The Chinese view this as a better approach to energy management then shipping coal a long ways over land despite the fact that some electric energy will be lost along the transmission grids.
If Obama really wanted to make a dent in global warming, he should be in the Chinese leaders faces before they expend so much wealth into this plan. Because once they do, one has to assume they would not abandon their investment for an iffy global warming theory. For Obama to insist that U.S. industry get hamstrung with a cap and trade program while China continues to build out its coal infrastructure would be a disaster for our economy and our country.
6) One last set of stats on why a cap and trade program for us is a silly, unmanageable, and economic disaster along every dimension:
- According to the previously cited Business Week article, the world’s use of coal, outside of China, has stayed about the same since the mid-1980s, around four billion tons a year. In that same time frame, China’s use of coal has about quadrupled, from less than one billion tons a year to close to four billion tons a year, with a strong upward trend. This makes China the consumer of almost the same amount of coal as the rest of the world combined. They must be severely changed out of their coal mentality for any cap and trade program anywhere in the world to have any impact at all.
- According to an article in Salon.com that was summarized in the September 28, 2013 issue of The Week magazine, carbon dioxide global warming gases in the U.S. are at their lowest point in 20 years, down 14% from their peak in 2007 as a result of fracking and the expanded use of natural gas, which is less damaging to the environment than coal and oil. This reduction is resulting in 500 megatons worth of emissions not going into the air, which is twice the amount of positive impact than what the original Kyoto agreement had on every other country in the world.
- An article from the Washington Post that was summarized in the March 1, 2013 issue of The Week reported similar numbers when it claimed that U.S. carbon emissions had fallen 13% relative to 2005 levels with a large part of that due to the increase use of natural gas and wind power.
- A Reason magazine article that was summarized in the January 18, 2013 issue of The Week magazine reported that U.S. power plant emissions were down 12% from their peak in 2007 even though the economy is larger than it was six years ago, mainly due to the wider use of natural gas.
- And finally, a Business Week graph in the January 7, 2013 issue of Business Week claimed that the demand and use of coal is up in every region of the world except the United States, with coal energy production almost catching up to oil energy production, not a good thing if you believe in global warming.
So, that’s the update from a believer in science but a global warming doubter. What have we learned over the past two days:
- There is a lot of doubt, which seems to be growing, that global warming actually exists or is caused by mankind. In fact, we are now seeing some scientists predicting a global cooling threat.
- Forcing the U.S. to hamstring its industries and companies with taxes and cap and trade programs that are unlikely to work without getting the rest of the world on board to do the same is economic suicide.
- If Obama was truly a world leader, he would be in China’s face about their severe global warming activities.
- The U.S. has been doing pretty good getting its carbon emissions under control, without cumbersome and ineffective government intervention, over the past few years with substantial declines in its carbon emissions.
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