The Truth about Global Warming? (OT)

[Guest guest]

Perhaps this is the truth behind the Global Warming

scare?........................Lynn

The Global Warming

Bubble

 

By Steven Milloy

March 20, 2008

You didn’t have to be a rocket scientist in the 1990s to figure that

speculative investment in dot-coms with no revenues would be disastrous.

The same goes for lenders giving mortgages to borrowers with no job, no

income and no assets. So after surviving the tech bubble and while trying

to extricate the economy from the housing bubble, why are we bent on

heading into the global warming bubble?

 

Just this week, the Environmental Protection Agency issued its economic

analysis of the Lieberman-Warner global warming bill that is now being

considered by the Senate. The EPA projects that, if the bill is enacted,

the size of our economy as measured by its gross domestic product (GDP)

would shrink by as much as $2.9 trillion by the year 2050. That’s a 6.9

percent smaller economy than we might otherwise have if no action was

taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

 

For an idea of what that might mean, consider our current economic

crisis. During the fourth quarter of 2007, GDP actually increased

by 0.6 percent, yet trepidation still spread among businesses, consumers

and the financial markets. Though the EPA says that Lieberman-Warner

would send our economy in the opposite direction by more than a factor of

10, few in Congress seem concerned. For more perspective, consider that

during 1929 and 1930, the first two years of the Great Depression, GDP

declined by 8.6 percent and 6.4 percent, respectively.

 

And what would we get for such a massive self-inflicted wound? It ought

to be something that is climatically spectacular, right? You be the

judge.

The EPA says that by the year 2095 -- 45 years after GDP has been

slashed by 6.9 percent -- atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) levels would

be 25 parts per million (ppm) lower than if no greenhouse gas regulation

was implemented.

 

Keeping in mind that the current atmospheric CO2 level is 380 ppm and the

projected 2095 CO2 level is about 500 ppm, according to the EPA, what are

the potential global temperature implications for such a slight change in

atmospheric CO2 concentration? Not much, as average global temperature

would only be reduced by a maximum of about 0.10 to 0.20 degrees

Celsius, according to

 

existing research.

 

Sacrificing many trillions of dollars of GDP for a trivial,

45-year-delayed and merely hypothetical reduction in average global

temperature must be considered as exponentially more asinine than the

dot-bombs of the late-1990s and the NINJA subprime loans that we now look

upon scornfully.

 

So who in their right mind would push for this?

 

I met many of them up-close-and-personal last week at a major Wall

Street Journal conference at which I was an invited speaker.

 

My fellow speakers included many CEOs (from General Electric, Wal-Mart,

Duke Energy, and Dow Chemical, to name just a few), California’s Gov.

Arnold Schwarzenegger and the heads of several environmental activist

groups.

The audience -- a sold-out crowd of hundreds who had to apply to be

admitted and pay a $3,500 fee -- consisted of representatives of the

myriad businesses that seek to make a financial killing from climate

alarmism. There were representatives of the solar, wind, and biofuel

industries that profit from taxpayer mandates and subsidies,

representatives from financial services companies that want to trade

permits to emit CO2, and public relations and strategic consultants to

all of the above.

 

We libertarians would call such an event a rent-seekers ball -- the vast

majority of the audience was there to plot how they could lock-in profits

from government mandates on taxpayers and consumers.

 

It was an amazing collection of pseudo-entrepreneurs who were absolutely

impervious to the scientific and economic facts that ought to deflate the

global warming bubble.

In the interlude between presentations by the CEOs of Dow Chemical and

Duke Energy, for example, the audience was shown a slide -- similar to

this one -- of

the diverging relationship between atmospheric CO2 levels and average

global temperature since 1998. That slide should have caused jaws to drop

and audience members to ponder why anyone is considering regulating CO2

emissions in hopes of taming global climate.

 

Instead, it was as if the audience did a collective blink and missed the

slide entirely. When I tried to draw attention to the slide during my

presentation, it was as if I was speaking in a foreign dialect.

 

The only conclusion I could come to was that the audience is so steeped

in anticipation of climate profiteering that there is no fact that will

cause them to reconsider whether or not manmade global warming is a

reality.

 

The callousness of their blind greed was also on display at the

conference.

 

In an instantaneous poll, the Wall Street Journal asked the

audience to select the most pressing societal problem from a list of five

that included infectious disease (malaria, AIDs, etc.), terrorism, and

global warming.

 

Global warming was the most popular response, receiving 31 percent of the

vote, while infectious disease was far behind in last place with only 3

percent of the vote. It’s an amazing result given that billions are

sickened, and millions die every year from infectious disease. The

consequences of future global warming, on the other hand, are entirely

speculative.

 

Finally, I was astounded by the double-speak practiced by the global

warmers.

 

Virtually every speaker at the conference professed that they were either

in favor of free markets or that they supported a free-market solution to

global warming. But invariably in their next breath, they would plead for

government regulation of greenhouse gases and government subsidies for

alternative energy.

 

It’s hard to conceive of any good coming from a public policy in which

facts play no substantial role in its development and words have no

meaning in its public debate.