alt.energy.renewable

March 20, 2008



http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,339831,00.html



You didn't have to be a rocket scientist in the 1990s to figure out that
speculative investment in dot-coms with no revenues would be disastrous.



The same goes for lenders giving mortgages to borrowers with no jobs, no
incomes 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 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 would
shrink by as much as $2.9 trillion by the year 2050.



That's a 6.9 percent smaller economy than we otherwise might have if no
action were 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 levels would be 25 parts per
million lower than if no greenhouse gas regulation were 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 were
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.



Steven Milloy publishes JunkScience.com and DemandDebate.com. He is a
junk science expert, advocate of free enterprise and an adjunct scholar
at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.


--



Warmest Regards

Bonzo

"Attributing global climate change to human CO2 production is akin to
trying to diagnose an automotive problem by ignoring the engine
(analogous to the Sun in the climate system) and the transmission (water
vapour) and instead focusing entirely, not on one nut on a rear wheel,
which would be analogous to total CO2, but on one thread on that nut,
which represents the human contribution." Dr. Timothy Ball, Chairman of
the Natural Resources Stewardship Project (NRSP.com), Former Professor
Of Climatology, University of Winnipeg