Global warming?

[TheMercenary]

Interesting...

Who Else Will Challenge Gore's 'Truth'?
By PHELIM MCALEER
Posted 10/14/2009 06:15 PM ET


Last week at the Society of Environmental Journalists conference in Wisconsin, former Vice President Al Gore took questions from journalists about global warming for the first time in years. I attended to ask him about factual errors in his movie, "An Inconvenient Truth."

You wouldn't know it from the sparse media coverage, but the British High Court found so many errors in Gore's movie in 2007 that British schools no longer can show the film without the equivalent of a health warning.

I asked Gore if he intends to correct the record. He dodged the question, and the so-called reporters defended his right to be evasive by shutting off my mic.

The encounter was disappointing but not surprising. I served years of hard time as a liberal journalist in Europe and learned that covering the environmental beat meant toeing the line of extremism — no inconvenient questions allowed.

But it is now time for journalists, and the consumers and businesses that will pay the ultimate price, to start questioning the conventional wisdom about global warming and exposing its true cost. If alarmists like Al Gore get their way, millions of American families will watch as their dreams of a prosperous and pleasant future disappear.

The evidence of environmentalism run amok abounds in Europe. Spain believed the spin that environmental regulation can create "green jobs" and boost the economy. Now the country has 18% unemployment. Britain could suffer blackouts because of policies that require the country to replace coal with fuels like solar and wind power that aren't readily available or reliable.

Unfortunately for Americans, many of the lawmakers who represent them in Congress seem unwilling to learn from Europe's mistakes.

The Senate is now considering a bill that Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., co-authored to create a European-style "cap and trade" system for carbon dioxide emissions, and he just won the endorsement of a key swing senator. International pressure on the United States to adopt such legislation also will increase in December at climate talks in Copenhagen.

That's bad news for taxpayers. The Obama administration reluctantly admitted last month that cap-and-trade would cost the average American family $1,761 a year.

That is a rosy prediction. A Heritage Foundation analysis pegs the cost at an average of $2,979 a year and as much as $4,600 a year by 2035. Jobs will disappear, energy prices will skyrocket, and the American Dream will become an unattainable fantasy for many.

Wealthy environmental elites like Ed Begley Jr., who is featured in our documentary "Not Evil Just Wrong," think that is just fine. They love to tell everyone how "happy" people are in the Third World, where poverty, disease and premature deaths are common. But if they really loved it, they would move themselves and their families to Fiji and burn all of their passports.

Instead, environmentalists live comfortably, flying around the world telling other people they should forsake air travel and drive cars that cost as much as many people pay for a place to live. All the while, the environmentalists try to scare people with stories about dying polar bears and lemurs.

Their hysteria knows no bounds. The British government is now spending nearly $10 million to air ads that feature an animated puppy drowning, a rabbit crying and a carbon monster spewing soot from the sky.

The ad is so laughable that even the journal Nature mocked it. But Britain wouldn't be spending that kind of money unless it expected a return on the investment in the form of new converts to the false doctrine of global warming.

That's why it's so important for journalists who inform the public to ask tough questions, both about the science behind global warming and the financial impact on consumers and businesses.

Americans had better hope their country's journalists start grilling Gore and his colleagues. Otherwise, more people will be misled, and the country will be feeling Europe's green-induced economic pains for years.

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnal...aspx?id=509026

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

Interesting...

...That's bad news for taxpayers. The Obama administration reluctantly admitted last month that cap-and-trade would cost the average American family $1,761 a year.

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnal...aspx?id=509026

In fact, the Obama administration said no such thing....a person from the Competitive Enterprise Institute cherry-picked data from a Treasury report...

http://www.factcheck.org/2009/09/boe...cap-and-trade/

.. using worse case scenarios and, more importantly, ignoring all the tax credits, grant programs, etc. in the same cap and trade legislation.

SO what's new.....conservative and libertarian groups (AEI, CEI...) dont like the idea of government intervention, even in protecting the environment and encouraging and stimulating the development of alternative energy.

I'm not one who believes CO2 emissions cause global warming...I do believe that anthropogenic emissions of CO2 (automobiles, power plants, etc) may contribute to global warming and certainly do contribute to environmental degradation...and being the second largest contributor, we should reduce those emissions.

IMO, it is much like the screaming of doomsday scenarios by libertarians and industry groups back in the 70s when the series of comprehensive new environmental laws were enacted...clear air act, clear water act, safe drinking water act, hazardous waste disposal act, toxic substances control act.

"All this government intervention and regulation will cost the consumers $millions...it will make the US less competitive....blah blah blah"

In fact, the reverse happened....those environmental laws stimulated innovation with no pain to the consumers and made the US the leader in environmental management initiatives, with US companies exporting those innovations all over the world...and doing a pretty damned good job of cleaning up the environment at the same time.

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by Redux

SO what's new.....conservative and libertarian groups (AEI, CEI...) dont like the idea of government intervention, even in protecting the environment and encouraging and stimulating the development of alternative energy.

Bull shit.

I'm not one who believes CO2 emissions cause global warming...I do believe that anthropogenic emissions of CO2 (automobiles, power plants, etc) may contribute to global warming and certainly do contribute to environmental degradation...and being the second largest contributor, we should reduce those emissions.

Yea, China and India are all over that.

IMO, it is much like the screaming of doomsday scenarios by libertarians and industry groups back in the 70s when the series of comprehensive new environmental laws were enacted...clear air act, clear water act, safe drinking water act, hazardous waste disposal act, toxic substances control act.

"All this government intervention and regulation will cost the consumers $millions...it will make the US less competitive....blah blah blah"

In fact, the reverse happened....those environmental laws stimulated innovation with no pain to the consumers and made the US the leader in environmental management initiatives, with US companies exporting those innovations all over the world...and doing a pretty damned good job of cleaning up the environment at the same time.

We are not talking about cleaning up a toxic environment in that sense.