Opinion Forum

Global Warming Kerfuffle

June 30th, 2009

This from a Fox News report:

A top Republican senator has ordered an investigation into the Environmental Protection Agency’s alleged suppression of a report that questioned the science behind global warming.

The 98-page report, co-authored by EPA analyst Alan Carlin, pushed back on the prospect of regulating gases like carbon dioxide as a way to reduce global warming. Carlin’s report argued that the information the EPA was using was out of date, and that even as atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have increased, global temperatures have declined. …

An EPA official told FOXNews.com on Monday that Carlin, who is an economist — not a scientist — included “no original research” in his report. The official said that Carlin “has not been muzzled in the agency at all,” but stressed that his report was entirely “unsolicited.”

Well, hell’s bells! Lots of us who aren’t scientists, or even economists, can read and think for ourselves. Come to think of it, even most of the global warming gurus aren’t scientists, either. You don’t have to look far to find all kinds of scientific and policy-oriented opinion that departs from global warming orthodoxy.

The House passed the massive energy bill, justified in large measure by faith in the politically correct version of global warming, without reading it or thinking about it very much. Maybe the Senate will take a more responsible approach.

Articles written by Tom Carter
Tags: climate, energy, global warming
Categories: News, Politics | Comments (5) | Home

5 Responses to “Global Warming Kerfuffle”

Harvey | July 1st, 2009 at 9:46 am

Tom,

I agree with you completely on the bad science behind the global warming conspiracy.

LOL! Casting our hopes on the Senate to act responsibly is a sure sign of sheer desperation.

Tom | July 1st, 2009 at 10:04 am

Harvey, I always try to be careful not to say that global warming is a hoax or that it isn’t real. I don’t know that. I’ve read a whole lot about it, from both sides. If I were forced to take a position, I’d say long-term warming is happening, yes, and if it went beyond some point the effects could be very bad. However, it isn’t clear to me that CO2 is a primary cause of warming, more than natural causes such as the Sun. It also isn’t clear to me that what we’re seeing now is more than cyclical warming and cooling of the Earth, which we know happens.

What concerns me is the way it has become a matter of faith for the left and right — you either “believe in” global warming or you don’t. That seems, at least to me, to be a pretty shaky foundation for making major policy and spending huge amounts of money now and in the future, such as in the energy bill just passed by the House.

Brian Bagent | July 2nd, 2009 at 1:11 pm

Will there be any domestic petroleum production if cap and tax and tax and tax becomes law?

If you want to discern if this thing is a hoax or not, look at most of the people getting rich off of this thing. It’s the “something for nothing” crowd like Gore, people that have NEVER produced anything useful in their lives.

There’s even a provision in this thing that will tax cattle ranchers at $80/head per year for each bovine over 50 in the herd. The obvious solution (for the big ranchers) is to set up a bunch of small corporations, each owning no more than 50 head. For small time ranchers, it’ll mean paring down the herd to no more than 50.

And no, Virginia, 50 or 100 head of cattle is not a large herd.

Tom | July 3rd, 2009 at 3:42 pm

Brian, I think your concerns are valid. Just like the unintended consequences of federal action on ethanol are becoming more and more clear, the same thing is going to happen with the energy bill and cap-and-trade. For businesses, like petroleum production, to function in an environment that’s not productive and profitable, they have to be either forced or incentivized. Either way, the government has to keep applying bandaids to injuries they didn’t know they were going to cause.

Brian Bagent | July 4th, 2009 at 3:25 pm

Tom, you are far less cynical than I. I think that the jerks that pushed for ethanol knew very well what was going to happen and didn’t care one whit about it.

Government involvement in business, without exception, makes the cost of living rise. As I have frequently said, government is deliberative. Deliberation is not the hallmark of effective business. Business decisions are made, and should be made, by people that have the most to lose if they make bad decisions. Ultimately, business decisions are made by one person, which is not, and should not be, the hallmark of good government.