Climate warming has become
so universally accepted that it is worth one's reputation to raise even a
tepid question regarding warming wisdom or its factual accuracy. Ordinary
civic minded citizens who dare to exhibit the temerity to raise serious
questions about the merits of man-made CO2 are routinely dismissed as
uninformed troglodytes. Scientists who question prevailing climate wisdom are
shunned by professional colleagues and shut out from lucrative government
research grants. Often their careers are sidelined and professional
reputations damaged, sometimes beyond repair, simply because they insist that
the methodologies of science be respected.
Indeed, Al Gore, Nobel
Laureate and 'eminence grise' of the global warming and climate change
movement, continually repeats...the world as we know it will surely come to
an end...caused by the rapid temperature increases and massive
flooding...triggered by rising ocean levels and...only dramatic measures
designed to stop the production of man-made anthropogenic CO2 caused by
burning fossil fuels...will alter the trajectory of this looming disaster...
otherwise a global calamity of immense proportions is inevitable.
Unfortunately, those
environmentalists motivated to support initiatives which contribute to the
greater good of society but reluctant to subscribe unthinkingly to the
political agenda of the warming movement, are routinely scoffed at and
humiliated. Publicity demonizing carbon dioxide, especially the man made
version, routinely convicts anyone who drives a gasoline-powered car, cooks
his hamburgers on the barbeque, warms their living room with the cosy flames
of the fireplace or cools their home with air conditioning using electricity
generated by coal or natural gas. We are pronounced guilty of contributing to
a looming genocide. The guilt we are made to feel, stemming from our apparent
insensitivity and warped morality, is almost palpable.
Climbing Aboard the Global
Warming Train
1. Government Leaders
Do our institutional leaders,
untrained in climatology, know more than the rest of us or is it possible
they find being advocates of the warming cause useful for personal career
reasons? Maybe fragile egos crave approbation and validation by the majority
who are warming believers? There are more than a few experts in
organizational and leadership theory who have noticed that leaders frequently
exhibit well honed skills at discerning which direction the parade is
heading. Having made that determination, these leaders hastily head to the
front of the march to squelch man-made carbon dioxide.
2. Electric Power Utility
Companies
Also puzzling is finding
sizeable support for the warming cause from business sectors one
instinctively expects to be opposed to caps on CO2 emissions. Major electric
power utility companies, which are among the largest consumers of fossil
fuels leading to the emission of significant quantities of CO2 and other air
and water born pollutants, have also joined the climate warming brigade. How
can that be? Isn't that contrary to their financial self interest? Is it
possible that power utilities are actually public spirited corporate citizens
driven to do what is best for the environment?
What about their significant
support for "Cap and Trade" which is the centerpiece of CO2
mitigation measures? Not only is it notable that many utility companies have
enthusiastically signed on to the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), but so,
too, have major investment banks and hedge funds. Trading Carbon Futures has
obviously drawn these moths to the global warming heat simply because it is a
golden opportunity to mint money. Whatever the additional costs imposed by
the purchase price of carbon credits, utility companies are certain that
regulators will allow those additional costs to be passed on to consumers.
Moreover, trading carbon credits opens the door to exploit major new profit
opportunities.
3. Wall Street Banks
Investment banks, such as JP
Morgan Chase, have also joined-in. Money-masters like Chase have recently
been discredited and shut out of further billions of dollars previously
generated by their creation and sale of various forms of questionable and
fraudulent financial paper known as Derivatives. Trading carbon credits
provides a new profit source.
Considering that these amoral
- some might suggest "sociopathic" - institutions almost gutted the
globe's financial system in September 2008, any issue to which they attach
themselves should be viewed with considerable alarm. While not guaranteed, it
is reasonable to conclude, from their recent actions that in whatever
activity these financial behemoths involve themselves, it must, by
definition, run counter to the public interest.
4. Hedge Funds
These large pools of private
capital also use large amounts of borrowed money to leverage their
speculative trades in a variety of financial products which now include
carbon credits. Is it not an inconvenient truth that the pious pied piper of
climate change, Al Gore, has become a partner in two hedge funds, Generation
Investment Management (GIM) and Capricorn Investment Group LLC, set up to
specifically trade carbon credits? Speculation suggests his paltry 2 million
dollar net worth at the time he lost his Presidential bid to George W. Bush
has mushroomed fifty fold since taking up the climate cause.
Speculative trading in carbon
credits will primarily benefit institutional traders, with only limited
benefit accruing to the environment or third world nations to use in
kick-starting climate friendly projects. The cost of carbon credits will most
certainly contribute to raising the cost of electricity, manufacturing costs
and the cost of living generally. All the while imposition of caps is
guaranteed to contribute precious little to limit carbon emissions.
5. Ordinary Citizens
Enlisting massive support from
so many well intentioned people who genuinely believe in the need to nurture
nature has been its singular success. Regular citizens have been bought into
the cause in spite of the fact that their cost of living will increase and
their standard of living lowered. Selflessness in the cause of preserving the
environment is their motivation.
Some of us, however, are by
nature cursed with an inquisitive mind and have developed and honed our
analytical skills to a degree sufficient to prevent us from blindly bending
to overwhelming publicity which promotes a single perspective. In spite of
the powers of persuasion mounted by climate activists, opinion makers and
their cheerleading media mascots, there remain those who insist on examining
the results of rigorous and independent research before adopting any
assertion, ideology, belief or conventional wisdom portrayed as truth.
Contrarians naturally find
themselves uneasy with any large public policy issue which seems to have had
the benefit of a consensus viewpoint from the beginning. "The science is
settled" and "peer review proves it" are mantras which are
just too convenient for comfort.
Have you hopped aboard the
global warming/carbon credit trading train or are you starting to question
what you have been told and question what the benefits are for those who
promote such 'science' as opposed to you as a private citizen of this planet?
Editor's Note: The above article is Part 1 of a
4-part series that includes: "U.S. and Canada Are Global Warming
Scapegoats (Part 2)"; "Why Should WE Make Sacrifices to Offset
Global Warming? (Part 3)"; "Global Warming: The 'Anthropocentric'
Crisis (Part 4)".