It's the Economy, Stupid!

It goes without saying anything that the Bush administration's resistance to listing carbon dioxide as pollution is viewed by some as criminal and others as an opportunity. Juliet Eilperin, a Washington Post environmental reporter, today supports both assertions.

Scientists, in this case at Arizona State University, are working on concepts and strategies that absorb carbon dioxide created by fossil fuel power plants before it's released into the atmosphere. A number of strategies are showing promise. So what does the enviro-crowd say? Howard J. Herzog of MIT says that carbon sequestration methods "are not an answer to the problem." He further elaborates: "This is not we're going to be able to have our cake and eat it, too."

A reasonable person might ask why Herzog and many other enviro-activists care little about carbon management? Carbon can be managed by growth of plants wordwide and by recent strategies to convert carbon to non-gaseous form at the site where it's created. Both concepts can work side by side to manage carbon dioxide. This seems reasonable because after decades of study, scientists don't know what level of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere is optimum. Some believe that there is a fine line between too much which might warm the earth and too little which will stunt plant growth.

One fact we know is that as carbon dioxide increases in the atmosphere, plant life flourishes which provides the food for animal life to explode in variety and in numbers. The health of our oceans depends on plankton. As plankton increases in numbers, the food chain that leads to fish and mammals is enriched. And so it goes for agriculture worldwide. More carbon equals better and healthier and stronger crops.

But more carbon dioxide also means more economic activity. That means more income and more consumption and continued world leadership for the United States. And that translates into more freedoms and religious choice and hope and opportunity for all the world's peoples. Now that's truly scary for the big government types.

The Earth is Dead Man Walking!

Cox News Service reports that: "Scientists at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography said yesterday that they have discovered the first clear evidence of human-produced warming in the world's oceans, a finding they say leaves little doubt that man-made "greenhouse gases" are the main cause of global climate change."

If this is true, we should all be heading for the exits. Virgin Atlantic Airline is offering the first space travel reservations and I'm getting me one. If this planet is heading for the ash heap, then I want a nice beachside place on the Moon or Mars. Venus appears, from my memory, to have today the climate these guys are predicting for us in 20 years. Hot and humid with lots of gases and limited visibility. I suppose that cave BBQs might be the hobby du jour in our future. There might even be investment opportunities for deep underground city construction. Why not?

Well, reading further into the above quoted article reminds us that the devil is in the details. It reads: "The new study used computer models and field tests to show that heat and energy levels as deep as nearly a half-mile in some oceans have risen dramatically in the past 40 years, in direct conjunction with rising levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases." Computer Models? I sometimes get SPAM to view computer models and some of them are not very scientific. In fact, computer models are like opinion polls. You write them to support your personal and professional opinions.

So let me get this straight. Carbon Dioxide is slowly increasing in the atmosphere. Most support that fact. So the "scientific" connection between ANY and ALL atmospheric and climate activity during a miniscule increase of carbon dioxide is therefore caused by the increase of carbon dioxide.

It rains! Guess what caused it? It snows? Same! It's warm? Same! It's cold? Same! This intellectually challenged "science" reminds me of the coffee scare when it was "scientifically" proven that drinking more than two cups of coffee a day caused heart attacks. Of course we now know that most of the more than two cup drinkers were generally stressed at work and home and even without coffee died at the same rate.

The United States invests nearly a trillion dollars annually in research and this is the best we can get? The vast majority, over 90%, of the world's glacial ice is in Antarctica. And why don't we hear about it? Because it is increasing in depth! For every melting glacier in the northern hemisphere, there are ten increasing in size in the south. Why is this not included in the computer models? Because it doesn't fit! What about temperature? The upper atmosphere and thousands of earth stations report level or decreased temperature. Why is this not included in the computer models? It doesn't fit!

So what about Global Warming? Hire a NYPD detective and in a week of looking for Global Warming he will tell you it doesn't exist. End of story.

Kyoto is here!

And now it begins. It wasn't a coincidence that global warming was rolled out in 1989, the same year that the Soviet Union imploded and world socialism suffered its single greatest set back. Further evidence of a world-wide conspiracy is that the global warming coalition is heavily weighted with politically far left organizations and governments that seek use global warming to redistribute income and to slow our economic growth.

Kyoto labels carbon dioxide the primary "green house" gas. The goal of the Kyoto Protocol is to convert carbon dioxide to the world's first internationally recognized, traded, and taxed currency. Even here Congress continues debating the administration's energy bill well into its third year. A major hurdle to passage is whether to designate carbon dioxide a pollutant. Democrats call carbon dioxide pollution and Republicans say that's an energy deal breaker. It appears that the Dems are trying to backdoor the United States into Kyoto, sort of, by insisting that carbon dioxide is a pollutant.

And that is where we come back to the envirowars. World egalitarians attempting to fund the United Nations through taxation of carbon dioxide. One additional benefit from this strategy is to redistribute America's wealth to dysfunctional socialist nations and to despots. Another is that limiting carbon dioxide emission slows our economy so that it weakens our GDP growth and subsequently diminishes our military power.

The envirowars shed bright light on where our two major political movements stand on America and the world. One movement views America in the eyes of foreign social liberals. They see a very imperfect and internationally hated America. It is left thinker's mission to be embraced and accepted by secular socialists who are the primary cause of their nation's decay. Secular socialists reached their height of world influence in the 20th century. We can measure the affect of Stalin and Hitler and Mussolini. And the world influence of Mao and Ho Chi Minh and Fidel Castro. Secular socialists have proven to be disruptive for the world's population.

The other movement views America as "a shining city on the hill." Ronald Reagan introduced that America to the world in the 1980s. His policies brought tectonic changes to a world of high taxation and despot hugging. He said that it was the individual who must keep the result of their labors and be given the freedom to spend it. But most of all, he demanded that democratic nations stop embracing despots and enslavers. I remember when he called the Soviet Union the "Evil Empire." It was Kennedy who said that America would "pay any price in the pursuit of freedom." It was Reagan who actually stopped containing the Soviets by defeating them.

Reagan lived the American dream. He supported the New Deal and served as a union leader. But somewhere along the way he began to believe his eyes and ears more than he followed his peer group's words. And ultimately that is what separates the two major movements in the United States. One says do as I say, not as I do. While another says do as you please with your own. But should others in foreign lands tell us how we should do with our own? Not likely. And that might be the political end to those who seek that kind of "global test."

Kyoto is leaving the station.

The world is launching its best effort at slowing the American and possibly China's and India's economies. Next week the Kyoto Protocol will become international law for those who participate by signing on to it. The United States stands alone in opposing this backdoor effort to slow its economy. China and India care little because for now they are exempt from job killing economic activity restrictions.

The world's growing economies are generally expanding because they export more than they import. And it is the American market place that is the growth engine for the world's workers. If we slow down, Third World countries crash back into poverty. In fact the UN supports the notion that economic globalization has lifted more of the worlds poor above poverty than all government programs for all of history combined.

Our consumption is considered obscene by European elites who feel that only they can be allowed to ride in limos and fly in private jets. Mercedes Benz in Germany restricts sales of their largest models to "select" business and government types. France has always practiced a double standard for the elites as opposed to their rabble. New money, earned by innovative business activities is taxed at levels often over 80% while old money is worshiped as a right and legacy.

So this is the landscape for Kyoto. Tax carbon dioxide. Why? Because economic activity releases carbon into the atmosphere. So America can be hit for hundreds of billions annually for redistribution to socialist and despot governments that long ago lost their way for their citizens. But what is the proof that higher carbon dioxide levels will negatively change our planet's climate? There is none. Zero, zilch, nil. There isn't any consensus on whether more carbon dioxide will even affect our climate.

So the 100 plus dwarfs happily march off to slay the carbon dragon using pea shooters and eloquent words. There is no doubt that they stand for a better planet and support what they truly believe is a policy that all can embrace. But in reality, this pig is so ugly that there isn't enough lip stick or make up to cover all the warts and pimples.