By Alan Caruba
Thursday, February 22, 2007
Let's see if we can come up with some important priorities for the security of the United States and the growth of its economy. Well, number one is surely the protection the nation against any further attacks by Islamist fundamentalists. Clearly this has been successful to date. It will remain, however, a constant concern for decades to come.
Another priority would be to insure that the nation continues to have the energy it requires to maintain and grow our thriving economy. We use a lot of electricity and our cars and trucks use a lot of fuel, as do our fleets of aircraft. The result is the movement of goods in, around, and out of the nation in an era of global trade.
The agricultural sector needs electricity and fuel as well. It needs access to irrigation, fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides to protect crops.
So what does Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, think is the nation's highest priority?
In an announcement on Thursday, February 8, she made it clear that Global Warming is her highest priority. Citing the utterly bogus scare mongering of the Fourth Assessment Report of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Speaker Pelosi has seen the future and it is one that "will reshape our planet and society. We also see a future in which harsh consequences could be blunted by our prompt action."
Fools rush in where angels fear to tread. The greatest fools of all are those running around these days shouting, "Global Warming! Global Warming! Global Warming!" Most of these people are relatively harmless because they do not have their hand on the lever of governmental power, but Speaker Pelosi is literally in the line of succession to the Oval Office.
In her announcement, she claimed that, "catastrophic hurricanes of 2005, Katrina and Rita, foreshadow the challenges we face." The lowliest government meteorologist could tell her there is no connection between hurricanes and so-called Global Warming. He might even remind her that, in 2006, not one single hurricane made landfall; another one of those inconvenient facts.
Instead, Speaker Pelosi conjured up "rising sea levels and intensifying storms." If that wasn't bad enough, she threw in "inland communities (that) will be gravely affected as well by drought and flood." Wait a minute, how can the IPCC report summary predict both droughts, the absence of water, and floods, too much water, at the same time?
To be fair, the planet is a very big place where there can be drought in one place and floods in another. It can be icy cold in one place and desiccating desert heat in another. There can be monsoons in India and balmy skies in Argentina. In short, the planet's climate at any given hour of any day is one of constant diversity.
That's why the scare mongers prefer to use the term "climate change" instead of Global Warming whenever possible. Only an idiot would not know that the climate, i.e., temperature, is always changing, both seasonally and from morning to night.
Speaker Pelosi, however, believes the United States must "prevent catastrophic global warming." The day before her announcement, however, the noted economist and Washington Post columnist, Robert Samuelson, wrote, "The dirty secret about global warming is this: We have no solution."
While predicting that worldwide emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) will increase as more developing nations access energy ("In Africa, less than 40 percent of the population even has electricity."), Samuelson is not ready to panic. Global warming, he said, "has been a change, not a calamity." Pretty smart for an economist who probably knows that longer periods in which to grow crops that thrive on CO2 might actually be a good thing. Good, too, for the forests and jungles that absorb CO2 and give off oxygen.
As for Speaker Pelosi's mad dash to impose "cap and trade" programs to control greenhouse gas emissions, Samuelson said, "in practice, no plausible--cap and trade' program would significantly curb global warming. To do that, quotas would have to be set so low as to shut down the economy."
Let me repeat that, "shut down the economy." If that doesn't scare you, how about "the costs of scarce quotas would skyrocket...and be passed along to consumers through much higher energy prices. The program would be a regulatory burden with little benefit."
It is regulation that totally ignores the fact that the climate is controlled by the actions of the sun, the oceans, clouds, volcanoes, and other natural phenomena. As for greenhouse gases, it is water vapor, primarily from the oceans, that far exceeds any amount of CO2.
There is no threat of massive, sudden, dramatic Global Warming. Not happening. Not going to happen.
Will someone please find a net and throw it over Speaker Pelosi before she and her supporters in Congress severely damage the economy?
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