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Junkie
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Interesting point of view from IBD opinion page.
Quote:
Global Whining
INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Posted 1/31/2007
Climate Change: Congress' new majority conducts forums and hearings on global warming while accusing the administration of suppressing facts. But it is they who want to silence others and can't handle the truth.
Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, accused the Bush administration on Tuesday of attempting "to mislead the public by injecting doubt into the science of global warming."
The Union of Concerned Scientists presented Waxman's panel a survey of 279 climate scientists who claimed they'd been subjected to political pressure aimed at having them downplay the effects of global warming.
In the Senate, Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, headed a forum at which senators could spout off on the dangers of global warming. Interestingly, as Democrats charge the administration with stifling discussion, Boxer opined: "We're not going to take a lot of time debating this anymore."
Idaho Republican Larry Craig observed at the Senate forum that drastic federal legislation would crush the American economy while the economies of China and India expand without being subjected to curbs on greenhouse gas emissions, exempt as they are from Kyoto as "developing" countries.
Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., couldn't be bothered to explain why her husband, co-President Bill Clinton, never submitted Kyoto to the Senate to be ratified. Nor she did explain why EU emissions rose in 2005 while U.S. emissions remained unchanged.
Rather, she responded to Craig by saying, "I reject that. We are the most innovative nation in the history of the world." Yes, but only because we haven't imposed draconian restrictions on ingenuity.
Mrs. Clinton neglected to comment on just why European signatories are failing to meet their Kyoto targets by wide margins or why China, where coal consumption is rising 14% a year and where a new coal-fired plant big enough to power San Diego is completed every 10 days, is exempt.
Mrs. Clinton, who sees this as "a problem whose time has come," no doubt sees global warming initiatives as a back-door way of nationalizing the economy, and imposing new taxes and regulations, as she tried to do with her failed health care plan 12 years ago.
Fact is, Craig is right. As we've reported, the annual loss for the U.S., according to the U.N., could be as high as 1.96% of GDP. This means today's $11.5 trillion economy would take a $260 billion hit every year, totaling more than $11 trillion by 2050.
Patrick Michaels, senior fellow in environmental studies at the Cato Institute, said: " 'Reversing' warming would require reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 60% to 80%, which is simply impossible. The world economy would implode." Is global poverty the Democrats' solution to global warming?
For all that pain, there would be very little gain. The best estimate is that full compliance by Kyoto signatories, even if we were one of them, might reduce global temperatures by 0.04 degree Celsius over the next century, an amount too small to measure, considering natural fluctuations.
Among the scientists who have complained of being muzzled is James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. He did his complaining to a nationwide TV audience on CBS' "60 Minutes," during which he talked of "restrictions on the ability of scientists to communicate with the public." Right.
If anyone wants to put restrictions on communicating with the public, it is the Green Gestapo and its supporters in both parties.
Sens. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, and Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., once wrote to Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson to demand that the company stop funding studies that dispute global warming hype. They demanded that it "acknowledge both the reality of climate change and the role of humans in causing it or exacerbating it."
Image that — demand. Talk about your, uh, "chilling effect" on scientific inquiry.
Not long ago Al Gore proclaimed, "The debate's over. The people who dispute the international consensus on global warming are in the same category with people who think the moon landing was staged on a movie lot in Arizona."
You know the type — people like Copernicus, who disputed the belief that Earth was the center of the universe, or Columbus, who disputed the international consensus that it was flat.
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