Bush in his latest state of the union is doubling the strategic oil reserve. The Saudis - even in the face of declining crude oil prices vetoed OPEC desires and continuing to boost production. Iv heard that the white house and Saudis could be potentially putting IRAN and Chavez out of business by driving down the price of oil below the costs (~$30 / barrel) it takes those countries to extract it from the earth. Amazing - starve off enemies of the US and House of Saud and avert WWIII without firing a shot! Just a theory Ive heard.. If its true and works, its putting the Soviets out of business through economics means all over again!

 

Who is to gain by promoting global warming? Countries like China. People like Gore. Google 'gore china campaign contribution' and see what comes up.

The Kyoto Protocol is nothing more than a tactic promoted by mostly socialist countries intended to weaken the USA, cloaked in the veil of 'global warming.' The USA creates more emissions, but the USA also happens to feed the world, and does far more than its share assisting developing countries...meanwhile China will surpass the USA in emissions in the near future. Its argument why they should be exempt? It believes emissions should be calculated per capita...hmm...wonder why they'd take that position.

Personally, I'm not in favor of America being punished for what it does for the world. And everyone knows that even if other countries sign, that's no guarantee they will follow the rules. 13 out of the 15 EU countries will not meet their reduction promises.

Climate change has happened since time began. And there are plenty of very credible scientists (from somewhat established places -- places like MIT) that disagree with the so-called 'consensus.' Their positions just aren't being trumpeted by the media...after all the media has an avowed left-leaning agenda.

 

The question was, who profits from global warming hysteria? Here is the answer, excerpt below from the Wall St. Journal:

China Cashes In on Global Warming
Wall Street Journal ^ | January 8, 2007 | JEFFREY BALL in Dallas, JOHN D. MCKINNON in Washington, and SHAI OSTER in Beijing

China is turning its environmental problems into a shrewdly managed financial asset, capitalizing on corporate and governmental efforts to curb global warming. How much China's actions will do for the atmosphere remains an open question.

Concerns about the world's rising temperature have prompted many industrialized countries to cap the amount of carbon dioxide and other global-warming gases companies can emit. One way companies can comply is by bankrolling emission-cutting projects in the developing world, where such projects often are cheaper than back home. In return, the Western companies receive "carbon credits" that essentially allow them to continue to emit greenhouse gases themselves.

The credits, which can be bought and sold, have led to a burgeoning global "carbon market." The World Bank, a major player in the market, estimates the market was valued at $21.5 billion in the first three quarters of 2006, about double its value in all of 2005. China, the world's No. 2 global-warming emitter behind the U.S., has become the biggest source of developing-world carbon credits bought by Western investors, benefiting both Chinese corporations and Chinese government tax receipts.

The market has led to projects like one announced December 2005 involving two Chinese companies in Jiangsu province on China's east coast. The two will receive about $1 billion, through 2012, from a private- and public-sector consortium that includes the World Bank, utilities such as Germany's RWE AG, Deutsche Bank AG, and Japanese trading firm Mitsui & Co. The project will, through 2012, destroy about 125 million so-called CO2-equivalent tons of HFC-23, a greenhouse gas that scientists say is thousands of times more potent than CO2 and that is a byproduct of the manufacture of a common refrigerant, HCFC-22.

 

Robert,
You are correct about Kyoto, and to a degree, Al Gore. But at the same time, one must also ask who stands to gain from refuting man's hand in global climate change.

I just wish we could put politics aside on this one though. This is such an important issue, yet no one is even allowed to finish a sentence - It pains me that hatred for Al Gore is a big reason some people won't consider the possibility that we may have a (reversible) hand in global climate change.

 

I don't hate Al Gore, I just think he's misguided.

The science doesn't hold up for me, either; it's not just the politics.

For example, here are 60 scientists that disagree. No consensus here, it appears:

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/f...e-4db87559d605

There is an op-ed in the LA Times today entitled "Global Cooling Costs Too Much" that pretty much reflects my sentiments, even if one accepts the postulate that human prosperity is indeed the cause of climate change.

"What would you prefer -- increase temperatures by less than a degree, or give up all the world's wealth?"

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/...ome-commentary

 

"Luxury yacht" is your term, not mine. You're no doubt thinking of mega-yachts and not the $100,000 boats that were subjected to the 10% "luxury tax". If mega-yacht buyers did buy, they simply bought and kept their boats elsewhere while the potential $100,000 boat buyer (by far, the majority in units and dollars) simply stopped buying. Maybe if you were buying a $100,000 item (car, boat, whatever), the extra $10,000 above and beyond all the other taxes wouldn't mean much to you, but it did to virtually everyone else in that market.

Allow me to modify my previous comment to apply to this example- The majority of $100,000 boat buyers and $80,000 Carerras aren't rich and the rich don't get rich by throwing money away. Dunderheads like Dudenhoeffer don't get it and never will.

 

OK, I did misinterpret your comments, but why not compare apples to apples, i.e. what was the effect of the gas guzzler tax on high-end car sales? I don't think it was much.

Pete

 

I was working at a marina when that tax was created and I believe that the threshold was much lower than multi-million dollar boats. I seem to recall that boats that were ~$100k and higher were impacted which you probably know is not much boat for open water cruising. Of course, the marina that I was at sold Carver yachts. We did not deal with big the biggest boats since we were on a massive inland lake, but the trickle down effects were felt. The company sales slumpted on their highest profit margin product and many people lost their jobs...

 

This thread was dying a natural death, but today's publication of this article offers the innately scientific (and sensible) comment that "humility in face of Nature’s marvels seems more appropriate than arrogant assertions that we can forecast and even control a climate ruled by the sun and the stars."

Key quote:

"Older readers may recall a press conference at Harwell in 1958 when Sir John Cockcroft, Britain’s top nuclear physicist, said he was 90% certain that his lads had achieved controlled nuclear fusion. It turned out that he was wrong. More positively, a 10% uncertainty in any theory is a wide open breach for any latterday Galileo or Einstein to storm through with a better idea. That is how science really works."

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle1363818.ece

 

EXACTLY! Those who are so arrogant as to believe we can forecast and even control all this global warming BS must also believe that we created it!

Of course the climate is changing. If it ever stopped doing so, then THAT would be news!

 

Resurrecting this thread to post this new threat:

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...Gw8&refer=home

Cutting CO2 or a Sneak Attack on Porsche, Ferrari?: Doron Levin
By Doron Levin

July 10 (Bloomberg) -- If one of the more extreme responses to global warming comes true, driving a sports car anywhere but on a racetrack might be relegated to history's dustbin.

Fast, powerful cars within a few years may be outlawed in Europe, an idea that has been raised ostensibly because Ferraris and Porsches produce too much carbon dioxide. For those who abhor sports cars as vulgar symbols of affluence (along with vacation homes, furs and fancy jewelry), such a ban could be a two-fer: Saving the planet while cutting economic inequality.

Who are these people anyway who decide on behalf of everyone what car is proper to drive? In the U.S. they're members of Congress, which is considering fuel-efficiency standards that will affect vehicle size. In Europe, it's the ministers and parliamentarians of the European Union, which wants to limit how much CO2 cars can emit as a proxy for a fuel- consumption standard.

Chris Davies, a British member of the European Parliament, is proposing one of the most-extreme measures -- a prohibition on any car that goes faster than 162 kilometers (101 miles) an hour, a speed that everything from the humble Honda Civic on up can exceed. He ridiculed fast cars as ``boys' toys.''

The proposed ban would take effect in 2013. Davies told the Guardian newspaper that ``cars designed to go at stupid speeds have to be built to withstand the effects of a crash at those speeds. They are heavier than necessary, less fuel-efficient and produce too many emissions.''

His last point is telling, even though there are many reasons why cars are heavier, including safety measures such as air bags and steel-reinforced crumple zones.

Focused on Cars

The idea is to limit CO2, a so-called greenhouse gas blamed for causing the earth's temperature to rise.

But the debate isn't just about how much carbon dioxide to allow into the atmosphere and whether the amount actually matters. It's also about disdain some hold for the size or speed of the cars others drive.

``Automobiles always seem to be the focus, even though they only consume 15 percent or 20 percent of energy,'' said Csaba Csere, editor of Car & Driver magazine. If politicians really cared about the atmosphere they might concentrate first on power plants or factories, he said.

The folks against sports cars in Europe and big sport utility vehicles in the U.S. often are same ones who hate McMansion-sized homes, corporate jets, jumbo freezers, yachts, 60-inch flat-screens TVs, overnight-delivery services and other trappings of Western-style wealth and energy use.

Do people demonize these goods because they can't afford them? Or because they think others shouldn't have them? Proposals to limit carbon dioxide often sound like basic opposition to prosperity and rising living standards.

Planet in Peril?

Outside of a handful of command economies, few today would agree that a central authority ought to regulate who owns what. But attacking those who ``waste'' energy achieves the same goal.

Many ardent environmentalists are convinced that the planet is in peril. Why can't they be just a bit cautious, humble or skeptical in their advocacy of reduced energy consumption, which in turn must mean reduced global economic growth?

The main reason I'm wary of Al Gore's call for radical, immediate reduction of worldwide energy consumption is that he's way too sure that the human race is on the cusp of catastrophe. With no credentials of his own, Gore relies on scientists who insist we must hurry because we're approaching a point of no return.

But how about other scientists, ones who aren't sure we're on the brink? Richard Lindzen of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a leading climatologist, says that even if nothing is done to limit CO2, the world will heat up by 1 degree Celsius, or a couple of degrees Fahrenheit, in the next 50 to 100 years.

Move Inland

We know from everyday experience that weather forecasting is a notoriously inexact. And if the world got a bit warmer there might be more arable land and longer growing seasons in northern latitudes. Is it heresy to suggest that if seas rise, moving back from the shore might be more practical than trying to change the weather?

The polar bear population, supposedly close to being wiped out, is ``not going extinct, or even appear to be affected at present,'' Mitchell Taylor of the Department of the Environment, Government of Nunavut, told the Toronto Star last year. One population in the eastern Arctic has grown to 2,100 from 850 since the mid-1980s, he said.

A half-century ago Rachel Carson popularized the modern environmental movement with ``The Silent Spring,'' a book claiming that the pesticide DDT was destroying America's wildlife. The book's impact was reduced use of the pesticide DDT, thereby leading to the unintended consequence of more mosquitoes and more malaria deaths in developing countries.

One Little Bite

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other health agencies noted an alarming rise of malaria in places like South Africa and Peru after DDT was banned in the late 1970s. Since the mid-1990s, when DDT spraying resumed, the incidence of the disease has fallen.

Calls for limits on carbon dioxide ignore a basic point. People are likely to be better judges of the benefits of fast cars, TVs, air conditioners, and jets than government planners.

Besides, the brunt of government limits on energy use may well fall on the world's poorest nations, which need more energy -- thus generating more carbon dioxide -- to provide lighting, refrigeration, harvesting, water purification and transportation.

What right do environmentalists in rich countries have to deny residents of poorer ones the benefits of higher living standards?

I have a hunch that a ban on sports cars won't be enacted soon in Europe, largely because the Italians love their Lamborghinis, the British their Bentleys and the Germans their Porsches. But this won't be the last time that anti-consumption crusaders come disguised as guardians of the Earth.

(Doron Levin is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer of this column: Doron Levin in Southfield, Michigan, at dlevin5@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: July 10, 2007 00:01 EDT

 

matt:

I agree with most of your points. I do raise the above excerpt from your post, because:

1. This is not an experiment we are leading, because it cannot be an experiment if there is only ONE (CONTROL) GROUP. It can best be called only an OBSERVATION. We cannot divide the Earth into two and say what's happening in India and China is global warming group and Europe and US is the save the Earth group, and compare.

So, what happens if in 10 years the polar ice caps reform, mean temps drop? The doomsday sayers will rejoice and claim victory: our effort saved us from global warming! The global warming naysayers will say, see, it's all a cycle.

Yes, thousands of scientists may agree on the effect of global warming, but that's because they all can observe: no one has done an experiment or studied the Earth in strict scientific methods, which require replication of the conditions of the environment as complex as the Earth itself so that experimental manipulations can be done to study the outcome, and that is simply not feasible. Computer modeling is one way they are claiming is useful, but computer modeling is only as sophisticated and valid as the information fed into the computer initially. So where can that info come if we cannot possibly know the real source of the current warming trend?

Thousands of scientists AGREE on the OBSERVATION that the Earth is warming up. I can do that too. But thousands of scientists agreeing on the CAUSE of global warming: that's not the truth.

2. As for your comment that we should not lash out at the media as "wrong" on this: even before that, the media is already lashing out at anyone else who even dares mention "we don't know the real cause." There is a really convenient, hot, and sellable pitch now, and it's global warming, and the media is running with it.

The media does not care for the truth in science, which is that a degree of certainty is built into every bit of assertion, even by scientists, and that uncertainty increases in magnitude commensurate with the complexity of the subject being studied. Nothing is as complex as the Earth to study, because there is only one Earth and one cannot compare and contrast (see #1 above).

It is also a very convenient topic for anyone who wishes to bash big corporations, big and economically successful countries like the US, and sports car aficionados like all of us. In the name of saving the Earth and saving the indigenous people, G8 summits get turned into hooligans' paradise and excuse to destroy things and injure other people every time.

The media's and the environmental extremists' insistence that global warming is purely the humans' fault, without any respect for the fact that uncertainty is the norm in science especially with subjects as complex as the Earth, is what blows the credibility of their cries of distress.

 

Adrienne - keep going!

 

... and if you're an idiot.

 

Environmentally safe Porsche...

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/Porsc...spagenameZWDVW