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Satellite
Data Blows Hole in Gobal
Warming
By Mike Shedlock
7/30/11
Forbes
Magazine reports New NASA Data
Blow Gaping Hole In Global Warming Alarmism
NASA
satellite data from the years
2000 through 2011 show the Earth’s atmosphere is allowing far more heat
to be
released into space than alarmist computer models have predicted,
reports a new
study in the peer-reviewed science journal Remote Sensing. The study
indicates
far less future global warming will occur than United Nations computer
models
have predicted, and supports prior studies indicating increases in
atmospheric
carbon dioxide trap far less heat than alarmists have claimed.
In
addition to finding that far less
heat is being trapped than alarmist computer models have predicted, the
NASA
satellite data show the atmosphere begins shedding heat into space long
before
United Nations computer models predicted.
Scientists
on all sides of the global
warming debate are in general agreement about how much heat is being
directly
trapped by human emissions of carbon dioxide (the answer is “not
much”).
However, the single most important issue in the global warming debate
is
whether carbon dioxide emissions will indirectly trap far more heat by
causing
large increases in atmospheric humidity and cirrus clouds.
Alarmist
computer models assume human
carbon dioxide emissions indirectly cause substantial increases in
atmospheric
humidity and cirrus clouds (each of which are very effective at
trapping heat),
but real-world data have long shown that carbon dioxide emissions are
not
causing as much atmospheric humidity and cirrus clouds as the alarmist
computer
models have predicted.
Real-world
measurements show far less
heat is being trapped in the earth’s atmosphere than the alarmist
computer
models predict, and far more heat is escaping into space than the
alarmist
computer models predict.
When
objective NASA satellite data,
reported in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, show a “huge
discrepancy”
between alarmist climate models and real-world facts, climate
scientists, the
media and our elected officials would be wise to take notice. Whether
or not
they do so will tell us a great deal about how honest the purveyors of
global
warming alarmism truly are.
Will
this stop the global-warming
fear-mongers? Of course not. Worse yet, even if global warming was a
genuine
threat, the cap-and-trade measures proposed as solutions are downright
idiotic.
The
Wall Street Journal blasted
Obama’s cap-and-trade proposal in March of 2009 in Who Pays for Cap and
Trade?
Cap
and trade is the tax that dare not
speak its name, and Democrats are hoping in particular that no one
notices who
would pay for their climate ambitions. With President Obama depending
on vast
new carbon revenues in his budget and Congress promising a bill by May,
perhaps
Americans would like to know the deeply unequal ways that climate costs
would
be distributed across regions and income groups.
Politicians
love cap and trade because
they can claim to be taxing “polluters,” not workers. Hardly. Once the
government creates a scarce new commodity -- in this case the right to
emit
carbon -- and then mandates that businesses buy it, the costs would
inevitably
be passed on to all consumers in the form of higher prices. Stating the
obvious, Peter Orszag -- now Mr. Obama’s budget director -- told
Congress last
year that “Those price increases are essential to the success of a
cap-and-trade program.”
An
economy-wide tax under the cover of
saving the environment is the best political moneymaker since the
income tax.
Obama officials are already telling the press, sotto voce, that climate
revenues might fund universal health care and other new social
spending. No
doubt they would...
Cap
and trade, in other words, is a
scheme to redistribute income and wealth -- but in a very curious way.
It takes
from the working class and gives to the affluent; takes from Miami,
Ohio, and
gives to Miami, Florida; and takes from an industrial America that is
already
struggling and gives to rich Silicon Valley and Wall Street “green
tech”
investors who know how to leverage the political class.
Cap-and-trade
confers benefit to
existing polluters at the expense of new businesses who will have to
buy
credits from existing ones. It sets up lucrative trading schemes that
will
benefit Wall Street derivatives traders and those peddling otherwise
economically nonviable clean energy schemes.
Cap-and-trade
also benefits China, the
largest, most flagrant producer of greenhouse gasses. China will not go
along
with cap-and-trade so driving up costs elsewhere only serves to drive
business
to China!
Finally,
and as Forbes states,
cap-and-trade is a tax on consumers who will have to pay for such
nonsense.
If
global warming is a problem, the
free market (not derivative traders, not nonviable clean-energy
schemers), will
find a solution.
Fortunately
cap-and-trade died in the
US senate. Unfortunately, no amount of research is likely to stop GE
and other
beneficiaries (as well a misguided fools led by Al Gore) from pushing
the idea.
Addendum:
Some
people have attacked the
credibility of the Forbes article. I knew in advance they would. They
miss my
point in writing.
My
point is about the silliness of
cap-and-trade as a solution. The Forbes article gave me a chance to
reiterate
those points and I took it. I side with the Wall Street Journal adding
my own
reasons as well.
My
points are valid whether or not one
believes in the merits of the Forbes article as presented.
Addendum
II:
My
friend “HB” writes ...
I
have always said the global warming
hysteria was essentially based on a hoax. Yet governments spend nearly
$60
billion globally on such dreck every year!
What
would you do if you were a
climate scientist, employed in a discipline that received a few 100
thousand
dollars per year of government research funding to study global warming?
If
they admit it’s a hoax, they are
jumping off a huge gravy train.
Exactly.
Money flows to those bound to
a set of predetermined answers that dictate 1. global warming exists in
a
meaningful way and 2. something sensible can be done about it on the
slim
chance it does exist in a meaningful way.
Read
it at Townhall Finance
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