Just a few months ago, Steve Forbes, editor of Forbes and an economic adviser to Republican presidential candidate John McCain, was assuring the base that McCain would abandon his call for a cap-and-trade system to regulate carbon emissions once he assumed office. Today, he pens a piece in his own publication rife with debunked climate myths that concludes cap-and-trade is "the wrong solution for a problem that we don't fully understand." Here's the column:
Frozen credit has occupied our minds of late, but our economy is also vulnerable to dangerous ideas. One is the notion that we should slow down the U.S. economy to save the planet from global warming.
There is growing consensus that temperatures on earth correlate to sunspot activity. What we're seeing from the sun implies not global warming but a global cooling that we haven't seen since the "Little Ice Age" three centuries ago.
There is no proven correlation between temperatures on earth and carbon dioxide. The earth's axis, the salinity of the Arctic Ocean and volcanoes all dramatically affect temperatures. But carbon dioxide? No way.
Yet we still flirt with imposing a harmful "cap-and-trade" system to limit carbon emissions. It will constrain our economy, raise prices for consumers, and encourage fraud among those forced to trade emission credits. It's the wrong solution for a problem that we don't fully understand.
For complete debunking of all the above, see our How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic Series: "No evidence," "it's the sun," "we're seeing cooling," "volcanoes are causing it," and "mitigating carbon dioxide emissions would cause an economic disaster."
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What to make of the new climate poll
Comments
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stevenearlsalmony Posted 9:07 am
03 Nov 2008
Does it make sense to suggest that the current "financial tsunami" has literally grown out of unconscionable greed and unbridled thievery of the highest order by a tiny minority of super-rich people who wear dark pin-stripe suits; own fleets of cars, yachts and a private jet; exchange secret handshakes; frequent exclusive clubs and distant hideaways; live in McMansions; and risk nothing of value to themselves and their minions?
Apparently, twenty-first century bankstas hold the much of the world's wealth and the extraordinary political/military power great wealth purchases. If left to their own devices, they will continue in the exercise of their self-proclaimed `inalienable rights' to outrageously consume Earth's limited resources; to recklessly expand economic globalization unto every corner of our natural world and, guess what, beyond; and to carelessly consent to the unbridled global growth of human numbers so that where there are now 6+ billion people, by 2050 we will have 9+ billion members of the human community and, guess what, even more people, perhaps billions more in the distant future, if that is what their endlessly growing global economy requires. They do not lie but also never tell the truth as they see it. They relish freedom and living without limits. Of course, they adamantly eschew any talk of the individual responsibilities that come with the exercise of personal freedoms and reject any discussion of the existence of biophysical limitations a finite planet with the size and composition of Earth naturally imposes upon human overconsumption, overproduction and overpopulation activities.
They deny the existence of human limits and Earth's limitations. Please understand that they do not want their bought-and-paid-for politicians and "talking heads" in the mainstream media presenting the public with scientific evidence that they could be living unsustainably in a manmade world filling up with gigantic business enterprises, virtual mountains of material possessions, and boundless amounts of filthy lucre.
What do you think, Mr. Forbes?
Steve Salmony
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Delay And Deny Posted 10:54 am
03 Nov 2008
The faster you guys distance yourselves from the whole Global Warming scam, the more likely the public will actually want to fund you.
Concentrate on the big three:
Clean Water
Clean Air
Clean Land
And skip the parlour games...
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314159265 Posted 8:52 pm
03 Nov 2008
Mars J. Pictor Florifulgurator, Western Bavarian Forest.
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stevenearlsalmony Posted 10:37 pm
03 Nov 2008
Our lexicon of business activities is being expanded daily, thanks to the "wonder boys" on Wall Street. We are learning about derivatives, collateralized debt obligations, credit default swaps, recapitalization, puts, securitization, short selling and so on. We are gaining a new vocabulary from the recent meltdown of the financial system and fully expected slowdown of the real economy worldwide.
Where did this debacle begin? Well, it began in the center of human community's most wealthy and powerful banking and investment houses in the financial district of NYC. Supposedly, the "brightest and best" among us go to Wall Street, know what they are doing and do the right thing. Unfortunately, such assumptions turn out to be colossal mistakes.
How did this calamity occur and why is the human family in such dire economic straits? It appears that grotesque greed and a culture of corruption have come to dominate significant operating systems of the global political economy.
Powerful people in high offices within huge business institutions with access to great wealth are recklessly and deleteriously manipulating the unbridled expansion of the soon to become patently unsustainable global economy in the small, finite planetary home God blesses us to inhabit.
Self-proclaimed Masters of the Universe have willfully "manufactured" a sub prime "asset bubble" and perversely fostered its uneconomic growth within the world economy. Not unexpectedly, this asset bubble did what bubbles do. The sub prime bubble burst and made a mess. While Wall Street insiders have been enriched by billions of dollars, trillions of dollars of America's wealth have been lost.
Think of Enron imploding, but on a global scale.
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAReness Campaign on The Human Population, established 2001
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