More Distractions in the Global Warming Debate

Really bad solutions to a greatly overstated problem.

Global warming and cooling take place constantly -- in most places, warming and cooling occur every day (and night).  The amount of warming predicted over the next century varies from about one degree (or less) to Al Gore's wild exaggeration of 20 degrees. Some of the "solutions" proposed to fight this problem are ridiculous, and yet there are people who take these ideas seriously.  This page exists for the purpose of exposing these ridiculous red herrings and encouraging people to filter the global warming "news" with a great deal of skepicism. Section 1 -- Al Gore: The global warming scare is easy to dismiss because it is being propagated most prominently by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, who is known to have difficulty with the truth.  Examples of Mr. Gore's previous lies and deceptions can be found in The Gore Lies, published by the National Review.  The global warming scare is also being spread by the American news media, which has a history of bias, dishonesty and sensationalism, especially when dealing with environmental matters. Unfavorable reviews of Al Gore's movie, An Inconvenient Truth, can be found on the bottom half of this page. In case you have forgotten the unnecessary strife and turmoil stirred up by Al Gore after he lost the 2000 presidential election, you can dig in the archives on this page. Al Gore, Ugly American.  Does Al Gore have nothing better to do than butt into other countries' politics?  In his grand bid to save the planet, he's damaging real nations and undercutting U.S. ties. The Money and Connections Behind Al Gore's Carbon Crusade:  Former Vice President Al Gore's crusade against carbon dioxide emissions could make him millions of dollars.  With help from friends at Goldman Sachs, Gore has established a network of organizations to promote the "climate crisis" — and keep himself in the spotlight. Al Gore, the Oilman Who Hates Oil.  The mainstream media has relentlessly hailed Al Gore as a visionary for urging America to get off oil but has essentially ignored the fact that Gore is personally invested in the most cutting edge oil extraction technologies. Al Gore, the United Nations, and the Cult of Gaia (1999):  U.S. taxpayers are being forced to subsidize a new form of state religion which holds that natural resources have to be protected for the sake of Gaia, a so-called Earth spirit.  This religious movement, which has cult-like qualities, is being promoted by leading figures and organizations such as Vice President Albert Gore, broadcaster Ted Turner, and the United Nations.  Gore, who as a member of the U.S. Senate participated in the 1992 U.N.-sponsored Earth Summit, is the most prominent member of what appears to be an environmental cult built around the concept of reverence for the Earth.  Gore has written openly about the Earth having sacred qualities and he has praised primitive pagan religions and goddess worship. Bag Man for Eco-Extremists.  When Gore started his [global warming] campaign in the early 1990s, a contemporary Gallup poll of scientists showed that only 18 percent thought there was any evidence to support Gore's theory.  Even a survey conducted by Greenpeace found only 13 percent of climatologists willing to declare GW "probable."  Nevertheless, Gore repeatedly claimed that (literally) 98 percent of scientists agreed with him, and he exhorted reporters to ignore skeptics. A False Frenzy on Global Warming.  In a remarkable speech before the San Diego Chamber of Commerce, [John] Coleman was very serious about global warming as the consummate fraud.  He began by saying that we should give credit where credit is due.  There is, he said, an intrinsic connection between Al Gore's campaign for global warming and $4 per gallon gasoline.  "It comes down to … the claim that carbon dioxide in the exhaust from your car and in the smoke stacks of our power plants is destroying the climate of planet earth.  What an amazing fraud; what a scam." Gore Ducks Questions About Food Crisis, Ethanol and Climate Alarmism.  A remarkable thing happened Thursday [4/24/2008]:  a press member wanted to ask Nobel Laureate Al Gore about the growing international food crisis and how it relates to ethanol and global warming hysteria.  Not surprisingly, the man who cast the tie-breaking vote in the Senate fourteen years ago mandating the use of ethanol wasn't available…. The Democrats' Ex-Presidents:  Like all Greens, [Al] Gore is an authoritarian, his prescriptions having the aura of the people's block committee and the reeducation camp.  So it's just as well that the warming thesis has run into cold facts recently.  If we are in truth moving into a "quiet sun" period — a period of dramatically reduced solar activity (as indications suggest we are), then every last puff of CO2 on earth will do nothing to stop the mercury from dropping like a stone.  It'll be interesting to see how Gore deals with this. Save Me from Al Gore.  Propaganda was in full force this past weekend when former Vice President Al Gore launched his 24-hour global concert — Live Earth — to bring attention to what he calls a "climate crisis."  For Climate Guru Gore, this is not a potential problem; not the start of a scary trend towards global heating; not even a potential crisis.  It is a complete and utter crisis! Global warming and its causes, according to Gore and his ilk, are no longer debatable, but are scientific facts and it's up to us to stop this impending doom. Earth Daze, Courtesy Of Al Gore.  Al Gore sees no climate improvement since he made "An Inconvenient Truth."  Actually, things have gotten worse.  As the environmentalists celebrate Earth Day, the rush to replace fossil fuels threatens global famine. Gore Ducks, as a Backlash Builds Against Biofuel.  In an interview last year, Mr. Gore expressed his support for corn-based ethanol, but endorsed moving to what he called a "third generation" of so-called cellulosic ethanol production, which is still in laboratory research.  "It doesn't compete with food crops, so it doesn't put pressure on food prices," the former vice president told Popular Mechanics magazine. [Wrong again, Al.] The hot air cult:  You don't have to be religious to qualify as a fundamentalist.  You can be Al Gore, the messiah figure for the global warming cult, whose followers truly believe their gospel of imminent extermination in a Noah-like flood, if we don't immediately change our carbon-polluting ways.  One of the traits of a cult is its refusal to consider any evidence that might disprove the faith. Ad to challenge Gore's planet-saving image.  He has a mighty big carbon footprint.  Al Gore's opulent lifestyle and his virtuous plea to save the planet from global warming don't mesh, according to the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), which announced plans yesterday [3/7/2008] for a new national advertising campaign to showcase the contrast before the American public. Al Gore:  enviro-tyrant.  [Al Gore] seems to think he is the spokesman for the human species, the legitimate representative of every human being who has ever lived or who will ever live in the future.  He thinks he and his supporters "control the destiny of all generations to come," a boast that even the worst dictators in history never dared to make.  Al Gore is an enviro-tyrant with delusions of global domination. Greens Going for the Green.  Even with the human tragedy of Cyclone Nargis still unfolding in Burma, environmentalists aren't wasting any time linking the disaster to global warming.  Or at least one isn't:  Al Gore. When Political Correctness Becomes Conventional Wisdom:  Con artists like Gore have enriched themselves on this issue, taking home Oscars, Nobel Prizes and millions of dollars.  Meanwhile, evangelical leaders are setting up their flocks for extreme fleecing by leftist politicos like Barack Obama, who will appeal for Christian votes by talking in glowing, biblical-sounding terms about "being good stewards of God's creation."  Climate change scientists have no evidence for their theories that cannot be refuted by experts of equal or greater stature. Al Gore Denies Global Warming is His Meal Ticket.  Al Gore, who famously claimed to have invented the Internet, now denies  — in the face of powerful evidence to the contrary — that he is in a position to make an immense fortune from global warming-mitigation efforts. Gore's warming plan will blister U.S..  If Gore and his Bali disciples prevail, growth in the United States and other developed nations will grind to a quick halt, while developing nations such as China and India remain free to pollute at will. … A generation from now, Americans may well look back at Al Gore as the Benedict Arnold of his age, someone so determined to save the earth he was willing to ruin his country. Crouching Gore, Hidden Oil Stocks?  Al Gore's long, former relationship with Occidental Petroleum is well-documented, and all but ignored in the mainstream media. Gore's wealth soars in 7 years.  Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore left the White House seven years ago with less than $2 million in assets, including a Virginia home and the family farm in Tennessee.  Now he's making enough to put $35 million in hedge funds and other private partnerships. Al Gore's Convenient IPO:  What's an Emmy worth?  If you're former Vice-President Al Gore, it's worth just north of $1 million a year and roughly another $48 million in stock.  That's a hefty sum for a guy who of late has traveled the globe as a goodwill ambassador for mankind, stressing the need for humanity to wake up to the dangers of global warming.  Where's Gore getting the dough?  From a tiny, lightly watched cable TV channel called CurrentTV. Global Warming, Inc.:  Al Gore, Silicon Valley, and venture politics.  Al Gore no longer needs to make claims about creating the Internet, because the former Vice President deserves much of the credit for creating an entire new industry — the global warming business. Al Gore is like Jim Jones, and we're drinking his Kool-Aid.  This postmodernist environmental movement … bears little resemblance to its forerunner, the ecology movement of the 1960s.  Back then, Captain Kangaroo simply told us to never throw trash out the window. … Now, schoolchildren scold their parents because they haven't traded in their incandescent lightbulbs for the depressing yellow light of compact fluorescent bulbs.  Environmentalism, which used to simply include anyone concerned about pollution, somehow morphed into radical environmentalism. Al Gore, Ignoble Laureate.  The front-runners for this year's Nobel Peace Prize are a couple of global warming alarmists.  With dozens of wars raging, the committee couldn't find a single person laboring honorably for peace? Gore Milks Cash Cow.  The most conspicuous doubter in France is Claude Allegre, a former education minister and a physicist by profession.  His new book, "Ma Verite Sur la Planete" ("My Truth About the Planet"), doesn't mince words.  He calls Gore a "crook" presiding over an eco-business that pumps out cash.  As for Gore's French followers, the author likens them to religious zealots who, far from saving humanity, are endangering it.  Driven by a Judeo-Christian guilt complex, he says, French greens paint worst-case scenarios and attribute little-understood cycles to human misbehavior. The Money and Connections Behind Al Gore's Carbon Crusade.  Al Gore's campaign against global warming is shifting into high gear.  Reporters and commentators follow his every move and bombard the public with notice of his activities and opinions.  But while the mainstream media promote his ideas about the state of planet Earth, they are mostly silent about the dramatic impact his economic proposals would have on America.  And journalists routinely ignore evidence that he may personally benefit from his programs.  Would the romance fizzle if Gore's followers realized how much their man stands to gain? Al Gore is criticised for lining his own pockets after £3,300-per-minute green speech.  [Scroll down] But a source told The Mail on Sunday:  "Many guests looked tired and began to talk among themselves during his speech.  Heads began to twitch with tiredness.  Al uses his position for great personal gain.  He goes from event to event delivering a similar speech, earning a large fee, and a lot of the time he doesn't actually inform the audience.  He refused to speak to journalists and security would usher away VIP guests and the Press.  He was being very precious and demanded his own VIP room before the event, where he held his own exclusive reception. A convenient £50m for green Gore.  Who would have thought that saving the planet could be such a lucrative business?  Al Gore, the former US vice-president turned environmental campaigner, has made more than £50m in just seven years from his books, speeches and shrewd investments in technology and green ventures. … Today Gore commands between £50,000 and £85,000 a speech, holds stock options in Google worth £15m and has made as much as £4m from advances on his book deals.  He is also advising a US venture capital company on how to invest a $600m green technology fund. The Cult of Gore:  If Gore learned anything from eight years as the understudy to Slick Willie Clinton … it was the value of fads.  That, and the truth that Hollywood + rock stars = lots of media coverage and leftwing support.  The most obvious target that would ensure not only the backing of the younger generation but play on the peoples sense of fear … was the environment. Al Gore Goes Elmer Gantry.  The result of all the hoo-hah was the eminently forgettable Live Earth extravaganza, which just flopped like a beached Great White whale.  Which is a very fitting metaphor for Mr. Gore himself, helplessly stranded on the muddy shoals of life, never to be President, even though Dad and Mom Gore groomed him from birth for that sure destiny. Al Gore now arbiter of good journalism.  Is there no discipline, no craft, no field of human endeavor this man has not mastered?  Politician-cum-statesman.  Atmospheric scientist.  Peace monger.  Internet inventor.  Logician.  And now lecturer on the shortcomings of journalism. Gore As Religious Figure:  I can understand the appeal of the global Warming religion, I really can.  For those who have disavowed conventional religion and have decided that man is the ultimate power — by which they mean themselves in particular, not just humanity in general — the thought that they alone can save the planet is heady stuff, indeed.  Who needs a god when they have placed themselves at that pinnacle? Gore's Deceptive Rolling Stone Interview.  In case any doubt remains as to who deserves the title of undisputed Globaloney Champion of the World, Al Gore's Rolling Stone interview should put the question to rest.  Interviewed in the magazine's third 40th Anniversary Issue of the year, self-proclaimed planet savior Al Gore warns that:  "It is a mistake to think of the Climate Crisis as one in a list of issues that will define our future.  It is the issue.  Everything else must be viewed through that lens." Gore Dodges Repeated Calls to Debate Global Warming.  As over 150 heads of state and government gather at UN headquarters in New York to discuss climate change, former Vice President Al Gore, the most prominent proponent of the theory of the human-induced, catastrophic global warming, continues to refuse repeated challenges to debate the issue. Magazine Madness:  Where did reporters get the idea that Gore was prone to self-serving fibs?  Perhaps from Gore's self-serving fibs.  In October 2000, National Review compiled a collection of Gore-isms, some of which are memorable.  No "attack machine" was responsible for Gore's claim, for instance, that he was the author of the Earned Income Tax Credit — which was enacted two years before he became a member of Congress…. Right warning, wrong crisis.  According to the renowned climatologist Al Gore, the world is facing a crisis.  Unless that crisis is resolved, the world is in serious trouble.  The crisis, of course, is "global warming," and solving the crisis is simple.  All it will take is the destruction of the United States, or at least the liberty and the technology that have made the United States what it is. Update:  Maybe he is a climatologist after all. A Degree of Folly in Al Gore Doctorate.  University of Minnesota President Bob Bruininks announced at the university's February Board of Regents meeting that Al Gore is being considered for an honorary doctorate in climatology for his 2006 movie, "An Inconvenient Truth."  Considering the multitude of misleading and inaccurate assertions Gore delivered in the film, Gore is better fitted for a dunce cap. Why Did Global Warming Become a Moral Matter?  The global warming issue is now regarded as a "moral" matter by its advocates.  None other than The High Priest of Global Warming (Al Gore) has decreed it as such.  Of course, there is some obvious humor in this because the liberals will also tell you that you "cannot legislate morality". Al Gore's Hell on Earth:  Al Gore calls it, "The Assault on Reason," but his brand of environmentalism sounds a lot more like a new form of faith. Alarmist global warming claims melt under scientific scrutiny.  In his new book, The Assault on Reason, Al Gore pleads, "We must stop tolerating the rejection and distortion of science.  We must insist on an end to the cynical use of pseudo-studies known to be false for the purpose of intentionally clouding the public's ability to discern the truth." … Many of the assertions Gore makes in his movie, "An Inconvenient Truth," have been refuted by science, both before and after he made them.  Gore can show sincerity in his plea for scientific honesty by publicly acknowledging where science has rebutted his claims. Manmade Global Warming:  The Real Assault on Reason.  [Al] Gore's cataclysmic forecasts of worldwide famine, rising sea-levels, vanishing species, et al, are themselves the very epitome of the same agenda-driven, illogical, expert advice cherry-picking, closed debate, unfounded fear-mongering he devotes the majority of his recent Bush-bashing book to deriding. Somebody should turn the lights on.  Behind global warming guru Al Gore is global warming guru mastermind Maurice Strong. … The latest ambition of this deadly duo is to ban the incandescent light bulb worldwide … Problem is Gore and his shadow don't intend to stop with banning the incandescent light bulb. … Gore's shadow Strong is a self-professed depopulationist. Forecaster Blasts Gore on Global Warming.  A top hurricane forecaster called Al Gore "a gross alarmist" Friday [4/6/2007] for making an Oscar-winning documentary about global warming.  "He's one of these guys that preaches the end of the world type of things.  I think he's doing a great disservice and he doesn't know what he's talking about," Dr. William Gray said in an interview with The Associated Press at the National Hurricane Conference in New Orleans, where he delivered the closing speech. Gore's flying visit questioned.  A group of scientists is questioning the worth of Al Gore's flying visit to New Zealand.  The former US vice-president will arrive for half a day next month to promote his film on global warming, "An Inconvenient Truth." Gore the Guzzler.  A Tennessee think tank has revealed an inconvenient truth … about what [Al] Gore actually practices, as opposed to what he endlessly preaches.  The Tennessee Center for Policy Research, using public records, calculated the Gores' energy use for the past two years at their new 20-room, 10,000-square-foot home in suburban Nashville.  In all, the main house and the pool house used an average 18,414 kilowatt-hours (KWH) of power a month last year; that's 14 percent more the 16,200 monthly KWH they devoured in 2005. Update: The Left-Wing Echo Chamber.  Death threats.  Harassing phone calls.  Threatening e-mails.  Such was a day in the life of Drew Johnson a few weeks ago.  His crime?  Johnson is president of the Tennessee Center for Policy Research, a free-market think tank that broke one of the juiciest stories of 2007. … Unfortunately for Johnson, it meant enduring days of attacks from liberals — even though the facts of the story came directly from public records. How Gore's massive energy consumption saves the world.  Al [Gore] buys his carbon offsets from Generation Investment Management LLP, which is "an independent, private, owner-managed partnership established in 2004 and with offices in London and Washington, D.C.," that, for a fee, will invest your money in "high-quality companies at attractive prices that will deliver superior long-term investment returns."  Generation is a tax-exempt U.S. 501(c)3.  And who's the chairman and founding partner?  Al Gore.  So Al can buy his carbon offsets from himself. Gore isn't quite as green as he's led the world to believe.  For someone who says the sky is falling, he does very little.  He says he recycles and drives a hybrid.  And he claims he uses renewable energy credits to offset the pollution he produces when using a private jet to promote his film.  (In reality, Paramount Classics, the film's distributor, pays this.)  Public records reveal that as Gore lectures Americans on excessive consumption, he and his wife Tipper live in two properties:  a 10,000-square-foot, 20-room, eight-bathroom home in Nashville, and a 4,000-square-foot home in Arlington, Va.  (He also has a third home in Carthage, Tenn.)  For someone rallying the planet to pursue a path of extreme personal sacrifice, Gore requires little from himself. Gore Exempt From His Own Global Warming Rhetoric?  As the self proclaimed spokesman for global warming former Vice President Al Gore has made an Oscar-winning documentary on the subject, been nominated for a Nobel Peace prize and regularly preaches about energy conservation although he himself doesn't do it.  On the day after his renowned documentary (An Inconvenient Truth) won an Academy Ward, Gore was exposed by a research group in his home state of Tennessee as a hypocrite for his own extravagant energy use, the very kind he travels around the world chastising. An Inconvenient Challenge:  A study by the Senate EPW Committee reveals that [Al] Gore, as the leader of the nationwide crusade against man-made global warming, consumes 191,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity per year in his Tennessee mansion.  The average American household consumes a total of 11,256 kilowatt-hours per year.  That's 12 times less electricity. Another update: Gore-ging on Energy, One Year Later Gore's Home Energy Use Climbs 10%.  [Last year, a] TCPR report revealed that Al Gore's Tennessee mansion used more energy each month than the average American household uses in an entire year.  ... A year down the line his energy use hasn't gone down.  It hasn't even stayed level.  It actually increased by 10%.  How will the media handle this bloated increase despite Gore's claims of trying to improve? Al Gore proves the futility of his policy recommendations.  The morality play on offer from greenies and their media buddies holds that "we can't drill our way" to cheaper oil prices, but "conservation" and "new technologies" for "alternative energy" are the answer.  Thus, I am thankful to Al Gore for proving that even in a high profile demonstration project these "solutions" won't work. A bad day for the red-hots.  [Al Gore] is green down to his skivvies.  But most of his advice is for everyone else.  He likes the extravagant life of the grasshopper, and if the ants will only work harder he can continue to burn through enough energy at his Nashville mansion to light six typical homes of worker ants. For Americans, $4 gasoline is the issue.  Some eight years ago, Vice President Al Gore proposed a 50-cent hike in gasoline taxes to raise prices to force Americans to repent and sacrifice their SUVs at the altar of environmentalism.  That's another reason why he never became president.  Gore has a King Kong-sized "carbon footprint."  He uses the equivalent of 125 barrels of oil a year to provide electricity for his home in Tennessee, or about what 20 normal families use.  So much for his argument that we are in imminent danger of global warming. Junk Science:  Al Gore's Epic Hypocrisy.  [Scroll down]  So while he campaigns for Americans to curtail their electricity use — you should take cold showers, forego air conditioning and dry your clothes on a clothesline — Gore is plugging in and turning on more than ever. … During a time of an alleged crisis, the profile of his personal power consumption is more akin to "greed" than "green"; moreover, the environmental impacts of the Tennessee Valley Authority's "green power" program from which Gore buys high-priced energy are murky, if not downright trivial. Global Warming Hypocrites.  I've come to the conclusion that many of these people are mentally ill.  They won't accept any rational opposition, scientific or otherwise, that refutes the global warming theory.  Drew Johnson reported that after his organization first revealed Al Gore's electric bill to the general public, his group received a number of death threats.  Their computers were hacked.  Phoned obscenities were common. New Ads Hit Gore's Energy 'Hypocrisy,' Critic Says.  A national advertising campaign contrasting Al Gore's "energy-consuming lifestyle" with the need for energy in developing countries was launched by a conservative think tank Tuesday despite charges from global warming activists that the new effort merely recycles old attacks on the former vice president. Climate Debate Leaves One Cold.  We can only hope [Al Gore's] heated rhetoric about global warming causes less damage to the environment than all the greenhouse gasses he generates while jetting around the planet to give speeches. … If Gore really believes humans are damaging the earth, he should stop flying (burned jet fuel is a major source of greenhouse gasses), stop driving his car (more greenhouse gas emissions) and sell his Nashville mansion (which sucked up nearly 221,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity in 2006, more than 20 times the national average). Return to Liberal La-La Land.  Observing recent events has landed me back in Liberal La-La Land.  I use the term to describe the fantasyland that I enter when watching most network news reports or when seeing things that don't make much sense.  One example I have given in the past is Al Gore preaching about conserving energy to decrease global warming, while flying around the world on private jets and traveling in gas guzzling limousines. Global Warming:  Caused by Pepsi, Coke, and Al Gore?  Something tells me that if Al [Gore] and his ilk have their way, the American economy will suffer enormous damage, and the impact on energy and transportation costs will slap every man woman and child across the face.  The lower the income, the harder the slap.  Yet at the same time, internet-inventing folk like Al Gore will still find a way to consume as they please.  They will convince themselves and their fellow jet-setters of their own heroics, and will never miss a wink of sleep in the process. The Strange World of Al Gore:  This hatred of humanity, of civilization, of industrialization, of expanding frontiers of science and technology lies at the heart of Al Gore's philosophy.  Is this insane or just stupid?  Either way, it does not merit a Nobel Prize or an Oscar.  And it is contagious.  Gore's moronic embrace of Global Warming is widely accepted even in the face of raging blizzards in Colorado, frozen orange crops in California, and chill conditions throughout the Midwest and Northeast.  There's plenty of cold weather elsewhere in the world.  We call this "winter."  Despite obvious and empirical evidence to the contrary, some people keep insisting the Earth is filled with signs of a sudden and calamitous warming. Forty Years of Perverse "Social Responsibility":  Instead of helping destitute families get abundant, reliable, affordable electricity, Rainforest Action Network, Environmental Defense and other pressure groups block efforts to build coal and gas generating plants, because they would release greenhouse gases. … Up to 95% of people in Sub-Saharan countries have no electricity, Al Gore personally uses more electricity in a week than 25 million Ugandans do in a year — and agitators are telling Africans the biggest threat they face is hypothetical climate change. Al Gore, Media Scholar?  Al Gore's new book "The Assault on Reason" has definitively established one fact:  Al Gore is still the sorest loser in American politics. … Like many liberals with the itch to micromanage our lives, Gore clearly believes the American people are ignorant to the point of endangerment.  So he's become a media scholar, and unloaded his communications theories in a book excerpt hyped by his friends at Time magazine. Diagnosing Mr. Energy (Al Gore).  The latest Al Gore flap concerns the extravagant electricity and natural gas consumption at the former vice president's mansion in Nashville.  Last year, electricity consumption there — one of several homes owned by Gore — was more than 20 times that of the average American household.  As many pundits have noted, this appears to be yet another example of hypocrisy on the part of Gore, who has plenty to say to everyone else about energy conservation. Mr. Gore owns several houses.  This energy hog is only one of them. Al Gore:  The debate is over.  There is no longer any serious debate over the basic points that make up the consensus on Al Gore.  He is an enviro-fascist hypocrite who lives in a Tennessee mansion that uses 30 times the energy of the average American home, yet he has taken it upon himself to lead a worldwide wacko movement that wants to force us to radically alter our way of life in the pursuit of zealous extremism to achieve dubious results in addressing a problem that may not even exist.  The debate is over. Al Gore and the Global Warming Scare.  The truth is that the Earth's temperature is always changing to some extent, up or down.  Within historic memory, the canals of Venice froze solid during the medieval Little Ice Age, and Greenland was verdant enough, during a warm spell, to earn its (currently) wildly inappropriate name. … There is nothing we can do about this, and no reason why we should try — let alone spend hundreds of billions of dollars trifling with titanic forces we can't even comprehend. Al Gore's Weather of Mass Destruction:  An Incoherent 'Truth'.  Before we finalize Gore's beatification, could we pause for a moment and at least examine the merit of his positions?  This generic requirement was suggested by Martin Luther King Jr. when he observed, "Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance or conscientious stupidity." … It is all too evident that Gore is ignoring any information that stands in the way of his alarmist, global warming theology. Al Gore's Untimely Global Warming Speech:  Former Vice President Al Gore unwittingly marked the 20th anniversary of 1984, the anti-utopia described in George Orwell's 1949 novel, by delivering a twenty-first century version of Orwell's feared "newspeak."  Gore chose January 15, 2004, one of the coldest days in New York City's history, to rail against the Bush administration and global warming skeptics for their insistence that science should guide public policy, rather than the other way around.  Global warming, Gore told a startled audience, is causing record cold temperatures. Gore's Global Warming Speech Gets Icy Rebuke:  The National Center for Public Policy Research, one of Gore's many critics, said "the speech is full of demagoguery, misleading statements, formulations intended to deceive, unsupported allegations of wrongdoing and hypocrisy.  …From a scientific and environmental perspective, Al Gore's speech today should be ignored.  No serious policy person could give the speech Al Gore gave today," said Amy Ridenour, the center's president. Mario Lewis was quoted in World Magazine, October 27, 2007, page 12. 10 Questions For Al Gore And The Global Warming Crowd.  The most ironic thing about the global warming argument is that Al Gore and Company have declared that it's settled, but they have to use scary stories about cities being flooded a hundred years from now and fake tales about polar bears drowning to sell it.  If they're on such rock solid scientific ground, why doesn't the science speak for itself?  Does anyone remember Sir Isaac Newton or Albert Einstein trying to get people to buy into their scientific theories by coming up with doomsday scenarios?  No, of course not. Science and Global Warming:  What Do We Know?  Wholly implausible scare scenarios are routinely disseminated to and through the media, even though they are contradicted by real-world scientific evidence.  Some of these scientifically unsubstantiated assertions appear in former vice president Al Gore's movie "An Inconvenient Truth." ... Gore's cinematic assertions are repeated as "truth" by a largely sympathetic media that seldom bothers to do their own research or mention contradictory scientific facts. The New Math on Global Warming:  The eco-movement and Al Gore have been repeating the mantra that "the earth has warmed 0.6°C. in the last century."  They claim this has been due to more human-emitted CO2, and project Big Warming on that basis.  When we plug in the 1,500-year cycle, however, we have to take away from the scary computer models the 0.5° of warming that occurred before 1940 — and thus before much human-emitted CO2.  The earth has warmed only a net 0.2°C. of net warming since 1940.  Human-emitted CO2 gets the blame for only half of that — or 0.1°C. of warming over 65 years!  We've had no warming at all since 1998. President of Czech Republic Calls Man-Made Global Warming a 'Myth' — Questions Gore's Sanity.  Czech president Vaclav Klaus has criticized the UN panel on global warming, claiming that it was a political authority without any scientific basis. Rage, rage against dimming of the light.  Global warming advocates frequently claim that the way for society to reduce carbon dioxide emissions is for individuals to make sacrifices to their lifestyle in the name of reducing their carbon footprint.  Thus people are encouraged to feel guilty about everyday components of their life, such as holiday air travel, driving cars to work, using electrical appliances and so on.  Judging by prominent global warming advocate Al Gore's power bill, (20 times that of the average American), one may be forgiven for thinking such activists are perhaps more interested in reducing your consumption rather than their own. Gore to recruit 10m-strong green army.  Al Gore yesterday launched a drive to mobilise 10 million volunteers to force politicians to act on climate change — twice as many as the number who marched against the Vietnam war or in support of civil rights during the heyday of US activism in the 1960s.  During the next three years, his Alliance for Climate Protection plans to spend $300m (about £150m) on television advertising and online organising to make global warming among the most urgent issues for elected American leaders. Goreacle's complicated truth:  Well, here's a surprise.  Al Gore last week linked the deadly cyclone in Myanmar to global warming.  "We're seeing consequences that scientists have long predicted might be associated with continued global warming," he told National Public Radio in reference to the tragedy. Al Gore Feeds on Myanmar's Tragedy.  With the potential death toll in Myanmar from Cyclone Nargis rising into the hundreds of thousands, last week's attempt by Al Gore to use the tragedy to promote his "climate crisis" agenda becomes all the more reprehensible. RI Students Must Watch 'Inconvenient Truth' to Graduate.  To receive a degree from Roger Williams University in Rhode Island, students are being forced to watch "An Inconvenient Truth," the documentary on global warming produced by former Vice President Al Gore.  The science class requirement has prompted one conservative student to declare that "we should stop calling these schools 'bastions of knowledge' since they're really bastions of leftist thought." Poor Al Gore.  How can one criticize a man so manifestly bent on saving the human race?  There would seem only one honor left for him to receive.  What else could so perfectly crown this lifetime of public service as … the presidency of the United States?  You can bet your bottom dollar that he wants the job — wants it so much his chest aches.  After all, he has pursued it all his life. … There is, in fact, only one serious obstacle.  And there she sits, like the Rock of Chickamauga:  Hillary Clinton. Eight Reasons Why "Global Warming" Is a Scam:  When Al Gore lost his bid to become the country's first "Environment President," many of us thought the "global warming" scare would finally come to a well-deserved end.  That hasn't happened, despite eight good reasons this scam should finally be put to rest. Section 1½ -- Al Gore's Nobel Prize: A "Nobel" Folly.  Take away Al Gore's Nobel peace prize.  Give him another one — literature maybe, or art — but the peace prize has got to go.  This is not a question of his environmental policies.  Agree or disagree, they are not the issue here.  Their consequences, however, are.  We have seen a reaction to the global warming scare that has people scrambling to produce alternate fuels.  This seems like an excellent idea, regardless of climate issues; more energy sources are always better than less. Al Gore, global warming and convenient untruths.  When Nobel laureate Al Gore collects his peace prize in Oslo on Dec. 10, he should tell the gathered Norwegians exactly what he meant when he remarked about global warming:  "I believe it is appropriate to have an overrepresentation of factual presentations on how dangerous it is, as a predicate for opening up the audience to listen to what the solutions are," Gore said in the May 9, 2006, issue of Grist magazine.  "Overrepresentation"?  Is that anything like "misrepresentation"? Al Gore and the Mission of the Nobel Prizes:  If Gore is indeed the recipient [of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize], this choice, more than any other Nobel Committee selection, marks the end of a 105-year era.  In direct contradiction of Alfred Nobel's last will and testament, the selection of Gore essentially means the Peace Prize can no longer be said to be an award for improving the condition of humankind.  Looking at Gore's writing, it's far from clear that Gore even believes that humanity is his most important priority. Gore's prize:  A fraud on the people:  Alfred Nobel felt horrible about the uses to which his invention — dynamite — was put.  So he endowed the Nobel Peace Prize and instructed that it go "to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between the nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses."  Al Gore has done exactly none of those things. Not Nobel Winners:  In Olso yesterday [10/12/2007], the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize was not awarded to the Burmese monks whose defiance against, and brutalization at the hands of, the country's military junta in recent weeks captured the attention of the Free World.  The prize was also not awarded to Morgan Tsvangirai, Arthur Mutambara and other Zimbabwe opposition leaders who were arrested and in some cases beaten by police earlier this year while protesting peacefully against dictator Robert Mugabe. First casualty of peace prize:  Since Al Gore was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize you might have been wondering what global warming had to do with peace.  To avoid endless head scratching, it might help to borrow the scrambled brain of a post-modernist.  Begin by putting inverted quotes around "peace" so that it can mean whatever you want it to mean — even "war", if that suits your argument. Al Gore:  Leading Us to Peace?  Really?  What it is, exactly, that Al Gore did to enhance "peace" such that he has now won a Nobel Peace Prize? Gore and Peace:  [Scroll down] Al Gore, the latest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, is a similarly poor choice, one likely not to stand the test of time.  Leaving aside the school-marmish, preachy, superior attitude that makes him such a magnet for parody, Gore is a phony. … And his movie, "An Inconvenient Truth," which offers an exaggerated, one-sided, and often inaccurate view of global warming, is more propaganda than documentary. Nobel Prize ignores inconvenient untruths to reward Gore:  So-called anthropogenic climate change has nothing to do with science and everything to do with political control of mass populations.  In this edifying work, the primary instrument is the lie.  That is why, in deference to the Orwellian principle, the word "truth" has been conscripted to propagate one of the great untruths of our time.  If you doubt for one moment that global warming is a political, rather than a scientific, phenomenon, ask yourself why a failed American presidential candidate is leading the charge. Al's Ignoble Nobel:  Al Gore has made an enormous business of his opposition to the oil companies.  He has made literally tens of millions from his crusade (far, far more than any oil company executive presently working). Al Gore's reputation as Nobel Prize winner rises on cloud of hot air:  They just don't make Nobel Prizes the way they used to.  That's the feeling we get after hearing that Al Gore was named co-winner of the Nobel Peace Prize yesterday for his global warming alarmism. Gore gets a cold shoulder.  One of the world's foremost meteorologists has called the theory that helped Al Gore share the Nobel Peace Prize "ridiculous" and the product of "people who don't understand how the atmosphere works".  Dr William Gray, a pioneer in the science of seasonal hurricane forecasts, told a packed lecture hall at the University of North Carolina that humans were not responsible for the warming of the earth.  His comments came on the same day that the Nobel committee honoured Mr. Gore for his work in support of the link between humans and global warming. Gore wins Nobel Peace Prize, but do inconvenient truths lie behind the green gloss?  The Nobel Peace Prize has traditionally gone to individuals who have promoted peace and attempted to end conflict between states or groups.  However, the Norwegian committee this year said it wished to bring the "increased danger of violent conflicts and wars, within and between states because of climate change, into sharper focus". Connecting the Dots Between Gore, Google and MoveOn.  Al Gore has cancelled speeches and is sending his tux out to be pressed.  Nobody's saying it for the record, but it appears he's about to get on his gas-guzzling private jet and fly to Sweden to be ready to accept his Nobel Peace Prize.  He would be getting the prize for his global warming work, notably his movie "An Inconvenient Truth," which, by the way, a British judge has ruled has at least 11 provable falsities embedded in it. Gore's Noble Challenge:  Al Gore has finally won his Nobel Prize, reminiscent of the proverbial little nut that stood his ground, evolving into a giant Oak.  Now we can only hope that he runs for President, an office that, given recent history, surely deserves him.  Where else — except perhaps via the Kyoto Protocol on global warming, which Gore negotiated — can someone accomplish so little while spending so much? Al Gore's Inconvenient Nobel Prize:  The irony is that the very issue that could propel Gore to win the Democrat presidential nomination is also the issue that could prevent him from winning the presidency, because the left-wing loons who control the Dems' nominating process would nominate him in a heartbeat but the American people as a whole would run from him like the plague. Gore Nobel prize a travesty after court finds his film error-riddled.  Al Gore's Prize is probably the first in history where the recipient's work was found seriously deficient and misleading in a courtroom a week before the award.  Some media articles made reference to this coincidence, but missed the more important point.  It's likely the committee had already made their decision when the court decision was made, but the deficiencies and problems were already well documented.  This suggests either very poor research by the committee, lack of knowledge of climate science, or a purely political purpose to the award. Global warming opportunity:  Like the Pulitzer Prize, which mostly goes to liberals or to economic conservatives who are OK with abortion and same-sex marriage, the Nobel Peace Prize has become a victim of political correctness and a tool for message-sending.  In this case (as when the award went to President Carter), the Nobel committee wanted to send a message to President Bush. Section 2 -- Reaction to Al Gore's testimony before Congress on March 21, 2007: Critics heap scorn on Gore.  For Al Gore, it was an emotional homecoming, his first public appearance on Capitol Hill since he reluctantly certified the disputed 2000 election victory of George W. Bush.  But for some of his Republican opponents, yesterday was also circled on the calendar.  It was an opportunity, as they saw it, to pounce on the former U.S. vice-president, shorn of his Hollywood sycophants and fawning audiences, to accuse him of shouting fire in a crowded theatre, a message of environmental alarm that has garnered him an Oscar, a Nobel Prize nomination and a global following. Al-Mighty Preacher Running Out of Power.  [Al Gore] knows as well as anyone that the only form of energy that has no effect whatever on greenhouse gases is nuclear energy.  And yet here the Prophet of Doom was bizarrely tentative. ... Since many companies don't even bother to try to build nuclear plants because of community opposition, why would he not embark upon an educational effort to explain to the American people the environmental benefit to be gained from a major program to build nuclear power plants?  Why?  I'll tell you why.  Nuclear power is an ancient bugbear for the environmentalist left, and Gore is now their leader and sovereign. Al's Warming Lies and the Real 'Inconvenient Truth'.  Gore's biggest rhetorical trick is saying that the Earth has a fever.  He says that 10 of the hottest years in history came in the last 11 years, and this proves we must do something, because, "If your baby has a fever, you go to the doctor."  This is meaningless.  The Earth has been much, much hotter in the past than today.  No giant space nanny fed it medicine.  Moreover, a healthy baby has a constant temperature — that's why a fever is bad.  The Earth does not have a constant temperature. Gore under the spotlight.  This week Gore appeared in the U.S. Congress and gave testimony to the hearing called by the House Energy and Commerce Committee's Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality.  Gore testified that "a crisis threatens the survival of our civilization and the habitability of the Earth."  Further, global warming "is real and human activity is the main cause." [Does anyone other than Mr. Gore really believe that industrial activity will eventually make the entire Earth uninhabitable?] Al Gore's Fevered Imagination.  Gore's testimony at twin House and Senate hearings the same day was long on metaphors.  He mentioned the trials overcome by America's "greatest generation," drew parallels to the Cold War and the Marshall Plan, and fired off soundbites like "Nature is on the run" and "The planet has a fever." Turning up the Heat on Gore.  Solving the problem isn't really the point.  As Gore makes it clear in his book, "Earth in the Balance," he wants to change attitudes more than he wants to solve problems.  Indeed, he wants to change attitudes about government as much as he wants to preach environmentalism.  Global warming is what William James called a "moral equivalent of war" that gives political officials the power to do things they could never do without a crisis. The Imperial Mr. Gore:  Chairing the hearing in the Senate, Senator Barbara Boxer allowed Gore to avoid answering Republican questions by letting him run on and on with meaningless observations, thereby using up the questioning senator's allotted time and limiting his ability to seek answers to legitimate questions. Section 2½ -- Reaction to Al Gore's Big Speech on July 17, 2008: Gore's activism is less welcome when gas costs 4 bucks.  Al Gore hopes to put global warming back at the top of Washington's agenda Thursday [7/17/2008], but some Democrats in Congress are questioning his timing when they are getting pummeled by Republicans over record gas prices. Some finding Gore's timing inconvenient.  Al Gore hopes to put global warming back at the top of Washington's agenda Thursday, but some Democrats in Congress are questioning his timing when they are getting pummeled by Republicans over record gas prices. Voinovich Finds Gore's Energy Speech 'Ridiculous'.  You can consider Sen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio) as definitely not enthused by former Vice President Al Gore's speech Thursday [7/17/2008] on U.S. energy policy.  Voinovich had an initial one-word response — "ridiculous" — to Gore's speech at Washington's Constitution Hall, in which the Democrat called for the United States to end its dependence on carbon-based fuels and begin using renewable energy to produce electricity within the next 10 years. Energy crisis threatens U.S. survival, Gore says.  The United States should be making all of its electricity with renewable and carbon-free energy in 10 years, former Vice President Al Gore said Thursday.  "The survival of the United States of America as we know it is at risk," Gore said. Dissecting Al Gore's $5 Trillion Energy Plan:  In a speech yesterday here in Washington, Al Gore challenged the United States to "produce every kilowatt of electricity through wind, sun, and other Earth-friendly energy sources within 10 years.  This goal is achievable, affordable, and transformative."  (Well, the goal is at least one of those things.) A bad day for the red-hots.  Al Gore picked a bad day to tout his global-warming scam.  Just as he was telling an easily conned columnist for the Associated Press that Earthlings have just 10 years to get in line behind him to save the world from the frying pan, a consortium of 50,000 physicists conceded that maybe Al's evidence of man-made warming isn't so hot, after all. Will the Media Report Gore's Stake in Electricity Conversion?  Global warming obsessed media are predictably gushing over Nobel Laureate Al Gore's call for America to completely convert all of its electricity production to solar, wind, and other renewable sources by 2018.  As they gush, fawn, and genuflect, will press members dare to point out that Gore is heavily invested in companies which manufacture that which he's recommending America convert to? They preen that others may sacrifice.  Americans for Prosperity catches on video Gore's supporters arriving in cabs for his speech on global warming in which he calls for higher gas taxes and greater use of public transportation.  But there's more:  Gore himself "brought a fleet of two Lincoln Town Cars and a Chevy Suburban SUV!" Do as Al says, not as Al does.  On Thursday, former U. S. vice-president Al Gore delivered a major address calling on his country to abandon all fossil fuels within 10 years.  By 2018, U.S. electricity and fuel should come entirely from "renewable energy and truly clean, carbon-free sources," he said.  Tickets to the event encouraged attendees to "please use public transit, bicycling or other climate-friendly means" to reach the lecture hall.  So how did Mr. Gore and his retinue arrive?  In two Lincoln Town Cars and a full-sized SUV that sat idling with the air conditioners blasting while the Gore party was inside. Al Gore's Doomsday Clock:  Al Gore gave a speech last week "challenging" America to run "on 100% zero-carbon electricity in 10 years" — though that's just the first step on his road to "ending our reliance on carbon-based fuels."  Serious people understand this is absurd.  Maybe other people will start drawing the same conclusion about the man proposing it.  The former vice president has also recently disavowed any intention of returning to politics.  This is wise.  As America's leading peddler of both doom and salvation, Mr. Gore has moved beyond the constraints and obligations of reality. Gore's nutty idea:  He's a former vice president of the United States, Nobel Prize winner and best-selling author, so the lavish news coverage of Al Gore's latest brainstorm was inevitable.  Less understandable is why an idea so irresponsible — in economic terms, in fact, just this side of deranged — attracted so little ridicule. An Inconvenient Perception:  Voters Say the Gore Plan is Unrealistic and Costly.  Only 33% of American voters believe Al Gore's proposal to switch all of the nation's electricity production to wind, solar and other carbon-free sources in 10 years is realistic.  And, beyond the Democratic Party base, most voters think Gore's plan will make energy prices go up. Democrats and Energy:  Reality Bites.  This week [Al Gore] laid out his demand for a miraculous transformation in U.S. energy use over a mere 10 years.  As for drilling for more oil?  "Absurd," the Nobel Laureate scoffed.  "When you're in a hole, stop digging."  The same might be said for Mr. Gore.  For while his message hasn't changed, the political realities of the energy debate have.  Suddenly, Mr. Gore's inconvenient speechifying only tightens the vise Democrats find themselves in over drilling. Gored!  [Al Gore's] speech on global warming is full of misstatements, exaggerations, and outright untruths.  What's worse is that I'm sure he believes every word of it. The Sixties Won't Go Away.  Al Gore recently prophesized that America within ten years could generate all its electrical needs from "renewable resources and carbon-constrained fuels" — mainly wind, solar, and geothermal power (which currently together account for less than 10 percent of our aggregate production).  In truth, that daydream has about as much chance of being realized by 2018 as Al Gore this year swearing off the use of polluting SUVs and gas-guzzling private jets as he whizzes to his next environmental pulpit. Somewhere over Al Gore's rainbow.  In a Washington speech last week, former Vice President Al Gore argued that America can produce "affordable" 100 percent carbon-free electricity within 10 years.  My question:  Why not five years?  As long as Gore sees virtue in proposing completely unrealistic solutions — as in moving America from getting 3 percent to all of its electricity from renewable energy sources in a mere decade — wouldn't five years be twice as good? The Green Hornet:  Al Gore said the other day that "the future of human civilization" depends on giving up fossil fuels within a decade — and was acclaimed as a prophet by the political class.  Obviously boring reality doesn't count for much these days. Al Gore's Curiously Cost-Free Plan to Re-Power America:  Of course, great-souled visionaries such as Gore do not concern themselves with piddling and mundane issues such as who will pay for this marvelous no-carbon energy future and how much it will cost.  Not being burdened with a great soul, I decided to don my green eyeshade and make a preliminary stab at figuring out how much Gore's scheme might cost us. Section 3 -- Proposed solutions that are sure to be worse than the problem. Global warming alarmists often compare today's atmospheric carbon dioxide content to "pre-industrial" levels.  The only way to eliminate industrial CO2 emissions is to eliminate industry and revert to the 17th century.  Unfortunately, there are some radicals on the far left who don't see that as a preposterous idea. Geoengineering Madness.  Irony heaps on irony in the climate debate as we are led down the path of certainty about the problem and the cause.  We now have people who blame humans for causing global warming and climate change taking deliberate action to cause cooling and counteract climate change.  So, the solution to human interference is more human interference.  Sadly, this assumes that you know what you're doing that the problem is correctly identified and you're prepared to accept the responsibility and deal with the outcome of your actions. Climate cure more costly than the disease.  Democracy, as Arthur Balfour said, is government by explanation:  but the explanations must be good ones.  The Garnaut report was to explain the basis for the Government's climate change policy.  Unfortunately it leaves open more questions than it answers.  This is because the encyclopedia Garnaut and his team have produced does everything except what it was supposed to do:  cost a target for greenhouse emissions reductions. Crazy-Sounding Ideas May Help Combat Global Warming.  How crazy?  There's the man-made "volcano" that shoots gigatons of sulfur high into the air.  The space "sun shade" made of trillions of little reflectors between Earth and sun, slightly lowering the planet's temperature.  The forest of ugly artificial "trees" that suck carbon dioxide out of the air.  And the "Geritol solution" in which iron dust is dumped into the ocean. Ghost ship fleet could be a silver lining in clouds of climate change.  A scientist at the University of Edinburgh has devised a new weapon in the fight against global warming:  a fleet of 1,500 unmanned sailing ships creating wakes that whiten clouds to reflect the heat of the Sun better.  The concept involves vessels powered by a radical rotary-sail technology that could patrol selected areas of ocean, spraying tiny droplets of seawater into existing clouds. Scientists Question Climate Tinkering.  Unfortunately, the solutions could cause problems of their own — beyond their exorbitant costs — including making the arid Middle East even drier and polluting the air enough to increase respiratory illnesses.  Kevin Trenberth, climate analysis chief at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, said mankind already has harmed Earth's climate inadvertently, so it's foolish to think that people can now fix it with a few drastic measures. Experts ponder the hazards of using technology to save the planet.  Last year, a private company proposed "fertilizing" parts of the ocean with iron, in hopes of encouraging carbon-absorbing blooms of plankton.  Meanwhile, researchers elsewhere are talking about injecting chemicals into the atmosphere, launching sun-reflecting mirrors into stationary orbit above the earth or taking other steps to reset the thermostat of a warming planet.  This technology … would inevitably produce environmental effects impossible to predict and impossible to undo. Block the Sun with Millions of Flying Cars!  Many of the Science Magazines are talking about crazy ways to stop Global Warming.  Some of the ideas put forth are absolutely insane and others plausibly deniable.  One member at the "Offline EU Think Tank" suggested that we put forth additional R-and-D monies to bring about "flying cars" a couple of decades early and since the traffic is so insane in our cities, where the urban heat islands are, the flying cars will provide shade to the hot concrete and asphalt below. Aspen trees starved in global warming experiment.  Chain saws scream in a northern Michigan forest, but it's not the familiar sound of lumberjacks.  This time the tree killers are environmental researchers.  They hope that years from now the aspens they remove will be replaced with a healthy mix of maples, oaks, beeches and pines — which should soak up more carbon dioxide from an ever warmer world. Flawed Climate Bill Will Hurt Economy.  In June, the U.S. Senate will debate Senate Bill 2191, "America's Climate Security Act," sponsored by Sens. John Warner, R-Va., and Joe Lieberman, I-Conn. … In addition to setting up a slew of new organizations and programs, this new government boondoggle would cost the U.S. a trillion dollars over the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Global warming fixes not cool.  Let's examine an important question.  Are the major schemes created by global politicians to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, ostensibly to combat global warming, effective?  The answer is no, because they aren't about addressing global warming.  They're about making more money for governments and large corporations. Germany Buries CO2 Underground in Pilot Research Project.  Scientists have buried CO2 underground in Germany as part of a pilot project designed to put climate change on hold.  Environmental groups, however, are worried about toxic leaks into the earth.  The plan is to pump 60,000 tons of greenhouse gas into porous, salt water-filled rock at depths of more than 600 meters (2,000 feet) over the next two years, said Germany's national geo-science institute, the project's initiator. Weekly Review.  A group of NASA engineers and American astronomers proposed solving the problem of global warming by moving the entire Earth into another orbit, which they say would add another 6 billion years to the planet's working life.  "The technology is not at all far-fetched," Dr. Greg Laughlin said.  "We don't need raw power to move Earth, we just require delicacy of planning and maneuvering." Plan to Dump Iron in Ocean as Climate Fix Attracts Debate.  In the coming days to weeks, Planktos, a small California-based "ecorestoration" company, will use a 115-foot (35-meter) research ship to dump a hundred tons of iron dust into international waters some 200 miles (322 kilometers) west of the Galapagos Islands.  Iron — a nutrient naturally carried into the ocean by wind — encourages plankton growth, which can absorb atmospheric CO2, a greenhouse gas. Orbiting giant sunshade gets thumbs down from climate scientists.  Unconventional schemes for tackling global warming by installing a giant sunshade in orbit, sowing the seas with iron and scattering sulphur into the upper atmosphere are set to be bluntly rejected by UN experts this week.  The oddball initiatives are being fostered by "geo-engineers" — scientists who say headway to reduce the fossil-fuel pollution which drives global warming is so ludicrously slow that bold new ideas are needed to avert climate catastrophe. Group Calls for Population Control to Stop Global Warming.  Ahead of Earth Day on Sunday, an advocacy group warned that the United States is ignoring "the most crucial factor in reducing global warming" — population control. Mad ideas crack me up.  Britain's Optimum Population Trust this year said having a large family should be regarded as an "environmental misdemeanor".  Alarmist of the Year Tim Flannery has called for our population to be cut by up to a third, and ABC radio [Australia] even ran a lecture by a green zealot suggesting we "put something in the water, a virus that would be specific to the human reproductive system and would make a substantial proportion of the population infertile."  Not a month goes by without even more crackpot schemes to make us suffer to save a planet that shows no sign of sickness, or gratitude. The ideology goes in before the science goes on.  What is so striking is how these scientists, who rightly highlight the need for careful scientific analysis in characterizing the climate effects of [greenhouse gas] emissions, unwittingly forsake science when thinking about how to mitigate climate change.  Instead, they jump right from "burning fossil fuels causes dangerous climate change" to "therefore the best way to stop climate change is reducing fossil fuel use."  The question of what the world's people will have to give up if they drastically reduce their use of fossil-fuel energy remains unasked. The Left's Global Warming Solution:  No More Children!  The environmental left is in a constant state of apoplexy about the environmental cost of human existence.  Back in 1968, Professor Paul Ehrlich published his famous — and entirely erroneous — anti-reproduction manifesto, "The Population Bomb."  "The battle to feed all of humanity is over," Ehrlich claimed.  "In the 1970s the world will undergo famines — hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death." Gasoline at $6 vs warming?  It's hard to say which is scarier — apocalyptic global warming scenarios or the economic impact of some of the proposals designed to prevent them.  A recent European Environment Agency (EEA) study reported greenhouse-gas emissions from motor vehicles continue rising due to increased driving, despite heavy fuel taxes that boost prices there above $6 per gallon.  Even with gas prices more than twofold that in the U.S., Europe falls short of its global-warming goals. Dearly departed encouraged to do their bit on global warming.  The dead in the jurisdiction of Tameside Council are simply not pulling their weight.  The council has now arrived at a rather daring solution. … The officers dared to think the unthinkable.  They proposed that heat from the burning bodies could be recaptured and used to power the boiler and the chapel's lighting system. The Editor says... Well... I guess as long as it's for the chapel, it's okay.  Why didn't Hitler think of this? Glass Particles in the Sky Studied As 'Global Warming' Fix.  Government scientists are studying the feasibility of sending nearly microscopic particles of specially made glass into the Earth's upper atmosphere to try to dampen the effects of "global warming."  The idea, while "interesting," said one leading global warming skeptic, is "not practical" and, if done on a large scale, could depress the ozone layer and cause other problems. Nobel Laureate Offers a Solution to Global Warming.  Nobel Prize-winning scientist Paul Crutzen ... demonstrated in the August issue of Climate Change that sulfur dioxide can be released into the Earth's extreme upper atmosphere to deflect incoming solar radiation and lower the Earth's temperature.  Crutzen's proposal was inspired in part by sulfur dioxide releases in the 1991 Mt. Pinatubo volcanic eruption, which lowered global temperatures by 0.5 degrees Celsius for a full year.  That cooling negated slightly more than half of the Earth's total temperature gain over the entire previous century. The Editor says... One volcanic eruption had more influence on the atmosphere than all the human activity in the 20th century. [More information about volcanos.] Can the ecohackers save us?  Paul Crutzen doesn't think we're moving fast enough with reductions in carbon emissions.  The professor emeritus at Utrecht University's Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Sciences became one of the most famous geoengineering advocates for his idea of copying the Pinatubo volcano.  Its 1991 eruption sent 10m tonnes of sulphur (which became sulphur dioxide) into the atmosphere, reducing the global temperature by 0.5C the next year.  Crutzen suggested a project to produce a similar effect, using balloons or artillery shells to put 1.9m tonnes of sulphur into the atmosphere to cool the Earth. The Editor says... Let the volcanos act like volcanos.  Anyone who intentionally pollutes the air with tons of sulfur dust is a madman. $6.00 Per Gallon Gas:  Not High Enough To Fight Global Warming?  It is hard to say which is scarier — apocalyptic global warming scenarios or the economic impact of some of the proposals designed to prevent them. Climate bill shaves $533 billion off economy.  A Senate bill to cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions would raise energy prices and also reduce American economic output by more than half a trillion dollars over two decades, according to a government report released on Monday [8/6/2007]. Risky Business:  Altering the atmosphere.  Back in 1992, as representatives from 154 countries gathered in Rio de Janeiro and agreed to keep greenhouse-gas emissions from getting out of hand, a US National Academy of Sciences report on climate change was receiving its final touches. … Since then, there has been a steady stream of geoengineering proposals to manage climate change:  iron-seeded oceans coaxed to absorb more carbon dioxide; an armour of mirrors for the Earth to reflect the sunlight into space; hazy mists of saltwater sprayed into the atmosphere to increase cloud formation over the oceans; the injection of sulphate aerosols into the troposphere to block incoming solar radiation.  Yet most of the proposals — seemingly cribbed from the pages of science fiction — have rested quietly on the fringes of science for years. Other risky schemes  to counteract carbon dioxide "pollution" or to mitigate global warming. Activists, Not Global Warming, are a Third-World Threat.  A coalition of environmental activists called this week for rich countries to do more to control global warming and to help poor nations cope with the alleged effects of climate change.  The irony, of course, is their activism, not global warming, is the real threat. Connecticut Global Warming Bill Will Pump up Energy Prices.  Energy prices and unemployment in Connecticut are expected to spike if the state legislature passes a greenhouse gas control measure supported by Governor John Rowland. 10 states sue EPA over global warming.  Ten states fired a new legal salvo at the federal government Thursday [4/27/2006] in a long-running court battle over global warming and pollution from power plants.  The states, joined by environmental groups, sued the Environmental Protection Agency over its decision not to regulate carbon dioxide pollution as a contributor to global warming. [Here's a complete waste of taxpayers' money — ten states are filing lawsuits against the federal government over something that isn't even a problem.] Global Warming Legislation Introduced in U.S. House Is a "Scam".  "We have reached a point where most Americans recognize that global warming, and legislation like this that proposes to stop it, is a scam" said Heartland Institute Science Director Dr. Jay Lehr.  "It puts money in the hands of radical environmental advocacy groups with nothing better to do than try and figure out what heats the Earth … It's the sun, stupid."  Lehr also warned the misguided global warming legislation will drive up the cost of energy to the average consumer and do little or nothing to help the environment. McCain and Lieberman Push for New Anti-Global Warming Legislation:  The theory that humankind is causing significant planetary warming remains dubious at best.  What is certain is that laws limiting U.S. energy use will hurt our economy and kill jobs. Global Lying:  The campaign to stampede the federal government into drastic action to counter "global warming" has never let honesty cramp its style. Global Warming — Is It All Hot Air?  All of this is part of the anti-technology, anti-energy, anti-growth philosophy of those who label themselves "The Greens."  If they got their way, we'd all be riding bicycles! The "National Climate Service" scam:  The one thing you learn as you follow the activities of the environmentalists devoted to the biggest hoax of the modern era, Global Warming, is that they are relentless in their devotion to pursuing the hidden agenda of "climate control."  It isn't about the climate at all and never has been.  It is about crippling the economy of the United States. Global Warming and the Anti-Technology Movement:  Global warming is the Rosetta stone of the anti-West, anti-technology, anti-globalization movement.  Observes Christopher Dickey of Newsweek, "Without global warming, the growing protest movement against 'globalization' would be even less coherent than it already is.  Because this slow-motion apocalypse can be traced to enormous multi-national corporations, who market the fossil fuels that generate carbon dioxide, it is a perfect unifying force for global protest.  And activists know it." The Seeds of the Global Warming Police State:  A perceptive reader suggested to me recently that when left claims that "the science is settled" in the global warming controversy, what they really mean is that the political science of the issue is settled.  The global warming hysteria reinforces all of their settled anti-capitalist prejudices — and it provides an open-ended justification for the central, dominant, overpowering role they think government ought to play in the individual's life. Al Gore's Unbeatable Deal!  You may not know it, but your house is leaking energy, which means that you are the victim of colossal waste.  In fact, your waste of energy will cost you a total of $22,000 over the rest of your life.  But I've got a package of home improvements we can install to slash that to a mere $10,000.  What?  The cost of these improvements?  It's a pittance really — a mere $34,000. ... If global warming is a catastrophe, what do you call a politician who advocates something twice as damaging? Stink over alarmist theory:  You'd think a record of dud predictions would shame Alarmist of the Year Tim Flannery into silence.  But, no. … Undaunted, Flannery this week amped up the hype to warn that global warming was now so terrifying we may have to change the colour of the sky.  As a "last barrier to climate collapse" we might within the next five years have to fire the "gas" sulphur (actually a solid) into the stratosphere to keep out some of the sky's rays.  There are obvious problems with his plan.  First, Flannery concedes "the consequences of doing that are unknown".  Second, some lousy consequences are known — for a start, sulphur is an element in acid rain. Our leaders are in a carbon-cloud cuckoo land.  Sitting on their cloud-wreathed Japanese mountain top, they solemnly agreed that, to halt global warming, their countries would aim by 2050 to halve their emissions of carbon dioxide.  A tiny indication of the fact that they didn't really have a clue what they were talking about was a slip by Japan's prime minister, Yasuo Fukuda, when he had to be corrected for announcing that the CO2 cut would be measured from "1990 levels". Last-Ditch Resort:  Move Polar Bears to Antarctica?  If the most dire climate predictions come to pass, the Arctic ice cap will melt entirely, and polar bears could face extinction.  So why not pack a few off to Antarctica, where the sea ice will never run out?  It may seem like a preposterous question.  But polar bears are just the tip of the "assisted colonization" iceberg. Section 4 -- Carbon Offsets and Emissions Trading: Carbon Offsets:  Eco-Extortion, Green Guilt, and the Selling of Indulgences.  The selling of "voluntary carbon offsets" — eco-indulgences — is a $55 million per year industry, involving over three dozen companies worldwide.  Total sales are anticipated to double both this year and next, and entrepreneurs are clamoring all over themselves for a piece of the action.  And it's all a scam.  Yes, the money is very real, but the alleged benefits to the environment are fake. Carbon quacks:  Our politicians ask us to believe humanity is facing Armageddon from man-made global warming.  That is, imminent, world-wide, climate catastrophe that will scorch the Earth, kill and displace hundreds of millions of people, drown cities and cause massive starvation and disease.  And what's their solution?  It's to impose another tax on us or create another stock market, which is all a "cap and trade" system is. Carbon credits' dirty secret.  At the bottom of the house of sand on which the Kyoto accord and world carbon trading markets are built, there's a leaking foundation.  Otherwise known as a carbon credit.  A carbon credit is a permit or, alternatively, a unit of currency, allowing a country or corporation to emit one metric tonne of carbon dioxide, linked to man-made global warming.  Carbon credits are the main mechanism by which Kyoto transfers wealth from developed nations like Canada to developing ones like China. Ontario launches three carbon offset projects.  Ontario farmers are being recruited for carbon offset testing as the province prepares to participate in a cap-and-trade system, which officials say is the best way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and fight climate change.  Three pilot projects will be launched this summer to test the feasibility of ways that farmers and others can reduce their greenhouse gas emissions in exchange for obtaining carbon credits. Kyoto's Long Goodbye.  The irony is that Kyoto has handed [developing countries] every reason not to participate.  Europe knew all along that it couldn't meet its quotas, so it created an out in "offsets."  A British factory, say, buys a credit to pay for basic efficiency improvements in a Chinese coal plant, like installing smokestack scrubbers.  This is a tax on the Brits to make Chinese industries more competitive.  Sweet deal if you can get it. Climate mafia has us fooled.  Vested interests have hijacked the climate debate, and taken Australia's future hostage.  The ransom they demand?  Simple agreement or, at the very least, compliance.  Voices of dissent face derision.  Legitimate questions are met with ridicule.  But with many of the squabbling forces of power in this country now apparently united in their enthusiasm for an emissions trading scheme, it is more important than ever that we go back and examine the basis of their campaigns. Climate mettle about to be tested.  An emissions trading scheme has not even started but the Government's hostility to carbon emissions is already choking off the supply of electricity, leading to an inevitable rise in prices.  Coal is used to generate 90 percent of Australia's electricity, but no business can fund new coal-fired power plants under the existing policy settings. Beware green zealots.  Nowhere is the fanatic's touch more apparent than in the confused notion of an emissions reduction budget, the idea that there is a fixed quantum of emissions reduction we should achieve by a given date, with the result that if we reduce a bit less in one area, we will have to reduce by more elsewhere. Power plants in danger from emission tradings scheme.  Four out of five power stations in Victoria's Latrobe Valley, both coal-fired power stations in South Australia and several generators in NSW and Queensland could close down under an emissions trading regime designed to meet even a modest greenhouse reduction target.  New modelling for the electricity industry finds that Australia could achieve cuts of 10 or 20 percent in its greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 compared with 2000 levels — but only after a massive upheaval in the energy sector. The great carbon offset con:  Flying, walking, eating, sleeping?  pretty much everything we do seems to add carbon to our footprints.  And just as once industrious priests used to sell absolutions to erase our sins, some clever clogs have hit on the idea of charging us for exuding CO2.  They called it Carbon Offsetting and they're laughing all the way to the bank. Cap and Burn:  After [GOP Senator Bob] Corker called the bill "the mother of all earmarks" and "a huge unnecessary transference of wealth," Ms. Boxer was reduced to arguing that it's really "a huge tax cut for the American people" and "will not increase gas prices."  These are delusions, or worse.  Cap and trade is designed to raise energy prices, which are supposed to spur the investments and behavior changes needed for a less carbon-intensive economy. Your Carbon Ration Card.  While American politicians mull a carbon cap-and-trade system for industry, our British cousins are already contemplating the next step:  personal CO2 rations.  A Parliamentary committee in May proposed giving all British adults "carbon allowances" that they would be required to spend — along with, you know, real money — when buying gasoline, airline tickets, electricity or natural gas. Cap-and-Trade = Cap-and-Tax.  The Senate is debating a cap-and-trade proposal, which would decrease carbon-based fuel emissions from coal, oil, and natural gas by making them illegal:  These fuels currently provide about 85 percent of U.S. energy needs and generate most greenhouse gases.  Companies could emit greenhouse gases only if they had annual "allowances" — quotas — issued by the government, which would gradually decline; that's the "cap." Faster than a speeding ballot — it's Super Obama.  An emissions trading scheme is what you get when you leave important economic decisions up to scientists who think they're economists and economists who think they're scientists.  It's a vision of paradise that only makes sense on a cosine-loaded blackboard.  Ask any proponent of an emissions trading scheme to explain why it's such a great idea.  Thirty minutes later you'll know how it felt in the '70s to be lectured on the wonders of socialism by some elbow-patched academic beardo. Let's Just Call It 'Cap and Tax'.  Cap-and-trade would act as a tax, but it's not described as a tax.  It would directly regulate economic activity, but it is promoted as a "free market" mechanism.  Finally, cap-and-trade would quickly become a bonanza for lobbyists, who would scramble to exploit the system for different industries, venture capitalists, localities and others.  All the influence peddling would undermine the system's abstract advantages. Climate is right for another swindle.  How does Washington plan to resolve our energy problems and control atmospheric temperatures?  Well, how do they fix anything?  By proposing a gargantuan boondoggle.  A "cap and trade" bill, one that will supposedly cut 66 percent of our emissions by 2050, is being debated in Congress this week.  To begin with, proponents of America's Climate Security Act have been misleading the public by claiming that cap and trade is a "market-based" solution.  In truth, cap and trade does to the market what "American Idol" does to music. Cap and Spend.  As the Senate opens debate on its mammoth carbon regulation program this week, the phrase of the hour is "cap and trade."  This sounds innocuous enough. But anyone who looks at the legislative details will quickly see that a better description is cap and spend.  This is easily the largest income redistribution scheme since the income tax. Washington's Unpopular War on Energy:  With energy prices already skyrocketing, federal lawmakers wreaked more havoc by trying to pass heavy-handed regulatory legislation known simply as "cap and trade."  The legislation would impose stringent emission limits on energy and manufacturing industries.  At the same time, many environmentalists admit that the legislation would have little to no impact on climate change.  However, the bill would greatly increase hidden taxes and costs on consumers.  The poor and middle class would be hardest hit. Going Green = $4 per Gallon.  [Scroll down]  Global warming has been the most convenient threat upon which all of the rhetoric has been based.  What it is really leading to is the creation of a new economy based on trading carbon credits.  Such policy is really nothing more than a massive redistribution of the wealth scheme designed to force industrial nations to make deals with less developed ones to trade for energy credits and get around severe energy use restrictions.  It's what Al Gore trades in order to allow him to claim he has a "zero carbon footprint" — even as he flies around the world in his jets and pays $2000 electric bills on his Tennessee mansion. Carbon pain is priceless.  Kevin Rudd has a plan to cut your emissions that won't work, will hurt and isn't needed.  In fact, if the Prime Minister has any sense, he'll check the soaring prices for oil and coal and say his painful plan has been tried on you already, and has failed, failed, failed. Rudd's carbon scheme chokes.  Co-founder of Access Economics Geoff Carmody warns that Australia's emissions trading model cannot work, that it is misconceived and that it will damage Australia's economy with almost no prospect of solving the global problem.  In an alternative climate change policy document provided to The Australian, Carmody warns that as the Rudd Government's model becomes apparent, "expect the strength of the adverse reaction to multiply". The Global Warming Bubble:  After all the magazine covers, celebrity sermonizing and U.N.-certified-expert hand-wringing, the fight against global warming got a real-world test in the U.S. Senate a few weeks ago in the debate over a proposal to limit carbon emissions through a cap-and-trade system.  After a small dose of the argument, supporters of the proposal couldn't wait to drop it. What's Green and Goes Pop?  The housing bubble has burst only a decade or so after the Internet and tech-stock bubble.  So we may not need to wait all that long to see the next one.  And the most likely candidate is a green bubble, fueled by climate-change alarmism and government subsidies. Simply UN-bearable:  Carbon trading is a modern religious exercise similar to the medieval practise of selling indulgences. … We pay somebody — a nation or say, Al Gore's company — money and they give us permission to drive our SUV or fly to the Amazon as an eco-tourist.  The UN's involved?  Trust me.  Somebody's gonna get real rich and they're going to laugh at us all the way to the bank — which is either in Geneva or the Cayman Islands — and the natural environment won't see anything in the way of improvement. Personal Carbon Credits:  The Trick.  Everybody from the Prince of Wales to liberal newspapers and former Labour ministers now compares climate change to the war.  Baroness Young of Old Scone, head of the Environment Agency, says this is "World War Three".  If it's not breaking the Official Secrets Act, could somebody explain what on earth they are on about?  The notion of a "war on carbon" makes even less sense than the glorious "wars" on terror/drugs/crime/whatever.  No, these evocations of the past appear political rather than practical. Billions wasted on UN climate programme.  Billions of pounds are being wasted in paying industries in developing countries to reduce climate change emissions, according to two analyses of the UN's carbon offsetting programme.  Leading academics and watchdog groups allege that the UN's main offset fund is being routinely abused by chemical, wind, gas and hydro companies who are claiming emission reduction credits for projects that should not qualify.  The result is that no genuine pollution cuts are being made…. Carbon's Power Brokers:  An unprecedentedly radical government grab for control of the American economy will be debated this week when the Senate considers saving the planet by means of a cap-and-trade system to ration carbon emissions. … "Cap-and-trade" comes cloaked in reassuring rhetoric about the government merely creating a market, but government actually would create a scarcity so that government could sell what it had made scarce. The great carbon bazaar:  Evidence of serious flaws in the multi-billion dollar global market for carbon credits has been uncovered by a BBC World Service investigation.  The credits are generated by a United Nations-run scheme called the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM).  The mechanism gives firms in developing countries financial incentives to cut greenhouse gas emissions.  But in some cases, carbon credits are paid to projects that would have been realised without external funding. Carbon Capper Capers:  [Scroll down]  Each of these complaints was prompted by the same thing:  Europe's "cap-and-trade" scheme of rationing carbon dioxide emissions, in the name of global warming.  Over just three years of operation, this plan has already driven European industry offshore and cost even universities and hospitals massive sums. The hole in Kyoto's 'cap'.  In reality, there is no "cap", either in the Kyoto accord or the "cap-and-trade" markets and carbon taxes it has spawned.  In addition, while politicians like to pretend it's easy to create a cap-and-trade market or institute a carbon tax, nothing could be further from the truth. Wile E. Coyote can't fix climate.  Wile E. Coyote is proof of the wise old saying that a good definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results. … The same image came to mind when I heard NDP Leader Jack Layton yesterday praising a "cap and trade" system for pricing carbon, even though Europe's three-year-old cap and trade system, known as the Emissions Trading Scheme, has become a playground for market speculators and hedge funds, while leading to skyrocketing electricity prices and doing next to nothing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Coal-Cap Disaster.  By pulling the plug on half of our current electricity production, cap-and-trade will risk a massive undermining of the American economy, as well as our future economic and national security.  The coal story is so important simply because the U.S. has massively undeveloped coal resources.  With 27 percent of the world's coal reserves estimated at 270 billion tons, the U.S. is the Saudi Arabia of coal.  And yet cap-and-trade would destroy this critical sector. Carbon Folly:  CO2 Emissions Sources and Options.  The UN demands that the US cut its CO2 emissions by 80%.  Congress is debating Cap and Trade legislation that will require the U.S. to cut its CO2 emissions by up to 80%.  But few are asking, is it possible to cut CO2 emissions by 80%?  Or by any meaningful amount? Hand over your money!  "We are saving you from yourself".  Carbon taxes are the latest example of a punitive sin tax.  They are imposed to punish those who break the rules of environmentalism; the new religion.  They are designed to reduce the amount of CO2 humans put in the atmosphere because we're told it is causing climate change.  It is not and it is unlikely to reduce consumption.  All they do is anger taxpayers and are justifiably labeled another tax grab.  While CO2 is not a problem the government believe it is and they have wasted billions convincing us it is, so they're unlikely to admit error. Climate Reality Bites.  For the most part, the politicians favor cap and trade because it is an indirect tax.  A direct tax — say, on gasoline — would be far more transparent, but it would also be unpopular. … The other reason politicians like cap and trade is because it gives them a cut of the action and the ability to pick winners and losers.  Some of the allowances would be given away, at least at the start, while the rest would be auctioned off, with the share of auctions increasing over time.  This is a giant revenue grab. The Great Cap-And-Trade Scam:  The adage, however, is "follow the money" and here's where we find the greatest supporters of cap-and-trade emissions credits.  Huge financial firms such as Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs are betting they can make billions through government mandated programs in which vast amounts of money move back and forth through "climate exchanges" where companies trade their alleged emissions reduction activities for credits, i.e., real cash. Carbon Costs:  Is It Easy Being Green?  Rental cars are now coming with more than just that new car smell.  For only $1.25 extra, some come with carbon offsets, too.  Enterprise Rent-A-Car, along with its sister companies Alamo and National, recently launched its Keys to Green program, which asks customers to pay a little extra to help offset emissions created by its gas-guzzling fleets. … So just where does the money go? Cap-And-Trade Folly:  Legislation pending in the Senate might warm environmentalists' hearts, but not because of potential cuts in carbon emissions.  Their interest is in the heavy economic costs the plans would inflict. … It's no surprise that the most expensive of the three is the Warner-Lieberman bill.  The Environmental Protection Agency reckons it could cost as much as $3 trillion a year in lost GDP.  In an economy of roughly $14 trillion, that's a significant loss. Global Warming Tax Grab:  The Cap-And-Trade proposal would be a huge boon to politicians.  Companies that exceeded their caps could buy credits from companies that had extra.  Commissions would be established. $$  Some politician's cohort would benefit from running that department. $$  Some cohort would be charged with establishing the cap limits.  And of course they would need offices and staff. $$ Cap and Trade Would Stifle Economy, Delay Transition to Cleaner Fuels.  With Congress determined to regulate energy use and perhaps impose caps or taxes on carbon dioxide emissions, the consequences of these actions deserve more scrutiny than they have received.  Much of today's debate is driven by rhetoric asserting a climate catastrophe is certain and the United States is sitting on the sidelines.  Neither claim is true. A Primer on the Economics of Carbon Taxes and Cap-and-Trade Systems.  The trading of carbon credits is troublesome.  It presumes an underlying database of emissions from millions of individual sources and a continuous monitoring of changes to the database.  This would be a huge increase in regulation, and it flies in the face of experience with other deregulations.  Markets are substitutes for regulation, not complements. Follow the money.  [Scroll down] During a Monday afternoon [3/3/2008] political session, the founder of junkscience.com explained GE's double-dipping ability to manufacture and sell windmills while receiving government subsidies for doing so.  And how, under proposed cap-and-trade plans, companies like Alcoa and DOW will be eligible for retroactive carbon credits for emission abatements they've accomplished in the past.  Oh, and who do you suppose owns the exchange where these carbon credits will be traded?  Can you spell Goldman Sachs? Weather Channel Founder:  Sue Al Gore for Fraud.  The founder of the Weather Channel wants to sue Al Gore for fraud, hoping a legal debate will settle the global-warming debate once and for all.  John Coleman, who founded the cable network in 1982, suggests suing for fraud proponents of global warming, including Al Gore, and companies that sell carbon credits.  "Is he committing financial fraud?  That is the question," Coleman said. $100 billion in carbon futures coming soon.  A futures market in carbon emissions trading could be worth several hundred billion dollars, ASX emerging markets general manager Anthony Collins says.  Mr Collins said the Australian Securities Exchange could be ready to launch a futures market for carbon emission permits "within weeks" of the federal Government passing the enabling legislation, expected late next year. Pelosi's Green House:  Carbon offsets are scams that allow gluttonous energy consumers like Gore to ease their conscience while doing absolutely nothing to curb their own energy use.  You buy a carbon offset, giving money to people who will do something like plant trees in Zimbabwe, which supposedly will reduce or absorb carbon emissions by an equivalent amount.  You are then declared "carbon-neutral" while you continue to pollute. The Carbon Footprint of the Rich is Twice That of the Poor.  Rich, well-educated Australians are contributing twice as much to climate change as average households, according to new analysis of consumption habits. The inconvenient truth about the carbon offset industry:  In the concluding part