Are we all really going to drown? by Bob King
Table of Contents
The basic premise made by Al Gore and other man-made global warming proponents is that man-made CO2 emissions are causing an unprecedented and catastrophic increase in the earth’s temperature. So let’s take a look at some facts related to this proposition.
Before we do, however, it is essential to note that the earth’s climate is constantly changing. There is no such thing as a “normal” climate. Sometimes the changes are gradual and take place over millennia. At other times the changes are dramatic and take place over a few decades or centuries. There have been times that were warmer than it is today and times that were colder. There has been less CO2 in the atmosphere and there has been more CO2 in the atmosphere.
There are many factors that influence the earth’s climate. Our current understanding of these factors and their complex interrelationships is limited.
First – CO2 is a greenhouse gas. Along with other greenhouse gases, like water vapor and methane, it helps the earth retain heat. So greenhouse gases warm the earth. Without them, the earth’s average temperature would be about 0°F (-18°C) instead of its present 57°F (14°C).
Water vapor makes up 95% of the earth’s greenhouse gases. CO2 makes up 3.6% of the earth’s greenhouse gases. Of this 3.6%, a small percentage is man-made. Natural sources of CO2, such as volcanoes, bacteria and decaying vegetation, exceed man-made sources. But these sources are all dwarfed by amount of CO2 released by the oceans.
The amount of CO2 in the world’s oceans is about 50 times greater than the amount in the earth’s atmosphere. When the climate warms, as it has recently, oceans are unable to hold as much CO2 so they release it into the atmosphere. This release is responsible for much of the recent increase in the earth’s CO2 levels. However, man-made CO2 emissions are also an important source.
CO2 and methane are more “efficient” greenhouse gases than water vapor. In other words they trap more heat and cause more global warming. But even factoring in the relative efficiencies of CO2 and methane, water vapor is still by far the most important greenhouse gas.
Plants capture and store CO2 through photosynthesis. CO2 feeds plants, so the more CO2 in the atmosphere, the more plant life. The more plant life, the more CO2 is removed from the atmosphere. In this way the earth’s biosphere has a tendency to maintain equilibrium.
The current warm period started in about 1850. Since that time the earth has warmed less than 1°C. In 1850 there were about 280 ppm (parts per million) of CO2 in the atmosphere. Today there are about 380 ppm. The United Nation’s IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) predicts that CO2 levels will increase to about 560 ppm by 2050, causing the earth’s temperature to increase by an additional 0.9°C.
While this doesn’t seem like much many scientists believe that CO2 induced warming will be much less. This is because the relationship between CO2 and temperature is not linear, as the IPCC assumes in their calculations. In reality, as the amount CO2 increases its effect on the climate becomes less. See Chart 1. Amy Frappier, Professor of Geophysics at Boston College, “The heat-trapping capacity gets saturated, and you don’t have increased heating.”
So what about all the news we have been hearing recently about dramatic temperature increases and sea level increases that are projected for the 21st century?
Virtually all of the claims Al Gore and his friends make about mankind’s contribution to global warming and about future changes in the earth’s climate are based upon computer models.
In reality, the factors influencing global climate are too complex for computer models to make accurate predictions. Some of these factors are; solar radiance, greenhouse gases, cloud cover, surface roughness and reflectivity, soil moisture, evaporation, snow and ice areas, vertical and horizontal winds, sea current, ocean flux, El Nińos, La Nińas, volcanoes, etc. The relationship between many of these variables is not well understood, making accurate modeling impractical.
For example, climate experts predicted a "very active hurricane season" in 2007. They forecast 17 named tropical storms, 9 hurricanes, and 5 major hurricanes. In reality there were 14 named tropical storms, 4 hurricanes, and only 1 major hurricane.
The problems with computer models include the fact that 1) they assume CO2 is the primary driver of global warming, yet this is an invalid assumption. Further, you cannot use a model to verify an initial assumption - that constitutes circular reasoning. 2) The impact of the sun is not well understood so it cannot be accurately modeled. And 3) the impact of water vapor and clouds are often ignored because they are very difficult to accurately model.
Tim Garrett, a Research Meteorologist at the University of Utah, said "We really do not know what's going on. There are so many basic unanswered questions on how they (clouds) work."
According to Professor Ian Clark, Dept. of Earth Sciences University of Ottawa “You tweak parameters, you can model anything. You can make it get warmer; you can make it get colder.”
In addition, the data that is used to create computer models is variable and not always reliable. The effects of climate change vary from place to place. Today, for example, glaciers in some parts of the world are melting, and in other parts of the world they are growing. Temperatures and sea levels are rising in some places and falling in others. And many of the data sources do not match. Tree ring data, for example, does not correlate with surface measuring station data. Surface stations show more warming than does the data from tree rings.
So where and how the data is collected is critical and can be used to influence research results – to give either the impression of more warming or less warming.
Further, the data collected from surface stations is not necessarily reliable. Some of the stations are located near unnatural heat sources such as air conditioning exhausts, and many are located in urban areas where they are subject to the “heat island effect”. While their data is supposed to be adjusted to compensate for this, it is interesting to note that “adjusted” temperature readings from urban surface stations are consistently higher than those of rural surface stations.
Kevin Trenberth, from the National Center for Atmospheric Research – “It’s very clear we do not have a climate observing system… This may come as a shock to many people who assume that we do know adequately what’s going on with the climate, but we don’t.”
From the US National Research Council “Deficiencies in the accuracy, quality and continuity of the records place serious limitations on the confidence that can be placed in the research results.”
There are many ways to collect data (ice cores, ocean cores, tree rings, satellites, balloons, surface stations), many places to collect it (surface, troposphere, northern hemisphere, southern hemisphere), times to collect it, etc. So researchers can influence their study’s results by strategically selecting where, when, and how the data is collected.
When trying to put everything into perspective it is important to note that 70% of the earth's warming that has happened between 1850 (pre-industrial) and now came before 1940. This is before the post-war boom and the significant increases in man-made CO2 emissions.
It is not warmer now than it has been in the last 1,000 years, as Al Gore claims. The Medieval Warm Period (850 AD to 1250 AD) was as warm as, and probably warmer, than it is today.
It is often reported that the warmest days of the last century were in the 1990s and early 2000s. This is one of the key arguments made in Al Gore’s movie, An Inconvenient Truth. But after corrections to NASA’s GISS database (that went virtually unreported by the news media) it turns out that six of the top 10 warmest years in the last century occurred within the span from the 1920s to the 1950s, and only four occurred in the last two decades.
Historic records tell us that Britain grew wine grapes 2,000 years ago and then again 1,000 years ago during the Medieval Warm Period. However, today it is too cold in Britain to grow wine grapes despite the fact that we are supposed to be experiencing unprecedented global warming.
Going back further, however, and looking at the ice core data from the last four interglacial warm periods (the last 420,000 years) we will find that the current interglacial warm period in which we live is cooler than the four previous interglacials. Yet the CO2 levels during those periods were lower than today’s CO2 levels.
Temperatures are not increasing at unprecedented rates, as Al Gore claims. Over the last 25 years the temperature has changed at a rate of about 1˝°C per century. This is within the normal rate of change for the last 5000 years. And in the last few years there has been no warming at all.
In 2007 South America experienced one of its coldest winters in decades. Snow fell in Buenos Aires for the first time since the year 1918. In Peru, 200 people died from the cold. The first significant snowfall in 26 years fell in Johannesburg, South Africa. Australia experienced the coldest June ever. And the U.S. cities of Boston, Madison, Milwaukee, and Topeka recorded their second snowiest Decembers in over 100 years.
Whether the current global temperatures are extraordinary or not depends entirely upon the timeframes considered. For example:
· If you look at a timeframe that includes the previous interglacial warm periods, then the current warm period is relatively cool and the temperature variations are mild.
· If you look at the timeframe from the Dark Ages to the present, then you will see a cool period followed by a warm period followed by a cool period followed by a warm period.
· If you look at 1850 to 1940, you will see a steady increase in global temperatures.
· If you look at 1940 to 1975, you will see a steady decrease in global temperatures.
· If you look at 1975 to 1998, you will see a steady increase in global temperatures.
· If you look at 1998 to 2007, you will see very little change in global temperatures.
So – it all depends upon the timeframes that are being considered. By zooming in on the temperature increases of the last few decades, and then using computer models to extrapolate future temperatures, Al Gore and the proponents of man-made global warming have obscured the longer term temperature trends that more accurately represent what is happening.
30 years ago the news media was trumpeting the “fact” that we were in the midst of a man-made global cooling catastrophe. Alarmist articles appeared in The New York Times, Time magazine, Newsweek magazine, Science Digest, and Science declaring that another ice age was upon us and that it was our fault. Why do we assume that the same scientists who were so spectacularly wrong back then are correct today when they warn us of man-made global warming?
Based upon millennia of ice core data, CO2 has never driven global temperature change. Increases in CO2 levels have always followed increases in temperature. So based upon this empirical data there is no reason to believe that CO2 is driving climate change today. It affects the temperature, in a small way, but it does not drive it.
The primary driver of global warming (and cooling) is almost certainly the sun and the effect it has on the oceans, the clouds, greenhouse gases, etc. At the same time the earth has experienced a warming trend, surface air temperatures on Mars have increased by 0.65°C. Ice on the Martian South Pole has steadily retreated. Habibullo Abdussamatov, head of the Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory, says "The long-term increase in solar irradiance is heating both Earth and Mars."
Historically, the earth’s warming and cooling trends correlate much better to solar cycles than they do to CO2 levels. Probably the best, most recent, example of this is the cooling trend that we experienced from 1940 to 1975. During this time, the post-WWII industrial boom, CO2 levels increased significantly, but temperatures steadily dropped. See Chart 2.
Mankind’s impact on the earth’s climate is minimal. We cannot control it. Meteorologist Mark Johnson, the Chief Meteorologist for WEWS-TV in Cleveland OH, “I’m not sure which is more arrogant‚ to say we caused (global warming) or that we can fix it.”
Who is behind the global warming initiative and why? The answer is the United Nations, environmentalists, politicians, academics, “green” companies, and the news media.
· The United Nations – power and money. The UN is engaged in a power struggle with individual nations, particularly the United States. The IPCC, a UN panel, is driving CO2 emissions regulations. Countries that don’t meet their commitments are fined billions of dollars by the UN. This pulls power and money away from the individual countries and passes it over to the United Nations.
· Environmentalists – money and influence. Global warming is enabling environmental groups to raise $10s millions of dollars each year. But there are new sources of income available to them now. For example, Environmental Defense is collaborating with Morgan Stanley to promote emission trading systems1 – giving them direct monetary stakes in the banking and political arenas, and in any environmental programs Congress might enact.
· Politicians – power. Controlling CO2 emissions will involve new taxes and government controls. This will increase tax revenues and increase the power of politicians. Further, by supporting environmental issues, politicians can gain the support of well-funded activist groups that have become very involved in election politics.
· Academics – money. Academic researchers are dependent upon grant money for their livelihoods. Billions of dollars are being spent each year on global warming studies. The easiest way to get grant monies today is to tie your research to global warming. And the easiest way to get your results published, and to get more grant money in the future, is to blame global warming on humans. While the oil industry has invested millions in climate research, organizations trying to prove that global warming is man-made have spent billions.
· Green companies – money. Entire new industries have been spawned by the man-made global warming phenomenon – everything from alternate energy sources to carbon offsets1. These are multi-mega-billion dollar business opportunities. Companies like GE, ADM and DuPont will be able to develop new products using tax breaks, subsidies, and legal mandates to gain competitive advantages. Lehman Brothers, Morgan Stanley, and other financial firms will make billions if cap-and-trade1 legislation is enacted to regulate CO2 emissions.
· News media – all of the above. Global warming is hot, pun intended. It sells newspapers, magazines, air time... An entirely new type of correspondent has even been created, the Eco Journalist. The more dramatic their story, the more air time or print space they get. Also, the media tends to lean left politically, so the fact that more government controls (socialist style programs) will be needed to resolve the problem fits nicely into their view of world politics.
In a recent interview Greenpeace co-founder Dr. Patrick Moore said “A lot of political activists moved into the environmental movement bringing their neo-Marxism with them and learned to use “green” language in a very clever way to cloak anti-Capitalism agendas.”
From the Friends of the Earth, “A climate change response must have at its heart a redistribution of wealth and resources.”
Christina Stewart, former Canadian Environmental Minister “No matter if the science is all phony, there are still collateral environmental benefits” to global warming policies.
Timothy Wirth, U.S. Undersecretary of State for Global Issues, said “We have got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.”
In 2005, a Greenpeace representative explained “global warming can mean colder, it can mean drier, it can mean wetter.” So… any weather variation is evidence for global warming.
From the Policy Studies Institute “Democracy is a less important goal than is the protection of the planet from the death of life, the end of life on it.” “This has got to be imposed on people whether they like it or not.” Does anyone else hear the drumbeat of Socialism?
In November 2007 John Coleman, the founder of The Weather Channel, said – “Global Warming; It is a SCAM. Scientists with environmental and political motives manipulated long term scientific data to create an allusion of rapid global warming. Their friends in government steered huge research grants their way to keep the movement going… Now their manipulated science has been accepted as fact by CNN, CBS, NBC, school teachers… The impact of humans on climate is not catastrophic. In time, a decade or two, the scam will be obvious.”
What is the IPCC? Because the United Nations is a political body, and not a scientific body, when it embarks upon an initiative that requires technical information it relies upon the scientific community for that information. The IPCC, or Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, was created in 1988 to assess “human-induced climate change”. It is interesting to note that natural causes of climate change were not, and are not, part of the IPCC’s charter.
It is often reported that there are 2500 scientists that are involved in creating the IPCC reports, and it implied that they agree with the reports findings. First of all, the 2500 number includes virtually anyone who was involved in producing the report. Many of them are not scientists and, of those who are, only a couple of hundred have expertise directly relating to climate change.
In reality each contributor is only responsible for one relatively small component of the overall report, and there has never been a survey to determine which of the contributors agree with the IPCC’s summary findings – known as the Summary for Policy Makers.
For the 2007 IPCC report, a total of 308 reviewers commented on the final draft, but only 62 scientists reviewed chapter 9, “Understanding and Attributing Climate Change”. So the idea that 2500 climate scientists wrote, reviewed, and agree with the IPCC report summary is false.
Scientists are selected by UN-member countries to serve on the IPCC panel. They produce research results which are then “edited” by the UN policy makers before the final reports are released. When the IPCC released its 1995 report several key passages were edited out of the final approved version that was submitted by the scientists. These included;
· "None of the studies cited above has shown clear evidence that we can attribute the observed [climate] changes to the specific cause of increases in greenhouse gases."
· "No study to date has positively attributed all or part [of the climate change observed to date] to anthropogenic [man-made] causes."
Dr. Frederick Seitz, former President of the National Academy of Sciences, said that "I have never witnessed a more disturbing corruption of the peer-review process. Nearly all the changes worked to remove skepticism with which many scientists regard global warming changes."
Similar passages may or may not have been deleted from subsequent IPCC reports, but the fact that there is a history of “shaping” reports to fit a preconceived idea is troubling. It also sent a clear message to the scientists who were selected to work on subsequent IPCC reports.
In February 2007, the IPCC released its most recent Summary for Policy Makers. The full report was issued three months later and had been edited “to ensure consistency with the Summary for Policy Makers." So… the summary was released before the report was finished, and then the report was changed to comply with the summary that had been written by the UN politicians?
Stephen Schneider, one of the lead authors of the 2007 IPCC report said “To capture the public imagination, we have to offer up some scary scenarios, make simplified dramatic statements and little mention of any doubts one might have. Each of us has to decide the right balance between being effective and being honest.”
So what is the Kyoto Protocol? It is an international agreement brokered by the UN in 1997. It was signed by some, but not all, member countires. It sets CO2 emissions limits and stipulates fines for countries that exceed these limits. Emerging nations, including China and India and Brazil, are excluded. Because of the adverse impact it would have on the U.S. economy, both President Clinton and President Bush have refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol agreement.
According to Tom Wigley of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, even if all of the industrial countries adhered to the Kyoto Protocol, the measures would avert less than 0.1°C of global warming by 2050. Yet the costs could easily run into the trillions of dollars.
French President Jacques Chirac said the Kyoto Protocol represented "the first component of an authentic global governance.” Global governance?
EU Environment Minister Margot Wallstrom, "Kyoto is about the economy, about leveling the playing field for big businesses worldwide." So the idea appears to be to artificially bolster less competitive foreign businesses at the expense of U.S. businesses and jobs.
Michael Oppenheimer, Environmental Defense Fund “The only hope for the world is to make sure there is not another United States. We can’t let other countries have the same number of cars, the amount of industrialization, we have in the U.S. We have to stop these Third World countries right where they are.” Right where they are – is impoverished.
A 2007 article in Newsweek profiled what they called the “denial machine”. It stated that a “well-coordinated, well-funded campaign by contrarian scientists, free-market think tanks and industry has created a paralyzing fog of doubt around climate change.”
In response, Robert Samuelson, a contributing editor of Newsweek (yes, Newsweek) said that “Newsweek’s ‘denial machine’ is a “highly contrived story" and "fundamentally misleading".
The fact of the matter is that $10s of billions have been spent by those trying to prove the link between man-made CO2 emissions and global warming, while only $10s of millions have been spent by the oil industry. And Newsweek knew this. They had been given the information by Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) prior to the article being written.
Al Gore's “Alliance for Climate Change” will spend $100 million a year over the next three to five years on global warming advertisements. This is just one example of the amount of money being spent by man-made global warming proponents and, by itself, it is 10 times the amount that Al Gore says that the oil industry spends. If there is a “machine” at play here, as Newsweek reports, it is clearly not the one funded by the oil industry.
The Greenpeace Web site criticizes a handful of scientists for accepting $100,000s from the oil industry over the course of the last decade. Yet Greenpeace’s annual revenues exceed $100M. Any scientist who has ever received industry funding is labeled as biased by environmentalists and the news media. Yet scientists that accept “other” funding are not similarly labeled.
The AP reported in October 2006 that “The United States is spending… $2 billion on climate research.” The UN, other governments, and environmental groups spend billions more – all in an effort to prove that man-made CO2 emissions are causing global warming.
From the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works, “There was a $3 billion donation to the global warming cause from billionaire Richard Branson alone. Environmental lobbying groups have massive operating budgets. The Sierra Club Foundation 2004 budget was $91 million and the Natural Resources Defense Council had a $57 million budget. Compare that to the often media-derided Competitive Enterprise Institute’s $3.6 million annual budget.”
The United Nations IPCC reports have a powerful influence on the direction and funding of scientific research into climate change, which in turn influences the number of research papers on these topics. Ultimately, and in a circular fashion, this leads the IPCC to report that large numbers of papers support a certain hypothesis.
At the 2007 IPCC conference in Bali a panel titled “A Global CO2 Tax” urged the UN to adopt taxes on CO2 emissions that would be “legally binding to all nations.” In a separate initiative, the UN called for rich nations, primarily the United States, to pay poor nations $86B to help them adapt to global warming. The UN would act as the transfer agent for the payments.
James Spann, a meteorologist certified by the American Meteorological Society, says that
"Billions of dollars of grant money is flowing into the pockets of those on the man-made global warming bandwagon. No man-made global warming, the money dries up. This is big money, make no mistake about it. Always follow the money trail and it tells a story."
Atmospheric physicist Dr. Fred Singer said "Tens of thousands of interested persons benefit directly from the global warming scare. Environmental organizations have raked in billions of dollars. Multi-billion-dollar government subsidies… are large and growing. Emission trading programs [carbon offsets] will soon reach the $100 billion a year level, with large fees paid to brokers." "In other words, many people have discovered they can benefit from climate scares and have formed an entrenched interest.”
Chris Allen, a meteorologist for WBKO in Bowling Green and chairman of the Kentucky Weather Preparedness Committee, said “All of this (alarmism) is designed to get your money and then guilt you in to how you live your life.”
So it is obvious that there are many agendas at play. Some are environmental, but many more are political. Global warming represents a unique opportunity for a great many people to gain power, influence, notoriety and wealth. For the time being the proponents of man-made global warming have the attention of the public, and they will do everything within their power to ensure that it stays that way – including biased reporting and intimidation.
A Media Research Center study of ABC's, CBS' and NBC's morning news programs found that out of 115 stories on global warming, 97% completely excluded any experts or evidence that disagreed with Al Gore's predictions of a "planetary emergency" and a "climate crisis."
Those who question man-made global warming have been referred to as “holocaust deniers” (Scott Pelley on CBS 60 Minutes and Ellen Goodman, Pulitzer Prize winning author), flat-earth believers (Al Gore and Malcolm Wicks, British Energy Minister), and "criminally irresponsible" (Yvo de Boer, one of the UN's top climate officials).
The Weather Channel’s Heidi Cullen said that broadcast meteorologists should be stripped of their scientific certification if they express skepticism about man-made global warming.
Rep. Brad Miller (D-NC) sent a letter to ExxonMobil requesting all records since 2002 that related to their support of scientists working on polar bears. This came after an article appeared in the journal Ecological Complexity by seven scientists indicating that there is no evidence of decline in the polar bear population of West Hudson Bay as a result of global warming. One of the scientist authors had thanked ExxonMobil for their support of the project.
At the very least there needs to be an open and honest dialog about climate change, its causes and its implications. The science is not settled. Despite this, there is an on-going effort by the proponents of man-made global warming to stifle the debate and to intimidate those in the scientific and political communities who challenge their views.
Here is a question to ask someone who believes that recent global warming is man-made and that it is a catastrophic event – what is the ideal temperature for the earth?
Would it be ideal if it stayed exactly the same as it is today, and if so why? And how could we make it do that? Or would it be better if it got a little colder? The polar bears might like that.
How do we know that it might not be better if it got a little warmer? It certainly has in the past. In fact, crops do much better in warmer and more CO2-enriched environments. So a slightly warmer planet is likely to be better for farmers, including those in poor countries.
And what if we had decided to try to change the world’s climate when it was getting colder between 1940 and 1975? What if we had intentionally injected things into, or extracted things from, the environment in an effort to make it warmer? It obviously would have exacerbated the current global warming cycle that started in the mid-1970s, albeit in a very small way.
What if we dramatically cut CO2 emissions now and then the earth cycles into another cooling period? Our efforts to “fix” a climate problem would make matters worse. Historically, cool periods such as the Little Ice Age have been much harder on humans than warm periods.
Simply put – human beings do not and cannot control the earth’s climate. Even if it were possible, the unintended consequences of such meddling could be catastrophic.
But if we truly want to address “environmental” issues then there may be better places to start than with global warming. According to the World Health Organization, the biggest issue is a lack of clean drinking water and sanitation. This kills millions of people each year. The second biggest problem is indoor air pollution. This probably kills between 1 and 3 million people each year, basically because people are too poor to use good fuels and end up using dung or cardboard or whatever they can find for indoor fires to heat their homes and for cooking.
So what if Al Gore’s “Alliance for Climate Change” spent its $100 million advertising budget on clean drinking water for poor countries? What if the United States spent its $2B climate research budget on improved sanitation for poor countries? Or if Greenpeace and other environmental groups spent their global warming money on solving the indoor air pollution problem? Might not these be a better ways to help mankind?
But the problem is that none of these things help accomplish what many of the global warming alarmists want to accomplish. Their goals are the de-industrialization of countries such as the United States, the transfer of power and money away from rich nations, and a global governance. The regulations required to fight global warming accomplish all of these things, and they do it under the guise of a moral crusade to save the environment.
1 – So what is cap-and-trade, or emissions trading, and what are carbon offsets?
The Kyoto Protocol proposed a cap-and-trade system as a method to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, particularly CO2. In a cap-and-trade system governments establish a “cap” that limits emissions from a designated group of polluters, such as power plants, to a level that is below their current emissions.
Polluters that are under their cap have extra permits. Polluters that are over their cap have to either reduce their emissions or buy permits from those companies that are under their cap. This is called emissions trading, and the permits are sometimes called carbon offsets. Carbon offsets can also be purchased from companies that do “green” things such as plant a tree or build a wind farm. Al Gore buys carbon offsets to compensate for his excessive use of energy.
Financial institutions like Lehman Brothers, Morgan Stanley, and Al Gore’s Generation Investment Management will broker the trades. If cap-and-trade legislations is enacted by the United States this will become a mega-multi-billion dollar business.
Some of the money generated from emissions trading would be used to allow poor countries to 1) buy non-carbon-producing energy sources or to 2) pay them for not industrializing. Alternate energy sources such as solar power are extremely expensive, would take decades to deploy, and would be marginally beneficial. By not industrializing, these countries will remain poor.
In essence emissions trading is a system of wealth and power redistribution. It is a way for the UN, poor countries, and green companies to draw wealth and power from rich nations.
Former Fed Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said “I have grave doubts that a globalized so-called cap-and-trade system on CO2 emissions will prove feasible.” “There is no effective way to meaningfully reduce emissions without negatively impacting a large part of an economy.” “Net, it is a tax. Large numbers of companies will experience cost increases that make them less competitive. Jobs will be lost and real incomes of workers constrained.”
Chart 1
Chart 2
