Global warming: A bargain at $20 trillion

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon admitted Wednesday in a new report that the U.N.’s proposals to curb global warming will cost “up to” $20 trillion.

He also mentions that the transition to a “sustainable energy trajectory” will be hardest on the world’s poor.

Beware when bureaucrats use phrases like “up to” and start showing concern for the disadvantaged. It invariably means the figure they’ve given you is a starting point and they’re itching to use your money for someone else’s benefit, minus a comfortable percentage off the top for expenses.

The entire U.S. economy is about $13 trillion per year. One might think, therefore, after bankrupting a couple of modern industrial countries, the U.N. might have something to show for it.

But that effort would only get part way to the target of lowering greenhouse emissions to 40 percent below 1990 levels. Some scientists have estimated that to actually halt warming — halt, not reverse — would require the world to go back to 1920s levels of emissions.

But surely, while we’re reducing emissions, the world’s brains will be taking energy production into the future, right?

There are plans to develop biofuels, windmills and solar energy. In other words, we will drastically raise the price of food while creating less power intermittently.

Common sense also suggests we will greatly lower our standard of living, probably damage our health and generally weaken our ability as a nation to respond to natural disasters or man-made disasters such as, oh I don’t know, a war with crazed terrorists who will be using powerful oil-fueled technologies to kill us.

The U.N. report was issued in preparation for a two-day global warming “debate” planned for February. (Debate meaning participants will debate how much to stick it to the U.S., not debate the dubious science behind global warming panic.)

A key point of the “debate” will be how to replace the Kyoto Protocols with tougher, nonvoluntary policies.  This is what’s known as a power play.

Both the Democrats and Republicans have jumped on the Algorite train, so when we get a new president next year, look for the U.N. to try to assert authority over the United States, with global warming as the pretext. The more successful that effort is, the more we are going to see our rights and lifestyle disappear, regardless of what happens with the climate.

There is no shortage of vultures waiting to feed on the carcass of the Industrial Revolution. Where is the leader who will protect human liberty and lead us into the future?

Carter’s liberal Baptist primary convention

One would hope the “Celebration of a New Baptist Covenant” gathering in Atlanta today and the next two days might, as its organizers tout, help bring Christians together.

Unfortunately, it seems designed to do anything but.

The event, organized by former President Jimmy Carter (first warning sign), a longtime Bible teacher at his Plains, Ga., church, will “solidify the image of Baptists and Christians being able to cooperate with each other,” Carter claims.

He continues: “We’re not going to delve into past divisions. We’re going to try to show we can work in harmony.”

It all sounds warm and fuzzy, except that the other stated aim of the gathering is to counteract the influence of those pesky conservative Christians.

To be fair, conservatives were sent an invitation to the event, which Southern Baptist Convention President Frank Page rejected last year by saying, “I will not be part of any smoke screen left-wing liberal agenda.”

He was a little more diplomatic this week, saying, “I continue to be concerned as to at least some participants’ motives for this event. However, I have assured President Carter of my prayers for this meeting.”

His reservations about the gathering are understandable.

Several skeptics have pointed out the timing of the liberal rah-rah fest just days before the Super Tuesday primaries. Organizers deny any connection to the presidential campaign, and there are a handful of Republicans slated to speak, but prominent on the speaker lists are numerous Democrats, including Bill Clinton.

Also prominent are workshops on poverty, health care policy and other “social justice” issues intended to form political momentum against conservatives.

According to David Gushee, ethics professor at Mercer University and another organizer of the event: “The Baptist brand has been damaged over the last 40 years, especially the Southern Baptist brand, by the idea that conservatives or Baptists or Southern Baptists are mainly known for what they’re against, who they’re boycotting next.”

One wild card at the event is Al Gore, who is featured at a special luncheon. It will be interesting to watch the Nobelly-empowered former veep bring his cult of global doom into the midst of a genuine religious convention and see whether he can make the entire event about himself and his quest for power. Being a Southern Baptist himself, Gore may get a lot of momentum from the gathering.

Whatever happens, the last thing the event seems likely to create is Christian unity.

Democrats: Backwards to the future

The much sought-after endorsement of Ted Kennedy, the senator from Chappaquiddick, has fallen on Barack Obama.

In a press conference that more resembled a coronation, Kennedy gave a nod to Obama’s opponent John Edwards, and a verbal backrub to Hillary Clinton before endorsing the Man from Nowhere.

Despite his lack of experience, Obama is clearly now on the fast track to the White House. Unlike past black candidates, he has not only garnered the support of African-Americans, but he has avoided playing race politics, thus drawing support from white voters as well, aided by a breathless, doe-eyed press.

From a cursory glance, Obama looks like a long-needed step into America’s future, someone who can unite people as Americans, not divide them by colors. (Whether that’s true is another question.)

So why then, are Democrats trying to drag him into their neurotic desire to relive the past?

Perhaps it’s the Kennedy connection and the fact that Uncle Teddy invoked his brother’s name repeatedly, but television commentators wasted no time in rolling out the JFK tributes and painting an Obama administration as a new “Camelot” and the “best” of the magical sixties.

Just like the years-long effort to portray Iraq as another Vietnam, the attempt to revive “the sixties” reflects a state of mind that is both juvenile and self-serving, and it wore thin almost the moment it passed the lips of Chris Matthews.

Here’s a news flash to the aging boomers who still run the media: Younger folks don’t believe the sixties were the height of civilization, and we couldn’t care less about JFK.

What we want to know — what everyone should be asking — is how is Obama going to build up this country to lead the world in the 21st century?

Keep your Camelot fantasy. What we want is the dream called America.

Global warming: Suffer the little children

For much of the past week, the media have been treating us to endless stories about Roe v. Wade, generally told from the pro-abortion view. It’s striking how often abortion backers resort to the line about how government has no right to “touch” a woman’s body and “force” her to allow a child to live.

But as soon as the issue becomes global warming, these same liberals have no qualms about wanting to control your right to reproduce, via various population-control schemes.

One such scheme was proposed recently in the Medical Journal of Australia in a letter from Barry NJ Walters, Clinical Associate Professor of Obstetric Medicine and all-around scary person. He proposes charging a $5,000 tax on the birth of every child, money to be used to plant trees to “offset” the youngling’s carbon footprint.

But it wouldn’t stop there. Walters would also have an annual $400-$800 tax for the life of the child. (He doesn’t discuss what he would like to see happen should the parents neglect to pay this secular jizyah*, but one might guess.)

Quoting David Attenborough, who said, “Instead of controlling the environment for the benefit of the population, we should control the population to ensure the survival of the environment,” Walters explains that he believes doctors must put the environment before their patients.

Thankfully, Sydney’s Cardinal George Pell, who is in danger of becoming a hero of mine, spoke up against the fascist proposals of Dr. Walters and his supporters:

“I am not sure what is more extraordinary, that an obstetrician could hold such a view or that a leading medical journal could publish such a view, but either way, this is a striking illustration of where a minority neo-pagan, anti-human mentality wants to take us,” Cardinal Pell was quoted as saying by Christian Today.

“We have been subjected to a lot of nonsense about climate disasters as some zealots have been painting extreme scenarios to frighten us,” Pell added.

It’s disheartening to see other Christian leaders who go along with the global warming hysteria, failing to recognize it for what it is: a religion. Most religions have a plan for returning the world to what might be called a state of grace. Global warming’s plan is unusual in that humans are not participants in that salvation.

People believe many strange things in this world, and I can’t help but wonder what would lead anyone to think that the elimination of humans from the planet is a good thing.

We need more leaders like Cardinal Pell to guide us out of the advancing night of the Algorites.

* The tax prescribed by Sura 9:29 of the Quran, to be paid by Christians and Jews living in Muslim-ruled lands.

Abortion: National dialogue 35 years overdue

With thousands of people marking the 35th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision by protesting abortion, Washington politicians and liberal media commentators just can’t help wondering this week why, more than three decades after the issue was settled, can’t abortion opponents just let it go?

That’s because it never was settled. In fact, it’s hardly been discussed.

Under our Constitution, it is Congress that is supposed to debate and make the laws, subject to the approval or veto of the president. This is a key function that is critical especially on issues which deeply divide the country.

But Congress has never seriously debated the legality, not to mention morality, of abortion. There have been skirmishes to expand or contract abortion rights, to be sure. But on the issue itself, and the heart of that issue — the personhood of the “fetus” — Congress has always shied away.

The Roe v. Wade decision stripped America of its opportunity to have a national dialogue that could cut through all the bumper sticker slogans, special-interest propaganda and media misrepresentation, instead forcing abortion down our throats.

Not only did the court deprive opponents of the chance to have their views heard, but the court based its decision on the flimsiest of premises — right to privacy — without sufficient explanation. The court has never since adequately explained how one person’s right to privacy trumps another’s right to live.

The only way that the Roe v. Wade decision makes any sense is if the baby is not a baby, or even human, at all. The label “fetus” covers a multitude of sins, not the least of which is the avoidance of an honest debate over the importance and sanctity of human life, an issue that has only become more important with the advent of human cloning for stem cell research.

Much as with the current global warming scare, we are expected to accept the “consensus” opinion on abortion unquestioningly.

We need to have this conversation as a nation. The anniversary of Roe v. Wade is a celebration of 35 years of congressional cowardice. It’s high time Congress step up and do its job.

Stop global warming — eat a cow

Dr. Martin Hertzberg once famously compared the human contribution to global warming to “a few farts in a hurricane.”

The good doctor thought he was using humor to make a point. Little did he realize at the time just how seriously liberals and Algorites take their posterior eruptions.

Case in point: The Swedish Research Council for Environment, Agricultural Sciences and Spatial Planning has decided to give the equivalent of about $590,000 to researchers for the study of “bovine greenhouse gas emissions” — cow belches and farts.

Cattle, of course, are one of the primary culprits in global warming, according to the enviro crowd, rudely spewing geysers of methane across the Earth as a result of their (notably vegetarian) diet.

So now 20 cows at the Swedish University for Agricultural Sciences in Uppsala will be fitted with special high-tech chemical-sensing collars to alert researchers whenever Bessie burps the alphabet.

Project leader Jan Bertilsson says up to 95 percent of cows’ emissions come from the front end, and the study will try to modulate the methane content by manipulating the cows’ diets.

He made no mention of how he plans to control the experiment to filter out the “whoever smelt it dealt it” factor that may arise should his lab assistants happen to eat burritos for lunch. Nor did he suggest whether there would be any testing of flammability coefficients. But presumably, those high-tech collars will be able to sort out all that important data.

Bertilsson did say he would be in contact with Canadian researchers who also are in hot pursuit of bovine Beano, making this a Multinational Study of Great Import.

So put aside any worries that this global gas crisis is designed to find an excuse to take meat off your plate. This is high-tech, cutting-cheese science here, and — mostly because it’s Swedish money — I say, in order to save the planet, let ‘er rip!

Global warming: Those who don’t know their history

Among the many failings of the global warming hysterics, prominent is an apparent lack of any sense of the historical context of our planet and our politics.

It’s well-known that the Earth has been warming and cooling since before humans even lived on the planet. But when the alarmists speak, it’s with a tone that implies the unheard-of is happening.

You’ve heard the claim about the “unprecedented melting” in the Arctic that has left the Northwest Passage navigable for the first time … EVER! The truth, of course, is less dramatic, as records clearly indicate the Northwest Passage was sailed in the early part of the 20th century and even at times during the middle of the century, as well as in times before our modern era. If not, why would it have the name Northwest PASSage if you couldn’t PASS through it?

Then there’s the claim that the last decade has been “the warmest on record” because of rising CO2 levels. When you look at the numbers, though, temperatures for the past decade have remained steady (and some scientists think they will soon go down) despite continued rising of CO2, which just supports skeptics’ claims that CO2 is an effect, not a cause, of warming.

And let’s not ignore the claim that melting ice caps will flood the world’s coast lines. Again, looking at the record, while the Arctic ice is shrinking, the Antarctic ice has been growing to the effect of a net gain of ice coverage for several years. Looking further back, scientists have recently found that during a pre-human period when the Earth was far warmer than now, the ice caps never did melt completely, and sea levels actually dropped.

As the explanations of alarmists become more convoluted to try to maintain the appearance that their theory is sound, I’m reminded of the calculations of planetary orbits before astronomers realized that the Earth orbited the sun. As measurements grew more precise, astronomers had to add more and more tricks into their mathematical figurings to account for the non-circular orbits of the planets, to the point of even proposing planets that would cross part of the sky, double back in a loop, then return to the previous course. Similarly, the Algorites are falling over themselves to explain how snow in the Mideast is a symptom of warming.

Then, there is also the now well-documented cycle of the news media which was uncovered in a study, whereby journalists seem to move in a 30-year cycle between promoting panic over global warming and panic about a new ice age. Those who went to school in the 1970s probably remember the “coming ice age” stories and film strips we sat through in science class. It basically boils down to: The media need a looming catastrophe. Catastrophes are news. Nature being itself is not news. Global warming! Global cooling! Ozone holes! Killer asteroids! Uncommon planetary alignments! Dying polar bears!! Imminent pandemics!!! Millennial terror!!!! Bigfoot!!!!! Nessie!!!!!! These are NEWS!!!!!! GET IT?!?!?!?!?!!!!!!!!!! (For those who still don’t, I’m suggesting perhaps, just perhaps, the media might exaggerate a smidge.)

While thinking about the history surrounding global warming, I happened across the farewell address of President Eisenhower. It’s the famous speech in which he warned about the military-industrial complex, that bogeyman of the radical Left. But I noticed he gave another warning in that speech, a warning which has largely been forgotten but now seems prescient (formatting mine):

“Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.

“In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.

“Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.

“The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.

“Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.

“It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system — ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.”

There are some other points Eisenhower made in his speech, regarding the nature of our country, the source of our liberties and the enemies we face that I may address in a later post. Suffice it to say that Eisenhower’s words of half a century ago are still very relevant to us today.

Global warming: Hell’s still freezing over

According to the BBC, the Mideast cold snap is continuing.

Being largely desert, the region is often home to weather extremes, but apparently the severe cold this winter has caught many people by surprise, not least among them the  global warming alarmists, who have been beside themselves for the past week trying to explain how extreme cold is actually a sign of global warming.

If it is, it’s one that their climate models never predicted.

According to the BBC, 10 people in Saudi Arabia have died from the cold after snowfalls, temperatures in Syria have gone as low as minus 16 degrees Celsius, and Kuwaiti meteorologists are watching to see if the previous low in an open desert (minus 4 degrees Celsius, in 1964) is broken in the next few days.

Widespread crop damage in Syria, Jordan and Israel has officials worrying about inflation at the region’s grocery stores.

Loyal followers all, global warming acolytes are resistant to any logic that points out that their beliefs may be wrong. But even they can’t escape the cognitive dissonance of holding cold out as warming, and many of them have begun talking this week about climate change, rather than “warming.”

By altering the vocabulary, the belief is secured. Is severe cold a sign of climate change? Well, since the climate is always changing from hot to cold or vice versa, of course it is. It’s a bit like asking if breathing is the result of taking air into the lungs.

Global warming: Those evil industries

One of the key unanswered questions about the global warming hysteria is, if we start holding companies liable for moderating their impact on warming, which businesses will be hardest hit?

Environmentalists trot out their cast of evil characters on a regular basis: Big Oil, Big Defense, Big Auto, etc. (Notice how everything bad is “big”?) So the names of industries that will actually be most liable may come as a surprise to supporters of Big Environmentalism.

A corporate research group called Corporate Library ranked companies that both emit lots of carbon, directly or through suppliers, and those that had higher emissions than their competitors. Also factored in was company history of disclosing emissions and potential costs for cleanup to stockholders.

Among the companies Corporate Library found were most at risk for legal liability regarding greenhouse emissions were toymaker Hasbro, fiber-optic maker Corning, Burlington Northern railroad,  Royal Caribbean cruise line (must be all those trips to see the drowning polar bears) and lawn care company Scotts Miracle-Grow.

Meanwhile, utilities and other large emitters scored better because of their history of disclosing their emissions and costs to stockholders.

There are currently no laws regulating greenhouse emissions, so no lawsuits of this type have been filed yet. But the second government passes greenhouse regulations that make companies’ stocks or pensions lose value, watch for the lawyers to pounce.

So when Big Environment starts talking about saving the globe by taking down Big Oil, Big Auto, etc. realize they’re more likely to wipe out Big Toy, Big Cruise and Big Lawn Care first. Then ask yourself, do you really want to live in a world where Geoffrey Giraffe is the face of evil?

Fries with your double clone burger?

Some days, it’s awfully hard to believe in coincidence.

Just last Friday, the European Food Safety Authority, Europe’s equivalent of our own Food and Drug Administration, issued a draft report saying that meat and dairy products from cloned animals are safe for human consumption.

Tuesday, our own FDA declared the same thing.

Today, there is expected to be a report from the European Group on Ethics in Science and New Technologies on the ethical and practical implications of food from cloned animals.

Both the EFSA and FDA reports note the extremely high death and disease rate of cloned animals. Both note that there are no immediate plans to introduce cloned food into the marketplace. Both note the excessive economic cost of cloned animals that will prevent them from becoming direct meat sources, but likely keep them confined to the role of breeding stock. Both note that there are no known environmental impacts to cloning animals, but the data are limited.

With all of these factors working against the concept of cloning animals for food, one might reasonably ask why (and how) agencies in the U.S. and Europe came to the conclusion that cloned food is safe for humans, and what the motivation was for even looking into the issue.

A little digging turns up a familiar name, the Biotechnology Industry Organization, or BIO, a U.S.-based lobby group, currently led by a former member of Congress from Pennsylvania, that has been instrumental in the ongoing efforts to force this nation to fund embryonic stem cell research.

For those unfamiliar with stem cell issues, you must realize there are two basic cell types usually discussed: adult stem cells and embryonic stem cells. Adult stem cells have been used very successfully in a number of medical treatments for years, with no ethical issues to hamper their use. On the other hand, embryonic stem cells have not yet been shown to be of medical use, and the method of obtaining them involves the laboratory creation and destruction of human embryos — cloning. All the hoopla about funding, all the celebrity commercials you’ve seen, all the media hype about miracle cures has been about forcing government to buy into embryonic stem cells.

Two issues: agriculture and medicine. Two impractical, possibly dangerous, schemes: cloning humans for stem cells, and cloning animals for food.

It seems obvious that BIO’s real interests are not in developing a new food source or new cures, but in paving the way for acceptance of cloning itself.

I can’t help but wonder what the ultimate goals are. Money, certainly, but what else?

I think I smell a cloned rat.