Deutsche Bank Puts Greenhouse Gases Doomsday Clock In Madison Square Garden
So why would a bank want to do such a thing? Well, Deutsche Bank has positioned itself to be a major player in any carbon cap and trade system instituted by the federal government, and thus stands to rake in a lot of money if Americans can be convinced that such a system is warranted to control carbon emissions.
Basically, it’s corporate rent seeking. Deutsche Bank wants to profit by having the American government manufacture a market for a service the company wants to provide.
MIT’s John Reilly said the counter would lag slightly behind real time as the rate of increase in emissions would be based on data collected on a monthly basis. He also confirmed that the effect of seasonal variations had been stripped out from the data to give a better picture of the underlying rate of interest.
But he insisted that with the counter drawing on measurements from dozens of atmospheric stations around the world, it presented the most up-to-date information on greenhouse gas emissions.
I’m not sure this is such a great move in terms of marketing. The National Debt Clock has been around since 1989, and what impact has that had? Well late last year they had to add more decimal places to the clock, if that tells you anything.
But at least the national debt clock is calculating something we actually know to be a bad thing. The science behind global warming, and the idea human activity is going to bring about sort of an ice-cap-melting apocalypse, just isn’t there. Maybe it will be one day, but there is no sound scientific basis for cap and trade policies right now.
There simply isn’t.
