Say Anything Blog

The global warming scam carries a HUGE price tag!

According to a study done by the American Council for Capital Formation and the National Association of Manufacturers, the Climate Security Act could raise retail prices for gasoline by 77%-145%, natural gas prices by 108% to 146%, and electricity prices by 101% to 129% by 2030. These price increases won’t just hurt consumers directly, but will drive economic growth down as well. By 2030 the economy could be 8.3% to 8.5% smaller than if this bill didn’t pass.

That’s the equivalent of a pretty severe recession. One much more severe than the current economic problems we face today-and one that won’t end until energy prices are allowed to fall.

Gas and home heating prices are high now.  Do we want them to DOUBLE again for our children?  People are worried about the economy now, but we haven’t even had a month with lower GDP.  Lowering it 8.3% is enormous.  We haven’t had our GDP contract on an annual basis since 1991, and that was 0.2%.  It’d be like a depression we’d never recover from.

Here are some rational thoughts on the global warming issue by Jerry Pournelle today:

Modeling the weather is difficult. Modeling climate is more difficult. Most of the equations cannot be solved and must be evaluated by brute force numerical analysis. This is difficult math and requires very expensive computers. Getting those computers requires grants. Getting those grants requires peer reviewed publications. Getting a positive peer review requires, usually, that you adhere to limits set by the “consensus” position. The consensus today it Global Warming despite the evidence that there is something wrong with the model. The consensus is intolerant of dissent from one side, but tolerated the “hockey stick” with unpublished secret algorithms for years.

And that is our present state, except that the weather observers—those who deal with data—tend to dissent from the Global Warming Consensus. They see trends but not the trends that the modelers see. Moreover, no model—none—can take the initial conditions of ten years ago and arrive at the present, much less track reality over the last hundred years.

Simple Bayesian Analysis says that if you have two mutually exclusive and expensive alternatives, then it is better to spend money reducing uncertainty than in preparing for either of the expensive alternatives. If the Earth is warming we have one course of action; if it be cooling we require another (and of course ice is a far greater danger if it comes). What we ought to be doing it better observations to see what is happening. When we do gather more data we find that the case for man-made Global Warming is not in general supported by the data. Solar output and volcanism are the major drivers of world temperature, and neither is entirely predictable.

Both articles I linked to are well worth the read.