By Nigel Lawson, former British Cabinet minister
Investing in sea and flood defences is a more sensible reaction to possible global warming than trying to cool the planet, a former British Cabinet minister told the Business Roundtable in Auckland yesterday. Nigel Lawson, Chancellor of the Exchequer in Margaret Thatcher’s Government and father of food writer Nigella Lawson, acknowledged there was evidence of global warming and that carbon dioxide emissions did play some part in warming the planet.
But he told the gathering that it was not at all clear how much CO2 emissions were contributing to global warming, and that humankind could adapt to whatever problems global warming caused. Lord Lawson, in New Zealand as a guest of the Business Roundtable, has written extensively about climate change and has raised concerns about what he says are the scientific uncertainties surrounding it. He told the gathering last night that mankind had adapted to many dangers over the years without the need for government intervention, but governments could invest in “public goods” such as adequate sea and flood defences. Governments in developed countries in this case had a moral obligation to invest in such defences in warmer developing countries, which were likely to be the biggest losers from any global warming. “The more one examines the current global warming orthodoxy, the more it resembles a Da Vinci Code of environmentalism. It contains a grain of truth - and a mountain of nonsense. See story here.
By Marc Sheppard, American Thinker
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.”
That’s right—The issue. Not the all too real, ongoing struggle against radical Islamic madmen. Not nuclear proliferation. Not even the truly apocalyptic potential fusion of the two, a prospect which recent events in Pakistan have chillingly served to advance.
No - the issue, insists Gore, is his completely conjectural Climate Crisis. As though to support such an absurd declaration, he then offered these keen observations: “The north polar ice cap is melting, the fires are burning, the sea level is rising, living species are going extinct. These and many other manifestations, including half the U.S. being in drought last year, are visible to the naked eye. We have got to recognize that even though it’s never happened before, it is happening right now.”
Now, virtually every claim in his first two sentences is technically truthful. Until, that is, augmented by the catastrophe-implying qualification of the third. And it is just that dishonest inference—that these occurrences are without precedent—that exposes the true measure of this man in oh so many ways. Not a single one of Gore’s five examples of what’s “happening right now” has, as he persists, “never happened before.” Not one. So in how many ways does Gore deceive? Given five deceptions in three sentences in one paragraph in just one interview, who can possibly keep count? Read more here.
The Washington Times
A misguided environmental-policy bill meandering through the Senate would slap U.S. businesses with pie-in-the-sky requirements for cutting greenhouse gases by unattainable amounts. The proposed bill introduced by Sens. Joe Lieberman, Connecticut independent, and John Warner, Virginia Republican, would require companies to scale back greenhouse-gas emissions to 2005 levels by 2012 and 1990 levels by 2020. Over the longer haul, the bill would mandate a 65 percent reduction in greenhouse emissions from 1990 levels by 2050. Companies that wish to exceed the greenhouse-gas limits would be allowed to purchase credits from companies whose emissions meet the standards, purportedly to offset their environmental impact.
Titled the “America’s Climate Security Act,” the bill’s end results would cause serious damage to our economic security and at best have a negligible impact on the world’s rising greenhouse-gas emission levels. It also does nothing to boost nuclear-energy development, one of the cleanest and most efficient energy sources. The bill fails to compensate and protect consumers from rising natural gas prices and harms job security by encouraging companies to move overseas to nations with less draconian standards. In short, the bill’s effects would land a crippling encroachment on U.S. power plants, factories and transportation sectors. One analysis by CRA International estimates the Lieberman-Warner bill will cost $4 to $7 trillion over 40 years.
The American Council for Capital Formation has concluded that the legislation’s emissions-swapping scheme would lead to “higher energy prices, lost jobs and reduced [gross domestic product].” During testimony before a House committee, Peter Orszag, director of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), stated that such swapping programs known as “cap-and-trade” would create “windfall” profits — profits that have even been denounced by presidential candidate John Edwards. The CBO has also cautioned that “price increases would disproportionately affect people at the lower end of the income scale.” It is baffling that congressional Democrats, who never cease to spout their populist rhetoric, are ignoring such a clarion call for ensuring economic stability among low and middle-income families. Read more here.