By Robert E. Murray on Dow Jones Marketwatch

Draconian legislation, such as the McCain-Lieberman or Bingaman bills, would impose arbitrary caps on the use of coal, despite the destructive implications to our economy. While some want us to believe that the science behind so-called global warming is certain, to the contrary, the actual environmental risk associated with carbon emissions is highly speculative.

It is a fact, however, that every proposal introduced to date would present a far greater risk that carbon-dioxide emission limits will destroy coal- and manufacturing-dependent communities and inflict great hardships on America’s families. Further, carbon capture, transfer and sequestration technologies have not been commercially developed, and the needed investment in them must not be thwarted by discussions of “global warming” legislation.

Some wealthy elitists in our country who cannot tell fact from fiction can afford an Olympian detachment from the impacts of draconian climate-change policy. For them, the jobs and dreams destroyed as a result will be nothing more than statistics and the cares of other people. These consequences are abstractions to them, but they are not to me. I can name many of the thousands of the American citizens whose lives will be destroyed by these elitists’ ill-conceived global-goofiness campaigns.

What will the worldwide environmental gain be from the pain that will be suffered by millions of American citizens? The answer: very little. Since 1990, U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions have increased by 18%, while China’s have increased 77%. China’s emissions will surpass ours by 2009. By the middle of the century, China and India will emit twice as much carbon as the United States and the European Union, combined.

The climate-change science is uncertain, and carbon-dioxide-capture technology has not been proved on a commercial scale. Congress must not be stampeded into pre-empting thorough climate research and development of carbon-capture, -transfer and -sequestration technologies with emotionally developed or politically motivated legislation in the current hysterical rampage to enact carbon-dioxide-limitation mandates. Americans must consider carefully the impact that climate-change legislation will have, not only on the environment, but on citizens, too. This is a human issue as well as an environmental one.  See full story here.

Today The National Center for Public Policy Research is challenging Greenpeace and its affiliates to disclose the sources and amounts of its 2006 donations exceeding $50,000. If it does so, The National Center for Public Policy Research will do the same.  We’re making this challenge in light of allegations in Greenpeace’s May 17 report, “ExxonMobil’s Continued Funding of Global Warming Denial Industry,” which suggests that it is improper for 41 groups, including The National Center for Public Policy Research, to accept contributions from ExxonMobil because the positions of at least some of them on climate issues is not precisely in accordance with those of Greenpeace.

Funding from energy companies is not what is fueling the vigorous climate debate. What is fueling the debate is genuine, sincere belief that great uncertainties remain - both on the science and on the appropriate public policy response. As the stakes, and the costs, of the climate debate are immense, it is entirely proper that many voices and perspectives be considered - not just those of Greenpeace and its allies. If Greenpeace disagrees with others, it might more productively use its resources debating the issue itself, rather than focus on the fact that certain groups also addressing climate issues receive less than 1% of its revenue from ExxonMobil—as ours did. Greenpeace has profited more from corporate largesse than The National Center for Public Policy Research and similar groups ever will. Think_Tank_Challenges_Greenpeace.pdf.  To view the PDF versions, you may need to install the free Acrobat® Reader.

Environmentally speaking, America has had a very good third of a century; the economy has grown and pollutants and their impacts upon society are substantially down. But now comes the carbon dioxide alarm. CO2 is not a pollutant--indeed it is vital for plant growth--but the annual amount released into the atmosphere has increased 40% since 1970. This increase is blamed by global warming alarmists for a great many evil things. The Web site for Al Gore’s new film, “An Inconvenient Truth,” claims that because of CO2’s impact on our atmosphere, sea levels may rise by 20 feet, the Arctic and Antarctic ice will likely melt, heat waves will be “more frequent and more intense,” and “deaths from global warming will double in just 25 years--to 300,000 people a year.”

If it all sounds familiar, think back to the 1970s. After the first Earth Day the New York Times predicted “intolerable deterioration and possible extinction” for the human race as the result of pollution. Harvard biologist George Wald predicted that unless we took immediate action “civilization will end within 15 to 30 years,” and environmental doomsayer Paul Ehrlich predicted that four billion people--including 65 million American--would perish from famine in the 1980s.

So what is the reality about global warming and its impact on the world? A new study released this week by the National Center for Policy Analysis, “Climate Science: Climate Change and Its Impacts” (www.ncpa.org/pub/st/st285) looks at a wide variety of climate matters, from global warming and hurricanes to rain and drought, sea levels, arctic temperatures and solar radiation. It concludes that “the science does not support claims of drastic increases in global temperatures over the 21rst century, nor does it support claims of human influence on weather events and other secondary effects of climate change.”See full story here