Environment: Barack Obama meets with Al Gore to discuss global warming, green jobs and his energy team. Did they also discuss how their policies will put America's ailing economy in a deep freeze?
In advance of the naming of an energy secretary, an EPA administrator and a new climate czar, the president-elect consulted Tuesday in Chicago with the oracle of climate change. "How policies in this area can stimulate the economy and create jobs" was the topic, according to a transition team spokesperson.
Which reminded us that seven months ago, Obama promised that "Al Gore will be at the table and play a central part in us figuring out how we solve this problem." That's what we're afraid of.
In a video presentation to a U.N. conference held to revive the Kyoto Treaty approach, Obama concurred with Gore that warming science is "beyond dispute and the facts are clear." "Sea levels are rising," he asserted, "coastlines are shrinking, we've seen drought spreading famine, and storms are growing stronger with each passing season." Problem is, none of it's true.
The Gore-Obama meeting followed an announcement by researchers at Florida State University that the 2007 and 2008 hurricane seasons had the least tropical activity in the Northern Hemisphere in 30 years. Then there was a report in November on cyclone activity showing storm durations and wind speeds in 2007 and 2008 were among the lowest since reliable global satellite data became available three decades ago.
As for those coastlines, studies by the International Commission on Sea Level Changes and others show ocean levels in recent decades have actually fallen. The Indian Ocean, for example, was higher between 1900 and 1970 than it has been since.
Due to a decline in solar activity and other factors, the Earth is cooling, and has been since 1998. A peer-reviewed study published in April by Nature predicted the world will continue cooling at least through 2015. In the U.S., the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration registered 63 local snowfall records and 115 lowest-ever temperatures for the month of October.
Meteorologist and Weather Channel founder John Coleman notes that a significant natural warming trend peaked in 1998 with lots of sunspots and solar flares. Now the sun has gone quiet with fewer sunspots, and global temperatures have gone into decline. "Earth," he says, "has cooled for almost 10 straight years."
So why in an economy reeling from a market collapse are we still considering emission controls certain to kill both jobs and economic growth? The EPA said the cap-and-trade lunacy of the recently stalled Lieberman-Warner bill would have caused a loss of $3 trillion in GDP in a $14 trillion economy.
An analysis by the National Association of Manufacturers and the American Council for Capital Formation concluded that passage of Lieberman-Warner would by 2030 cost the average American household $6,752 a year, with job losses as much as four million.
The Earth is cooling. So is the economy. It's time to step on the gas, not regulate it.
Source: Investor's Business Daily
