NASA satellite data from the years 2000 through 2011 show the Earth's atmosphere is allowing far more heat to be released into space than alarmist computer models have predicted, reports a new study in the peer-reviewed science journal Remote Sensing. The study indicates far less future global warming will occur than United Nations computer models have predicted, and supports prior studies indicating increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide trap far less heat than alarmists have claimed.Will this stop the global-warming fear-mongers? Of course not. Worse yet, even if global warming was a genuine threat, the cap-and-trade measures proposed as solutions are downright idiotic.
In addition to finding that far less heat is being trapped than alarmist computer models have predicted, the NASA satellite data show the atmosphere begins shedding heat into space long before United Nations computer models predicted.
Scientists on all sides of the global warming debate are in general agreement about how much heat is being directly trapped by human emissions of carbon dioxide (the answer is "not much"). However, the single most important issue in the global warming debate is whether carbon dioxide emissions will indirectly trap far more heat by causing large increases in atmospheric humidity and cirrus clouds.
Alarmist computer models assume human carbon dioxide emissions indirectly cause substantial increases in atmospheric humidity and cirrus clouds (each of which are very effective at trapping heat), but real-world data have long shown that carbon dioxide emissions are not causing as much atmospheric humidity and cirrus clouds as the alarmist computer models have predicted.
Real-world measurements show far less heat is being trapped in the earth's atmosphere than the alarmist computer models predict, and far more heat is escaping into space than the alarmist computer models predict.
When objective NASA satellite data, reported in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, show a "huge discrepancy" between alarmist climate models and real-world facts, climate scientists, the media and our elected officials would be wise to take notice. Whether or not they do so will tell us a great deal about how honest the purveyors of global warming alarmism truly are.
The Wall Street Journal blasted Obama's cap-and-trade proposal in March of 2009 in Who Pays for Cap and Trade?
Cap and trade is the tax that dare not speak its name, and Democrats are hoping in particular that no one notices who would pay for their climate ambitions. With President Obama depending on vast new carbon revenues in his budget and Congress promising a bill by May, perhaps Americans would like to know the deeply unequal ways that climate costs would be distributed across regions and income groups.Cap-and-trade confers benefit to existing polluters at the expense of new businesses who will have to buy credits from existing ones. It sets up lucrative trading schemes that will benefit Wall Street derivatives traders and those peddling otherwise economically nonviable clean energy schemes.
Politicians love cap and trade because they can claim to be taxing "polluters," not workers. Hardly. Once the government creates a scarce new commodity -- in this case the right to emit carbon -- and then mandates that businesses buy it, the costs would inevitably be passed on to all consumers in the form of higher prices. Stating the obvious, Peter Orszag -- now Mr. Obama's budget director -- told Congress last year that "Those price increases are essential to the success of a cap-and-trade program."
An economy-wide tax under the cover of saving the environment is the best political moneymaker since the income tax. Obama officials are already telling the press, sotto voce, that climate revenues might fund universal health care and other new social spending. No doubt they would...
Cap and trade, in other words, is a scheme to redistribute income and wealth -- but in a very curious way. It takes from the working class and gives to the affluent; takes from Miami, Ohio, and gives to Miami, Florida; and takes from an industrial America that is already struggling and gives to rich Silicon Valley and Wall Street "green tech" investors who know how to leverage the political class.
Cap-and-trade also benefits China, the largest, most flagrant producer of greenhouse gasses. China will not go along with cap-and-trade so driving up costs elsewhere only serves to drive business to China!
Finally, and as Forbes states, cap-and-trade is a tax on consumers who will have to pay for such nonsense.
If global warming is a problem, the free market (not derivative traders, not nonviable clean-energy schemers), will find a solution.
Fortunately cap-and-trade died in the US senate. Unfortunately, no amount of research is likely to stop GE and other beneficiaries (as well a misguided fools led by Al Gore) from pushing the idea.
Addendum:
Some people have attacked the credibility of the Forbes article. I knew in advance they would. They miss my point in writing.
My point is about the silliness of cap-and-trade as a solution. The Forbes article gave me a chance to reiterate those points and I took it. I side with the Wall Street Journal adding my own reasons as well.
My points are valid whether or not one believes in the merits of the Forbes article as presented.
Addendum II:
My friend "HB" writes ...
I have always said the global warming hysteria was essentially based on a hoax. Yet governments spend nearly $60 billion globally on such dreck every year!Exactly. Money flows to those bound to a set of predetermined answers that dictate 1. global warming exists in a meaningful way and 2. something sensible can be done about it on the slim chance it does exist in a meaningful way.
What would you do if you were a climate scientist, employed in a discipline that received a few 100 thousand dollars per year of government research funding to study global warming?
If they admit it's a hoax, they are jumping off a huge gravy train.
Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
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