Access to Energy

TEMPERATURE 101

While such authorities as the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in its page 3A article on July 17, 1997, entitled "Animals, Plants, Glaciers Sending Warming Signals,'' continue to beat their Aztecan drums of global warming, and as the Clinton Administration runs headlong, like the Biblical demonized hogs, toward a cliff of international carbon controls, sophisticated thermometers on orbiting satellites still find no indication at all that atmospheric temperature is increasing. Less reliable ground measurements show no temperature fluctuations outside of the normal range of variability that long predates significant human release of carbon dioxide. This should at least be understandable by all college graduates who have passed a course in Thermometer Reading 101.

The new game is looking for changes that can be blamed on temperature rises, since temperature rises themselves are not occurring. Apparently forgetting that environmental and biological phenomena are inherently variable, the enviros now blame virtually every fluctuation on global warming regardless of the indisputable fact that the globe is not getting unusually warmer. Apparently, we need (this will get the Administration's attention) a new national program to teach thermometer reading to the American people. Additionally, it must be explained that in cause-and-effect arguments, it is unacceptable to argue that the effect has arrived before the cause has occurred.

Meanwhile, "The Global Warming Treaty: For U. S. Consumers -All Pain, No Gain'' Brief No. 238, based on a presentation by F. B. Smith, and "The Global Warming Game'' Brief No. 239 by E. M. Trisko and H. S. Burnett, published by the National Center for Policy Analysis, 727 15th St. N.W., 5th floor, Washington, DC 20005, summarize estimated economic effects of current global warming treaty proposals. For the United States, these include:

1. A drop in Gross Domestic Product of $150 to $250 billion.

2. Electricity and household fuel cost rise of 50%.

3. Gasoline price rise of 60 cents per gallon and gasoline rationing. 4. Sharply increased prices for food, medical care, police and fire protection, air travel, and most other goods and services.

5. Major reductions in industrial production.

6. Sharp increases in the cost of homes and fewer homes constructed. Those constructed would be substantially smaller.

Implicit in these effects are very large increases in federal and state taxes to pay for increases in government expenses and for transfer payments to the estimated 500,000 to 1 million people who would lose their jobs each year as a result of diminished economic activity.

In addition to job loss, suffering will be most severe for the poorest American households because the poor pay much larger percentages of their income for essential services such as heat, electricity, and transportation. These are the American poor - who will probably be saved from starvation by depleting American capital and savings.

Elsewhere on Planet Earth, the poor will have no safety net. Especially in Africa and Asia, a lot of people are going to die. They will lose energy, food, and markets for their labor. The global human carnage that will ultimately result from this insane program of energy rationing will be far greater than the mass killing from the DDT ban (currently running at one human death - mostly children - every 12 seconds) and the genocidal nightmares of Mao, Stalin, Hitler, and Pol Pot.

There have been many terrors and insanities during recorded history. Power hungry maniacs have caused so much human suffering over the past 6,000 years that the study of history is largely devoted to analyses of their activities. Never before, however, have so few people had such awesome power to impose suffering and death on so many -and to cloak their activities in a guise of assumed virtue.

Make no mistake about this, however. Their power is American power - derived from American technology and financed by Ameri-can taxes. Carbon rationing is being cloaked in a disguise of internationalism, but the raw economic and military power for its imposition is American. It cannot be imposed without American participation. If we let this happen, we shall be guilty of a crime beyond forgiveness -and that crime will not be forgotten by the survivors.



 • Earth, Physics, and Chemistry
 • 50 MILLION WASTED MINDS?
 • LIMITED BY LIGHT
 • FOSSIL FUELS?
 • TEMPERATURE 101
 • STARK RAVING MAD
 • GOOD READING
Vol. 25, No. 1

Newsletter: Access to Energy Newsletter Archive
Volume: Issues
Issue/No.: Vol. 25, No. 1

Date: September 01, 1997 02:39 PM
Title: Earth, Physics, and Chemistry

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