Cap and Trade

EIN News says, "Cap-and-Trade's Unlikely Critics: Its Creators. In the 1960s, a University of Wisconsin graduate student named Thomas Crocker came up with a novel solution for environmental problems: cap emissions of pollutants and then let firms trade permits that allow them to pollute within those limits. Now legislation using cap-and-trade to limit greenhouse gases is working its way through Congress and could become the law of the land. But Mr. Crocker and other pioneers of the concept are doubtful about its chances of success. They aren't abandoning efforts to curb emissions. But they are tiptoeing away from an idea they devised decades ago, doubting it can work on the grand scale now envisioned. (wsj.com)".
This is an interesting historical account of the origin of an idea and its proliferation. It would be interesting to develop similar historical accounts of other myths, such as witchcraft, but that is not our main concern. The question is how to deal with myths. There is a television program known as "Myth Busters", but the "busting" always involves dealing with the hard aspects of science. Intellectual myths are a different matter, and until there is a revolutionary change in busting such myths, we are probably stuck with engaging in sometimes futile argumentation. Attempts to inject the practical aspects of science into the carbon dioxide greenhouse gas myth are many times overshadowed by the emotionally negative attitudes previously established and continued through fear mongering.
Crocker is to be tiptoeing away from the idea of Cap and Trade in carbon dioxide emission control, because the problem is too big to be solved by a Cap and Trade system. I doubt that. I suspect that Crocker more likely recognizes that his original idea did not involve a greenhouse gas myth, which is unresolved as to whether it is fact or whether it continues as myth.
Meanwhile, I urge you and your associates to kill any carbon dioxide Cap and Trade proposals, until such time as the carbon dioxide greenhouse gas myth is confirmed by hard science techniques, rather than an emotional feeling brought on by fear mongering, which may very well have been initiated by opportunities for financial profit.