Money for Status and Toys

E-mail to Congress:

EIN News says, "Cap-and-Trade Loses Lots of Steam As Senators Negotiate. The trio of senators negotiating a broad climate change and energy bill appears likely to abandon plans for an economywide cap on greenhouse gas emissions in favor of a sector-based approach that is winning cautious support by oil and gas industry leaders. (chron.com)".

There is a very interesting article entitled, "Seeking Funds for Geo-Engineering" by Cheryl Hogue in the February 22nd Issue of Chemical and Engineering News. Cheryl works for Editor-In-Chief Rudy Baum. Rudy has a BA in Chemistry from Duke and did some part-time work in medical school. He has swallowed the hoax of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations radically affecting climate change. As far as I can tell, he has never given justification for his opinion, although he and his staff continue to expound the need for climate control. I have previously claimed that carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere have little to no affect on climate change, because carbon dioxide is not significantly more insulating than other atmospheric gases and its concentration is very low. No one has ever challenged my position on this reasoning. Conversely, C&EN and others have continued to promote fear through their apparently unjustified opinion that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has a strong effect on climate change.

I strongly suspect that many scientists who have taken up the flag on climate change have done so on the basis of personal profit. It is easy to accept the questionable teachings of the East Anglia group, who invented the terms global warming and greenhouse gas, if there is an economic advantage to do so.

In her article, Cheryl Hogue assumes that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere affecting climate change is an accepted fact. On that basis, she goes on to record various technical suggestions for control of carbon dioxide, and categorizes this as "Geo-engineering". The next big jump is that she implies present funding for geo-engineering results from a an insufficient "hodgepodge of private money". She doesn't say how much that is but does say it includes $2.5 million of federal money. She regards this is picayune and is pushing for public funds. Note that any time a project requires substantial money, "public funds" must always come into the picture.

Philip Rasch is chief climate scientist at Pacific Northwest National Laboratories Atmospheric Science and Global Change Division. High sounding title but in fact he is an employee of a minor government bureaucracy. Rasch says he wants $10 to 50 million for research in this area. He then goes on to say that $22 BILLION would not be unreasonable Why? So he can be having a bigger, more important position in government circles, or does he have a scientific motive to obtain facts? What kind of research would he be pursuing? Would it be to determine whether atmospheric carbon dioxide has a real effect on climate change, or will he start from the presumption that it does and wander into "never never land"?

What are some of the projects, which other geo-engineers would like to squander public funds on? Prof. Lackner of Columbia wants a program to reduce the cost of "mineral sequestration" from $100 per ton of CO2 to $10. Why would we want to do that? Have we really established that that is a necessary objective? I suppose a project like this would be good for Lackner. He would have the prestige of operating a big project, and he could obtain a nice cut of the funds for his personal use.

David Keith is a professor at the University of Calgary. He wants to interfere with how much radiation is captured by the Earth through injecting aerosols into the atmosphere to act as insulators for incoming radiation. A nutty idea? Yes, but believable by many ignorant people, including Congressman. That's not to say that ignorance of congressmen is a derogatory statement, but rather that most congressmen do not have a basic understanding of science and the technology of engineering.

Prof. Jackson of Duke and Prof. Keith recommend the formation of a governmental interagency working group on geo-engineering. It would be analogous to the US Global Change Research program, an interagency group focused on climate-change research, apparently already established. Why establish such groups? The purpose is obvious. The more bureaucracy we have, the more money can be allocated to the individual bureaus from the federal budget and thus trickle down to private (usually University) interests, allowing funds for more toys.