The Climate Change Fear Mongers Are Still At It

The November 28 issue of Chemical and Engineering News reported that new talks would begin on that date in South Africa concerning the curbing of greenhouse gas emissions. They really mean reducing CO2. They also plan to brace the world for the worsening impacts of climate change, which are detailed in a recently released UN report.

I have not seen the UN report, but the C&E News article includes a picture with a caption that says "A new report says storms like Hurricane Irene are likely to become more intense but not more frequent". It would be interesting to see how they could make this prediction. I also note that in the subsequent issue of C&E News on December 5, there is no mention of the results of the meeting. Hopefully, it was a bust.

"Negotiators", and I use the term loosely as reported by C&E News, are trying to get China to reduce its CO2 emissions, but China has wisely not agreed. The US continues to sit on the fence by saying that if China doesn't agree, it will also not agree. While I don't like the rationale, at least it is progress in going nowhere on limiting CO2 emissions.

For those who may not have been following the aspects of CO2 emissions, the claim is that CO2 leads to global warming, with disastrous effects. However, the fact is that there are no data to support this theory. The basis is not so much an environmental concern but rather a government interest in obtaining additional tax revenues through a carbon tax. Another negative for even considering it is that it would cost trillions of dollars to control CO2 emissions unnecessarily from power plants and other major sources, at a time when the US is very strongly in deficit, with a completely unbalanced budget.