April 10, 2013

By Warren Duffy

If you are looking for employment where you can be mistaken time and time again and still maintain your job, try weather forecasting. Predicting the weather day to day, seven to 10 days in advance is challenging.

Yet there are those in that vocation still predicting “climate change” in seven, 10, 20 and even 50 years with determined veracity. It is such predictions that brought us California’s AB 32, the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, and similar legislation.

The debate on global warming is rapidly escalating as the assumption, touted by so many climate scientists, that carbon dioxide (CO2) is extremely harmful to the atmosphere, is now being questioned. According to a new NASA study, could this pesky gas actually be cooling the planet?

And article in the Washington Post by Ed Rogers is headlined, “The Insiders: Voters are cool and the planet is too.” He cites a recent Pew Research poll showing fewer and fewer Americans say global warming is a serious problem.

Add to that more research showing the globe has not warmed in the last 15 years, and one begins to wonder if AB 32 is out of step with 2013 climate reality seven years after it was signed into law by then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Pause for concern

In England, one of the leading proponents of the alarming global warming scenario, London Telegraph writer Geoffrey Lean, just wrote an article titled, “Global Warming: time to rein back on doom and gloom?” He believes the lull in global warming for 16 of the last 18 years has given him pause for concern, and now is reconsidering his view on the subject.

Of course, the U.S. Department of Energy has tried its hand at forecasting. Time and time again the USDE has thrown all its marbles at green technology in an effort to wean the country from using those harmful fossil fuels. Their “forecasts” have been no more accurate than the global warming predictions of 20 years ago.

Whether the new generation of climate change projects will turn out to be as counter productive as Fisker electric autos or Solyndra’s circular solar panels is to anyone’s guess.

Years ago, when the earth’s climate stats began to level off and didn’t reflect the abrupt “hockey stick” peak climate scientists had forecast, some clever person replaced “global warming” with “climate change,” which can mean literally anything anyone wants it to mean.

If there is a drought, the climate alarmist claims it is an obvious result of climate change. If there are storms and floods — climate change. A hurricane decimates the East Coast of our country — climate change. The term covers anything and everything.

Even Wall Street is in the business of “global warming” theatrics. An article written in Bloomberg Businessweek reported hedge fund experts on Wall Street are putting their risk capital investments into climate change business ventures where the world warms and the oceans rise. One example: the private equity firm KKR snagged a 25 percent stake in Nephila Capital, which trades in derivatives that hedge against natural catastrophes and extreme weather events, such as last year’s Hurricane Sandy.

The California Air Resources Board has moved its Website homepage away from “global warming” to “climate change projects.” But they can’t do anything but still devote a page titled, “AB 32: The Global Warming Solutions Act.” It would take an act of the Legislature to update the bill’s name. Which would be embarrassing, and remind everyone of the lack of global warming.

AB 32 and similar laws, such as SB 375, were based on the “global warming” alarmism of the the mid-2000s. That was the period of Al Gore’s 2006 documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth.” Its untruths garnered him an Academy Award and a Nobel Peace Prize.

CARB’s quarterly cap-and-trade auctions that began in November 2012 now are justified not by “global warming,” but “climate change.”

New forecasts

In light of the apparently erroneous predictions of global warming for the last quarter century, what if the forecasts for the next 75 years are equally wrong? What if global warming never happens? Then, why does California need a “Global Warming Solutions Act” complete with cap and trade?

Similarly, what if the earth’s temperature increases at precisely the rate the computer programs predict, between one and two degrees Celsius by 2099? Would it be less expensive and make even more sense to adjust accordingly as the environment changes, rather than taking drastic steps to avoid a predicted climate cataclysm that might never happen?

Lord Christopher Monckton was the energy advisor to the late British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. As he said in his 2012 presentation to the California Legislature, making a comparison to global warming, “If the cost of replacing an automobile is less than the cost of insuring the vehicle from an unforeseen catastrophe, why buy expensive auto insurance?”

What are the Sacramento politicians missing?

Warren Duffy is an award-winning talk show host, columnist and author, with an Honorary Doctorate in Theology from the California Pacific School of Theology. Check out his new book, “The Green Tsunami: The Tidal Wave of Eco-Babble Drowning Us All.”