The Science and Public Policy Institute (SPPI, www.scienceandpublicpolicy.org) released its newest study this week, "Climate Money" written by Joanne Nova (19 pages, pdf).
Below is the "Summary for Policy Makers":
"The US government has spent over $79 billion since 1989 on policies related to climate change, including science and technology research, administration, education campaigns, foreign aid, and tax breaks.
Despite the billions: 'audits' of the science are left to unpaid volunteers. A dedicated but largely uncoordinated grassroots movement of scientists has sprung up around the globe to test the integrity of the theory and compete with a well funded highly organized climate monopoly. They have exposed major errors.
Carbon trading worldwide reached $126 billion in 2008. Banks are calling for more carbon‐trading. And experts are predicting the carbon market will reach $2 ‐ $10 trillion making carbon the largest single commodity traded.
Meanwhile in a distracting sideshow, Exxon‐Mobil Corp is repeatedly attacked for paying a grand total of $23 million to skeptics—less than a thousandth of what the US government has put in, and less than one five‐thousandth of the value of carbon trading in just the single year of 2008.
The large expenditure in search of a connection between carbon and climate creates enormous momentum and a powerful set of vested interests. By pouring so much money into a question have we inadvertently created a self‐fulfilling prophesy instead of an unbiased investigation?
Can science survive the vice‐like grip of politics and finance?"
The full report can be viewed at http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/originals/climate_money.pdf
Actually, $79 billion over 19 years (1989 to 2008) is peanuts as far as the US government is concerned. President Obama’s cap and trade bill alone will cost around $5.7 trillion of carbon tax revenues over 18 years (2012 to 2030), which is around $317 billion/year, and that’s for federal carbon taxes alone. Excluded there are carbon taxes by various states, counties and cities.
So spend $79 billion, even $150 billion over 20 years, scare the American public, scare the world, lie if you must -- for big carbon tax revenues in the future, for income taxes from carbon trading among private corporations, for the power to tell people what energy sources they can use and what they cannot use, for the arbitrary power to give away subsidies to favored power plants (solar, wind, etc.) regardless of the amount of electricity those power plants can produce, and so on.
This is not just a big scam. It is monster scam. No wonder why the ecological socialists and rent-seekers are riding vehemently on this climate hysteria.
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Last July 02, 2009, I write this:
Politics Over Science: the US Climate Bill
I am posting here a letter by some top notch American scientists to the US Congress. I have personally heard some of them in an international climate change conference in NY last March.
Short but very clear message. Among the signatories here, Dr. Fred Singer is a co-author of the comprehensive report, "Climate Change Reconsidered" by the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC, http://www.nipccreport.org/), an 880-pages paper explaining why the UN IPCC 4th Assessment Report (AR4) is wrong.
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TO THE CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES: YOU ARE BEING DECEIVED ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING
You have recently received an Open Letter from the Woods Hole Research Center, exhorting you to act quickly to avoid global disaster. The letter purports to be from independent scientists, but that Center is the former den of the President’s science advisor, John Holdren, and is far from independent. This is the same science advisor who has given us predictions of “almost certain” thermonuclear war or eco-catastrophe by the year 2000, and many other forecasts of doom that somehow never seem to arrive on time.
The facts are:
The sky is not falling; the Earth has been cooling for ten years, without help.
The present cooling was NOT predicted by the alarmists’ computer models, and has come as an embarrassment to them.
The finest meteorologists in the world cannot predict the weather two weeks in advance, let alone the climate for the rest of the century. Can Al Gore? Can John Holdren?
We are flooded with claims that the evidence is clear, that the debate is closed, that we must act immediately, etc, but in fact
THERE IS NO SUCH EVIDENCE; IT DOESN’T EXIST.
The proposed legislation would cripple the US economy, putting us at a disadvantage compared to our competitors. For such drastic action, it is only prudent to demand genuine proof that it is needed, not guesswork, and not false claims about the state of the science.
DEMAND PROOF, NOT CONSENSUS
Finally, climate alarmism pays well. Many alarmists are profiting from their activism. There are billions of dollars floating around for the taking, and being taken.
Robert H. Austin
Professor of Physics
Princeton University
Fellow APS, AAAS
American Association of Arts and Science Member National Academy of Sciences
William Happer
Cyrus Fogg Brackett Professor of Physics
Princeton University
Fellow APS, AAAS
Member National Academy of Sciences
S. Fred Singer
Professor of Environmental Sciences Emeritus, University of Virginia
First Director of the National Weather Satellite Service
Fellow APS, AAAS, AGU
Roger W. Cohen
Manager, Strategic Planning and Programs, ExxonMobil Corporation (retired)
Fellow APS
Harold W. Lewis
Professor of Physics Emeritus
University of California at Santa Barbara
Fellow APS, AAAS; Chairman, APS Reactor Safety Study
Laurence I. Gould
Professor of Physics
University of Hartford
Chairman (2004), New England Section of APS
Richard Lindzen
Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Fellow American Academy of Arts and Sciences, AGU, AAAS, and AMS
Member Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters
Member National Academy of Sciences
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