 May 21 , 2009
Dear Friend, Our apologies for the lateness of this week'sWeGetIt.org Wednesday Bulletin. We wanted to include as much up-to-date information as possible on late-breaking developments in Congress. As you read this week's Bulletin, please be thinking of friends who would benefit from it, and then forward it to them. Thanks for your support! Cap and trade: Huge costs for insignificant benefits
A new study released by the Heritage Foundation finds that a bill co-authored by Congressmen Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Ed Markey (D-MA) working its way through the House Energy and Commerce Committee to fight global warming by a "cap-and-trade" system--issuing industries permits to emit carbon dioxide and then allowing them to trade the permits--would raise
The bill would also reduce gross domestic product by an average of $380 billion per year, or $9.6 trillion cumulatively through 2035; raise unemployment by about 1.1 million in an average year, and peak-year (2035) unemployment by about 2.5 million; and raise inflation-adjusted federal debt 25%, or $29,150 added debt per American, or $116,600 per family of four. The projected payoff? About 0.09 degree F reduction in global average temperature in the year 2050, or slowing allegedly manmade global warming by about 2 years. That works out to GDP loss from now to 2035 (i.e., not including continuing costs from 2035 to 2050) of about $1.1 billion for every 1/100th of a degree reduction in temperature. And that assumes that global warming is caused primarily by manmade increases in atmospheric CO2, which is probably not true. Reduce human contribution to global warming to about 10% of what was assumed, and the temperature reduction from Waxman-Markey would be only about 0.009 degree F, at a rate of $1.1 billion for every 1,1000th of a degree reduction in temperature. More green brainwashing in schools The craze over Al Gore's film An Inconvenient Truth has died down a bit, particularly after a British court found it so full of scientific errors that it permitted its showing in schools only when accompanied by a list of corrections. But don't look for Greens to stop targeting captive audiences of children for their propaganda. The latest craze is for The Story of Stuff, a 20-minute video that gives children its producer's perspective on the impact of making and marketing and using all the "stuff" Americans consume. It's not a bad idea in principle. But in this case, principle is lacking. The video presents only the down side of the "stuff." When it puts a skull-and-crossbones graphic beside factory smoke, does it also tell about all the benefits of what the factory produces? No. And that's the rub. Just as surely as industries should take responsibility for what economists call their "externalities"--costs of production that aren't borne by the producers unless "internalized" by some regulatory mechanism--so also critics of industries, when counting the cost of the externalities, should count the benefits of the activities that produced them. A chemical or drug factory produces pollution. It also produces, e.g., fertilizer or pesticide or herbicide that enhances crop yields and so helps make food more affordable, or medicine that heals diseases and saves lives. If you're going to report the negative value of the pollution, it's only fair and balanced to report the value of the products made. That's what The Story of Stuff doesn't do, and that's why it's not education, it's brainwashing. Rising atmospheric CO2 mostly natural? Fears of manmade global warming all rest on belief that manmade emissions of CO2 are forcing the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere upward, and the higher CO2 concentration is absorbing more infrared radiation (heat) that would otherwise bounce back out into space. Long-term measurements make it pretty certain that atmospheric CO2 concentration is rising. But the fact of its rise doesn't tell why it's rising. The assumption has been that, before we began burning lots of fossil fuels, it remained stable, or at least that natural patterns aren't sufficient to explain the rise in recent decades. But Dr. Roy W. Spencer, a climatologist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, has posted an exercise that challenges the assumption that CO2 drives warming. Spencer finds that the best fit of CO2 emissions and concentrations and global temperature occurs on the assumption that "only 10% of the atmospheric CO2 increase is due to human emissions (b=0.1), while the other 90% is simpl[y] due to changes in sea surface temperature"--i.e., that warming drives CO2. If that is true, then, even assuming (wrongly) that all the recent warming was driven by increased CO2, only 10% of the warming might be attributed to manmade increases in CO2. And if the actual increase in temperature from 1980 to 2002 was only about half what the alarmists claim, i.e., about 0.25 instead of 0.5 degree C, as this study concludes (PDF) , then total warming from manmade emissions would be only about 0.025 degree C. Now, please forward this message to your pastor, other Christian leaders, and friends and urge them to sign the WeGetIt.org Declaration, too! The more people sign, the stronger the message our leaders will hear that Biblical principles and factual evidence, not media hype about speculative fears like global warming, should guide our care for the environment and the poor.Gratefully, We value your privacy. If you received this from a friend, you can join the campaign at www.WeGetIt.org. This message was originally sent to [email address suppressed] because someone signed the WeGetIt.org Declaration as "fullname." Edit your name | Bulletin Archives | Unsubscribe | Inquiries |
