As the Democrat Leadership Plans to Cripple America with Cap and Trade, the Rest of the World Seems to be Coming to its Senses

From the Wall Street Journal's Kimberley Strassel comes this gem on the massive global shift in opinion on "Climate Change" based on evidence that the whole Al Bore putsch on "Global Warming" is rooted in deeply flawed science. Even so, Waxman, Markey, Frank, Pelosi and "Mr. Transparency" himself, the Great and Powerful BOZ, continue to ram "climate change" legislation through against both the compelling evidence debunking the validty of the "science" upon which they rely and the clear wishes of the American people.

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The Climate Change Climate Change

The number of skeptics is swelling everywhere.

Steve Fielding recently asked the Obama administration to reassure him on the science of man-made global warming. When the administration proved unhelpful, Mr. Fielding decided to vote against climate-change legislation.

If you haven't heard of this politician, it's because he's a member of the Australian Senate. As the U.S. House of Representatives prepares to pass a climate-change bill, the Australian Parliament is preparing to kill its own country's carbon-emissions scheme. Why? A growing number of Australian politicians, scientists and citizens once again doubt the science of human-caused global warming.

Among the many reasons President Barack Obama and the Democratic majority are so intent on quickly jamming a cap-and-trade system through Congress is because the global warming tide is again shifting. It turns out Al Gore and the United Nations (with an assist from the media), did a little too vociferous a job smearing anyone who disagreed with them as "deniers." The backlash has brought the scientific debate roaring back to life in Australia, Europe, Japan and even, if less reported, the U.S.

In April, the Polish Academy of Sciences published a document challenging man-made global warming. In the Czech Republic, where President Vaclav Klaus remains a leading skeptic, today only 11% of the population believes humans play a role. In France, President Nicolas Sarkozy wants to tap Claude Allegre to lead the country's new ministry of industry and innovation. Twenty years ago Mr. Allegre was among the first to trill about man-made global warming, but the geochemist has since recanted. New Zealand last year elected a new government, which immediately suspended the country's weeks-old cap-and-trade program.

The number of skeptics, far from shrinking, is swelling. Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe now counts more than 700 scientists who disagree with the U.N. -- 13 times the number who authored the U.N.'s 2007 climate summary for policymakers. Joanne Simpson, the world's first woman to receive a Ph.D. in meteorology, expressed relief upon her retirement last year that she was finally free to speak "frankly" of her nonbelief. Dr. Kiminori Itoh, a Japanese environmental physical chemist who contributed to a U.N. climate report, dubs man-made warming "the worst scientific scandal in history." Norway's Ivar Giaever, Nobel Prize winner for physics, decries it as the "new religion." A group of 54 noted physicists, led by Princeton's Will Happer, is demanding the American Physical Society revise its position that the science is settled. (Both Nature and Science magazines have refused to run the physicists' open letter.)

The collapse of the "consensus" has been driven by reality. The inconvenient truth is that the earth's temperatures have flat-lined since 2001, despite growing concentrations of C02. Peer-reviewed research has debunked doomsday scenarios about the polar ice caps, hurricanes, malaria, extinctions, rising oceans. A global financial crisis has politicians taking a harder look at the science that would require them to hamstring their economies to rein in carbon.

To read the whole of Ms. Stassel's compelling piece click here

See Left Coast Rebel's excellent related discussion here

See also, GetLiberty.org's piece here

CAGW.ORG's May Porkers: Rep. Henry ("the Snout") Waxman, D-CA and Rep. Edward Markey, D-MA

Reps. Henry Waxman and Edward Markey CAGW’s May Porkers of the Month

Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) today named House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and House Energy and the Environment Subcommittee Chairman Ed Markey (D-Mass.) its May Porkers of the Month. They are the ringleaders behind H.R. 2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (ACESA), the Waxman-Markey bill.

As the negative economic realities of the bill have become clear, negotiations have degenerated into a circus as Reps. Waxman and Markey frantically jump through hoops, adding and altering provisions to placate special interests and buy the votes of appropriately skeptical members of Congress from states which stand to lose if the bill passes.

The Waxman-Markey bill would purportedly do two things. First, it would reduce greenhouse gases by having the government set annual carbon emissions limits which would steadily ratchet lower. Second, the Environmental Protection Agency would distribute carbon permits to companies, and since some companies will be over the limits and some will be under, those whose emissions exceed the limits would have to buy more permits from the government or from other firms in this new government-created and managed “market.”

Waxman-Markey is a job-killer, with estimates of job losses ranging from 1 to 2.5 million by 2030. It imposes enormous cost burdens on companies and industries and will drain the nation’s gross domestic product by $9.6 trillion by 2035. It will drive consumer utility bills up dramatically, a fact that President Obama himself admitted during the campaign when he stated that consumer energy bills “would necessarily skyrocket” and Director of the Office of Management and Budget Peter Orszag reiterated when he confirmed that “price increases would be essential to the success of a cap and trade program.” Families will pay an average of $1,500 more in energy costs per year. Waxman-Markey would create complicated new financial instruments similar to those that played an integral role in the collapse of the mortgage market. Despite the authors’ claims that the bill would create jobs, the bill contains a provision that would grant any worker laid off as a result of the program a “climate change adjustment allowance,” three year’s worth of salary payments, health insurance premiums, up to $1,500 in a relocation allowance, as well as $1,500 for job search expenses.

For cracking the whip behind this Cirque du Disarray and for ballyhooing a bill that deserves to collapse under the weight of its own faulty assumptions, byzantine structural flaws, and astronomical costliness, carnival con-men Reps. Henry Waxman and Ed Markey are CAGW’s May Porkers of Month.

Citizens Against Government Waste is the nation's largest nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement in government. Porker of the Month is a dubious honor given to lawmakers, government officials, and political candidates who have shown a blatant disregard for the interests of taxpayers.

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UPDATE: For more on the sick antics of Henry Waxman, Hollyweird's very own Congressman, go to Left Coast Rebel by clicking here