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There have been many texts and many analyses written about big governments, specifically the tyranny of big governments. Those who have studied them notice big governments such as those of Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, Red China, Cuba, North Korea, Myanmar, and others, have commonalities among them. “The Road to Serfdom” by Nobel winner Friedrich Hayek, for example, is a short and excellent analysis.

There are invariably major losses of personal freedoms, personal liberty, speech codes, loss of freedom of the press, to assemble, of religion, expression, confiscation of personal property, confiscation of wealth, wages, and overall government sponsored destitution. Most have led in their final stages to tyranny involving huge terror and police states, rendering its citizens broken, deprived, and destitute.




Big Federal Government

Recently Congress attempted to impose its big government hand into CO2 mitigation. Called the Climate Security Act (sponsored by senators Warner and Lieberman) it proposed, according to the Heritage Foundation analysis of the bill, many economy-killing features. The Act relies upon 3 dubious assumptions: The climate is warming, man-made CO2 is the cause, and it is always harmful.

A look at the scientific literature shows that the earth has not been warming for 10 years and has been actually cooling for the last 7 years, man-made CO2 is not the cause of significant warming or cooling, and warming is not necessarily harmful. It shouldn’t need saying but life is better at the lower latitudes. CO2 is a nutrient essential for all life. Nonetheless, the Senate bill proposed an “economy killer” by restricting CO2 emissions, throughout nearly all human activities in American life. No government should have this much power, let alone one that espouses freedom.

Most Americans would never accept or believe that our leaders would seriously propose legislation that could destroy the American economy, and that would take our liberties.

As serious as this proposed federal legislation is, many in Congress are also compounding the economic threat by restricting the oil supplies, opposing drilling, wishing to wean Americans off cars and gasoline. Washington’s Senator Maria Cantwell was quite explicit in supporting this agenda (http://tinyurl.com/5gbold). The Senators seem to have forgotten that our constitution was written specifically to protect US citizens from heavy handed government. Leaders with such whimsical and shallow understanding of energy and how it is made, are frightening and dangerous.

Big State Governments

Now we find that it is being casually put forth at the state levels too, as if these were just routine legislation. The expansion of federal and state government bureaucracies in the Western United States is of major concern to many Americans in noticing the similar growing expansion of big US state governments into their lives, much of it menacing, unwelcome and unsolicited. What is going on in the Western states may be called “assisted suicide”.

This history of big government intrusions continues in the western US such as the Washington State legislature passing House Bill 2815 and signed into law by Governor Christine Gregoire. The bill spells out the need and a multi-billion dollar climate change mitigation program.

More bureaucratic activities have been formed such as the Western Climate Initiative (WCI). The WCI released its recent planning document entitled “Draft Design of the Regional Cap-and-Trade Program.” The document is available on the Washington State Dept. of Ecology's website http://www.ecy.wa.gov/climatechange/wci_stakeholders.htm.

Concurrently another bureaucracy was formed, the Washington State Climate Action Team (CAT). The big government fests continued when the big government CAT team was briefed on the status of WCI accomplishments to-date, and discussed these draft recommendations.

The driving force behind these massive well-funded government activities is the global warming scare in general, now renamed “climate change”, and a huge, largely wasteful program for mitigation of Washington State CO2 emissions.

Based upon incomplete climate “evidence”, the Washington State programs—and the thousands of proposed new hires needed to enforce them, will require billions of dollars to be spent in implementation, monitoring, testing, measuring, permitting, approving, auditing, recording, filing, and enforcement throughout, the program is grotesquely misguided, wasteful, and unnecessary.

The Origins of it all

Going back to the beginning of this giant scare story, the leader of the United Nation Environmental Program stated in 1992 “Isn't the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn't it our responsibility to bring that about?" -- Maurice Strong, (Strong was head of the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro and Executive Officer for Reform in the Office of the Secretary General of the United Nations).

Strong’s statement was quite clear in its intent, ominous in significance, and an integral part of UN policy. His statement is fundamental in helping us understand the essence of the global warming agenda at the state and federal levels as well. But it is not science, even though it may look and sound like it.

Secondly, the entire climate undertaking by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was not to push research toward a greater understanding of the very complex climate systems. The stated purpose of the IPCC with regard to climate change was to show man-made effects only. The effects of the significantly larger natural forces were to be ignored---vastly different from the purpose of understanding the complex climate-changing forces.

For example, the United Nation’s Framework on Climate Change states in its Article 1 defines “Climate Change” as “a change of climate which is attributed directly and indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and which is in addition to the natural climate variability observed over comparable time periods”. (Green Delusions, by Vincent Gray, p. 11).

Once we understand the IPCC’s original guidance to limit studies solely to human impacts on climate and ignoring the rest, the entire discussion changes. Given man’s small impacts the entire global climate, this effort seems to be more political activity than science. (See the Maurice Strong quote above).

Many in the media, Hollywood, educators, state and federal governments, (including the funding agencies providing $5 billion in climate research per year), nevertheless have failed to notice such limiting distinctions.

The level of science intolerance continues far beyond the Washington State policy makers. Since the policy makers have forbidden any discussions of the underlying and changing science, they have forced science illiteracy upon themselves. This, of course, will result in extremely misguided, costly, and intrusive policy, that is based upon bad science.

Even worse some of the operating assumptions appear to be questionable. Some of these include:

Climate change is always unusual---its not

Climate change is always harmful—its not.

The change is always caused by humans (especially in the capitalist and free nations---See Maurice Strong’s statement above)

Climate change, no matter its largely natural origins, no matter that it has been changing for millions of years, must now be stopped no matter how costly, how futile, and how harmful to Americans. Thus, when the CAT team, politicians, and others attempt to end the science discussion, they also cut themselves off from recent evidence.

One of these is that the global temperatures have not increased for 10 years. In fact in has declined since 2001. The CAT team is not alone in its self-imposed isolation, since many in the media have yet to learn this either, and are still repeating old mantras that the earth is warming and doom is imminent. Even though CO2 is increasing, the climate is not currently warming.

What Warming?

When the Royal Society of New Zealand recently claimed that the earth was warming, Society member and climatologist Dr. Vincent Gray responded:

“This statement is a lie. The globe is currently cooling. ……..there are currently nine authorities currently involved in providing a dataset of monthly global temperature anomalies. They are:

NOAA’s National Climate Data Center (NCDC, GHCN-COADS)

NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS)

Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia (HadCRUT2v)

NOAA radiosonde network , (RATPAC)

Hadley Centre Radiosonde Network (HadAT2)

University of Alabama Lower Troposphere TLT MSU (UAH )

Remote Sensing Systems Lower Troposphere TLT MSU (RSS)

National Center for Environmental Protection Reanalysis (NCEP50)

European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts Reanalysis (ERA40)

Eight of these authorities agree that the globe is currently cooling. Only GISS disagrees.” See http://tinyurl.com/logfl

There are many other serious yet unanswered climate questions about which we have little information. There is significant information that is directly contrary to what the dogmatic climate change “templates” require.

Americans would be better served if the policy makers paid closer attention to the continuing flood of new climate information. The fact that the climate is currently cooling, is unknown to the CAT team which now seems hell-bent on creating a multi-billion dollar bureaucracy, that is premised on warming which ended 10 years ago. We are not even permitted to ask why. Why the rush? Why the secrecy? How can we respect such heavy handed state policies, when the need for such policies and huge costs are not justified?

In the recent words of Christopher Monckton, science advisor to Margaret Thatcher, “We must get the science right or we shall get the policy wrong. There is no manmade “climate crisis”. It is a non-problem. The correct policy approach to a non-problem is to have the courage to do nothing.”

He continued to an Australian government official: “If you introduce an emissions-trading scheme, when it transpires that the scheme and its associated economic damage had never been necessary - and it will, and sooner than you think - you and your party will be flung from office, perhaps forever. It is, therefore, in the long-term vested interest of your party to think again.” Amen, Lord Monckton.

Michael R. Fox, Ph.D., a science and energy reporter for Hawaii Reporter and a science analyist for the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii, is retired and now lives in Eastern Washington. He has nearly 40 years experience in the energy field. He has also taught chemistry and energy at the University level. His interest in the communications of science has led to several communications awards, hundreds of speeches, and many appearances on television and talk shows. He can be reached via email at mailto:mike@foxreport.org

HawaiiReporter.com reports the real news, and prints all editorials submitted, even if they do not represent the viewpoint of the editors, as long as they are written clearly. Send editorials to mailto:Malia@HawaiiReporter.com

Cap and Trade: Economic Suicide