Till now, I have avoided more than very limited comment on the whole global-warming-carbon emissions controversy. But now that colossal spending and regulating programs impend on these issues, I must say that the Al Gore-David Suzuki conventional-wisdom hysteria is an insane scam.
The basic relevant facts are that carbon emissions are not the principal factor in global warming, and despite dire contrary forecasts and ever-increasing carbon-emissions in the world -- especially as the economies of China and India, representing 40% of the world's population, expand by 6% to 10% each year -- the world has not grown a millidegree warmer since the start of this millennium. And its mean temperature rose by only one centigrade degree in the 25 years before that. The greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide emissions does have a gentle warming effect if it is not counteracted by unpredictable natural phenomena, but cannot be measured directly against the volume of such emissions.
The chief source of apparently informed hysteria on this subject, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has estimated that the mean world temperature will increase by between 1.8 degrees C and 4 degrees C in this century, although a tenth of that warming has already failed to occur in the last decade. But even this prediction does not remotely justify all the cant and hype that the end of the world is nigh.