Gore's Retirement Scam, Redux

Hopefully the morticians are starting to drive nails, such as this article, into the coffin lid of the shameful flim flam know as global warming. From the Toronto Sun:

Over the past 18 months I've written scores of columns on global warming.

I've read nine books on the subject so far (six by authors supporting the theory of man-made global warming and the Kyoto accord, three by skeptics).

I've watched three documentaries, including Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth and two by skeptics.

I've read hundreds of articles and now spend at least two to four hours each week researching this issue alone.

The best journalism, pro and con, is coming out of the United Kingdom and Europe, where carbon taxes and cap-and-trade are already adversely affecting millions of people because of skyrocketing energy prices.

Al Gore's retirement plan in action. Hundreds of millions of people being forced to contribute to Gore's 401-stic(k)itinyourass.

I'm not an expert. But I am an engaged lay person who now knows enough that I can tell when someone is bullsh****** us.

Here's what I've figured out so far.

Tighten yer lugnuts, the road to a carbon neutral lifetyle is getting bumpy.

First, Canadians care about this issue, passionately. I've never had as strong a response from readers as I've had to these columns in more than 20 years of column-writing.

Second, most politicians, regardless of party, don't know what they're talking about.

They don't understand the theory of anthropogenic global warming, or what is known with confidence and what isn't.

They don't know the difference between the Earth's natural greenhouse effect and man-made greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

They don't realize the economic dislocation involved in moving from a carbon-based to a carbon-free economy.

Most care about the issue only in so far as it can help them get elected, which, given the implications and what's at stake for ordinary citizens, is recklessly irresponsible.

Most politicians don't know what the Kyoto accord says.

Economic treaty

They think it's an environmental treaty. It's not.

It's an economic treaty.

Its purpose is not to reduce GHG emissions -- under it GHG emissions are guaranteed to rise.

Kyoto is a United Nations treaty designed to transfer wealth from the developed world to the developing world by charging the developed world for the right to emit carbon.

While still VP, Gore must have been approached by some mega investor types who saw his eco-nuttiness as a way to influence the markets. Think of it, Gore's investment firm, Generation Investment Management, is based in London, not in the US where the loons are not quite completely in charge of things - yet. So the stage was set for the redistribution of Europe's wealth, as it is being set here with the demand for reduction in greenhouse gases. And the price? Gore and his buddies are looking at slicing up a $3 trillion pie.

The main drivers of Kyoto were, ironically, the U.K. and Europe, along with the developing world, led by China, now the world's largest GHG emitter.

Last year, China alone, exempt from reducing its own GHG emissions, was responsible for two-thirds of the total global increase in these emissions, although its per capita emissions remain well below that of the United States, the second-largest emitter.

In any event, the developing world, the U.K. and Europe each saw in Kyoto (although it's now backfiring on the U.K. and Europe) not a way to save the planet, but to hobble the U.S. economy to their advantage.

For the developing world, Kyoto, if ratified by the U.S., would place severe restrictions on American industrial activity from which developing nations are exempt.

Europe and the U.K. crafted Kyoto to give them an undeserved economic advantage over the U.S.

There is more to this article, particularly how European countries took credit for an overall reduction of carbon emissions that resulted from the economic collapse of the USSR in 1990.

By using 1990, a year before the Soviet Union disintegrated and its carbon emissions dramatically dropped because its economy collapsed, Europe was able to claim much of this emissions drop for itself, as major parts of the former
Soviet empire were absorbed by it.

It was an accounting trick. Nothing more.

The selection of 1990 also gave an undeserved bonus to the U.K., which was moving, for reasons unrelated to Kyoto, from coal to natural gas as an energy source, which emits less GHG than coal.

The Americans, wisely, refused to ratify Kyoto, even when Gore was their VP and lobbying for it.

Unfortunately, we did, either because the previous Liberal government didn't understand that the economic penalties Kyoto aimed at the U.S. would also apply
to us, or because Jean Chretien, in his rush to craft himself an environmental legacy, didn't care.