Cap and trade, climate pseudo-science and corruption lurking behind the concept
A few days ago I was talking with some friends. These were intelligent and informed people, and some physicians were among them. I was surprised to learn they did not have a clear understanding of the "cap and trade" legislation recently passed by the House.
Later I came across a Pew Research poll that found that only 23 percent of Americans know about this concept. Fortunately, the legislation has been blocked in the Senate and may die.
In nutshell, cap and trade means there is a "cap" on the emission of carbon that an industry -- or a single plant -- can emit. This cap is set by the government. If the industry emits more than allowed amount of carbon, it must "trade" and buy the permission from someone else that produces less carbon.
Exchanges have been set up for the trades (for example, Chicago and European Climate Exchanges), which make commissions from such trades. Major corporations like Goldman Sachs, G.E., etc., have their hand in such exchanges, so does former Vice President Al Gore. They reap the profits from these trades -- Gore has personally profited, and stands to make more should the cap and trade legislation become law.
These schemes are also devised to combat a theory that carbon emissions from human activities create greenhouse gases, which cause global warming. The supporters of this theory contend that such global warming will spell the end of earth. Recently Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger announced that parts of the Bay Area will be under water over the next century from global warming. The government is making laws to reduce energy consumption in order to prevent such disasters.
However, there is a glitch. The entire theory of global warming is founded on something called the "hockey stick chart" created by Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University, who used data compiled by Phil Jones of the University of East Anglia in Great Britain, and theorized that there has been a rapid warming of earth in recent years. This theory was based on various temperature records from around the world and assumptions about temperatures from prior centuries. They further theorized that such warming is caused by man-made activities, especially carbon emissions from fossil fuel consumptions.
Then came Climategate. E-mails to and from researchers at East Anglia that were posted on the Internet indicate that the data, on which the theory and computer models are constructed, are essentially useless. If the numbers did not meet the requirements, they were simply thrown away or discarded. The computer programmer wrote that he "made up" some of the data as he went along, since they did not exist. In fact, evidence suggests the earth has been cooling since 1998. One of the researchers wrote that it is a "travesty" that the temperatures are not behaving in accordance with their computer models. In another e-mail, Jones wrote about a "trick" he used to "hide the decline" in temperatures suggested by an analysis of tree-ring data.
Since this fraud has been exposed, the Australian senate has defeated their version of cap-and-trade legislation, and the British have announced that they will re-examine 160 years of climate data for verification -- which will take three years. Jones has temporarily stepped down from his position and Penn State is investigating Mann's work. Yet the Obama administration is moving full speed ahead.
So, in short, the politicians came up with a scheme to impose huge taxes on energy production, which is the lifeline of nation's prosperity, based on a dubious theory, which has now been tainted by revelations of corrupt, incoherent, incorrect and incomplete data -- manipulated or made up out of thin air -- so that the "professors" could receive millions of dollars in grants, certain corporations can make billions of dollars in profits, and the politicians can collect trillions of dollars in taxes. That's corruption on a grand scale.
Oil production is a major industry in our Kern County. Such cap and trade taxes will effectively decimate the industry and will be extremely detrimental to our community. We should have an inherent interest in opposing such draconian legislation, especially when it is based on dubious pseudo-science.
The Californian has printed very little on the e-mail scandal, dubbed Climategate. I was not surprised by this -- there has been a literal blackout by the mainstream media on this "scandal of the century." Could it be because the facts do not fit the alarmist narrative?
Dr. Girish Patel of Bakersfield is the owner of Truxtun Radiology Medical Group.
