Re: [asa] Live - Gore on Climate Change

At 12:08 AM 3/26/2007, Merv wrote:
>then the only question remaining is can you impose your political
>will over the objections of your adversaries?

@ The "only question remaining", is the only question there ever was
in the first place. As I have said before until I'm blue in the
face,: FOLLOW THE MONEY. Anyone who argues otherwise is either
hopelessly naive, or using the hopelessly naive. ~ Janice

February 6, 2002 Why Enron Wants Global Warming

  "...a 1998 letter, signed by Enron's then-CEO Ken Lay (and a few
other bigwigs), asking President Cl*nton, in essence, to harm the
reputations and credibility of scientists who argued that global
warming was an overblown issue.

Apparently they were standing in Enron's way.

The letter, dated Sept. 1, asked the president to shut off the public
scientific debate on global warming, which continues to this date.

In particular, it requested Clinton to "moderate the political
aspects" of this discussion by appointing a bipartisan "Blue Ribbon
Commission."

The purpose of this commission was clear: high-level trashing of
dissident scientists.

Setting up a panel to do this is simple -- just look at the latest
issue of Scientific American, where four attack dogs were called out
to chew up poor Bjorn Lomborg. He had the audacity to publish a book
demonstrating global warming is overblown.

Because of the arcane nature of science, it's easy to trash
scientists. Imagine a 1940 congressional hearing to discredit
Einstein. "This man actually believes the faster you drive, the
slower your watch runs. Mr. Einstein, then why weren't you here
yesterday?" The public, listening on radio, immediately concludes
this Princeton weirdo is just another academic egghead. End of reputation.

The proposed commission was billed as an "educational effort" that
would lead to "subsequent policy actions," which the letter itself
recommended. These included a directive to "establish the rules for
crediting early, voluntary emissions reductions [of carbon dioxide]."

  And who was going to sell these credits? Enron, of course.

But what about Kyoto itself, which Enron knew would never be ratified
by the required 67 senators? In 1998, Kyoto enjoyed the support of
about 12 senators.

"We urge the Kyoto Protocol not be submitted to the Senate in the
near future, where pre-emptive rejection would remove the U.S. from a
political leadership role," said Lay's letter. In other words, Lay
wanted to derail the normal democratic process of having our elected
officials vote on a treaty, so that Enron could prosper.

While that was happening, Enron commissioned its own internal study
of global warming science. It turned out to be largely in agreement
with the same scientists Enron was trying to shut up.

After considering all of the inconsistencies in climate science, the
report concluded: "[T]he very real possibility that the great climate
alarm could be a false alarm. The anthropogenic warming could well be
less than thought and favorably distributed."

One of Enron's major consultants in that study was NASA scientist
James Hansen, who started the whole global warming mess in __1988__
with his bombastic congressional testimony.

Last month, he published a paper in the Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences predicting exactly the same, inconsequential
amount of warming in the next 50 years as the scientists that Enron
wanted to gag. They were a decade ahead of NASA.

True to its plan, Enron never made its own findings public,
self-censoring them while it pleaded with the new B... administration
for a cap on carbon dioxide emissions that it could broker. That
pleading continues today -- the remnant-Enron still views global
warming regulation as the straw that will raise it from its corporate
oblivion. ~ Patrick J. Michaels February 6, 2002 Why Enron Wants
Global Warming
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=3388&print=Y

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Received on Sun Mar 25 23:44:18 2007