Frederick Bastiat on Government Creating Jobs/Growth

"If employment's the goal, let's cut off everybody's left hand. Think of it as having to hire twice as many workers." Yes, yet another vivid illustration of his "broken window fallacy".

Spanish Economist, Gabriel Caldaza, On President Obama at One Point Wanting to Emulate Spain and its Green Agenda

"(I'm paraphrasing) Why would a country like the United States with relatively low unemployment and relatively low energy prices want to emulate a country like Spain which has an over 20% unemployment rate and skyrocketing energy costs?"............Now, to be fair here, Mr. Obama no longer seems to mention Spain (those leaked documents from the Spanish Socialist Workers Party in which even Mr. Zapatero himself admits that the green initiatives have failed and failed majorly - more so than even Caldaza has asserted - probably played a part in it) and, yes, for that I do give him some credit. SOME.

On Kyoto, Cap and Trade, Etc.

a) The climatic impact of each would be minimal (hell, even the protagonists of them admit it now) and b) the effect on the economy could potentially be ruinous (just take a look at what happened to Spain).............So, why are there still people out there advocating in favor of them? It would probably be best for me to just quote Maryland Senator, Ben Cardin, here, "Cap and Trade is most significant revenue generating proposal of our time."

To Those of You Who Don't Think that Big Government and Big Business Are In the Sack Together, This

"Kyoto is exactly what I have been lobbying for. This agreement will be good for Enron stock. If implemented, this agreement will do more to promote Enron's business than will almost any other regulatory initiative. Enron now has excellent credentials with many green interests, including Greenpeace, the Natural Resources Defense Council, etc.. This position should be increasingly cultivated and CAPITALIZED (my emphasis) on." John Palmisano in a memo to Enron director, Ken Lay. That sure as hell sounds like a symbiotic relationship to me.

Extremely Implausible

According to Al Gore, record low temperatures and record slow fall are also a by-product of global warming (this in that it isn't just warming but extremes in climate and weather that are being produced). The only problem here is that Gore never once made these claims in either his book or his movie, and that he only started making them ex post facto. It seems to me that this is simply just another example of people trying to make the facts fit the theory and not vice versa.

The Audacity of Occasionally Making Some Sense

Alright, now I'm totally confused. Just take a look at these two quotes. 1) "The forcings that drive long-term climate change are not known with an accuracy sufficient to define future climate changes." And 2) "we argue that rapid warming in recent decades has been driven mainly by non-CO2 greenhouse gasses such as chlorofluorocarbons, CH4, and N2O, NOT (my emphasis) by the products of fossil fuel burning." The first one is from 1998 and the second one from 2000. Any idea who might have uttered them, these quite reasonable sentiments? Try James Hansen!...Talk about a curve-ball, huh?

Have Another Schlitz, Mikester

My only real question is - why did this Mann guy stop at 1,000 years? I mean, if the dude really wanted to underscore the evilness of human civilization/advancement, he could have just as easily taken his little hockey stick figure back 12-14,000 years. That way he could have eliminated not just the Little Ice Age and the Medieval Warm Period, he could have also eliminated the Dark Ages Cooling, the Roman Warm Period, the Bronze Age Cooling, the Minoan Warm Period, the Akkadian Cooling, the Second Holocene Warming Optimum, the Egyptian Cooling, the First Holocene Warming Optimum, The Younger Dryas, the Allerod, the Older Dryas, and even the Bolling. The only thing that I can think of is that the fellow is either an ignoramus, or he totally thinks that we are. But, man, oh man, this guy really could have gone for the jugular had he wanted to (tongue planted firmly in cheek, obviously)..............................................................................................Seriously, though, I am not in any way, shape, or form trying to shit on the concept of sudden paradigm shifts. In fact, I'm pretty much on board with it as a general rule (Newton, Galileo, Copernicus, Watson and Crick, etc.). But I'm sorry, there was just something suspicious about this whole hockey stick thing right from the start; the manner in which the politicians rallied behind it, the woefully inadequate peer-review, the way that it coincided so perfectly with Kyoto, etc., etc.. And just this very concept of such brazen oversimplifying, the fact that these people focused strictly on one variable (man-made CO2) and disregarded the myriad of others (like, I don't know, the fact that we haven't had a major volcanic eruption with an VEI of over 4 in over 20 years). It just didn't seem like science at that point, and still.