I have been rather quiet for a while because school is taking up all of
my time. I haven't had a chance to read and analyze  the article posted
by Gordon or the one referred to, below, by Brian - maybe one of these
days .....

In any event I just found this item in the Wall Street Journal,
addressing the "impartial" Stern report.
 http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110009181

Regards
Chuck Dolci

Brian Ellis wrote:

> Are you telling me that we can send an extra 15 billion tonnes of CO2
> into the air, each year, with impunity? Get real, Gordon. May I
> suggest you read the Stern report, published a couple of days ago,
> which impartially treats the problems you raise in much greater detail
> and with more accuracy. It is fully referenced and gives data from all
> sources, not just a single faulted unreferenced opinion. It is too
> long to quote here but you can find it at
> http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/independent_reviews/stern_review_economics_climate_change/stern_review_report.cfm
>
>
> When I see sentences like "Others are blaming malaria and malnutrition
> on climate change" I can place the credibility of your quotation where
> it belongs, in the trash can. No one denies climate change is
> happening, whether the cause is natural or anthropogenic. No one can
> deny that desertification, and food production loss, is on the rise,
> as a result, or that the range of the anopheles mosquito has increased
> (or, worse, that of the mosquito that vectors dengue fever).
>
> Brian
>
> Davy, Gordon wrote:
>
>> Environet has been quiet lately. Here's an essay on climate change to
>> stir things up a bit. See the end of the essay to find out more about
>> the author.
>> The short version is that irresponsible and unethical environmental
>> activists are demanding expensive changes (Kyoto) that at best would
>> have a neglible effect on the climate (which has been changing
>> without human influence for a long time) but a huge effect (negative)
>> on the third world. I will add my own comment: what do you think
>> motivates the activists? Altruism?
>>
>>
>>
>> Gordon Davy
>>
>>
>> ________________________________
>>
>>
>>
>> The real climate change catastrophe
>> Misguided energy policies are harming the world's poor
>> Paul Driessen
>>
>> Our planet is again warming slightly, and the weather keeps taking
>> unexpected turns. Many scientists say this is hardly unprecedented,
>> cause for alarm, or proof that humans are now the dominant factor in
>> climate change. Others disagree strongly, and point to every
>> snowstorm, hurricane, deluge or drought as proof that urgent action
>> is needed to avoid imminent climate catastrophe.
>> Britain's Royal Society wants ExxonMobil to further squelch debate,
>> by ending its funding of researchers who say natural forces are the
>> primary factor in climate change. (The Society didn't mention the
>> $250,000 award that scientist James Hansen received from Teresa
>> Heinz-Kerry for insisting that humans are the cause.) Others have
>> threatened climate alarmism skeptics with "Nuremberg-style war crimes
>> trials."
>> "Socially responsible" investor services refuse to recommend
>> corporations they deem insufficiently sensitive on climate change.
>> Companies have brought climate activists into their board rooms,
>> lobbied Congress for climate and ethanol legislation, and retooled to
>> produce new product lines they hope will boost tax subsidies, profits
>> and favorable PR. Meanwhile, headlines hype every scary scenario.
>> Asserting "the science is settled" ignores the debate that still
>> rages. Proclaiming that "climate change is real" ignores Earth's
>> constant, natural warming, cooling and weather anomalies. Most
>> important, our current knowledge simply does not justify imposing
>> inhumane policies on the world's poorest citizens.
>> Four times, mile-thick ice sheets smothered Europe and North America.
>> A thousand years ago, Vikings raised crops and cattle in Greenland,
>> while Britons grew grapes in England. Four centuries later, the
>> Norsemen were frozen out, Europe was gripped in a Little Ice Age, and
>> priests performed exorcisms on glaciers advancing toward Swiss
>> villages. The globe warmed in 1850-1940, cooled for the next 35
>> years, then warmed slightly again.
>> Detroit experienced six snowstorms in April 1868, frosts in August
>> 1869, a 98-degree heat wave in June 1874, and ice-free lakes in
>> January 1877. Wisconsin's record high of 114 degrees F in July 1936
>> was followed five years later by a record July low of 46. In 1980,
>> five years after Newsweek's "new little ice age" cover story,
>> Washington, DC endured 67 days above 90 degrees.
>> Studies by National Academy of Sciences, NOAA, Danish and other
>> scientists raise additional inconvenient truths that contradict
>> catastrophic climate change hypotheses and computer models. The
>> Southern Hemisphere has not warmed in the past 25 years. The "hockey
>> stick" temperature graph (which claimed 1990-2000 was the hottest
>> decade in 1000 years) broke under scrutiny.
>> The sun's radiant heat and cosmic ray levels affect planetary warming
>> and cooling and cloud formation more strongly than most climate
>> alarmists and models acknowledge. Contrary to 2005 assertions and
>> predictions, interior Greenland and Antarctica are gaining ice mass,
>> not losing it; Gulf Stream circulation has not slowed; and the US is
>> yet to be hit by a major hurricane in 2006.
>>
>> All in all, nothing suggests that predominantly human influences have
>> suddenly supplanted the natural forces that clearly caused climate
>> and weather cycles in past centuries. Yet, many still demand
>> immediate action to prevent future climate change. Few appreciate how
>> costly (and futile) such actions would be.
>> Government and private studies calculate that the Kyoto Protocol
>> would cost the US up to $348 billion in 2012, and average American
>> families would pay an extra $2,700 annually for energy and consumer
>> goods. In US minority communities, concludes another, the climate
>> treaty would destroy 1.3 million jobs and "substantially affect"
>> standards of living.
>> Globally, Kyoto carries a $1 trillion annual price tag, in regulatory
>> bills, higher energy costs and lost productivity, according to
>> economist Bjorn Lomborg. That's several times what it would cost to
>> provide the world with clean drinking water and sanitation - which
>> would prevent millions of deaths annually from intestinal diseases.
>> Over 2 billion of the Earth's citizens - including 95% of Africans -
>> still do not have electricity. That means no lights, refrigerators,
>> stoves, radios, televisions or computers; no modern homes, hospitals,
>> schools, offices or factories. Instead, people breathe polluted smoke
>> from wood and dung fires, and die by the millions from lung diseases.
>> The world should be rushing to their aid. Instead, in the name of
>> preventing hypothetical climate change, environmentalists and rich
>> countries oppose fossil fuel power plants in poor countries. To
>> "protect wild rivers," they obstruct hydroelectric projects. On the
>> ground that it is "inherently dangerous," they resist nuclear power.
>> In short, they are telling a third of the world's people:
>> "You cannot have modern, healthy, industrialized societies. Your only
>> option is trivial amounts of expensive, unreliable electricity from
>> wind and solar. To safeguard the world from speculative risks that we
>> are concerned about, you must endure life-threatening dangers that
>> perpetuate poverty, disease and childhood death in your destitute
>> nations."
>> To top it off, just as thousands of delegates and activist are about
>> to board CO2-emitting jetliners to attend the 2006 global warming
>> confab in Kenya, the European Union has proposed taxes on  imports
>> from China, India and other poor nations that are exempt from Kyoto.
>> The EU claims the exemption gives poor countries an "unfair trade
>> advantage" over EU countries that are struggling to meet even their
>> initial treaty commitments. (Some have increased CO2 emissions by
>> 20-50% since 1990, despite signing the treaty.)
>> Others are blaming malaria and malnutrition on climate change, to
>> deflect well-founded charges that their callous opposition to
>> insecticides and biotechnology is killing more African babies.
>>
>> For nearly everyone - especially the world's poor - it will be all
>> pain, and no gain. Even perfect compliance with the Kyoto Protocol
>> would result in Earth's temperature being only 0.2 degrees F less by
>> 2050 than if we did little or nothing. Assuming humans really are the
>> culprits, actually controlling theoretical global temperature
>> increases would require 40 Kyoto treaties - each one imposing greater
>> government control over energy use and prices, emissions, and
>> housing, transportation, heating, cooling and manufacturing decisions.
>> Alarmists demand that we handcuff modern economies, to promote
>> solutions that won't solve a problem which extensive evidence
>> suggests is moderate, manageable and primarily natural in origin.
>> Infinitely worse, they use faulty models, extreme what-if scenarios
>> and exaggerated fears of climate cataclysm to justify depriving
>> Earth's most impoverished citizens of electricity, water purification
>> and other modern technologies that would improve and save countless
>> lives.
>> That is unconscionable and immoral. It is the real climate change
>> catastrophe.
>> Truly ethical and socially responsible policies would foster robust
>> debate about costs, benefits, models and every other aspect of
>> climate change - and ensure rapid technological and economic
>> advancement (including modern pollution controls) in Third World
>> countries.
>> They would leave critical development decisions to the real
>> stakeholders: not climate alarmists - but those who must live with
>> the consequences of decisions that affect their access to energy,
>> health, hope, opportunity and prosperity.
>> __________________
>> Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Congress of Racial
>> Equality and Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow, and author of
>> Eco-Imperialism: Green power • Black death (www.Eco-Imperialism.com
>> <http://www.eco-imperialism.com/> ). CORE will host a November 29
>> program at the United Nations on how climate change policies might
>> affect industrialization, families and communities in developing
>> nations.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>