If we weren't talking so much about health care right now, you can bet cap-and-trade would be the big story on the front pages of newspapers. While it is nice to say we are winning the debate on Obamacare, we're not quite yet at the point where we can safely say it is dead. The recent preliminary analysis by the CBO of the Baucus Bill, which alleges a deficit neutral health care plan (as long as there are billions in new taxes) has offered a small glimmer of hope for those still trying to figure out how to get Obamacare passed.
Cap-and-trade isn't dead yet either, but it should be. We've got Waxman-Markey in the House. Boxer-Kerry in the Senate. The costs of cap-and-trade have been discussed here before...but,now I'd like look into whether there is actually a problem that needs to be fixed.
Many would say that as good as the American health care system is, there are rooms for improvement. But, when it comes to global warming, those who disagree with the conventional wisdom that a) global warming exists, b) that it is man-made, and c) if we don't do something soon the world will end aren't treated seriously by the so-called consensus of science. Al Gore would much rather speak to a group of people who agree with him, than debate someone who disagrees with him. Why would someone who believe he has the unified opinion of the science community avoid the opportunity to debate someone who he clearly thinks is full of misinformation?
Perhaps, the answer is out there in plain sight.
BBC climate correspondent Paul Hudson, wrote a story yesterday headlined, "What happened to global warming," and points out a very inconvenient truth against the man-made global warming theory:
This headline may come as a bit of a surprise, so too might that fact that the warmest year recorded globally was not in 2008 or 2007, but in 1998.
But it is true. For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures.
And our climate models did not forecast it, even though man-made carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise.
Research suggests the answer to the climate change question is in the oceans.
According to research conducted by Professor Don Easterbrook from Western Washington University last November, the oceans and global temperatures are correlated.
The oceans, he says, have a cycle in which they warm and cool cyclically. The most important one is the Pacific decadal oscillation (PDO).
For much of the 1980s and 1990s, it was in a positive cycle, that means warmer than average. And observations have revealed that global temperatures were warm too.
But in the last few years it has been losing its warmth and has recently started to cool down.
These cycles in the past have lasted for nearly 30 years.
So, there might be evidence that carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases are not cause of rising global temperatures -- which are not even rising, anyway. Certainly makes cap-and-trade look even more like a raw deal.