Getting Greener and Greener by Bill Bonner

A man who doubts the global warming hypothesis is asking for trouble. He
might just as well question the virgin birth in St. Peter's or praise a
sirloin steak in Benares. He is sure to be damned by everyone.

The whole earth is going green. Every newspaper tells us so. And anyone
who stands in the way of this great trend will be treated like a holocaust
denier - that is, like a wicked kook.

Communism, famine, plague, the Huns - all the old enemies are in retreat.
Now, climate change and terrorism are the threats du jour. All a good
citizen has to do is pick one...or both. Then, he can be properly lined up
and enrolled in the crusade - cajoled, connived and conscripted into
fighting a battle in which he is almost sure to be the loser.

Climate change got off on the wrong foot in 1974, when TIME magazine's
cover pronounced the coming of "Another Ice Age," somewhat prematurely, it
turned out. Now, the same TIME magazine is warning us that the old globe
is on the verge of burning up, but no one giggles.

Instead, the media and the activists march along with the serene
confidence of a religious cult, convinced that the world is in imminent
danger and only they can save it. Politicians, corporate do-gooders, and
investors are not far behind...each hoping to get something out of the
whole things. And bringing up the rear guard are the yeomen soldiers...the
poor grunts who will go along with anything, so long as it's sufficiently
idiotic.

Our beat here at The Daily Reckoning is, of course, money...not politics.
But there are billions of dollars at stake in global warming...in
subsidies, tax incentives, contracts, taxes, carbon credits, the whole
shebang. Besides, like any great public spectacle, global warming has its
comedic dividends as well as its financial returns.

Why are rising temperatures a threat, anyway? Practically everyone we know
welcomes warm weather...and looks forward to the mosquito months more than
a white Christmas. You'd think a few more days of sunny skies and outdoor
barbecues would be to their liking.

Today, in Paris, we saw several groups of American tourists - dressed for
summer, with their shorts and flip-flops. How they must wish Europe were
more like Florida and not gray and chilly.

Rising temperatures would be good for tourism, and for more practical
reasons too. Growing seasons would be longer. The well-fed complainers
have fingered carbon dioxide as the culprit, but we know that plants are
fond of CO2. Longer growing seasons plus higher levels of CO2 boost crop
yields, say the experts. And that helps keep people from starving.

Nonetheless, for reasons never fully explained to us, global warming is
viewed not as a boon to humanity but as the dawn of its doomsday.

Mr. Ban Ki Moon, as we mentioned earlier this week, is both the current
Secretary General of the United Nations and a man whose feet seem to have
left Mother Earth. Writing in the IHT, the U.N. man asserts, "the science
is clear. The earth's warming is unequivocal; we humans are its principle
cause." We are always impressed with people like Mr. Moon. As a scholar of
climate change, we suspect his credentials are as good as ours, which is
to say - he has no idea what he is talking about. Most people would hedge
their bets...roll meal around in their mouths...mutter under their
breath...on one hand this, on the other that. But Mr. Moon comes down,
unequivocally, like a hammer on an egg, with a bold, powerful lie.

The science is anything but clear. Even some of the world's greatest
scientists are scratching their heads. The idea of global warming rests on
three major things: A series of observations - melting ice, rising
temperatures in certain places; a guess about how the earth's climate
works - the so-called greenhouse hypothesis; and a proof, of sorts, based
on some further observations that suggest that as CO2 levels have risen
over the last century or so, temperatures have, as well. The hypothesis
further supposes that higher CO2 levels are caused by humans.

But a quick reading of the literature yields more questions than proof.
Atmospheric CO2 concentrations have apparently risen 21% in the last
century. But, during the Depression of the 1930s, when human CO2 emissions
dropped 30%, CO2 in the atmosphere continued to rise. Maybe human activity
really doesn't contribute that much to global CO2 levels. Even during the
Eocene era, there was three to four times as much CO2 in the atmosphere,
and that was 20 million years before the first SUV was built.

One of the great scientists of our time, Freeman Dyson, concludes:

"Concerning the climate models, I know enough of the details to be sure
that they are unreliable. They are full of fudge factors."

Yet, those very same climate models are now read by many as passing
Biblical judgment on the entire planet. "The Big Thaw," proclaims the
cover of this month's National Geographic. The cover shows a photo of a
polar bear on a melting iceberg. The reader thinks the poor animal is
doomed...and guesses that he must be doomed too.

But no problem is so pressing and so monumental that heads of state can't
get together and turn it into a carnival sideshow. Today's International
Herald Tribune carries a photo of George W. Bush, Vladimir Putin and
Angela Merkel sitting together, apparently enjoying a lighthearted moment.
The headline tells us that they are getting close to solving the problem;
the American president has signed on to "consider" cutting carbon-dioxide
emissions.

This is surely a historic moment. Future historians will look back and
label it a turning point. For now, the chief of the world's chief carbon
dioxide-emitting tribe, has taken the first step towards saving the planet
from the evil of warmer weather. The world still has a chance, dear
reader.

Meanwhile, at the grass-roots level, the fight against carbon dioxide
takes on an absurdity of its own. A group was formed recently to campaign
against airline traffic, especially on short-hauls, on the theory that
airplanes use too much fossil fuel and thus leave big "carbon footprints"
all over the skies. The activists made one good decision, deciding to call
themselves "Plane Stupid." From there on, things went into a tailspin.

To draw attention to their cause, the group decided to occupy the London
headquarters of EasyJet. They invaded the building, hung out a banner, and
locked arms around it so that neither customers nor employees could enter.
At that point, someone should have pointed out to the saps that EasyJet's
headquarters were in Luton, not London. The world-improvers had targeted
the headquarters of EasyGroup, which has nothing to do with air travel.

Is global warming worth worrying about? What do we know? But, we wouldn't
be so suspicious if there weren't so many billions of dollars at stake.
Not that we doubt the sincerity of Al Gore or the other earth savers; in
fact, we don't know how the old planet survived so long without them. But
pile up so much bread in one place and it is bound to attract rats.

The most likely remedy is a new tax on carbon-based fuels, designed to
raise prices and discourage users. Who will collect the money?
Politicians. Who will they redistribute it to? The needy and sick? No,
they will tell you that the money will go into wind, sun and sea
energy...into hydrogen and hydroelectric. But neither wind nor water makes
campaign contributions.

No, dear reader, the high-minded money will pass through the usual low,
greasy palms - cronies and contractors, oil companies, honey-tongued
lobbyists, fleet-footed hustlers, and private equity investors. Gradually
and inevitably, the Holy Cause for which the tax was imposed will be as
forgotten as the Bill of Rights and the loot will make its way into the
customary lost causes and holes in the ground, most prominently at the
Pentagon - the biggest gas guzzler this side of Hell.

Regards,

Bill Bonner
The Daily Reckoning

We Want Solutions! by Howard Kunstler

May 28, 2007

Wherever the environmentally-informed gather these days (i.e., the clusterfuck-aware), a nervous impatience often mounts, and ends up expressing itself as an outcry for "solutions." For example, at the Telluride Mountain Film Festival, where I happened to be this past weekend, along with a couple of hundred other people who spewed airplane exhaust across the stratosphere to get there. This year's twin themes were the Castor-and-Pollux of Clusterfuck Nation, Global Warming and Peak Oil.
Many frightening documentary films and Powerpoint talks were served up in the opening symposium (including ones by Dennis Dimick, the editor of National Geographic, Daniel Nocera of MIT, and yours truly) and, as the morning wore on, the audience grew visibly impatient, until one speaker dropped the word "solutions," and the audience gave out a big whoop of approbation.
It only made me more nervous, because this longing for "solutions," strikes me as a free-floating wish for magical rescue remedies, for techno-fixes that will allow us to make a hassle-free switch from fossil hydrocarbon power to something less likely to destroy the Earth's ecosystems (and human civilization with it). And I think such a wish is, in itself, at the root of our problem -- certainly at the bottom of our incapacity to think clearly about these things.
I said so, of course, which seemed to piss off a substantial number of my fellow festival attendees.
My position on this can be easily misunderstood. I don't want civilization to collapse (I like Mozart and access to root canal). I don't want Homo sapiens to go extinct, or the planet to parboil. I certainly don't believe in doing nothing in the face of this emergency. But I also don't believe we are going to make any hassle-free switch in the way we run things -- or that we should want to. Would the USA be a better place if we could run Wal-Mart and Las Vegas on wind power? I don't think so. Would the public benefit from another hundred years of suburban living -- and an economy based largely on creating ever more of it? All the Prozac in the universe would not avail to offset the diminishing returns of that bullshit.
In my travels, I have noticed a disturbing theme among the educated minority of eco-advocates: they are every bit as dedicated to the status quo (in their own way) as the NASCAR morons and shopping mall developers. The eco-advocates want cars, too, and all the prerogatives (like free parking and country living) that go with them, just like the WalMart shoppers. If this were not so, then why do the eco-advocates cream in their jeans whenever somebody presents a snazzy new vehicle that runs on a fuel other than gasoline? Indeed, why are some of the eco-friendly pouring all their efforts into the invention of such things instead of into walkable communities and the reform of our stupid land-use laws?
I encountered this ethos most strikingly a few years back at Middlebury College in Vermont, where angry biodiesel advocates assailed my lack of enthusiasm for their particular "solution" -- which seemed geared mainly to allow them to continue to drive their dad's old cast-off SUVs to the snowboarding venues of that progressive little state. But the wish to keep running all our cars permeates what little public discussion there is of the global warming / energy crisis issues at all levels. Even the elder statesmen of the eco-movement talk it up incessantly. The first great victory will come when they shut up about it and put their minds to other tasks.
The eco-advocate community is still hooked into the Faustian bargain of technology with little consciousness of its diminishing returns, and to some extent have made themselves unwitting tools of the truly clueless and wicked who run business and politics in our land. With this particular group in Telluride, which was composed heavily of Boomer eco-adventurers (mountain climbers, trekkers, kayakers), the infatuation with ever-cooler adventuring techno-gear extended naturally, it seemed, to their uncritical view of magical techno-fixes aimed at "solving" the climate / oil mess.
And the setting of the festival -- the Rocky Mountain ski resort town of Telluride -- itself induced some eerie moments of reflex nausea as one contemplated the many 10,000 square-foot peeled-log dream palaces built by Hollywood producers, who derive their fortunes by selling violent masturbation fantasies to fourteen-year-olds. One couldn't fail to notice that three-quarters of the storefronts along the little main street were occupied by real estate sales offices.
But I don't want to be doubly or triply misunderstood as appearing to twang on the kind people who invited me there, or to evade the obvious fact that I went (by airplane and shuttle van). I thought it was worth going to carry this one little message: let's stop talking about making better cars and start talking about occupying the landscape differently -- which we're going to have to do anyway.

The benefits of global warming

If there is one thing I have learned over the past twenty years or so its that any time the government declares an emergency you’d better hang on to your wallet. So let me be the first to say, “hold on to your wallet” now that the current crop of legislators have taken up the mantel of global warming.

In the future, global warming and all the accoutrements that go along with it, is going to be the biggest cash cow in many a generation.

When the government starts doling out all of its subsidies and favored status to the myriad hucksters and schemers that are beginning to crop up like mushrooms, rest assured you as the tax payer and consumer will be the one who inevitably feels the pain.

As the national hysteria gains in volume the level of handouts will increase exponentially. Every quack concept or invention supposedly designed to decrease our level of energy dependence will be met with ringing endorsement by some Senator or congressman, with most of these boondoggles never showing any benefit or proof they actually perform the function they were sold to do.

Fortunes will be made in the alternative energy business and long after many of these harebrained schemes are uncovered as fraudulent the perpetrators will be sipping margaritas on a beach somewhere in the Bahamas.

A new boom will surely follow just like the tech boom which preceded it, this time instead of dot com it will be any stock with the word “alternative” in it that goes through the roof. Millionaires and billionaires will be created overnight who will then wind up in the poor house in the inevitable bust.

The ones for whom a few million in stock options aren’t enough will ride the wave all the way up until the point they end up doing the perp walk ala Bernie Ebbers and Ken Lay for bilking their companies retirement funds and assorted other larcenies. There will be a few of those for sure.

But the people who will suffer the most, as is always the case, will be the ones who can least afford it. Even now, because of the fraud that ethanol can lower the cost of gasoline; any product containing corn will be higher this year at the grocery store. Not only will products containing corn be higher (practically all soda contains corn syrup), but so will dairy products. The demand for corn has dramatically increased, since now it is seen as an alternative fuel and the increased pressure has in turn doubled the cost of feed for livestock. Increased feed costs equal increased production costs for milk, cheese and any other dairy product that ends up in the grocery store. This has already begun to happen.

With the demand for corn sure to escalate, more farmers will plant corn which means that less grain will be farmed, that will in turn send up the cost for bread and any other grain dependent products. The trivial amount of ethanol production will have little or no impact on the price of gasoline, but the impact of higher demand for corn will have a substantial impact on prices at grocery stores nationwide.

Ethanol is just the first of many usufructs that will be foisted onto the citizenry as the United States engages in it’s charade of weaning itself from oil and reducing CO2 emissions. None of these measures will be successful or even very serious until Americans are forced to change due to oil being altogether unavailable. But the issue as always will be dolled up in flowery language and will most assuredly be for the benefit of the children and big business will jog for position at the trough of government contracts and handouts while the taxpayer will take it in the wallet.

http://thedailyobfuscation.blogspot.com/2007/07/popcorn-prices-popping-thanks-to.html