From Utah’s Daily HeraldÂ
A week ago Utah joined in announcing a plan to fight global warming — but the real danger lies in cooling: the cooling of the world’s climate, and the chilly outlook for the state’s economy.
The Western Climate Initiative has trumpeted a cap-and-trade system to cut carbon emissions and thus fight “greenhouse gasses.” Joining the Beehive State in the proposal are six other Western states and four Canadian provinces.In cap-and-trade programs, businesses are allowed to pump out certain levels of substances such as carbon dioxide and methane. If emissions exceed statutory levels, the businesses have to pay the government. If they are under that level, they can trade those credits to other enterprises.
Utah would have to pass legislation to implement these ideas. But they couldn’t have been announced at a worse time.
The news indicates that, if anything, our planet is growing not hotter but colder. Recently, NASA’s Ulysses project reported that the intensity of the sun’s solar wind — a flow of charged particles — is at its lowest point of the Space Age. This adds to the mounting evidence that the Sun’s activity is decreasing, and could signal the start of an era of cold weather, as in the Little Ice Age from the mid-16th century to the middle of the 19th century.
Four major agencies that keep track of the Earth’s temperature agree that the Earth cooled 0.7 degrees Celsius in 2007, the biggest such dip on record. In short, as Utah and other states panic over global warming, global cooling may be the bigger threat.
The real danger posed by the notion of global warming is that it will put the economy into a deep freeze. Utah’s own experts already predict a sluggish economy, at best, through 2009. The Legislature has just finished slashing $270 million from the state’s budget. Meanwhile, the “meltdown” in the credit markets has Washington scrambling for answers. This is the worst time in the past half-dozen years to place added strains on the state’s economy.
Read the rest of this piece at the Daily Herald.
I think we need to keep asking ourselves “What would an intelligent species do in this situation?”.
An intelligent species would admit their limitations, and exercise caution. An intelligent species would make maximum use of all of their resources to stop any probability of runaway climate change, and preserve the huge value of all the free services we receive from our biosphere. An intelligent species would not wait for the computer modelers to come to some dubious conclusion in such a complex situation, but would take preemptive action to limit any probable runaway climate change.
An intelligent species would stop looking to appease the angry volcano god with sacrifices and realize that our knowledge and power regarding the natural world have limitations.
I would have said: an intelligent species would have understood for ages that burning in 200 years sources of energy that take millions of years to build is not a good idea.
Ya think? I see the angry volcano God as fossil fuels and the natives are who are even more afraid of anything that might replace thier current God. Oil is THE God of our world, and you are one of its priests.
Rob N. Hood, your tactless, senseless ravings are boring. These arguments are weak and chlidish at best. If you will use your brain for something other than senseless, decades old liberal rantings, you will understand that to believe humans could have the effect you say on the earth’s warming is the height of arrogance. CO2 is a necessity to all of vegetation, and it makes up only 1/10th of 1% of all the greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere! By the way, it was reported today that Alaskan glaciers expanded and grew this past year due to the intense cold! In addition, the state of Oregon is experiencing its coldest year since 1892. But I’m sure you and your ilk will have lame excuses for this too!