EclectEcon

1. Global Warming is occurring,
2. Global warming is the direct of human behaviour, and
3. it is most efficient for us to do something about it, likely via carbon taxes.

Environmental extremists routinely assert a “scientific consensus” that global warming is occurring, and that human activity somehow causes it. This week, however, over 31,000 scientists spoke up and reduced that myth to a smoldering rubble.

The environmentalists’ alleged “scientific consensus” is much like the curtain in The Wizard of Oz, behind which the supposedly infallible wizard dictated to his minions. Beyond that curtain, however, the wizard was nothing more than an ordinary little man perpetrating a fraud upon those who worshipped his doctrine. And once Toto removed that curtain, the fraud was exposed for all to see.

Similarly, environmentalists’ mythical “scientific consensus” has served as a shroud behind which they have sought to maintain an air of infallibility. By falsely claiming a closed consensus and excoriating anyone who speaks out against their flawed orthodoxy, environmental extremists seek to prevent any objective, scientific debate that might inhibit their political agenda.

That shroud, however, was further torn this week by a 31,000-strong petition organized by the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine (OISM). According to the OISM’s board of scientists, “a review of the research literature concerning the environmental consequences of increased levels of carbon dioxide leads to the conclusion that increases during the 20th Century have produced no deleterious effects upon global weather, climate, or temperature.”

To the contrary, the OISM notes that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide have actually increased plant growth rates, among other positive effects. On this basis, the OISM concludes that “predictions of harmful climatic effects due to future increases in minor greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide are in error and do not conform to current experimental knowledge.”

• Even if the EU, Canada, and the US impose carbon taxes, these taxes would have a minimal impact on carbon emissions, given the rates of economic growth in the rest of the world, and
• it might be more efficient to build levees and dikes, if necessary, than to try to curtail carbon consumption.
  
  Just call me a major skeptic.
  
  Addendum: For more, see this at SCSU Scholars.
  
  And check out the Global Warming DoomsDay Called Off video from, surprisingly, the CBC.

  Addendum #2: For more, see this about the decline in sunspot activity and possible global cooling. [h/t Newmark's Door].