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About Jack Puglis Jack Puglis, a lifelong conservative, managed engineering development for most of his career and more recently has prepared and presented numerous training courses in leadership, management and organizational development. He is lifelong student of economics, finance, management science, leadership theory and politics. Mr. Puglis holds a BS and MS in electrical engineering and an MBA.

Past Articles The Nefarious Force Behind Cap & Trade Obama’s Healthcare Experiment: A Leftist Fantasy...

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Jack Puglis
The Nefarious Force Behind Cap & Trade
December 1, 2009
 

Recently, a number of emails have been hacked from the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit (CRU). Many articles have come out by atmospheric scientists and journalists indicating that the hacked emails point to one thing: the scientists at CRU were falsifying (“cooking”) their data [look here, here and here]. They appeared to be doing this to force the data to match a foregone objective: that the earth is warming as a result of carbon dioxide, methane and other so-called greenhouse gasses.

CRU has been accepted by this scientific community as the foremost research organization and therefore are favored as peer-reviewers in scholarly journals. These reprobates, now known as “warmists,” pushed the “infallibility” of peer-reviewed research papers, and then proceeded to peer-review one another’s work. As the so-called leaders, they also rejected the work of those scientists who disagreed with them. They also worked to blacklist other researchers and even journals who showed that their own work was deeply flawed. In the process of doing so they have shown themselves to be frauds and have discredited their own work. Now that CRU has been exposed as having cooked some of their data, how can the climate research community be sure in the future about which CRU data is honest and which is not?

As expected, the only defense of the warmists that I could find all comes from liberal sources [look here, here and here]. I found those defenses to be weak, whiny and tending to argue that “the emails prove nothing,” with no substantiation. None contains issues of substance or truly refutes that systematic cooking of data took place. Interesting—it’s like looking up at the sky and then being told by these people that it’s blood red.

Yet, other highly competent and well-known (in their scientific community) climate researchers have been publishing paper after paper pointing out the flaws in the “global-warming” cabal’s work. The emails also show, chillingly, the group’s rather vicious strategies for suppressing the opposition in any way that they can.

Enter the (Liberal) Mainstream Media

The mainstream media in the United States has, for years, been writing about global warming as if it’s a fact of life and continues to do so. For example, this November 20^th quote from the New York Times, consistently a very liberal newspaper, treats climate change as if it were accepted and obvious: “The evidence pointing to a growing human contribution to global warming is so widely accepted that the hacked material is unlikely to erode the overall argument. However, the documents will undoubtedly raise questions about the quality of research on some specific questions and the actions of some scientists.”

There is a debate raging, and the New York Times is attempting to suppress it through slanted statements. In fact, some of this left-wing journalism has been written in a way to incite fear in people’s minds, an ancient political strategy. Since it is abundantly clear that the “jury is still out” on this issue, what would motivate them to do so? Why report so dishonestly on one side of an undecided issue?

Global Warming as the Cap & Trade Legislation Raison D’être

Global warming has been cited by the Obama administration, Democrats and liberals in general as the chief motivation for the cap-and-trade legislation. Yes, there are pollution-related arguments as well, but the central focus of the “selling” of the legislation has been to save the earth before we’ve done “irreversible damage.”

What damage? Coupled with the fact that the globe has actually been cooling for the past 8-12 years (depending on which source you read), it would seem that the American people are likely being sold a false story, or at least one in which the urgency has been greatly magnified.

That means that falsified results on the part of a few dozen scientists’ data is not just a casual issue. Doubt cast on global warming findings may make it difficult—or impossible—for the cap-and-trade legislation to pass.

The Travesty of Cap & Trade

A number of articles that have contained analyses of the impact of cap-and-trade this year have concluded that this legislation will be nothing more than a very large tax increase, coupled with many needless restrictions on industry. They have argued that if the bill is passed, excessive carbon taxes will drive offshore many industries that produce significant amounts of carbon dioxide. Those industries will take jobs with them.

Companies will be strongly motivated to relocate these operations in countries that have lax regulation on carbon dioxide production since that will lower production costs. The analyses conclude that worldwide emissions of carbon dioxide will actually increase as a result of this legislation. Cap-and-trade will therefore exacerbate the very climate issue that is the claimed major reason for its existence.

Cap-and-trade, potentially a very large tax increase on all of the American people, has a chance of being passed just as a weak recovery to our very severe recession is taking place. Significant increases in taxes or interest rates have been shown in the past to have the potential to stall or crush a recovery.

Moreover, now that the government’s claimed fundamental motivation for this legislation is apparently, at least in part, a sham, there is a growing suspicion among many people that the government knew that climate change arguments were overblown all along. Why, then, are they so dead-set on passing cap-and-trade?

It’s All About Power and Control

The present administration has virtually declared themselves to be socialist, and their actions support this perspective. The have needlessly nationalized financial and automobile companies, greatly increasing their power in those sectors. They’ve gone to the extent of setting executive salaries in a supposedly free market. Moreover, the president has openly stated that he want to “spread the wealth around”—meaning to take from some and give to others.

The government is attempting to pass a socialized healthcare bill that will decrease the quality of the entire nation’s care while increasing taxes by trillions of dollars and significantly increasing their power. Cap-and-trade is just one more step along the road to progressive socialism.