Thursday, July 23, 2009

The Global Warming Monopsony

A new report titled Climate Money by researcher Joanne Nova has just been published by the non-affiliated Science and Public Policy Institute.

Key findings:
  • The US Government has a near-monopsony on climate science funding. This distorts the science towards self-serving alarmism.
  • The US Government has spent more than $79 billion of taxpayers’ money since 1989 on policies related to climate change, including science and technology research, administration, propaganda campaigns, foreign aid, and tax breaks. Most of this spending was unnecessary.
  • Despite the billions wasted, audits of the science are left to unpaid volunteers. A dedicated but largely uncoordinated grassroots movement of scientists has sprung up around the globe to test the integrity of “global warming” theory and to compete with a lavishly-funded, highly-organized climate monopsony. Major errors have been exposed again and again.
  • Carbon trading worldwide reached $126 billion in 2008. Banks, which profit most, are calling for more. Experts are predicting the carbon market will reach $2 - $10 trillion in the near future. Hot air will soon be the largest single commodity traded on global exchanges.
  • Meanwhile, in a distracting sideshow, Exxon-Mobil Corp is repeatedly attacked for paying just $23 million to skeptics—less than a thousandth of what the US government spends on alarmists, and less than one five-thousandth of the value of carbon trading in 2008 alone.
  • The large expenditure designed to prove the non-existent connection between carbon and climate has created a powerful alliance of self-serving vested interests.
  • By pouring so much money into pushing a single, scientifically-baseless agenda, the Government has created not an unbiased investigation but a self-fulfilling prophecy.
  • Sound science cannot easily survive the vice-like grip of politics and finance.
It's time to destroy the myth that the global warming industry is "the underdog". If you are interested in the politics of global warming and the controversial science surrounding the issue, be sure to read the whole thing.