In , Kurt
Ullman wrote:
In article
,
" wrote:

I think what he was saying was that people operate in their own best
interest because they know what is in their own best interest.
Unfortunately, government is no better a predictor of what is in my
best interest than me, so while I may make a number of decisoins that
work to my detriment, by and large I will make decisions that overall
work best for me.

Probably a much worse predictor of what is best for me than I am
because of the self-interest stuff you discuss later on.

More unfortunate is the unreliability of information that comes from
government, because once a person has achieved power, he/she will
often do things to maintain that power. Because, by and large, he/she
will do what is in his or her own best interest, and maintaining power
falls in that category. That includes lying about a variety of things
in order to have a compliant public. That lying includes lying about
motive, perhaps even to oneself. You must separate the wheat from the
chaffe in politics, electing people who are not yet in the power grab
mode, or you have to remove the motive to maintain power, which was
the reasoning behind the inclusion of term limits in our system.

Nicely put, although everywhere you put politics, I would add "and the
bureaucracy". The same power and self interest things get plugged in
here. Probably more so, since most legislation really sketches things
out in general terms and leaves it to the bureaucrats to write the rules
and regs that actually implement the law.

It is very easy right now for people to believe that about George
Bush, but these same people won't take a look at those on the other
side of the aisle. The old saying, though, is "Follow the money". I
look at people who have made a fortune on the global warming-as-man-
made concept, who try to maintain control of that concept by saying
that "debate is over" when it clearly is not, I see people threatening
the careers of those who dispute the idea of human causality of global
warming. Then I look at the careers and lifestyles of people in this
camp and I wonder how the two can square with one another. For
example, how much money has Al Gore made on the global warming issue?
How does he live his own life with regard to things like energy
consumption?

A prof from Wisconsin who is not at all a supporter of man made
global warming on CNBC a couple of weeks ago. One of the things that
came up was that those pro-GW tend to write off most anti_GW results off
because they are paid for by oil companies. His first comment was a
general indication that this was BS and not all were. Then he said
something telling: "Besides when was the last time you heard of anyone
who is anti-GW getting any federal grants?" The implication being that
governments has its own problems with bias. Because something comes from
a governmental or other non-industry group is no guarantee of lack of
bias."

So how much is being spent by governments on global warming studies,

how much of that is spent to pay those who only keep their jobs if they
produce study results indicating need to remediate man-made global warming,
(I expect a small number due to profit motive to either "defect to the
other side" or "fame motive" [that can lead to profit] to produce studies
and/or papers that show that "The Conventional Wisdom" is wrong. As an
example - Einstein doing some significant boat-rocking of Newtonian
physics!)?

And how much on similar studies (that indicate lack of existence of
man-made global warming that requires remediation) and "counterstudies" is
being spent by industries (and front organizations thereof) that stand to
lose from need (or knowlege thereof) to counteract man-made global
warming?

And why is some of the "counterdata" being misrepresentation of
anthropogenic rate of carbon addition to the atmosphere into a low-by-73%
claim of anthropogenic rate of CO2 to the atmosphere?

(Hint: 44 grams of CO2 has 12 grams of carbon. Next hint: when need
to do web searching, consider gigatons, which are the same as pecagrams,
and for accounting of "anthropogenic input to carbon cycle" (my words,
which I expect low search engine hit usefulness from) gigatons and
pecagrams are the same, and so far in my experience is that one
web-searchable unit of anthropogenic rate of transfer of carbon from the
lithosphere to the atmosphere is "PcG C per year", maybe also PcGC,
give-or-take upper/lower case. Please keep in mind that a pecagram or
gigaton of carbon entering the atmosphere does so mainly [or closer to
entirely] as 3.67 of same units of CO2.)

- Don Klipstein )