Will A Spoon Full Of Carbon REALLY Make The Earth's Temperature Go Down?

My oh my! The gullible have multiplied and will now subdue the earth but I feel this Elvis must leave the building.

It's like the movie Lost Train From Paris. Or maybe it's more like Chicken Little, the kiddie book starring Henny Penny that pointed out to the world that there is more than a little mass hysteria now available at the concession stand.

Just when will we be seeing world wide cartoons with a Julie Andrews copycat voice singing:

"Oh removing a little bit of carbon

Can make the temperature go down

....temperature go down....

temperature go down

In a most delightful way."

All around there are cries that the world is changing.

NEWS FLASH! It always has. Go ahead pick an age. The age of revolving gases, the age of crust forming over a molten core, ages of great deep seas and mountains forming; also ages of great ice and now, some would say with some scientific expertise, a time of melting. So pick an age. I now write on top of a withering Appalachian mountain that was once the bottom of the sea. I am reminded of this when I mow my grass and see the outcrops of shale in the barren spots in my yard.

If, and I sometimes do, drag a magnet across those barren spots I pick up minute chips of free iron ore. In other places other people walk across other evidences of an earth that has continually changed. Not all deserts were always desert. Some sea bottoms once basked in the sun. Nothing is so certain as earth change and we are fortunate that for the most part they have changed slowly, giving we insignificant human beings a chance to adapt and change.

Even the most fundamental of fundamental religions admit the earth has continually changed.

My 25,000-plus days on earth have afforded me the opportunity to get hustled, and not just in the pool emporium. After you lose your lunch money, rent money and savings a few times, you generally get a little wiser. I always thought being behind the eight ball was a good thing until I got knocked down my someone trying to drill it into the corner pocket. After you lose long enough you get to where you cannot only recognize a hustle in progress, you can see it coming from afar.

That's how I feel about climate change. Sure the earth is changing. Certainly evolving technologies green and otherwise are important. I sit in an all-electric home with heat supplied by a coal-fired-but-co-generated- with-natural- gas power plant. On the other side of the world people burn wood or go cold and would love to have the water to drink we Americans use to flush our toilets several times per day. For reasons of health, hunger and industry other people need and and deserve the same utilities I have. Their best chance to obtain them is through emerging technologies. I have full faith and confidence the new generation of Edison's and Ford's will develop them.

My experience also tells me that once they are developed, government will see that recipients of those new utilities will be taxed, regulated and controlled. Government power and the freedom of self determination are always in conflict. (You can't freely buy your water and flush it too.)

What utilities do you have that are not government regulated or taxed? We get trash bills, water bills, sewage bills from a city or county. In some cases electric power is generated by quasi-public utilities. Not only do they get a monthly payment from you, they reserve the right to charge innumerable fees. Fees are in place to hook-up, disconnect, special inspect and relocate meters and lines.

There is power in the blood of providing services to poor souls nations, states and commonwealths, counties and cities. The more money they generate, the more people they hire. As their team sizes increases so does the personal power and prestige of those in charge.

What is unfolding in Paris this week is an outgrowth of a political film release by Former Vice President Al Gore in 2007. An Inconvenient Truth produced by Participant Media, owned by Jeffrey Skoll, better known as the first and former President of E-Bay.

Skoll, Gore and later his partner David Blood, a former captain of the Goldman Sachs Asset Management, created a frenzy by teaming up to say if the earth got 2-degrees hotter it was doomed. But this was Chicken Little screaming that the sky was falling because they secretly had an idea that would revolutionize the world. They decided that carbon--that villainous naturally occurring substance said to be ruining the earth while simultaneously bonding it together--could be turned into gold. It was a genius stroke of alchemy even Merlin never gave a second thought.

But to perform this magical transition some special charms were needed. No it was not the heart of a toad or the tongue of a serpent. No, the prime ingredient was to be OPM. While that may sound like a gem found of a foreign planet, it was in fact a common element hucksters and treasure hunters have long sought....Other people's money. Together Gore and Blood founded Generation Investment Management (GIM) and immediately began to tout the idea that if carbon had value, people would buy and sell it. This was followed by a complicated series of plans which would have given Bernard Madoff vertigo.

Perhaps the Madoff mention is unfair in that Madoff's Ponzi scheme was totally illegal while the Gore-Blood production appears to be totally legal. Obviously there was risk involved and anytime risk is involved it is possible to lose your investment. But as they say on Wall Steet: "That's the American way."

The GIM way was to inflame the masses (especially the younger) and create the same kind of enthusiasm exhibited by Japanese kamikazes in World War Two. To date they have been successful and the cry against global warming has permeated the American psyche. Gore's ability to garner a piece of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize (sharing with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) was one of the slickest instances of mass persuasion seen in America since another denigrated (and almost unknown) democrat named James K. Polk so inflamed the nation with a passion for taking Oregon from the English (Fifty-Four Forty Or Fight) that he took the presidency out of the clutches of wily old velvet voiced Henry Clay.

Just as Gore (who may have had the presidency stolen from him by lawyers counting hanging chads) James K. Polk recognized a silent issue, motivated the masses and won a prize. Gore seems to no longer want to be president but may still want to be rich and revered. That too is sometimes the American way.

bOne of the most interesting derivatives of the Gore-Blood relationships was the creation of the Chicago Climate Exchange. When it was launched in 2003, the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) became "the first carbon-emissions trading company in the world.equipped to regulate all transactions made under cap and trade energy plans designed to restrict and tax greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions produced by U.S. companies." (This information is taken from http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/printgroupProfile.asp?grpid=7526.)

To do this special software was needed and had to be designed for the project. Carlton Bartels, a partner at Cantor Fitzgerald and the chief executive officer of a company named CO2e.com, filed for a patent on the software technology that would eventually equip CCX to properly monitor the trading of residential carbon credits. Ironically he died in the 911 attacks on the Twin Towers.before he secured the patent.

,After his death his widow found a buyer for the program Bartels had so ingeniously developed; The purchase, most likely fostered by Gore-Blood who badly need the program to make the Climate Exchange Work, found a buyer of controversy. His name was Franklin Raines.

Franklin Raines was CEO of Fanny Mae and as such oversaw the giant corporations role in bundling (combining) at-risk mortgages and selling them to investors and mortgaged-backed securities while collecting hundreds of millions of dollars for himself and his management team. It was also alleged he manipulated Fannie Mae's Profit and Loss statements to secure those bonuses. Fannie Mae nor its leaders were ever punished or tried for their roles in the subsequent market collapse. But Raines had friends in high places.

If you fantasize a day when you will become rich and will leave behind a huge trust to do good things for the world, consider what happened to The Joyce Foundation created in 1948 by Beatrice Joyce Kean, sole heir of the Joyce family (of Iowa) which derived its fortune from timbering and lumber businesses. Mrs. Kean generally conducted her philanthropy on a conservative tone (with disbursements usually totaling less than $100,000 per year), She directed her grants chiefly toward beneficiaries with benign political goals. Hospitals and medical facilities being among her favorite choices.

When she died in December 1972, Kean endowed more than $100 million to her foundation. This was nine-tenths of all she had.

Kean was hardly cold in the grave when others began to spend her money. Almost immediately a professional staff took over and the philanthropy named for her took a turn for the liberal on its way to the radical. Social justice became a by-word and as the years rolled by the big hogs at the trough begged to fund "good works" of social justice like funding government created institutions, especially if there were minority undertones. Ms. Kean's small grant dole outs quickly expanded to gifts of hundreds of thousands of dollars--even millions.

Eventually the biggest feeder at the trough were left-leaning environmentalists. And the Joyce Foundation soon found itself helping even such a questionable and suspect entity as CCX.

Whether by chance or coincidence Paula DiPerna President of the Joyce Foundation left her job at Joyce and took a position as Vice President For Recruitment and Public Policy and, simultaneously, President of CCX International.. DiPerna, renowned (especially by the left) author and lecturer, was well known in environmental circles. She had even held positions with the Cousteau Society.whose President was explorer and filmmaker, Jacques-Yves Cousteau.

It was under her leadership that the Joyce Foundation changed its mission statement. :Today the foundation "supports the development of policies that both improve the quality of life for people in the Great Lakes region and serve as models for the rest of the country."

DiPerna too had friends in high places and the acquisition of her services certainly came as a boost in credibility for an organization owned by a huckster with a couple of loan sharks waiting in the wings.

Al Gore and David Blood also had a lot of powerful allies. They not only knew people in high places, they could motivate (manipulate?) them.

Some have speculated that it was Al Gore behind the torpedoing of the Hillary Clinton campaign of 2008 that propelled Barrack Obama into the White House. It was rumored Gore had been highly unhappy Former President William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton had not done more to help him in his failed attempt to defeat George Bush in the close contest to win the highest office in the land.

In truth ex-Vice President Gore had mostly himself to blame. He had purposely kept Clinton at arm's length for most the campaign, even alluding now and again to the former president's trouble with women.

Others think it wasn't Gore alone who got Obama the job. They believe it was George Soros that eccentric international billionaire who provided the funds which carried him to the White House. Obama supporters are fond of noting how much money their candidate raised on the Internet and would leave you feeling that he in fact got to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue on their donations alone.

Barrack Obama became President with the help of people and money found in high places. He was certainly known to the people already mentioned in this article. (Did I mention he was at one time a sitting member on the Joyce Foundation Board of Directors?) A remarkable feat since to this point he had worn only the cloak of an Illinois State Senator. He was a political newcomer. Unfortunately he came from Chicago and was no neophyte to politics. Soon he became a U.S. Senator noted for not being there when his colleagues needed him.

There is also no doubt he reached that lofty position on OPM....other people's money. The question now is not only what he promised.them to use their money. No, we must also wonder what he gave away in making his many promises. Nearly seven years into the job, there are many questions to ponder.

Here are my personal conclusions about the Obama Presidency to date. I doubt they will be posted in his presidential library:

1. Always Spend Lots Of Money. You can get away with almost anything if you lavishly spend Other People's Money. Dream big. Spend big. That's the Democratic way.
2. Support my ideas or burn in hell. When you want to accomplish something be single-minded. Never compromise.
3. Always Blame Someone Else. If things go wrong never admit you made a mistake. Always blame someone else! People in Congress or the man you succeeded as president are always great straw-men. If you can't throw them under the bus, tear them down and burn them.
4. Appoint radicals and revolutionaries to high places. America is after all a banana-eating republic. Appoint radicals to high offices and NEVER EVER hold them accountable. (It is telling that after seven years in office the only person I can remember being fired is a smirking schmuck photographed sitting in a hot tub.)
5. Make bad deals. The art of the deal is to make only really bad deals. A good example of many is trading five hard-core terrorists for a run-away soldier.
6. Always apologize to foreign leaders for the nation you represent. If possible also apologize for your nation having been a strong protector of the weak, hungry and downtrodden in the past. Bow to foreign kings.
7. Be Intransigent. Only your opinion and point of view counts. Totally discount, discredit and defame any who disagree with you. In a modern democracy only the pharaoh has a voice. So let it be written so let it be done!
8. Never follow-up, fix or modify your accomplishments. What is always important is rushing into law everything you want to accomplish. Always say you are willing to hear other points of view about messes you have created and then close your ears. When possible change the subject.
9. Always act in urgency. Say any law your are trying to pass is of the utmost urgency and that the sky is falling if you do not get what you want.when you want it, the way you want it. Always say the sky is falling.
10. Abraham Lincoln was wrong when he said you can fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time. What he should have said is you can always fool enough fools to get done what you want to do.
11. As chief executive, If you do not like a law that goes against your personal belief system you do not have to enforce it. However, if you are a taxpayer you have to abide by the law. Supper is whatever you are served.and there will be no dessert!

And so friends, having already been sold so many pigs-in-a-poke and having been repeatedly flattened by eight balls the size of glaciers (melting or not), I am not about to buy the climate change argument as presented by this president. His credibility is not only suspect, it is caustic.

You can only put so many lightning rods on a roof. I will abide by Abraham Lincoln's observation. I see by my personal clock it is now all of the time This turnip will wait for another wagon.