A Global Warming Challenge for Liberals

For several years now there has been an ongoing debate regarding the impetus for President Obama’s economic policies. Were they the work of the smartest president in history, a man so intelligent that his wisdom could supplant the collective experience and choices of 300 million Americans, and in so doing restore our economy? Were they the well-intentioned but errant contemplations on an Ivy League egghead with lots of “book learnin’”, but without a shred of private sector experience that is the proving grounds for such ideas, being exposed to the unmerciful judgment of markets? Was he a Kenyan-born Manchurian candidate sent to infiltrate our ranks, rise to power and then destroy the country from within?

At this point I have come to the conclusion that it is an intentional effort to replace America’s free-enterprise system with a democratic-socialist style, centrally-planned, government run economy. Look at the evidence…the massive stimulus package which failed spectacularly, the auto union bailouts, government employee bailouts, Cash for Clunkers, Son of Stimulus, and myriad other economic “remedies”. Combine this with calls for increased taxes of “the rich”, more regulation and more government intervention in the market, and we end up with a long-term stagnant economy. One can no longer chalk it up to pure stupidity. If it were pure stupidity then the law of probabilities would dictate that Obama would have made the right decisions, even if only by accident, somewhat approaching fifty percent of the time.

Maybe the most costly and intrusive example of this government intervention that most Americans are unaware of (or at least unaware of the level of damage being done by it) is the Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA was ostensibly founded to protect air and water quality, endangered species, etc. Yet today it has become a bludgeon used by government to circumvent the legislative process in pursuit of the elimination of private property rights. Bureaucrats at the EPA continually pass regulations and issue edicts that have the force of law without ever being exposed to the will of the people through the legislative process.

In order to justify their power grab, bureaucrats must have a pending catastrophe to use as an excuse to circumvent the will of the people, and always under the guise of being done for their own good. In the 1970’s it was the “coming Ice Age” which threatened the Earth, as well as population growth which was going to lead to a dearth of food and resources, which would cause a hundred million deaths.

Today the catastrophe comes in the form of “global warming”, the theory that man’s industrial activity is leading to elevated levels of carbon dioxide, which in turn warms the earth, which in turn melts the icebergs, which in turn causes sea levels to rise, which in turn is going to cause New York City skyscrapers to be underwater and Guam to tip over (…strike that last part…Guam capsizing would be the result of putting too many Marines on the island, making it too heavy on one side, according to Democrat Rep. Hank Johnson).

The problem now, at least for liberals, is that with each passing day more and more Americans stop believing in the dark fairy tale of global warming. And without that belief and the accompanying fear, liberals can’t get enough support to pass global warming bills into law, and therefore they miss out on the chance to expand government power. This falling support for the global warming nonsense is justified. NASA had to revise its predictions when it was discovered they were using faulty temperature data. The revised data showed that we are actually in a decade long cooling trend. Then you have the hacked e-mails from the East Anglia University CRU (Climate Research Unit), which showed that the lead scientists were frantically falsifying climate data when they discovered that the actual data did not support their political agenda (and put future billion dollar government grants at risk). In short, the entire foundation for global warming theory is being exposed as a huge lie perpetrated not only on the America people, but the entire world, all to justify the confiscation of private wealth to combat this phantom menace.

Of course, there are millions of liberals today that are still crying like weak-kneed Cassandras, warning us that the problem is all too real and the Earth is plummeting towards destruction unless we enact a full scale assault on industry to reverse the damage. We are told that the contradicting evidence is the work of conspiring capitalists and evil coal, oil and gas company executives. Yes, Chicken Little, the sky is falling.

This week a report was released that revealed that the EPA is preparing to hire 230,000 new bureaucrats to process the paperwork associated with the agency’s decision to regulate carbon dioxide emissions under cover of the Clean Air Act. The newer, incredibly stringent standards will mean that the number of businesses which are currently regulated by the EPA for CO2 emissions will jump from 14,000 to an estimated 6.1 million. The cost to taxpayers for the new staff is expected to be at least $21 billion.

This is hugely controversial considering the diametrically opposed positions of each side, and the cost incurred to business and taxpayers if continued. Yet I believe I’ve come up with a solution. The crux of the problem is proving whether global warming is the cause of man’s activity or natural cycles. I propose a scientific experiment to end the debate once and for all, and the test is really quite easy. The natural byproduct of human respiration is carbon dioxide. According to calculations by the chemistry department at UC-Berkeley (a liberal bastion that other liberals cannot therefore refute), the average adult human produces 360 liters of carbon dioxide per day. If we extrapolate that out, then we find that 360 liters/day x 365 days per year = 131,400 liters per year per adult human. So, if we assume everyone that voted for Obama supports his policies and would sacrifice to see him succeed, we now have a control group.

Now, if we take the 69.5 million people that voted for Obama, who each produce 131,100 liters of carbon dioxide per year through respiration, we conclude that Obama supporters produce 9,104,500,000,000 liters of carbon dioxide annually (yes, that is 9.1 trillion liters). If they are right, that has to be doing a lot of damage to the environment. My proposal is this; in order to prove their claims, all Obama supporters should voluntarily refrain from exhaling for a period of one year. If the corresponding elimination of 9.1 trillion liters of carbon dioxide produces a measurable decrease in the Earth's temperature, the rest of us will jump on board and enact whatever laws are necessary to combat this meteorological menace. If there is no corresponding temperature drop despite such a drastic reduction in CO2, then we get to drop this nonsense once and for all, and allow people to enjoy the standard of living we’ve attained, and allow businesses to be unshackled from nanny government.

Everybody on board?