During past recessions companies had world-changing inventions such as the light bulb, telephones, radios, automobiles, airplanes, televisions, transistors, microchips, computers, mobile phones, internet and so on. Now there are no breakthrough technologies ready to reignite the economy. Inventions have not been businesses’ priority only making profits that look good, but in most cases weren’t real.
Nowadays, companies are responding to the downturn with layoffs to lower their expenses, and when possible to increase prices in an attempt to maintain profits and generous executive salaries. They for sure will not go after new business opportunities, they have found that it is easier and less risky to push harder on current staff and businesses, applying creative accounting when required. They don’t believe the government’s economic data that the corner has been turned on the economy. Consequently they are very conservative about any expansion plan, and seeing that the economic environment still is further deteriorating, making it is even less likely that new expansions will come on stream.

There will be several apparent recoveries as the depression continues its trajectory, pushed up by TV annalists the so called ‘experts’ telling that the market now has bottomed out, that probably one day may happen, but not in their life time.

The problem with a depression is that it is self-energizing. As unemployment goes up, the economy becomes weaker, causing companies to downsize further and therefore adding more people to the unemployment lines. As sales go down, profits also go down. Slowly people are losing faith in the market, and driving prices and subsequently profits further down.

The crisis we’re now in will change pretty much everything. While this change will entail a great deal of pain and a reduced standard of living for a large number of people, by the time the Crisis subsides, society will have pretty much remade itself in ways that no one can predict at this point.
Today’s economy is in serious trouble, despite rigorous efforts by the US government and its many friends in the large banking institutions. The housing market battered by tsunami-like waves of defaults, foreclosures, overvaluations, historic levels of personal debt, and tight credit that has left governments as the sole lender in the market.

There’s no way of telling where the Crisis will lead, or how it will end. That’s going to depend not only on the one who is in control, but what they do, who they’re up against, and a hundred other variables that can’t even be anticipated.

One thing that seems certain is that this crisis will bring out strong leadership.
Millions of jobs are gone for good, and how millions more could disappear before we’re through, while a long-term collapse for the dollar looks inevitable.

And yet, unlike other recent minor busts and even major corrections, the lesson hundreds of millions of strapped people are learning all over again is that same lesson our ancestors learned after 1929 during last century’s depression, that lasted from well after WWI till into the 1940s.

The law of personal and financial responsibility is as irreversible as the law of gravity. And no bureaucrat no matter how popular even with the help of multi-billion dollar bailouts can change that.

Not to be negative, but it is realistic to consider the following scenario: Terrorist attacks on the oil facilities in Saudi Arabia and or Russia. If that occurs all the world’s economies will be in turmoil. And other attacks could even more disrupt society that will cause massive disorder. Recent attempt on Christmas day in a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit is just a tip of the iceberg of what is coming and feasibly. Next time people may not be that lucky, because 100% security is per definition impossible. However now is the time to prepare us for more independence of oil. Oil dependency weakens severely security because much of the world’s oil is controlled by regimes that do not share our values. Diminishing the use of fossil crude is the crucial importance in the world’s energy market. Making states like Saudi Arabia, Iran, Russia and Venezuela less powerful, and less able to fund militias and terrorist groups.

The simplest and most sensible alternative is developing ultra cheap carbon free energy. This would mean beating the price of coal used to generate electricity at under 3 cents per kilowatt-hour.

After two years of doom and gloom, market distorting bailouts, ineffective stimulus packages, etc. governments seriously should turn to latest generation nuclear energy that will be the real savior for the economy, the job creator per excellence and greening the environment in the process. Cheap electric energy distributed via smart grids, create millions of urgent needed jobs, and saves the environment from gas emissions, and, ‘if true’, avoiding global warming. Moreover there are important savings generated on environmental, social, security and military cost.

Nuclear energy is the only answer to become independent of the present energy supply. Further it makes feasible to employ alternative energy for transportation by using synthetic diesel fuel generated from coal, which is cheap and abundant, available in almost every country. Nuclear energy complies with the Kyoto Protocol. Nuclear power is compact while commercial operators in countries like France where 80% of their energy need is generated this way, is a net exporter of energy.
The industrialized world should become wise on this subject, creating millions of NEW JOBS, keeping money and urgent needed jobs in their countries, opening up a new era of prosperity and finally solving the economic crisis as result.

As home prices slide, this time many high-end homeowners – like so many of their subprime counterparts before – find themselves hopelessly upside down in their mortgages. Once the value of a home falls well below the size of the mortgage against it, the homeowner loses the incentive to continue making payments. The calculation is more or less the same, whether the mortgage is $100,000 or $1,000,000.

It’s a snowball that rolls off the mountain getting bigger at every turn. Lots of big-ticket employees lost their jobs; home prices tanked and credit disappeared. When added all this up, there is an enormous mountain of pain and suffering, even in “rich” households. Big-ticket mortgages are the new sub-prime.

“For three straight months, option adjustable-rate mortgages have generated proportionally more delinquencies and foreclosures than subprime mortgages.”

Another housing-bust-cum-credit-crisis comes around the corner. Credit has disappeared from the economy thousands of businesses are discovering that they cannot survive the new ‘normal culture’ that relies on solid paychecks and savings, and NOT on credit. And so, one by one, business doors are closing and the empty commercial spaces are piling up, pushing commercial real-estate prices further down in the process. There will not be any genuine bottom in the property market until there is a bottom in the prices of commercial real estate mortgages, and that is a long while off.

Millions more consumers will freeze up as their finances go over the cliff. More bank losses will drag down even more so-called “blue chip” retirement portfolios and the impact of the consumer bust as written about before will “multiply” yet again. Millions more could lose everything.

Dan Amoss says: “when you consider that the biggest threat to the economy in 2010 is the backlog of mortgage foreclosures that have yet to work their way through the system.” – “As these homes work their way through the system, it will be another deflationary shock to the banking system.”

The world is drowning in debt and there are only two possible options:

1. A global economic depression or,
2. A very high inflation with the risk of hyperinflation.

The #2 option is the most likely one.

Because the Obama team faces a total debt obligation of US$115 trillion, while the majority of the American consumers still are in debt too. Consequently the US dollar will be further reduced in value through a process known as monetary inflation.

However America is not the only nation pursuing inflationary policies, other developed governments are printing money too, to debasing their currencies in order to stay competitive in a global market environment. In other words no country wants a strong currency so everyone is occupied with competitive currency devaluations. Certainly this massive money and debt creation is causing a severe inflationary pressure that could move into hyperinflation, which is a very scary thought.

If the Fed does not inflate away – or repay – their huge debt, the alternative will be the largest sovereign default in history. Given the ability of the Fed to print fiat money, the inflationary solution is the route they will follow.

It’s important to realize that fiat money is the worst kind of money whenever it has been used. History showed that fiat money has been a great failure. In fact, EVERY fiat currency since the Romans first began the practice in the first century has ended in devaluation and eventual collapse of not only the currency, but of the whole economy that housed the fiat currency as well.

Inflation would certainly make debt more manageable, but it would also dilute the purchasing power of ordinary people the consumers, causing a drawn out ever-deepening depression.

Today’s monetary setting is worse than that of the last century, for at least in the earlier part of that century there was still a gold standard. Up until 1971, there was some resemblance, however weak, of an international gold standard that put up a valuable resistance to printing infinity quantities of paper money, as is the case nowadays that’s done by the feds and other central bankers around the world. For example look at Zimbabwe to understand where al this will lead.

The monetary restraints on today’s central bankers are too lenient. Hence, the threat of inflation is far more lethal. Paper monetary systems have a tendency to blow up, in what is commonly called hyperinflation. Those are not so rare, looking again at last-century experience. There is the famous German hyperinflation of 1922-23, where price inflation was 3,422% in 1922 alone and where, in January 1923, one could buy a dollar for 20,000 marks – but by early November it took 630 billion marks to buy that same dollar! The numbers are simply staggering and hard to comprehend. Yet, Hungary’s hyperinflation of 1945-46 was even more spectacular, with price inflation of 19,800% per month.

The huge un-payable debt owed by the U.S. is an invitation to repeat the German Weimar experience.

To demonstrate the devaluation of a currency in a period of hyperinflation, here a brief overview of the German marks per one U.S. dollar exchange rate during the Weimar Republik:

• April 1919: 12 marks
• November 1921: 263 marks
• January 1923: 17,000 marks
• August 1923: 4.621 million marks
• October 1923: 25.26 billion marks
• December 1923: 4.2 trillion marks.

What happens in a hyperinflation is that people start buying things, anything, and everything, desperately getting rid of their money, spending all their cash to stock up on these things that are going to cost more in the future or even tomorrow, because their money is going to be worth less every day if it isn’t spent immediately. Consequently prices rise like they were rocket-propelled in response to this increased demand. The result is that everybody who has any money that they were not able to spend is gradually bankrupted.

However increased gas prices are not just felt at the pump, food prices are jumping up as result too. The use of corn for making fuel was a bad decision under Bush II in doubling its price by now, but many more sectors are becoming victim too, as for example transportation. New energy sources are urgently required and will be key to the answer of this economic crisis that already has turned into a depression.

What will be the alternative? In today’s world of “green energy” and global warming scares, coal is out. However with a couple of centuries worth of coal – and natural gas- buried underground, that all is going to change. In a next political campaign with even more environmental hype, coal will come back into the daily environment and be exploited to make green diesel fuel for transportation and power generation, once nuclear energy is accepted as a must. No need anymore to buy fossil fuel in Iraq or the Middle East, money that is used to support terrorists.

If indeed coal is at the heart of Obama’s climate battle, – as rumors do believe -than the world is getting realistic about the use of the allover the world available abundance of coal for the need of cheap energy. The rich 20% of the world population can’t stop the other 80% or world’s 5 billion poor people from burning the trillion tons of cheap carbon that they have easily available. There is no chance for durable reduction in global emissions, because emissions from the developing world are growing much faster as the 20% can reduce. The other 80 percent of humanity desperately needs cheap energy because they are meanwhile part of the same global economy. Foolish enough the industrialized rich world is having them producing even more by outsourcing their production, loosing their jobs in the process, and let them discharging more carbon faster. The US and Europe but even more poor countries all around the globe do have this large energy source within reach in the form of carbon, about a trillion ton of cheap and easy accessible coal.

The only solution that will work is to provide the other 80% with cheaper energy without carbon emission, than they do obtain from coal. Simply the most sensible alternative is developing ultra cheap carbon free energy. This would mean beating the price of coal used to generate electricity at under 3 cents per kilowatt-hour.

In mind comes renewable energy from the power of wind, the sun, or tidal wave, you name it. But besides being carbon emission free, all these technologies are not cheap enough. No carbon-free fuel or technology comes remotely close to the under 3 ct/KW except nuclear energy.

Nuclear energy complies with the Kyoto Protocol. Nuclear power is compact while commercial operators in countries like France where 80% of their energy need is generated this way, and the U.S.A., Japan, all have credibly established that this type of energy generation is safe and cheap and probably becoming even cheaper when engineers are allowed to develop it further. The only draw back may be the up-front capital investment for a power plant, and the discharge of nuclear waste. But with all the bailout money slugging around this should just be the opportunity to make the change for the better. On the other hand, most of the cost of carbon-based energy comes not from the cost of the fuels used but from the capital investment for the infrastructure of furnaces, turbines, and engines. Thus not cheap either compared with nuclear. Another important argument getting over carbon, nevertheless be comparatively cheap, is eliminating the dependence on oil from fossil crude. Moreover generating power from nuclear energy is cheaper than from oil and even still cheaper than from coal. Once nuclear energy is available Coal-to-liquid Technologies can be applied for the economically conversion of coal into synthetic green diesel fuel for transportation. For years it was simply too expensive compared to pumping oil out of the ground. Diesel fuel is the best Transportation Fuel and cleaner than electricity generated from coal fired plants. Diesel has effectively twice the specific energy of Ethanol and 10 times that of Hydrogen. It is very environmental friendly.

Per unit of energy delivered, coal is about 20% of the cost of oil, but contains one-third more carbon. If coal can be liquefied by nuclear energy there will be no or much less environmental pollution.

The industrialized world should become wise on the subject of realistically possible emission reduction, creating millions of NEW JOBS, keeping money and urgent needed jobs in their country, opening up a new era of prosperity and finally resolving the economic crisis as result. Look forward that this WAKE-UP CALL is being understood soon.

In France President Sarkozy has committed €3,5 billion (over US$ 5 billion) to develop electric cars and to have over 2 million Electric Vehicles (EVs) on the road by the year 2020. France has an advantage because 80% of their energy is nuclear generated and consequently their electricity is the cheapest and greenest energy in the world.

“The Obama Administration is eager to establish a green auto industry and is willing to spend money to make it happen. So far the U.S. Energy Dept. has agreed to lend $8.5 billion to help companies large and small retool plants to make more fuel-efficient cars and develop new technologies. On Sept. 22, the Energy Dept. announced the latest such loan: $528 million for a Silicon Valley start-up called Fisker Automotive that vows to produce 130,000 plug-in hybrids by 2013.”

All these billion dollars is typical for Washington and France, rob the taxpayer to enrich your friends (Al Gore) in this case.

A better alternative for this investment money is the funding 100 plus companies with $50M each to be used to make breakthrough innovations in green fuels as for example synthetic fuel made from coal, which is plentiful available all over in the world while those fuels are greener than green when generated form nuclear energy.

Other innovations to be pursued could be smaller batteries with larger storage capacity, solar applications, and wind-turbines. If such companies created viable innovations further funding would automatically follow from the industry. Unfortunately Governments have zero accountability and taxpayers are like sheep.

After the Bush years of Greenhouse gas emission denial, the Obama regime rode to office promising the greening of the world especially in America. Spending couples of billions on seemingly un-lucrative projects to keep his promise.

17.5 trillion was spent to bail out the Wall Street gamblers on their scam “fiscal products”. Who cares if 8-10 billion goes to car industry and don’t create a return on investment.

A better alternative could be the funding of educational initiatives for ‘green’ houses and importantly focusing on water and energy conservation, maybe by applying passive solar energy, from roof panels. Here these billion could create valuable return on investment. Further offering rebates to encourage property-owners and housing co-operations to retrofit old buildings with more efficient windows, etc.

If EVs are the future, why do they need government money? There should be plenty of investors interested to jumping at the chance to make money.

Supporting this eccentric electric car nonsense would take an exceptionally green wallet, and is definitely not guaranteed to make the planet any greener at all.

The Electrical Car itself is not high tech. The only high tech is the battery technology. If the electrical car is really high tech, why are so many Chinese companies such as BYD been able to produce electrical cars even before GM and Toyota did? As pointed out by the Chinese government, the reason they put more resource on electrical cars is that it is easier for them to catch up because there are no technology hurdles except the one for batteries. Everyone can build electrical cars if you get capital.

But much better lets first make a good marketing study to find out whether the average customers want to buy those cars, against which price and against which conditions establishing the necessary technical requirement and usability.

Fast-charging electric cars kill the electric grid, charging electric cars with off-peak power is a fantasy.

Fast recharging times generate lots of excitement, but what seems to be forgotten is that they can lead to a fabulous amount of peak demand.

How many extra power plants are needed to build if electric cars are introduced on a large scale? According to ‘Eco-tech’ advocates, that matter is solved: none.

Their argument is: Electric vehicles can be charged at night. Many power plants have a surplus of energy during the night “off-peak production capacity” because demand is low and generators keep spinning. And when we all start driving electric cars, oil consumption will plummet to zero and electricity production will remain the same is their reasoning. Of course this is mathematically an impossibility!

To bring those arguments into better perspective, below details and arguments are quoted from: Low-tech Magazine:

“If you charge an electric car with a battery capacity of 25 kWh during 8 hours, it needs a power output of 3,125 watts. If you charge the same car in just 10 minutes, it needs a power output of 155,000 watts.

Charging at night?

Electric cars, however, do not have the backup of a gasoline engine and an infrastructure of petrol stations for longer distances.  If we can only charge them at night, the range of our vehicles would be limited to 100 miles (160km) per day, or only half of that when the cars are driven at high speed. There are some electric cars that have better mileage: 220 miles for the Tesla Roadster and 150 for the Mini E – but both have no back seat since that space is taken by the larger battery.

The standard answer to this drawback is that the average commute in the US is only 33 miles, so in most cases the limited mileage of electric cars will be sufficient.

1,000 power plants

The study from Oak Ridge National Laboratory also calculated what would happen if all plug-in vehicles would be charged at 5 pm instead of after 10 pm. In this worst-case scenario, the US would need to build 160 “large” power plants (and the related distribution infrastructure, of course). Note: this concerns plug-in hybrids, not fully electric cars, and this concerns a penetration of only 25 percent, not 100 percent.

Electric motors are more efficient than gasoline engines, but the problem is not total energy consumption, it is peak load.

A complete conversion to plug-in hybrids would thus require 640 extra large power plants. The researchers do not specify what they consider to be a “large” power plant, but this must be around 1,000 megawatts, which boils down to the need for another 640 GW of power plants. That is almost a 65 percent increase of the existing US electricity generation capacity.

Fast recharging time

This is the worst-case scenario considered by the researchers, where all drivers plug in their cars at the same time and at the worst possible moment of the day. That will never happen.

Yet, there is another scenario that is much worse and is not considered by the researchers: a fleet of fast-recharging fully electric cars.

A vehicle that needs 6 to 12 hours of charging to drive just 1 or 2 hours will never appeal to the larger part of the public. The automobile stands for freedom of movement, so electric cars will never catch on unless they have at least a similar recharging time to that of a gasoline car (one of the reasons why they disappeared one hundred years ago).

Manufacturers of electric cars and batteries know that, and that is why most of them are pushing faster recharging times. Combined with an elaborate infrastructure of charging spots, this would largely overcome the problem of limited autonomy. We would still need to recharge more often than with a gasoline car, but at least it would be possible to drive further than 100 miles from home, and to leave anytime you want.

150,000 watts

Several manufacturers and researchers have already announced recharging times of 30 minutes or less, which would bring refueling time quite close to that of a gasoline car. This is only possible through a high-voltage current outlet. Fast recharging times generate lots of excitement, but what seems to be forgotten here is that they come with a price – you have to pump in more energy over a shorter time, which can lead to a fabulous amount of peak power.

You cannot solve this issue with better batteries – in fact, you can only make it worse.

If you charge an electric car with a battery capacity of 25 kWh during 8 hours, it needs a power output of 3,125 watts (3.1 kilowatts x 8 hours = 25 kWh).

If you charge the same car in just 20 minutes, you need a power output of 75,000 watts (75 kilowatts x 0.33 hours = 25 kWh).

This corresponds to the energy output of 220 plasma televisions of 340 watts each. This amount of energy is required over a shorter period, but it has to be available.

If you lower the recharging time to 10 minutes, the energy output will be 155,000 watts (155 kilowatts x 0.16 hours = 25 kWh). This equates to 450 plasma televisions.

It will be clear that fast recharging times, even if they are used only by a relatively small amount of drivers, will only be possible with a massive extension of our electricity generation capacity.

Meltdown

There are 220 million private cars in the US. If the complete fleet would be plugged in at the same time it would need 34,000 gigawatts, or 34 times the existing electricity generation capacity of the US. This will never happen, but it compares to “only” a 65 percent increase of the power capacity in the slow-charging scenario above. A large fleet of fast-charging cars will melt the grid.

Charging just 6,500 of these vehicles (0.003 %) simultaneously in 10 minutes will require an energy-output comparable to that of one large power plant.

If one in a thousand of these cars (220,000 vehicles or 0.1 %) is charged simultaneously in 10 minutes they will need 34 gigawatts. And one in a 100 cars charged simultaneously will require a total energy output of 340 gigawatts. The question is not how many cars will be charged together on average during the day, but how many of them will be charged together at any possible moment of the day, month or year.

Better batteries?

The energy infrastructure has to be prepared for the highest possible demand – for instance, when everybody wants to drive to a large sporting event. Also, don’t forget that someone who wants to make a trip of 500 miles will have to charge the battery 5 times. Because of their shorter range, electric cars need to be refuelled much more often than gasoline cars.

There is no way around this problem. You cannot solve it with better technology – in fact, you can only make it worse. Better batteries with higher capacities may lower the amount of stops at charging spots, but they will raise the amount of peak power required for one charge.

Electric cars are not refrigerators – but many calculations of their energy requirements treat them as if they were.

The fundamental problem (and we have noted this before) is that electric cars are wireless. Trains, trams (streetcars) and trolleybuses do not have these problems, simply because they do not need a battery. Their energy consumption is spread evenly over their operation time.

People keep saying that electric motors are more efficient than gasoline engines, and that’s definitely true, but the problem is not total energy consumption, it is peak load. Electric cars are not refrigerators – but many calculations of their energy requirements treat them as if they were.

Swapping batteries

There is only one last way around the mileage problem of electric cars: swappable batteries (another part of the infrastructure proposed by “Better Place”). This would mean that the batteries could be charged at night at refueling stations, and thus provide instant off-peak power during the day. There are two problems with this.

Firstly, we are not talking about a handy laptop battery here. The battery packs of electric cars easily weigh 100 to 500 kilograms, which means you will need a machine to get them out and back in again. Moreover, the batteries are not always placed so that you can easily swap them – in many electric cars they are underneath the floor, to optimize weight distribution and centre of gravity.

Secondly, all batteries would have to be the same, and achieving such a standard is both technically and commercially very unlikely. If it doesn’t work for laptops or mobile phones, then why should it work for cars? “A Better Place” will make use of standardized vehicles, but the day that we will all be willing to drive the same car, we would probably also not mind leaving the car altogether and – finally – get on a bike, a tram or a train.”

Man-made global warming is a fantasy, engineered by the global-warming fanatics themselves. Climate change is occurring – as it always has – and is harmless. The same cannot be said for the unspeakably irresponsible proposals of scientists whose egos have far outstripped their knowledge.

Planet Earth is five billion years old. Our sun exerts more control on all the planets than any other factor. Our climate has never stopped changing and never will.

About two decades ago, some politician/scientists decided that the “average temperature” of our planet should remain constant. The global warming hysteria has allowed politicians to spend insane amounts of taxpayer dollars to “fix” a problem that we humans absolutely have no control over.

Politicians have kept us dependent on foreign oil by not allowing further development of nuclear energy – specifically concerning the harmless disposal of nuclear waste- and to drill and refine our own oil. Our climate will continue to change based on the sun’s activity levels.
To be frank, I’m not against the preservation of our environment, or disputing global warming, but am concerned that the objectivity has been shattered by people who depend on it, by exploiting fear about global warming that definitely not is going to destroy our planet. Once governments start subsidizing political motivated issues, it is clear that everyone wants to be on the bandwagon to cash in on the money. The propaganda made, goes beyond reality and is creating panic in order to make better impact.

An abundance of new peer-reviewed studies, analyses, and data error discoveries in the last several months has prompted scientists to declare that fear of catastrophic man-made global warming “bites the dust” and the scientific underpinnings for alarm may be “falling apart.” The latest study to cast doubt on climate fears finds that even a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide would not have the previously predicted dire impacts on global temperatures. This new study is not unique, as a host of recent peer-reviewed studies have cast a chill on global warming fears.

Excerpts reported by Evelyn Pyburn from a speech by Kenneth Green a biologist and environmental scientist, serving as a public policy analyst for the American Enterprise Institute, confirms the insanity of the Global Warming hype.

“Even if we fervently wanted to, nothing that the developed world could do would significantly reduce predictable global warming,” Kenneth Green told attendees at an energy summit held last week at Montana State University-Billings.

“That makes any expenditure to reduce greenhouse gases a waste of resources that will not yield any environmental or human risk-reduction benefits,” said Green.
Both pro-business groups and environmental groups should be “outraged” with what is being proposed in the American Energy and Security Act of 2009, said Green.

According to Green, there are alternatives to the massive, all-intrusive scheme, also known as the Waxman-Markey bill, which has already passed the US House and now awaits action in the US Senate. There are alternatives and time to pursue less disruptive policies. Despite the hysteria, we are not in a crisis mode, and there are options in the future.

What is being proposed is not “carbon cap and trade,” it is “economic cap and trade,” contended Green, who as a biologist, says he “places environmental protection in very high regard.” “But I strongly believe the environmental protection must complement rather than displace other values such as fiscal conservatism, personal freedom, economic opportunity and prosperity, free enterprise, limited government, and so on.”

Green said that he believes “we have a moral duty to keep energy as abundant and affordable as possible, so as to continue to lift people out of poverty both at home and abroad.”

Rather than supportive of this bill, environmentalists should be unhappy about its “lack of effectiveness, the clauses preventing EPA from regulating CO2 under the Clean Air Act, and the science-censorship of EPA that will prevent them from taking steps to phase out corn-ethanol,” said Green.

Analysts at the Breakthrough Institute have shown that the offset and banking provisions of Waxman-Markey will allow most US emitters – including power plants burning coal – to continue emitting at business –as–usual rates through 2030, while capturing vast wealth in the form of emission permits.”

In fact, the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) itself projects coal power will increase under Waxman-Markey by about 1 percent by 2020. And, said Green, EPA projects less renewable energy under Waxman-Markey than there would be without it. Even if fully achieved, EPA “acknowledges” Waxman-Markey would only reduce CO2 levels in the year 2095 by 25 parts per million — “a quantity that will reduce global warming not a whit,” said Green.

While achieving none of the benefits that proponents claim they want, the provisions of the bill will “raise the cost of products, goods, and services in the US, dramatically impairing US competitiveness.” It will “lead to economic contraction or stagnation due to the impact of higher energy rates on ratepayers, which the Heritage Foundation estimates at about $1800 per household by the year 2020,” said Green.

So what should be done?

The “first-best policy option,” according to Green, should be “to increase the resilience of human structures and institutions through an aggressive program of fixing perverse incentives that increase climatic risk-taking.” That means “removing the kind of risk subsidies that lead people to put themselves in climatically sensitive areas, to build on flood plains, in storm tracks and so on.”

Whatever policies are adopted, said Green, “we should pursue only ‘no-regrets’ policies” — policies that “won’t have us looking back in a few decades with no climate benefit in hand, and a legacy of wasted resources and lost opportunities.”

“They should be focused on ending the kind of subsidized infrastructure programs that lead people to build giant cities in deserts dependent on far-away sources of seasonal snow. And, they should put economic repairs first: only the surplus wealth of productive economies allows us to protect our environment, set aside natural resources, and tread more lightly on the Earth.”

He also recommends investing in research and development on means to remove carbon from the air directly through genetic engineering, or pyrolisis of crop stubble.

And, regardless of the impacts of carbon dioxide, we should be researching how to warm or cool the earth, said Green, pointing out that one volcanic eruption puts enough material into the atmosphere to cool the planet for a decade.

Battery technology and how to transmit energy are also areas in which more research would be beneficial.

“The last time that US emissions were 1 billion tons was in 1910, when the population was only 92 million (most of whom had no cars).” Per capita income was $6000 (current dollars). In 2050 it is estimated that the US will have over 400 million people. So, in per capita terms, the reduction allows each person 2.4 tons – less than a quarter of what a person from 1910 put out.

“The last time per-capita emissions were that low was around 1875, barely at the start of the industrial revolution. The only countries with values this low today are economic basket cases like Belize and Grenada. Of the developed countries that come close, France and Switzerland, both are largely powered by nuclear and hydro power, are smaller, and even so, are putting out about seven times more emissions per-capita than we’re allowing ourselves in 2050 under Waxaman-Markey,” said Green.

This all comes following a series of events that are unwinding the prevailing ideas about global warming. “Climate is more unpredictable than anyone imagined,” said Green.

“Europe is coming apart at the seams” as their carbon-trading system has “melted down.” China has become the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter and the climate has stopped warming and started cooling,

Al Gore’s alarming depictions of global warming and the United Nation’s predictions used numerous assumptions to “pump up the estimates of how much a given quantity of greenhouse gas will increase heat retention. Those assumptions have been shown to be spurious on both theoretical and empirical grounds,” explained Green.

In getting better insight whether all those emitted gasses in the atmosphere cause Global-Warming, as the media do us believe, is referred to the BBC documentary “The Great Global Warming Swindle”[gallery]