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The Rosett Report

by Claudia Rosett

Climategate: Beyond the Sleazy Science, Rotten Economics

December 7th, 2009 - 3:23 am

The United Nations ”climate” summit is upon us, already qualifying as the world’s biggest emitter of hypocrisy –with the Telegraph reporting on the convergence in Copenhagen of ”1,200 limos, 140 private planes and caviar wedges.

And here’s the beauty of this grand scam. Not only is it based on unsound ”findings” with the UN claiming a “consensus” that never was, based on “science” that was something other than scientific. Beyond that, if anyone cares to venture further, lie boundless vistas of bad economics.

After all, when the UN wizards got done tailoring their conclusions about climate cause and effect, their work was far from over. They went on to produce stacks of calculations about the economy of the planet over the next 10, 20, 30 or 40 years or more. Thus, for instance, do we find such hocus-pocus as the UNFCCC providing estimates that in the year 2030, climate “mitigation” will require “$200 to $210 billion” in order to “return greenhouse gas emissions to current levels.” This is accompanied by a slew of estimates involving such stuff as percentages of global GDP needed for “climate” projects, flows of resources to developing countries two decades from now and prompts for governments to direct what is laughably referred to in this context as ”private investment.” Here’s a sample of this kind of blithe projection about the economy of the planet, gravely informing us of such gobbledygook as the conclusion that if the UNFCCC investment scheme is adopted, and trillions are redirected over the years as the UN prefers, then in 2030 –  the emissions reductions of developing countries will account for 68% of all global emissions reductions.

Let’s get real. We can’t even predict with certainty which countries, or how many, will qualify 21 years from now as “developing,” or what, by the year 2030, that term might mean. (There are dynamic processes at work. If America signs on to this climate deal, for instance, that alone could swell the ranks of impoverished nations, and greatly change the ratio of developed to developing countries). We don’t know what technologies might be invented; we don’t know what inventions might never come to be — because they will be choked off by the same state planning which, in the name of “climate mitigation,” would regulate a lot of productivity and initiative out of existence.

It’s hard enough trying to get a handle on where the economies of the U.S., or the European Union, or China might be in another year or two. These things depend on a multitude of factors for which there are no sure oracles: the upheavals of politics, the trends of taxes, the complexities of money, exchange rates and discount rates, not to mention such potential events as large-scale wars. Whatever causes climate to change — whether carbon, sunspots or Zeus having an off-day on Mount Olympus — the economy of the planet, two or three or four decades from now, depends on many things, and climate may be the least of it.

For UN planners to presume that they can reliably calculate the economic future around the planet and across decades is absurd. To pretend to calculate the economic future in neat correlation with potential variations in climate is ridiculous. For UN planners, and politicians jetting into Copenhagen to further pretend they can better organize our lives based on this confetti of calculations is beyond inane. This is the global version of the old Soviet planners sitting down to command the economy of the USSR — and enforcing it would similarly require repression and coercion. Welcome to a world where you wait in line for toilet paper. Unless, of course, you are one of the climate-klatura, entitled to your caviar, limo and private jet, high above the queuing proles.

Behind Door #1 of the Copenhagen summit’s rigged game was Climategate. UN economics is the howler waiting behind Door #2.

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