Global cooling?

Maverick geophysicist David Deming recently penned an article titled Year of Global Cooling which describes a series of cooler-than-expected temperature events recorded in 2007. Most of these events occurred in the Southern Hemisphere, which fits links I posted earlier (too lazy to dig for them again, sorry) that show the Southern Hemisphere is actually cooling over the past 25 years, and that the ice of Antarctica is getting thicker.

Do these events disprove the theory of man-made global warming? I can't say for sure, the Earth's climate is so complex and poorly understood, by even leading scientists, that I won't claim to know better. Feedback loops and temperature forcing are concepts that I can only get my head around at the most general level. The world is full of ignorant people making sweeping pronouncements, so it's hardly productive to add my voice to the din.

But it does demonstrate how easy it is to build a convincing case by merely cherry-picking your data, let alone wantonly manipulating that data like the IPCC. There are a lot of people that stand to gain from the phenomenon of global warming. There are bushels of money to be redistributed. Don't think for a moment that the "scientific consensus" you often read about is any more correct about this popular craze than the scientific consesuses (consensii?) behind eugenics, Einstein's denial of quantum physics, or the Earth at the center of the solar system.

This much I know: carbon-swapping and greenhouse gas caps aren't the answer. That's nothing but wealth redistribution in disguise, which would have almost no discernable effect on the climate whatsoever, by the IPCC's own estimation. (You have to extrapolate their own numbers to prove this out, they fail to draw the conclusion themselves, for political reasons.)

Solar power might still be twice as expensive as coal-based power from the utility grid, but the cost has fallen 90% since the 1970s. Can anyone doubt, with a healthy market economy, that technological improvements will continue to decrease that cost at a steady, if not exponential, rate? If oil prices hold steady, we could hit that magic point of equilibrium as soon as 2015. Even if oil prices fall back to $40/barrel levels, solar power will be cheaper before 2050.

Can you imagine that the U.S. will still be burning oil and coal at all - let alone at increasing rates - in 2050, even 2100, like the enviro-goons claim in all their models? Wouldn't we make the switch to a more reliable, less dangerous, cleaner power source that is unlimited and not controlled by our mortal enemies, the second it was economically feasible to do so? Why are we wasting time pointing fingers, slandering the outspoken, and trying to slow down the world's biggest economies with artificial caps instead of moving with all of our effort toward a future of renewable power?

Why, indeed? Because there is money to be stolen. Moved from one pocket to another. That's what it's all about. That's why you read about global warming every day, see it on the news, and why it's being taught to our children in school. That's why there's an international conference in Bali right now. That why there are innumerable U.N. and government agencies, growing fat on taxpayer dollars, raising an alarm for something that has never been a problem and is on the verge of going away in any case.