Watching the (next) disaster coming

Out to destroy the US economy based on shaky science:

Among the many reasons President Barack Obama and the Democratic majority are so intent on quickly jamming a cap-and-trade system through Congress is because the global warming tide is again shifting. It turns out Al Gore and the United Nations (with an assist from the media), did a little too vociferous a job smearing anyone who disagreed with them as "deniers." The backlash has brought the scientific debate roaring back to life in Australia, Europe, Japan and even, if less reported, the U.S.

Remember when the Obama administration was "about ensuring that facts and evidence are never twisted or obscured by politics or ideology?" Yeah, me neither. One of my primary concerns with the "global warming" panic is, and always has been, that it looks to me like an excuse for central planners and anti-US consumptionists to implement the same kind of policies that they've always been looking for a way to implement.

Of course, destruction of the economy is always good for politicians, at least those who can avoid the blame for said destruction. In the United States, those politicians are, primarily because of the whims of the media, called "Democrats." The worse things are, the more call there is for power for government Democrats to make things better. They never do, which is is why the calls continue and the power expands. We call this "positive feedback," and it's a very bad thing. They get power and importance from damaging the private sector - of course they have incentive to damage it further.

The collapse of the "consensus" has been driven by reality. The inconvenient truth is that the earth's temperatures have flat-lined since 2001, despite growing concentrations of C02. Peer-reviewed research has debunked doomsday scenarios about the polar ice caps, hurricanes, malaria, extinctions, rising oceans. A global financial crisis has politicians taking a harder look at the science that would require them to hamstring their economies to rein in carbon.

Well, some politicians. If the US Congress passes the Waxman-Markey abomination, you'll know that either a) they didn't look hard enough at the science or b) global warming amelioration isn't actually the real goal.