You Don't Need an Economics Degree to Spot a Climate Scam

One of the first rules of business I ever learned is that everything in this world comes down to money. I remember an old cartoon in Mad  magazine that spoofed the opening of the 1960s Ben Casey  television show, one of the first hospital dramas. In that scene the wise old Dr. Zorba played by the actor Sam Jaffe  would stand at a blackboard and instruct young residents on the facts of life, scratching in chalk  the symbols: man, woman, birth, death, infinity. To this Mad added a sixth fact of life: the dollar sign.

I think of this scene often when I'm trying to understand the controversy over global warming--man-made climate change, for you more liberally inclined readers. For most of us the "evidence" of global warming is inconclusive or contradictory at best. Yet the climatologists who drink the global warming Kool-Aid say the subject is settled and the "fact" of man-made climate change is truth. The question is why.

And the answer, as Dr. Zorba could have told us, is the dollar sign. If doing good involves saving the planet, then  apparently you can do very well by doing good. The unfolding scandal over   "Climategate " (see our Dec. 7, 2009) post, raises the issue of why the climatologists in questions were so conspiratorial. As scientists, shouldn't they be interested in a free and frank exchange of data  and not try to bury opposing theories? Well, short answer, no.

It seems that the academics in the crosshairs of this controversy may have been motivated by more than science. The Wall Street Journal has reported that the British University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit  has netted nearly £12 million as the climate scare has escalated over the decade.

And Michael Mann, another name that comes up in the purloined Climategate emails, was even more proficient. By 2007, two years after he joined Penn State University , the institution had brought in some $55 million in climate research funding, most of it supplied by the government.

So there's big money to be made in saving the planet. That explains the fear tactics ginned up by climate researchers. This is no longer about science or health. It's about money. It's not Thomas Edison and Louis Pasteur. It's Toyota v. Honda.

Several years ago, before the doubts and before Climategate, the best selling author Michael Crichton satirized this global warming industry in novel State of Fear . In it a major environmental "non-profit," which is a thinly veiled send-up of one of the world's leading environmental organizations, rakes in millions of dollars in donations by duping easily duped Hollywood stars into cheerleading for this nonsense.

As an avid outdoorsman, I firmly believe we have an obligation to minimize our footprint on the planet as we go through life.(Pack in, pack out) But, please, don't believe that the current nonsense coming out of formerly esteemed research institutions has anything to do with meeting that obligation.

If anybody asks you what the current flap over climategate is all about, tell them the truth. Tell them it's all about the money.

Just thought you might like to know.