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FROM- Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Community Columnist

Don't nap on cap and trade

By Kathy Banaszak



Hang on to your hats, everybody (and your wallets)! Another monster piece of legislation is coming down the pike. With the Senate poised to take up "cap and trade" any day, the Obama administration continues its blitzing strategy to ram through one blockbuster bill after the next at breakneck speed. Never mind that "sleeping giant" on the road to Oz.

While the American electorate may be understandably fatigued, now is not the time to snooze. The Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act (HR 2454) is a whopping 1,201 pages. Not surprisingly, Congress didn't read this one, either.

Someone who has read HR 2454 is Cindy Drehmel of Milwaukee. A Wisconsin native, Drehmel is co-developer of a state-of-the-art, non-polluting gas energy start-up in Texas as well as a Wisconsin aeronautics firm. Drehmel is putting finishing touches on her book "Burned Up Over Global Warming." She's definitely done the research.

In Wisconsin, cap and trade will hit the manufacturing sector heaviest, including paper mills, electricity production, automotive, coal, oil and gas. As the second-highest industrial state in the country with coal-intensive electricity production, cap and trade is a recipe for disaster here. Drehmel predicts a mass exodus of business overseas. She sees China already positioning itself as the next global leader in paper.

Under Spain's cap and trade plan, 2.2 private jobs have been lost for every government-created green job, resulting in billions in lost wages. No longer willing to follow the UK, Australia shelved a similar proposal.

At the heart of the debate is the increasingly tenuous premise that "global warming" is not only fact but also manmade. The United Nations 2007 Climate Summary claimed "consensus" in the scientific community on that point. Al Gore was unequivocal: "The science is settled." Not so.

At a recent hearing of the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, Sen. James Imhofe (R-Okla.) referenced more than 700 legitimate scientists who have come out against global warming theory. The Wall Street Journal's Kimberly Strassel noted they now outnumber those scientists who signed on to the 2007 climate summary 13 to 1. Dissenters (including a Nobel Prize winner in physics) dismiss "green science" as more about ideology than scientific evidence. With cap and trade premised entirely on green science, this poses an inconvenient truth.

Notable dissenters include Patrick Michaels and Roy Spencer, who have doctorates from the University of Wisconsin in ecological climatology and meteorology, respectively. A past president of the American Association of State Climatologists, Michaels authored "Climate Extremes: Global Warming Science They Don't Want You to Know."

An American Meteorological Society award winner, Spencer is principal research scientist at the University of Alabama-Huntsville and senior scientist for climate studies at NASA Marshall Space Flight Center. Author of "The Great Global Warming Swindle," Spencer is clear: "Climate change happens - with or without our help."

A study by the National Association of Manufacturers and American Council for Capital Formation forecasts Wisconsin electricity prices will skyrocket by 177% while residential natural gas will more than double.

At the July 30 U.S. Senate Committee Hearing on Climate Change and National Security, Imhofe cited research by environmental scientist Chip Knappenberger of New Hope Environmental Services. Using sophisticated modeling developed at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, he demonstrated that cap and trade regulations will lower global temperatures by a minuscule 0.2 degrees Fahrenheit over the next 40 years. Not even a dent.

Before burying our economy, the Senate needs to rethink that return on investment. The only thing HR 2454 gives us is unprecedented intrusion and government control over yet another gigantic sector of our economy. Don't let it happen.

Do not hit that snooze button!


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