Brian Angliss's articles

In early 2008, the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine (OISM) published their Petition Project, a list of names of people who claim to be scientists and who reject the science behind the theory of anthropogenic (human-caused) global warming (AGW). The petition was an attempt by the OISM to demonstrate that there are many more scientists opposing AGW theory than there are supporting it.

This so-called petition took on special importance coming after the release of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fourth Assessment Report, and specifically the Working Group 1 (WG1) report which attributed climate change to human civilization.

The WG1 report was authored and reviewed by approximately 2000 scientists with expertise in climate and related fields. So the ability to publish a list of over 30,000 scientists who reject the WG1’s conclusions was a powerful meme that climate skeptics and deniers could use to cast doubt on the IPCC’s conclusions and, indirectly, on the entire theory of climate disruption.

And in fact, this meme has become widespread in both legacy and new media today, 

It also happens to be an elaborate deception, as the following deconstruction of the Oregon Petition Project will demonstrate, and important to revisit as federal climate law is negotiated in Congress.

The American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE) has been running an online advertisement at the Washington Post, The Hill and other web sites which makes the following claim: 72% of opinion leaders support coal electricity.

A closer look at this claim provides yet another example of how the coal and electricity industries that created ACCCE are manipulating Americans in their fight to keep polluting for free.

American-style capitalism, sans regulation, has earned its present bad rap. Even so, some market mechanisms do work quite well.

Markets discover commodities pricing and keep costs low, and they are very efficient at making sure that metals, oil, food, etc. are moved to where the demand is highest from where the supply is greatest. A market in traded sulfur emissions imposed by the Clean Air Act has enabled fossil fuel plants to reduce sulfur dioxide emissions (the main source of acid rain) dramatically since that market’s inception.

And soon, President Obama and the Congress will catch up to New England and the European Union with a new vision for capitalism – carbon capitalism.

Carbon capitalism involves a cap-and-trade market for carbon dioxide, and it makes a lot of sense. Just like sulfur dioxide, CO2 emissions from different sources mix with each other in the atmosphere, and for this reason trading emission credits between one source and another is physically viable. Add in the ability to bank emissions credits, and you’ve got the makings of a complete carbon market and financial system.

So if cap-and-trade is really carbon capitalism, why do so many supposed capitalists hate the idea of a market in CO2?

The United States' role in climate disruption is far greater than most people realize. Not only does the U.S. emit more carbon dioxide (CO2) than any other nation besides China, not only does the U.S. have one of the highest per-capita emissions levels in the world, but the U.S. economy also accounts for a massive amount of emissions released by the rest of the world.

I crunched the numbers to see just how much CO2 the United States economy is actually responsible for. The results are disturbing.