Is it just me or are the global warming headlines starting to overheat a little? The Independent on Sunday gave its report on the Montreal climate conference the somewhat overwrought title: "What planet are you on, Mr Bush? (And do you care, Mr Blair?)" Nothing in the rather dull article underneath justified the hectoring hysteria.

And, to be honest, I've no real idea what it means. Is the IoS asking whether Mr Blair cares what planet Mr Bush is on? Well, no doubt he'd be startled to hear the President's moving to Pluto, but I expect he'd take it in his stride.

As to what planet Mr Bush is on, he's not on Pluto but on planet Goofy, a strange lost world where it's perfectly normal for apparently sane people to walk around protesting about global warming in sub-zero temperatures. Or, as the Canadian Press reported: "Montreal - tens of thousands of people ignored frigid temperatures Saturday to lead a worldwide day of protest against global warming."

Unfortunately, no one had supplied an updated weather forecast to the fellow who writes the protesters' chants. So, to the accompaniment of the obligatory pseudo-ethnic drummers, the shivering eco-warriors sang: "It's hot in here! There's too much carbon in the atmosphere!" Is this the first sign of the "New Ice Age" the media warned us about last week?

The story originated in Nature, the hitherto distinguished scientific periodical whose environmental coverage increasingly resembles that celebrated Sunday Sport scoop about the London double-decker bus found frozen in the deepest ice of the Antarctic. That, of course, is absurd - in reality, as the trained scientists at Nature would be the first to point out, the Clapham omnibus would be lucky to make it as far as Tulse Hill before being embedded in a glacier.

The eco-doom-mongers were speculating on possible changes in thermohaline circulation in the Atlantic - or, as the Daily Mail put it: "Is Britain on the brink of a New Ice Age?" Europe could get so chilly that shivering Muslim rioters might burn the entire Peugeot fleet on the first night. Which would be good for the environment, presumably. After that, they'd be reduced to huddling round the nearest fire-breathing imam for warmth.

But the point is, as Steven Guilbeault of Greenpeace puts it: "Global warming can mean colder, it can mean drier, it can mean wetter, that's what we're dealing with." Got that? If it's hot, that's a sign of global warming, and, if it's cold, that's a sign of global warming.

And if it's just kind of average - say, 48F and partially cloudy, as it will be in Llandudno today - that's a sign that global warming is accelerating out of control and you need to flee immediately because time is running out ! "Time is running out to deal with climate change," says Mr Guilbeault. "Ten years ago, we thought we had a lot of time, five years ago we thought we had a lot of time, but now science is telling us that we don't have a lot of time."

Really? Ten years ago, we had a lot of time? That's not the way I recall it: "Time is running out for the climate" - Chris Rose of Greenpeace, 1997; "Time running out for action on global warming Greenpeace claims" - Irish Times, 1994; "Time is running out" - scientist Henry Kendall, speaking on behalf of Greenpeace, 1992. Admirably, Mr Guilbeault's commitment to the environment extends to recycling last decade's scare-mongering press releases.

"Stop worrying about your money, take care of our planet," advised one of the protesters' placards. Au contraire, take care of your money and the planet will follow. For anywhere other than Antarctica and a few sparsely inhabited islands, the first condition for a healthy environment is a strong economy. In the past third of a century, the American economy has swollen by 150 per cent, automobile traffic has increased by 143 per cent, and energy consumption has grown

45 per cent. During this same period, air pollutants have declined by 29 per cent, toxic emissions by 48.5 per cent, sulphur dioxide levels by 65.3 per cent, and airborne lead by 97.3 per cent. Despite signing on to Kyoto, European greenhouse gas emissions have increased since 2001, whereas America's emissions have fallen by nearly one per cent, despite the Toxic Texan's best efforts to destroy the planet.

Had America and Australia ratified Kyoto, and had the Europeans complied with it instead of just pretending to, by 2050 the treaty would have reduced global warming by 0.07C - a figure that would be statistically undectectable within annual climate variation. In return for this meaningless gesture, American GDP in 2010 would be lower by $97 billion to $397 billion - and those are the US Energy Information Administration's somewhat optimistic models.

I've mentioned before the environmentalists' ceaseless fretting for the prospect of every species but their own. By the end of this century, the demographically doomed French, Italians and Spaniards will be so shrivelled in number they may have too few environmentalists to man their local Greenpeace office. Is that part of the plan? To create a habitable environment with no humans left to inhabit it? If so, destroying the global economy for 0.07C is a swell idea.

But even the poseurs of the European chancelleries are having second thoughts. Which is why, in their efforts to flog some life back into the dead Kyoto horse, the eco-cultists have to come up with ever scarier horrors, such as that "New Ice Age". Meanwhile, the Bush Administration's Asia-Pacific Partnership for Clean Development and Climate brings together the key economic colossi of this new century - America, China and India - plus Australia, Japan and South Korea, in a relationship that acknowledges, unlike Kyoto, the speed of Chinese and Indian economic growth, provides for the sharing of cleaner energy technology and recognises that the best friend of the planet's natural resources is the natural resourcefulness of a dynamic economy.

It's a practical and results-oriented approach, which is why the eco-cultists will never be marching through globally warmed, snow-choked streets on its behalf. It lacks the requisite component of civilisational self-loathing.

Wake up and smell the CO2, guys. Sayonara, Kyoto. Hello, coalition of the emitting.

- posted by Ike @ 5:03 PM 0 comments

December 7, 2005
Extravagant Waste in the Law Business
By John Stossel

In recent months, we've seen seemingly endless arguments over the Supreme Court. But as I watch people comb through old documents and parse interviews for clues to the nominees' positions on high-profile constitutional questions, I'm struck by how little attention has been given to one of the biggest problems in America's judicial system: the enormous cost and creativity-killing pace of ordinary civil cases.

In my years doing consumer reporting, I watched every American industry find ways to do things better, faster, and cheaper. Today's computers cost less, but are more powerful. Cars got better. Supermarkets offer more for less. Most every business is better.

But not the law business. In law, everything is slow and expensive, and our choices limited.

For $1 I can buy a newspaper, and every day it's different. But try to get a divorce or a simple will for less than $300.

The lawyers defend their fees and snail-like pace, saying, "We've got to make sure you get due process." Glad they're so concerned. But when there's no money in a case, people have trouble getting a lawyer, let alone getting due process. When there is money, lawyers even insist on undue process. In the O.J. Simpson trial, they even quibbled about the jewelry the other lawyers wore.

Other businesses pad bills, too, but competition limits it. There's less competition in law because lawyers outlawed competition from outside their profession -- they prosecute paralegals who offer cheaper alternatives, calling it "unauthorized practice of law." And they are all bound by rules of procedure, drafted by lawyers and, for the federal courts, issued by the Supreme Court, that call for volumes of paper and make lots of work -- lucrative work, if you're a lawyer.

Civil cases usually take years. It almost makes me feel sorry for the people who sue me. A guy in Philadelphia who said I damaged his reputation had to wait four years just to get me into court.

The essence of my story was that Irwin Rogal, a dentist, ran a dental "mill," telling people (including me, after he examined me for a "20/20" story) we had jaw problems, and then charging big bucks for dubious "treatments." In his lawsuit, he claimed he had not recommended treatment to me.

Sounds simple for a court to resolve. The exam was on videotape. The jury could watch the 40-minute tape and then decide. But that never happened. Instead, the dentist's lawyers and mine spent three years sending legal papers back and forth. My lawyers (did I mention they were paid by the hour?) demanded that the dentist produce vast amounts of paperwork detailing "all persons other than your attorneys with whom you have had written or oral communication" and "each workshop or seminar in which you have participated as a speaker."

The dentist's attorneys demanded that we "state the title and author of each book that was used as a source of information, the name and date of publication of each newspaper, magazine, pamphlet . . . documents . . . " In case we didn't know what documents were, they spelled it out: "Any abstracts, accounts, accounting records, accounting advertisements, agreements, bids, bills, bills of lading, blanks, books, books of accounts, brochures" -- that's just the A's and B's.

Eventually, my case got to court. I assumed the jury would watch the tape, but they never did. Instead, we had war. War is what a lawsuit is. Each side played snippets of the videotape. His side played a few minutes that made it seem as if he hadn't recommended treatment; my side played a few that demonstrated he did. This happened again and again -- for days. It was ridiculous. That's what got to me most, watching my case: the extravagant waste. Even with lawyers charging hundreds of dollars an hour, the judge just let it go on and on.

I finally won, but the ordeal cost ABC a fortune. Why couldn't the judge say, "Shut up. This is a waste of time and money. We're just going to play the tape."

"Because most judges are afraid to offend," Joe Jamail, a Texas lawyer who's made millions, told me.

So these lawyers are just self-indulgent? "No," said Jamail. "They were being paid."

©2005 JFS Productions, Inc. Distributed by Creators Syndicate

- posted by Ike @ 4:59 PM 0 comments