Comrade Barack (and others) in his Community Organizer days actually set up the Exchange (with money they took from private charitable trusts – mostly, to the great amusement of the Conrades, set up by dead Republicans).

However, Goldman Sachs moved in quickly – as they always do with a scam. Just as my dear friends at the Economist magazine tend to be very quick to write articles that refer (either as the main feature of the article – or in passing), in positive terms, to the latest fashionable scams.

Although Goldman Sachs were not the first major corporation to try and make money out of the “Carbon Trading” scam.

That was Enron.

Truly, it would gladden my bleak, “Austrian” heart if Goldman had failed.

So nothing sinister about weather derivatives, UNLESS it is part of crony-capitalist manipulation. So if you sell a wind-velocity hedge to an electric turbine investor, or rain cover to a farm, fine. But if you trade carbon credits made artificially scarce by political fiat, then shame. The former of course is hard work, and of no interest to Goldman.

CO2 is a naturally occurring trace gas, essential to life on Earth.

In an interview with the Wisconsin Energy Cooperative Newsletter, the late Professor Reid Bryson, the father of climate science, related the following which I have paraphrased.

As for the effects of green house gasses, in the first 30 feet above the surface, 80% of reflected solar energy is absorbed by water vapor. CO2 absorbs 0.08%. H2O is 1000 times more effective than CO2. You can go outside and spit and have more effect on warming that doubling the level of CO2.

And the moral is, when you make a mistake, admit it. Don’t try to pretend you didn’t. If you do pretend you didn’t, that’s when the real grief begins.

And, the political debate is about whether to impoverish teh world by severely restricting the use of fossil fuels in favor of much more expensive and less reliable “renewables.”

And for that, not only must “C” be demonstrated, but also the efficacy of the proposed cure must be demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt. And we are so far from THAT it is just laughable.

What is not at all certain is that the A factor is remotely significant, let alone catastrophic.

(In other words, I think A – in the most literal, and also least meaningful sense – is a given, but the form of A people “widely believe in” is not remotely well-supported by evidence.*)

* And thus while denying A is not literally-and-scientifically quite accurate, it’s decently acceptable in the vernacular because what’s really being denied is significant and relevant A, not any-old-A.