Money is power. You can use money to get people to do things for you, and to obtain real stuff. Most people will do almost anything, if you offer them enough money. In the current financial system, money is manufactured by central and private banks out of thin air: they make something from nothing. This is a great power. There is a system of checks and balances surrounding it, but the safeguards are imperfect. This is the story of the rise and abuse of that power.

The paper aristocracy, those who manufacture money and the financial smarties who work the system of paper money, have easy jobs and far more stuff than the rest of us. If you are not part of the paper aristocracy, you are effectively working for them, being subtly and persistently disadvantaged in ways you probably are not aware of. Ultimately those who wield the power to manufacture money have great financial and political influence, and have come to quietly rule the financial world.

This essay explains the story as simply as possible, for members of the public. There are a lot of interconnecting parts to the story, so unfortunately the essay cannot be short. So far most readers have found it eye-opening, informative, and thought-provoking. The essay starts a little slowly because we need to understand the basics of money manufacture, but then moves quickly.

And global warming? The money behind trading carbon emission permits will be colossal. The proposed system bears remarkable similarity to the paper money system: permits are manufactured out of nothing, given value by government decree, traded at a profit by big banks, and then the rest of us have to buy them. The same sort of game by the same people.

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20th-century warming: less than had been thought SPPI's authoritative Monthly CO2 Report for September 2009 reproduces a research paper by Dr. Joe D'Aleo showing that global temperatures over the past century, corrected for urban bias and other errors in the current datasets, have changed by far less than official sources suggest.

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The Economic Effects of Legislation to Reduce Greenhouse-Gas Emissions

September 2009

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What does the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation think about carbon dioxide (CO2)-induced global warming?

“We don’t think about it,”Bill Gates said during last year’s Engineers Without Borders International Conference.On another occasion, he told Newsweek magazine: “The angle I’ll look at most is … What about the 4 billion poorest people? What about energy and environmental issues for them?”

The question, however, is not simply a matter of reprioritising limited resources. More fundamentally, the scientific case for catastrophic global climate change from increased atmospheric CO2 is substantially flawed.

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After crunching data this week from two of our satellite-based microwave sensors, and from NOAA’s official sea surface temperature (SST) product ERSST v3b, I think the evidence is pretty clear:

The ERSST v3b product has a spurious warming since 1998 of about 0.2 deg. C, most of which occurred as a jump in 2001.

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DeSmogBlog describes itself as "the world’s number one source for accurate, fact based information regarding Global Warming misinformation campaigns." It takes the position that "An overwhelming majority of the world’s climate scientists agree that the globe is warming...and that the indiscriminate burning of fossil fuels is to blame." (Einstein didn't think majority opinion decided scientific disputes, but that's another discussion.)

DeSmogBlog alleges that those who doubt global warming theory are part of a "a well-funded and highly organized public relations campaign" that is "trying to confuse the public, to forestall individual and political actions that might cut into exorbitant coal, oil and gas industry profits."

In this comic-book view of the world, environmental issues aren't complex matters involving imperfect tradeoffs, limited resources, and inadequate technologies. Nor is it necessary to consider ideas from multiple perspectives in order to understand them thoroughly.

In the DeSmogBlog universe, good guys and bad guys are readily identifiable and the way forward is clear. Although DeSmogBlog implies that its concern is with industry lobbying efforts, in reality anyone who disagrees with its perspective gets slimed. Satirist Rex Murphy, for example, is called "resolutely stupid" because his bracing commentaries on global warming contrast with the DeSmogBlog point-of-view.

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