OPINION: True costs of warming hype

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican in name only, convened an international dog and pony show in Los Angeles this week to hype the need to "do something worldwide" to combat climate change.

Global warming alarmists were still smarting from retracting the latest claim, by NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, that Earth had experienced the hottest October ever.

Sharp-eyed skeptics noticed the record high was because someone copied September's temperature readings onto October's chart. In truth, October had record snowfalls and low temperatures from China to Florida.

While temperatures increased less than 1 degree Celsius during the 20th century, they have slightly declined so far this century. Studies show Earth cooled 0.7C in 2007, the fastest decline in the age of instrumentation, returning to 1930s level, says Investor's Business Daily.

The truth is, no one is certain why global temperatures rise or fall. Nevertheless, governments leverage the hype to impose new costs and to seize new control over the private sector in a quixotic quest for the perfect temperature.

"Reversing the damage done by global warming is the great environmental challenge of the 21st century," the governor said. Of course, identifying real damage is another matter.

And we are likely to find the real damage is caused not by global warming, but by the fight against global warming. The United Nations reports 40 national signatories to the Kyoto Treaty requiring cuts in CO2 emissions achieved a 5 percent cumulative reduction below 1990 levels. The trouble is, according to the New Scientist, the reduction was primarily because of even greater reductions in Europe, where much of a "17 percent drop is a consequence of the economic downturn of eastern and central European nations in the 1990s."

The National Center For Policy Analysis observed, "The Eastern European economies had to basically collapse in order to help the world meet its Kyoto goals."

Europe may offer a foretaste of what lies ahead for some regions of the United States. In California, for example, bureaucrats are finalizing costly regulations, called the Global Warming Solutions Act, for businesses, homes, transit, construction and nearly every aspect of life.

This is a grand platform for a Hollywood expatriate to receive cheers from global warming believers. But it bodes ill for one of the world's largest economies, and it's unlikely to have any effect on global temperatures, whatever they may be. Even worse, what Schwarzenegger does in California, to keep him on the A-list of glitterati types, will almost certainly catch on with other politicians throughout the United States.