Here is an excellent press release from Myron Ebell, of the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Myron will be on ATG on Tuesday, October 31. The subject, the British report on Global Warming, and the move by the UK to HIRE Al Gore to give the UK government advice on the supposedly man-made warming problem.

Here is the press release from CEI:

C|E|I

Competitive Enterprise Institute

British Economic Review of Global Warming Fuels Alarmism;
Economist Cherry-Picks Data to Forecast Overblown Scenario

Washington , D.C. , October 30, 2006—A new report commissioned by the British government on the potential costs of global warming and its prevention is deeply flawed and should not be used to justify a global emissions trading scheme, the Competitive Enterprise Institute warned on Monday.

The Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, authored by former World Bank economist Sir Nicholas Stern, concludes that global warming could cost up to 20 per cent of world economic output if urgent action is not taken to stop floods, storms, and natural catastrophes. The review further concludes that cutting global greenhouse gas emissions by at least 60 per cent by 2050 would cost the global economy no more than one per cent of output. The report can be accessed here: http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/independent_reviews/stern_review_economics...

“The report’s estimates for reducing greenhouse gas emissions are laughably rosy, while the assumptions about the impacts of global warming are ridiculously overblown,” said Myron Ebell, Director of Energy and Global Warming Policy for the Competitive Enterprise Institute. "The Stern Review may look professionally done, but it doesn't pass the laugh test."

"Contrary to speculative economic models used by the Stern Review, the European Union's actual experience suggests that the costs of cutting emissions would be very high," noted Iain Murray, CEI Senior Fellow. "The EU’s greenhouse gas emissions have gone up considerably since the Kyoto Protocol was negotiated in 1997, despite the fact that the EU is supposedly committed to the Kyoto agreement," said Murray .

"Moreover, the report only used one of the UN’s scenarios for future emissions, the one that sees a very high world population and low amounts of globalization,” Murray explained. “Even then, the report still concludes we will be 5-10 times richer at the end of the century than now. The charges of economic catastrophe must be measured against this. If the report had actually looked at other scenarios, with lower population growth and freer trade, it would have had to conclude we would be very rich indeed.”

The report recommends a global emissions trading scheme, similar to the one in Europe that recently crashed -- after driving up household energy prices and delivering windfall profits to energy companies but without reducing European emissions.

"This is ‘Chicken Little’ stuff," said Murray , "except that Chicken Little wasn't trying to scare the public in order to create Enron-style con games and line the pockets of Wall Street investment bankers at the expense of consumers.”