Opponents of the “Consensus” on Anthropogenic Global Warming

Contrary to what one often hears, opponents of the ‘scientific consensus’ promoted by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, are not self-published kooks & cranks. In view of the heat that this statement seems to generate, it is necessary to spell out & clarify what is involved (for careful readers): There are many established scientists who seriously question its procedures & arguments. See, for example, the following:

Environmentalist Zen

If you’d prefer to be cool rather than suffer in the heat, what you need to do, according to the environmental movement, is smash your air conditioner, refrigerator, and freezer. That will help to cool the planet—someday. If you want to be secure from hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, and other natural (according to it, manmade) disasters, what you need to do is destroy the energy base required to produce and operate modern construction equipment and means of transportation.

Pop fluff and the 12-cent meal

A fun little absurdity — AOL has a teaser that purports to show how a celebrity salary feels to the working man or woman making $30K. According to the first slide, Angelina Jolie feels the cost of a $40 meal the same as $0.12 feels to the $15 per hour laborer. Absurd! Are they trying to tell me that after the waiter said, “I’m sorry, I just lost your meal.” Jolie would smile and forget the matter?

The Ethics of Bribery

Bribery has received a uniformly bad press, and it is generally assumed that bribery should be outlawed. Murray Rothbard asks: is this necessarily true? There is nothing illegitimate about the briber, he argues, but there is much that is illegitimate about the bribee, the taker of the bribe. Legally, there should be a property right to pay a bribe, but not to take one. It is only the taker of a bribe who should be prosecuted. In contrast, left-liberals tend to hold the bribe-giver as somehow more reprehensible, as in some way “corrupting” the taker. In that way they deny the free will and the responsibility of each individual for his own actions.

The Fallacy of Inflation Targeting

Recently some Federal Reserve officials such as Mishkin, Fisher, Lacker, Moskow, and Poole have voiced their support for setting inflationary targets. They believe that this will not only stabilize the rate of inflation but will also help to stabilize economic activity around sustainable levels. In short, setting targets could eliminate the menace of boom-bust cycles.

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