Krugman's op-ed begins: "History shows that cap and trade, a system specifically designed to bring the power of market incentives to bear on environmental problems, does work."

Now, Krugman does have some relatively serious economics "chops." He majored in economics as an undergraduate at Yale, obtained a Ph.D. from MIT and then taught at Yale, MIT and Stanford before joining the faculty at Princeton in 2000 as professor of economics and international affairs. Well, my gosh, can we say Ivy League all the way? Makes one wonder how he missed doing something at Harvard, as well.

He is also a centenary professor at the London School of Economics and a member of the Group of Thirty international economic body, as well as the Council on Foreign Relations. His field is macroeconomics and one of his main influences is John Maynard Keynes. That last gives me some pause, because Keynesian economics is what Obama and his economic advisors also believe in and are following -- and we all can see how well that's been working out so far.

And in 2008, Krugman won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics. Of course, that impresses me less that it once would have, because Al Gore also won a Nobel for his An Inconvenient Truth and his world-wide posturing, pontificating and proselytizing first about the more alarmist "global warming" (until maintaining that rubric became simply unsustainable, PC-wise) and now for the more generic "climate change," all based on so-called "settled science" which has always had a significant contingent of fellow scientist debaters and doubters (derisively dubbed and dismissed as "deniers" by the Goracle and his greeny, gadfly "true believers"). Oh, yeah, and Krugman's award (and everyone else's Nobel Prize, for that matter) is also diminished by Obama also getting one for.....um, what? Oh, yeah, naively talking a lot about something which will never happen -- global nuclear disarmament -- and being in office for two weeks at the time he was nominated.

So, who am I to challenge Krugman on anything "economic"? No one, really. My goodness, you couldn't be much more well-credentialed than he is, now, could you? Well, except, as I said, that I don't think Keynesian economics works very well. But that's just based on my experience in watching Team Obama (loaded up with a whole bunch of other really smart folks -- er, in fact, many of them like Krugman) trying to make it work.....and it not working. (I know, my lying eyes again, huh?) Besides, the best I can do is balance my checkbook and manage my credit and my debt. (But, hmmm, even that means that I'm still doing better than all those super smart folks in charge of the federal government are doing with our tax money right now, doesn't it? Hey, just askin' - just sayin'.)

Krugman goes on in the article to express his optimism that the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference can make a real difference in getting the world on the right track to capping off what's bad and trading on what's good about this whole climate-change-and-cap-and-trade "thingy."

And Krugman's optimism seems further boosted now that we know President Obama is not only going to the conference, whereas before he wasn't going at all, but also that he's now going toward the end of the conference, rather than attending the beginning as penultimately planned, so he can maybe endorse something positive being accomplished -- oh my! Goodness gracious, I guess hope does spring eternal, after all.

Plus, of course, there's that conference goal of getting industrialized countries to pay developing countries under some kind of sovereignty destroying, "global governance" or "one world order" kind of thing for all the past pollution the wicked and powerful industrialized countries (that's us and Europe and more recently China and India) have inflicted on the world, especially those poor, picked on and undeveloped countries (I guess that's just about everybody else) who now want lots of the industrialized countries' money to, uh, become more "developed" themselves. I guess, so they can then become wicked and powerful polluters, too.

It's an idea somewhat like so-called African-hyphenated-Americans wanting reparations for slavery which was abolished in the U.S. over 140 years ago, whose ancestors may or may not have ever suffered slavery but who certainly personally never suffered it themselves, from, I guess for comparability's sake you would have to call them, European-hyphenated-Americans who have never been slave owners or slave masters and who likely never had any ancestors who ever were, either.

So, on all this optimism and economics stuff, I can doubt Krugman but can't really challenge him. I can challenge him, however, on the climate change issue, especially antrhopogenic change, because being an economics expert doesn't mean you know diddly squat more about something like climatology than I, or Fred, or Tom, do. And, like many Ivy League educated and Ivory Tower thinking liberals, it is Krugman's intellectual smugness and inability to resist getting into an area of pure opinion where he overreaches and attempts to "lecture" and where I can not only challenge him but also reveal his bias.

First, Krugman's credibility and objectivity suffer a little bit with me simply because he writes for the liberal NYT, which loves to leak national security secrets and undermine our military but which keeps getting scooped on "other" news stories by the likes of FOX News' Glenn Beck, an avowed non-journalist.

Second, Krugman's credibility on the issue here recently suffered even more with me when he appeared as a guest panelist this past Sunday on ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos and, when asked about the leaked emails he mentions here, looked straight into the TV camera, as if he really believed what he was saying (and that of course we should also), and said that what the climate change scientists had said in those leaked emails is not what they meant; that it was just scientists "informally" talking to each other -- wink, wink, nod, nod; and that the leaked emails did not mean what they clearly do mean -- and said -- that there is disagreement about unexplained and so far unexplainable data even among some climate change scientists (so that "science" is obviously not "settled" as so long claimed); that certain climate change scientists had been hiding data, manipulating other data, destroying still other data and denying legitimate Freedom of Information requests for some of their data, as well as avoiding full peer review of their work by other qualified scientists in the field who disagreed with them, instead denouncing the "disagreers" simply as "deniers" for years.

And then, third, there was this. Krugman goes on in the article cited here to say, "Of course, if things go well in Copenhagen, the usual suspects will go wild. We’ll hear cries that the whole notion of global warming is a hoax perpetrated by a vast scientific conspiracy, as demonstrated by stolen email messages that show — well, actually all they show is that scientists are human, but never mind."

Oh, Paul. Paul, Paul, Paul. You do so sorely disappoint. However smart you may be economically, does this put you, climatologically, in the camp of those who simply call any who question and doubt the so-called "settled science" of global warming/climate change the "deniers"? My, my, my, how intellectually insufficient, not to mention intellectually dishonest. The "usual suspects" will go wild? Does the "usual suspects" mean the hundreds and hundreds of reputable scientists world-wide who not only question but many of whom have also proven the global climate change "science" to not be "settled" but to be at least questionable, if not some of it outright false in many instances?

And, Paul, please -- "We'll hear cries that the whole notion of global warming is a hoax perpetrated by a vast scientific conspiracy"? First, you and I both know that one way to seemingly (but not really) reduce the credibility of an opposing point of view is to so overstate it that it sounds ridiculous, don't we? Nice try, but it doesn't work on all of us all the time, and it hardly ever works on those of us who have engaged in forensic debate and recognize the tactic.

Second, well, yes, "global warming" is just that, a hoax, or at least just bad science based on faulty computer models fed with inaccurate input data (GIGO) and propagated by global warming scientists hungry for government grant money and fame and opportunists like Al Gore who also want fame and to make millions from selling so-called "carbon credits." The "bad science" part of "global warming" has been pretty well proven by now; hence, in part, the shift from its advocates calling it "global warming" to now calling it "climate change."

So far as the "whole notion" of "climate change" being a hoax perpetrated by a "scientific conspiracy" of whatever size, "vast" or not, however, I don't know. Perhaps. The recently divulged emails to which you refer have certainly confirmed that not all the "climate changers" are among the most honest and forthright clutch of conspiracists caught by their own inadvertent confessions.

And, no, Paul, I won't "never mind" when you say, "...stolen email messages that show — well, actually all they show is that scientists are human, but never mind."

When Bill Clinton became president, he considered Krugman for a leading post. Krugman was interviewed but his outspokenness was reportedly "the main reason the Clinton administration didn't offer him a job." Krugman says he would not have been interested in such a job, anyway. (Well, then, Paul, why did you go for the interview -- just for "funsies"?) He told Newsweek, "I'm temperamentally unsuited for that kind of role. You have to be very good at people skills, biting your tongue when people say silly things." In his New York Times blog, Krugman repeated that statement, saying that he was "temperamentally unsuited to politics."

Well, Paul, here, I think you're right. You probably are "unsuited to politics." You're "suited" to economics, so perhaps you should just stick with that. You know, something you no doubt know a lot about. Because you're also apparently "unsuited" to an intelligent discussion about climatology, climate change and whatever conspiracies may or may not be afoot about all that. On those things, your liberalism apparently blinds you, or at the least gives you tunnel vision.

And, I'm sorry, but I also sometimes choose not to be "very good at people skills," at biting my tongue when people say silly things, too. That's why I didn't bite my tongue when I saw the silly things you said on TV and have now written in your article.

Global temperature is measured through thousands of temperature reading stations located around - well, the globe. The United States alone has more than 1,000, which are supposedly among the most reliable world-wide. But Anthony Watts, of the Watts Up With That blog, and a group of about 650 volunteers, found out very differently when they actually visited and examined 70% of the U.S. stations:

"We found stations located next to the exhaust fans of air conditioning units, surrounded by asphalt parking lots and roads, on blistering-hot rooftops, and near sidewalks and buildings that absorb and radiate heat. We found 68 stations located at wastewater treatment plants, where the process of waste digestion causes temperatures to be higher than in surrounding areas.

"In fact, we found that 89 percent of the stations - nearly 9 of every 10 - fail to meet the National Weather Service's own siting requirements that stations must be 30 meters (about 100 feet) or more away from an artificial heating or radiating/reflecting heat source. In other words, 9 of every 10 stations are likely reporting higher or rising temperatures because they are badly sited.

"It gets worse. We observed that changes in the technology of temperature stations over time also has caused them to report a false warming trend. We found major gaps in the data record that were filled in with data from nearby sites, a practice that propagates and compounds errors. We found that adjustments to the data by both NOAA and another government agency, NASA, cause recent temperatures to look even higher."

The conclusion is obvious: The U.S. temperature record is unreliable. And since it is based on what are supposed to be among the more reliable temperature readings from around the world, what does that potentially say about many other nations' readings?

So, with ground temperature data revealed as unreliable, what is it that we know that we know?  Well, satellite data indicate the earth warmed from the period 1979 to around 1998, and that it has cooled since 2002. That's 19 years of warming and at least the 7 most recent years of cooling. Yet, countries around the world are instituting disastrously business-damaging programs, like carbon taxes or cap-and-trade programs. 

The U.S. Congress is considering the Waxman-Markey bill, which would enact a cap-and-trade program: (a) that would impose draconian operating conditions and carbon emission taxes on businesses, (b) that would cause energy costs to skyrocket for everyone who turns on a light switch or drives a car, and (c) that even global warming alarmist James Hansen of NASA and consumer advocate Ralph Nader say won't work. Oh, and (d) that would also raise lots and lots of money in taxes for the government to spend.

Global warming proponents tell us "the science is settled" and that any who disagree with them are merely "deniers," the same type of ignorant or unsophisticated people who deny the Holocaust or that the Earth is round. Of course one of the most prominent of these proponents, former vice president Al "The Goracle" Gore (who can sometimes say the most preposterous things with a perfectly straight face - guess it sometimes actually helps to be a little "wooden"), is ironically, hypocritically and personally responsible for a huge "carbon footprint" himself. With a monster house in Tennessee which uses more energy in a month than those of his neighbors use in a year and with all of his jetting around in a private jet for speaking engagements, fund raising and global warming alarming, Gore, like many other liberal elites who preach to the rest of us about how we should live, creates more carbon emissions in a month than you or I do in a year. But, of course, I guess he, like some other rich people salving their own consciences for their extravagant and wasteful lifestyles, makes it all right by buying what are called "carbon credits" to offset his excessive carbon emissions.

You know, I've heard the carbon credits thing talked about a lot, normally just as if in passing, like, well, everybody understands about that, but I'll admit to having never understood exactly how that works. For example, how much does, say, one carbon credit cost? Who determines what that cost is? Is it market driven or determined and regulated by government bureaucrats? If I wanted to buy some carbon credits, to whom would I make out my check? Do they give me a piece of paper, perhaps a certificate of some kind, to prove that I paid for some carbon credits? Can I deduct buying some carbon credits from my taxes?

(If anyone reading this understands how it all works (if, in fact, it actually does at all), please 'splain it to me.)

But, enough philosophy. Back to science. If the science is "settled," then why do over 30,000 scientists, many of them world-renowned, disagree with the man-made global warming alarmism? First, that doesn't sound all that "settled" to me. And, second, it now turns out that the so-called "settled science" is based on flawed data. If temperature readings are inputted to computer models which then make global warming "predictions" and 8 or 9 out of 10 of those temperature readings are wrong, then aren't the computer model predictions necessarily also wrong? Or did a basic computer principle - garbage in, garbage out (GIGO) - change all of a sudden?
 
Besides, Richard Henry Lee at the American Thinker Blog probably asks a more important question:

"...the real question is why it took a dedicated group of volunteers to find the numerous faults in our temperature record rather than the heavily funded governmental and educational institutions which are continually warning us about global warming."

Well, I think part of the answer to Mr. Lee's question lies in his wording "heavily funded governmental and educational institutions." They don't get funded anymore if there is no man-made global warming or they "solve" the problem, do they?

Perhaps it's less "environmental science" and more "economic science" which has been the point all along - and still is really in play here.