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Con: Candidates realize most voters view it as a canard promoted by self-serving profiteers

WASHINGTON — EDITOR’S NOTE: The writer is addressing the question, “Were President Obama and Gov. Mitt Romney derelict in not treating climate change as a major campaign issue?”

There was no mention of the man-made global warming theory during the three presidential debates. That’s a good thing because policies enacted to fight global warming hurt people.

Anti-global warming policies are crafted to raise the price of energy to deter its use. They cause inflation and kill jobs.

All for nothing!

Even anti-global warming activists admit the policies they fight for won’t have a meaningful impact on global temperatures. Too little, they say.

Plus, relatively wealthy developed countries such as the United States and Britain aren’t the big carbon dioxide emitters of the future. Look to China—already No. 1—and India for that.

The developing world isn’t going to surrender its chance at prosperity, and we shouldn’t expect it to.

In every society—no exceptions—concern about environmental issues comes only after that society has enough wealth to meet basic needs and earn some luxuries. China and India aren’t going to be exceptions. Their first goal is economic growth.

A third reason it’s good that global warming was absent from the debates is that global warming isn’t happening. The world isn’t getting warmer.

Data collected from 3,000 land and sea locations around the globe and jointly released last month by Britain’s Met Office Hadley Centre and the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia show that from early 1997 until August 2012 there was no noticeable rise in global temperatures.

Let me say that again: Earth temperatures have been steady since 1997. And the outfits saying so are the most famous pro-global warming theory institutes on Earth.

Recall the Climategate scandal, in which leaked or hacked emails revealed that prominent scientists had let their zeal for the global warming theory—and the grant money and fame it generates—overwhelm their objectivity and professionalism.

Those emails came from one of the two institutes that now, probably reluctantly, is revealing there has been no noticeable warming worldwide since 1997.

For those keeping track, before 1997, there was warming for about 20 years, and before that, stable or declining temperatures for about 40 years. In total, the Earth has warmed about 0.75 degrees Celsius since 1880, which is soon after the Little Ice Age ended.

The 16-year halt to global warming we’re enjoying now isn’t what the global warming computer models so beloved by Al Gore predicted. In other words, the computer models predicting global warming turned out to be wrong.

People who aren’t profiting in some way from the global warming theory consider this good news. But to others, the absence of global warming is upsetting.

Big-government politicians are among those upset. According to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a new anti-energy carbon tax enacted in the name of fighting global warming could raise $1.5 trillion—TRILLION—for politicians in Washington to spend.

If global warming isn’t happening, these politicians lose their excuse to get that money—from you.

And there are the businesses that get grants and loans they’ll never repay to develop “green” energies.

Recall that President Obama did brag about spending your money on “green” energy during the debates.

Perhaps you already know Al Gore has parlayed his well-known interest in fighting global warming into business activities that have earned him a reported $100 million.

Even green activists seem blue that global warming isn’t occurring. Being part of the anti-global warming cause may have been more important to them than ending global warming.

For those who profit in some way from the global warming theory, the absence of global warming from the debates was a loss. For the rest of us: good riddance to global warming.

Amy Ridenour is chairwoman of the National Center for Public Policy Research, a conservative think-tank. Readers may write to her at NCPPR, 501 Capitol Court NE, Washington D.C. 20002; email: aridenour@nationalcenter.org.