The Big Lie: Global Warming And Climate Change, cont'd.

Man-Caused Global Warming And Climate Change: A Monstrous Lie

It is well known and documented that Alpine Glaciers (those found in mountainous areas) have advanced and retreated many times in recordable history.  This is history witnessed and written of by man during the past approximate 5,000 years.  There is unmistakable and unarguable evidence these glaciers have advanced and retreated many times since the end of the last Ice Age, when Continental Ice Sheets covered much of the Polar Regions and the Northern Hemisphere.  Something caused this glacial retreat, or melting, and it wasn't man-caused.  At least this melting occurred before he burning of massive amounts of fossil fuels and the emission of carbon dioxide (CO2). 

These were also at least as rapid climate changes as we see in the world today.  So what is unique about current events?  Why are we in such a frenzy to "stop climate change"?  It is nothing unusual, unless we're being scared and panicked by fear?  Is it so we will happily, or a least willingly, pay more taxes, carbon taxes or otherwise, to solve this imaginary warming problem?  We should be worried, but not about global warming.
Peter

Perito Moreno Glacier, Argentine Patagonia

Scientist Reveals Inconvenient Truth to Alarmists

Tuesday, 17 Jun 2014 07:59 AM

By Larry Bell

Dr. Christian Schlüchter’s discovery of 4,000-year-old chunks of wood at the leading edge of a Swiss glacier was clearly not cheered by many members of the global warming doom-and-gloom science orthodoxy.

 

This finding indicated that the Alps were pretty nearly glacier-free at that time, disproving accepted theories that they only began retreating after the end of the little ice age in the mid-19th century. As he concluded, the region had once been much warmer than today, with “a wild landscape and wide flowing river.”

 

Dr. Schlüchter’s report might have been more conveniently dismissed by the entrenched global warming establishment were it not for his distinguished reputation as a giant in the field of geology and paleoclimatology who has authored/coauthored more than 250 papers and is a professor emeritus at the University of Bern in Switzerland.

 

Then he made himself even more unpopular thanks to a recent interview titled “Our Society is Fundamentally Dishonest” which appeared in the Swiss publication Der Bund where he criticized the U.N.-dominated institutional climate science hierarchy for extreme tunnel vision and political contamination.

 

Following the ancient forest evidence discovery Schlüchter became a target of scorn. As he observes in the interview, “I wasn’t supposed to find that chunk of wood because I didn’t belong to the close-knit circle of Holocene and climate researchers. My findings thus caught many experts off guard: Now an ‘amateur’ had found something that the [more recent time-focused] Holocene and climate experts should have found.”

 

Other evidence exists that there is really nothing new about dramatic glacier advances and retreats. In fact the Alps were nearly glacier-free again about 2,000 years ago. Schlüchter points out that “the forest line was much higher than it is today; there were hardly any glaciers. Nowhere in the detailed travel accounts from Roman times are glaciers mentioned.”

 

Schlüchter criticizes his critics for focusing on a time period which is “indeed too short.” His studies and analyses of a Rhone glacier area reveal that “the rock surface had [previously] been ice-free 5,800 of the last 10,000 years."

 

 

Such changes can occur very rapidly. His research team was stunned to find trunks of huge trees near the edge of Mont Miné Glacier which had all died in just a single year. They determined that time to be 8,200 years ago based upon oxygen isotopes in the Greenland ice which showed marked cooling.

Casting serious doubt upon alarmist U.N.-IPCC projections that the Alps will be nearly glacier-free by 2100, Schlüchter poses several challenging questions: “Why did the glaciers retreat in the middle of the 19th century, although the large CO2 increase in the atmosphere came later? Why did the Earth 'tip' in such a short time into a warming phase? Why did glaciers again advance in the 1880s, 1920s, and 1980s? . . . Sooner or later climate science will have to answer the question why the retreat of the glacier at the end of the Little Ice Age around 1850 was so rapid.”

 

Although we witness ongoing IPCC attempts to blame such developments upon evil fossil-fueled CO2 emissions, that notion fails to answer these questions. Instead, Schlüchter believes that the sun is the principal long-term driver of climate change, with tectonics and volcanoes acting as significant contributors.

 

Regarding IPCC integrity with strong suspicion, Schlüchter recounts a meeting in England that he was “accidentally” invited to which was led by “someone of the East Anglia Climate Center who had come under fire in the wake of the Climategate e-mails.”

 

As he describes it: “The leader of the meeting spoke like some kind of Father. He was seated at a table in front of those gathered and he took messages. He commented on them either benevolently or dismissively.”

 

Schlüchter’s view of the proceeding took a final nosedive towards the end of the discussion. As he noted: “Lastly it was about tips on research funding proposals and where to submit them best. For me it was impressive to see how the leader of the meeting collected and selected information.”

As a number of other prominent climate scientists I know will attest, there’s one broadly recognized universal tip for those seeking government funding. All proposals with any real prospects for success should somehow link climate change with human activities rather than to natural causes. Even better, those human influences should intone dangerous consequences.

 

Schlüchter warns that the reputation of science is becoming more and more damaged as politics and money gain influence. He concludes, “For me it also gets down to the credibility of science . . . Today many natural scientists are helping hands of politicians, and are no longer scientists who occupy themselves with new knowledge and data. And that worries me.”

 

Yes. That should worry everyone.

 

Larry Bell is a professor and endowed professor at the University of Houston, where he directs the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture and heads the graduate program in space architecture. He is author of “Climate of Corruption: Politics and Power Behind the Global Warming Hoax,” and his professional aerospace work has been featured on the History Channel and the Discovery Channel-Canada.

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Politicians And Liberal Policy Makers Take Note: Buying Into The Bad Carbon Myth Is Damaging To Your Career

Obama is behind the curve again.  His advisers (or his teleprompter) are putting out totally flawed ideas that other governments around the world are recognizing as abysmal failures.  Here, now, I am referring to the idea of carbon taxes, carbon offsets, or any other schemes to raise tax revenues on the backs of higher energy prices for consumers.
 
Politicians around the world who bought into the idea of fossil fuel-burning, carbon dioxide causing global warming and climate change are realizing what a mistake they have made.  It is costing not only the public in terms of lost jobs, higher energy costs, and a lowered standard of living, but now as near bankruptcy looms, politicians are the ones feeling  the heat.  It will only get warmer in the frying pan these self-serving clowns (politicians) find themselves in.  The following article describes the problems liberal politicians in Australia are encountering because they have bought into the climate fear-mongering.  I have no sympathy.  They should, and do know better.  They have allowed the greed of carbon taxes overwhelm the obvious.  Man's activities are not causing catastrophic climate change, and to try and alter the global climate is political folly, or even suicide.  Eventually, the truth prevails.
Peter

Australia's carbon mess a warning to the world: Clyde Russell

     

 

The evil Mr. Carbon scaring the children.

 

 Source:

• http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/17/column-russell-carbon-australia-idUSL4N0FN0ER20130717?feedType=RSS&feedName=industrialsSector&rpc=43

 

Wed Jul 17, 2013 1:47am EDT

--Clyde Russell is a Reuters market analyst. The views expressed are his own.--
By Clyde Russell
LAUNCESTON, Australia, July 17 (Reuters) - Any government thinking of introducing policies to limit carbon emissions should look at Australia for an example of how not to do it.
Australia's efforts to combat climate change have been poison to politicians from all sides of the debate, contributing so far to the demise of two prime ministers and an opposition leader, and there may be more to come.

The latest twist has seen Prime Minister Kevin Rudd decide to switch from a straight tax on carbon emissions to a floating emissions trading scheme (ETS) a year earlier than planned.

This has nothing to do with improving the workings of the scheme or limiting carbon emissions and everything to do with trying to win back voters angered by rising electricity prices and industries that have seen their international competitiveness eroded by the tax.

The theory is that power and other prices will decline as the cost of carbon permits is expected to be around A$6 per tonne - the level at which European permits are currently priced - compared to the tax of A$25.40 ($23.09) per tonne that had been planned from July 2014.

Assuming European carbon permits don't rise in price, which is a fairly big call given efforts to reduce the supply of permits, Rudd's changes will save the average Australian household A$4 a week in electricity costs.

Whether this is enough to assuage public anger and help Rudd's Labor Party win re-election will become clear in the coming months as he has to call a federal election by end-November.
But Rudd's efforts to remove the carbon tax as an election issue only serve to underline how badly the whole thing has been handled.

When Rudd was first elected prime minister in 2007 he called climate change the "greatest moral, social and economic challenge of our time", signed Australia up to the Kyoto Protocol and proceeded to design an ETS.

This even enjoyed rare bi-partisan support from the then leader of the Liberal opposition Malcolm Turnbull.

However, it was Turnbull's support for the ETS that helped undo his leadership and he was ousted by his colleagues in December 2009, being replaced by the more conservative Tony Abbott, who withdrew his party's support for Rudd's plans.

Rudd's own popularity fell as he struggled to gain public support for his carbon scheme and a controversial new mining tax, leading to his ouster in a party coup in June 2010.
His replacement as prime minister, Julia Gillard, scrapped the planned ETS, making a promise that any government she led wouldn't introduce a carbon tax.

This commitment came back to haunt her after the August 2010 election, in which she managed to hang on to power by cutting a deal with Australian Greens and two conservative independent lawmakers to form a minority government.

Part of her agreement with the Greens was the introduction of a carbon tax with a fixed price per tonne of emissions up until July 2015, at which point it would change to a floating, traded price.
The broken promise was seized upon at every opportunity by the Liberal opposition and conservative media commentators, and in turn contributed to Gillard's poor performance in opinion polls.
When these polls showed her Labor Party heading for a massive defeat in an election she scheduled for September, her colleagues once again ousted a prime minister, bringing back Rudd in a party room vote last month.

Rudd's popularity with the public has seen the Labor Party inch closer to the Liberals in opinion polls, putting pressure on Abbott, who courted ridicule as a climate sceptic earlier this week by describing the ETS as a "so-called market in the non-delivery of an invisible substance".
However, the Liberals are still ahead in opinion polls and if they win the upcoming election, Abbott has promised to scrap the carbon tax and the move to an ETS, replacing it with what he terms "direct action" on climate change.

But even if his party does win the election, it may not control both houses of parliament, and the lack of a majority in the upper house Senate may cruel Abbott's plans, as legislation has to clear both chambers.

It's little wonder that businesses and the public want some kind of resolution to the issue, but the upcoming vote may not deliver this, at least not immediately.
Part of the problem with Gillard's carbon tax is that it was more of a welfare programme than a plan to reduce emissions.

The tax raised was used to fund a raft of welfare measures to compensate for the higher prices caused by the tax.
The plans of both Rudd and Abbott would see the revenue from the tax fall dramatically or disappear altogether, but the welfare payments would remain, leaving the nation's budget with the worst possible outcome.
Rudd said his plan to move earlier to an ETS would cost the budget some A$4 billion, which would be recouped through spending cuts and tightening rules around company-funded vehicles for employees.

Abbott has so far only promised to end a small portion of welfare payments and seek spending cuts across the government.
Absent from both plans is much talk about climate change and carbon emissions.
Australia is the world's 15th-largest polluter and the highest per capita in the developed world, largely as a result of 80 percent of power being coal-fired and the prevalence of carbon-intensive industries such as mining and liquefied natural gas plants.

The existing carbon tax may actually be able to claim some credit for reducing emissions, with Australia's overall greenhouse gas emissions dropping 0.2 percent in 2012 from the prior year, and those from electricity generation by 4.7 percent.
But this success, while modest, is completely drowned out by the political machinations.
What the Australian experience shows is that any government tackling climate change needs as broad a consensus as possible, and that it should be done for the right reasons, not political expediency

Insane Waste Of Money On Global Warming And Climate Change Continues

The absurd notion that mankind is causing global warming and hence climate change continues to be spread by the liberal controlled media.  It is not seriously questioned often enough because too many people are making and stand to make Billions of dollars from the "biggest hoax of all time."  It has become such a political hot-potato that even people in positions to know, like scientists, are afraid to speak out for fear of losing their jobs, their funding, or worse.  Yes, there is THAT much money involved.  Now we learn that the NSA, IRS, FBI, EPA, etc. is listening in on, and sometimes selectively blocking or censoring everything we read and write.  Are we living in a "Police State"?  Yes, beyond a doubt.  Watch, I'll be shut down just for saying this.

The idea that we could actually change and control the Earth's huge and complex atmospheric climate system is even more absurd.  People won't even go close to asking the question "could we really control climate change even if we put every last human effort and dollar to work on the issue?"  The answer is obviously NO.  I mean 1/3 of the people in the U.S. are on food stamps, tens of millions of people are unemployed, or underemployed, and people want to spend Billions more to try and change the climate?  Insane.

To the ignorant trolls lurking out there: you bet it's a political issue.  It has to be.  New bills and taxes are being forced down our throats by our legislators on this issue every day.  It has long gone way past being a scientific question, which I originally, naively assumed.  As a scientist, I had faith in logic, reason, facts, and the scientific method.  No longer.  We have lost control to big business, and big politics or big government.  So we must fight the insanity using every method we can.

Politicians look at a "carbon tax" on everything we do, and they DROOL; because most of the energy we use requires the release of simple (and harmless) carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.  They salivate or dream about grabbing all that potential tax revenue.  It is literally like being able to tax the air we breath.  We do produce and release carbon dioxide every time we exhale.  Simply speaking, we breath in oxygen, use it for vital physiological functions, and our bodies convert it to carbon dioxide.  And our government wants to tax it!!!!  Amazing  (and sad) that so many people are so uneducated that they accept such absurd tax proposals.  Obviously most of our public school teachers have also fallen for or are intimidated into accepting the global warming/human connection hoax.

Now we get some egomaniac control-freak, like Billionaire NYC Mayor Bloomberg making proposals like the one described in the article below.  Such idiocy is actually treasonous, if you think about it.  What destroys America's economy, destroys America.
Peter

Mayor Bloomberg Pledges $20 Billion NYC Doesn't Have To Address Global Warming Which Isn't Happening

Written by Jeff Dunetz, The Lid.

Build a Boat! It's Gonna Start Flooding! (sometime soon). According to Mommy Mayor Bloomberg NYC is about to be flooded because of global warming, so he's announced a $20 billion dollar plan to prevent the big apple from becoming the worlds largest bobbing for apples game.  Its a reasonable plan with only two problems, the City doesn't have that kind of money and the sea level isn't rising, in fact temperatures haven't risen in 15+ years.
Mayor Bloomberg unveiled a $20 billion plan to defend New York City from what he claim will be the ravages of global warming in the coming decades. His  plan will cost the average New York City household nearly $3,000.

Bloomberg’s 430-page plan, Special Initiative for Rebuilding and Resiliency, includes approximately 250 recommendations ranging from new floodwalls and storm barriers to upgrades in the city’s power and telecommunications infrastructure. The plan also calls for $1.2 billion in loans and grants to help owners make buildings more resilient to floods and proposes changes in the city’s building code.

New York has always had to deal with the threat of flooding. Hurricanes and severe tropical storms have struck the area periodically since the founding of New Amsterdam (today’s New York) in 1624.Bloomberg announced the plan by claiming New Yorkers could either “do nothing and expose ourselves to an increasing frequency of Sandy-like storms” or “make the investments necessary to build a stronger, more resilient New York.”

 

Bloomberg is correct about the frequency of bad hurricanes, there was Hurricane Donna in 1960 (a category 2), Hurricane Gloria in 1985, Irene in 2011 and Sandy in 2012.  See--a-15-year-gap followed by a 26-year gap and a 1-year gap (there were other storms but these were the bad ones).  Come on Mayor! Four bad hurricanes in 52 years and you are freaking out!

“I have trouble seeing exactly how spending $20 billion—that’s billion with a ‘b’—will prevent bad weather or climate,” said climate scientist Willie Soon. “In general, to be more prepared is a good thing. But preparing, as New York City is apparently doing, using the faulty climate modeling scenarios offered by the UN IPCC [United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] is a serious distortion of basic science.”

 

As far as sea levels---that's also nonsense. The President forgot  ever since the last ice-age 10,000 years ago, sea levels have been rising. So unless the Neanderthals were imitating Al Gore and flying private jets and driving gas guzzlers, rising sea levels are not caused by man but by natural phenomena.

The climate change hoaxers use computer models to predict that sea levels would rise anywhere from 15 inches to 20 feet because of global warming in the 21st century (the consensus number is closer to 3 feet).

But Mother Nature was never good at computer science.  Satellite data proved that the first decade of the 21st century sea level grew by only 0.83 inches (a pace of just 8 inches for the entire century). What's even worse (for the global warming hoaxers) there has been no rise since 2006.  Just like there has been no warming since 1998.

Gotta feel bad for the Mayor, he must be having some pretty bad nightmares to believe the City that never sleeps is going to become the city that can't keep its head above the water. Maybe he should stop having spicy food before he goes to sleep.  Perhaps instead he could relax with a nice 44 ounce Slurpee.
Source

Canadians Facing The Facts: Man Caused Global Warming Is A Myth

A myth or a lie?  Well, I'd call the entire idea that man's burning of fossil fuels is causing global warming or that dreaded "climate change", a deliberate and well orchestrated lie.  Even now European nations are initiating  a carbon tax on airlines and thus their users.  How utterly ridiculous and useless!!!  This is just another clever way of squeezing more tax money from the public.  It can not and will not be used to improve or protect the climate.  It is way past time for Canadians and everyone else to wake up and admit they've been lied to about climate change and get on with tackling the real problems in the world.  Read on.......
Peter

Progress: Canadian Senate Listens to Global Warming Skeptics




Posted By Tom Harris On January 2, 2011 @ 12:00 am In Uncategorized
32 Comments
http://pjmedia.com/blog/progress-canadian-senate-listens-to-global-warming-skeptics/?singlepage=true



On December 15, four leading scientists appeared before the Canadian Senate Standing Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources to challenge global warming advocacy. The hearing was the first of its kind in Canada. (Video of the hearing can be found here [1].)



Guelph University Professor of Economics Dr. Ross McKitrick [2] led off the hearing, explaining that the foundation of the climate scare — the science as promulgated by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — cannot be trusted:



The so-called Climategate emails confirmed the reality of bias and cronyism in the IPCC process. … IPCC Assessments are guaranteed merely to repeat and reinforce a set of foregone conclusions that make up the party line.



McKitrick explained how his research showed that much of the warming seen in the IPCC surface temperature record is almost certainly a result of urbanization, agriculture, and other land use changes, not greenhouse gases (GHG). He also found that the 50-year record of temperatures measured by balloons does not show the warming trend forecast by climate models.



University of Ottawa (U of O) Professor of Earth Sciences Dr. Ian Clark [3] addressed the committee:



We have not really seen any global warming for the past 10 years. … This is in stark contrast with the IPCC forecast of an increase of some 0.2 degrees per decade.



Clark explained that 20th century warming is merely one of a series of warm periods in the last 10,000 years. During these intervals, carbon dioxide — the greenhouse gas most targeted by governments around the world — was relatively steady:



CO2 had nothing to do with these warming periods.



Clark continued, showing that the last 500 million years show no correlation between temperature and CO2. He explained that water vapor is in fact responsible for the majority of the greenhouse effect. Clark also promoted the theory that the Sun, not CO2, is driving climate change. He concluded:



It is time to turn our attention to real, tangible environmental problems.



U of Ottawa Distinguished University Professor Dr. Jan Veizer [4] spoke next:



Many people think the science of climate change is settled. It is not. … [The Sun] drives the water cycle; the water cycle then generates climate, and climate decides how much jungle, how much tundra and so on we will have, and therefore drives around the carbon cycle. … The sun also warms the oceans that emit CO2 into the atmosphere. Atmospheric CO2 is thus the product and not the cause of the climate.



Veizer explained that solar output must be amplified to explain recent warming:



The IPCC argues that because no amplifier is known, which is an invalid assertion, man made greenhouse gases must be responsible. … However, this is an assumption. … There is no actual empirical experimental proof that carbon dioxide is a driver.



Veizer then showed that changes in cloudiness can account for much of the past century’s warming. Clouds have an enormous impact on temperature, he explained, and cloud extent appears to be controlled largely by cosmic rays entering the atmosphere, which are regulated by the Sun.



Carleton University Professor of Geology Dr. Timothy Patterson [5] discussed how his research in the fjords of British Columbia revealed consistent correlations between solar cycles and climate over the past 5,000 years:



Hundreds of other studies have shown exactly the same thing. … The sun, and not variations in carbon dioxide, appears to be the most important driver of climate change. … Solar scientists predict that by later in this decade the sun will be starting into its weakest solar cycle of the past two centuries, and this will likely lead to unusually cool conditions on earth, which may persist for decades. … It is global cooling, not warming, that is the major climate threat to the world.



Patterson explained how his research on the Tibbitt to Contwoyto winter ice road in northern Canada leads him to “project a period spanning several decades where conditions will remain suitable for continued extensive use of the ice road.”



With the exception of Alberta Senator Grant Mitchell — who asserted that “to believe these arguments is to believe some kind of strange conspiracy theory” — committee members appeared open to the scientists’ testimonies. Patterson encouraged Mitchell to attend one of the large earth sciences conferences where the skeptical point of view is supported by many researchers.



Yukon Senator Daniel Lang challenged the scientists:



Do everything you can to get out and to have that public debate … especially since, as Mr. Patterson’s research has indicated, we may well be looking at a cooling period for quite some time. If that is the case, then we really better have a look at what we are doing.





--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Article printed from PJ Media: http://pjmedia.com



URL to article: http://pjmedia.com/blog/progress-canadian-senate-listens-to-global-warming-skeptics/



URLs in this post:



[1] here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xW19pPFfIyg&feature=related



[2] Dr. Ross McKitrick: http://www.uoguelph.ca/%7Ermckitri/ross.html



[3] Dr. Ian Clark: http://www.earth.uottawa.ca/details.php?lang=eng&id=55



[4] U of Ottawa Distinguished University Professor Dr. Jan Veizer: http://www.earth.uottawa.ca/details.php?lang=eng&id=63



[5] Dr. Timothy Patterson: http://http-server.carleton.ca/%7Etpatters/

The Cost Of Believing In The Myth Of Man-Caused Global Warming

The cost to taxpayers and consumers of the proposed "cap and trade" control of carbon (dioxide) emissions by the Obama Administration is almost beyond comprehension. The following brief article puts things in perspective. This a nightmare waiting to happen. This is how Obama hopes to pay for his grand scheme of healthcare and education, and social justice for all. It really is insanity, and will destroy the real health and economy of the entire USA.

Peter

The Cost of Global Warming: A Story in Pictures
Written by Nick Loris, Heritage.org
Monday, 06 April 2009
It’s no secret policymakers in Washington want to dramatically change America’s energy policy by regulating carbon dioxide emissions. Their most popular idea, a cap and trade proposal, should really be read as a tax on energy consumption. Indeed, it’s a very large tax that compares with some of the largest government spending items in history.

This translates to real money stripped from real families - causing families to face difficult trade offs and make important budgetary decisions.

Whether they fall on businesses or consumer, higher taxes reduce economic growth. Higher taxes force companies to cut costs elsewhere, typically by reducing production and therefore cutting jobs. According to The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis, job losses resulting from cap and trade will surpass 900,000 in some years. Keep in mind; this is net of any “green jobs” created.

Particularly hit hard is the manufacturing sector. Since fossil fuels generally make America’s economic engine run, especially the manufacturing sector, taxing fossil fuels would cause job losses to exceed two million in 2028 and 2029.

The Heritage Foundation’s Manufacturing Vulnerability Index measures a state’s direct and immediate vulnerability to an energy tax based on the extent of the state’s manufacturing workforce and its reliance on coal power generation. Taking a look at the map, the Midwest will suffer most.

And what should be the final nail in the coffin: All this economic pain is for very little, if any, environmental gain. Analysis by the Environmental Protection Agency concludes that if the U.S. reduces CO2 emissions 60 percent by 2050, it will reduce global temperature by 0.1 to 0.2 degree Centigrade by 2095. A multi–lateral approach wouldn’t fare much better. Why? Well, there’s a lot of reasons. After all, the science behind global warming is anything but conclusive, but one reason could be how small man’s contribution to carbon dioxide emissions is.

Source

Cap-And-Trade Carbon Tax Insanity

Let us hope that the following writer is correct about the failure of the Obama Administration's ability to pass their proposed "cap-and-trade" carbon tax legislation. It truly will be a disaster if it passes. It is becoming clear Obama is taking actions in many areas of the economy without thoroughly considering the consequences. Driving up the cost of energy in a time of economic recession is pure insanity, but that is what is being proposed.
Peter

Obama's Tax Proposals Cap Economic Growth
Donald Lambro Friday, April 03, 2009 (source)

WASHINGTON -- I recently predicted that President Obama's cap-and-trade energy taxes would be the first casualty of his ambitious legislative agenda.
A bipartisan group of Senate Democrats and Republicans drove the first nail into its coffin by adding an amendment to the pending budget resolution. The amendment will deny carbon-emissions-tax supporters the use of a fast-track budget reconciliation rule to limit debate and pass their tax scheme by a simple majority, skirting the tougher 60-vote hurdle to end debate and quickly move to consideration of the measure.

Senate Democratic leaders do not have the 60 votes to bring cap-and-trade to an up-or-down vote. And even if they had 60 members of their party in the Senate, they would lose many, if not most, Midwestern and Gulf State Democrats who fear that Al Gore's so-called climate-change tax scheme on all carbon emissions would be the death knell of their states' oil- and gas-powered economies.

Wednesday's vote on an amendment by Nebraska Republican Sen. Mike Johanns was a major setback for the White House and top Democratic leaders in Congress. Twenty-six Democrats joined 41 Republicans in the 67-31 vote to insert the amendment into the budget resolution.
The Democrat who first predicted the demise of Obama's energy tax is Bill Galston, President Clinton's chief White House domestic policy adviser and a longtime policy strategist (also a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution).

"It is gradually dawning on Washington that cap-and-trade legislation won't pass anytime soon -- certainly not this year, and probably not next year either," Galston wrote in a blog last month that was widely read on Capitol Hill and in the White House.
But cap-and-trade is still alive and breathing in the House, where liberal Democratic Reps. Henry Waxman of California and Edward Markey of Massachusetts unveiled their 648-page bill last week for rationing energy use in the United States.

Lawmakers in both parties were aghast when they read the bill's fine print. "The Democrats' ruse of an energy plan is nothing more than a regressive tax being offered when families, small businesses and farmers ... can least afford it," said GOP Rep. Roy Blunt of Missouri.

"Their proposal will cost any family that turns on a light switch, drives a car, plugs in an appliance, or purchases an American-made item an extra $3,100 a year," he said.
The Waxman-Markey bill would be especially damaging to Blunt's home state where, he said, "almost 90 percent of electricity is coal-generated."

A Massachusetts Institute of Technology analysis of a less-intrusive cap-and-trade plan estimated it would cost about $3,128 per household nationally.
"Waxman and Markey blithely set targets for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions without any serious analysis or even awareness of the colossal costs of energy rationing to American consumers, workers and industry," said Myron Ebell, director of energy and global-warming policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI).

"Beyond these enormous economic costs, Waxman-Markey would put big government in charge of how much energy people can use. It would be the biggest government intervention in people's lives since the Second World War, which was the last time people had to have rationing coupons in order to buy a gallon of gas," Ebell wrote in a CEI analysis of the bill.

But the deep damage Obama's cap-and-trade plan would inflict on our economy goes beyond its draconian carbon taxes. Now we learn that the plan could likely start a trade war.

"The bill as drafted clears the way for carbon protectionism," said CEI senior fellow Iain Murray. "It envisages 'rebates' to companies that have to pay higher costs than their international competitors, which amounts to illegal state aid under World Trade Organization rules."

Last month, Energy Secretary Steven Chu told a House panel that the United States would likely have to raise trade tariffs on carbon-intensive imports as a "weapon" to protect American businesses to "level the playing field" with countries that do not impose similar greenhouse-gas restrictions that the Obama administration envisions here.

"If other countries don't impose a cost on carbon, then we will be at a disadvantage ... (and) we would look at considering perhaps duties that would offset that cost," Chu testified.
That provoked an immediate counter-threat from Li Gao, a top Chinese trade official, who told the Dow Jones news service that a carbon tariff would be a "disaster" that would lead to a trade war.

Obama already appears to have precipitated a trade war with Mexico, which announced it is raising tariffs on $2.4 billion of our exports to their country in retaliation to the administration's latest restrictions on Mexican trucking access to U.S. roads.

"Taken together, these provisions (in the cap-and-trade bill) represent the first shot in what is likely to prove a disastrous carbon trade war," CEI's Murray said.
Meanwhile, if the Johanns amendment survives in the budget resolution, which must be reconciled with the House version, cap-and-trade is all but dead in the Senate. Stay tuned.

CO2 Taxes, The Real Aim Of The UN...Stopping Global Warming Is A Ruse

This editorial explains how the United Nations expects to obtain the funds to "stop global warming". If this isn't the biggest con-job in all history, I don't know what is. If people think the ENRON scandal was bad, or the current mortgage problems in the U.S. are serious, this plan to basically tax everyone enormously and then use that money to stop global warming is a hundred, or a thousand times worse.
Peter


Tax And Wane
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY Posted Friday, December 14, 2007 4:20 PM PT
Environment: Big news from the United Nations global warming conference was the last-second agreement on a pact for cutting greenhouse gas emissions. But a more ominous development went largely unnoticed.

The media obsession has been on the efforts of delegates at the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change conference to craft an agreement for a climate treaty that would take effect after the Kyoto Treaty expires in 2011.
Though it appeared the meeting would end with no deal, the delegates looked to be near a compromise late Friday.
That treaty is likely to be as effective as the useless, symbolic Kyoto protocol with which no nation has yet complied.

A day earlier, however, a panel at the IPCC conference titled "A Global CO2 Tax" took a step that will have a more lasting impact than an empty agreement. It urged the U.N. to adopt taxes on carbon dioxide emissions that would be "legally binding to all nations."
And guess who would be hit the hardest? That's right, the tax, if levied, would put an especially high burden on the U.S.

"Finally, someone will pay for these costs" related to global warming, Othmar Schwank, a global warming busybody from Switzerland, told Sen. James Inhofe's office. We imagine Schwank, a panel participant, took great glee in saying the U.S. and other developed nations should "contribute significantly more to this global fund."
Schwank estimates the CO2 tax would generate "at least" $10 billion to $40 billion a year in revenues; but anyone who believes that has not paid attention. Even in nations that have a legitimate and more-or-less-limited government, such as ours, bureaucratic programs and taxes always grow bigger than first expected.

It's a good bet that Schwank's low estimate was done intentionally. If the public found out what he and others like him really want, the backlash would put the alarmists out of business.
The driving force of the environmental movement is not a cleaner planet — or a world that doesn't get too hot, in the case of the global warming issue — but a leftist, egalitarian urge to redistribute wealth. A CO2 tax does this and more, choking economic growth in the U.S. and punishing Americans for being the voracious consumers that we are.
Eco-activists have been so successful in distracting the public from their real intentions that they're becoming less guarded in discussing their ultimate goal.

"A climate change response must have at its heart a redistribution of wealth and resources," Emma Brindal, a "climate justice campaign coordinator" for Friends of the Earth Australia, wrote Wednesday on the Climate Action Network's blog.
In this case, redistribution would be handled by the Multilateral Adaptation Fund, an agency that would use the carbon tax receipts to help countries that are having to deal with climate change.
Since the "complete list of things caused by global warming" now exceeds 600 (see our "Chilled By The Heat" editorial, Dec. 13), there would be few if any limits on the U.N.'s ability to move riches from countries that have created and earned them to those that have done neither.

Still think this is all about halting climate change? We would go as far as to say that anyone who does is either naive or a dupe. Both the rhetoric and the behavior of the eco-activists back us up.

source:

Poweful Democrat Proposes Carbon Tax

With an issue that is certain to be a political "hot potato" in the up-coming elections in the U.S., a leading Democrat is proposing a new tax on the "carbon" produced by burning oil, gas, and coal. Apparently he expects a public outcry and he wants to demonstrate that the public is not willing to pay the cost to cut "carbon" emissions and thus, presumably stop global warming.

I'm not sure I understand the logic of this, but other Democrats want a carbon "cap and trade" system, where "non-polluters" could sell credits to "polluters", who would then be allowed to go on "polluting", but presumably at a lower rate because it would cost them. This way, (the logic goes) there would be less over-all pollution, and more non-polluting energy sources being used.

Did you follow that? You get paid (a credit) to produce "clean" energy and you get penalized (cap) when you produce "dirty" energy. What proponents of the "cap and trade" plan fail to disclose is that this will still cost the public more for energy. When they realized it will cost them just as much, or more for energy than just a simple tax on "carbon", they're going to be at least as unhappy. Good luck on getting any meaningful legislation through Congress.
Peter

from: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/07/washington/07carbon.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin

Counting on Failure, Energy Chairman Floats Carbon Tax

By EDMUND L. ANDREWS
Published: July 7, 2007
WASHINGTON, July 6 — A powerful House Democrat said on Friday that he planned to propose a steep new “carbon tax” that would raise the cost of burning oil, gas and coal, in a move that could shake up the political debate on global warming.

The proposal came from Representative John D. Dingell of Michigan, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and it runs directly counter to the view of most Democrats that any tax on energy would be a politically disastrous approach to slowing global warming.
But Mr. Dingell, in an interview to be broadcast Sunday on C-Span, suggested that his goal was to show that Americans are not willing to face the real cost of reducing carbon dioxide emissions.

His message appeared to be that Democratic leaders were setting unrealistic legislative goals.
“I sincerely doubt that the American people will be willing to pay what this is really going to cost them,” said Mr. Dingell, whose committee will be drafting a broad bill on climate change this fall.
“I will be introducing in the next little bit a carbon tax bill, just to sort of see how people think about this,” he continued. “When you see the criticism I get, I think you’ll see the answer to your question.”

The idea behind a carbon tax is to provide an incentive to reduce the use of fossil fuels like oil and coal, which are loaded with carbon, and increase the use of cleaner, renewable fuels like solar power, wind and fuels made from plants and plant waste.
Many economists like the idea of a carbon tax, saying that it would be simple to administer and could profoundly affect energy choices.

But most Democrats are staunchly opposed, saying that a tax would raise the costs of travel, commuting and heating and cooling homes, and that it would be wildly unpopular at a time when voters are already angry about high energy costs. Republicans, they said, would seize on any such proposal as proof that Democrats were bent on raising taxes and increasing the size of government.

Indeed, many Democrats still cringe at the memory of President Bill Clinton’s trying to pass a broad “B.T.U. tax” in 1993 on most forms of energy. The measure passed the House but not the Senate, and more than a few Democrats believe the effort was one reason they lost their majority in the House in 1994.

Now, House and Senate Democrats are writing bills that would require factories and power plants to reduce emissions of heat-trapping gases through a so-called cap-and-trade system of mandatory requirements and tradeable pollution credits.

Most of the proposals would impose mandatory limits on the amount of carbon dioxide that companies would be allowed to produce each year, and those limits would become steadily more rigorous over time. A factory or a power plant that is already below the limit could sell its unused allocations to companies that were over the limit.
The United States already uses a cap-and-trade system to limit emissions of sulfur dioxide and other pollutants that cause acid rain.

The European Union has adopted a system to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, though the system has come under considerable criticism for letting companies game the rules and for failing to reduce emissions in line with European goals.

Carbon Tax Inevitable Say Experts

Here's what is coming, big tax increases. If lawmakers succeed in capping "carbon emissions", or directly taxing companies that produce carbon dioxide, there is little doubt these costs are going to be passed on to the consumer. How does a $100 Billion per year increase sound? Maybe the worst thing is it will all be for nothing, because reducing carbon dioxide emissions will do nothing to control global warming and climate change.
Peter


Carbon Tax Inevitable, Analysts Say
By Nathan BurchfielCNSNews.com Staff WriterJune 06, 2007(CNSNews.com) -

A tax-based approach to reducing carbon emissions "is going to happen," a panel of economists and tax analysts agreed Tuesday, differing only on whether a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade system would be the best approach. "This is going to happen anyway so we might as well enjoy it," Eric Toder, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute, said during a discussion at the organization's Washington, D.C., headquarters. "And maybe something good will come of it."

Toder and three other panelists discussed the costs and benefits of the two approaches to reducing emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), which some scientists believe contributes to global climate change. The panelists ruled out direct federal government regulation of emissions and tax credits for "doing good things," describing those as "inefficient" ways of addressing the issue.

A cap-and-trade system would place limits on how much CO2 industries may emit, and allow heavy emitters, such as power plants, to trade carbon "credits" with others that emit less. A carbon tax would simply apply a tax to carbon emissions, creating an incentive to reduce the emissions to avoid the tax. A carbon tax "gets the incentives right," said Rob Williams, an associate professor of economics at the University of Texas at Austin. He suggested such a tax could raise $100 billion per year in revenue.

Cap-and-trade credits are also "worth a lot of money," argued Terry Dinan, an economist at the Congressional Budget Office. She pointed to the success of sulfur emissions caps in the 1990 Clean Air Act as evidence that the cap-and-trade approach could succeed in reducing CO2 emissions. A bill currently in the U.S. Senate would create a cap-and-trade system for electricity plants and set carbon emissions standards for automobiles, beginning in 2016.

Drafted by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), the measure is under consideration in the Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee. Toder said it is likely that any proposal that ends up passing will include tax incentives and a major public relations push, because "any kind of new tax is likely to create a tremendous amount of resistance." "Given political realities, tax incentives will have to be part" of whatever bill is passed, Toder said. "You would really need to make the offsets very, very compelling to get people to agree to it. "He suggested a revenue-neutral approach that would apply tax cuts from other areas to make up for the increased revenue from a carbon tax or sales of emissions credits. "If you were really interested in doing it for environmental reasons," he said, "you would need to give away at least as much money as you raised in order to make it sell."

As Cybercast News Service previously reported, EPW Committee Chairman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), has pledged to push legislation that addresses carbon emissions. The proposal, however, has been in her committee since January without action. In a reversal from his previous skeptical stance on global warming, President Bush last week announced a new approach. "Climate change must be addressed in a way that enhances energy security and promotes economic growth," the White House said in a statement Thursday.