Black carbon gives the lie April 16, 2009
Posted by wonderingin in Environment, Regulation.add a comment
… to the environmental left’s histrionic certainty about global warming and its causes.
According to scientists, including Dr. Veerabhadran Ramanathan, one of the world’s leading climate scientists, black carbon accounts for 18% of the planet’s warming and likely represents an even greater cause of glacial melting around the world. And black carbon arises primarily from poor cooking stoves in developing countries.
Black carbon was not even mentioned in the 2007 summary report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that pronounced the evidence for global warming to be “unequivocal.”
So much for all the certainty…. Let’s get the facts straight before we wreck our economy.
Cap and trade really means Crumple and Trounce March 13, 2009
Posted by wonderingin in Energy, Environment, Regulation, The Economy.add a comment
Two of the things which never cease to amaze me about the climate warming theocracy are their scientific certitude and their omniscience when telling other people what to do.
Scientific certitude – Having been raised in a religiously conservative setting, anyone claiming that their way is the only way is always suspect from my vantage point. Saying something does NOT make it so. And regardless of what Al Gore thinks or says, the scientific debate about global warming is not over. The history of science is rife with examples of widely accepted theories which were ultimately proven to be incorrect (the world is flat, the Earth is the center of the universe). The current theory about the existence and effects of global warming rests on imprecise data, numerous modeling assumptions, and a careful selection of time periods to support a pre-determined outcome.
Coastal regions versus the Heartland – It is also interesting that most of the intellectual class (along with a majority of the population) live in the country’s coastal regions while energy production and manufacturing tend to be concentrated in the Heartland. The burden of responding as the theocracy wishes to climate change will fall disproportionately on people living in the Heartland areas (see below) despite the intellectual class’ reliance on those areas for many of the factors which support their life styles.
“. . . ultimately the incidence of a carbon tax depends on how the revenues it takes from the public are redistributed back to the public. Yet Congress, being Congress, is incapable of designing even a marginally efficient system — and given environmental politics and state carbon realities, the losers will be concentrated in noncoastal regions that rely most on coal and manufacturing.
” . . . Not only does cap and trade tax at the point of production (even if some of those costs are ultimately borne by consumers elsewhere), but it also shifts economic activity away from those industries. The states that produce the most emissions are going to see the strongest ancillary declines in income and increases in unemployment. The top carbon states — in absolute, not per capita, emissions — include Ohio (No. 3), Pennsylvania (No. 4), Indiana (No. 7) and Michigan (No. 9).”
- Who Pays for Cap and Trade? — II, WSJ
I am all for improving the environmental quality of our planet. We have made great strides in that direction over recent decades in this country, and we should continue to do so – but not at the cost of economic penury.
Cap (your income) and trade (your assets) March 8, 2009
Posted by wonderingin in Energy, Environment, Politics, Regulation, The Economy.2 comments
President Obama’s cap and trade proposal for reducing greenhouse gases is a tax pure and simple. Anything that generates $500 – $600 billion for the government to spend on other things by definition has to be a tax.
Cap and trade really means: “I am going to cap your income and force you to trade down your standard of living because I need that money for other things.”
Never mind that:
- the underlying climate science is still subject to debate,
- Obama proposes to launch an untested scheme of dubious merit on a large scale without prototyping or testing, or that
- creating a giant new revenue source for politicians is begging for irresponsible behavior of the worst sort.
Business leaders are finally beginning to wake up to the danger.
Where are the rest of you?!!
