An Inconvenient Fraud

I don't know what I think about the issue of Global Warming/Climate Change. I say "Climate Change" because I think that is a better term than Global Warming, simply because "global warming" implies that the whole planet gets noticeably hotter, and that's not the issue in many areas. It is actually when abnormal weather patterns in a particular region becoming more common. For example, it seldom snows in Dallas Texas, but this past winter 2010 (and the first day of spring), Dallas set a record for snowfall and colder temperatures. It snowed last year, too. If climate change is a real phenomenon, that sort of weather will become more common. Climate change also occurs  as a case of extremes: winters becoming colder with more storms, summers becoming hotter with less rainfall. In Dallas, you can make a case that both those seasons have been extreme recently, even a few years ago when Dallas had its coolest summer ever due to record rainfall (and flooding). Extremes in seasonal  weather, uncommon weather patterns, increased number of extremely severe storms - these are the red flags of climate change, rather than a "noticeable case of global warming." It's a very real possibility that "global warming" can trigger an ice age in the future, too, which REALLY blows the minds of people who deny climate change/global warming outright.

Those who proclaim it's real have taken some hits in credibility lately, and some of them seem to be the potential beneficiaries of climate change legislation, for instance, like Al Gore, who stands to gain billions of dollars in the carbon credit swap/tax legislation being considered by congress. What I've read of that plan, regardless of whether climate change is real or not, is that this is a really bad way to fix the problem while making rich corporations/individuals even richer. How does it help the planet for major polluters to swap carbon credits with low or no polluters when it still results in the same amount of pollution entering the atmosphere? It amounts to a tax which goes into the pockets of private account holders. Screw that.

So while I lean more to the possibility that climate change is real but that no feasible method of preventing it has been proposed, I do cast a skeptical eye at the motivations of those championing climate change legislation. They seem like snake oil salesmen exploiting a real cause for their own benefit. Like television evangelists...

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Greenhouse Gas Taxes to Push Gasoline to $7 a Gallon?

Greenhouse Gas Taxes to Push Gasoline to $7 a Gallon?
Published on 03-04-2010
NY Times

To meet the Obama administration’s targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions, some researchers say, Americans may have to experience a sobering reality: gas at $7 a gallon.

To reduce carbon dioxide emissions in the transportation sector 14 percent from 2005 levels by 2020, the cost of driving must simply increase, according to a forthcoming report by researchers at Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

The 14 percent target was set in the Environmental Protection Agency’s budget for fiscal 2010.

In their study, the researchers devised several combinations of steps that United States policymakers might take in trying to address the heat-trapping emissions by the nation’s transportation sector, which consumes 70 percent of the oil used in the United States.

Most of their models assumed an economy-wide carbon dioxide tax starting at $30 a ton in 2010 and escalating to $60 a ton in 2030. In some cases researchers also factored in tax credits for electric and hybrid vehicles, taxes on fuel or both.

In the modeling, it turned out that issuing tax credits could backfire, while taxes on fuel proved beneficial.

“Tax credits don’t address how much people use their cars,” said Ross Morrow, one of the report’s authors. “In reverse, they can make people drive more.”

Dr. Morrow, formerly a fellow at the Belfer Center, is a professor of mechanical engineering and economics at Iowa State University

Researchers said that vehicle miles traveled will increase by more than 30 percent between 2010 and 2030 unless policymakers increase fuel taxes.