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Posts Tagged ‘Cap and Trade’
February 1st, 2010 at 2:32 pm
Climatologists “Puzzled” as “Unexplained” Stratospheric Cycles Cool Planet
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Talk about “inconvenient truths.”

The global warming cacophony has become even more dissonant in recent months, as global temperature data continues to confirm a decade-long temperature decline since 1998.  How could this happen, considering substantial increases in carbon output as China and India have rapidly industrialized, and the United States economy witnessed a decade of unprecedented growth?  On top of that, the “Climategate” scandal in recent months exposed the rotten infrastructure of lies, pettiness and data manipulation that constitutes the global warming community.

Now, along comes an unintentionally amusing report that climatologists are “puzzled” that the planet’s stratospheric cycles may have cooled the globe despite their claims that humans control our climate.

As reported by Gautam Naik of The Wall Street Journal, “climatologists have puzzled” over global cooling over the past decade, and “new research suggests that lower levels of water vapor in the stratosphere may partly explain the anomaly.” The report proceeds to discuss a Science magazine study showing that “concentration of water vapor in the atmosphere has dropped about 10% in the past decade, triggered by unexplained cooler temperatures at certain high altitudes above the tropics.”

Further, “the study concludes that in the last decade the decline in water vapor slowed the rate of rising temperatures by about 25%, thus partly negating the heat-trapping effect of increasing greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane.”

In other words, natural and unpredictable global cycles and solar activity far beyond human control overwhelm the alleged effects of human activity on the planet.

The only people “puzzled” by this are the global warming zealots who are at long last watching their claims to vanity evaporate in the face of reality.

January 19th, 2010 at 5:05 pm
Another Climate Change Fraud Exposed
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Late last year, the “Climategate” scandal fell like a meteor from the sky, creating catastrophic damage for the worldwide fraud that is global warming alarmism.  That controversy centered upon the revelation that climate change activists had manipulated data, blacklisted scientists who opposed their agenda and targeted scientific journals.

The repercussions continue, but one fortunate trend is that most Americans have become skeptical toward environmental extremists and their deteriorating claims.

Now, the United Nations was forced this week to make yet another embarrassing admission.

Yesterday, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) admitted that its 2007 claim that Himalayan glaciers would completely disappear by 2035 was based on speculative assertions.

The UN’s erroneous 2007 claim was based upon a 2005 World Wildlife Fund study, which was itself based upon a 1999 study in New Scientist magazine, in which Indian glacial scientist Syed Hasnain was quoted as saying the glaciers would disappear “within forty years.”  Now, however, Dr. Hasnain admitted that his 1999 assertions were based upon “speculation” instead of sound science.

Along with the fact that global temperatures have fallen below their 1998 levels despite eleven years of rapid growth in China, India and the United States, these successive scandals within the global warming grievance industry have the movement well on its way to the same fate as the ultimately discredited 1970s “global cooling” movement.

The demise of this politically-based speculative movement can’t come soon enough.

December 17th, 2009 at 10:36 am
CBO: Cap-and-Trade Will Cost Taxpayers
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The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) forecasts that current climate change legislation in the Senate will increase spending by $833 billion.

According to the budget office, not only would Cap-and-Trade legislation effectively tax and regulate all carbon emissions in the country, but it would also add $854 billion to federal coffers.

The cost estimate concluded, “CBO estimates that the annual cost of [cap-and-trade] would amount to tens of billions of dollars for private-sector entities and hundreds of millions of dollars for public entities… Public and private entities would also be required to report information on greenhouse gases to a federal registry.”

In short, the bill is an unmitigated disaster and must be defeated.

Click here for the CBO study.  More of CFIF on climate change here and here.

December 15th, 2009 at 1:40 pm
“Arnold the Barbarian”
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barbaric:   (1) Of, relating to, or characteristic of barbarians.   (2) Crude or unrestrained in taste, style, or behavior.

Perhaps California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is simply desperate to retain some element of his fading spotlight as he drifts toward political retirement?  After all, we live in the age of reality TV, in which even self-embarrassment such as White House party-crashing is an acceptable price for publicity.

Sadly, that possibility would be preferable to the possibility that he’s simply lost what remained of his intellectual bearing.

Appearing today on ABC’s Good Morning, America, Schwarzenegger attempted to outdo even the Obama White House on the topic of climate change absurdity.  Even though he has presided over California as it has hemorrhaged jobs and descended to economic basket-case status, partly due to costly state environmental policies, he denied any contradiction between the global warming agenda and economic prosperity, saying, “we in California have proven it over and over that you can protect the economy, and you can protect the environment.  I don’t think you have to choose.  I think it is nonsense talk to say ‘let’s talk first about the economy.'”

Apparently oblivious to the Climategate scandal surrounding the global warming activists at Britain’s University of East Anglia, he went so far as to say that on the issue of global warming, we should “pay more attention to the universities.”  And ignoring California’s catastrophic loss of jobs to surrounding business-friendly states, Schwarzenegger continued, “in California, the biggest job creation is in green technology, we have seen an increase there of over 36%, we have been increasing the amount of jobs in all those different areas.”

Perhaps most preposterously, the man who played Conan the Barbarian had the audacity to label anyone who rightfully questions man-made global warming hysteria as “still living in the Stone Age.”

No, Governor Schwarzenegger, you’re the one who has continuously regressed back to the Stone Age with such profoundly mindless comments as these during your tenure.  What a sad, sad spectacle for a once-promising political newcomer and purported reformer.

December 10th, 2009 at 3:36 pm
Obama’s EPA Goes Chicago Thug Style
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Was Chicago-style political thuggery the type of “hope and change” for which Americans voted in 2008?

Either way, that’s the White House’s emerging modus operandi.

Intially, the Obama Administration at least paid lip service to bipartisanship, even if the reality behind closed doors was quite different.  But with the EPA’s recent determination that everyday carbon dioxide constitutes a “dangerous pollutant,” Obama has abandoned even that pretense.  According to an anonymous White House source quoted by Fox News, the EPA’s absurd ruling is a bald political tactic to bludgeon the Senate and the business community into accepting carbon cap-and-tax legislation:

If you don’t pass this legislation, then … the EPA is going to have to regulate in this area.  And it’s not going to be able to regulate on a market-based way, so it’s going to have to regulate in a command-and-control way, which will probably generate even more uncertainty.”

The House of Representatives passed a cap-and-tax bill by razor-thin margins, but its prospects in the Senate appeared slim.  Meanwhile, many business coalitions have refused to play ball in the White House’s game of global warming hysteria.  Enter the team of Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod, with their ugly form of Chicago politics.

As Obama’s popularity falls to record lows for a President at this stage, and with his extremist agenda in increasing jeopardy, we should prepare for more.

December 8th, 2009 at 1:00 pm
Stop Breathing! The EPA Says You’re Destroying the Environment
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The Obama Administration increasingly resembles an oceanliner captain who stubbornly responds to iceberg alarms by shifting to full speed ahead.

Ignoring recent news of declining global temperatures and the Climategate scandal that has shaken global warming activism to its core, Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) yesterday declared carbon dioxide a “dangerous pollutant.”

That’s right – the gas that we all exhale and that plants inhale is suddenly a toxin.

The political cynicism behind this maneuver is obvious.  Barack Obama and climate change alarmists (notice, by the way, how they dropped the term “global warming” when the temperature data became too inconvenient) know that passing draconian carbon cap-and-tax legislation in the foreseeable future is nearly impossible.  Consequently, they have used the EPA to arrogantly shove their agenda through, or at least as a threat to Senators and big business lobbyists that the alternative to Congressional cap-and-tax is even worse.

Fortunately, the EPA’s reckless, mindless and arrogant maneuver will be challeneged in court.  But in the meantime, we’re left to wonder whether there’s any limit to the destructive efforts the Obama White House will shove down Americans’ throats in order to placate the extremist left wing.

November 16th, 2009 at 1:02 pm
Poll: We’re Winning the Battle Over Climate Change
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One of the more frustrating aspects of debunking worldwide climate change hysteria is the false notion that a consensus exists that global warming is man-made.

On that front, there’s good news to report for those of us who prefer sobriety to fashionability.  According to a new Rasmussen Reports public opinion poll, a 47% to 37% plurality believes that climate change results more from long-term planetary causes than human activity.  Considering the fact that temperatures have declined since eleven years ago, and that global cooling was the trendy hysteria just thirty years ago, it’s refreshing to know that Americans are on to the scam.

And dangerously for Barack Obama, Americans by 50% to 20% believe that he still considers global warming man-made.  Thus, like ObamaCare, this means that more Americans view his agenda as one opposing theirs, creating a precarious phenomenon for him.  As he prepares to travel to Copenhagen to once again bow before the false international gods of global warming at the expense of America’s economy and taxpayers, it’s something of which his bumbling staff had better become aware.

November 10th, 2009 at 6:04 pm
Cap-and-Trade: There’s No Such Thing As a Free Lunch

As Majority Leader Harry Reid scrambles to put together the pieces on his economy-busting health care “reform” bill, the Senate Finance Committee today began  hearings on that other job-killing legislation… Cap-and-Trade.

The Committee’s Ranking Member, Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), rightly used some of the time he had for opening remarks to remind his colleagues that unlike the Environment and Public Works Committee, which is controlled by some of the Senate’s most liberal members and which passed its version of a Cap-and-Trade energy tax last week, the Finance Committee’s job is to focus on the economic impact and costs of the legislation.

According to Roll Call, Grassley stated:

This committee’s expertise is in the costs and economic impacts of new taxes. It therefore has the relevant expertise for evaluating the costs associated with climate change legislation. An honest cost-benefit assessment requires that we first stop trying to sell this policy as if it will have no cost for Americans and accept the basic economic principle that there is no such thing as a free lunch.”

Acknowledging Grassley’s remarks, Chairman Max Baucus (D-Montana) said:

While we must always be mindful of the cost of legislation, that’s particularly true in today’s economy. Our unemployment rate remains far too high. And we must be diligent to create jobs, including in the energy sector.”

Considering the federal government’s own estimates warn that the legislation would cost the U.S. economy far more jobs than it may create, wouldn’t the most diligent thing be for Baucus to scrap the idea of a Cap-and-Trade energy tax altogether?

November 6th, 2009 at 12:04 pm
Health Care Taxes to Crush Small Businesses
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There are a lot of awful provisions in Speaker Pelosi’s 1,990 page stab at health care “reform.”  For millions of small businesses across the country, a 5.4 percent surtax is high on the list of undesirable provisions.

The Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) released an estimate that determined one-third of small businesses will be hit with the new 5.4 percent surtax.  Roughly speaking, small businesses can look forward to forking over another $150 billion next year in new taxes to feed Washington’s spending binge.

The lesson: Small businesses must trust Congress.  Only Congress knows that the best way to bring down a 10.2 percent unemployment rate is to tax small businesses, raise utility rates through Cap-and-Trade legislation, take over $2 trillion from the private sector through taxes and determine corporate pay scales… Congress knows best.

Here is the JCT cost estimate.  To read more on health care, click here.

October 22nd, 2009 at 2:01 pm
Poll: Fewer Americans Favor Cap-and-Tax
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A new poll released by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that Americans are becoming less enthusiastic about capping greenhouse gas emissions.  According to the survey, only 35% say global warming is a very serious problem.

Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) commented, “Perhaps the most interesting finding in this poll, aside from the precipitous drop in the number of Independents who believe global warming is a problem, is that the more Americans learn about cap-and-trade, the more they oppose cap-and-trade.”

Surprisingly, 55% of respondents said that they have heard “nothing at all” about cap-and-trade (legislation that would impose new energy taxes) proposals being debated in Congress.

For more info see here and here.

Call Congress at 202-224-3121 and urge your representatives to oppose new energy taxes.

October 21st, 2009 at 7:02 pm
Sen. Inhofe Reminds Us That Cap-and-Trade Is a “Costly Non-Solution”

Senator James Inhofe (R-OK), Ranking Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, penned a great op-ed in Roll Call this week about the climate change legislation (aka Cap-and-Trade) being pushed by the Obama White House and the majority leadership in Congress.

No matter how many times Congress debates it, and no matter how environmentalists couch it, cap-and-trade will do virtually nothing to stop global warming, and cap-and-trade, as Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.) said, ‘is a tax, and a great big one.’ These are the fundamentals in the cap-and-trade debate…

We need to remind the American public, for example, that the 1,400-page Waxman-Markey monstrosity is a monument to big government that will make food, gasoline and electricity more expensive, increase mandates on small businesses, and increase the size and reach of the federal bureaucracy — all while doing nothing to affect climate change.

The Kerry-Boxer legislation introduced Sept. 30 is, in many ways, worse than the Waxman-Markey bill. This reflects the attitude of one of the bill’s sponsors, who said recently that, because of the recession, businesses should be expected to make even more expensive emissions reductions. While it’s never a good time to pass a national energy tax, one would have thought that imposing such a tax during a recession is especially bad.”

Read the full column here.

October 14th, 2009 at 5:16 pm
CBO: Climate Change Bill Will Cost Jobs
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No surprise here.  According to CBO chief Doug Elmendorf, “The net effect of that [climate change legislation] we think would likely be some decline in employment….  The fact that jobs turn up somewhere else for some people does not mean there aren’t substantial costs borne by people, communities, firms and affected industries.”

To think that drastically increasing the cost of carbon without any impact to labor in the energy sector is absurd.  Thankfully, the CBO agrees and is finally cautioning Congress against cap-and-trade proposals.  Click here for the full article.

October 7th, 2009 at 7:57 am
Global Warming Activists Want $10 Trillion From You
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In a new report, the International Energy Agency (IEA) says that we must “invest” $10 trillion over the upcoming 20 years to stop global warming.  That’s $500 billion per year, and we’ll give you one guess as to which nation will be asked to shoulder that crippling new burden…

Shamelessly, this amount is 37% higher than the IEA said was necessary just one year ago.  The IEA also demands that developed nations such as the United States reduce carbon emissions even further than the economically destructive levels already being pushed by left-wing special interests and liberal politicians through such abominations as the Waxman-Markey bill, which will cost American families thousands of dollars each year and punish American business.  This IEA report also comes just as global temperatures continue their cooling plateau over the past ten years, meaning that the global warming hysteria may be today’s equivalent of the discredited global cooling craze of the 1970s.  But what’s a trifling $10 trillion, right?

September 29th, 2009 at 10:33 am
Paul Krugman: “The End Is Near,” For Real This Time.
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Remember 2005, when global warming alarmists claimed that Hurricane Katrina proved the effects of climate change, and that Katrina-level hurricanes would occur with increasing frequency until draconian government climate legislation was imposed?  The years 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009 apparently didn’t get the memo, judging by the dearth of major hurricanes.  Heck, remember the 1970s, when the fashionable climate-change hysteria was global cooling, not global warming?

Well, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman apparently has a short memory.

In his latest column, Krugman confidently instructs us that the sky is falling…  yet again.  For real this time.  He assures us that “I’m not engaging in hyperbole,”  but lacking any sense of irony or familiarity with recent history, he then asserts that “climate scientists have, en masse, become Cassandras — gifted with the ability to prophesy future disasters, but cursed with the inability to get anyone to believe them.”  You mean, sort of like the “gifted” alarmists who predicted global cooling in the 1970s and an coming onslaught of Katrinas in 2005?

Instead of writing a New York Times column, perhaps Krugman should instead join the city’s street vagrants and carry his own “The End Is Near!” sandwich board sign.

September 27th, 2009 at 11:10 am
Krugman Goes Postal
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There is something distinctly undignified when a Nobel Prize-winning economist goes postal, but then no one has accused Paul Krugman of dignity in some time.

In one of his harangues on behalf of the Waxman-Markey bill (you know, otherwise known as cap-and-tax) to supposedly prevent some future tropical creature’s diet from including boiled people, Krugman makes the argument that in 2020 the bill would cost the average family “roughly the cost of a postage stamp a day.”

Krugman did not originate the line, around a while now, one of those analogies invariably conjured up by elitists to explain to us plain folks in plain language why we can afford to fund this or that government program.

With regard to this one, we would never stoop so low as to ask what the Postal Service, yet another already bankrupt government service, will do when all those average families, who really must live within their budgets, have to sacrifice just that one postage stamp a day (and that’s if you accept Krugman’s and the government’s math).  Do Nobel Prize-winning economists ever address the idea that resources which are not infinite cannot be infinitely taken?

No, we want to be positive by urging President Obama to begin selling ObamaCare by saying it’s only going to cost every senior citizen just two-and-a-half Depends diapers a day.

August 12th, 2009 at 9:46 pm
New Study Estimates Climate Change Bill Will Cost 2 Million Jobs

If the Waxman-Markey Cap-and-Trade bill (H.R. 2454) becomes law, U.S. economic growth could be slashed by 2.4 percent and the legislation would cost 2 million jobs by 2030.  This, according to a recent study conducted by the Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) and released today.

The study, which was commissioned by the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) and the American Council for Capital Formation (ACCF), assesses the impact of the Waxman-Markey bill on manufacturing, jobs, energy prices and the overall U.S. economy.  According to a summary of the study, “The NAM and ACCF released national data as well as the analysis for 15 industrial states that would be impacted greatly if this or similar legislation is signed into law.  The full report, including the data covering the remaining 35 states will be released in the coming weeks.”

The Senate is expected to take up its version of climate change legislation in September.  This latest study is yet another in a growing list of reasons why it shouldn’t.

Read the full national report here.

Access the analysis of each of the 15 states that have released so far here.