There is an excellent article in the Sunday Australian by Greg Sheridan. Excerpts:
EVERY so often Australians accuse themselves of being out of step. The implication is that we should “catch up with the world”. Sometimes this has been a useful spur to reform, sometimes it has been nonsense. But the Gillard government is attempting to put Australia off-side with the practice of virtually the entire world. And it is doing so by pursuing a puritan ideological obsession that virtually no one else in the world is doing.
I refer, of course, to the proposed carbon tax. If the carbon tax goes ahead, to be replaced in due course by an emissions trading scheme with a fixed carbon emissions target, Australia will have among the most extreme climate-change policies in the world.
Gillard has shown herself to be a highly reactive politician. And it is characteristic of her that she overreacts. The ETS was unpopular before the last election, so she urged Kevin Rudd to dump it. After the election, Labor was worried about hemorrhaging votes on its left to the Greens, so every Labor right-winger who had ever bruised a ballot became a champion of gay marriage. And Gillard embraced the carbon tax....
Let’s have a simple rundown of what the rest of the world is doing. In Europe there has indeed been an ETS for some years. But more than 95 per cent of the carbon permits in its first years were given out for free. The scheme had little effect on reducing greenhouse emissions. It was widely regarded as a joke, although European officials who come to Australia are inevitably interviewed reverentially by uninformed ABC personalities who never hold them to account for this.
Europe says it is going to fix its ETS. But even so, the vast majority of Europe’s export industries will qualify for free or highly discounted carbon permits.
Some heavy manufacturing has left Europe and gone to China. But as Graeme Kraehe of Bluestone Steel pointed out, carbon emissions attributable to European imports have risen massively. So any carbon reductions from European manufacturing have been more than matched by carbon increases from non-European manufacturers now supplying Europe’s population. Out of this, there is little or no net carbon reduction for the planet.
What about China?
China is the world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitter, responsible for nearly a quarter of the world’s new carbon. The Gillard government’s Greg Combet uses a Jesuitical form of words, which is a first cousin to rank fraud, when he talks about China. He recently spoke of an “implicit carbon price” in “certain sectors” of the Chinese economy. Gillard herself frequently talks of China decommissioning coal-fired power stations. Let’s be quite clear. China is engaged in a massive, yes massive, increase in carbon emissions....
It is a nonsense to describe the imposition of a carbon tax as an economic “reform” for Australia. If the proponents of the tax were honest, they would acknowledge that it is completely implausible that a massive cost imposition on the Australian economy will benefit the Australian economy. Instead, Australians are being asked to engage in a massive act of altruism - although the benefits of that altruism are doubtful, even for the global environment, given that high-carbon activities will simply shift to other countries.
Richard Mackey also suggests you read the story by Geoffrey Lehmann, Peter Farrell and Dick Warburton in the March and April issues of the Quadrant. They start:
In a news story on March 20, 2000, “Snow falls are now just a thing of the past”, the UK’s Independent newspaper reported:
Sledges, snowmen, snowballs ... are all a rapidly diminishing part of Britain’s culture, as warmer winters - which scientists are attributing to global climate change - produce not only fewer white Christmases, but fewer white Januaries and Februaries ... According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia, within a few years winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event ... Children just aren’t going to know what snow is”.
This millenarian prediction from the world’s most prominent climate research centre was a dud. When the news story appeared ten years ago, an unanticipated pause in global warming was already taking place, and global warming has not resumed since then. On January 7, 2010, a NASA satellite photographed the UK covered entirely by a blanket of snow. The published photograph shows the familiar shape of the map of England, Scotland and Wales, frozen white, and set in an ocean of dark blue silk, with the edges partly obscured by wisps of cloud. In the winter just ending, Britain underwent yet another winter of heavy snowfalls. On November 29 the Independent had a story headed, “Cold comfort for a Britain stuck in a deep freeze”.
With Julia Gillard’s sudden switch to support for a carbon price, Australia in 2013 could be the first country to hold an election with anthropogenic global warming (AGW) as the pivotal issue.
They go on to discuss the science in some detail. A good read.
By Art Horn, ICECAP on Pajamas Media
I hardly know where to begin in describing how ignorant and vacuous Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) is on this issue. I know that sounds harsh, and it’s intended to be for so many, many reasons.
On March 30, Senator Boxer went on a tirade about how despicable the Republicans were for attaching an amendment to the Small Business Innovation Research Bill (SBIR). The amendment, sponsored by Senator Mitch McConnell (R-TN), would prevent the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating emissions of greenhouse gases to address climate change. The principal gas in question that the EPA wants to regulate (er, tax) is carbon dioxide.
Carbon DIOXIDE! Not carbon.
The first thing Senator Boxer said on the floor, immediately exposing her profound understanding of scientific knowledge:
There has been an amendment that was attached to this bill on the very first day that would stop the Environmental Protection Agency forever from enforcing the Clean Air Act as it relates to carbon pollution… It is essentially a repeal of the Clean Air Act as it involves a particular pollutant, carbon, which has been found to be an endangerment to our people.
She is so very wrong, already. First, the amendment is not a repeal of the Clean Air Act. The Clean Air Act is supposed to regulate pollution - this amendment is intended to stop the EPA from regulating a harmless and beneficial trace gas, carbon dioxide. Without carbon dioxide in the air, all life on Earth would die. It is essential for all plant life. Likely the senator does not know she was exhaling copious amounts of it during her rant.
Carbon dioxide is not dangerous to human health. In the very hall she was speaking in, it is possible and likely that carbon dioxide levels were three to five times higher than the air outside. Servicemen on submarines breathe air with up to 8,000 parts per million of carbon dioxide with no harmful effects - the Earth’s atmosphere currently contains only 390 parts per million.
Her further remarks are so full of errors, it’s hard to know which ones are worth discussing: virtually everything she said was not so.
She referred to a letter from the American Lung Association (which deserves just as much scorn here. The letter is a disgrace - the ALA should know better than to say that by not regulating carbon dioxide the health of Americans will be compromised. Apparently they are not worried about their professional credibility, as the letter actually supports the absurd notion that carbon dioxide is air pollution). Said Boxer:
And what is the science telling us? That it is dangerous to breathe in air pollution with lots of carbon in it.
Once again, not what she was supposed to be there to talk about.
She then entered into the record a despicable letter signed by a long list of environmental groups - groups that are anti-business, anti-civilization, anti-human - that read, among other things:
Medical professionals and public health organizations agree that carbon dioxide pollution is a serious public health issue.
No, they do not. There is absolutely no scientific evidence to support this claim. It is 100% false. She continued:
Compromising the work of the EPA means that more Americans will suffer from the impacts of severe asthma attacks.
What? How did she get there?
More children will end up in hospitals attached to respirators...
Are you kidding me? From CO2?
More seniors lives will be put at risk from heat waves and severe weather.
Ah, now we see where her head is at and where this letter is really coming from. That statement let the truth sneak out: the argument about carbon dioxide being dangerous to health and equivalent to carbon pollution is a cover, an excuse, and a fabrication to legitimize the environmentalists’ attack on carbon dioxide and the companies, utilities, and manufacturing industries that produce it.
The entire letter is a tactical lie.
The spectacularly fact-challenged senator continued:
Let me give you one economic fact: If you can’t breathe you can’t work.
Wow.
This statement is so absurd I would find this enjoyable if it weren’t so serious an issue. Perhaps the only thing more absurd is that enough people in California voted for her, and that she is in a position to affect policy. The good senator actually believes that a trace gas essential for life on Earth that constitutes only .038% of the atmosphere has the potential to inhibit someone from breathing. Unbelievable.
It gets unfathomably worse. The senator then held up a picture of a little girl on a breathing tube.
Yes, really:
Do you want their future to look like this, breathing through a device? Come on, this is clear.
It certainly is clear: this woman has absolutely no idea what she is talking about. Terribly, profoundly clear.
Some of the business and industries that would be struck hard by the EPA should they be allowed to move forward with regulating CO2 recently took out a full-page ad in several newspapers. Senator Boxer gave some color commentary about the ad’s design:
It looks almost environmental, green. This is not green - it is dirty, dirty air. That is what this ad stands for - dirty air.
The remainder of her rant (which you can read here) makes for an amazing read - it is so thoroughly lacking in any understanding, of absolutely anything factual. She was completely clueless as to what carbon dioxide is - she kept referring to it as carbon - and has no idea that the hearing was completely unrelated to carbon air pollution.
And you wonder why people are outraged at what our leaders have given us: a bankrupt, once-great nation now led by uninformed dolts like Barbara Boxer, the EPA, and unscrupulous environmental groups that want to make sure we have no hope of recovering our former greatness.
Her term can’t end soon enough.
Art Horn spent 25 years working in television as a meteorologist. He now is an independent meteorologist and speaker who lives in Connecticut. He can be contacted at skychaserman@cox.net.
The moment of truth arrived: 64 senators voted yesterday, in various ways, against EPA’s cap-and-trade agenda. The House just passed Upton-Inhofe, 255 to 172, as 19 Democrats voted to repeal that agenda. So what happens next?
The debate is surely not over-EPA will press ahead and the Energy Tax Prevention Act will come up again-so it’s useful to recount what happened and why. Here’s a brief list of the major issues, and how they played out:
It’s Not About Kids with Asthma: In countless speeches and meretricious ad campaigns, EPA’s cap-and-trade supporters, desperate for some compelling basis for their position, cast the debate as protecting kids with asthma or protecting “dangerous” carbon “polluters.” Support for the Energy Tax Prevention Act, they said, was tantamount to “gutting” the Clean Air Act. Of course such tripe made little headway, and the reason was obvious to the sane: carbon dioxide poses no threat to public health and the bill in no way affects federal laws governing real pollutants and toxic emissions. Not to mention the inconvenient fact that carbon emissions (and ozone) have declined while cases of childhood asthma have increased. (See chart here) Green activists overplayed their hand, and erased whatever shred of credibility they possessed.
Repudiation of the Tailoring Rule: The tailoring rule was EPA’s trump card, pulled to answer charges that its regulations would trample small businesses. But now it’s dead.
Tailoring emerged so EPA could avoid the self-described “absurd results” from regulating GHGs under the Clean Air Act, i.e. requiring churches and schools to get PSD permits before expanding. So tailoring exempted small sources-temporarily. But the rule blatantly violates Clean Air Act, and the DC Circuit will likely defenestrate it.
EPA’s cap-and-trade supporters threatened to vote on the rule, daring Republicans to oppose “regulatory relief” for small businesses. They did so yesterday, in the form of the Baucus amendment, which would have codified tailoring. Yet the American Farm Bureau opposed it, on grounds that a limited permitting exemption would not exempt farmers and ranchers from the higher electricity, diesel, gasoline, and fertilizer costs caused by EPA regulation of refineries and power plants. And by voting for Baucus, one would have voted for EPA’s cap-and-trade agenda, albeit in modified form. The Farm Bureau, and many others, said “no deal.”
Combined with Democrats opposed to any restriction on EPA, and Republicans who know the tailoring rule is a sham, the Baucus tailoring amendment suffered an ignominious defeat, losing 93 to 7.
Doing Away with the Rockefeller Two-Year Delay: It was dubbed the compromise measure, but was filled with holes, and would have delayed news jobs, new construction, and economic expansion. By a vote 88 to 12, the Rockefeller two-year delay is no more.
The bill ultimately foundered on its inconsistent logic. As articulated by its sponsor, the purpose of the bill was to rein in EPA’s GHG regulatory authority, which, he said, is “broad and potentially far-reaching,” and which could “touch nearly every facet of this Nation’s economy, putting unnecessary burdens on industry and driving many businesses overseas through policies that have been implemented purely at the discretion of the executive branch and absent a clearly stated intent of the Congress.” If that’s the case, one wonders, why a two-year delay and not repeal?
The American Lung Association comically expressed concern that Rockefeller would “interfere with EPA’s ability to implement the Clean Air Act.” It would not; on the other hand, it would not categorically block EPA’s ability to implement GHG regulations. For both of these reasons, Rockefeller went down, and it won’t rise again.
Nowhere to Hide: Many members have publicly aligned themselves with concerned constituents, say manufacturers or farmers, who oppose EPA’s GHG regulations. One Democratic senator, for example, wrote a letter to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson in February, arguing that “any approach to reducing greenhouse gas emissions must recognize the unique situation of energy-intensive manufacturers.” Of course, EPA’s regulations don’t, and can’t: “It is disconcerting,” the senator wrote, “that, to my knowledge, the EPA has neither a plan in place nor the authority to provide these protections to U.S. manufacturing, a sector of the economy critical to the continued economic recovery of my state and so many others.”
Well put. Yet this senator voted against the Energy Tax Prevention Act, the only solution to fully address the aforementioned concerns. He fails to grasp that delays, carve-outs, and exemptions won’t solve the underlying problem: EPA will raise energy prices and send manufacturers overseas. Now this senator and others will have to explain why, with their vote, they stood by and let it happen.
What the Future Holds: With 19 House Democrats supporting Upton-Inhofe, and 64 senators on the record in some way against EPA, all eyes are on EPA and the White House. Will EPA change course? Will President Obama accept that his cap-and-trade agenda is wildly unpopular, and agree to repeal it? Don’t hold your breath. That means the debate continues, and the battle over the Energy Tax Prevention Act carries on. The bill will come to the floor again, and soon, so members will once again have to decide whether they stand with consumers, manufacturers, farmers, and small businesses, or with EPA’s barrage of GHG regulations that will harm all of them.
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House Dims claim climate change worse health threat than aids and malaria
The Hill Blog
Just hours before a vote Wednesday on a GOP plan to block Environmental Protection Agency climate regulations, Rep. Lois Capps (D-Calif.) called climate change a bigger public health threat than AIDS, malaria and pandemic flu.
Capps and several other liberal Democrats spoke out Wednesday morning in opposition to the legislation, authored by House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.).
The lawmakers, who were joined by officials from the American Lung Association and the Union of Concerned Scientists, said the Upton bill would harm public health.
Capps pointed to a 2009 article in The Lancet, a medical journal, that said climate change could be the “biggest global health threat of the 21st century.”
“That makes climate change a bigger public health problem than AIDS, than malaria, than pandemic flu,” Capps said. “That’s why we need to take steps to address this cause behind this growing public health problem.”
Later, Rep. Paul Tonko (D-N.Y.) blasted the Upton bill as a “move by Republicans to reject science.”
Democrats intend to force a vote on an amendment calling on the House to accept a scientific finding by the EPA that climate change affects public health. Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee offered a similar amendment during the panel’s consideration of the bill.
The last-minute push to oppose the bill is part of a broader effort by some Democrats and environmental and public health groups to cast Republicans as opponents of public health protections and cohorts of industry.
But Republicans argue that EPA climate regulations will burden the economy and many in the GOP take issue with the scientific consensus that climate change is occurring and it is caused in large part by human activity.
See rest of the post and be sure to read the comments which are on target about this nonsense. The dims are using the same paid for liars to stand up beside them to allegedly provide credibility. But since these groups have no credibility left, it is no longer working.
See this post on the EPA and health risk with a reality check. See this Paul Dreissen story which talks about why the EPA plans are a bigger danger than CO2 for health. See why CO2 is not a pollutant but a benefactor despite what the airheads in the EPA and congress try and tell you.