Senate Environment & Public Works Chairman Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) have proposed the “Global Warming Pollution Reduction Act” aimed at combating climate change. The proposed partisan bill (S.309) is supported by another 15 senators, including: Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY); Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL); Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-CT); Sen. Joseph R. Biden (D-DE); Sen. Daniel K. Akaka (D-HI); Sen. Russell D. Feingold (D-WI); Sen. Daniel K. Inouye (D-HI); Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA); Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg (D-NJ); Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-VT); Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ); Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI); Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI); Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski (D-MD), and Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin (D-MD).
FACT: A new MIT study concludes that the Sanders-Boxer approach would impose a tax-equivalent of $366 billion annually, or more than $4,500 per family of four, by 2015. And the annual costs will grow after 2015. [Read full MIT study]
The Kyoto Protocol would have imposed an equivalent tax of over $300 billion a year, 10 times the size of the Clinton-Gore tax increase of 1993. In addition to the MIT study, a new Congressional Budget Office study released recently, details how a carbon cap-and-trade system would result in massive wealth redistribution from the poor and working class to wealthier Americans. [Read more on CBO study]
Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.), EPW Ranking Member, said today: “Carbon caps would artificially and needlessly raise the cost of energy the most on the people least able to afford it. It astounds me that any Senator could support such a proposal.”
By Noel Sheppard, Newsbusters
Senior Fellow in Political Economy for the Independent Institute, Dr. Robert Higgs, published an article at George Mason University’s History News Network “I have served as a peer reviewer for more than thirty professional journals and as a reviewer of research proposals for the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and a number of large private foundations. So, I think I know something about how the system works. It does not work as outsiders seem to think”.
“Peer review, on which lay people place great weight, varies from important, where the editors and the referees are competent and responsible, to a complete farce, where they are not. Any journal editor who desires, for whatever reason, to knock down a submission can easily do so by choosing referees he knows full well will knock it down; likewise, he can easily obtain favorable referee reports.”
At any given time, consensus may exist about all sorts of matters in a particular science. In retrospect, however, that consensus is often seen to have been mistaken. As recently as the mid-1970s, for example, a scientific consensus existed among climatologists and scientists in related fields that the earth was about to enter a new ice age. Drastic proposals were made, such as exploding hydrogen bombs over the polar icecaps (to melt them) or damming the Bering Strait (to prevent cold Arctic water from entering the Pacific Ocean), to avert this impending disaster. Well-reputed scientists, not just uninformed wackos, made such proposals. How quickly we forget.” See full interview here
By Dan Gainor, The Boone Pickens Free Market Fellow Business & Media Institute
Paul Watson, founder and president of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and famous for militant intervention to stop whalers, now warns mankind is “acting like a virus” and is harming Mother Earth. Watson’s May 4 editorial asked the question “The Beginning of the End for Life as We Know it on Planet Earth?” Then he left no doubt about the answer. “We are killing our host the planet Earth,” he claimed and called for a population drop to less than 1 billion.
The commentary reminded readers that Watson had called humans a disease before and he wasn’t sorry. “I was once severely criticized for describing human beings as being the ‘AIDS of the Earth.’ I make no apologies for that statement,” the column continued. “No human community should be larger than 20,000 people and separated from other communities by wilderness areas.” Watson essentially called for humans to return to primitive lifestyles. “We need to stop flying, stop driving cars, and jetting around on marine recreational vehicles. The Mennonites survive without cars and so can the rest of us.”
See story here