A powerful House Democrat said on Friday that he planned to propose a steep new “carbon tax” that would raise the cost of burning oil, gas and coal, in a move that could shake up the political debate on global warming.

The proposal came from Representative John D. Dingell of Michigan, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and it runs directly counter to the view of most Democrats that any tax on energy would be a politically disastrous approach to slowing global warming.

But Mr. Dingell, in an interview to be broadcast Sunday on C-Span, suggested that his goal was to show that Americans are not willing to face the real cost of reducing carbon dioxide emissions. His message appeared to be that Democratic leaders were setting unrealistic legislative goals. “I sincerely doubt that the American people will be willing to pay what this is really going to cost them,” said Mr. Dingell, whose committee will be drafting a broad bill on climate change this fall. “I will be introducing in the next little bit a carbon tax bill, just to sort of see how people think about this,” he continued. “When you see the criticism I get, I think you’ll see the answer to your question.” See full story here.

By Dr. David Evans

When I started the job in 1999, the evidence that carbon emissions caused global warming seemed pretty conclusive. But since then new evidence has weakened the case. I am now skeptical. As Lord Keynes famously said, “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?”

The hypothesis that carbon emissions are to blame is currently falsified by the observational data. If the scientific method was applied, carbon emissions would not be blamed for causing global warming.

The current situation is not the way science should be done. It isn’t science, it’s politics. The notion that carbon emissions cause global warming is not scientifically defensible on today’s evidence. If this topic was just in the realm of science, blaming carbon would merely be another falsified hypothesis with no supporting evidence and attracting only minor interest from scientists. But the notion has escaped to the realm of politics. People’s salaries depend on it, and its running rampant. I was on hand to observe a little of this at the Australian Greenhouse Office.

So how did we get into this mess? I’d like to make just one observation on the interaction of science and politics. The political realm is funnelling a lot of money into the scientific community on climate and carbon. By the late 1990s, lots and lots of jobs depended on the idea that carbon emissions caused global warming. Many of those jobs were bureaucratic, but there were a lot of science jobs too. As mentioned, I was on that gravy train, making a high wage in a science job that would not have existed if we didn’t blame carbon emissions. And so were lots of people around me.

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