Cap and Trade? More like Tax and Kill…the Global Warming Myth

I first wrote this and posted it on my personal blog in June of this year when the House of Representatives was attempting and then were successful in ramming Tax and Kill down the throats of the taxpayers. In light of some new developments that will astound you all I am reposting it, with more info that was brought to my attention today. I caution us all to be wary of jumping on this too quickly, but if it does pan out, then it will be a game changer in the area of Cap and Trade. Read my article and then check out what the “game changer” is at the bottom of the page.

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Well, looks like Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House is trying to ram Global Warming down our throats, via the Cap and Trade Climate Bill. Why? More than thirty one thousand experts agree that global warming is a hoax. The science is inexact and faulty. Yet the mainstream media keeps helping to perpetuate the myths that surround this near religion of climate change. The facts about climate change, global warming, greenhouse gases; whichever terms you prefer are simply this. Global Warming caused by man is a myth. It is false. Take this statement from the Petition Project that has to date; over 31,000 signatures of scientists and experts that all say the idea of man-made global warming is not possible.

“There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.”

http://www.oism.org/pproject/

But just for fun, let’s look at some of the myths surrounding global warming, okay?

• Myth: The world is getting warmer!!
• Fact: Since 2001, the earth has actually cooled
  • “This warmth peaked in 1998, and the temperature trend the last decade has been flat, even as CO2 has increased 5.5 percent. Cooling began in 2002. Over the last six years, global temperatures from satellite and land-temperature gauges have cooled (-0.14 F and -0.22 F, respectively). Ocean buoys have echoed that slight cooling since the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration deployed them in 2003.”
  • http://www.scrippsnews.com/node/32821
• Myth: Carbon Dioxide is the most common greenhouse gas.
• Fact: Carbon Dioxide actually makes up .038% of our atmosphere, that is less than four parts per million. In fact, Dudley J. Hughes, a retired geologist and author of A Geologic Reinterpretation of the Earth’s Atmospheric History, said this in a paper he wrote which was published in Environment and Climate News, May 2007:
  • “For centuries, bloodletting was an accepted medical procedure administered by physicians to treat patients for most illnesses. In today’s world, we find it almost inconceivable that such a practice was condoned by entire populations. Similarly, the claim that increased carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere is causing “global warming” has been accepted as “fact” in many countries worldwide. This belief has no more scientific foundation than the bloodletting of past generations.”
  • http://www.heartland.org/policybot/results/20952/Carbon_Dioxide_Levels_Are_a_Blessing_Not_a_Problem.html
• Myth: The icecaps are melting!!
• Fact: They are not melting, in fact it is reported that Antarctic Sea Ice has increased 41% since 1980.
  • “Yet that is what we have, and not just a little increase but a 43% increase since 1980! This is highly significant yet hardly anyone in the main stream media (MSM) is talking about it.Sea ice is much different than interior ice. Some of the models predicted increased ice over the interior of Antarctic. If you’ve ever lived in the extreme cold temperature regions you already understand this. When it gets very cold the air become drier and it snows less, as the temperature warms towards freezing it actually snows more. Since the Antarctic rarely even gets close to freezing its understandable that warming would cause more snow fall. Over time compacted snow would lead to more ice. But that is not what is happening here. We’re seeing a dramatic increase in “sea ice”; this ice is over the ocean. Sea ice is caused by colder temperatures, not by increased snow fall. An increase of 43% is highly significant, but we hear nothing from either the MSM or the scientific community. Especially compared to the out 6%-7% decrease at the arctic (this isn’t year over year, this is a 6% decline since 1980!).”
  • http://www.globalwarminghoax.com/comment.php?comment.news.109
  • http://www.ecoworld.com/blog/2009/04/30/antarctic-ice-increasing/
• Myth: The United Nations produced a report stating that man-made carbon dioxide causes global warming.
• Fact: In a 1996 report by the UN on global warming, two statements were deleted from the final draft. Here they are:
  1) “None of the studies cited above has shown clear evidence that we can attribute the observed climate changes to increases in greenhouse gases.”
  2) “No study to date has positively attributed all or part of the climate change to man–made causes”
  • http://www.nytimes.com/1996/06/17/us/un-climate-report-was-improperly-altered-overplaying-human-rolecritics-say.html

So you see, for every myth that the enviro-statists use, we can counter them with hard scientific data. Carbon Dioxide in the air is not a danger; it isn’t even prevalent in our atmosphere. How much carbon dioxide is in the air we breathe? To answer that, let’s turn to Dudley Hughes once again.

“Earth’s atmosphere is made up of several major gases. For simplicity, let us picture a football stadium with about 10,000 people in the stands. Assume each person represents a small volume of one type of gas. The approximate numbers of people representing the various types of gas are set out in the accompanying table.

Not included in the table is “water vapor,” the amount of which varies in the atmosphere but probably averages about 2 percent at any point in time. Water vapor is the principal greenhouse gas and has more impact on global temperature than all other greenhouse gases combined.

Carbon dioxide is represented as only about 4 parts in 10,000, the smallest volume of any major atmospheric gas.

Moreover, those who name CO2 as a pollutant are not concerned with the 4 parts, but only with 1 part–the portion added during the past 150 years by the burning of fossil fuels. This 1/10,000 increase is the target of the Kyoto Protocol.”

Jay Lehr, Ph.D. is science director of The Heartland Institute, and he says that warming periods PRECEED carbon dioxide increases. Hard scientific data supports this. He says, “A full 900,000 years of ice core temperature records and carbon dioxide content records show CO2 increases follow increases in Earth’s temperature instead of leading them. This makes sense because the oceans are the primary source of CO2, and they hold more CO2 when cool than when warm. Warming causes the oceans to release more CO2.” http://www.heartland.org/publications/environment%20climate/article/25520/A_Primer_on_Global_Warming_Dispelling_CO2_Myths.html

With all this compelling data, one must ask why then is our government wanting to implement a “Cap and Trade” system that would regulate an element of our atmosphere that is not even ONE HALF OF ONE PERCENT of the air we breathe? Moreover, what will Cap and Trade lead to?

In a report on his testimony before Congress, Ben Lieberman, the Senior Policy Analyst for Energy and Environment in the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation had this to say about H.R. 2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (Waxman-Markey); otherwise known as Cap and Trade.

“It is clear that cap-and-trade is very expensive and amounts to nothing more than an energy tax in disguise. After all, when you sweep aside all the complexities of how cap and trade operates–and make no mistake, this is the most convoluted attempt at economic central planning this nation has ever attempted–the bottom line is that cap and trade works by raising the cost of energy high enough so that individuals and businesses are forced to use less of it. Inflicting economic pain is what this is all about. That is how the ever-tightening emissions targets will be met.”

When you consider that Obama wanted to be the President of Change we can believe in, why do you think he is pushing this so hard? This will be a tax on EVERY AMERICAN CITIZEN who uses power in their everyday life. Last week the House of Representatives passed this monstrosity by a vote of 219 – 212. It only needed 218 to pass. This means that 8 Republicans voted FOR this bill. Before I go on to explain how this is going to affect our economy, let me list the Republicans who voted against the American public.

• Mary Bono Mack – California – (202) 225-5330
• Mike Castle – Delaware – (202) 225-4165
• Mark Kirk – Illinois – (202) 225-4835
• Frank LoBiondo – New Jersey – (202) 225-6572
• Christopher Smith – New Jersey – 202-225-3765
• Leonard Lance – New Jersey – (202) 225-5361
• John McHugh – New York – (202) 225-4611
• Dave Reichert – Washington – (202) 225-7761

We must do all we can to express our outrage at what these Republicans have done to us. This bill, if it makes it into law will wreck our economy. Our electricity rates will skyrocket, even Obama himself said this very thing. I urge all of my readers to reach out and contact the list of Republicans that voted for this, the largest tax hike in American history.

How will this affect the average American family? The higher energy costs kick in as soon as the bill’s provisions take effect in 2012. That means that for a household of four, energy costs go up $436 that year, and they eventually reach over $1,200 in 2035 and average $829 annually over that span. It gets worse.

• Electricity costs go up 90 percent by 2035
• Gasoline by 58 percent
• Natural gas by 55 percent by 2035.
• The cumulative higher energy costs for a family of four by then will be nearly $20,000.
• Overall, gross domestic product will be reduced by an average of $393 billion annually between 2012 and 2035
• Cumulatively by $9.4 trillion. In other words, the nation will be $9.4 trillion poorer with Cap and Trade than without it.
• Farmers will average 57 percent LOWER profits through 2035.

It will also affect jobs. Job losses are estimated to be around 1.2 million at any given time between 2012 and 2035. It must be noted that these job loss figures are AFTER the much touted “Green Jobs” have been taken into account. This bill is a job killer, plain and simple. Some jobs will be eliminated entirely, but most will be relocated to China or India. Incidentally, both of those countries refuse to put restrictions like these into place because of the damage it would do to their economies.

To sum it up, Cap and Trade should be known as Tax and Kill because that is exactly what it will do. This is nothing short of a government re-engineering of our national economy. This will only put us on a wrongheaded path down a narrow trail of benefits with the costs vastly outweighing them. All we have to do is look to Great Britain. The average Great Britain family is paying around $1,300 a year in green taxes from carbon-cutting programs that have been in effect only a few years, says Britain’s Taxpayer Alliance. Is that what we want for America? We should lead the way, not follow other countries down a dangerous path.

Here is what was posted on Soylent Green today:

“Remember when England’s CRU scrubbed all its temp data in response to Steve McIntyre’s FOIA requests? I, like many, concluded they did so because the data supported Steve and not their Mann-Briffa, hockey stick Thermageddon scenarios requiring Waxman-Markey type “Solutions.” I likened the whole affair to the plot of a spy novel, with moles and secrets. It appears I failed to account for some of the characters. Apparently a hacker with a passion for scientific truth has entered the storyline.

Today, some of the “missing” data (a 61 meg file of data, code and emails) began appearing in the comments at skeptic sites like Jeff Id’s Air Vent. Anthony posted some of it while traveling.

So, what were they hiding?

From: Phil Jones
To: ray bradley ,[email protected], [email protected]
Subject: Diagram for WMO Statement
Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1999 13:31:15 +0000
Cc: [email protected],[email protected]

Dear Ray, Mike and Malcolm,
Once Tim’s got a diagram here we’ll send that either later today or
first thing tomorrow.
I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps
to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from
1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline. Mike’s series got the annual
land and marine values while the other two got April-Sept for NH land
N of 20N. The latter two are real for 1999, while the estimate for 1999
for NH combined is +0.44C wrt 61-90. The Global estimate for 1999 with
data through Oct is +0.35C cf. 0.57 for 1998.
Thanks for the comments, Ray.

Cheers

Phil

Prof. Phil Jones
Climatic Research Unit Telephone +44 (0) xxxxx
School of Environmental Sciences Fax +44 (0) xxxx
University of East Anglia
Norwich Email [email protected]
NR4 7TJ
UK

(Emphasis by and Hat Tip to Soylent Green)