Climate 411

“Back door attempts in Congress to push through a global warming tax are heating up.

“It is our understanding that the Democrat Senate leadership is planning to move forward with a cap-and-trade bill, which would drastically limit levels of greenhouse gases that electrical, industrial, and transportation sectors can emit, tax them for what they do emit, and slap them with hefty fines if they exceed those emissions levels.

“Such a bill would put the brakes on our already slowed economy, forcing industries and businesses to slash jobs and to pass their taxes onto individuals and families in the form of price increases on commodities and energy. This would make it even more difficult for America to climb out of its current economic troubles. Making this worse, the whole basis for the policy — catastrophic human-induced global warming — is not even settled among scientists, who are growing increasingly skeptical, especially since we have been experiencing a decade-long cooling trend.”

— From email sent by Dr. Richard Land, President of The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission Southern Baptist Convention, March 23, 2009.

As we have written before, the proposal to set a market-based cap on America’s global warming pollution is not a tax. No matter how times they say it, it’s still not true.

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“We, the undersigned scientists, maintain that the case for alarm regarding climate change is grossly overstated. Surface temperature changes over the past century have been episodic and modest and there has been no net global warming for over a decade now. After controlling for population growth and property values, there has been no increase in damages from severe weather-related events. The computer models forecasting rapid temperature change abjectly fail to explain recent climate behavior. Mr. President, your characterization of the scientific facts regarding climate change and the degree of certainty informing the scientific debate is simply incorrect.”

— Draft text of newspaper ad by the Cato Institute, a conservative think tank based in Washington, DC. (Thanks to Real Climate for surfacing this ad)

Cato is circulating this draft newspaper ad text to find scientists willing to sign on. It will be interesting to see how many they get and who they are.

In the meantime, let’s see if we can help Cato untangle the facts.

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“If anything, there is a case to be made that Congress is kind of rushing on the whole cap and trade legislation. Henry Waxman has said that he wants a bill out by Memorial Day. Barbara Boxer says she wants a bill out of the Senate by a similar time…

“Not surprisingly, people are fixated on the economy. Obama is fixated on the economy. This seems like a low level thing, even though scientists are saying we really need to cut emissions quickly. I think there’s a real case to be made for splitting this up and waiting until later this year or early next year on cap and trade until Obama can really focus his full attention on it and do what’s possible in the meantime.”

— Bradford Plumer, Assistant Editor at The New Republic, March 19, 2009

While Bradford Plummer isn’t an opponent of global warming action, the question “Why rush this?” is one we hear a lot from many of those who are.

But it’s a very thin reed to stand on. We’ve debated and debated and debated the need for global warming for more than a generation.

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“Why all of a sudden is there so much money for, like, global warming? Why is that so high on the president’s agenda? Why are they trying to shut down every coal plant? Have you checked the temperature lately? The new budget contains a cap-and-trade program that is supposed to limit carbon dioxide emissions. Oh, the trees will love it. But if it performs anywhere near as well as the one in Europe — because that one’s great — it will likely limit nothing except corporate profits and economic growth.

“…So, if we’re worried about the economy, why is that there? Remember one thing: The problem is the solution. The answer to why we’re talking about global warming is contained right there in the name — global. Global warming fits perfectly with a global New Deal, because they’re both focused on solving everyone’s problems all at once — controlling your life globally — while ensuring that America takes on the majority of the world’s burden.”

— Glenn Beck, the Glenn Beck show on Fox News, March 3, 2009

The conspiracy theorists are out in force when it comes to global warming action, and Glenn Beck’s quote captures the sentiment perfectly.

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