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Carbon Tax Hallucinations

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Average planetary temperatures haven’t budged in 16 years. Hurricanes and strong tornadoes are at or near their lowest ebb in decades. Global sea ice is back to normal, while the Antarctic icepack continues to grow. The rate of sea level rise remains what it was in 1900.

And yet, President Obama and many politicians, newscasters and alarmist scientists continue to insist that carbon dioxide emissions are changing Earth’s climate, and we need to take immediate action to prevent storms like Hurricane Sandy and avert catastrophes predicted by IPCC computer models and “scientific consensus.” Not surprisingly, polls show public support for controlling CO2 output and taxing hydrocarbon use – to “ensure climate security” and “save vital federal programs” from budgetary axes.

As the liberal lobby Think Progress put it, people “overwhelmingly” prefer a carbon tax on “big polluters” versus cuts in favorite programs “like education, Social Security, Medicare and environmental protection.”

Five-alarm climate claims, skewed polling questions and phony taxes-versus-grandma budget alternatives will almost always ensure support for carbon taxes – especially among Bigger Government and Ban Fossil Fuels constituencies. More rational analysis reveals that dreams of hundred-billion-dollar windfalls from slapping regressive new taxes on job creation and economic growth are nothing more than dangerous tax revenue hallucinations. They would bring intense pain for no climate or economic gain.

Employing Energy Information Administration data, a recent Heritage Foundation study by economists David Kreutzer and Nicolas Loris found that a tax starting at $25-per-ton of CO2 emitted and increasing by 5% per year would cut a family of four’s income by $1,400 annually, raise their utility bills by $500 a year, and increase gasoline fill-ups by up to 50 cents per gallon. That’s $2,000 a year chopped from their budget for food, vacations, home and car payments and repairs, college and retirement savings, dental and medical care, and overall quality of life.

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EPA Moves Forward With ‘Climate Change’ Protection Plan

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Photo Credit: DonkeyHoteyThe Environmental Protection Agency is formally moving forward with its Climate Change Adaptation Plan.

Beginning Friday, the EPA is accepting comments on its draft plan, which calls for the agency to amend its operations — including the promulgation of new regulations — to account for increasingly rapid global warming. The effort comes in response to a 2009 government-wide directive via President Obama’s Council on Environmental Quality, requiring agencies to plan this year for future climate change.

“It is essential that EPA adapt to anticipate and plan for future changes in climate,” according to the 55-page plan, which carries a 2012 date but was put forth now for public consideration. “It must integrate, or mainstream, considerations of climate change into its programs, policies, rules and operations to ensure they are effective under future climatic conditions.”

Rising sea levels, loss of snowpack and drought linked to climate change will likely require the agency to take additional steps to protect watersheds, wetlands and water supplies, the report argues.

Increasing temperatures and more frequent extreme weather events, meanwhile, will demand measures to protect public safety and adapt emergency response plans, it says.

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Study: Opinions on Climate Change Rise and Fall With the Temperature

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Photo Credit: US NewsAmericans’ opinions on climate change blow with the wind—with more concern shown in years that are much warmer or much colder than normal—according to a new study released Tuesday.

Five of the nation’s top newspapers were also more likely to publish opinion pieces that showed “belief” in climate change during years that were colder or warmer than normal. Previous studies have suggested that people are more likely to believe in or “show worry” about global warming when the weather is particularly bad, but the study, published in the journal Climatic Change, is the largest to date and uses data from 1990 to 2010, a much longer time period than previous studies.

“I’m not surprised by the results judging by how pervasive these opinions were in the polls,” says study author Simon Donner, of the University of British Columbia’s department of geography. “I think certainly on a public understanding of science issue it’s a problem. Even if the planet is warming, we’re going to have cold years.”

Donner says that newspapers were more likely to publish opinion pieces about climate change during heat waves in an attempt to make the connection between day-to-day weather and climate. Climate change is not a “breaking story,” according to Donner.

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Study: Earthworms May Contribute To Global Warming

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Photo Credit: APAs environmentalists and politicians fret about man-made global warming, they may be ignoring another culprit: earthworms. According to a new study by an international team of researchers, earthworms could be contributing to global warming.

The study looked at results from 237 separate experiments from published stories to explore earthworms’ role in affecting global warming.

“Our results suggest that although earthworms are largely beneficial to soil fertility, they increase net soil greenhouse-gas emissions,” according to the study’s abstract.

Worms affect how much carbon dioxide is produced in the soil and how much escapes into the atmosphere by altering the physical structure of the soil through burrowing, which makes it more porous. Earthworms interact with microbes in the soil that produce a large chunk of the carbon dioxide emissions.

There are concerns that earthworms increase greenhouse gas emissions, which troubles scientists since earthworm numbers are on the rise.

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Sierra Club Chief ‘Confident’ That Kerry, Obama Will Scuttle Pipeline

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Photo Credit: Center for American Progress Action FundSierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune predicted victory Tuesday in activists’ battle against the proposed Keystone XL oil sands pipeline, calling President Obama’s vow to focus on climate change in his second inaugural speech a good omen.

“We are confident that [new Secretary of State John] Kerry will advise the president and the president will decide to reject this pipeline because it is such a clear first test of the president’s commitment to actually fighting climate change and … moving beyond these extreme sources of energy,” Brune said on WAMU’s “The Diane Rehm Show.”

In addition to Obama’s speech, the arrival of Kerry – a longtime advocate of emissions curbs – at the State Department has bolstered environmentalists’ hopes that Keystone will not receive a federal permit.

The State Department is heading the federal review. Kerry, in his Jan. 24 confirmation hearing before a Senate committee, kept his cards close to the vest on Keystone.

Stopping TransCanada Corp.’s proposed pipeline to bring oil from Canada’s oil sands projects to Gulf Coast refineries has become a top priority for environmental groups.

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Biden Says Obama Agrees With French Socialist On Climate Change

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Photo Credit: U.S. Embassy Jakarta, Indonesia

Vice President Joe Biden says President Barack Obama and France’s new socialist president share the same ambition to regulate carbon emissions.

“I could have been sitting in a private meeting with President Obama [and] he would have not said it in French, he’d say it in English, but you said the same thing,” Biden told President Francois Hollande during a brief Feb. 4 public appearance at the French presidential palace in Paris, France.

“The [French] President pointed out that there … is a need to set out a vision for the young people in both our countries [and] a rallying cry that can be a call for a united effort and support in both our countries to deal with Global Warming,” declared Biden, who is buffing his foreign-policy credentials prior to a possible run for the presidency in 2016.

In his Jan. 21 presidential inauguration address, Obama touted his support for an extremely expensive wave of “Global Warming” regulation.

“We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations … we will preserve our planet, commanded to our care by God,” he claimed in his controversial speech . . .

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Report Shows UN Admitting Solar Activity May Play Significant Role in Global Warming

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The Earth has been getting warmer — but how much of that heat is due to greenhouse gas emissions and how much is due to natural causes?

A leaked report by a United Nations’ group dedicated to climate studies says that heat from the sun may play a larger role than previously thought.

“[Results] do suggest the possibility of a much larger impact of solar variations on the stratosphere than previously thought, and some studies have suggested that this may lead to significant regional impacts on climate,” reads a draft copy of a major, upcoming report from the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The man who leaked the report, StopGreenSuicide blogger Alec Rawls, told FoxNews.com that the U.N.’s statements on solar activity were his main motivation for leaking the document.

“The public needs to know now how the main premises and conclusions of the IPCC story line have been undercut by the IPCC itself,” Rawls wrote on his website in December, when he first leaked the report.

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Certifiable: Liberal Activist Attributes Chicago’s Murder Rate To . . . Climate Change (+video)

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On Wednesday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” the Center for American Progress’ Christie Hefner said that Chicago’s sky-high murder rate could be blamed — at least in part — on climate change.

“Yes, last year we hit a record number of murders from guns [in Chicago],” Hefner, the former chairwoman and chief executive officer of Playboy Enterprises, said. “And this year we are already outpacing last year’s numbers. Now, there are contributing factors that are not under anybody’s control and may seem odd, but it is factually true. One of them is actually the weather. There is a dramatic increase in gun violence when it is warmer. And we are having this climate change effect that is driving that.”

The average high temperature July, the hottest month in both Chicago and the much-safer New York City, is the same for both cities at 84 degrees Fahrenheit. Scarborough took a moment to sardonically thank Hefner for that statement on behalf of conservative bloggers.

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Senior State Dept. Climate Official Heads to Department Of Energy

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photo credit: kevin m. gill

A State Department official who helped lead international climate talks is moving to the Energy Department (DOE) to head that agency’s climate operations.

Jonathan Pershing will begin his new role as DOE deputy assistant secretary for climate change policy and technology on Tuesday, David Sandalow, DOE secretary for policy and international affairs, said in a Friday email to staff.

Pershing will oversee domestic climate and clean-energy initiatives for that office, Sandalow noted. He replaces Rick Duke, who left the agency in September.

At State Department, Pershing served as deputy special envoy for climate change under special envoy Todd Stern. He helped lead the U.S. envoy in United Nations global warming talks for the past four years.

Pershing defended U.S. and Obama administration efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions during a U.N. climate conference in November.

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Matt Ridley: Cooling Down the Fears of Climate Change

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Forget the Doha climate jamboree that ended earlier this month. The theological discussions in Qatar of the arcana of climate treaties are irrelevant. By far the most important debate about climate change is taking place among scientists, on the issue of climate sensitivity: How much warming will a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide actually produce? The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has to pronounce its answer to this question in its Fifth Assessment Report next year.

The general public is not privy to the IPCC debate. But I have been speaking to somebody who understands the issues: Nic Lewis. A semiretired successful financier from Bath, England, with a strong mathematics and physics background, Mr. Lewis has made significant contributions to the subject of climate change.

He first collaborated with others to expose major statistical errors in a 2009 study of Antarctic temperatures. In 2011 he discovered that the IPCC had, by an unjustified statistical manipulation, altered the results of a key 2006 paper by Piers Forster of Reading University and Jonathan Gregory of the Met Office (the United Kingdom’s national weather service), to vastly increase the small risk that the paper showed of climate sensitivity being high. Mr. Lewis also found that the IPCC had misreported the results of another study, leading to the IPCC issuing an Erratum in 2011.

Mr. Lewis tells me that the latest observational estimates of the effect of aerosols (such as sulfurous particles from coal smoke) find that they have much less cooling effect than thought when the last IPCC report was written. The rate at which the ocean is absorbing greenhouse-gas-induced warming is also now known to be fairly modest. In other words, the two excuses used to explain away the slow, mild warming we have actually experienced—culminating in a standstill in which global temperatures are no higher than they were 16 years ago—no longer work.

In short: We can now estimate, based on observations, how sensitive the temperature is to carbon dioxide. We do not need to rely heavily on unproven models. Comparing the trend in global temperature over the past 100-150 years with the change in “radiative forcing” (heating or cooling power) from carbon dioxide, aerosols and other sources, minus ocean heat uptake, can now give a good estimate of climate sensitivity.

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