Carbon illusion

America's Conservative have NO solution, and are perpetuating the problem. And the liberals are 100 percent off grid using no mining, electricity, cooking fires, solar panels, bio-diesel, living as the ancient hunters gathers did minus the fires.

LDS Tree-Hugger, Open Minded Mormon, LDS Liberal, Airnaut, but not yet Samuel the Liberalite, If we go on the concept of helping out the world population, the increase in CO2 in the atmosphere is a good thing.

Plant growth increases with increased CO2, that is why greenhouses have CO2 generators. Plant growth increases with increased temperature, that is why greenhouses have heaters to elevate temperatures.
Current studies have shown, the earth has greened up by at least 11% with the increased temperatures and CO2.
With an increase in CO2, plants require less water to grow, thus providing more water for populations to live by. The WH climate report recognizes this in stating the CO2 increase is resulting in larger amounts of pollen. But they tell us this is bad.

Why is this bad if the earth is making more plant growth which can be used to feed the starving nations? Or do you simply need a sterile earth to prove you have taken care of it?

jfreed27

If you believe the federal government is going to return carbon taxes to the people that just paid it in higher costs for food clothing utilities and more you live in a dream world.

@J Thompson
SPRINGVILLE, UT

Do you think, even for an instant, that He created an earth that his children could destroy by using the fuels that He put beneath the surface of the earth for our use?

He certainly knows whether using resources that he provided to us for our well-being would destroy the earth that He created. Of course those who believe that they are the creators and not the creation would reject that statement; after all, they have all knowledge, or so they suppose.

5:23 p.m. May 6, 2014

=======

Um yes, in fact I do.

I believe we are his children,
and like children has given us a huge bag of jelly beans,
has told us there is enough and to spare,
BUT we must be good stewards, and us it Wisely & Sparingly.

An Eternal concept --
God will not use magic pixie dust to swoop down and save us from our own stupid, selfish selves.

FYI - He put Uranium 235 on the Earth too, we can choose to use it for power or to blow up ourselves up with it as well.

Same thing goes with fuels...

I'm curious why Mike Richards is believeing NASA now,
but,
disavows everything they say about the age of the Earth, the age of the Universe, Black Holes, and Gravity?

@J Thompson,

"There are a lot of reasons to debate a point, but it is fruitless to debate with someone who makes his own rules."

I don't see where anyone's done that. You're the one putting words in someone's mouth and then refusing to address his points about the value of the so-called evidence presented by ignoring his entire argument.

"Global warming is not something that God does not understand."

You started your comments with a lecture about the scientific method, but now you're falling back on a theological argument (furthering my belief that you're an alter ego of Mike Richard's). If you want to invoke God, I think there's ample evidence that He's willing to let us muck up our environment if we don't provide the stewardship He's commanded of us. And who's to say that poisoning our own planet isn't another sign of the times?

re: Unreconstructed Reb,

There are a lot of reasons to debate a point, but it is fruitless to debate with someone who makes his own rules. When you are prepared to debate, using points that you have discovered to disprove the comments that I and others have made, then we'll debate. Until then, we can safely assume that you have no points.

Global warming is not something that God does not understand. Do you think, even for an instant, that He created an earth that his children could destroy by using the fuels that He put beneath the surface of the earth for our use? I find that type of opinion to be more than arrogant. God knows the beginning from the end. He certainly knows whether using resources that he provided to us for our well-being would destroy the earth that He created. Of course those who believe that they are the creators and not the creation would reject that statement; after all, they have all knowledge, or so they suppose.

@Pops "...it isn't 97% vs 3%, by the way...."

You are correct. If I were a climate scientist and had been included in that study, they would have lumped me in with the 97%, in spite of my skepticism. Here's why: I believe that the temperature trend is upward (but not over the last decade!); and I believe that that some negligible component of that warming is contributed by man. For those two beliefs, I would have been counted in agreement, although I don't really agree with them.

I believe that the earth is following a natural, cyclical pattern of warming and cooling, that we are now warming as we climb out of the Little Ice Age, and that we are still below the median temperature of the last few thousand years. I believe that man's activities contribute a minuscule amount to that warming. I believe that warming is no cause for alarm, and may in fact be beneficial.

Many climate scientists make the same distinctions, yet people throw around that 97% figure as if it means that every climate scientist believes -- like them -- in catastrophic anthropogenic global warming. It just isn't so.

I don't think wanting everybody to go back to riding bicycles and horses is a very progressive idea.

I remember 5 years ago that the Idea of a carbon tax was a conspiracy theory and now those same people that made fun of this are the same ones that are advocating this.

one vote
Salt Lake City, UT
if we stopped pumping excess carbon onto the atmosphere totally now, a national geographic article indicated in would still be four to five hundred years to get rid of excess man made carbon. Wait till every one in China and Mexico has two cars and an SUV too.

12:15 p.m. May 6, 2014

=======

And let's not leave out the Billion people in India...

Face it -- WE have a problem,
and America's Conservative have NO solution, and are perpetuating the problem.

if we stopped pumping excess carbon onto the atmosphere totally now, a national geographic article indicated in would still be four to five hundred years to get rid of excess man made carbon. Wait till every one in China and Mexico has two cars and an SUV too.

JThompson/LWhite,

You persist in misstating what I've said by appealing to the authority of scientists who have allegedly disproven global warming. I don't understand how my comments can be interpreted in that way except as deliberate spin.

What was quoted was not from the scientific report in question. It was from an anti-science website twisting the report's findings to support its views and inferring beyond the report's scope to suggest NASA debunked global warming. That is incorrect. I'm "smearing" and "rebutting" the site, not scientists.

The report doesn't attempt address global warming at all. It observes atmospheric deflections of recent high-energy solar eruptions. But global warming isn't concerned with deflections, it's concerned with trapping the energy that's actually absorbed over long periods of time. It's vital to understand what the evidence is and what question it answers.

This information is readily available with 10 minutes of searching to see for yourself. It highlights the need to critically evaluate evidence instead of regurgitating what fits your point of view. Chastise Richards and the proprietors of the site he cribbed "evidence" from for that, not me.

Mr. Reb,

If you'd allow me to interject something, I'd like to give my opinion.

Mike Richards wrote: "The claim has always been that the heat from the SUN would be trapped by CO2 and that we would all die. The report that I quoted clearly said that we don't need to worry about the SUN. So now the pro-tax people morph into another argument. That's just another example of "snake oil" salesmen at work.

In a court, they would have been thrown out. It's time to see them for what they are, not who they claim to be."

It looks to me like he told us that "snake oil salesmen" would be thrown out of court. I can't find anything in his post that even slightly claimed that those people who didn't agree with his ideas would be thrown out of court. In fact, I didn't even see where he claimed to have his own ideas about the matter. It sure looked to me like he simply respected the ideas of NASA scientists whose observation disproved much of what other scientists have claimed.

re: Unreconstructed Reb,

With all due respect, I think that I read your posts carefully enough to see what you are trying to do. You disagreed with quotes from scientists whose observations showed that solar flare radiation coming from the sun bounced off earth's atmosphere. You didn't rebut those quotes, you simply smeared them and the website that published them. Doing that does not further the debate. Doing that does not examine the science behind the findings.

Science explores things. It changes its "mind" when new data contradicts old data, otherwise we would still think that the earth was flat and that everything revolves around the earth. That concept was "settled science" for millenia - until scientists with enquiring minds noticed irregularities in that "settled science".

Everyone is free to express opinions. Some use that freedom to attack the messenger instead of debating the subject of the message using factual data. If you have data that NASA found after that experiment that proves that solar flares do reach earth (meaning we'd all have been toasted when the first flare hit earth), then please present it.

J. Thompson, you should read my posts more closely. I said nothing indicating rejection of scientific findings in conflict with my views, nor did I accuse scientists of lying. Quite the opposite.

I am rejecting the cut 'n paste smear job from an anti-science website which twists scientific findings to suit its own rejection of climate change. The original report does not make any claims to study, much less reject, climate change, and therefore does not stand for the propositions Mr. Richards asserts. I am upholding the scientific process rather than getting my information from sources which manipulate scientific reports to fight overwhelming scientific opinion. In short, I am doing the reverse of the very thing you accuse me of, which should be obvious by any clear reading of my previous posts.

Mr. Richards asserted that claims contrary to his own would be thrown out of court. As happens frequently when he comments outside his expertise, he is wrong when misapplying evidentiary standards. If I proffered in court what he claims is scientific evidence, I'd face the prospect of sanctions from the judge, and I object to his pseudo-authoritative use of terms he doesn't understand.

The first point is that the carbon fees are returned to the customer, leaving that customer with a free market choice. He could continue to buy dirty energy products. Or, not.

Dirty energy (due to fees) will go up in price of course, but the consumer (with the fees in his/her pocket) is free to buy low carbon products, which are now more competitive - once the polluters have been charged for the social cost, or fee.

Second, thank heavens for Mr. Obama! He is doing more to reduce emissions than any President has. CAFE standards are higher. The EPA will regulate coal pollution. A large list of other interventions for our oil habit is listed on the White HOuse website

BTW: Also, most citizens are unaware that coal, for example, represents a "hidden tax" on citizens of $100-$500 billion per year (Harvard School of Medicine study, Epstein lead author, and the World Bank) in over 70 negative costs, primarily in health costs.

As we move to a low carbon energy society that coal hit goes away.

We need to vote smart, look at voting records, and "extract" the "fossil tools" from Congress.

==

re: Unreconstructed Reb,

I'm sitting here scratching my head wondering why a lawyer would do what you did. It seems to me that you rejected the findings of scientists without showing any evidence that they had lied about their findings. You quoted a post from another thread to smear a poster, but I don't see that he smeared a group, unless you inferred that you belong to a group that rejects the findings of scientists and then, like the snake oil salesman mentioned, morph the debate into something other than what is being discussed. No lawyer that I know would try doing that. No scientist that I know would reject the results of a scientific experiment just because those results contradicted his opinion. In fact, every scientist that I know would carefully study that test and then modify his opinion based on the results of that test. You, on the other hand reject that new "evidence". Rejecting evidence (observed phenomena) is not scientific. I'm wondering why you reject "evidence" that conflicts with your opinion?

There is still no correlation between atmospheric CO2 and global temperature.

All climate researchers agree that if CO2 is added to the atmosphere, the temperature will go up, all other things being equal. The amount the temperature will go up is also undisputed, all other things being equal. The divergence of opinion among climate researchers (it isn't 97% vs 3%, by the way) occurs because "all other things" are not equal. The computer models used by alarmists suggest positive feedbacks will potentially drive the climate into thermal runaway. The data, however, shows that the climate is far more stable than the models, to the degree that nobody has even been able to detect a CO2 signal in the temperature data despite decades of trying. So yes, I'm skeptical (but please take your "denier" language elsewhere).

The political component of the argument far overshadows the scientific component - it's basically those who believe in freedom vs. those who don't or who think freedom ought to be far more limited than it is today.

"In a court, they would have been thrown out. It's time to see them for what they are, not who they claim to be."

Mr. Richards, I'm a lawyer. You don't have a clue what you're talking about by trying to invoke evidentiary standards to spin a NASA report to say something it doesn't.

"So now the pro-tax people morph into another argument. That's just another example of "snake oil" salesmen at work."

That's pretty aggressive from someone who just posted on another thread:
"The most common form is found right here on this thread when people attack one person and then smear whatever "group" that person is thought to associate with. That is hate speech. That is something that polite people in a polite society would never do."

Are you really claiming that YOUR NASA information is correct and that MY NASA information is not correct?

Mike, NASA scientist, including the one you cited, do not conclude what your post said they did.
NASA climatologists clearly state that they believe the exact opposite.

"It's amusing that some discredit anything that contradicts their point of view"

Yes Mike it is. For proof, just look in the mirror.

I notice that you did not address my posts with excerpts from NASA own climate website.

Why is that? Possibly because it "contradicted your point of view"?

It's amusing that some discredit anything that contradicts their point of view. I quoted the report. It reported exactly what the pro-tax people don't want to see. They resort to using FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) to "prove" their point.

The claim has always been that the heat from the SUN would be trapped by CO2 and that we would all die. The report that I quoted clearly said that we don't need to worry about the SUN. So now the pro-tax people morph into another argument. That's just another example of "snake oil" salesmen at work.

In a court, they would have been thrown out. It's time to see them for what they are, not who they claim to be.

"NASA's own scientists, after observing an event, told us that the claims made by NASA's other scientists were false."

No, Mr. Richards, they did not. Cutting and pasting misleading summaries of their report from anti-science websites is not evidence. A review of the actual report shows that the scientists are not making the claims you assert they are.

And even what you have cited is not evidence that C02 has a cooling effect on the atmosphere. What was observed is that the C02 deflected the majority of energy from a major solar event. Great. The atmosphere did its job.

But climate change isn't about external high-energy, coronal mass ejections. It's about slowly turning up the temperature inside our atmosphere because of gases we're producing, in effect moving to a pressure cooker-like atmosphere such as that of Venus.

It's vital to understand both what you're observing and what you're criticizing before you claim that the former invalidates the latter. Your cut 'n paste job shows comprehension of neither.

Re: ". . . we could (and should) . . . stop subsidizing oil companies."

We don't, of course, subsidize oil companies.

Liberals love to sit and spin, suggesting that, since we don't tax someone as heavily as we could, we're subsidizing them.

They don't fool most of us. By that same argument, we're subsidizing environmentalists, abortionists, anti-Second Amendment activists, atheists, and, worst of all, liberal politicians. Yeah, we directly subsidize politicians, but we're also not taxing them as heavily as we could/should.

As our Marxist friend points out -- but liberals refuse to admit -- the burden of all taxes are most likely to fall on those least able to pay. Evil corporations don't pay taxes. We do. Corporations simply pass them along to those least able to avoid them.

Us.

Taxes are a liberal scam to funnel money to them, so they can engage in vote-buying giveaways. They're never a good idea to bring about social change -- unless the change you're seeking is to injure and beggar the real people you're supposedly looking out for.

So, what change are liberals really aiming for? Their actions speak louder than words.

airnaut. Have you ever noticed how thin O2 is at higher altitudes? The answer is gravity! Yes, that's right, just like CO2 is effected by gravity except as I stated, CO2 is one of the heaviest gases and therefore it tends to rise less than other gasses, including O2! When your body breathes CO2, it changes the blood gas chemistry and your body automatically increases its respiration rate to compensate (more intelligent design). Also the higher concentration of C02 in the atmosphere, plant photosynthesis increases as well. So actually, higher C02 increases food production and makes food less expensive and fewer people go hungry. C02 is not that "evil" gas liberals want to make it!

Re: Roland,

Are you really claiming that YOUR NASA information is correct and that MY NASA information is not correct? If a witness to the court said that the defendant was not at the scene of the crime based on photographic evidence and scientific evidence and the prosecution said that the defendant was guilty based on their belief that he might have been there and that he basically fit their profile and that they really really really thought he was guilty, what would the jury think,

It only takes one set of evidence to "prove" that all of the suppositions made by the "official" people are wrong to put into doubt ALL of their "evidence". NASA's own scientists, after observing an event, told us that the claims made by NASA's other scientists were false. Do you have data that discredits that scientific experiment? Unless you do, that single experiment invalidates all other claims made by other NASA scientists.

@Roland Kayser "You are [sic] the temperature in 1998 as a baseline...."

No, he isn't. His statement was "the earth has been cooling for the last decade," which doesn't include 1998. This assertion is true, as shown by Christopher Monckton in a guest essay published July 21, 2013, on What's Up With That?, entitled "Ten years of 'accelerated global warming'?"

Monckton examines the terrestrial datasets HadCRUt4, GISS, and NCDC, along with the satellite datasets RSS and UAH, and sees a slight decrease over that time period. You should go have a look.

@Mike Richards: You are looking at one individual study. My quote comes directly from NASA's website here they have analyzed thousands of studies.

Mountanman
Hayden, ID
@ Onion Days. The problem with the "green house" theory of CO2 is that it is a very heavy gas, much heavier than water vapor (H2O) and as such, CO2's mass makes it layer lower in our atmosphere than other gasses making it impossible to create a green house effect. Yes, there is some mixing but gravity solves that and the vast majority of CO2 finds its way to the earth's surface where plants can adsorb it and produce life and O2 back into the atmosphere. Intelligent design?

2:16 p.m. May 5, 2014

==========

Then using your un-Scientific logic -- please explain why we are not all DEAD.

CO2 is heavier than O2
Nitogren is heavier than O2

In your world of make believe, Oxygen would only be found above altitudes over 30,000 feet.

99.999% of all life on Earth would be dead.

un-intelligent design.

The earth is heading for an other ice age, at least that's what climate scientists told us back in the 1960's and 1970's. Were it not for the carbon we are putting into the air, we would be will on our way now. (Or they were wrong) Even with all the carbon the earth hasn't heated up for the past 17 years. Probably what is happening is a tug of war, carbon dioxide on one side, and earth trying to go ice age on the other.

Wow! How many more times do right wing posters need to post junk science articles which are quickly debunked by real science?

I say, is institute the tax. There's nothing wrong with creating new taxes if we all get a new benefit! What's wrong with cleaning our air?

I say, redistribute the subsidies. Take them away from dirty oil and coal, give them to green, and tax dirty fuel users.

There's nothing wrong with reasonable taxes. What repubs want to do is ruin our country to the point that we can't have taxes because our country doesn't even exist!

@LDS Liberal,
It may take less gas to drive the Corolla than the Van or the SUV to the game. But because you can take more children in the Van or the SUV... the amount of gas per person makes it more efficient (same concept as taking a bus or train to work being more efficient then small vehicles even though they get lower miles/gallon, but can carry more people).

Some families don't fit in a Corolla... And if you car pool... the van or the SUV could actually be more efficient than the Corolla....

Everything's not as simple as it seems through rhetorical glasses...

@ LDS liberal
You have it just backwards!
The United States federal excise tax on gasoline is 18.4 cents per gallon (cpg) and 24.4 cents per gallon (cpg) for diesel fuel. On average, as of April 2012, state and local taxes add 31.1 cents to gasoline and 30.2 cents to diesel for a total US average fuel tax of 49.5 cents (cpg) per gallon for gas and 54.6 cents per gallon (cpg) for diesel.

So, using your numbers we can calculate that your vehicle getting 48 miles/gal cheats the government out of a difference of 36 miles/gal (48-12) @ 49.5 cents/gal=$17.82 in fuel taxes!
My points;#1: We already are taxing em!
#2: Who we should be taxing much more is high mileage vehicles to make up the shortfall in revenue!

marxist,
IF when you say "More ATTRACTIVE alternatives"... you mean "more AFFORDABLE alternatives"... then I agree with you 100%...

Then even the poor would move to the alternative (not just the rich people).

I also think people respond better to carrots than to the sticks the Left likes to use (taxes, fees, fines, jail time, etc)...

====

If we had a more affordable alternative... I think everybody would flock to it (even the poor).

If we just add taxes, and try to FORCE people to go to more EXPENSIVE alternatives OR ELSE... it probably is domed to failure long-term. Most people will fall back to what they can afford eventually.

===

So we need to find a way for the alternatives to be affordable as well... IMO

@ Onion Days. The problem with the "green house" theory of CO2 is that it is a very heavy gas, much heavier than water vapor (H2O) and as such, CO2's mass makes it layer lower in our atmosphere than other gasses making it impossible to create a green house effect. Yes, there is some mixing but gravity solves that and the vast majority of CO2 finds its way to the earth's surface where plants can adsorb it and produce life and O2 back into the atmosphere. Intelligent design?

Re: Roland,

Sorry, but what you posted is contradicted here:

"As reported by Principia Scientific International (PSI), Martin Mlynczak and his colleagues over at NASA tracked infrared emissions from the earth's upper atmosphere during and following a recent solar storm that took place between March 8-10. What they found was that the vast majority of energy released from the sun during this immense coronal mass ejection (CME) was reflected back up into space rather than deposited into earth's lower atmosphere.

The result was an overall cooling effect that completely contradicts claims made by NASA's own climatology division that greenhouse gases are a cause of global warming. As illustrated by data collected using Sounding of the Atmosphere using Broadband Emission Radiometry (SABER), both carbon dioxide (CO2) and nitric oxide (NO), which are abundant in the earth's upper atmosphere, greenhouse gases reflect heating energy rather than absorb it."

I also oppose the carbon tax, fearing that it will land on people least able to pay. We need to develop attractive alternatives to burning fossil fuels.

The Republicans may have introduced the concept of a carbon tax, but quickly saw that it was a bad idea. The Carbon tax scheme isn't dangerous just because it imposes higher costs on those who consume the most carbon. Rather, it is now touted as an income sharing device between nations.

In a sense, it is somewhat like the old Catholic sale of indulgences, where a sinner paid the church for the right to sin in the future. Carbon taxes allow a high-consuming country to buy the right to keep on consuming, and "reimburse" countries with a smaller carbon footprint.

I accept the Climate Change science, but reject the international carbon tax as just another socialist scheme.

Truck or SUV taking little Bobby to soccer = 12mpg
Toyota Corolla taking little Bobby to soccer = 42 mpg

User taxes are always the most fair taxes.

So, Tax'em.

@Mike Richards: This is what NASA really says: "Ninety-seven percent of climate scientists agree that climate-warming trends over the past century are very likely due to human activities,1and most of the leading scientific organizations worldwide have issued public statements endorsing this position."

Mr Richards writes

"If you really believe that man can cause global warming, take it up with NASA

OK, Check out climate dot nasa dot gov. I am confused as to what you are looking at.

Under evidences it says (these are a few excerpts. But nothing they write seems to agree with you)

"The evidence for rapid climate change is compelling"

"The current warming trend is of particular significance because most of it is very likely human-induced and proceeding at a rate that is unprecedented in the past 1,300 years."

"Most of this warming has occurred since the 1970s, with the 20 warmest years having occurred since 1981 and with all 10 of the warmest years occurring in the past 12 years"

"Both the extent and thickness of Arctic sea ice has declined rapidly over the last several decades"

Re: Mike Richards "If you really believe that man can cause global warming, take it up with NASA. Send your own satellites into orbit to monitor things. Spend your own money, instead of taking grants from government which wants you to prove that they can and should tax us."

See, Mike, you are suspicious of the practice of science currently. Apparently to you science is a con to get money and control through government.

I have been around a lot of scientists. I trust them to be honest in their research for the most part. This doesn't mean there are no grounds to question. That's fine, but you impugn the integrity of the investigators, with a broad brush. You go too far.

NASA disagrees with COSMOS. NASA told us that MOST of the radiation that would cause the earth to overheat is bounced off the atmosphere. In other words, that radiation cannot be trapped by CO2 or anything else. NASA disagrees with those who tell us that the earth is going to overheat. NASA disagrees with the scientists who use government funds to prove that government should tax us for living on a planet that has carbon based fuels available for our use, for our comfort, for our mobility, for our industries. NASA disproved the fear mongering going on by those who think that government has the right to control us by taxing us to death.

If you really believe that man can cause global warming, take it up with NASA. Send your own satellites into orbit to monitor things. Spend your own money, instead of taking grants from government which wants you to prove that they can and should tax us.

Yes, Cosmos really is worth watching, because it gives a foundation for debate of a variety of issues, including and especially global warming. It occurs to me that those who debunk the notion of global warming aren't just climate change deniers, they are science deniers. They are suspicious of science because it stands in opposition to a lot of ideology and religion.

Cosmos is well done. Watch it if you dare!

Since we are all, including children, 18% carbon, we should tax every person, man, woman, and child 18%.

That will clean up the air for sure!

" Carbon is an imaginary problem trumped up by those who would control the economy."

Of course Carbon is one of the natural elements. It is the foundation of life because of its bonding abilities with other elements. I watched Cosmos last night - very interesting BTW. In the show deGraff Tyson talked about the role of CO2 in patterns of heating and cooling of the atmosphere in the ancient past. Tyson agrees with the consensus that CO2 emissions by man in the current era threaten the suitability of the earth for human life - not necessarily all life, but it is a threat to human viability. He's pretty persuasive.

You climate change deniers maybe should tune in.

Oh and BTW, what's with "those who would control the economy?" I am a socialist, and I can tell you most of the environmental community aren't socialist, not even close.

Brian, I am happy to see that there are people like you, smart enough to see that taxes don't clean the air, and don't punish the rich. They just make life more expensive and harder for every normal person.

Taxes are for funding essential services, like defense. They should not be used to punish anyone, not do they clean the environment.

Implement a carbon tax, start it low but increase at an annual pace so that it is high in about twenty years. Then let the free market work, if the free market understands that carbon based energy is going to get much more expensive, it will come up with solutions that use more non-carbon energy and use less carbon based energy.

To Mountanman:The earth is not cooling, the 2000's were hotter than the 90's. This decade is starting out hotter than the 2000's. You are the temperature in 1998 as a baseline, 1998 was a peak El Nino year which led to the highest temperature readings recorded so far. We have not had a peak El Nino year since then, so we have not broken that record, but average temps continue to go up. The next peak El Nino year will certainly shatter the 1998 record.

"More TAXES.... is not the solution for everything... I wish the Left could learn that!"

The concept of a carbon tax began with emissions trading. It was introduced by George HW Bush as a way to bring in market forces to control acid rain.

Another case where "the left" gets bashed for instituting a GOP idea.

Per Mr. Mountanman:

"Photosynthesis requires carbon!"

Not just carbon, but 2 additional atoms of oxygen to make the molecule called carbon dioxide

It's a logical fallacy to assume a carbon tax would end or reduce CO2 emissions. Just as assuming a sin tax would end sin, and a speed tax would reduce speed, or a war tax would end war, or a gun tax would end the need for guns.

More TAXES.... is not the solution for everything... I wish the Left could learn that!

===

More taxes just means each individual has to pay more to do what they already do.

If you want to STOP what they are doing... it takes more than a tax.

===

IMO a carbon tax would have the most impact on the poor... they are the least able to buy new (more expensive) alternative energy sources, new battery powered cars, energy efficient homes, solar panels, wind mills, etc, etc, etc...

The rich people can afford these things (and could avoid the tax)... but the poor can't.

AND everything the poor MUST buy (food, heat, shelter, etc) would all become more expensive as a result of the tax...

Regardless, the least we could (and should) do is to stop subsidizing oil companies. They're doing fine, thank you.

Photosynthesis requires carbon! No carbon, no life on earth. And by the way, the earth has been cooling for the last decade. Carbon is an imaginary problem trumped up by those who would control the economy.