J. Frank BullittAt roughly the same time one Republican said he was thinking about co-sponsoring a carbon tax bill, another was tacitly telling Prince Charles to buzz off with his crackpot global warming theories.
Thankfully, the latter is president and can veto lousy legislation as well as withdraw from counterproductive international climate pacts.
Some Republicans in Congress, prominent among them Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, are warming (yes, warming) to the idea of enacting a carbon tax to do Al Gore’s work, which is “fighting” a windmill called “climate change.”
E&E news reports Romney is “considering co-sponsoring a carbon tax bill amid shifting attitudes in the GOP and increasingly strong advocacy for carbon pricing programs in corporate America.” The Wall Street Journal says “some Republican lawmakers” are breaking with their “party on climate change.” These congressmen “favor market-based solutions over government regulations.”
“Solutions” implies that there’s a problem. Can these GOP lawmakers clearly identify the problem? Where’s the evidence that human-produced carbon dioxide emissions are warming Earth? With what degree of certainty can any politician, scientist, or activist say that man is causing the climate to change in ways that threaten him? 100%? No one can say this. 75%? No serious person would make such a claim. 50%? A 50-50 chance simply isn’t worth the known costs of carbon taxes and other mitigation proposals (Green New Deal, for instance). 25%? No serious person should consider such low odds to be grounds for making significant policy changes — the unknown is too great.
Despite the 1994 revolution, the Tea Party protests, and the 2010 midterm turnaround, it seems little has changed in the GOP. It’s easily bullied by a hostile, agenda-driven media, and would rather incrementally surrender to Democrats’ big-government urges than put up a fight on principle.
But one Republican who has been a registered Democrat, and has even said “in many cases, I probably identify more as Democrat,” is refusing to give in to the demands that we have to let governments take over the global economy to neutralize a mirage. While on his recent visit to the United Kingdom, President Trump met with Prince Charles, who a decade ago said the we had “less than 100 months to act” to save the planet from irreversible climate change. Their scheduled 15-minute meeting went 90 minutes, during which, Trump said, the prince “did most of the talking.” Trump listened politely, but implicitly told the prince he wasn’t interested in joining him to bay at the moon.
Trump has said the global warming scare is a “Chinese hoax.” We don’t believe it’s a hoax, Chinese or otherwise. Or even a conspiracy.
It is, however, hysteria gone wild. Activists, politicians, and journalists want global warming. They have to have it. They can’t live without it. Nothing ever persuades them they might be wrong, not the deeply flawed warming models, not the unreliable and doctored temperature record, not the fact that multiple factors, not just CO2, affect the climate. Religious fervor overwhelms their rational thinking. They want to shame, shut up, and shun those who don’t share their mania.
This is the fanaticism that some Republicans have decided to give in to. We understand keeping an open mind, and we’re willing to change ours if the facts prove our skepticism wrong. But surrender is not a sound policy agenda. The GOP leadership needs to reel in its wayward lawmakers.
Issues & Insights is a new site formed by the seasoned journalists behind the legendary IBD Editorials page. We’re just getting started, and we’ll be adding new features as time permits. We’re doing this on a voluntary basis because we believe the nation needs the kind of cogent, rational, data-driven, fact-based commentary that we can provide.
Be sure to tell all your friends! And if you’d like to make a contribution to support our effort, feel free to click the Tip Jar over on the right.
I & I Editorial Board
Using these vague “policy violations,” Google is now threatening to demonetize us. It’s part of Big Tech’s effort to silence conservative voices.
It is not that global warming is not happening, it is that the cure is worse than the disease.
Plus, global warming may be a boon, rather than a curse, for mankind.
The Global Warming industry (its a multi-billion dollar business) is not about the environment. Nor is it about income redistribution. Its about wealth redistribution. The real intent is to take wealth (in the form of employment and capital production) and give it to 3rd world countries who don’t adhere to carbon reductions…such as China and India.
There is no reliable or valid evidence that “global warming” – whatever that might mean – is happening.
We have been afflicted by more (seriously-taken) hoaxes in recent years than in any other time. To name a few: Global Warming / Climate Change, Russian Collusion, Transgenderism, the Fetus as Non-Human. It’s time to recognize the authoritarianism behind the hoaxes.
The Lib-Leftists found out that hoaxes work.
What can be done to Mitt Romney? Is a recall possible?
recall a Mormon in a Mormon majority state ? Not going to happen.
I wish the reality of climate change and mankind’s iatrogenic effects were as the author states. I am a scientist (not a climatologist admittedly). I teach graduate statistics and research design and can read and understand peer reviewed science. Non-cyclical climate change is occurring, and our behavior is having a notable effect. This is no longer a hypothetical. The confidence interval for point prevalence estimates for deleterious outcomes, of course, shows some uncertainty. It is like predicting the exact time of death for someone just diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Aggressive treatment may delay the inevitable and in rare cases lead to some form of remission. Because climate change is not as salient or personal as cancer, it is easy to minimize or blow off, especially if it means changing consummatory behaviors.
Of course you’ve integrated the recent global cooling data published by nasa and observe that nobody in the global warming hysteria will address it. Of course you recall it was predicted by your pathetic scientists that we’d see catastrophic hurricanes for years to come after Katrina which was followed by 10 years plus of no major hurricanes. Of course you recall the prediction in 1989 that we have only 10 years until we’re all overrun with water and drought. Yet you can’t sufficiently discriminate the studies to know your small mind is being manipulated.
Sorry climate fearing man, but the scientists who proclaim another global scare, (more than 15 over the years) are paid very well to put a lit match under their thermometers. As a Phd climatologist, I can tell you that the earth is self cleansing. It has been since the earth cooled off and continues to this very day. There is more danger from the Al Gores than from any normal climate changing day on earth. The only true climate graph is the one from Russia and there shows no elevated heat or cooling of the earth over the past two centuries.
As a Scientist, you understand the effects on both sides of the issue need to be detailed ? There are no “Climate change” experts talking about the very positive effects on agriculture from increased CO2.. Thus, this is bad science, and you know it.
Bah-loney. There is BNO valid or reliable evidence that noncyclical climate change is occurring at all and there is NO evidence that “our behavior is having an effect” on the global climate. Those are flat out lies you’re repeating. And, I AM a bona fide scientist, not a statistician. If you were a rigorous scientist, you would realize that the warmist “data” range from inconsistent to made-up and that their “models” are woefully inadequate.
Global warming is pure
fraud. If anyone is truly interested, simply go to YouTube and start
watching global warming videos. Those videos are overwhelmingly
negative towards climate change. Here are two videos to get you
started: https://www.youtube.com/watchv=Wo7U_yfCyeU&t=22s
and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sbalx6UyAXY The global
warming fraud has cost the US Treasury on the order of $500 billion
over thirty years for unnecessary alternative energy subsidies. For
example, the Arctic is not melting, watch the second video. The
problem is the corruption of the data. Almost ALL of the warming is
adjusted data. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgk3xFHvWLE&t=59s
Also try https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krrimqxDBMI and
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YMttEhtgpk An early video to
frame the problem is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQPGU85cm4A
One other point: most of the pro-climate change articles are
published in publications that do not allow general comments. the
result is climate claims that have no basis in fact while being
allowed to stand unopposed. Again, global warming is PURE FRAUD and
has been so for three decades. Another global warming short summary
video:https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/05/27/climate_is_unpredictable_weather_you_like_it_or_not_140411.html
Also, google Dr. Richard Lindzen.
I wonder why PRESIDENT TRUMP wasted 90 minutes with bonnie prince Charles?
When the scientists (all receiving funding as climate change experts) can explain away, consistent with their dire conclusions, why Viking farming communities have been found as glaciers recede in Greenland, I will take them a bit more seriously.
It’s time to hire the skeptic science team, exit the UN Climate Protocol and give America and the world a choice.
Soviet ended in 1991.
Climate Protocol started 1992.
We are better off without either. To hell with the NWO.
For a long time, I was angry at Huckabee for colluding with McCain to derail Romney’s chances in the 2008 Election. Huckabee stayed in the race when he didn’t have a ghost of a chance & peeled off some of Romney’s voters.
Now, Huckabee’s my hero! Romney is a liberal in conservatives’ clothing.
The rate of increase of the earth’s temperature in 2018 was 0.096 degrees C per decade. This is the lowest rate of warming of the surface of the earth since 1968, some 50 years ago. This decrease in warming began in 2001 and has dropped, on average, nearly one percent every 3 months for 18 years since then, despite the transient warming effects of the past 20 years due to very high activity ENSO currents in the Pacific Ocean. The absolute temperature of the earth could begin dropping within the next decade. Check out my tutorial on the subject on Facebook.
The “Hockey Stick Graph”, a term coined by the mass media to oversimplify and exploit the idea out-of-control global warming some 20 years ago was never supported by the temperature record and is no longer mentioned by the press. The story was a sham narrative from the start. Zero evidence exists that convincingly supports the contrived threat of “out-of-control-global-warming”. Not one of over 100 climate models comes close to predicting future temperatures. Caltech is beginning a 5-year project to rebuild a climate model from the ground up. The global warming narrative is a myth perpetuated by the mass media. The number of polar bears seen floating on icebergs does not make a trend.
Actions taken to counter a non-existent threat have led to the expenditure of trillions of unnecessary dollars on failed alternate energy projects world-wide and a flood of unnecessary and possibly harmful environmental regulations. The mass media aggressively pushed the myth that Iraq possessed nuclear weapons, which contributed to starting the Iraq war in 1991. After the Iraq war, the world found out that Iraq had no nuclear weapons. That war resulted in 45,000 unnecessary, war-related deaths. Another media myth was that Trump was guilty of coercion and obstruction of justice. Neither charge was found to be credible after a two-year investigation by hundreds of lawyers and expenditures of over 40 million taxpayer dollars. That myth is largely responsible for the currently dysfunctional Congress.
It is long past the time to declare the threat of out-of-control global warming over and to move on. The greater threat in the future is an out-of-control media.
There are two very simple facts the Liberals will not acknowledge:
#1 This Earth can only sustain 2 billion people without burning fossil fuel – John Deere does not run on batteries… so, what to do with 5 billion dead bodies?
#2 The “deal” Trump wisely backed us out of would have taxed USA and sent this money to the #1 and #4 producers of CO2 – Chairman Mao’s China, and India…
The political class simply want more power. They can never get enough.
When Norwegians (Vikings) are growing barley in Greenland again, give me a call.
It’s been proven time and again that he predictions are false and the computer models flawed and their is no evidence of “global warming” or “climate change” created by human activity. There have been colder and warmer periods in the past with no or little human activity. It’s the way of the Earth itself and it is monstrous conceit to believe we can control the climate of this planet.
This entire debate and the acquiesence of people like Mitt Romney can be summed up in the folowing “… increasingly strong advocacy for carbon pricing programs in corporate America.” Just follow the money and you know why people like Senator Romney are advocates.
I just love the comments about how much money scientists are making to push climate change. It’s a drop in the bucket compared to the money made by companies NOT converting to renewables. There is zero reason not to use renewables. Even if the one in billion chance comes around and we don’t have global warming, we are still better off having renewable energy sources that are generated in our country. First we limit the need to go to war to maintain global energy supplies. Second we reduce the power of those countries that depend on natural resources. Third, it’s cheaper. Does anyone LIKE paying higher electric bills each year? New utility scale power plants are much cheaper when using renewables, on the order of 2-3cents per kWh. Compare that to new fossil fuel plants which are some 8-10 cents/kwh or more. It’s not even close. The only reason we even use fossil fuels is we haven’t solved the energy storage option (although pumped hydro would work) and we already have existing plants. Very few new fossil fuel plants are being built. We should stop subsidizing fossil fuel companies. It’s like throwing money at the buggy whip manufacturers when cars were introduced.
Your comment still agrees that there is global warming, just slower. Even still, cleaner air isn’t a bad thing is it? Air pollutants cause billions of dollars in unnecessary medical costs each year, but you didn’t factor that in. Also, new solar and wind plants are CHEAPER than new fossil fuel plants. So even if you are right about global warming, you are wrong to suggest that investments in renewables are a waste. Do you like paying your electric bill? Would you prefer it to be $0? It costs $0 to install solar. Yes, it costs nothing, then you save all the money on the electric bill. How??? A new solar installation costs the same as the new additional value it adds to a home. So, spend 20k on solar, your home is worth an extra 20k. Zero cost. You’ve simply exchanged one asset, cash, for another, home value, and you don’t have an electric bill. Professional home valuations support this.
Sorry, but so called renewables are at this point in time little more than a heavily government subsidized pipe-dream. They can supplement existing conventional power sources (at enormous cost to the tax-paying public), but they will never replace them.
Northwest passage is open. Do you really need more proof?
Yes, follow the money. Compare income of fossil fuels vs renewables. Fossil fuel revenues are literally more than 20x that of renewables. There are huge investments in fossil fuel plants, and that is the ONLY reason companies want to continue with them.
first the GOP needs to get some leaders with some balls before they can reel in the pansy assed idiots. most of them are scared of their own shadows. and we the people are the ones who can give them those leaders but we have to do serious research on the people we elect and not just blindly elect them.
What? You mean that 0.004% of our atmosphere ISN’T controlling the other 99.996%? Next you’ll be claiming Santa doesn’t exist when you can clearly see him in shopping malls all across the country! lol