A number of B.C. churches are urging Finance Minister Carole Taylor to include a carbon tax in the next budget, saying such a measure would help save God’s creation — the planet Earth.
“Climate change is a moral issue because the way we care for creation ties into how we respond to God’s creativeness,” Rev. Kenneth Gray, chair of the environment committee of the Anglican Diocese of B.C., said Wednesday.
“We support a transitional and progressive tax strategy, which forces heavy polluters and heavy consumers of fossil fuels to change their way of operating.”
Like it or not, we live in a carbon fueled economy. The only way to reduce carbon in the atmosphere is to reduce our standard of living worldwide. I vehemently oppose these crusaders who want to impose a lower standard of living on us in exchange for some vaguely hoped for better climate.
There are several huge problems with the efforts around global warming. First, it is not universally accepted that it is occurring because of the difficulty of accurate temperature data over long enough periods of time to be meaningful. Secondly, a warmer earth is not necessarily an inhospitable earth. Some places may be worse off, some will be better off. Thirdly, it is highly questionable that even if we did all of the things that these folks desire that it will make any difference in the earths temperature. Fourth, we know with certainty that carbon taxes and so forth will reduce the standard of living of billions of people around the world.
A far better strategy is to adapt. Humans live in hot arid places, cold wet places, hot wet places, cold dry places, and every variation in between. We all have feet, and are capable of moving and adapting to changing climate. The climate has changed since the formation of the earth, and will continue to do so whether we like it or not.
Most importantly, the job of these ministers is to help people find and follow Christ. It is a full time job all by itself. No one comes to Church looking for guidance on global warming. These ministers have no expertise beyond their own opinions, and while they are entitled to their opinions, their professional duty is to help us find and follow Christ.
Part of the problem of TEC and the Episcopal Church in Canada is that it has been taken over by secular social activists who mainly want to use the power of the pulpit to pursue their secular, political objectives, rather than helping us in our walk with God.
CO2 is GOOD for the earth. Trees like it. We like trees.
The link between atmospheric CO2 levels and warming is a false link. If anything, t is the reverse: warmer temperatures cause rising CO2 levels. For a more consistent causal connection solar activity matches perfectly.
Over [b]100 scientists[/b] signed a letter delivered to the UN environmental confrence on Fiji (New York was facing an ice storm). The message: Global warming is a natural phenomena/cycle and nothing we do can altar that cycle. All new legislation and ‘taxes’ will do is hurt the poor and developing countries.
It was ignored. And Fiji ran out of room to park all those private jets in which the delegates arrived and had to use a neighboring island’s airport for parking!
Sorry, that bold face above was supposed to be a url link. I obviously didn’t think about it when I typed in the commands for bold.
anyway the letter and the list of scientists signing it can be found [url=http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/reprint/open_letter_to_un.html]here[/url].
According to the US Department of Energy, [b]carbon release was down by 1.5% in 2006,[/b] compared to ’05, and overall carbon release in the US has increased only by 6% since 1997 when the US Senate voted 95-0 against (in principle) the Kyoto accord.
What we’ve got here is a solution in search of a problem, and for now the proponents of that “solution” — higher taxes, greater regulation, larger government, and trans-national authority — have latched onto climate change as their preferred “problem.” That very same solution has been proposed for AIDS and other diseases, for “gender inequality” and most notably for “global poverty.” When it’s always the same “solution,” regardless of the problem, I tend to be quite skeptical.
When furthermore in response to the climate “problem” politics is driving the “science;” when confirmation bias governs which data are included; and when limited perspective ignores the hugely important paleo-climatic context … I tend to be extremely skeptical, and the longer it continues in its present direction the more confident I become that such skepticism is more than justified.
My first two degrees are in geology. The core of my skepticism comes from an unusual and unexpected place. We geologists are strange beasts, even amongst the other hard sciences, because (uniquely) we are taught to [b]think in [i]four[/i] dimensions.[/b]
In a similar vein, we are taught to reason [i]from[/i] the data towards a conclusion. This discipline is imposed with near Stalinist fervor for the simple reason that a lot of us rock jocks end up in energy or mining. Not a lot of room for philosophy in either of those areas; you find the goodies, or you don’t, and there are tens of millions of dollars riding on your decision. If the data aren’t clear you go looking for more data, or you decide those data are indicating the wisest course is to look elsewhere.
Proponents of anthropogenic global warming believe, as an article of faith, that current rates of warming and climate change are unprecedented. They are not. Earth has been in a long-term cooling trend for the last 50 to 60 million years. Climate is naturally and constantly changing, from cooler to warmer and back to cooler again – at multiple levels and time scales even within the much larger cooling trend of the last 50 million years. Some of [b]those warming spells have been far faster and more intense than the present one.[/b]
Over the really long term temperature and atmospheric carbon dioxide to not co-vary. During one of Earth’s coldest periods (450 million years ago) carbon dioxide was at least ten times more concentrated in the atmosphere than it is today.
Within the period for which we have data, fluctuations in solar energy and Earth’s temperature [i]do[/i] co-vary. This might explain why we are now documenting global warming on Mars.
Carbon dioxide accounts for much less than 1% of greenhouse gasses, hardly sufficient to drive something as massive as the energy system of Earth’s climate. Water vapor, in contrast, is a very big deal, and evaporation from the oceans is driven by solar energy.
In fact, [b]changes in average global temperature [i]precede[/i] changes in concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide by about [url=http://www.noe21.org/dvd2/Global%20Warming%20FAQ%20- %20temperature.htm ]800 years.[/url][/b] If there is a causal relationship at all, temperature drives carbon dioxide levels and not the other way around.
Another crucial point: different potential causes of global warming will differentially warm various parts of the atmosphere. The standard AGW models clearly predict greatest warming will be in the tropics about 10 kilometres up in the atmosphere. A series of satellite and weather balloon studies from 2005 to 2007 have demonstrated conclusively that no such warming is taking place. In fact, that segment of the atmosphere is the coolest at that altitude anywhere on Earth.
Every one of the 22 current models of global warming is incapable of predicting even [i]current[/i] atmospheric conditions, and they don’t dare attempt a prediction of known [i]past[/i] climate.
And that sort of pitiful excuse for “science” is to be used as the basis of massively damaging tax increases? Sorry. Not interested. It definitely fails the sniff-test.
As I said … solution in search of a problem.
Great post Bart. Solution in search of a problem indeed.
Liberals really hate automobiles. With the advent of the personal auto came true mobility for the tax base. And that let the tax base slip away from those grandiose liberal plans financed by confiscatory taxation. Once the tax base could get in a car and move to the suburbs, tax base became a commodity to be purchased, and not a resource to be mined. Liberals dream that the population can still be herded into downtown tenements – there to be controlled, watched, and (of course) taxed. But those awful cars stand in the way. So, they think, let’s make them too expensive to drive.
Of course, high fuel prices would simply spur a market alternative to gasoline. And then liberals would find some reason to oppose that transportation alternative. Probably not global warming, but something. For it’s the private behavior that galls them – not the technology. It’s the fact that private transportation allows people to “desert their civic responsibilities.” Liberals desire greatly to reverse this trend. And that is ultimately what the hysteria over “Global Warming” is really all about. It’s nothing more than a sophisticated lever to effect behavior modification.
It’s all in our best interest of course. We masses are afflicted with false consciousness regarding our best interests. Fortunately, the vanguard of the masses stands ever vigilant to show us the true path.
carl
Another 400 counter examples to the “consensus”