Brought to you by Benny Peiser's Global Warming Policy Forum
Why Old-Guard Republicans’ Carbon Tax Plan Has No Chance
A push by a group of senior Republican statesmen for a tax on carbon to help lessen the effects of climate change is already meeting entrenched opposition from within their own party. Within hours of their announcement, influential conservative anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist took to Twitter to suggest any proposal that includes a carbon tax is dead on arrival at Capitol Hill. “Now that the GOP can repeal all the anti-energy, anti-job regs — the Left offers to trade those regs for a carbon tax,” tweeted Norquist, president of the group Americans for Tax Reform. “Nice try. No.” --
A plan by former Republican officials to tax carbon dioxide emissions is similar to one considered by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton before she launched her presidential bid. Their plan is similar to one considered by the Clinton campaign in 2015 of imposing a greenhouse gas emissions “fee,” or carbon tax. The campaign opted not to support a carbon tax after polling showed it would be “lethal in the general” election. “We have done extensive polling on a carbon tax. It all sucks,” Clinton campaign chair John Podesta wrote in a 2015 email to campaign aides. --Michael Bastasch, The Daily Caller, 9 February 2017
There's nothing like a new administration in the White House to encourage proponents of discredited and failed plans to try, try again. That's what happened Wednesday when a group of former Republican cabinet members and their corporate brass friends got a 45-minute meeting with top Trump administration officials, including Vice President Mike Pence, to pitch... wait for it... a carbon tax. That's right, the old idea that keeps pretending it's new again. Carbon tax plans, where companies have to pay levies based on each metric ton of emissions they produce, have been popular with many big businesses and environmentalists alike for almost 20 years. They're often depicted as a "free market friendly" or economically wise path to combat climate change. But there's one problem: The free market, the economy, and most importantly, the voters really don't like the idea at all. --Jake Novak, CNBC, 9 February 2017
Wall Street is throwing the most money at U.S. energy companies since at least 2000 amid growing confidence that the industry is emerging from the worst downturn in a generation. --David Wethe, Bloomberg, 9 February 2017
South Australia A has become a laughing stock — a state that, literally, cannot keep the lights on. Even more disturbingly, we’ve become a place where big business like BHP Billiton cite the risk posed by unreliable power supply. South Australians are seething. We have been let down by our state and federal politicians. They must display true leadership to provide a basic utility — reliable and affordable electricity. --Editorial, The Adelaide Advertiser, 10 February 2017
A world-leading scientist has warned Donald Trump may signal the end of the world — and Australia could be first to face the catastrophic consequences. Michael Mann claims Mr Trump’s relationship to “post-truth” politics and “alternative facts” is much more than just embarrassing for the US and has the potential to destroy civilisation. Sitting in an office at the University of Sydney Business School ahead of his sold-out talk this week, the Penn State professor says one only has to look at the city’s record January temperatures for proof of how dangerous the President’s attitude is (sic!). --Emma Reynolds, News.com.au, 10 February 2017
Ahead
Federal Scientist Cooked Climate Change Books
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Obama Presentation, Whistleblower Charges
Obama Presentation, Whistleblower Charges
A key Obama administration scientist brushed aside inconvenient data that showed a slowdown in global warming in compiling an alarming 2015 report that coincided with the White House participation in the Paris Climate Conference, a whistle blower is alleging. Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, chairman of the House Science Committee, questioned the timing, noting the paper was published just before the Obama Administration’s Clean Power Plan was submitted to the Paris Climate Conference of 2015. “In the summer of 2015, whistleblowers alerted the Committee that the Karl study was rushed to publication before underlying data issues were resolved to help influence public debate about the so-called Clean Power Plan and upcoming Paris climate conference,” Smith said in a statement. “Since then, the Committee has attempted to obtain information that would shed further light on these allegations, but was obstructed at every turn by the previous administration’s officials.” --Fox News, 7 February 2017
John Bates is not fighting this fight alone. Representative Lamar Smith, chairman of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, has been asking NOAA for all communications related to Karl’s report, but the agency has refused to cooperate. In October 2015, Smith’s committee issued subpoenas for the documents; NOAA released some technical papers but not the requested correspondence, arguing that taxpayer-paid scientists don’t have to disclose their emails with other taxpayer-paid scientists about a taxpayer-paid study. With a sympathetic administration in power, Smith should now be able to get to the bottom of how the Karl study was conducted and who else helped move it along. And despite the personal attacks on his character and credibility, Bates’s actions could have long-lasting repercussions, not the least of which could be to encourage others to speak out about what’s been going on at federal scientific agencies. It’s long overdue. --Julie Kelly, National Review, 7 February 2017
Now we hear from an eminent whistleblower with America’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that the organisation used dodgy data to claim the “pause” in global warming from 1998 never existed, and had rushed to publish without the usual checks in order to influence the Paris Agreement on climate change. The almost 20-year “pause” or “hiatus” in global surface warming since 1998 was confirmed in 2013 by UN scientists and has been an awkward stumbling block for climate alarmists who insist the world’s temperature is soaring skyward at an exponential rate. Thus, Pause Debunking has become a competitive sport for alarmist scientists. --Miranda Devine, The Daily Telegraph, 7 February 2017
BP’s recent Energy Outlook 2017 has given the impression to some journalists that the oil giant sees fossil fuels in a hopeless long term struggle with a renewable energy steamroller squeezing the life out of all others through sheer competitive advantage. However, careful reading of a key chart in the Outlook tells a different story. Coal and gas will remain fundamentally cheap for decades, while renewables will remain dependent on fragile market distorting policies. --John Constable, GWPF Energy Comment, 7 February 2017
Poland threatened to sue the European Union (EU) over its global warming regulations, according to documents seen by Reuters. An EU deal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 40 percent by 2030, fulfilling its [Paris] pledge to the United Nations, poses problems for EU member-state Poland. Poland is challenging the legal basis for the EU’s global warming rules, and is determined to bring the case to the European Court of Justice (ECJ), though an unnamed source doesn’t think Poland will go that far. EU global warming rules require unanimous consent from all 28 member-nations, meaning that Poland could block them. --Andrew Follett, The Daily Caller, 7 February 2017
House lawmakers will renew their long-dormant investigation into the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) on the heels of whistleblower testimony that agency scientists rushed a landmark global warming study to influence policymakers. “The chairman intends to push for responses to his initial requests,” an aide for the Committee on Science, Space and Technology told reporters on a press call Monday, “to uncover exactly what was going on” at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Texas Republican Rep. Lamar Smith, the committee’s chairman, will “move forward as soon as possible” in asking NOAA to hand over documents included in a 2015 subpoena on potential climate data tampering. --Michael Bastasch, The Daily Caller, 6 February 2017
Rolling Blackouts In South Australia As Wind Farms Fail Again
Coldest Winter In Decade Causes Energy Shortages Across Southeast Europe
The Federal Government needs to take urgent action to improve its energy policies before the rest of Australia falls victim to the type of large-scale blackouts experienced in South Australia, the Australian Energy Council has warned. About 90,000 South Australian homes and businesses were blacked out Wednesday when the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) issued a load-shedding order to avoid potential damage to the network equipment due to supply deficiency. --Claire Campbell, ABC News, 9 February 2017
German coal and gas-fired power plant output in January rose to its highest in almost five years as cold weather boosted demand while below average wind and record-low winter nuclear availability reduced supply, according to power generation data compiled by think-tank Fraunhofer ISE. --Platts, 3 February 2017
To appreciate how quickly and fundamentally things are changing, it is necessary to go no further than a one-hour press briefing held jointly this week by the Global Warming Policy Foundation and Foreign Press Association in London. Rising from a sea of incredulity was a question from one journalist present [Channel 4 science editor Tom Clark] that underscored just how things had changed. “Me and my colleagues in this room haven’t spent much time speaking to people like yourselves and the Global Warming Policy Foundation over recent times because nothing you have to say has any support in fact,” the journalist said. “There are a lot of politicians and policymakers who have determined what you have to offer is essentially meaningless in terms of where the planet should be going, where the economy should be going and business should be going, but yet here we are all sitting in a room listening to you again. Why do you think that is?” he asked. Ebell said: “Well, elections are surprising things sometimes.” --Graham Lloyd, The Australian, 3 February 2017
As freezing weather triggered energy shortages across southeast Europe at the start of the year, Bulgaria’s refusal to export power was typical in a region where everyone had to fend for themselves. Nations from Greece to Hungary hoarded power last month in response to the coldest winter in a decade, exposing the weakness of the region’s power markets, which should enjoy unrestricted flows. --Bloomberg, 9 February 2017
The German Muenster district court on Thursday granted an emission-control permit to Datteln 4, a hard-coal fired power station under construction by utility Uniper that has been held up by an intense legal battle with environmentalists. Uniper said it aims to begin supplying electricity and district heating from the 1,050 megawatts plant in western Germany in the first half of 2018. --Reuters, 19 January 2017
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