“Over the last year or so, I have tried to advise the progressive community that we should be open-minded about a carbon tax.”
– Greg Dotson, Center for American Progress
“The bottom line here is that the distributional effect of a carbon tax could really be anything you want, depending on how you use the revenues. We think it is shortsighted to only think of the direct effect of the tax.”
– Eric Toder, Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center
“[Trump] … is going to be utterly decimated in November…. Then the question is, what does that do to the Tea Party? …. Is the Tea Party really something to fear now, after a decimation in November?
– Jerry Taylor, Niskanen Center
It is rare that one gets to follow the talk and reasoning of climate/energy alarmists/activists.…
“It’s flat-earthers like Obama who refuse to acknowledge the problematic nature of contradictory data. It’s flat-earthers like Obama who cite a recent Alaskan heat wave — a freak event in one place at one time — as presumptive evidence of planetary climate change. It’s flat-earthers like Obama who cite perennial phenomena such as droughts as cosmic retribution for environmental sinfulness.”
– Charles Krauthammer, “Obama’s Global-Warming Folly.” Washington Post, July 4, 2013.
The late Charles Krauthammer was a wise voice in a public policy hothouse. His views on Obama-era climate-change policy ring true today–and demonstrate prescience.
After providing key quotations from Krauthammer, I revisit James Taylor’s rebuttal to the critical backlash generated by the Washington Post piece.
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“The economy stagnates. Syria burns. Scandals lap at his feet.…
“If the current pace of the buildup of these gases continues, the effect is likely to be a warming of 3 to 9 degrees Fahrenheit [between now and] the year 2025 to 2050, according to these projections…. The rise in global temperature is predicted to … caus[e] sea levels to rise by one to four feet by the middle of the next century.”
– Philip Shabecoff, “Global Warming Has Begun.” New York Times, June 24, 1988.
Climate exaggeration (in the long Malthusian tradition) creates a paper trail and data points for falsification. Some 30 years ago, temperature- and sea-level–rise predictions were made that are in the news. As the predictions near the beginning of the forecast period, the skeptics of alarmism are well on their way to yet another victory.…