Word on the political street is that a 15 cent increase in the federal gasoline tax may well be included in the final draft of a bill being prepared by Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Joe Lieberman (I-CT), and John Kerry (D-MA) to address global warming.   Shell, British Petroleum, and ConocoPhillips – are said to support the tax because it’s a less costly intervention in the transportation fuel market (for them anyway) than alternative interventions that might otherwise find their way into this prospective legislation.  Shell et al. may be right about that, but be that as it may, this would still constitute lousy public policy.  A gasoline tax hike ought to be resisted.

Higher Taxes Will Not Alter Climate Under Anyone’s Math

The proposed gasoline tax increase will have no significant impact on greenhouse gas emissions. …

“Unrestricted mobility is every bit as important to American freedom and economic health than health care reform. I hope that the people who have fought socialized health care will work just as hard to fight the congestion coalition.”  – R. O’Toole

The United States is the most mobile nation on earth, with the average American traveling nearly twice as many miles per year as the average resident of any other country. That mobility, the vast majority of which is provided by automobiles, has produced enormous benefits, including higher incomes, lower cost consumer goods, better housing, and access to a wide variety of social and recreational opportunities.

Transportation touches everyone’s lives every single day, and most American have to deal with traffic congestion several times a week. So when Congress takes up the subject of federal transportation funding, which it does every six years, people ought to be as concerned as they have been in the ongoing health-care debate.…

Recent reports from the Urban Land Institute and other planning advocates insist that so-called smart growth—a term meaning more compact urban development, combined with heavy investments in mass transit as an alternative to driving—is an essential tool in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. In heeding this call, the Obama administration and Democrats in Congress want to impose a national land-use planning policy that threatens the property rights of every landowner in the country.

Smart-growth advocates project that miles of driving over the next forty years will grow faster than improvements in fuel economy or development of alternative fuels, so it will be impossible to meet GHG reduction targets unless we coerce people out of their cars. Based on this, they argue that Americans must drive less to meet greenhouse gas reduction targets.…

[see bottom of post for an update]

Steve McIntyre, chief blogger and workhorse at the blog ClimateAudit, has a recent post which is grabbing a lot of attention across the web and being trumpeted by some as a triumphant unmasking of the fraudulent behavior in the preparation of the IPCC Third Assessment Report (TAR).

Science/science policy blogger Roger Pielke Jr. covers Steve’s post, with a post of his own, under the title The “Trick” in Context. However, I think the post should more accurately have been titled The “Trick” in “Context.” For the “context” is one supplied by Steve McIntyre. My read of the relevant emails surrounding the incident in question doesn’t lead me to the same conclusions as Steve.

Context must be supplied in this case. For as anyone who has looked through any of the leaked/stolen Climategate emails (available here) quickly realizes, most of the email threads are not complete from start to finish, and, as is typical of most conversations, they assume the participants already know a lot of what is being discussed, including the context. …