“If the government is going to force businesses and households to do things that are uneconomical, this will be costly. It will make the country as a whole poorer than it otherwise would have been, at least measured in conventional terms such as GDP, real income, job growth, etc…. We should not kid ourselves into thinking the here-and-now costs will be negligible.”
Lately the proponents of “saving the planet” from climate change (yes, them) are proposing that the rest of us have our cake and eat it too. In an editorial for the Denver Business Journal, Chris Hoffman cited a REMI study claiming that a “fee and dividend” on carbon dioxide emissions will not only reduce climate change, but will also (they assure us) somehow create jobs and make everyone richer to boot.…
Continue Reading“I do, however, believe that corporations which deliberately, purposefully, maliciously and systematically sponsor climate lies should be given the death penalty.”
“The Cato Institute, The Heritage Foundation, the Cooler Heads Coalition, the Global Climate Coalition, The American Enterprise Institute (ALEC), Americans for Prosperity, Heartland Institute, Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), George C. Marshall Institute, the State Policy Network, The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), and the American Enterprise Institute (AEI).… these front groups are snake pits for sociopaths.”
“Koch Industries and ExxonMobil have particularly distinguished themselves as candidates for corporate death.”
– Robert Kennedy Jr., “What States’ Attorneys General Can Do About Climate Deniers,” Huffington Post, October 1, 2014.
Robert Kennedy Jr.’s screed against great American corporations is an elitist indictment against consumer preferences for affordable, reliable energy. Kennedy’s hate speech is also a confirmation about how badly the climate fanatics are losing in the court of public opinion.…
Continue Reading“But while the IPCC chooses to look the other way, the scientific evidence supporting low equilibrium climate sensitivity continues to pile up…. This is all around good news, for it means that we can focus more on expanding energy access (via fossil fuels) around the world rather than curtail our energy growth.”
There are basically three key parameters that determine the pace and magnitude of future climate change: 1) how much carbon are we going to emit, 2) what percentage of those emissions will remain in the atmosphere (as opposed to being taken up by the biosphere), and 3) how much will the climate warm as a result of what remains in the atmosphere. We understand these things a lot better than we often let on.
The first parameter seems difficult to assess on timescales that exceed a couple of decades.…
Continue Reading