Tag Archives: Carbon Tax

News

Global warming in the UK: coldest March in 50 years, Winter extending into Spring

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From the UK Daily Mail. (H/T Doug Ross)

Excerpt:

Today is officially the first day of spring – but it will bring little respite to freezing Britain as snow continues to fall, closing schools and causing chaos on the roads.

The country is on track to suffer its coldest March in more than 50 years as conservationists warned that the prolonged winter weather was damaging wildlife.

The unrelenting cold weather is showing no signs of slowing this week as snow continues to fall across the North.

Today is the vernal equinox, traditionally regarded as the end of winter and the day that spring arrives, but the news could come as a surprise to Britons affected by the snow and cold.

More light snow will settle throughout the day in the north-east of England and eastern Scotland, adding to large amounts of up to 10cm which hit the regions yesterday.

Higher ground will see up to another 5cm, while lower areas could see around 2cm – along with parts of Northern Ireland and Wales.

[…]The Central England Temperature – covering an area bounded by Lancashire, Bristol and London – shows temperatures have been 2.8C lower than normal for the month.

The last time March was so cold was in 1962, when the average temperature was 2.4C (36F) – or 4.1C below the norm.

Meanwhile, in the midwestern United States, we get snow storms in the Spring:

Winter’s late-season grip on the nation continued into the first full week of spring with a powerful snowstorm moving east, leaving major highways closed, flights canceled and heavy accumulation in the Midwest.

The largest snowfall totals of 10 inches or more fell across Kansas and over St. Louis, Mo., before the storm began churning up the Ohio River Valley toward the East Coast on Sunday.

In the mid-Missouri town of Columbia, TV station KOMU was briefly evacuated Sunday morning because of high winds and a heavy buildup of snow on the broadcast tower next to the building.

Two distinct patterns of heavy snow were following one another across the nation’s midsection, engulfing areas of Illinois, Indiana and Ohio. The storm was forecast to bring heavy snow to portions of the Midwest. About 6 to 10 inches were forecast from Missouri to Ohio on Sunday. Winter storm warnings were issued for much of central Missouri, Illinois, Indiana and Ohio.

[…]Forecasters Sunday said travel across the Mid-Atlantic will be disrupted with slush and snow accumulating along the I-95 corridor from Philadelphia to Washington, D.C. With temperatures expected to hover around freezing Monday, it was difficult for officials to be certain how quickly snow would melt.

[…]In the west, Highway I-70 was shut down from Denver — where 100 flights were canceled — into Kansas Saturday as truckers pulled off treacherous roadways and hotels quickly filled up.

Forecasters were predicting a few inches in and around the nation’s capital and further to the north in New York City. Heavier accumulation was expected in areas in between, such as Baltimore and Philadelphia.

Do you know what we need to stop this global warming? A nice carbon tax. And thankfully, Obama is working hard on that.

News

Democrat senator Barbara Boxer introduces carbon tax legislation

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From CNS News.

Excerpt:

Today, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) introduced a bill to levy a carbon tax. But, back on Nov. 15 of last year, Pres. Obama’s press secretary promised the administration would “never” do so.

According to Reuters, the new tax law “would set a $20 tax for each ton of carbon dioxide equivalent a polluter would emit beyond a set limit, which would rise 5.6 percent annually over a 10-year period.”

Last November, however, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters that would never happen:

“We would never propose a carbon tax, and have no intention of proposing one.  The point the President was making is that our focus right now is the same as the American people’s focus, which is on the need to extend economic growth, expand job creation.  And task number one is dealing with these deadlines that pose real challenges to our economy, as he talked about yesterday.”

“A carbon tax will skyrocket [the] price of everything,” a statement from Sen. David Vitter (R-LA), a member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, warned today:

“It’s not just energy prices that would skyrocket from a carbon tax, the cost of nearly everything built in America would go up.”

The cost of everything is already going up because of inflation. This carbon tax is just going to make it worse, especially for the poor.

Videos

Jay Richards: what should Christians think about global warming?

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Here’s a lecture Jay Richards did for the Acton Institue.

And here is a related article from Boundless.

Excerpt:

The big environmental issue nowadays is global warming. Anyone who watches or reads the news even occasionally has been told that humans are causing global warming through all the fossil fuels we’re burning. They’ve also been told that this warming process eventually will prove catastrophic if we don’t reverse course as soon as possible.

As thinking Christians and good stewards, how should we respond?

The short answer is, we should respond thoughtfully. Thoughtless stewards are rarely good stewards.

Notice that my brief summary of the global warming controversy bundled together several distinct claims. To think clearly about this issue, we have to tease apart this bundle of claims and consider each one. For each claim, there is a corresponding question we need to answer. And it’s only after answering these questions that we can be in a position to determine what, if anything, we ought to do about global warming.

Here are the four central questions:

  1. Is the earth warming?
  2. If the earth is warming, is human activity (like carbon dioxide emissions) causing it?
  3. If the earth is warming, and we’re causing it, is that bad overall?
  4. If the earth is warming, we’re causing it, and that’s bad, would any of the proposed “solutions” (e.g., the Kyoto Protocol, legislative restrictions on carbon dioxide emissions) make any difference?

It’s important for us to think carefully about how best to achieve the goals set out by the Bible. And that means undertaking a close study of how the world works and how best to affect change for the good.