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By Repair Man Jack Posted in Policy | Spotlight Blogs — Comments (12) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

Global Warming has begun to scare me greatly. Not the hocus science or laughable models such as Michael Mann’s “Hockey Stick Curve,” nor the ponderous preponderance of pointless paperwork such as the latest iteration of the IPCC scare documents. After all, both of these documents were obviously prepared by advocates; not legitimate professional scientists.

What scares me more has been the reaction of the non-scientific community to this elaborate media campaign. Those who disagree with the basic thesis are referred to as skeptics, or worse heretics. This makes Global Warming scary, whether its wellspring is proven to be anthropogenic, terrestrial or solar.

Read on . . .

What scares me most about the Global Warming debate isn’t even the rank defamation of those who oppose the consensus. Science survived the imprisonment of Galileo, it will still be kicking after the inevitable success of the political jihad contra Oregon State Climatologist; Gordon Taylor.

Global Warming has become the ultimate Trojan horse for advancing the power of the state, over our lives and over our livelihoods. Everyone wants to horn in on the opportunity. The Earth is not in the balance, but your freedom may become increasingly imperiled.

What imperils our freedoms? The proposed Orwellian solutions which are far more deadly than the problem at hand. In Europe, the EU claims the mandate to establish a list of “Environmental Crimes” which it could proscribe throughout the EU’s area of implementation. This would supersede and overarch rights which the indigenous countries of Europe have enjoyed since King John put pen to Magna Carta at swordpoint.

Closer to home, the threats of Global Warming, and all the stupid remediation policies that its fervent believers support, threatens the core of American power; our economy. With the 95-0 margin in support of the 1995 Hagel-Byrd Resolution and the subsequent defeat of the pompously titled McCain-Liebermann Climate Stewardship Act, the climate lemmings have adopted a different method of penalizing those of us who egregiously consume resources, while not being named Al Gore.

Anne Applebaum recently added her brilliant suggestion to a burgeoning list of “progressive” initiatives that would make hard work and success dangerous to the financial well being of the average America. She intends to make us innovate by imposing a carbon tax on our businesses.

She describes her environmentally-sensitive initial foray into state socialism. “It's called a carbon tax, and it should be applied across the board to every industry that uses fossil fuels, every home or building with a heating system, every motorist, and every public transportation system.”

For some reason I’m reminded of the Beatles lyric “If you drive your car, I’ll tax the street.”

I’d challenge Anne Applebaum to find me an avocation, that doesn’t involve the use of fossil fuels, that isn’t one step below automation. At this point in the column, I was hoping the rest of her logic wasn’t as plastic. That substance, after all, requires the heavy-duty refining of petrochemicals.

“Immediately, it would produce a wealth of innovations to save fuel, as well as new incentives to conserve.”

No, Anne, it wouldn’t. It would drive the program management costs at most industrial plants through the roof. The first budgetary line items that get gutted in scenarios like that are R&D. The retiree health care comes in a close second. It doesn’t get more carbon-nuetral than unplugging gramps from the respirator and chucking his butt on the compost heap.

“More to the point, it would produce a big chunk of money that could be used for other things. Anyone for balancing the budget? Fixing Social Security for future generations?”

No, Anne, it really wouldn’t. The US has made far more progress towards a balanced budget in the last three years than anyone who writes for Isvestia on The Potomac would ever admit was true. This progress has occurred while industrial input has gone up. What drives tax receipts is not rate, but the revenue base from whence the receipts are derived. If you want more for your sweet tooth, bake a bigger pie.

As a foreign policy side benefit, users of the tax would suddenly find themselves less dependent on Persian Gulf oil or Russian natural gas, too.”

Yes, Anne, you may be on to something here. If we made our economy run like Rawanda-Burundi’s, we’d all be walking to work and using nothing more complex than hand tools. You don’t need much petrol to run that type of Ecotopia, but it does come with all the malaria and dengue fever mosquitoes that sort of lifestyle entails.

I’d be willing to listen more closely to climatologists and their strap hangers on the science, if they did something to dissuade the hucksters, grafters and brigands who appeal to their cause as a gravaman to pry the locks off my treasure chest and rob me blind. The physics described by climate change theorists are possible and could worth proving out, provided we used methodologies less blatantly dishonest than the aforementioned “Hockey Stick Curve.” Oh, and we also may want to establish this truth before trying any cure as potentially lethal as that put forward by Anne Applebaum and her fellow stumble-bum Carbonari.