Tag: climategate

The Economic Folly of a Carbon Tax

The push for a carbon tax has regained popularity as the fiscal storm in 2025 and climate change debates intensify. Advocates claim it’s a solution to pay for spending excesses while reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. But a carbon tax is a misguided, costly policy that must be rejected.

A carbon tax functions more like an income tax than a consumption tax, capturing all forms of work, including capital goods production and building construction. These sectors are heavy on carbon emissions, meaning the tax disproportionately burdens them, stifling investment and innovation — much like a progressive income tax, but with broader economic repercussions.

For example, in the US, the construction sector alone accounts for about 40 percent of carbon emissions. A carbon tax would heavily penalize this industry, reducing its capacity to grow, generate new housing, and create jobs. Moreover, implementing a carbon tax involves massive administrative costs. The federal tax code is already complex and costly; a carbon tax would exacerbate these issues.

Determining net carbon emissions is a nuanced process subject to ever-changing and arbitrary federal definitions, increasing compliance costs for businesses and consumers.

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Climate Research Fails a Science Integrity Test

Last February I documented how PNAS had published a paper — Grinsted et al. 2018 — that was based on a fake ‘dataset” of hurricane losses assembled by a successive set of interns for a now defunct insurance company, for purposes of marketing insurance products. The “dataset” was never intended for research.

I won’t rehash the details here — you can take a deep dive here. The “dataset” simply does not exist and thus the paper’s analysis and conclusions are based on false information. This case is not complicated or difficult to understand.

At the time, I requested of the editor of the paper, Kerry Emanuel of MIT, that the paper be retracted based on its reliance on a fake dataset. Emanuel agreed to escalate my request to PNAS.

Today, I heard back from PNAS that the dataset and paper are without problems and the matter is now closed. I reproduce the full PNAS email to me below. Some highlights:

  • Remarkably, PNAS did not actually examine the dataset in question;
  • PNAS apparently relied instead on an unrelated letter I submitted on the paper’s methods from 2019 — the information I shared with them earlier this year was based on new information, which was apparently ignored.
  • Remarkably, one of the “expert” reviewers wrote: “the conclusions of the Grinsted et al. article do not depend on the ICAT dataset due to the robustness analyses performed with the other datasets.” This is easily shown to be false — The “other” datasets are subsets of the fake dataset, as I explained to PNAS but which they apparently did not read or ignored. Remarkable.
  • The “expert” reviewer wrote that my request: “does not change my impression of the validity of the data, and again ignores the robustness analyses performed with the other datasets.” There are no other datasets. Rather than rely on an “impression,” PNAS could have actually looked at the data and done some simple analyses to confirm my assertions — it might have taken all of 10 minutes.

Today, I emailed Kerry Emanuel, who edited the original paper, and asked if he agreed with the PNAS verdict. He said that he did agree that the paper was fine.

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Prof. William Happer: “More CO2 is good for the world”

Why is CO2 good for the world?

“If you look at the geological history … we’re in a CO2 famine now compared to what’s normal for plants. And just about any plant if you give it more CO2, and a lot more, it will do better … most greenhouses double or triple the amount of CO2 … because the plants grow so much better – the quality of the flowers and the fruits are so much better,” Prof. Happer said.

He further explained that since the Cambrian explosion of life “CO2 levels have gone way down.”

The Cambrian explosion refers to the rapid and sudden emergence of complex life forms on Earth, approximately 541 million to 530 million years ago.  It is believed to have laid the foundation for the incredible diversity of life on Earth, with many modern animal groups emerging during this period.

The high levels of carbon dioxide during the Cambrian period may have played a crucial role in the evolution of life on Earth. Studies suggest that carbon dioxide concentrations during the Cambrian period were much higher than they are today. One study found that CO2 levels were 1,000 parts per million (“ppm”) and R.A. Eggleton’s book ‘A Short History of Climate Change’ stated that CO2 levels may have been as high as 4,000 ppm during the Cambrian period, compared to the current level of around 400 ppm.

“[CO2 levels have] typically been three, four, five times than they are now.  And plants are adapted to much higher levels and so they’re harmed in a number of ways by the low levels [of CO2] now,” Prof. Happer explained.

One of the harms to plants with low CO2 levels is photorespiration.  Photorespiration is an important aspect of plant metabolism and plays a fundamental role in plant growth and development.   When CO2 is low, “the enzyme [plants] use is poisoned by oxygen if there’s not enough CO2, so plants have to devote a lot of their resources to detoxifying this oxygen poisoning [instead of to growth],” he explained. 

“If you double CO2 [the plants] don’t have to work as hard to protect themselves from oxygen.  That’s the main reason greenhouses work better is that you get rid of the oxygen poisoning – the photorespiration,” he said.

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Climate Change Causes Earthquakes Now, Y’all

Dear Climate Alarmists: If you want to know why such a high percentage of the public detests you and doesn’t believe anything you say, it’s because of nonsense like the new report from LiveScience.com claiming that ‘climate change’ now causes earthquakes.

No, really, it’s a real report, headlined “Will we have more earthquakes because of climate change?”

Naturally, the story answers that question with a resounding “yes.” Because of course it does. What else would a good climate alarmist say? It’s a requirement to blame literally everything in our lives on the all-knowing, all-seeing, all-causing, all-powerful boogeyman we call ‘climate change.’ If you don’t, you won’t get that next government grant, now, will you?

That’s the game. It’s been the game for 30 years now, and the net effect has been the utter corruption of what we call “science.” The raising of outlandish claims such as this in glaring headlines or by hyperventilating-but-cute weather girls on our local news channels is exactly why a constantly rising percentage of the population holds the field of climate “science” in contempt.

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Green terrorists are stealing property in America’s heartland to build massive CO2 pipeline terraforming machines for destruction of photosynthesis on Earth

Summit Carbon Solutions is back at it in Iowa trying to steal private farmland for use in its massive “carbon capture” scam.

The Iowa Utility Board (IUB) reportedly approved a proposal by Summit to build a carbon dioxide (CO2) pipeline that stretches across five Midwestern states: Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota. The pipeline is slated to cover 2,500 miles – the portion in Iowa is supposed to be 680 miles long – and connect with 57 ethanol plants, a spokeswoman from the company revealed.

The IUB decision will allow Summit to use eminent domain to steal 859 land parcels from private landowners, the vast majority of whom are opposed to the “green” project, which aims to bury CO2 underground so it cannot “pollute” the environment.

“After weighing numerous factors for and against Summit Carbon’s petition, the Board found that the service to be provided by Summit Carbon will promote the public convenience and necessity,” UIB said in its decision.

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Gassy cows and pigs will face a carbon tax in Denmark, a world first

Denmark will tax livestock farmers for the greenhouse gases emitted by their cows, sheep and pigs from 2030, the first country to do so as it targets a major source of methane emissions, one of the most potent gases contributing to global warming.

The aim is to reduce Danish greenhouse gas emissions by 70% from 1990 levels by 2030, said Taxation Minister Jeppe Bruus.

As of 2030, Danish livestock farmers will be taxed 300 kroner ($43) per ton of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2030. The tax will increase to 750 kroner ($108) by 2035. However, because of an income tax deduction of 60%, the actual cost per ton will start at 120 kroner ($17.3) and increase to 300 kroner by 2035.

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The Rockefellers Created 990 “Climate Change” Institutions, Foundations, And Activist Groups

In the climate change arena, the Rockefellers call the shots. The whole thing was their idea, they took a silly but interesting theory and amped it up with hundreds and hundreds of million of dollars. They founded institutions and linked the survival of those institutions to promoting climate change and population reduction. They adopted one likely politician after another.

The Rockefellers have created 990 Climate Change activist organizations. They give them directions, financing, and launch them on the world. The Green Movement was started, financed, organized, and militarized by the Rockefellers. By the late 40’s the family was all in, on the same page. In the 50’s they began to stand up countless institutions, committees, university departments, university institutes, foundations, and policy shops gathered around this one idea…

Let’s just pause here and recognize that the United States and Canada are 5% developed. If it were 50%, then maybe we would have reason to worry about the effects of trace gas that takes up .04% of the atmosphere, of which 3% is currently contributed to by humans. But were we to have that level of development, our science would have long ago solved the problem. Our sense of proportion, size and consequence has been twisted, propagandized via hundreds of billions of purposed dollars. And all of it is exaggerated science done by scientists compromised by Rockefeller money.

By 1998, the Rockefeller family had swept the table clean of any opposition to this one idea. Any scientist not on board with the agenda was imperiled. Any university department not working towards this one artificial goal, was in danger of being marginalized. Infiltration had begun into every media organization, every entertainment division of every major corporation. This, as stated below, would be a generational goal. For everyone. Or get off the bus.

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Climate and climate change do not cause or influence weather

It is now a ubiquitous cultural ritual to blame any and every weather event on climate change. Those hot days? Climate change. That hurricane? Climate change. The flood somewhere that I saw on social media? Climate change.

With today’s post, the first in a series, I go beyond the cartoonish media caricatures of climate change, which I expect are here to stay, and explore the actual science of extreme events – how they may or may not be changing, and how we think we know what we know, and what we simply cannot know.

Quite apart from the outsized and oversimplified role of climate-fuelled extreme weather in culture and politics, climate is fascinating and important – and worth understanding as more than a meme. This post lays the groundwork for this new The Honest Broker (“TBH”) series, starting with some important definitions and a quantitative thought experiment.

Let’s start with the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) definition of “climate”(bold emphasis added):

In a narrow sense, climate is usually defined as the average weather, or more rigorously as the statistical description in terms of the mean and variability of relevant quantities over a period of time ranging from months to thousands or millions of years. The classical period for averaging these variables is 30 years, as defined by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO). The relevant quantities are most often surface variables such as temperature, precipitation and wind. Climate in a wider sense is the state, including a statistical description, of the climate system.

Climate refers to a “statistical description”1 of the climate system, defined as:

The global system consisting of five major components: the atmosphere, the hydrosphere, the cryosphere, the lithosphere and the biosphere and the interactions between them. The climate system changes in time under the influence of its own internal dynamics and because of external forcings such as volcanic eruptions, solar variations, orbital forcing, and anthropogenic forcings such as the changing composition of the atmosphere and land use change.

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Net Zero Will Boost the Economy? Pull the Other One

According to a recent Bloomberg article, the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) has urged the next Government to “put Net Zero at the heart of its economic plans” in order to achieve a “£57 billion economic boost by going green”. The article draws from a recent speech by CBI Chief Exec Rain Newton-Smith, in which she argued that “the next Government can’t be pro-growth and deliver for our people, planet and communities, without being pro-green”. This claim is in turn based on an analysis from CBI Economics, “which found that the U.K.’s Net Zero sector grew by 9% in 2023, a year when the U.K. economy fell into technical recession”.

If it is true, it is remarkable, surely, that a sector of the U.K. economy could grow at such a rate, despite headwinds. And it would indeed be an extremely foolish Government that ignored such a stark metric. But the CBI has form in making big statements about the direction that U.K. Governments should take, including most famously an injunction that Britain should ditch the pound and join the Eurozone – a policy position which Vote Leave later revealed likely to be related to the fact that “12% of the CBI’s retained income” came from the European Commission. “Since 2009, the CBI has received £7,031,797 from 140 taxpayer-funded public sector bodies in membership fees,” explained Vote Leave in 2015. Might funding sources also explain its arguments for a doubling down on Net Zero policy?

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Net Zero will Destroy You, Your Family and Everything You Love

The drive towards Net Zero is fuelled by the climate change myth and is based on a delicately balanced raft of pseudoscientific evidence and fake news material which are used by professional propagandists and skilled conspirators to sustain the notion that fossil fuels are threatening our world and our very existence.

The myth they have created has been propagated with absurd enthusiasm by small but vocal teams of compliant and easily led enthusiasts, most of whom almost certainly believe that the lies they have been told are the truth and that if we do not make substantive changes to our way of life then we have no future. They’ve been taught that the seas will boil and rise up to engulf the land, life as we have known it will become impossible and the human race will be doomed.

As a result of this nonsensical belief (which is no better established in science than the equally absurd but far less dangerous and damaging theories that the Earth is flat, there are no germs and that gravity does not exist) governments around the world now argue that they have no choice but to take drastic action to save us from doom. Aided and abetted by gullible, easily led, virtue-signalling leaders of charities, lobby groups, bankers and investment groups, action is, therefore, being taken to halt the use of all fossil fuels and to change every aspect of the way we live.

The Supreme Court in the UK has ruled that a local council should have considered the climate impact of burning oil before allowing new wells. This will put all future oil and gas projects in doubt both in the UK and in the EU. A Swiss woman won a victory at the European Court of Human Rights to force Switzerland to do more to deal with the myth of climate change. This is all insanity.

The best joke of the century so far is that China is selling solar panels and electric vehicles to the West and burning coal to create the electricity to make them.

And as we in the West are encouraged by the lunatics to condemn fossil fuels no one is allowed to mention that 84% of global energy comes from fossil fuels. (That is just 2% less than in 1973, by the way.) Without oil and gas, we would have to survive on 16% of the energy we use now. Oh, and you can’t make fertiliser or fly planes with solar power or ugly, bird-crunching windmills.

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