Bad Day to Miss the News

I missed the news yesterday and missed some good news stories, which are infrequent enough. (Work and class pressures were too much.)

Pension Reform Measure Stays on on the Ballot, Survives Two Lawsuits

In the first lawsuit, the California Public Employment Relations Board tried to take the almost unprecedented step of preventing a citizen initiative on pension reform to reach the ballot on the thin legal argument that it was actually a city government sponsored initiative, which violates good faith bargaining principles.

In his ruling, Judge William Dato said case law is clear that the court should block a measure only when it is clear beyond a doubt that it is invalid. He said he found no compelling reason to keep the initiative from the ballot when its legality can be still be challenged later.

Exactly. Further, even if city officials were involved in the initiative process, which is what the PERB alleges, they are citizens, too, and have the right to launch an initiative process.

The second lawsuit

. . . filed by mayoral candidate and attorney Hud Collins, claims the measure is a major revision to the City Charter, and can't be put on the June ballot by way of petition signatures.

But Judge Steven Denton ruled that the initiative won't affect the "structure" of city government, so it's a valid amendment to the charter.

So much for pre-election legal challenges. This initiative will clearly pass in June. I think the unions know it, hence the legal wrangling. Get ready for post-election lawsuits to prevent the law from taking effect. If any city employee is reading this blog, could you please explain how this hurts you; I understand how the union bosses get hurt, but how does the union member get hurt.

Comprehensive Smackdown of Warmist Scaremongering

The WSJ published a second smackdown of the theory that man made CO2 is causing catastrophic global warming. Of course increased CO2 has some impact, the questions about how much and whether this is even a problem are not clear. Further, the supposed climate experts have no clue as to whether the vast economic tradeoffs necessary to shift from a carbon based energy economy are worth it. They rail against supposed non-experts who question their findings, and yet launch themselves into economic discussions in which they are clearly uneducated and untrained. The pseudo-scientific cult of warmism has all the hallmarks of religion. A few choice quotes from the scientists who have gone public with debunking the theory that we are all doomed.

When predictions fail, we say the theory is "falsified" and we should look for the reasons for the failure.
. . .
From the graph it appears that the projections exaggerate, substantially, the response of the earth's temperature to CO2 which increased by about 11% from 1989 through 2011. Furthermore, when one examines the historical temperature record throughout the 20th century and into the 21st, the data strongly suggest a much lower CO2 effect than almost all models calculate.
. . .
Given this dubious track record of prediction, it is entirely reasonable to ask for a second opinion.
. . .
The Trenberth letter tells us that decarbonization of the world's economy would "drive decades of economic growth." This is not a scientific statement nor is there evidence it is true. A premature global-scale transition from hydrocarbon fuels would require massive government intervention to support the deployment of more expensive energy technology. If there were economic advantages to investing in technology that depends on taxpayer support, companies like Beacon Power, Evergreen Solar, Solar Millenium, SpectraWatt, Solyndra, Ener1 and the Renewable Energy Development Corporation would be prospering instead of filing for bankruptcy in only the past few months.

Thanks for that.

As I continue to point out, if the warmists were serious they would have called for a carbon tax with an income tax offset as the economically most efficient means of delivering CO2 reduction. That they do not is proof of their statist aims.

Santorum's Odds on In-Trade Drop

Ok, I admit this is today's news, but Santorum has too much big government baggage and emphasis on social issues when the nation has to face down the debt-star. I would hope that social conservatives see that government that is limited in all areas is to their advantage. Notice how every expansion of government eventually intrudes on religious beliefs, usually in a negative way, e.g. Obamacare vs the Catholic Church. Santorum can make a big show of defending Catholicism against Obamacare, but he has some history in causing the problem in the first place.

Cap and Trade Fraud

Capitol Commentary (H/T Harrison) has a must read about the "theft" of carbon credits in the EU. That we would consider implementing a similar system that has been rife with fraud is beyond me. Oh wait, that's a feature, not a bug, got it. Handing out "credits" to your buddies who can then sell them on open or black markets, that's a great feature. From Capitol Commentary:

How much would you pay for something which doesn’t really exist but yet has enormous value? That’s the question many in Europe are asking themselves as it was revealed that over €30 million Carbon Credits were “stolen” by hackers and quickly moved into other peoples’ accounts. . . . Carbon Credit trading is huge in the crazy parts of the world where Liberals think naturally occuring gasses destroy the planet. In Europe, this Carbon Credit trading rang up €90 billion in 2009! These credits are bought and sold throughout the European Union among 10,000+ different businesses. The money is so good, Al Gore became a part of a Carbon Credits trading company back in 2008.

Maybe that's all we need to know about the whole scheme. As I have said before, if the left were serious about reducing CO2, they would have gone for a carbon tax, with a revenue neutral income tax offset. But since this is really about political payback and a way to extort campaign cash and actual cash, cap and trade it is.

Good News from the Republican House Majority

It's been a busy week for the new Republican House majority. First and most important, the House voted to repeal Obamacare 245-189. I know it won't even get to a vote in the Senate, what are you afraid of, Harry, but Paul Ryan reminds us of the importance of this vote. Let me be clear, this bill significantly raises the amount of debt of the federal government.





Next up, the House Energy committee plans to investigate the EPA's power grab over CO2 regulation. From committee documents, as reported in The Hill:

“The stakes could not be higher,” the document says. “ If the Obama administration succeeds in imposing unaffordable and unworkable permitting and other rules through EPA, it will severely impede the domestic manufacturing and industrial growth necessary for this nation to create jobs and emerge from a devastating recession."

Meanwhile Senate Republicans think they can gain significant Democrat support for legislation to restrain the EPA's ability to regulate green house gas emissions.

Most Senate Republicans think the sweeping repeal of EPA authority is the best approach, a Senate aide said, and they’re confident they can get broad Democratic support.
“There’s anywhere from 12 to 15 Democrats that we are eying that we think would have an interest in supporting a bill like this,” the aide said.

I think this is a long shot because Harry Reid won't allow a floor vote on this, and even 15 Democrats plus 47 Republicans wouldn't sustain a veto. But hearings would remind the public about Obama's pernicious use of regulation to bypass the Congress and make for a tasty campaign issue in swing states in the Midwest.

Back to the Obamacare front, the Daily Caller is reporter that Fred Upton, Chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee (the same committee taking dead aim at the EPA) is beginning an investigation of the waiver process that has already allowed 222 companies and unions to escape the nasty clutches of Obamacare. Here is an excerpt of the letter sent to the office charged with overseeing the waivers:

It continued: “In a Nov. 30, 2010 meeting with Ranking Minority Member Michael Burgess, you stated that your office had also denied waiver requests. We would appreciate if your office would explain how a decision is made on whether compliance with the PPACA is necessary.”

Hey, I think we'd all like to know the answer to that one.

Meanwhile, Darrell Issa, Chair of the Oversight Committee has yet to launch a single investigation, but he is already making the right enemies. The ranking minority member of the committee wrote a seven page letter blasting potential targets of investigation. Some lefty group ironically named the Courage Campaign announced the creation of a web site to enable anonymous smears of Issa. And the Washington Post and NPR are trying to poison the atmosphere with questionable articles about Issa's past. Let the smearing begin.

Carbon Hypocrisy

Just a quick thought. If the Democrats in Washington and Sacramento were serious about reducing carbon emissions, they would propose an across the board carbon tax that would bring economic incentives into play to reduce CO2. That they favor cap and trade is proof that, whatever the truth of global warming, they view it as a con game by which to gain further control over the economy to reward their friends and punish their enemies.

More Carbon Thugocracy

The WSJ editorial pages alerted me to something widely predicted in my blog and the conservative blogosphere. Obama's EPA is threatening to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant. This is a blatant attempt to split the business community into those who will lobby for cap and trade against those who won't. As Dean keeps reminding us, If you're not at the table, you are on the menu. I dare the EPA to regulate CO2 for two reasons. First, there will be an inevitable court challenge and we could have the open debate on global warming 'Dawg wants. Second, the manner in which the EPA is proposing the regulation is patently unconstitutional.

Yet one not-so-minor legal problem is that the Clean Air Act's statutory language states unequivocally that the EPA must regulate any "major source" that emits more than 250 tons of a pollutant annually, not 25,000. The EPA's Ms. Jackson made up the higher number out of whole cloth because the lower legal threshold—which was intended to cover traditional pollutants, not ubiquitous carbon—would sweep up farms, restaurants, hospitals, schools, churches and other businesses. Sources that would be required to install pricey "best available control technology" would increase to 41,000 per year, up from 300 today, while those subject to the EPA's construction permitting would jump to 6.1 million from 14,000.

...

Usually it takes an act of Congress to change an act of Congress, but Team Obama isn't about to let democratic—or even Democratic—consent interfere with its carbon extortion racket. To avoid the political firestorm of regulating the neighborhood coffee shop, the EPA is justifying its invented rule on the basis of what it calls the "absurd results" doctrine. That's not a bad moniker for this whole exercise.

Defeating Cap and Trade

Richard Lugar, one of the Republican senators being courted to pass the cap and trade, carbon emissions bill said that such a bill would likely not pass this year due to the ongoing Health Care debate. I tend to agree. I see this as both opportunity and danger. The opportunity is that the Tea Party movement can help build highly deserved disgust towards legislation that hands out exemptions like Halloween candy to the politically favored. The danger is that Green groups will get organized more quickly than our side and blunt the message about the horrible jobs impact of this bill.

I would like libertarians and conservatives to seriously re-think the merits of a carbon tax, when coupled with reductions in the income tax. With regards to global warming, it allows us to avoid a debate over whether global warming is

1. Actually happening.
2. Actually man made.
3. Actually bad.

We can concede on these issues or just say it doesn't matter because even if all three were true, Cap and Trade would STILL BE BAD POLICY.

Second, by proposing to reduce income taxes to offset carbon taxes, it puts the Democrats in a tough spot. (I have also argued the benefits of a consumption tax vs income taxes.) We can make this argument, if global warming is the giant threat you say it is, why wouldn't you reduce income taxes as the price of saving the planet? Are you hypocritical? The countercharge that we are holding the planet hostage to tax cuts, is that we believe that national wealth needs to be preserved to combat the potential crisis.

Finally, Republicans need a serious plan to deal with the negative side affects of burning carbon, I think that just saying no to cap and trade will be insufficient. A carbon tax, because it is simple and predictable will have the lowest impact on the economy and be the least susceptible to log rolling.

Using The Carbon Crisis

As Rahm Emmanuel said, never let a good crisis go to waste. There is no reason our side can't advance our goals in response to real or artificial crises, just as the left does. This is why I am adamant about the need to put forward a carbon tax with offsetting income tax reductions.

I also feel compelled to respond to commenter criticisms of my carbon tax proposal because I have failed to communicate effectively. The objections go like this:
1. Man made global warming doesn't exist.
2. Even if America does something, China, India et al will just keep polluting.
3. Destroying America's wealth will do us no good.
4. If a carbon tax is tied to an income tax reduction, it will get a sunset clause.

All reasonable objections, however, I believe that my readers are missing my point. A carbon tax is the ultimate tax on consumption. Many studies have shown that shifting taxes away from income to consumption increase the wealth of nations. From the Library of Economics and Liberty:

The case for a consumption tax is that the tax wedge created by taxing capital income does enormous long-term damage to the economy. Taxing interest, dividends, and capital gains penalizes thrift by taxing away part of the return to saving. The unavoidable result is less saving than society would choose in the absence of any taxes.

Further, there is evidence that long term economic growth is tied to the rate of savings.

Next, even if China and India do nothing, we will still be better off by taxing consumption and reducing income taxes. A carbon tax with offsetting income tax reductions has benefits, even if global warming is a total fantasy, even if there is no air pollution. The last objection is the trickiest and goes to the sausage making nature of legislation. This deserves to be a part of the Freedom Coalition Agenda, because ignoring the issue makes our side look bad. I also reiterate the ancillary benefits of a carbon tax: reduced air pollution and reduced world wide demand for oil and therefore less money for Saudi sheiks, Hugo Chavez and Ahmadenijad.

Carbon Conservatism Revisited

With the health care debate trending so nicely in our favor, I thought it would be a good time to revisit my unpopular views on global warming. My dilemma is that unlike many conservatives, I believe man-made global warming is a real phenomena and unlike many leftists I don't believe it's a good excuse to ruin the economy with massive socialist schemes. That leaves me in a predicament. In my first foray into this territory I tried to convince fellow libertarians and conservatives that man is really having an effect on the planet. To recap, the planet is in a unique time with respect to the climate. The last three million years have seen ever deepening ice ages, with short interregnums of warming. We are currently in such a period, the Holocene, but that period has lasted significantly longer than the mean time of other such warming periods. Man's civilization developed during the Holocene, which is currently about 12,000 years old, so any changes, either a plunge into a new ice age, or global warming will be highly disruptive to the global economy. In my view the current increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide are probably preventing another ice age, which is the geologic "normal" for our epoch, but this increase also threatens to significantly increase global average temperature. The current, since 2001, slight cooling trend we are seeing is probably the result of a sunspot minimum and in my opinion, should be a much deeper trend. The longer term temperature trend is upward, unless the current sunspot minimum, against probability, remains in place.

But the tougher debate is over what is to be done. First, I think that left and right can accept that the historical record shows that civilization developed in a fairly narrow and unique time in geologic history. It is unlikely to remain stable indefinitely, so we are likely to need all of our wealth to be made available to deal with whatever conditions prevail. That means that wealth destroying plans, such as the current "cap and trade" bill have to be non-starters. Further, any steps that we do take, must be clearly effective. We can't afford to disrupt the economy to no benefit. Finally, since the free market has shown itself to be the most efficient producer of goods and services, we need to harness its power toward our stated end of stabilizing carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere.

No one is smarter than the market as a whole and so cannot predict which technology will be most efficacious in replacing energy sources that are currently carbon based. Further, within carbon fuels, some produce more CO2 than others, so a shift from coal to natural gas for instance would reduce carbon emissions per BTU produced. So I propose a carbon tax at the point of consumption, with an offsetting reduction in the income tax so that government does not consume a larger share of GDP, therefore damaging the economy. Such a tax would be phased in gradually to further avoid economic disruption. Finally, the United States should make it a goal that all industrial and emerging economies sign a treaty regarding such a tax, because if only the United States takes this route, we are unlikely to reduce carbon dioxide emissions unilaterally.

A carbon tax has the advantage of simplicity and being technologically neutral. By raising the price of fuel sources in direct proportion to the amount of carbon oxidized, we directly attack the problem we wish to solve. Is wind power better than solar photovoltaic? Who knows? Over time the market will decide. Further, the carbon costs of building solar panels or wind turbines would be factored into the equation by the equitable distribution of this tax. Also, a carbon tax has the added advantage of reducing air pollution caused by other contaminants. The majority of air pollution in the United States today is caused by burning fossil fuels.

The other advantage of this plan, is that it would reduce global demand for fossil fuels. There may be a correlation, but it seems that the world's oil reserves are in the hands of despots and madmen. Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iran and Venezuela come to mind. Depriving these governments of oil revenue would go a long way towards advancing the cause of freedom in the world.

I have been a little slow on posting lately, as I waited until the last weekend to finish a paper for a class I am taking. More to follow, and as usual on this subject, I look forward to spirited debate.

Carbon Conservativism

Conservatives and Libertarians are losing credibility by arguing that man made sources are not responsible for global warming. While I appreciate that the left has seized on the issue in order to seize our income and control of the economy, arguing against the underlying science is a long term losing proposition. Further, having done nothing about the issue when they controlled the Congress and the Presidency, the Republicans have paved the way for Henry Waxman's hair-brained, reward-your-buddies scheme that will actually do little to nothing to solve the problem. For scathing critiques of Waxman-Hartley also see the Reason article and Economist article.

First, I want to examine a little of the science. It is established fact that greenhouse gases, CO2, water vapor, ozone and methane, exist and cause the surface temperature of the earth to be about 57 deg F warmer than if they were not present. Hooray, it would be mighty cold without them. I worked the equations to determine this difference in a college level physics class well before the current debate. Further, the concentration of CO2 is increasing steadily and is now about 37% higher than a century ago, so it is not too far a stretch to believe that this will cause a warming of the earth's atmosphere. How much? Perhaps one degree Celsius. However, we continue to increase the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.



The historical record of the last million years has been dominated by ice ages, with relatively brief warming periods that occur on a 100,000 year cycle. We are currently in such a warming period, called the holocene that started about 10,000 years ago. During the warming period, the rise in carbon dioxide levels generally lagged the rise in temperature by 800 to 1100 years. While this proves that historically, CO2 did not cause the initial increase in temperatures, it is hypothesized that the rising carbon dioxide levels, released from warmer oceans, due to lower CO2 solubility created a positive feedback effect that caused temperatures to rise quickly.

Today, we appear to be in a historically anomalous time. The interglacial period has lasted almost as long as any for the last million years, so it is an open question as to whether the increased carbon dioxide will be overwhelmed by the natural forces that seem to be cooling the earth over the longer haul. More importantly, the surface temperatures of the earth have been very stable during the holocene; this very predictability has contributed to economic development. The argument on the left is that because we are dependent on temperature stability for our current economic structures, it would be disastrous to allow anthropegenic (man-made) global warming to upset the balance.

However, the balance is likely to be upset anyway, and it seems that the Waxman's proposal is to wreck the economy to in order to save it. However, because the main source of global warming is the burning of fossil fuels, which is associated with air pollution, it would still seem prudent to reduce carbon emissions in a way that does the least damage to the wealth of the planet, for the very reason that this wealth will be needed to adapt to climate changes that have probably become unstoppable for the time being. Because I believe in the power of deregulation and free markets to effect change, the proposal that makes the most sense is to phase in a carbon tax and offset the revenue with an equal phased reduction of the income tax. This has the advantage of not choosing favorites with respect to which alternative sources of non-carbonated energy should be used and minimizing the impact to the economy. Because it doesn't raise revenues nor reward favored groups, Democrats will never go for it. Republicans, you suck too, for not putting this in place when you had the chance. Now, we are all going to suffer.

I will post more on this topic at a later date.

I am calling out 'Dawg to comment. Other posters are welcome as well.

I leave you with a quote from Reason: "Man-made climate change may be a huge problem, but cap-and-trade proponents need to stop pretending that the solution will cost virtually nothing while producing more jobs than it destroys."

The Coming Carbon Thugocracy Update

During the campaign, I predicted that if Obama won, he would use the EPA to back door Congressional lawmaking and get the EPA to regulate carbon dioxide emmisions. From an October article in the WSJ:

In an interview last week with Bloomberg, Mr. Grumet said that come January the Environmental Protection Agency "would initiate those rulemakings" that classify carbon as a dangerous pollutant under current clean air laws. That move would impose new regulation and taxes across the entire economy, something that is usually the purview of Congress. Mr. Grumet warned that "in the absence of Congressional action" 18 months after Mr. Obama's inauguration, the EPA would move ahead with its own unilateral carbon crackdown anyway.

So guess what happened? From the NYT article today:

The Environmental Protection Agency is expected to act for the first time to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that scientists blame for the warming of the planet, according to top Obama administration officials.

Unlike the earlier proposal, this effort does not seem to propose the blatantly unconstitutional proposal to have the EPA impose a tax on carbon emissions. The administration is trying not to tread on Congressional toes in other ways as well. Lisa P. Jackson is the new EPA administrator. From the same article:

The finding and proposed regulations would be issued in sequence, with ample opportunity for public comment and not in a sudden burst of regulatory muscle-flexing, Ms. Jackson said. The regulations would work in concert with any legislation and not supplant it, she added.

The article also points out the likelihood of lawsuits that would dramatically draw out the implementation. But I say, bring it on! I would love to see this case in front of the Supreme Court, with the AGW crowd (that's anthropogenic global warming) having to defend their pseudo-science. American Thinker has pointed to the total hysteria on the other side, with little proof that man is (a) causing global warming and (b) that global warming is actually harmful. I think this last bit is the trickiest part for the chicken-little crowd. Just because the earth heats up, life is not necessarily harmed. In fact, increased carbon dioxide and warmth might help biodiversity. If that could be shown, then the tree huggers should be encouraging us to by that Hummer.

But of course, it really isn't about saving the planet is it? It's about wresting control over the lives of individuals to establish a socialist utopia where the intellectuals rule and rid us of our benighted ways. But the dirty little secret of that dream is that thugs with guns always end up ruling, not the so-called enlightened intellectuals.

This is a threat to freedom. It is one more warning, as if we needed one, that Obama is on a crusade to secure socialism in America, just like someone else who just won an election.