Al Gore Has Always Been A Fool.

A fool's errand: Al Gore's $15 trillion carbon tax
by Fred Palmer | May 9, 2017, 5:00 AM Share on Twitter  Share on Facebook  Email this article  Share on LinkedIn




       

Al Gore wants to reverse modernity and save the world from itself through an elimination of its fossil-fuel-based energy system. During the final week of April, his newly created Energy Transitions Commission released a document setting forth a fool's-errand pathway to "decarbonize" the world's energy system.

If this sounds familiar, it is. Gore's plan features a new, sophisticated, and expensive public-relations campaign, but it's all based on his views on carbon dioxide first broached in his 1992 book Earth in the Balance, which he reissued in 2000 for his failed presidential campaign. The subsequent efforts made by Gore during the past 25 years have transformed little from their genesis, and he remains as tragically wrong today as he was when he first surfaced as an opponent of everything linked to carbon-dioxide.



If you scroll through the verbiage surrounding the document, you will find the core policy recommendation is a massive, punishing carbon tax. Gore would start the tax at $50 per ton, which would increase to $100 per ton over time, essentially destroying the market for continued robust development of the world's fossil-fuel base. Our economic growth and personal well-being depends on robust fossil-fuel use, so Gore's plan would destroy these as well.

But, don't worry! The all-in estimated cost to re-engineer humanity is only a mere $15 trillion—enough money to give every man, woman, and child in the United States more than $46,000.

Al Gore has been demonizing fossil fuels and attempting to marginalize all those involved in the traditional energy sector since 1988, the year the climate-change movement was rolled out in Washington, D.C., which happened to correspond with a nationwide heatwave and with Yellowstone in flames. Ever since, Gore's pathway to political power and personal riches has been a successful one, to be sure, but his multi-trillion-dollar effort today is his most sophisticated effort to date. Unfortunately for him, it will also fail, because what he's selling in his "new" proposal is bad for the people being asked to embrace it.

Over the years, Gore has emerged in many contexts in his effort to eradicate carbon-dioxide emissions, a benign gas required for all life to thrive on Earth—plant, animal, and human alike. It has never mattered to Gore that ordinary people everywhere have been hurt and will continue to be hurt by his continual efforts to make fossil-fuel energy expensive and that the poorest among us are harmed the most by the energy policies he supports.

The anti-humanity proposals in Gore's latest initiative have as one of their chief goals the elimination of fossil fuels, full stop. Gore does allow for greater use of natural gas into the 2030s, but he eliminates coal right away. He also allows for oil use to grow into the mid-2020s, but "decarbonize" means just that; his plan inevitably ends with a phase-out of fossil-fuel use. Fortunately for us all—and make no mistake about it, the American people understand this—the fossil-fuel-free future Gore imagines is not supported by observation-based science, and it is contradicted by all the evidence we have gained from recorded human history.

April 22 was the 47th anniversary of the first Earth Day, which occurred in 1970. Since that day, the number of people on Earth has increased from 3.7 billion to 7.5 billion, and average life expectancy for all the world's people has risen by 11 years, to 67 years old. Likewise, food production has soared and energy production and consumption, mostly thanks to fossil fuels, has increased by more than four times.

Since the first Earth Day, the natural environment has improved substantially, through urbanization, and the biosphere and agriculture are more robust. Earth is greener, because of the additional carbon dioxide in the air, as numerous studies now show.

Since the first Earth Day, the flawed computer models backed by radical environmentalists have failed continuously, and we now know they can never serve as a reliable tool to make policy judgements governing the future of human life on Earth.

And since the first Earth Day, we can now say with confidence that all these positive developments have resulted from, or are closely linked to, the robust use of fossil fuels, including oil, natural gas, and coal.

The world is blessed with an abundance of fossil-fuel reserves, which allow the billions of people alive today and the billions yet to come to enjoy longer and better lives. They will continue to provide additional energy to grow food, resources to build cities, and by helping urbanization, they will allow the natural environment to improve, as it has for decades.

Gore's $15 trillion carbon tax should and will be rejected for the phony, radical environmental vision it represents.

Fred Palmer (fpalmer@heartland.org" target="_blank">fpalmer@heartland.org) is a senior fellow for energy policy at The Heartland Institute, a free-market think tank founded in 1984 and based in Arlington Heights, Illinois.

On Earth Day--Obama And Minions Create Tons Of Carbon Emissions To Promote Global Warming

Earth Day Shrieking And Government Hypocrisy

April 23, 2014 by Sam Rolley

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Yesterday was Earth Day. Some Americans likely celebrated by picking up litter or making a conscious effort to reduce the amount of waste they produce, a few others protested the Keystone pipeline and some shrieked breathlessly about how we’re all going to die if global warming doesn’t end.

The Huffington Post declared yesterday that this year’s Earth Day marks a frightening milestone for the planet: The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has been consistently more than 400 parts per million for the past month.

Via Huff Post Green:

“This is higher than it’s been in millions of years,” said Pieter Tans, a senior scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate Monitoring and Diagnostics Laboratory.

Parts per million, or ppm, is a measure of the ratio of carbon dioxide to other gases in the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide is just one type of greenhouse gas that has been found to trap heat, but it is the primary one emitted from human activities and it lingers in the atmosphere for a very long time. There is typically seasonal fluctuation in the parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide, according to scientists who track the levels. That explains why, after hitting 400 for the first time in recorded history last May, the levels declined soon after. But they hit 400 ppm again in mid-March, and have stayed above that level for all of April.

The news outlet also featured an article from Climate Central, an organization devoted to talking about climate change, which warns of how much hotter the U.S. is now that during the first Earth Day in 1970.

From the piece:

Average temperatures across most of the continental U.S. have been rising gradually for more than a century, at a rate of about 0.127°F per decade between 1910-2012. That trend parallels an overall increase in average global temperatures, which is largely the result of human greenhouse gas emissions. …

Since then, every state’s annual average temperature has risen accordingly. On average, temperatures in the contiguous 48 states have been warming at a rate of 0.48°F per decade since 1970, nearly twice the global average.

Commenters quickly added a little common sense to the alarmist write-up, noting things like: “They were concerned about global cooling during the first Earth Day, because it was colder than ‘normal.’ Guess what, no matter what the current temperature is, it’s ‘normal’ to the earth. We’re the ones with issues.”

Meanwhile, the White House set about sending Administration officials to join “Americans around the country to talk about our environmental and climate challenges” to mark Earth Day.

“Secretary of Energy Ernie Moniz and EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy will be at the New England Aquarium talking about what climate change will mean for Boston Harbor. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack is at Drake University in Des Moines, discussing how climate change is going to impact our farms and our food supply,” the White House announced.

Each of those officials presumably earned a hefty slice of carbon guilt for the amount of fuel expended so that they could go tell Americans how using fuel is killing fish and farms. But it’s safe to assume that none of their travels produced as much carbon as President Barack Obama used as he traveled to Washington State and then overnight to Tokyo.

National Review’s Jim Geraghty did the math:

[F]lying from Washington, D.C. to Washington state — 2,328 miles, generating 568,032 pounds of carbon emissions at 244 pounds per mile — and then beginning his week-long trip to Asia, flying tonight to Tokyo — 4,792 miles, an additional 1,169,248 pounds of carbon emissions. The two trips add up to 1.73 million pounds of carbon or 868.64 tons.

For perspective, the average American generates about 19 tons of carbon dioxide in one year.

This figure does not count the carbon emissions from the president’s backup plane, cargo planes transporting the president’s limo and helicopter, advance staff, etc.

It seems there is a lot of hot air floating around after all.

One Quarter Of Americans Don't Buy Global Warming, The Others Are Mind Numbed Robots

On Earth Day: One In Four Americans Aren’t Very Concerned About Climate Change

April 22, 2014 by Personal Liberty News Desk 

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Happy Earth Day. As Democrats spent today screaming about climate change and President Barack Obama and top Administration officials burned massive amounts of jet fuel heading to speeches about the issue, a newly-updated poll illustrates that many Americans just aren’t that concerned about manmade global warming.

Gallup reports that, while 40 percent of Americans are “concerned believers” in global warming, one in four Americans remain “cool skeptics” with regard to manmade climate change. Furthermore, about 36 percent of respondents take a middle of the road opinion on whether man is in danger of turning the planet into an overheated hellscape.

Gallup explains the difference between the groups thusly:

Concerned Believers and Cool Skeptics are of entirely different mindsets when it comes to how much they worry about global warming. Concerned Believers say they worry “a great deal” or “fair amount” about the issue, while Cool Skeptics worry only “a little” or “not at all.” Additionally, Concerned Believers think media reports about the issue are either correct or underestimated, while Cool Skeptics think they are exaggerated. And, most starkly, 100% of Concerned Believers say the rise in the Earth’s temperature over the last century is due to the effects of pollution, while 100% of Cool Skeptics say it is due to natural changes in the environment. Finally, two-thirds of Concerned Believers believe global warming will pose a serious threat to their own way of life in the future, while 100% of Cool Skeptics disagree.

Americans in the Mixed Middle are individuals who hold a combination of views. For instance, some believe humans are the cause of the Earth’s warming, but aren’t worried about it. Others say global warming is a natural phenomenon, but that it will pose a serious risk in their lifetime. In one way or another, those in the Mixed Middle fail to line up with the orthodoxy on either side of the climate science issue.

More from the poll at Gallup.com