The truth is slowly beginning to cut through the propaganda. Of course, I don't expect this will cause Congress to decide against carbon taxes. Here are two excerpts from a presentation by Physicist Dr. Will Happer to the US Senate (See this link):

“Many people don’t realize that over geological time, we’re really in a CO2 famine now. Almost never has CO2 levels been as low as it has been in the Holocene (geologic epoch) – 280 (parts per million - ppm) – that’s unheard of. Most of the time [CO2 levels] have been at least 1000 (ppm) and it’s been quite higher than that,”

“I keep hearing about the ‘pollutant CO2,’ or about ‘poisoning the atmosphere’ with CO2, or about minimizing our ‘carbon footprint.’ This brings to mind another Orwellian pronouncement that is worth pondering: ‘But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.’ CO2 is not a pollutant and it is not a poison and we should not corrupt the English language by depriving ‘pollutant’ and ‘poison’ of their original meaning. Our exhaled breath contains about 4% CO2. That is 40,000 parts per million, or about 100 times the current atmospheric concentration. CO2 is absolutely essential for life on earth. Commercial greenhouse operators often use CO2 as a fertilizer to improve the health and growth rate of their plants. Plants, and our own primate ancestors evolved when the levels of atmospheric CO2 were about 1000 ppm, a level that we will probably not reach by burning fossil fuels, and far above our current level of about 380 ppm."

The point about CO2 as a fertilizer is important, and carefully avoided by the alarmists. If we actually could reduce CO2 to pre-industrial levels, crop harvests worldwide would drop substantially (up to 35% for arid-condition grain, less for other crops). Imagine the effects...

Yup ... the tax will translate into higher energy prices and the poor will be the hardest hit ... as usual.

"The point about CO2 as a fertilizer is important, and carefully avoided by the alarmists." It's also an industrial agent used to control pH in industrial processes, and in the high end Aquarium hobby for fertilizer and pH control. While I support global clean air initiatives I have trouble wrapping my head around CO2 being part of it, VOC, sulfates, organic ash, mercury etc. sure but CO2 not as much. I think they have a point but pulling facts out of your ass to support it is just lazy.

Having traveled back home near power and industrial plants the dangers of these compounds is very hard to miss. Visually large areas of land (as far as the eye can see) look like mad max post Apocalypse waste land. Young people with rotted teeth, skin rot etc. However these are all local issues and they sure as shit are not produced by CO2. Also nature recovers rather well as Chernobyl is a thriving green area now, still not safe for humans though.

Well they are targeting smokers to pay for SCHIP.

The biggest federal tax increase hits roll-your-own tobacco, rising from $1.10 per pound to $24.78 per pound. Store-bought cigarette taxes are headed from 39 cents per pack to $1.01 per pack.

What I'm trying to figure out is how they came 2252.72% increase as even close to sane.

"The biggest federal tax increase hits roll-your-own tobacco, rising from $1.10 per pound to $24.78 per pound..."

That's it! I'm switching to marijuana. I can't afford regular tobacco anymore.

People, wake up, you just don't understand. These carbon taxes, restrictions, regulations, no oil drilling offshore, no modern nuclear energy, $billions investments in green energy, costs to burn super-clean coal or no coal, automatic thermostats controlled by Energy Central, backyard windmills, are all needed to keep the world from ending in the near future. Any cost is justified to make a better world for our children. Think of the little children!

We in government are dedicated to the wise spending of your money. Maybe we made some mistakes in the past, but the future of our actions and control will be bright. Or, at least as bright as modern energy regulation will allow.
(sarcasm warning)

Global Warming in 1000 Years

People thought that if we stopped emitting carbon dioxide, the climate would go back to normal in 100 - 200 years, but that is not true. Absorption of carbon dioxide by the oceans acts to cool the Earth. Release of heat from the oceans warms the Earth. These processes will work against each other to keep temperatures almost constant (at current levels) for more than 1,000 years.

So, is it crucial that we lower greenhouse gases this instant, or would it not make any difference? If no difference, what sense does it make to be alarmed? That last statement by Solomon is a head-scratcher. Are we supposed to worry that temperatures will be "almost constant for more than 1,000 years"? Is that what they mean by global warming?

Do you think that the world is running out of oil?

Do you think that coal is a good source of energy? Are you willing to live with the pollution and medical problems of coal?

Do you believe relying on foreign oil is good for the United States?

Do you think the United States (and the World) should shift to non-carbon based energy? (Nuclear, solar, wind, ....)

If you are at all concerned about our use of oil, can you translate your concern (medical problems, pollution, national security) into a dollar cost? Because the price of oil you pay at the pump doesn't include the increased health care costs, or the increased national security costs, or the pollution cleanup costs, or the opportunity costs to society for having to devote resources to that cleanup and defense.

What does econ 101 have to say about when the free market will shift from a "cheap" source of energy to a more expensive form of energy?

Oil is 100 years further down the learning curve and has economies of scale due to that. It also has the national defense and health care subsidies. So the free market economy won't change until oil becomes the same price as the more expensive forms.

You can either say that's fine, and be happy switching over when oil is $200 per barrel. Or you can try to bring the costs of the other forms down. Or you can try to raise the price of oil.

What cap and trade tries to do is capture some of the subsidies we already give to the oil industry that pervert the economic rewards of the various energy choices we could make. It raises the price of oil. It can be used to lower the costs of the alternatives. It still lets the free market make the large decisions on what form of energy to move to.

I am not fond of cap and trade. (I'd prefer a straight out carbon tax.) And I do think it's quite reasonable to ask what the taxes will pay for. Shouldn't be slush, it should go into oil industry cleanup, and R&D into alternative sources of energy.

Cap and trade has been used, successfully, to reduce emissions. It is being used to restore fisheries. It is basically a strategy to prevent the tragedy of the commons.

What will cap and trade do for the value of hybrid vehicles, or their resale values, and what will cap and trade do for the values and resale values of gas guzzlers?

Here's another WSJ opinion: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123051123182738427.html

The author here seems schizoid. He is unsure if there is any global warming at all, but agrees we should stop dumping CO2 into the atmosphere. He favors a carbon tax but doesn't think the proceeds should be used to help other forms of energy. And he ends with some scary and completely ludicrous statement that "renewable energy could be the next subprime mortgage meltdown."

By WILLIAM TUCKER

There isn't much doubt that Congress and incoming President Barack Obama will try to impose some kind of limits on carbon emissions. The Republicans, girding in opposition, are denouncing global warming as a fraud, and claiming that either a carbon tax or cap-and-trade system will impose an unacceptable burden on the economy.

Their strategy of stonewalling cedes the game in what will be the most dangerous aspect of carbon legislation -- the effort to use the proceeds of an emissions tax to subsidize a dead-end expedition into "renewable" energy.

Whether global warming is real will probably not be known for another 50 years. There are signs, in the melting of the Arctic ice cap and warming in Alaska, that something unusual is happening to the climate. But skeptics note that world temperatures haven't risen since 1998 and that, if anything, recent weather has been unseasonably cold. Still, that doesn't mean we can dump billions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere each year without eventual consequences.
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A $50 per ton carbon tax would raise gasoline prices about 25 cents per gallon -- nothing we haven't experienced in the last two years -- and accelerate a move toward electric hybrids, weaning us away from foreign oil. Nothing catastrophic there. The same levy would raise electric rates about 10%, which would encourage conservation while pushing us away from fossil fuels.

The real danger is that, instead of refunding the tax to consumers, Congress will grab the money to subsidize the current craze for specific forms of energy, particularly wind or biofuels.

WHen younger I bought the ecological crisis thing completely. Now, I find it sadly lacking in evidence. The earth's temperature fluctuates. Sometimes warmer, sometimes cooler. Sometimes we have ice caps, sometimes we don't. It's insane to think that the fluctuating process would end just because we humans happened upon the scene and it's inconvenient to us.

At some point oil will run out, and will get more and more expensive as we near that. Duh. And some enterprising people will make billions off coming up with alternatives. That's how it works. We have a train system because some smart people were willing to shell out the bucks building it to make money when people used it. Not because government taxed everyone to pay for the train tracks.

"shouldn't be slush, it should go into oil industry cleanup,"

Let's talk about oil industry clean-up. The EPA fines oil companies $50k or more for spilling ANY oil at any point in the extraction/transport process. Yet 5 miles down from the oil rig, the county is spraying 100's of gallons of used motor oil on gravel roads to keep the dust down. Is oil on the ground bad or not? Apparently, only when it's the big bad oil companies doing it.

Oil spilled in the ocean is a mess and kills sealife, yes. So do volcanic eruptions which happen underwater every day.

I think we are wasteful, as far as the environment goes. We are overfishing, mostly because we waste so much food. feedlotting cattle is not great practice. But we're not killing the earth. Ourselves, perhaps, but not the earth. It's just fine.

There was an article in National geographic recently about how we're losing our topsoil. It's this great crisis that soil is blowing away off farms. Crisis for who? That dirt's going somewhere, it's not disapearing, just moving. Everything moves over time. Rivers, mountains, why not dirt?

I dont know if global warming is real, but I refuse to say it is impossible.

Take a look at any graph of nighttime temperatures of the pheonix valley and any coresponding map and you can clearly see an expanding heat island effect
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_heat_island

If we are capable of effecting the enviornment on a small scale I see no reason why we would be utterly incapable of effecting it on a larger scale

Lujip, do you not see the difference in cause? The heat island affect has been know for years (like > 30 from my own knowledge). It is very simple, heat is lost from buildings and residences and the residual effecdt during night from heat capacitance of asphalt and concrete.

What in the sam hill does that have to do with Carbon Dioxide, which is the alleged culprit of the global warming/cooling/staying-too-constant idiocy going on today?

Nothing, and I never said it did, I used it to illistrat the point that we do have an impact of enviornments locally and in the face of that why is it reasonable to assume that we 'never under any circumstances' impact things on a larger scale?

Bigger government, bigger deficits, higher taxes...

I hate to be the kind of guy that says "I told you so...", but...

Michael Stipe was right, it is the end of the world as we know it, just not how we supposed it would end...