There's something happening here

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Paul Douglas, a Minnesota meteorologist and author, writes a regular weather feature in the Star Tribune. This article first appeared Thursday on the Huffington Post.

I'm going to tell you something that my Republican friends are loath to admit out loud: climate change is real. I'm a moderate Republican, fiscally conservative; a fan of small government, accountability, self-empowerment and sound science. I am not a climate scientist. I'm a Penn State meteorologist, and the weather maps I'm staring at are making me very uncomfortable. No, you're not imagining it: we've clicked into a new and almost foreign weather pattern.

To complicate matters I'm in a small, frustrated and endangered minority: a Republican deeply concerned about the environmental sacrifices some are asking us to make to keep our economy powered-up. It's ironic. The root of the word conservative is "conserve". A staunch Republican, Teddy Roosevelt, set aside vast swaths of America for our National Parks System, the envy of the world. Another Republican, Richard Nixon, launched the EPA. Now some in my party believe the EPA and all those silly "global warming alarmists" are going to get in the way of drilling and mining our way to prosperity. Well, we have good reason to be alarmed.

what it is aint exactly clear

BE to me...I can see what you're saying that there are interesting things happening with the weather, but very explainable IMO.

Last Saturday, here in Utah we were reaching temps close to 70 which is rare this early in the year. On Sunday, a storm front blew in from the Northeast and brought the temps down to the high 30's, which is colder than normal as well. When that storm front finaly reached Texas it mixed with warm gulf air and produced severe thunderstorms and tornados.

Could it be as simple as the air was colder than normal that mixed with the normally warm air of the gulf?

If there is a cost associated the can will be kicked down the road until the end cost is 100 times higher.

Could it be as simple as the air was colder than normal that mixed with the normally warm air of the gulf?

anything is possible

i'm also open to the possibility that raping all the carbon from the earths crust and burning it into the atmosphere, changes things

I know for certain that finite resources don't last forever, so what then? 

Either way, if we want a successful and egalitarian economy/political system of taxation, we should be taxing land at the ground level, especially carbon based fossil fuels. I think we all agree that we want to be able to reap the full benefits of the product of our own labor, but who produced the land(which includes petroleum etc.)?

This is why the American Henry George solved the problem so eloquently over a century ago, and the fervor at which both sides of the political system lashes out at the idea, only strengthens my knowing that it is the solution to most our problems

Land Value Tax

no doubt, human nature, for the simple minded. I'm not even sure that we are saving any money now, to be honest,,,,,,I think the Law of All Devouring Rents proves that when caught in a zero sum game, all 'savings' get devoured by the monopolists

BE,

why do you say that?

If global warming is the problem, wouldn't Land Value Taxation be the best solution?

besides, nobody here has given it a fair shot

i get the feeling that you will take any stance opposite me, just to argue with me.  I read your posts wall, i feel your want. You want LVT as well, you just don't understand what it is

educate youself, don't just google for some dweeb that uses second grade logic to attempt to debunk it's benefits.

Who produced the land?

I don't know how one would be able to conclusively "prove" the extent to which man-made activities are effecting weather patterns given that we know there is variation over time with weather cycles.

 

you really believe man isnt ruining the environment and possibly doing damge to the ozone?  Do you really believe man isnt destroying our oceans with the shit that is being dumped in there?

It doesnt matter what happened a million years ago, what matters is whats happening now. I guess we should just continue down are same path without adjusting anything and then just hope that it was a weather cycle, and if we wrong and destroy the planet for generations down the road, we can just say opps, we messed up

BE,

What matters is to what extent man is affecting the weather based on human activities. I don't know how you or anyone would prove that.

I'm not willing to completely cripple industrial civilization/the US economy on the CHANCE that it is significantly contributing to climate variability.

Besides, it doesn't matter what the US would do if we didn't have China and India on board, and they are both gonna tell us to go kick rocks if we tried to convince them to reduce their carbon output.

Kap - Your concerns are more than fair. I understand the economic argument, but it's just more of a reason to promote policies that lead to a strong green economy. Ending oil subsidies should have been done long ago. There are a number of other things we can be doing that wouldn't cripple industrial civilization. 

I don't disagree about the desirability of renewable energy and about the downsides to such significant reliance on foreign fossil fuels. Hell, this is really the one issue that left wing hippies and right wing hawks should be in lockstep with another on because our dependence on foreign oil and basing our economy on it is a security issue, not just an economic one.

I am going to say something my democrat friends are loathe to admit.

agreed drj

no one can prove one way or another that man has made the earth warmer. on a 4b year old planet we could still be warming from the last ice age 100k years ago

then again, 35 years ago, Global Cooling was the rage

carbon taxing, carbon credits, green energy...all of it a scam and all of it thievery by corporatists, hyprocrites, crooked politicians and crooked banksters

Enron, CCX, Agenda 21, Sustainable Development, Kyoto Accord...all became prominent under Clinton/AlGore who happens to have a hedge fund investing primarily in green energy industry which is only around because of government subsidy

let the market decide. 40 years ago, americans didnt know they needed more efficient vehicles, Honda and Datsun and Toyota showed them they did

mother nature will reclaim what is hers one way or another

Some of you guys really are crazy with a capital C.
So man hasnt polluted are oceans?  I guess its the whales and dolphins dumping all the garbage and chemicals in it.  Tuna has so much mercury in it, they tell pregnant woman not even to eat it, while telling healthy people to eat it only 1or twice a week.
Damn those dolphins.

Its a matter of common sense. Do really think our air quality is better today then it was before man was here

Only people who dont believe this stuff is happening, are the people who dont give a shit about what happens to the earth generations down the road, because they wont be here to worry about it anyways.

DD, didnt you know man isnt polluting the oceans, those damn dolphins and whales are doing it.

For anybody to think man isnt damaging the ozone layer, is just plain nuts

Yup corporations never lie to us, so their hired scientists wouldnt be lying now

i am not for oil subsidizes either

conservatives shouldnt want any tax on anything. taxation is theft.

the government shouldnt be directing investment. that's tantamount to picking winners and losers and distorting the market. if the true price of a gallon of gas is $8, so be it. the market will demand a cheaper alternative

if putting solar panels on your roof was such a good deal for the consumer, then the government wouldnt be subsidizing the installation at 110% which runs $30k

The debate about climate change and its impact on polar bears has intensified with the release of a survey that shows the bear population in a key part of northern Canada is far larger than many scientists thought, and might be growing.

The number of bears along the western shore of Hudson Bay, believed to be among the most threatened bear subpopulations, stands at 1,013 and could be even higher, according to the results of an aerial survey released Wednesday by the Government of Nunavut.

 That’s 66 per cent higher than estimates by other researchers who forecasted the numbers would fall to as low as 610 because of warming temperatures that melt ice faster and ruin bears’ ability to hunt. The Hudson Bay region, which straddles Nunavut and Manitoba, is critical because it’s considered a bellwether for how polar bears are doing elsewhere in the Arctic.

I guess we have Coca-Cola to thank .....   Polar bears with jobs multiply faster .........

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Either way, if we want a successful and egalitarian economy/political system of taxation, we should be taxing land at the ground level, especially carbon based fossil fuels. I think we all agree that we want to be able to reap the full benefits of the product of our own labor, but who produced the land(which includes petroleum etc.)?

This is why the American Henry George solved the problem so eloquently over a century ago, and the fervor at which both sides of the political system lashes out at the idea, only strengthens my knowing that it is the solution to most our problems

Land Value Tax
[/Quote]

There is already property tax based on land value.  Such a capital tax is among the worst taxes because it ignores ability to pay.  Carbon tax is better because it targets fuel consumption and is based on ability to pay.  .