$7 a gallon gas?

Fuel Taxes Must Rise, Harvard Researchers Say
By SINDYA N. BHANOO
To meet the Obama administration’s targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions, some researchers say, Americans may have to experience a sobering reality: gas at $7 a gallon.

To reduce carbon dioxide emissions in the transportation sector 14 percent from 2005 levels by 2020, the cost of driving would simply have to increase, according to a report released Thursday by researchers at Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. The research also appears in the March edition of the journal Energy Policy.

The 14 percent target was set in the Environmental Protection Agency’s budget for fiscal 2010.

In their study, the researchers devised several combinations of steps that United States policymakers might take in trying to address the heat-trapping emissions by the nation’s transportation sector, which consumes 70 percent of the oil used in the United States.

Most of their models assumed an economy-wide carbon dioxide tax starting at $30 a ton in 2010 and escalating to $60 a ton in 2030. In some cases researchers also factored in tax credits for electric and hybrid vehicles, taxes on fuel or both.

In the modeling, it turned out that issuing tax credits could backfire, while taxes on fuel proved beneficial.

“Tax credits don’t address how much people use their cars,” said Ross Morrow, one of the report’s authors. “In reverse, they can make people drive more.”

Dr. Morrow, formerly a fellow at the Belfer Center, is a professor of mechanical engineering and economics at Iowa State University

Researchers said that vehicle miles traveled will increase by more than 30 percent between 2010 and 2030 unless policymakers increase fuel taxes.

[From Andy R.: March 4, 7:58 a.m. | Update ] Rush Limbaugh weighed in on this post yesterday, as some may have surmised given the spike in comments, and the tenor of many. Some important points were raised by his audience, including a listener calling from his car in Nebraska to say how a gas tax would unfairly burden workers in sprawling states with no public transportation options. I’ll be posting more from the research team on some of this.

Since the research was done by a team from Harvard and published in the NY Times it is doubtful that the study was funded by those "evil oil companies" that are intent on pillaging the planet and wrecking the environment of "mother earth".

EPA administrator Lisa Jackson is intent on exercising her court appointed authority to regulate the economy:

The head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said Wednesday that an effort in Congress to stop the agency from regulating pollution linked to climate change would be an “enormous step backward for science” if successful.

Testifying before a Senate Appropriations panel, Lisa Jackson defended EPA’s finding that carbon dioxide and other so-called greenhouse gases endanger human health and welfare by contributing to global warming.

That “endangerment” finding requires EPA to regulate emissions under the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Massachusetts v. EPA, Jackson said.

“The science behind climate change is settled,” Jackson said during testimony Wednesday morning before the Senate Appropriations Interior, Environment and Related Agencies subcommittee hearing on EPA’s 2011 budget request.

“Multiple lines of scientific inquiry” and the consensus of climate scientists hold that climate change is happening and humans are the cause, Jackson said.

Fom her statements it would appear that Lisa Jackson has been without internet access since last November. That "consensus" she speaks of is in tatters. Even the UN has ordered a independent review of the science after all the errors in the IPCC report were exposed. Errors, which incidently, all favored the theory that climate change was being driven by human activity. The fact is that satellite data shows that there has been no appreciable warming in the Earth's atmosphere since 1979. Humans have burned a lot of fossil fuels since that time, it's curious that all that CO2 hasn't had a measurably significant impact.

You can bet that Ms. Jackson's regulations will have an immediate impact on the living standards of every American. I think even the very wealthy will feel the pinch of $7 gas. After all, if gas is going up to $7 what will jetfuel cost? Those Gulfstreams have pretty big gas tanks.

They Call This Science?

The global warming alarmists have been caught lying again, unfortunately, if one wants to find out about "glaciergate" it is necessary to go to British papers. The American press is treating this story just like "climategate", as far as they are concerned there is nothing to see here. Unlike with climategate, the IPCC is implicated directly in this fraud. They shared the Nobel Peace Prize with noted alarmist Al Gore:

"The scientist behind the bogus claim in a Nobel Prize-winning UN report that Himalayan glaciers will have melted by 2035 last night admitted it was included purely to put political pressure on world leaders.
Dr Murari Lal also said he was well aware the statement, in the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), did not rest on peer-reviewed scientific research.
In an interview with The Mail on Sunday, Dr Lal, the co-ordinating lead author of the report’s chapter on Asia, said: ‘It related to several countries in this region and their water sources. We thought that if we can highlight it, it will impact policy-makers and politicians and encourage them to take some concrete action."

That political pressure has worked as planned. The EPA, relying on the fraudulent reports of the IPCC has decided it must regulate CO2. In regulating emissions of CO2 the EPA is essentially regulating the entire American economy. A bill is being introduced in Congress attempting to keep this economy killing regulation from taking effect:

"Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska is leading the charge to block the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gasses, and today she got some support from across the aisle: Three Democratic senators signed onto Murkowski resolution to bar such regulation.
The Democrats, the Associated Press reports, are Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, and Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas. Murkowski’s resolution says a rule submitted by the EPA to regulate greenhouse gasses “shall have no force or effect.” '

Every Senator in New England needs to support this bill. In these tough economic times we shouldn't be forced to pay more money to heat our homes when the "science" the EPA decision was based on fraudulent data. In fact, they admit the 2035 date for the disappearance of glaciers was simply made up.

Also, from Britain:

"A period of humility and even silence would be particularly welcome from the Met Office, our leading institutional advocate of the perils of man-made global warming, which had promised a “barbecue summer” in 2009 and one of the “warmest winters on record”. In fact, the Met still asserts we are in the midst of an unusually warm winter — as one of its staffers sniffily protested in an internet posting to a newspaper last week: “This will be the warmest winter in living memory, the data has already been recorded. For your information, we take the highest 15 readings between November and March and then produce an average. As November was a very seasonally warm month, then all the data will come from those readings.” '

Unbelievable, the Brits are enduring the coldest, snowiest winter in decades, but it will be deemed the warmest to further the global warmists agenda. The model they are using wouldn't pass muster at a 7th grade science fair.

Soros, EPA Tagteam America

George Soros is about to make a mint off his investments in the Democratic party. The benefit of being worth billions is that he could afford to squander millions in his effort to defeat former President Bush in 04 and turn around and spend even more on democrats in 06 and 08. The Obama admistration just made those bets pay off. Big time!

Yesterday EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson declared CO2 a danger to public health that will henceforth be regulated by the Federal government. This decision gives the Federal government complete control over our economy. Ian Murray and Marlo Lewis explain the probable scope of the decision:

"Large apartment buildings and hospitals would need EPA operating permits to continue running their furnaces. Lawnmowers and aircraft alike would be regulated for fuel economy like automobiles. And as the EPA orders a retooling or even closure of the nation's power plants, electricity prices would skyrocket, and blackouts would become common."

and

"It will trigger a regulatory avalanche that vastly expand the number of activities that require EPA permitting -- fast-food franchises, apartment buildings and hospitals will soon all have to face the same crushing federal bureaucracy that has bedeviled energy firms for years."

When Europe went down this road they tried to ban propane grills. Having a backyard barbecue makes one an eco-criminal to the average EU bureaucrat. Seattle WA is trying to ban campfires on the beach because they claim it contributes to global warming. The statists meeting in Copenhagen won't be happy until they can regulate i.e. control everything we do. The Obama administration chose to ignore the Climategate scandal and its implications because they see the finish line before them. An honest person/administration would have admitted that the leaked e-mails cast the "consensus" of man made global warming into doubt and would not have labled CO2 a health hazard.

The Lisa Jackson's of the world can't accept that climate change happens regularly. More importantly, they can't accept that humans have very little impact on whether the planet warms or grows colder. Admitting this fact would undermine their ability to control our behavior. The American people would never submit to the massive tax increases and energy bills living under this regime would entail if they were told it would have no benefit to the planet and their ability to live on it. Until some archaeologist digs up a fleet of fossil fuel burning vehicles that early man drove across the land bridge between Siberia and Alaska causing the glaciers to melt and the flooding of the Bering Sea; I'll continue to believe that solar cycles, not man are the main cause behind climate change.

How did Ms. Jackson's decision benefit Mr. Soros? Simple.He's betting big on Brazil, in particular Petrobas. "Among investors bullish on Petrobras is George Soros, who last year made the oil company the largest single holding in his investment fund, according to Bloomberg." While the folks that he helped put in office are putting the American economy in a straight jacket he's putting his money into country that doesn't choose to commit economic suicide. For him it's the best of both worlds. He can live in a country following his progressive dream and still make a fortune in a country that won't sacrifice economic growth to appease the warmists at the UN.