Climate change is another excuse to tax us

Climate change is another excuse to tax us

Posted on October 28, 2014October 27, 2014 by Sovereign Society Views: 3,521
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This article originally appeared on The Sovereign Investor on Oct. 8.

Climate change is not as real as they say it is, but the push to combat it is growing stronger than ever.
The last weekend of September, hundreds of thousands of people marched in New York City, proclaiming a call to action that we must address the crisis surrounding climate change. The demonstration coincided with a meeting at the United Nations to discuss how countries can come together to combat temperature fluctuations, hurricanes, tornadoes, drought, blizzards and other forces of nature.
The theory behind climate change is that man’s production of carbon dioxide and methane is responsible for changes in the weather and climate. But the theory — while a sincere effort by some to protect the global environment — is muddied by misinformation, misinterpretation, ideology and, most importantly, money.
Of course, it’s not just the folks who believe that the apocalypse of global warming is near who are guilty of distorting science to further their cause. The people on the other side of the fence, whether for personal or political reasons, also spout off about stuff they have no comprehension of.
However, there’s one thing the protesters managed to accomplish — and it will affect both you and me.

A much-needed definition of ‘climate’

Climate change — formerly known as global warming until that title became inconvenient — is one of the prime items on the Obama Administration’s agenda. After all, climate change has a strong activist base that is solidly behind the idea that taxes will solve the problem.
Sure, that’s good politics — but politics are, after all, just a game. And this particular game reminds me of two kids on the playground wrestling in the dirt and yelling at the top of their lungs. Amid the commotion, they can’t hear what the other is saying; and they both misuse terminology in a desperate effort to come out on top.
And one of the biggest areas of misinterpretation — and one that irritates me dearly as a meteorologist — is over what climate actually is.
In all the noise over a heating planet and carbon emissions and man-made global deterioration, we’ve forgotten as a society that climate is not weather and, therefore, fundamentally different from the concept of a heating planet.
“Climate” refers to the long-term atmospheric conditions prevailing over a specific region. When a weather condition predominates for an extended period of time (usually a few decades or more), it sets the climate for that region.
Another way of looking at it is this: Short-term “weather” does not determine climate. The California drought has been a short-term weather event. The polar vortex? Short-term weather event. This year’s lack of hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean? Again, short-term weather event.
If these events last another 20 years and, thereby, establish themselves as the normal weather conditions of their respective regions, then we may be able to consider them leading causes in climate shift. The polar vortex and the lack of Atlantic Ocean hurricanes indicate nothing about the climate because they are caused by weather patterns specific to this year.
So let’s be clear: While it’s very compelling to attribute these very spectacular weather patterns to climate change, they are doing nothing of the sort.

We affect climate, but not how they say we do

Most of the weather patterns we see are driven by natural phenomena, not some interference by mankind. Cycles like El Niño control weather patterns across the Northern Hemisphere by circulating temperatures in the ocean and atmosphere. And volcanic eruptions have a history of changing the weather around the world by spewing sulphate aerosols into the stratosphere, blocking energy from the sun.
That said, there is no doubt that man has influenced climate — just not in the ways we get worked up about and summon armies of protesters for.
The Great Plains was once a great sea of long and short grass that held moisture in the soil — that is, until agriculture tore up the grassland, releasing great quantities of soil moisture into the air. And the industrialization of cities has spread concrete and asphalt across great swaths of land that were once forest and grass.
Changing the way we use land is a way we have influenced climate, but I did not hear demonstrators demand New York City return to its original pre-Peter Stuyvesant condition.
Still, at the heart of the matter is a noble pursuit. The People’s Climate March in New York City brought to the forefront, once again, the fact that plenty of people are concerned about protecting the planet — even if a certain lack of conviction was evident from the fact that the march caused cars to be stuck in traffic for two hours or more, pumping exhaust into the air. Not to mention all the plastic cups and empty water bottles the city had to clean up afterward and probably dump into a landfill.
But there were some suspicious details regarding the U.N. Climate Summit that coincided with the protest.

The hidden agenda

Notably absent from the U.N. talks were China and India, two growing economies. They both know that a drastic cut in carbon emissions will slow economic growth in their respective nations.
But they also understand the real point behind all these world leaders coming together to address the issue of climate.
New York Times bestselling author Naomi Klein’s most recent book, “This Changes Everything,” lays it out on the table: Rein in the principles of a free market that drive corporate power — even though this is what drives economies — in order to combat climate change. And the ultimate destination for implementing this: taxes. Taxes to curtail corporations that are “destroying the planet” in order to save the planet from mankind.
And that’s the real agenda behind climate change: Find something else to tax so governments can either continue their spending habits or begin combating their debt.
And what better stage to build this tax upon than a movement that summons nearly 400,000 people to New York City, all of whom demand we do something about climate change. Governments will likely use the queue to begin working on a new system of taxes to “remediate” the “problem.”
And what will that look like?
Carbon taxes will be imposed upon corporations charged with releasing too many emissions into the atmosphere. And instead of absorbing the blow, the consumer will likely feel the brunt of those taxes.
But wealth taxes are also likely to be implemented — under the justification that the more you own and the more you do, you’re probably releasing more carbon emissions into the air than the average person.
Exactly how a redistribution of your wealth will stop the climate from varying is beyond me. But, hopefully, either the planet will cool or we will get over this hullabaloo about climate change faster than world governments can tax us into oblivion.
There’s a silver lining in every cloud.
–Chris Orr
Editor, Weather Trader


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