Many Science Teachers Not Stampeded into Climate Alarmism

A coalition representing 22 research institutes, legal foundations, and grassroots activist groups submitted a letter to House Majority Whip Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) expressing support for his House Concurrent Resolution 89, expressing the sense of Congress that a carbon tax would harm the U.S. economy.

The letter notes multiple independent analyses, including reports by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), have found “Such marketplace manipulation represents a recipe for unintended consequences and self-inflicted economic damage … [and would be] … regressive, imposing disproportionately high costs on middle- and lower-income families and thereby harming most those who can afford it least.”

NAM found a carbon tax could eliminate the equivalent of 21 million jobs over the next 40 years and reduce workers’ wages by up to 8.5 percent. CBO noted a carbon tax would cost the poorest one-fifth of American households two-and-a-half times more than the richest one-fifth of households.

Responding to the coalition’s letter, Scalise released a statement saying, “A national energy tax would cripple America’s economy, raise electricity bills, and cost families more money when they fill up at the pump. I’m glad that nearly two dozen free-market groups have joined the growing army that supports my legislation to halt President Obama’s proposed job-killing carbon tax.”

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s investigation of Exxon Corporation’s climate efforts, including donations to think tanks and associations, violates Exxon’s First Amendment rights to engage in scholarship, advocacy, and other forms of protected speech. Hans Bader of the Competitive Enterprise Institute notes federal courts have found, “A prolonged investigation in response to someone’s speech can violate the First Amendment even when it never leads to a fine.” A string of federal court precedents also indicates the constitutional rights Schneiderman is trampling are not just Exxon’s but those of the organizations to which it gave donations, if his investigation “causes them to lose donations they would otherwise receive. Government officials cannot pressure a private party to take adverse action against a speaker.”

Prof. Philip Hamburger of Columbia Law School writes Schneiderman’s subpoena power under New York’s Martin Act is legally problematic: It imperils due process and the separation of powers because it lacks judicial supervision and the normal protection against self-incrimination.

A new study in the Journal of Geophysical Research warns the push to use cleaner boat fuels may result in additional warming. Fishing boats emit carbon dioxide, sulfur oxides, and black carbon during their operation. Elliott Campbell and Brandi McKuin, environmental engineers at the University of California – Merced, found the amount of black carbon (a form of soot) emitted by incomplete combustion has been underestimated by an order of magnitude in previous studies. Black carbon tends to warm the areas affected by it because of its ability to absorb radiation from the sun. The cooling effect of sulfur oxides, which counteracts the warming effect of black carbon and carbon dioxide as sulfate particles reflect sunlight back to space themselves and contribute to cloud formation that reflects sunlight away from the Earth, has also not been properly accounted for. Campbell and McKuin calculate as sulfur emissions decline due to regulations curtailing sulfur in fuels, sulfur oxides’ cooling effect will also fall while the warming impacts of black carbon will remain.

In new study in Nature, Phil Williamson of the UK’s University of East Anglia warns radical geo-engineering proposals to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to fight climate change could result in greater environmental harm than benefits. Williamson explores a variety of schemes to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, finding each of them comes with environmental risks.

For instance, Williamson notes growing crops to use in power stations could “use up to 580 million hectares of land – or half of the land area of the US. This would in turn accelerate the loss of forests and natural grassland with impacts for wildlife, whilst also having implications for food security.” Another possible climate fix would be to add crushed silicate rocks to the Earth’s land surface to chemically absorb carbon dioxide, yet adding enough crushed silicate rocks to the soil, over almost half of the Earth’s land surface, could cost up to $600 trillion. According to Williamson, “Present climate policy assumes that one or more of [the geo-engineering solutions] will work at the scale required, yet we just don’t know if that is the case,” and many carbon dioxide removal techniques proposed “will have knock-on effects for ecosystems and biodiversity. There could be benefits, but damage seems more likely.”