Obama Science Czar John Holdren on Redistribution of Cap & Trade Revenue From U.S. to Global South

Via-Breitbart TV

Bam's climate Rx: All pain, no gain

Via-NY Post

By PATRICK J. MICHAELS

The cap-and-trade bill that the House passed last summer aims to force Americans to reduce those dreaded carbon emissions by 83 percent in less than four decades -- to the same per-capita level as 1867. Yet, even under the Al Gore-approved climate-science models, the bill would do nothing to stop global warming.

The bill is 1,000-plus pages of rules, regulations, handouts, subsidies and whatever else House leaders deemed necessary. Not one of the 435 members read the whole monstrosity -- because the leadership dropped 300 new pages on their desks the night before they voted.


Yet the central point is clear enough: The bill simply drives up the price of fossil-fuel based energy so high that the nation will have to somehow get along with only 17 percent of the gasoline and fossil-fuel-powered electricity that it uses today.

Don't ask how much it will cost. No one really knows, since you can't put a price on something that has yet to be defined.

Last Tuesday, President Obama cited the BP blowout as reason for the Senate to pass its version of the House bill. But senators know that expensive emission reductions are profoundly unpopular. Congress members found this out last summer when protests erupted nationwide within 24 hours of the bill's passage. Polls also suggest that a vote for the warming bill (especially on top of a vote for the health-care bill) is not a good way to keep a job in Congress this November.

And, again, the bills (neither the House-like Kerry-Lieberman tome, nor the climate-change lite by Indiana's Sen. Richard Lugar) would do nothing measurable about climate change.

The median guess from the United Nations is that, if we do nothing to change our ways, the average world surface temperature will rise about 5 degrees Fahrenheit this century. (In fact, the trends in recent decades strongly suggest that this is an overestimate -- but let's accept it for the sake of the argument.)

Now, if only the United States does change its ways, by adopting something like the House bill, we'd prevent about two-tenths of a degree of that warming, according to the UN's climate calculator. That is, the temperature in 2100 gets reduced to what it would otherwise be in 2096. All pain, no gain.

Even if every nation that has "obligations" under the UN's Kyoto Protocol on global warming also adopts and enforces it, it would cut warming a mere 7 percent below the "business as usual" level, an amount probably too small to measure with confidence.

Why would such drastic action on the part of America, Europe and Japan do so little to change the world? Because the older industrial nations are fast becoming bit players when it comes to global CO2 emissions. America's been pretty stagnant in the last decade -- while China's have been staggering.

In eight years, China's annual totals will be equal to what they emit now plus everything we emit. So if we stopped emitting completely, China completely counters our effort.

Add to that a simple fact which no cap-and-trade bill admits: That legislation would push even more of our industry into migrating to China, India and other nations that have no intention of reducing emissions by making energy more expensive.

Bottom line: This legislation won't lower global temperatures -- but merely make life more expensive. It'll force you to buy things you don't want, like much more expensive cars, and to use energy sources you'd normally bypass, like ethanol, solar and windmills. All have to be massively subsidized -- with your tax dollars -- to compete with today's mix of coal, gasoline and natural gas.

Patrick J. Michaels is Cato Institute senior fellow and a distinguished senior fellow at the School of Public Policy, George Mason University.

Running on Empty

Via-The Weekly Standard



The wheels come off the liberal juggernaut, but it’s still dangerous.

BY Fred Barnes


The Obama presidency is nearly out of gas. So are the Democratic majorities in the Senate and House. Yet the White House and congressional Democrats aren’t surrendering. They’re still intoxicated with their “historic majorities” and bent on enacting more landmark liberal legislation this year, including cap and trade, a value-added tax (VAT), and who knows what else.

Are they fantasizing? Not entirely. The odds—and the political climate—are against them. But their ideological ambitions are undiminished and they have a sense of urgency. They know their majorities will be crippled (if not eliminated) in the midterm elections on November 2, which means they must enact the remaining parts of the agenda in 2010 or put them back in the cupboard of liberal dreams, maybe for decades. So it’s now or never.

There are two time slots for passing these bills, both difficult. The first is between now and whenever Congress recesses in the fall. Prospects look bleak in this time frame for approving anything except the final version of the financial reform bill. The second is when a lame duck Congress, filled with defeated and retired senators and House members, convenes in December.

Lame duck sessions don’t ordinarily enact major policy changes, but this one could be an exception. It is likely to meet after the president’s commission on reducing the deficit announces its recommendations, which may include a VAT. Democrats insist they’re not scheming to pass what is in effect a national sales tax. But a Republican official in the Senate told me a White House aide, in a recent chat, had raised the possibility of enacting one in the December session. A VAT has obviously crossed the president’s mind.

One can imagine the pressure that might be exerted to pass a VAT in a fiscal “emergency” in December: the deficit and the national debt exploding, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner reporting purchasers of government debt are suddenly backing off because of America’s fiscal mess, the president and his commission vowing to match the tax hike with spending cuts. The result: a VAT becomes law, most of the cuts don’t. President Reagan experienced a similar squeeze in the 1980s when he agreed to a tax increase in exchange for two times that amount of spending cuts. Taxes went up, the spending cuts went away.

Representatives Investigate Fannie Mae Patent

Via-New American

Written by Raven Clabough

Republican Representatives Jason Chaffetz (Utah) and Darrell Issa (Calif.) are in the process of seeking information concerning a recent patent acquired by Fannie Mae regarding the cap-and-trade system. The Representatives and many Americans are confused as to the role Fannie Mae intends to play in cap and trade since Fannie Mae is a mortgage company.

When visiting the Fannie Mae website, the company’s mission statement reads, “Fannie Mae is committed to supporting and aiding in the efforts to stabilize the housing market.” It seems, however, that Fannie Mae is attempting to take on a new role within the federal government, and it involves cap and trade and the Chicago Climate Exchange.

A few weeks ago, I wrote an article entitled "Secrets Exposed: Goldman Sachs May be Obama’s Enron," in which I questioned the role of Goldman Sachs as the sole scapegoat for America’s economic woes. The only viable conclusion was that Goldman Sachs has willingly accepted the role of scapegoat for now because they are looking to the bigger picture: If cap and trade is passed, Goldman Sachs stands to make a lot of money through the Chicago Climate Exchange, and they will owe many thanks to their near and dear friend, Barack Obama. But Goldman Sachs is not the only agency that stands to profit from this Ponzi scheme.

In June 2005, the United States Patent and Trademark Office issued Patent No. 6,904,336 to Fannie Mae for a “System and Method for Residential Emissions Trading.” The patent was approved for then-chairman and chief executive officer Franklin Raines, who is now better known as a notorious fraudster. The “system and method for residential emissions trading” is the machinery necessary to facilitate the carbon trading system as established through cap and trade.

Chaffetz states, “I have serious questions about why Fannie Mae, back in 2005, was working on a Cap and Trade scheme. Why would they be spending their resources on something that is well outside of the scope of Fannie Mae’s charter?”

Furthermore, former Fannie Vice President Scott Lesmes was listed on the patent as a co-inventor on the patent. You may recall Lesmes played a large role in the downfall of the housing market through his use of risky “bundling” of mortgages that were resold to investors as mortgage-backed securities. The same Scott Lesmes has been placed in charge of the carbon trading system and intends to use a similar method of “bundling” to sell air.

Representative Issa adds, “It’s disturbing that Fannie Mae executives were positioning themselves in 2005 for financial gain from an Obama administration cap-and-trade system, but given the huge amount of campaign contributions Fannie Mae poured over President Obama it should be no surprise.”

Chaffetz and Issa issued a letter to the U.S. Patent and Trademark office, also addressed to Michael Williams, president and CEO of Fannie Mae, questioning the content of the patent as well as the intention of the company.

The letter reads, “We are troubled by evidence that, while Fannie Mae was funding hundreds of billions of dollars in risky mortgages that were a primary cause of the financial crisis, it was simultaneously pursuing a patent to capitalize on the potential of legislative efforts that would have the effect of increasing energy costs to millions of Americans.” To see the full text of each letter sent to the patent office and Williams, click here.

Chaffetz and Issa request that the information be turned over to the investigation committee by May 27, but skepticism over whether that will happen continues to pervade. Whatever happened to the transparency that was promised to the American people by Obama? In his Inaugural Address, Obama insisted, “For a long time now, there’s been too much secrecy in this city…. Let me say it as simply as I can: Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency.” That promise lasted approximately five minutes.




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