CO2 Tax? Please, no!

Hey, all. Just found out about something: they're considering taxing CO2 emissions through legislation in congress. And they're doing it soon: the bill is expected to be on the floor for debate in early June (yep, this month!). Here's the text of the bill, which will allocate over 3/4 of a trillion dollars for various things (see Title V, Subtitles D through H). Hey, this is America... we're built on supply & demand, a capitalistic commerce system. I think we should let the consumers and producers drive the economy of power supply, don't you? Why not sign the GrassFire petition, then? Do it soon, though... it's up for debate very, very soon. (Note: this is not one of those "e-mail petitions" that's worthless... this one is one of the "tracked online" things where you have to submit your name, address, etc., and it's collected and coalesced into a single petition; the e-mail forwarded petitions are meaningless, but this kind has at least a little sway.)

By the way, over on Not-tional Geographic I posted an article (click "an article" for the actual article, the "Not-tional Geographic" link goes to the main site) that illustrates how easy it is to manipulate data into a desired result. You can't simply take some correlative data and infer a causal relationship - for instance, I tend to eat more ice cream sandwiches in the evening than at any other part of the day. I also tend to watch TV more in the evening than in any other part of the day. This does not mean that watching TV causes me to eat ice cream sandwiches - they just happen to be happening at the same time. On another note, it tends to be dark outside when I'm eating more ice cream sandwiches - does my ice cream sandwich intake have anything to do with the lack of sunlight? No! They happen to occur at the same time, but there is no causal relationship between any of these three data points. Similarly, man's (very slight) effect on the amount of CO2 gas in the atmosphere (which, actually, hasn't necessarily been proven, either - while it may be likely that the industrial revolution caused a slight increase in global CO2 levels, there is no direct proof that the increased CO2 levels can be attributed to human activities) that happens to coincide with seemingly increased global average temperature (which is occurring at a time of high sunspot activity and at the end of an ice age; what, you mean the temperatures could be going up as part of a normal earthly cycle? duh!) does not indicate a causal relationship - they just happen to be occurring simultaneously. (Past records of global CO2 level vs. temperature show that, in the earth's history, CO2 levels have been much higher than they are currently, while temperatures have cycled without having excessively high temperatures that threatened life on this planet; in fact, if anything, we should be more concerned about cooling temperatures affecting life, as life during a major ice age becomes relatively impossible.) Also, CO2 isn't the major greenhouse gas in our atmosphere... water vapor is.

I haven't provided lots of links in this post - feel free to search my past posts for this information and supporting links and research. Or - here's a novel idea - take to Google and go find out for yourself! :) Anyway, I hope we don't have to pay inordinate amounts of tax in order to change our entire power economy... please consider signing the petition. Soon. Oh, and sorry, Carter (and any other out-of-country readers - wait, I guess I should qualify that - out-of-the-United-States readers), but I imagine only United States addresses are valid for this one...