Friday, May 9, 2008

Carbon tax irrationale

While the AGW debate stutters because no one can actually 'prove' that a significant human influenced warming effect actually exists; politico's all over the western world carry on with their insane 'anti-carbon' tax agenda. From my childhood. I was moved to recall a Cummings cartoon in the English Daily Express about the British Government wanting to tax the air everyone breathes. A vague recollection also trips about satirical pieces about a proposed British 'sex licence' from the 1960's.

So the continuing saga of BC's 'Carbon tax' rolls on, with many Northern communities complaining to BC Premier Campbell that it is a 'discriminatory' tax.

For myself I wonder how all this 'tax' is going to 'save the planet'. What is the money raised going to go towards? My thinking is that it will disappear without trace into the general tax pot, never to be seen again. All the new tax will do is increase the cost of living for Canadians. All the stuff that the Northern Communities produce for the urban dwellers in the towns and cities will have to go up in price, because the cost of transport will have risen, and simple causal economics dictates that employers and employees cannot keep on absorbing the increased cost of delivering and producing purely due to tax without imposing price rises. Everyone has to eat and stay warm. Especially up in Prince George.

Furthermore, I would also argue that reducing Carbon Dioxide is bad for all BC's trees and actually threatens wildlife because trees and plants need CO2 for photosynthesis. If the 'Reduce CO2' faction get their way and somehow manage (Not that this is likely, unless we all stop breathing) to reduce the percentage of CO2 in the atmosphere, this will eventually harm the trees and plants, then the wildlife, then eventually humans. More CO2 is not a bad thing. For the minuscule and unproven 'warming' effect it has, water vapour being a much greater 'greenhouse gas', it's not even worth bothering about.

As for 'peer reviewed' research, I say that nothing was ever proved by 'consensus' science. Did Einstein have a peer review? Edison? Faraday? Tesla? Lister? No, they went ahead and proved that their approaches actually worked. Then again, I would say that, I was trained as an Engineer. Engineering is all about dealing with realities, not vague theories and suppositions. To me these are as valid as Paley's 'Watchmaker' fallacy, of which 'Intelligent design' is merely a crude makeover.

On a different tack, I was asking a work colleague how one went about getting a piece of land 're-zoned' for residential building. He gave me a couple of suggestions, before vouchsafing; "Of course if that doesn't work, you could always try bribing the Mayor."
"How much does he usually charge?" I responded. "Is there some kind of price list?" Sometimes BC politics seems so surreal.

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