Originally Posted by dyna mo

the U.S. Government Accounting Office can?t figure out what benefits taxpayers are getting from those many billions of dollars spent each year on policies that are purportedly aimed at addressing climate change. A May 2011 GAO report noted that while annual federal funding for such activities has been increasing substantially, there is a lack of shared understanding of strategic priorities among the various responsible agency officials. This assessment agrees with the conclusions of a 2008 Congressional Research Service analysis which found no ?overarching policy goal for climate change that guides the programs funded or the priorities among programs.?

The Obama administration?s attempt to justify these economic regulatory burdens conjures statistical sorcery purporting to assess a ?social cost on carbon.? This is supposed to represent an accounting method to quantify market externalities attached to human fossil- burning emissions, whereby each ton of CO2 leads to a future societal cost of about $40 (in today?s dollars).

The idea is that any newly-proposed regulation intended to reduce future CO2 emissions will get to claim an equivalent social cost credit for each ton avoided. This scheme is intended to enable EPA and other regulatory organizations to build stronger political cases for their burdensome policies.

At the same time, the UN?s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has had to finally admit that global temperatures have been flat for at least 16 years despite rising atmospheric CO2 levels.

IPCC has also confessed that their theoretical simulation models have grossly exaggerated climate sensitivity to CO2.




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