Gov. Martin O'Malley is proposing a plan to confront global warming through a state carbon cap — the generic words for carbon tax.
No doubt the tax will add 5 cents to 10 cents per gallon on gasoline, diesel, and home heating oil. The purpose of O'Malley's face-to-face meeting with the issue is to deal with the vulnerability of Maryland's 3,000 miles of shoreline that may suffer from a rise in sea level caused by global warming.
Global warming activists have been warning of a 13-foot to 20-foot rise in sea level by the year 2050, caused by the melting of the great polar ice cap. The Democrat governor will be backing a bill that would "set the nation's toughest limits on carbon emissions, a 90 percent drop from 2006 levels by 2050 with a 25 percent drop in carbon emissions by 2020."
The legislation the governor backs calls for the diversion of a $50 million Chesapeake Bay Fund, an energy efficiency measure and a reform to state zoning laws that apply to development near waterways. The governor wants to provide goodies for everyone.
Thinking realistically, the column of air that towers over Maryland for some 13 miles aloft is not static. The body of atmosphere is constantly moving from west to east in the Northern Hemisphere. Therefore, the atmosphere that is Maryland's today is someone else's atmosphere tomorrow.
In addition, Maryland's atmosphere tomorrow was yesterday's atmosphere in Ohio or states to the west. Unless all states cooperate in the 25 percent to 90 percent reduction in CO2, Maryland's efforts will prove to be futile and the tax burden required to benefit all Marylanders will be for naught.
The rising sea levels of 13 feet to 20 feet that O'Malley fears when the great polar ice cap melts are a myth.
The great polar ice cap consists of 15 feet of ice frozen at sea level on the Arctic Ocean. This writer has been there and stood at precisely 90 degrees north latitude.
Since the ice froze at sea level, it will melt to sea level. It physically cannot rise above sea level any more than a glass filled with ice will overflow when the ice melts. Claims of drastic rises in sea levels are nothing more than envirocrat lies.
Furthermore, carbon dioxide has never been proven to be a hazard to human habitation on earth. In fact, CO2 is the giver of all life on the planet. It is the only substance on earth that can harness the energy of the sun and by the process of photosynthesis create matter in the form of vegetation on which all life subsists.
There is no sound scientific evidence that increases in CO2, even a doubling of CO2, would adversely affect human beings. The planet would be much greener and the deserts would bloom.
The U.S. submarine base in New London, Ct., has been America's No. 1 laboratory for the study of the effect of CO2 on the human body for more than 75 years.
Human tolerance for CO2 was tested to the limits of human endurance on the old diesel-powered U-boats of World Wars I and II.
Carbon dioxide comprises 0.0375 percent, or 375 ten-thousandths of 1 percent of the atmosphere — a trace. The research at the sub base in New England revealed that 1 percent CO2, amounting to a concentration of 2,800 times the CO2 in the earth's atmosphere, was tolerable. With this concentration of CO2, the human reaction was found to be an increase in respiration of 27 percent.
The fact that CO2 causes global warming exists only in the hard drive of the envirocrat's computer.
A U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee (minority) report of Dec. 20, 2007, reports that more than 400 prominent scientists dispute man-made global warming claims in 2007.
One such scientist, Robert Durrenberger, past president of the American Association of State Climatologists, stated Al Gore brought him back to the battle and prompted him to do renewed research in the field of climatology and, Durrenberger said, because of all the misinformation that Al Gore and his army have been spreading about climate change, he has decided that real climatologists should try to help the public understand the nature of the problem.
Last October 2007, a Mr. Justice Burton in a London court opinion, identified what the justice called nine significant errors within Al Gore's global warming documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth."
The first error he identified was that Mr. Gore asserted that a sea level rise of up to 20 feet would be caused by melting ice sheets "in the near future." The judge stated: "This is distinctly alarmist and will only occur after, and over, millennia."
The judge ruled that the film could not be shown in British classrooms unless it was accompanied by new guidance notes for teachers to balance Mr. Gore's "one-sided" views.
Gov. O’Malley should review Burton’s opinion on the nine significant errors in Al Gore’s "An Inconvenient Truth" before committing the citizens of Maryland to an unnecessary tax burden.
E. Ralph Hostetter, a prominent businessman and agricultural publisher, also is a national and local award-winning columnist. He welcomes comments by e-mail sent to eralphhostetter@yahoo.com.
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