ecotyrants.com

From the San Francisco Chronicle:

Development: The West is warming faster than the rest of the world.

What it means: This year’s whiteout of a winter has prompted many a global-warming naysayer to crow about buying Al Gore a snow shovel. Not so fast, weather weenies. A recent report from the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization shows that the West has warmed 70 percent more than the rest of the globe over the past five years, with temperature increases in the arid Colorado River Basin coming in at about twice the global average. We’re already enjoying the fallout, the authors say, including more frequent extreme heat waves, the sudden decline of aspen trees, the bark beetle epidemic, and escalating wildfires and drought.

A slight problem with that study…the Earth has been cooling the past five years. In fact, it has been cooling for the past 10 years. So how can the West be warming 70 percent more than less than zero. I think someone is cooking the books over at the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization.

Exit Thought: Don’t you just love the maturity on the eco-left. Point out at the Earth is cooling and you are a weather weenie.

In Gaza, thugs drag a sea turtle out of the water and kill it for its aphrodisiac properties while in California the military spends $8.5 million to relocate desert tortoises off a desert training base, but we are the evil ones in the eyes of most liberals.

I’ve said it before, but this is the difference between a developed country and a third-world country yet most environmentalists want people to remain underdeveloped. That endangered turtle would still be alive today had it swam a few miles to the north.

It’s Basic Economics: Raise the price of something and people will search for a cheaper alternative. The City of Chicago has found that out the hard way as it’s eco-tax on plastic bottled water is way behind projections. (Via Copious Dissent):

Are Chicagoans trekking to the suburbs to buy cases of bottled water — and avoid a new nickel-a-container tax that adds $1.20 to the price of a 24-pack? Or are they making the switch to tap water to save money? One or the other is happening. Maybe both.

Revenues from Chicago’s new bottled water tax are trickling in — at a rate nearly 40% below projections — exacerbating a budget crunch that has already prompted Mayor Daley to order $20 million in spending cuts. January collections were $554,000. That’s far short of the $875,000-a-month needed to meet the city’s $10.5 million-a-year projection.

Many environmentalists point to California’s flat rate of per capita energy use as a model for the nation, but trouble lurks behind those numbers. As the Competitive Enterprise Institute points out that the reason isn’t because of an environmental miracle of new laws and regulations, but rather that the big energy producers have been forced out of the state.

First, California’s mild climate aids dramatically in reducing consumption for heating and cooling of homes and businesses.Second, California’s economy has undergone a structural change, away from energy-intensive manufacturing to less energy-intensive services, which are also more reliant on having a consistent electricity supply. This shift is due in part to manufacturing firms leaving the state because of high energy prices.

Third, while the California economy has grown during the past 25 years, it has also become more volatile.

Fourth, California’s high residential property prices tilt the housing market towards smaller homes and apartments and encourage more people to live in the same household.

Since1980 virtually every large energy consuming business has left the state. GM has left, almost all of the aerospace industry has left and dozens of military installations have closed as well. Nissan recently decided they have had enough and moved their headquarters from So Cal to Tennessee. The old Nissan headquarters was deemed to be too large for any company to expand so it will be torn down and split into smaller units.

As for the per capita, it is also helping that many families are leaving with the jobs and moving to other states. California has a net out-flow of native born people. These people are being replaced by illegal immigrants who cram eight or more people into one-bedroom apartments so of course the per capita is not going to rise, but is California better off? No, it is becoming a third-world country with the rich and the non-citizen poor.

Barbara Boxer is miffed that Bush isn’t moving faster to make the Polar Bear an endangered species. (As noted earlier, this is a ploy to get the US to adopt Kyoto like restrictions)

Say Anything notices what the MSM hasn’t yet. More Ethanol means high food prices and starving people.

Coyote Blog covers how eco-liberalism is hurting millions of poor people across the globe. From starving people in Africa who are denied food because it is genetically modified to people being kept poor because of the global warming hysteria.

Global Warming to lead to the spread of Malaria? Nope. Q and O breaks down the facts.

Who makes more money off a gallon of gas? The government or oil companies? The Sundries Shack has the answer.

Yep, 20 cents per bag. Oh yeah and that Chinese take-out you were going to pick up on the way home…well, it will cost more too if Seattle has it’s way. (Hat tip: Michelle Malkin)

Seattle could trump even the greenest of American cities with fines on foam and taxes on bags — both paper and plastic, city politicians say.

Seattle would impose a 20-cent-per-bag “green fee” and outlaw foam food containers next year under a proposal announced Wednesday. Aiming to persuade Seattleites to ditch disposable bags, the city hopes to send a free reusable bag to every Seattle household, Mayor Greg Nickels said.

“No other city has done what we’re suggesting here,” Nickels said. “These actions will take tons of plastic and foam out of our waste stream. … The best way to handle a ton of waste is not to create it in the first place.” Eventually, Seattle restaurants also would be forbidden from using plastic food containers that can’t be recycled or composted, according to rules being developed by Nickels and City Council President Richard Conlin. Some major questions about the policies remain — from political differences over how to spend the taxes to outstanding technical dilemmas. If adopted by the council, the fee would apply to disposable bags distributed at grocery, convenience and drug stores. The polystyrene foam ban would force restaurants and stores to find alternative egg cartons, meat trays, plates, “clamshells” and cups.

The foam and bag rules would go into effect Jan. 1. The plastic food container restrictions would be implemented July 2010.

“It’s a big symbolic step, but it’s also a very concerted step in the right direction,” Conlin said.

And where would all the money go that is collected? To funding a new eco-bureaucracy whose job it will be to find new items to tax.

The grocery bag fees would generate about $10 million a year, according to Seattle Public Utilities. The money would be used to administer and enforce the rules, to buy and promote reusable bags, and to expand recycling, environmental education and waste prevention programs.

Of course, the facts are that plastic bags aren’t as bad for the environment as many have been led to believe. This is just another pointless gesture by the green police that will just end up costing tax payers.

If they can’t ban SUVs and MiniVans they will tax them away:

Californians support the idea of charging “green” vehicle fees that would make drivers of gas guzzlers pay higher taxes and offer discounts for those driving less-polluting vehicles, according to a survey by a transportation researcher at San Jose State University.

The state now charges drivers registration and licensing fees and gasoline taxes at rates that do not take into account vehicles’ pollution levels. But the survey, conducted by Asha Weinstein Agrawal, a research associate with the university’s Mineta Transportation Institute, found that Californians would support a variety of taxes and fees to raise money for transportation improvements as well as combat global warming, including:

– Raising vehicle registration fees, which now average $31, to an average of $62 and having higher-polluting vehicles pay higher rates and cleaner cars lower rates.

– Offering rebates of up to $1,000 for people who buy new cars that emit very little pollution and levying a surcharge of as much as $2,000 on those purchasing gas hogs.

– Levying a mileage-based tax that would replace the 18-cents-per-gallon gasoline tax. The per-mile amount would vary depending on how much a vehicle polluted the air.

The poll claims 50 to 65 percent support for various tax hike on higher pollution vehicles. Californians have a history of supporting the idea of these taxes, but them coming back to reality at the ballot box. I hope this year stays the same.

Also, you know this bill will be worded to only go after newer SUVs, Minivans and Trucks. If it was serious about cleaning the air it would go after older smaller cars as well. An early 1990s economy car puts out a lot more pollution that a new SUV. But this bill isn’t about cleaning the air rather it is about funding the bureaucracy and making large cars unaffordable to most people.

The Ecotyrants website of the day is from our brothers to the north: A Dog Named Kyoto

Why is named that: “Stéphane Dion, current leader of the Liberal Party of Canada believes so strongly in global warming that he named his dog Kyoto.”

Over at Pajamas Media, the Anchoress addresses why mixing the food supply and energy production is a bad idea. It is because poor people starve so environmentalists in San Francisco can feel good about themselves and farmers in Iowa can get a huge chunk of tax payer money.

In an era where the word “crisis” is attached to every issue that has an advocate, it becomes so difficult to know what to save first. Do we address the “man-made global warming crisis” by burning off our very food in order to propel ourselves around? Or do we instead anticipate the ever-looming “food shortage/famine” crisis by sending human beings the grain they need to survive, while taking a chance that the earth really isn’t going to end in thirty short years — or sooner if we drill in ANWR — without ethanol?

Hmmmm, let’s think about that. In poorer countries famine routinely occurs and people live and die in hunger; in prosperous countries people now find their grocery bills running over budget. The starving people are going to die without nourishment. The struggling people may see their national economies negatively affected if food prices skyrocket.

One good thing about a John McCain Presidency is that he is dead-set against Ethanol subsidies. Hopefully he won’t give in to the porkers in Congress and we can finally toss corn ethanol into the ash heap of environmental bad ideas.

Los Angeles has sinned against Mother Earth and now must pay its fair share to the Church of Global Warming Climate Change.

Los Angeles already has the highest gas taxes in the nation and it might become even higher if a new law passes this year.

Nothing riles Southern Californians like a new tax on their God-given right to drive. Yet motorists in Los Angeles County might be paying an extra 9 cents per gallon at the gas pump — or an additional $90 on their vehicle registration fees. The purpose? It would help fight global warming.Voters will decide whether to approve a “climate change mitigation and adaptation fee” under a proposed law being debated by the state legislature. It has already been endorsed by the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

The money would be used to fund public transportation and other projects that ease traffic congestion at a time when the state budget is strapped and money from Washington has all but dried up. Critics are hopping mad. They say that it exploits public sympathy for global warming in order to fund projects that are already sucking down taxpayers’ dollars.

Yes, a big chunk of it will go to LA’s version of the Big Dig, the Subway to the Sea which is a waste of money in a spread out city like Los Angeles and is a big humanitarian disaster in the making when the next big earthquake traps possibly thousands of people under the Earth.

Instead of fighting global warming all this tax is about is keeping public transportation bureaucrats in a job while the state is out of money.

Also, the bill is using tricky language to help pass it and will cost anyone who has to drive a larger car more money as well.

Coupal also objected to the measure’s being called a “fee” — which requires a simple majority for approval — instead of a “tax,” which requires two-thirds approval.

Feuer’s bill would allow the MTA board to ask voters either for a fee of up to 3% of the retail price of gas, or for a vehicle registration fee of up to $90 per year. The money would pay for programs to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The registration fee would be higher for cars, trucks and SUVs that produce more carbon emissions, a feature that backers said would discourage drivers from using higher-polluting vehicles.

If you live in a big city you will be next…The Church demands it.