Carbon Taxes

[Wakeupcall]

I am all for raising taxes, paying a bit extra to save this shambles that we are surrounded by.

However, I feel that carbon tax is a step too far. It is in fact a tax which will allow our governments to actually obtrusively regulate our lives.

I do not want to be taxed for farting. Maybe I have it wrong? What kind of taxes are they putting forward in relation to carbon tax? What can these taxes then possibly lead on to?

Ireland looks like a testing ground for the elite, maybe I am being too paranoid? I am however looking at evidence throughout the world to get to that paranoia... I also have a tendancy to see the future and end results but often leave some details out on the way, perhaps I can be enlightened on this carbon matter..

[JCSkinner]

The Greens pushed for cuts in energy prices so that they can recoup it all in the form of carbon taxes.
I expect you'll be hearing more of this from Gormley today.

[wombat]

I suspect that carbon taxes will be similar to VAT a giant cash sucker from everything we do. In the meantime I expect 20cents on the litre of petrol, dressed up as an environmental measure. I'm not happy as I need my car for work and I'm not talking about driving from Dalkey to the city centre and parking all day.
God help us, Ryan is waffling on RTE.

[bananarepublic.ie]

Non commercial 4X4 in Dublin should pay more tax for their attitude towards the society as a whole.

[Ultan Murphy]

When the Irish people are being penalised for the expansion of our economy through crippling Carbon Taxes, it is vital that every person be made aware of the true history of CO2 levels in the atmosphere. After 35 years of atmospheric cooling from 1940 to 1975 when Newsweek was warning of an impending ice age, the level of CO2 in the atmosphere was approx 0.033% (330ppmv). By 1997 when the Kyoto Protocol came into being, the level of CO2 in the atmosphere was approx 0.037% (370ppmv). The difference between those figures is just 0.004% by volume or 40ppm. Fluctuation in the levels of CO2 has happened all throughout history as CO2 concentration follows the temperature changes in the oceans. What is being propagandised by the IPCC is that a rise in CO2 levels is entirely unnatural and must be man-made.

The IPCC have constructed a history of CO2 levels in the atmosphere based on gas bubbles trapped in Antarctic ice cores and have decided to ignore the 90,000 readings by chemical analysis dating back to 1812 performed by the pioneers of modern Physics, Chemistry and Biology. Analysis using the “Pettenkofer” process (1857) was demonstrated to be accurate to +/- 3ppm and showed CO2 in the atmosphere to be as high as 400ppm at various times. The IPCC’s pre industrial figure of CO2 at 280ppm is based on ice- core samples only, but according to Prof Zibigniew Jarworowski of the Central Laboratory for Radiological Protection in Warsaw, ice cores are likely to be contaminated in the drilling process and do not constitute a closed system to sample CO2 accurately.

In December 2008, 650 of the worlds’ most eminent climate scientists voiced their disapproval of the man-made theory of Global Warming to a US Senate Committee. This was 12 times more than the 52 scientists who authored the 2007 IPCC report. At Global Warming Petition Project 34,000 scientists also disagree with the IPCCs views. Until the EU & UN can come up with a global taxation system which can regulate the output of the Sun, I suggest we consign “Climate Change” to the dustbin of history.

[BodyofEvidence]

Given that we are made of carbon, I am still not sure how this will work. Like the OP I suspect its uses. How does a 20c carbon levy on fuel differ from a 20c increase in tax or duties on fuel?

[JCSkinner]

Given that we are made of carbon, I am still not sure how this will work. Like the OP I suspect its uses. How does a 20c carbon levy on fuel differ from a 20c increase in tax or duties on fuel?

It doesn't, any more than a pension levy or health levy doesn't differ from a tax hike.
This is the real reason why energy prices were forced down. The carbon levy won't just apply to fuel stations. You'll be seeing it on your gas and electricity bills too, most likely.
Which will be nasty for those who went with Bord Gais for their electricity recently, especially if the carbon tax isn't applied to Aertricity bills too.

[He3]

Given that we are made of carbon, I am still not sure how this will work.

Think Poll Tax?

[islands]

the trouble with environmental taxes is always that while you want to tax the pollution itself, you end up taxing some more convenient proxy. So instead of taxing discarded plastic bags, for instance, you make the simplifying asssumption that they will all end up in landfill or blowing around the landscape. That allows you to tax them at the point before they are used, which is feasible, instead of the point where they're thrown away, which is not.

When it comes to actual carbon emissions, it's even more difficult. So you tax the purchase of fuels that have the potential for carbon emissions because you can, basically, rather than taxing the emissions themselves. That means you need to make assumptions, and to balance the tax between industry and private individuals. You need to decide the carbon cost of electricty, for instance, and gas. Even the texhnical aspects involve really subjective judgements, and that's long before you get to the political decisions on who should bear the cost.

[Wakeupcall]

Rupert Murdoch’s Twentieth Century Fox corporation has admitted to planting political brainwashing within its globally popular TV shows and indeed boasts that it is proud of the fact.

A corporate video currently being showcased on another part of Murdoch’s media empire, MySpace.com, shows Fox executives and stars of its universally recognized shows bragging about how they use the platform of hit shows that are broadcast globally to implant messages about the supposed threat of global warming.

This is not the first time Fox have been enthusiastic in propagandizing for the establishment. In 2003, [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JF9HpuZm6-g"]Rupert Murdoch himself admitted[/ame] that the corporation had “tried” to help the Bush administration sell the war in Iraq.

The text accompanying the video states, “In 2006, News Corp. embarked upon a company wide initiative to reduce the size of its carbon footprint.”

The means by which this “initiative” was carried out is then made clear by a plethora of clips from Fox’s most popular shows - the Simpsons, King of the Hill, Family Guy, Prison Break - which are all loaded with messages about global warming and the need to do something about it.

“What could we do on a practical level to start making a difference,” asks one executive before another answers, “The biggest thing we’ve done is inserting messages about the environment into some of our content.”

In other words, Fox has embarked on a deliberate campaign, which could only have been done with the coordination of the script writers of each program, to force people to accept the pseudo-science of global warming by brainwashing them into accepting it as a reality. This has been achieved by weaving in messages about climate change and having popular characters in the TV shows embrace specific tenants of the global warming manifesto.

“The most powerful way we could communicate the commitment on behalf of our company, was to change the practices within the production, as well as work in a message about global warming, about environmental changes, about empowering people to take responsibilities,” states Fox chairman Dana Walden.

We’re also treated to the vomit-inducing sight of Kiefer Sutherland, who plays the torture loving Jack Bauer in 24, sounding about as genuine as a 3 dollar bill reading off a teleprompter about how Fox is committed to reducing its “carbon footprint”.

This again goes to show that the acceptance of global warming as a reality by the general public is not being accomplished as an organic reaction to scientifically proven threats, but by propagandists artificially piggy-backing the climate mantra on the back of fictional TV shows passively absorbed by people in their millions.

This is key because of the process that people’s brains undergo when they are watching television. Political messages implanted in fictional television programs will always enjoy a receptive audience.

According to an Associated Content article, “Studies have shown that watching television induces low alpha waves in the human brain. Alpha waves are brainwaves between 8 to 12 HZ. and are commonly associated with relaxed meditative states as well as brain states associated with suggestibility.”

Experiments have shown that less than one minute after the viewer begins to watch television, the brain switches from Beta level consciousness, associated with active and logical thought, to Alpha level, which is associated with passive acceptance and suggestibility. This is why advertisers spend billions a year on commercials as well as product placement within TV shows themselves.

The scale of what Fox is admitting to here is staggering, and the fact that they even boast about what they are doing beggars belief. As Darryl Mason sardonically comments, “I never realised just how much I’d learned about the dire threats of global warming-induced climate change simply by watching immensely, globally popular Murdoch/Fox entertainments like The Simpsons and 24.”

Millions of people not just in America but globally are being educated, or should I say re-educated, about the highly complex and highly debatable topic of global warming, not through a reasoned public debate between advocates and skeptics, but through fictional cartoons, comedies and drama shows produced by a monolithic corporation that has its tentacles deeply embedded into the same establishment that is trying to sell global warming in order to introduce a CO2 tax and regulate people’s lives.

[source]