A carbon tax: A useless solution to a nonexistent problem

Mr. Fred Krupp is president of the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF). He claims that "capitalism will solve the climate problem" (op-ed, WSJ, July 22, 2018). EDF pays him the princely sum of about $350,000 USD. Evidently, his duties include spreading the idea that EDF, an aggressive environmental non-profit, is "pro-market." Krupp asserts that the climate warmed in the final two decades of the 20th century, thus following the 1988 predictions of Dr. James Hansen, former head of NASA-GISS (Goddard Institute for Space Studies), notorious for his violent opposition to emission of CO2.

But Krupp is quite wrong, and so are the predictions of Dr. Hansen. There is no warming at all after about 1940, 'til the El Niño event of 1998 (which had nothing to do with CO2). Therefore, there is no climate problem to be "solved." It turns out that the warming reported by surface weather stations is fake – it is entirely an instrumental artifact, caused by drastic changes after 1980 in the way in which (surface) temperatures were measured – as discussed in detail in a research paper by noted meteorologist Dr. Joseph D'Aleo. Krupp further asserts that satellites show atmospheric warming. Wrong again! Prof. John Christy has shown that neither satellites nor balloon-borne radiosondes exhibit warming in the final decades of the 20th century – nor does any other data source. A carbon tax? Krupp espouses "market-based mechanisms." All of this sounds persuasive until you discover that he really wants a carbon tax – the wrong remedy, especially for a nonexistent climate problem. S. Fred Singer is professor emeritus at the University of Virginia and a founding director of the Science & Environmental Policy Project; in 2014, after 25 years, he stepped down as president of SEPP. His specialty is atmospheric and space physics. An expert in remote sensing and satellites, he served as the founding director of the U.S. Weather Satellite Service and, more recently, as vice chair of the U.S. National Advisory Committee on Oceans & Atmosphere. He is an elected fellow of several scientific societies and a senior fellow of the Heartland Institute and the Independent Institute. He co-authored the N.Y. Times best-seller Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1500 years. In 2007, he founded and has chaired the NIPCC (Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change), which has released several scientific reports (SeeNIPCCreport.org). For recent writings, see http://www.americanthinker.com/s_fred_singer and also Google Scholar.