Dan Pangburn was kind enough to comment on a recent post. We wanted to highlight his recent article, dated March 2008, summing up some of his research. It’s worth a read, so go to it.

From CEI scholar (and TCE interviewee) Iain Murray:

Brookings has resorted to what science communications expert Matthew Nisbet (not someone likely to agree with me on the details) terms as framing global warming as a ‘Pandora’s Box,’ with all sorts of calamities ready to emerge. Yet evidence suggests it doesn’t work. Brookings’ entry into the debate merely advances harmful policies in an ineffective way. They really should know better.

Sen. Barack Obama just said that, if elected, America would end our dependence on foreign oil in the next ten years. That sounds more like HOPE than a plan.

We haven’t gotten much into the cap-and-trade statements of the presidential candidates, but columnist-slash-TV guy Larry Kudlow — who’s right on the money! — teases out a distinction in the New York Sun:

Incidentally, while the public clamors for drill, drill, drill, Mr. Obama wants high-cost, cap-and-trade carbon regulation enforced by the Environmental Protection Agency. Now, Mr. McCain also wants cap-and-trade, but not if India and China don’t go along. Apparently Mr. Obama will not be constrained by the rest of the world.

A giant new tax, the proceeds of which are not guaranteed to go toward making energy more efficient, will make energy more expensive for everyone, especially the poor. But implementing a unilateral plan, while economic competitors do not, will make us uncompetitive, and that harms everyone, especially the poor. It is a difference worth noting.

UPDATE: Tom Nelson writes: “I see no evidence that China or India will ever be stupid enough to buy into cap-and-trade. If we only do cap-and-trade if China and India go along, it almost certainly means that we won’t do cap-and-trade at all.”

Today’s evidence against a cap-and-trade slush fund:

RESIDENTS of Maldon are paying £600 too much in guilt money to offset the cost of UK carbon emissions, which is twice that of people in Ipswich, the Taxpayers’ Alliance reports today.

In research broken down into Britain’s local authority areas, the TPA says green taxation - advocated by environmentalists as a fair way of making amends for the pollution we generate - has raked into Government coffers £19.6billion more than needed.

Hmm.

“It’s too bad things didn’t work out between Laurie and Larry David, but if fighting global warming means hanging out with lovely ladies like those on that cover then sign me up!” Heh.

A recent oped from Independent Women’s Forum President Michelle Bernard in the DC Examiner looks at the high costs of GHG cap and trade policies and sums up the cost to Earth’s inhabitants:

“The poor would suffer the most. If we drain trillions of dollars out of the economy, it is the poor who find it hard, if not impossible, to buy a home, educate their kids, buy gas, put food on the table, get needed health care and more. Any money spent to try to prevent temperatures from rising generates an “opportunity cost,” that is, we are missing out on putting that money to another use.

“Think of America’s great needs. Poverty still exists, even amid plenty. Our educational system is abysmal, failing to educate many children morally to be good citizens and economically to participate in the global economy. There is infrastructure to be built and investment to be made.

“Every dollar spent to preclude a temperature increase that might never occur is a dollar not available to help a needy person today. And opportunity costs run global…”

This is embarrassing:

Ms. Pelosi appeared Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” where Tom Brokaw gently pointed out that the various Democratic alternative energy ambitions are “not going to happen overnight.” Replied Ms. Pelosi: “You can have a transition with natural gas. That, that is cheap, abundant and clean compared to fossil fuels.” Later, she again said that “I believe in natural gas as a clean, cheap alternative to fossil fuels,” and that wind, solar, biofuels and “a focus on natural gas, these are the real alternatives.”

Apparently Ms. Pelosi’s new script is still being reworked, but it’s a telling mistake. Not only is natural gas every bit as much a “fossil fuel” as oil or coal. More to the point, these concentrated organic compounds found beneath the earth’s surface must be extracted by . . . drilling. And sometimes even drilling offshore, on the Outer Continental Shelf. But more drilling is what Ms. Pelosi had refused to allow just a few days ago.

An interesting side note: Last night’s Mad Money with Jim Cramer noted that Pelosi is a large shareholder of a clean energy company — in fact, the Clean Energy Fuels company. What does it sell? Nat gas.

UPDATE (August 27): IBD has more:

“But, that is — that is the marketplace,” she replied, explaining that the market is so big her meager investment was trivial and irrelevant. “That’s not the point,” she said. “I’m investing in something I believe in.” Oh. And here we thought investments were made on the expectation of profit.

The fact is, as syndicated columnist Michelle Malkin reports, the Speaker’s 2007 financial disclosure form Schedule III lists “Assets and Unearned Income” of between $101,000 and $250,000 from Clean Energy Fuels Corp. (CLNE) Public Common Stock. All on the expectation of, uh, windfall profits?

From the Wall Street Journal and its great enviro blog:

The Obama camp also believes it has a regulatory stick to force congressional action. The Supreme Court has ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency can regulate carbon dioxide under the Clean Air Act. While the Bush administration has taken a go-slow approach, a President Obama would shift into high gear, says Elgie Holstein, a senior Obama energy adviser. If Congress didn’t act on a cap-and-trade system, he says, Mr. Obama “wouldn’t hesitate to use Clean Air Act authorization to regulate” CO2 emissions, a step that could involve a huge increase in EPA oversight of industry.