There’s nothing new, sadly, in the efforts of politicized science and its pop-culture acolytes in trying to silence opponents. The latest episode appears to be directed at our friend Marc Morano, but we’re confident he’ll keep speaking out loudly and forcefully against climate alarmism.

Check out this great video (h/t Mark Tapscott)

There’s just something so addictive for public-health and enviro types about claiming the scourge-of-the-hour will kill hundreds of thousands of people. Specifically, it seems, we have a repeat of the claim that a problem is killing 300,000 people — and, it seems, again the claim is dubious at best.

The most recent is a study claiming global warming is already killing 300,00 people every year. As the New York Times’ Andrew Revkin notes at his dot-earth blog, “There are significant questions about the robustness of the numbers at the heart of the new report…” And in his news story, Revkin reports:

Roger A. Pielke Jr., a political scientist at the University of Colorado, Boulder, who studies disaster trends, said the forum’s report was “a methodological embarrassment” because there was no way to distinguish deaths or economic losses related to human-driven global warming amid the much larger losses resulting from the growth in populations and economic development in vulnerable regions. Dr. Pielke said that “climate change is an important problem requiring our utmost attention.” But the report, he said, “will harm the cause for action on both climate change and disasters because it is so deeply flawed.”

Well, headline-seeking “science” will do that. It reminds us of the obesity scare bubble that burst a few years ago when the CDC was finally forced to acknowledge that woeful methodology for a study purportedly showing that obesity killed 300,000 (which would be the basis for an updated, and equally erroneous, claim that it actually killed 400,000).

Whether it’s our bellies or our climate, activists have found they can’t get their way without scaring us to death, or about death.

What do legalizing marijuana, stripper taxes, hotel-movie rental taxes, and eliminating state organ-donor tax deductions have in common? Apparently they’re revenue-generating notions by politicians across America. But John Rafuse says there’s a better way:

Legislators need not nibble around the edges to generate revenue for their states. They can simply grant U.S. energy companies access to the vast oil and natural gas reserves off our shores, thereby generating $2.3 trillion in new tax revenue for federal, state, and local governments while also creating 1.2 million new, well-paying jobs and providing a shot in the arm for our slumping economy.

A timely reminder, even as much attention is directed to the pressing concerns of cap-and-trade legislation.

Human Events points us to this video of Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, who has taken a strong stand against cap-and-trade legislation sold as a “solution” to global warming.

In a great piece, Lauren Steffy points out:

cap-and-trade is marinated in political favoritism, steeped with biases against certain industries and skewed against certain regions of the country.

In its budget proposal, the Obama administration slotted $650 billion in new revenue from cap-and-trade between 2012 and 2019, with $80 billion a year used to fund a middle-class tax cut and $15 billion going to promote alternative energy.

The closer we get to cap-and-trade becoming law, the more its true picture comes into focus.

It’s been portrayed as a free market solution, but with all the manipulation before the first permit has even traded, it doesn’t resemble anything close to a market.

And it darn sure won’t be free.

Well, this is going to raise prices for Oregonians.

Drudge offers this picture to go with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s claim that every aspect of our lives must be subject to an eco-inventory:

Well, can’t say we’re surprised to hear that major companies are looking to cash in on global warming fears. But this is not welcome news:

In a statement dubbed the “Copenhagen Call,” business leaders said developed economies should make the deepest cuts initially, though all nations would be required to play a part. A global deal would benefit business by helping to establish a “more predictable framework for companies to plan and invest,” the statement said.

It’s sort of amazing that companies ruled by economics and surely guided by economists are happy to throw a gear into the growth machines that are developed nations just to cash in a quick buck. Amazing may not be the right word — disgusting, then.

As an Oregonian, I found the embedded stat below in a new Investors Business Daily editorial both new and troubling:

In the summer of 2007, a report by the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency announced that China had officially become the world’s biggest polluter after its CO2 emissions rose an astounding 9% the year before. Since then, China has shown no signs of slowing down in its commitment to both economic and energy growth.

Between 1980 and 2006, China increased its carbon emissions by 321%. China is adding 100 gigawatts of coal-fired electricity capacity annually. That’s like adding the entire capacity of the United States every three years. The irony is that this powers Chinese factories that export goods to the energy-starving and economically beleaguered U.S.

This isn’t all China exports. As Peter Brookes of the Heritage Foundation reports, , sulfur from China alone reaches 10% to 15% of the EPA’s allowable levels in California, Oregon and Washington. Estimates are that a third of California’s air pollution and a fifth of Oregon’s come from China. Sensors in the Sierra Nevada Mountains have identified huge Chinese pollution clouds that traverse the Pacific.

Those facts ought to add up to one big realization: go-it-alone carbon capping plans in the United States (let alone single states such as California) will not really affect “global warming.” A plan has to be international, and there’s no sign China is willing to sacrifice its economy in order to serve the psychological needs of going-green Americans:

They are building [coal-fired plants] over there and not here. That’s not an energy policy. That’s economic suicide. Clean energy and economic growth are not incompatible.

We should be trying to get China to reduce its pollution. But we should also be expanding our own domestic energy resources, including building at least as many nuclear power plants as China is.

China is unwilling to commit economic suicide. Why are we?