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Letter: Carbon tax just more hot air

Reader grateful Canada won't send delegates to upcoming Climate Conferences, and urges voters to tell MLAs to drop the carbon tax.

Margaret Evans continues to tell the story that the Earth is getting warmer and excess human carbon emissions are to blame (Turning up the heat on climate change action).  But she has left out much of the story.  It’s the part of the story that says the Earth is not warming, and it has not been warming for a substantial period of time.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change(IPCC), a UN committee, has published several accounts that deny many of Ms. Evans’ claims.  The IPCC published in 2012 that it agreed the world has not been warming as stated by Univ. of East Anglia, NOAA, and other agencies for at least the last 15 to 20 years.  Sea ice has increased in all the places that scientists have expressed the greatest concern.

Also, the IPCC has reviewed and published the findings of scientists that state extreme weather events have not been linked to man-made carbon emissions.  Heavy storms are not caused by humans.  And, Margaret’s claim that our recent hot summer is an indicator that we are warming the planet, does not account for this year’s early cold and snowfall registered in Alberta.

The truth is that many of our governments have made plans other than saving our planet for the funds generated by taxing carbon producing humans.  In an email conversation with our local MLA, Laurie Throness, I suggested that a financial solution to funding B.C.’s education system would be to use the Carbon Tax revenue, since there was really no need to save us from the effects of our carbon production.  Laurie’s response was: “about the use of the carbon tax, it’s now used for tax reductions in other areas, so diverting it would cause an effective tax increase.”

So you see, the funds are not now, and really never were meant to help B.C. decrease its carbon footprint.  It was a plan to implement a perpetual new tax.  And like the increases to ICBC rates that really go into general tax revenue, it is just more tax money for our provincial public servants to squander.

I am grateful that Canada does not plan to send delegates to upcoming Climate Conferences.  I urge voters to tell our MLAs to drop the carbon tax.  And, for Margaret Evans, the science is settled; the sun is the major controller of climate and global temperature.

Gary Raddysh

Chilliwack, BC