'Inescapably, alternatives burn more fossil fuel than conventional energy. This will be true until the high costs in energy for total-cycle manufacturing and maintaining of alternatives is paid for using energy produced by alternatives.'
'The increases in the insignificant alternatives are tied to disproportionate government investment, incentives, and subsidies, which transfer artificially high costs to citizens and users. As soon as government commitments are reduced or terminated the sector crashes'
Claims that 2014 and 2015 were the hottest years on record are meaningless when you consider how little they set records by (seven hundredths of a degree Fahrenheit and 29 hundredths of a degree, respectively). In fact, the uncertainty in the 2014 temperature was twice as much as the amount by which the record was supposedly set. Sea level rise has also been unremarkable in the past century. There has been no recent acceleration, and the current rate of rise is less than one tenth that of 8,000 years ago. Geologists tell us that the oceans have been rising since the end of the last glacial period, 15,000 years ago. There has been no overall change in the incidence and severity of extreme weather in the past century, either. As in the case of temperature and sea level, the contribution of our emissions to extreme weather must have been very small indeed.
WaPo editorial board: 'This policy is a steadily rising carbon tax. A carbon tax would put a lower ceiling on national gasoline use without more aggressive regulatory interventions. It would also encourage every other piece of the economy to green up over time, starting with those for whom doing so is cheapest. This is why it is also the least expensive path to lowering the country’s carbon dioxide emissions. But a carbon tax would require Congress to act, which it has serially failed to do.'