Slashdot Mirror
Carbon Dioxide Emissions Fall Worldwide In 2009
Hugh Pickens writes "The Christian Science Monitor reports that the good news is that emissions from burning coal, oil, and natural gas fell 1.3 percent compared with emissions in 2008 primarily because of the global economic downturn and an increase in carbon-dioxide uptake by the oceans and by plants on land. One big factor was La Niña, a natural seesaw shift in climate that takes place across the tropical Pacific every three to seven years, where the climate is cooler and wetter over large regions of land in the tropics, encouraging plant growth in tropical forests. However the bad news is that even with the decrease in emissions the overall concentration of CO2 rose from 385 ppm in 2008 to 387 ppm in 2009, as concentrations continue to rise even as emissions slip because even at the reduced pace, humans are pumping CO2 into the atmosphere faster than natural processes can scrub the gas. Many countries have agreed in principle to try to stabilize emissions at 350 ppm by century's end, which would result in a 50 percent chance of holding the increase in global average temperatures to about 2 degrees C over pre-industrial levels."
This from someone promoting a joke in their sig.
The "Fair" Tax.
Fair in the sense that "why is it fair that, I as a millionaire, pay proportionally equal share of my income [sometimes much less, even] than poorer people! We must only tax things that people buy, that way it is fair for all!"
Of course, it's not like purchases like food, heating, power, water make up a proportionally larger amount of a poor family's income compared to a rich person.
All the "fair tax" does is accelerate the wealth gap even further, increase the tax load so the bulk of it (proportional to income) is shouldered by the poor and reduce the total amount of tax collected by the government, forcing cuts to programs that help those same poor people, like welfare, medicare/medicaid and things like education. Of course, the military budget would be untouched.