Your Opinion: Response to Holzem on climate change

Dear Editor:

I'd like to respond to Jeff Holzem's July 8 letter to the editor.

He claims that I was wrong on my numbers on the drop in CO2 emissions by the U.S.A. This is straight from the EPA's website from a report released in April 2016: "Greenhouse gas emissions in 2014 were 9 percent below 2005 levels."

That included the 1 percent increase Holzem spoke of, which the EPA attributes to weather. Also on the EPA site: "since 1990, the management of forests and non-agricultural land has acted as a net sink of CO2, which means that more CO2 is removed from the atmosphere, and stored in plants and trees, than is emitted. This sink offset about 11 percent of total emissions in 2014."

The USA is doing even more, right here in our own state. Several years ago one of my suggestions in a letter to the editor was solar roads. MoDOT is now studying the feasibility of this system. If this study is successful I-70 will become the nation's first and longest solar road and all this without a carbon tax.

Holzem asked me to explain the increase in the economy of Sweden. I thought I had explained it in the letter he was referring. Industry only had to pay 50 percent of the tax and many fossil fuels were exempt from the tax, this offset the negative effects to the economy. Sweden's economic success is heralded on many websites to its free markets, regulatory transparency and government subsidies.

However, on many "green" sites there appears to be controversy as Sweden is importing more, less expensive goods from countries which do not have a carbon tax and is therefore counterproductive to their efforts in reducing global CO2 levels. On these sites there is outcry that Sweden isn't doing enough and they need to increase their efforts.

People like me prefer to be called climate change realists instead of climate change deniers. The term denier is an attempt to make people look foolish and stupid in the face of facts. Climate realists are people that go by reason, fact, data and personal observation, instead of fine speeches and drama.

Climate change is natural and constant, so are changes in weather. We can accept this fact and prepare for these inevitable natural changes or we can tax and regulate several industries to death in a vain attempt to change the climate.

__________

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