Norway is the fifth largest oil exporter in the world. Their largest oil company, STATOIL ASA has it’s majority shares owned by the state of Norway itself, tho not fully nationalized.
Despite the govt’s ability to rein in fuel prices for it’s citizens, Norway’s increased their gas taxes, ignoring a supply problem that doesn’t appear to exist for them.
So why is it Norwegians are up in arms about petrol prices, when the black gold abounds in their back yards?
Per Norway govt officials, it’s all about AGW and forcing behavior change in the world’s denizens.
The tax increase is part of a wider government strategy to fight climate change by pushing Norwegians to leave their car at home.
“At a time when climate change is beginning to seriously impact the planet, and when Norway’s carbon dioxide emissions are increasing, we politicians must take steps to meet these challenges,” Finance Minister Kristin Halvorsen said.
The tax was agreed by all political parties, apart from the Progress Party, as part of the country’s overall climate change policy.
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“Of course petrol is expensive but it’s okay. The standard of living is good here and salaries are high,” said Stine Nore, a 28-year-old logistics manager as she filled up her black BMW estate.
“There have to be incentives for people to drive less. Driving is a luxury. People should only drive a car when it really is necessary,” she said.
Driving is a luxury?? This, in itself, is a frightening and dangerous attitude. For it must follow that luxuries, by their very nature, then become privileges reserved only for the more wealthy. The US Congress is already dancing dangerously close to the same conclusion with their calls for conservation. They, too, are standing by idly, refusing to join most of the rest of the world in plans to increase supply, merely to drive up gas prices in order to force behavioral change…
And all in the interest of AGW.
Since when has transportation become a luxury? It is America’s vacation travel, even neighborhood trips to local shops, malls, theatres, that keeps our economy healthy. If driving is a luxury and restricted merely to commuting for work or emergency needs, what happens to the consumers’ economy, and the retail businesses that depend upon it?
Norway’s elections are Sept 2009, one year later than our US elections. Yet already they are predicting a first time ever change for Norway politics.
But now supporters of the centre-left coalition government fear the tax increase will cost them dearly in the next elections, in September 2009.
“It’s a very unwise political decision. The only thing it will accomplish is that the Progress Party will get even more votes,” Labour MP Karita Bekkemellem told the daily VG in June.
A third of the population expect fuel prices to be the most important issue in the polls, according to a survey in Aftenposten, Norway’s paper of reference.
Speculation has been rife over whether the far-right could come to power for the first time in the next election.
Even Labour Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg has acknowledged that the Progress Party could get into government.
Those living in rural and remote areas are particularly incensed about the tax increase as they are more dependent on cars than city dwellers who have access to public transport.
“This is a serious issue with many people I have spoken to and met in my region, (rural) Moere and Romsdal. Much more serious than for those who live in a small circle in Oslo and Gruenerloekka (a fashionable area in the capital) think,” Bekkemellem told VG.
Despite Norway’s favorable position of having ample supply, and even govt majority shares, int’l pressure on governments to implement climate change legislation is being played - all at the consumers’ expense.
In the meantime, the AGW skeptics just gained another influential and credible member… Dr. David Evans, consultant to the Australian Greenhouse Office from 1999 to 2005, wrote an op-ed in The Australian News on July 18th. Naturally, the coverage of this op-ed was limited to a few media, mostly with more conservative tags applied to their coverage.
I DEVOTED six years to carbon accounting, building models for the Australian Greenhouse Office. I am the rocket scientist who wrote the carbon accounting model (FullCAM) that measures Australia’s compliance with the Kyoto Protocol, in the land use change and forestry sector.
FullCAM models carbon flows in plants, mulch, debris, soils and agricultural products, using inputs such as climate data, plant physiology and satellite data. I’ve been following the global warming debate closely for years.
When I started that job in 1999 the evidence that carbon emissions caused global warming seemed pretty good: CO2 is a greenhouse gas, the old ice core data, no other suspects.
The evidence was not conclusive, but why wait until we were certain when it appeared we needed to act quickly? Soon government and the scientific community were working together and lots of science research jobs were created. We scientists had political support, the ear of government, big budgets, and we felt fairly important and useful (well, I did anyway). It was great. We were working to save the planet.
But since 1999 new evidence has seriously weakened the case that carbon emissions are the main cause of global warming, and by 2007 the evidence was pretty conclusive that carbon played only a minor role and was not the main cause of the recent global warming. As Lord Keynes famously said, “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?”
There has not been a public debate about the causes of global warming and most of the public and our decision makers are not aware of the most basic salient facts:
1. The greenhouse signature is missing. We have been looking and measuring for years, and cannot find it.
Each possible cause of global warming has a different pattern of where in the planet the warming occurs first and the most. The signature of an increased greenhouse effect is a hot spot about 10km up in the atmosphere over the tropics. We have been measuring the atmosphere for decades using radiosondes: weather balloons with thermometers that radio back the temperature as the balloon ascends through the atmosphere. They show no hot spot. Whatsoever.
If there is no hot spot then an increased greenhouse effect is not the cause of global warming. So we know for sure that carbon emissions are not a significant cause of the global warming. If we had found the greenhouse signature then I would be an alarmist again.
When the signature was found to be missing in 2007 (after the latest IPCC report), alarmists objected that maybe the readings of the radiosonde thermometers might not be accurate and maybe the hot spot was there but had gone undetected. Yet hundreds of radiosondes have given the same answer, so statistically it is not possible that they missed the hot spot.
Recently the alarmists have suggested we ignore the radiosonde thermometers, but instead take the radiosonde wind measurements, apply a theory about wind shear, and run the results through their computers to estimate the temperatures. They then say that the results show that we cannot rule out the presence of a hot spot. If you believe that you’d believe anything.
The question now becomes this… what will happen first? Will governments pressured by a psuedo “consensus” inflict irreversible damage to the world economy? Or will the world’s climate itself prove the “consensus’ as flagrantly flawed - in time to prevent the serious economic damage proposed by the AGW alarmists?
I’d like to vote for the latter. However the former includes those who will continue the pressure because of the financial agendas, and big money in play.
But there is a third choice… consumers will overwhelmingly reject the economic pressure governments will place on them to bow to the AGW altar. And that one just may be a good bet.
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UPDATE: It looks like the Pakistanis are also getting vocal about the new coalition government’s price increases in fuel taxes. Whether the government did this for AGW, or just pure corrupt greed, is not mentioned. It is, however, an indication that the honeymoon is over for Benazir’s party and their coalition government… for the Pakistanis are regretting the day they believed the PPP campaign promises.
President of Sukkur Small Traders Haji Mohammad Haroon Memon said the increase in fuel prices was a sheer injustice. The government should have instead given subsidy on petroleum products to bring some relief to people, he urged.
Religious leaders Mufti Mohammad Ibrahim Qadri and Musharraf Mehmood Qadri slammed the increase and termed it an anti-people action.
The present government had failed miserably to provide any relief to people, who had become disappointed in their tall claims and hollow promises, they said, adding, that the government had delivered nothing during its 100 days.
Mohammad Hanif Memon and Abdul Rehman Ansari said that the rulers should cut down on their royal expenses to be able to provide some relief to people with regards to daily-use commodities.
Majority of people who recorded their comments during the survey believed that the government had no interest in solving people’s problems. The only factor behind price hike was wrong policies, which had overburdened people with heavy weight of inflation, they said.
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