Romney and carbon tax – Senator Mitt Romney might not be ready to introduce a bill – or sign on to a current proposal – but he is seriously considering and reviewing the merits of a carbon tax that would return the revenue to taxpayers. Specifically, Romney said he is enticed by a proposal developed by former Republican Secretaries of State James Baker III and George Shultz as part of the Climate Leadership Council that would impose a carbon tax beginning at $40 per ton, increasing 5% every year, and return the revenue to households through equal quarterly payments, known as “dividends,” to offset higher energy prices. “I am interested in the proposal because it may create incentives for the private sector to develop new technologies that will be adopted globally,” Romney said. He added that his interest in any legislation is its actual effect, not what others are “pushing.” (Washington Examiner)
Wait, what? – Remember Sidney Powell? She was the attorney who claimed that Iranian and Chinese agents had hacked Dominion’s voting machines so Trump would lose (among other things). She was hit with a $1.3 billion defamation lawsuit by Dominion, which accuses Powell of “eviscerating the company’s reputation by falsely claiming it conspired with Democrats and shadowy foreign agents to steal the election.” Now, she wants the suit dismissed because….wait for it….no one should have believed her anyway. Her attorneys argued that “no reasonable person” would think her claims were true, although she continues to stick by them. The court filing also noted that political speech “is often vituperative, abusive and inexact,” and that it is a “well recognized principle that political statements are inherently prone to exaggeration and hyperbole.” And as if the whole situation couldn’t get any weirder, well, those arguments have worked before. (The Hill, CNN, Forbes, Bloomberg)
Project Iceworm – The Greenland ice sheet is an astonishing natural phenomenon, a gigantic slab of ice up to a mile deep that covers an area more than four times the size of California. During the Cold War, Pentagon planners decided it was a perfect place to burrow inside and create a military base known as Camp Century. Tunnels and large workspaces were carved from the ice and covered over with snow and ice. “You could dig out a huge bunker underneath the ice sheet and no one would know,” USU geology professor Tammy Rittenour said in an interview on the USU campus. “It would be invisible from above.” Project Iceworm looked at core samples from the ice sheet that went down nearly a mile and into the sediment below. What they found was evidence that the ice sheet has melted away completely, twice. (Deseret News)
