A Carbon Tax Won't Stop Hurricanes

Media tends to overhype everything and it is not helpful when politicians get in on it as well. The politicalization of this issue is mostly due to politicians being quick to support "solutions" to climate change that won't substantially affect the climate, are costly and have little or no scientific basis, all in the name of "doing something". The reason there are so many "deniers" is because everything politicians do looks like a money grab. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. Human do increase the levels of said gas in the atmosphere. But how much it affects the climate and what the 2nd order effects are is still poorly understood and climate models are generally terrible at prediction (though sometimes they are pretty good at recreating the past). Ultimately, mass taxation programs and forced reduction of CO2 output (which are the solutions most talk about) could well have worse effects on society (and ultimately the planet) than whatever global warming may be caused by human CO2 emissions. One worse than normal hurricane year certainly doesn't constitute proof of anything, especially given a few recent below normal years.

Certain media outlets have linked Hurricanes Harvey and Irma to global warming by ignoring wide-ranging facts and cherry-picking timeframes, geographical locations, report contents, and the opinions of scientists. As explained in an academic book about analyzing data, “One of the worst abuses of analytics is to cherry pick results. Cherry pickers tout analysis findings when the results serve the purpose at hand. But, they ignore the findings when the results conflict with the original plan.”

Source: A Carbon Tax Won't Stop Hurricanes - Foundation for Economic Education