Here we are again, with more on the Crap and Debt bill, as our commenter, PatriotUSA, put it.
House Bill 2454, traveling under the name “American Clean Energy And Security Act of 2009”, has crawled out of committee and is currently being debated. Grand Poobah Pelosi wants a vote by Friday.
This sucker weighs in at 1,292 pages. Do you think your representative has read it all or did he pass it to one of his many minions to summarize for him in a page or two? You can look it over at the link provided; it takes a minute for all the pages to load. Read ‘em and weep that any elected official in America would propose these regulations. Babs’ proposal in the comments, about moving to another country, begins to appear a reasonable response to what we will be facing if this becomes law.
ACES is also known as the Waxman-Markey bill, since they are the only sponsors of this tragedy (and I don’t know the political implications of having only two co-sponsors. Did no one else sign on, or were their colleagues told not to sign? If anyone understands the subtext, please enlighten us).
Here is our president, promising higher energy bills:
Yeah, he can afford to be sanguine about it. Obama doesn’t have to pay for keeping the Oval Office thermostat set at 70° [Fahrenheit]. He doesn’t pay monetarily or politically for this hypocrisy, but rest assured he will pay politically if this bill passes. Of course, that won’t keep you warm…or maybe it will, if he is shut out of office the second time around.
Several commenters have asked if I’m a Global Warming Denier. I’m not sure of the precise tenets of this faith, but here’s my own particular creed: the climate is changing, as the climate always does. Is it getting warmer or cooler? Who knows? The scientific information is conflicting.
Is this change caused by human behavior? Sure. The Chinese have finally learned to control sunspot activity so it’s their doing.
On a site devoted to statistics and surveys, there is a page that breaks down the beliefs of some meteorologists and others regarding global warming theories. They say:
Overall, only 5% [of those surveyed - D] describe the study of global climate change as a “fully mature” science, but 51% describe it as “fairly mature,” while 40% see it as still an “emerging” science. However, over two out of three (69%) believe there is at least a 50-50 chance that the debate over the role of human activity in global warming will be settled in the next 10 to 20 years.
Only 29% express a “great deal of confidence” that scientists understand the size and extent of anthropogenic [human] sources of greenhouse gases,” and only 32% are confident about our understanding of the archeological climate evidence.
Despite the lack of “maturity” of the science of global climate change, these folks believe what they read, proving that if something is repeated often enough, it becomes the “truth”. Notice the cognitive dissonance these people manage to cobble together when you put their beliefs in the accuracy of this science together with their faith in global warming:
Ninety-seven percent of the climate scientists surveyed believe “global average temperatures have increased” during the past century.
Eighty-four percent say they personally believe human-induced warming is occurring, and 74% agree that “currently available scientific evidence” substantiates its occurrence. Only 5% believe that that human activity does not contribute to greenhouse warming; the rest are unsure.
A slight majority (54%) believe the warming measured over the last 100 years is not “within the range of natural temperature fluctuation.”
A slight majority (56%) see at least a 50-50 chance that global temperatures will rise two degrees Celsius or more during the next 50 to 100 years…
I wonder if any of these “scientists” (sorry, too many of them are merely meteorologists. They study weather, not climate) have noticed that their belief system has serious contradictions? That’s okay; it’s just an indication that this is a belief system, not a scientific conclusion founded on a working hypothesis using scientific methodology to prove their contentions. This is not science, it is "best guess" weather predicitons.
I’m a skeptic. We simply don’t know enough to make accurate predictions. Nor do we take into account changes in our observations. When the USSR fragmented and broke, much of the climate study and the weather stations were simply abandoned. So the sudden loss of data from such a huge land mass was simply ignored. This side-step permitted a skewed measure.
Just as the study of the human brain is primitive, so is the study of the earth’s climate. Which is not to say there’s not plenty of money to be made in both fields, predicting patterns. The accumulation of knowledge in both fields will be long term, so these prognosticators will be dead and gone before they’re proven right or wrong.
After the Club of Rome debacle, I’ve adopted the creed of wait-and-see. As John Sununu says: [with my emphases - D]
[There is]…the current international “rush to judgment” and the calls for implementation of drastic policies to deal with this rashly proclaimed “crisis.” My message today is to make sure we recognize that no matter how effectively we deal with exposing the errors and games behind that agenda, we need to know the battle will never end, because it’s not really about global warming.
The global warming crisis is just the latest surrogate for an over-arching agenda of anti-growth and anti-development. This agenda grew and gathered support in the years following World War II.
One of the first issues to be celebrated as a crisis by these reformers was over-population. That fad peaked in the ‘60s and early ‘70s. The bible of that cult, “The Population Bomb,” argued that “… the battle to feed all of humanity is over” and claimed we had lost the battle, claiming “ … in the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death.”
This clearly phony crisis was followed by warnings about global climate change: Global cooling was going to lead to a new ice age.
But the best parallel to the current crusade, the real precursor to the current “panic du jour,” was the computer model-based alarmism of the “Club of Rome.” The Club of Rome’s claim that global economic collapse was imminent because the world would soon “run out” of some critical resources was a very appropriate precursor to the current dire warnings. It too based its alarms not on any scientific analysis of specific issues, but on a computer model. And like the current call to action, their model was pre-destined to give the result they wanted.
The criticism of the “Club of Rome” models by Resources For the Future clearly applies to the Global Climate Models’ predictions of doom. RFF pointed out that parameters with a negative impact were programmed to grow non-linearly (exponentially in fact) and parameters that mitigated negative effects were programmed to grow, if at all, “only in discrete increments.”
In each of these false alarms, nature and technology spiked their prophecies. The natural cooling period of the ‘50s and ‘60s turned into the warming period of the ‘80s and ‘90s, and with the help of increased C02, a plant nutrient, instead of mass starvation, we had no problem growing enough food for the rapidly increasing world population, and we continue to find and make more efficient use of our other critical resources.
But the anti-growth, anti-development crowd are a hardy bunch. They won’t give up. As nature switched from global cooling to global warming, so did they.
It is quite easy to link virtually all of the principal proponents of this overall agenda through a two- or three-generation mentor-apprentice-mentor professional family tree. I don’t want to go through a specific list of names. That has all been well researched and reported by many of you here. But it is important to understand that without this process of resonating self-acclamation, such bad science and ludicrous predictions would long ago have relegated them all to obscurity.
Make no mistake, their cast of characters may have expanded a bit, but at the core, there is an unbroken lineage back to those unbelievably wrong, unscientific prognosticators.
Their basic method of attack may be the same, but they have certainly refilled their operations. They learned from the “Club of Rome” episode. Since basic hard science is more difficult to bias, they would resort again to modeling. And since critics will take the time to examine their assumptions, they make the models big, obscure, and full of complex feedback structures much too abstract to debate in a public forum.
That all brings us to what has happened in the last 20 years, and where we are today. It is worthwhile reviewing what has gone on over the past two decades to give perspective and context to what is taking place today.
Some Basic Facts
Let’s begin by summarizing what we did know then and what we do know now. In fact, we don’t know as much as the media and the public have been led to think we know.
Here is what we could include in an absolute fact base:
- Over long periods of time climate changes
- Over short periods of time weather changes
- There have been relatively long periods of time when the world has been colder than it is now
- There have been relatively long periods of time when the world has been warmer than it is now
- C02 is a trace gas whose presence in the atmosphere can contribute to an increase in the absorption of thermal radiation
- The increased use of carbon-based fuels has produced significant increases in the amount of C02 released to the atmosphere, though still dwarfed by natural sources.
Also, there have been a number of identifiable periods of temperature variability over the past century:
Cooling in the ‘20s
Heating in the ‘30s and ‘40s
Cooling in the ‘50s and ‘60s and ‘70s
Warming in the ‘80s and ‘90s
and cooling for the past decade
It was the warming period of the late ‘80s and ‘90s that provided the context and the opportunity for the alarmists to argue that once again we faced a serious calamity.
[…]
Over the years, the anti-growth lobby has used the global warming issue very effectively. They have received even more significant levels of funding. One estimate puts the U.S. contribution to climate research today at $10 billion per year and climbing.
Unfortunately, the alarmists have effectively captured the funding allocation process.
An important question to ask now is: What have we gotten for that investment? In my opinion, surprisingly little. Of course, the computing capacity has been increased, and the models have become bigger and more complex, and they have been able to include better detail in some of the air-ocean interactions, but they still are a long way from modeling detailed phenomena very well. And of course, many of the most critical phenomena are still represented in the computer models by an assumed interaction or feedback process. And thus, the models are still susceptible to the same predestination of results as was the “Club of Rome” model….
He has much more to say. As the text of his brief CV that follows the end of this speech shows, his background and education speak to his knowledge of this subject - i.e., the politics of global climate change theories.
He was commissioned chief of staff to the president of the United States on January 21, 1989 and served in the White House until March 1, 1992. He became New Hampshire’s 75th chief executive on January 6, 1983 and served three consecutive terms prior to joining the White House staff. In 2004 he co-chaired the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board, Nuclear Energy Task Force. He has taught at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and Tufts University; served Tufts as associate dean of the College of Engineering; served on the Advisory Board of the Technology and Policy Program at MIT; co-hosted CNN’s nightly “Crossfire” program; and helped establish and served as chief engineer for Astro Dynamics Inc. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering
A commenter, “Watchful”has a link in the comments to the BBC’s documentary, The Great Global Warming Swindle. It’s over an hour long; we can’t watch the whole thing without causing problems with our connections. If you don’t have limits with your connectivity, watching the whole thing would be preferable. However, this shorter précis is available:
House Bill 2454 is a philosophy based on fear and scarcity. This philosophy has driven the engine of government in our country for a long while. We could trace it back in concrete terms to 1913, and the deals done then with federal income tax and the creation of the Federal Reserve of the United States. Will either institution be cut back or simplified? One can hope. But it is Henny-Penneys who tend to get elected to government office. They run on the basis of fear and scarcity and they win. The exception was President Reagan, whose philosophy of abundance wrought some small changes, though he, too, grew government.
We need leadership that understands innovation, creativity, and what it means to be an entrepreneur. We need people who understand foreign policy beyond the bromides they tediously provide. We especially need leaders who believe in our country’s potential and who understand at least some of the horrific consequences, often unintended.
However, as President Obama showed in the first video, some of our problems will be deliberately induced. If this man were a doctor, he’d be using leeches to cure disease. That’s all this bill is: giant leeches designed to suck the blood out of the body politic.
Where are those who believe in abundance, who realize that the earth redeems and heals itself without our help or interference? Unfortunately, the Puritan thinking that ran through the founding of the Massachusetts Bay Colony has prevailed once again. The world centers around humanity’s evil rather than the abundance that surrounds us.
Eric at Red State, where I got the Obama video, has also provided a link that permits you to call your congress representative. Put in your zip code to be provided with your rep’s phone number. I prefer emails, but this late in the game, phone calls will be effective.
Whatever you do, stand and fight now. With this Congress and this President, it will be only one of many struggles. We have been burdened with the Stimulus Attack. Let us resist this new onslaught by the House.
- - - - - - - - -
Call it “cut and run” because that’s what our Imperial Congress is about to do.
This week, the House of Representatives is expected to vote on that scurrilous piece of legislation known as “cap and trade”. Named after its two sponsors, Waxman and Markey, this bill spells doom for the American economy, both in the short term and longer down the line.
Here’s a good duel that exposes some of the problems:
The Heritage Foundation has been keeping up with the progression of this robbery in the name of Greenspeak. A unilateral pullback like the demented members of Congress who plan to vote yea for this bill means that we hand over the reins of our economy to whichever countries either (a) sign on to this kind of nonsense and proceed to ignore it, or (b) those, like China, who will simply ignore it because to do so is in their own best interest.
But our political class no longer serves America’s best interests. It is too short-sighted, too caught in the nets of political correctness about the environment, and beholden to too many people to do what they were hired to do: watch out for America’s interests.
Here’s the Heritage Foundation’s latest take, as of 16 June. They title their essay “Son of Waxman-Markey: More Politics Makes for a More Costly Bill”:
Representatives Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Ed Markey (D-MA) modified their global warming proposal from the draft version published on March 31. For the most part, the changes focused on the distribution of the allowance revenue--the equivalent of tax revenue.
There was also a slight easing of targeted emissions reductions for 2020, which resulted in a marginally lower economic impact. However, the new distribution of allowances created a less efficient pattern of government expenditures and more than offset the gain from the lower cap for 2020.
The economic impact of the new draft varies from that of the original draft in several major ways:
- Compared to no cap and trade, real GDP losses increase an additional $2 trillion, from $7.4 trillion under the original draft to $9.4 trillion under the new draft;
- Compared to no cap and trade, average unemployment increases an additional 261,000 jobs, from 844,000 lost jobs under the original draft to 1,145,000 lost jobs under the new draft; and
- Peak-year unemployment losses rise by 500,000 jobs, from 2 million under the original draft to 2.5 million under the new draft.
Though the proposed legislation would have little impact on world temperatures, it is a massive energy tax in disguise that promises job losses, income cuts, and a sharp left turn toward big government.[my emphases - D]
Isn’t that the point? The sharp left turn into Big Government’s waiting arms? We will have no recourse if this bill is passed. Talk about trapped!
Ultimately, this bill would result in government-set caps on energy use that damage the economy and hobble growth--the very growth that supports investment and innovation. Analysis of the economic impact of Waxman-Markey projects that by 2035 the bill would:
- Reduce aggregate gross domestic product (GDP) by $9.4 trillion;
- Destroy 1,145,000 jobs on average, with peak years seeing unemployment rise by over 2,479,000 jobs;
- Raise electricity rates 90 percent after adjusting for inflation;
- Raise inflation-adjusted gasoline prices by 58 percent;
- Raise residential natural gas prices by 55 percent;
- Raise an average family’s annual energy bill by $1,241; and
- Result in an increase of $28,728 in additional federal debt per person, again after adjusting for inflation
And they’re going to do this in a severe economic contraction with rising unemployment. Are these people on drugs? On the take?
Stock up on long underwear and stocking caps for our coming cold spell. You won’t be able to afford much in the way of heat when Waxman and Markey are done with us.
Waxman-Markey Basics
The bill discloses a basic two-pronged approach to cutting greenhouse gas emissions:
1.The first prong is a set of mandates forcing efficiencies independent of any cost-benefit calculations on the part of industry or consumers. These mandates include a requirement for low-carbon motor fuels and a tenfold increase in the production of electricity from renewable sources.
Notice that the second mandate of Prong One is a TENfold increase in the production of electricity from renewable sources. We received a notice from our rural electric co-operative that they have locked in a contract that runs until 2012. After that, all bets are off because “renewable” energy is hugely expensive and the co-op is saying frankly that they don’t know where it’s going to come from.
What no proponent of this bill will admit is that some of these “renewables” are even more polluting than coal. But Obama has decided coal is evil. Thus, it’s not really about emissions or clean air. It’s about destruction of an industry that the political class deems evil.
2.The second prong is cap and trade. With cap and trade, absolute limits on total emissions of greenhouse gases are established. Before those in a covered sector can emit a greenhouse gas, they need to have the ration coupons (also known as pollution permits or allowances) for each ton emitted. Because the ration coupons will have a value, and therefore a cost, cap and trade becomes a tax on fossil fuels and the energy they generate.
This is part of Obama’s promise to “kill the coal companies”. As if West Virginia weren’t poor enough already.
The intent of cap and trade is to impose a cost on CO2 and allow businesses and consumers to adapt as well as they can to this new cost. The mandates of the first parts of Waxman-Markey are counterproductive because they force choices on the economy that might not be the most efficient and inexpensive ways to cut CO2. That said, this paper’s analysis looks at only the cost of a simple cap-and-trade approach. Consequently, the economic impact estimates reported here will likely be lower than the economic cost of cap and trade hobbled further by mandates.
Renewable Energy Goals
The renewable energy targets already established by current laws will be challenging to meet. This paper assumes no additional renewable energy beyond these significant baseline increases of 36 billion gallons of renewable motor fuels and the existing state-level renewable electricity requirements. The current baseline projects 18.3 gigawatts of increased nuclear power capacity. The history of nuclear construction in the 1960s through the 1980s shows that a much more aggressive nuclear build-out is technologically possible, but political and other factors make the likelihood of a “nuclear renaissance” highly uncertain. Therefore, this study assumes no additional nuclear capacity beyond the baseline increase.
Results of The Heritage Foundation’s Analysis
It is no surprise that the economy responds to cap and trade as it would to an energy crisis.
This is a crucial point. Remember Jimmy Carter’s long lines for gasoline? You can expect them to return, along with the malaise this enormous mistake will induce.
The price on carbon emissions forces energy cuts across the economy, since non-carbon energy sources cannot replace fossil fuels quickly enough. Energy prices rise; income and employment drop.
The current recession diminishes near-term projections for aggregate economic activity. As this activity drops, so does energy use. Though a recession is bad news, it has the effect of moving the economy closer to the energy cuts needed to meet the emissions targets. Nevertheless, the income (GDP) losses are nearly $200 billion out of the gate and average over $380 billion per year. As the economy recovers and the caps tighten, the detrimental effect of cap and trade gets more and more severe. In the worst years, GDP losses exceed $700 billion per year.
If you want to see this illustrated, the graphs are at the Heritage website. They are impressive and dismal.
This Congress and this administration are not friends of the United States. They are in thrall to some supra-nationalist religion of environmentalism, nihilism, and the establishment of poverty that makes us all beholden to the government for what little good remains.
Yes, they will continue to drive gas hogs, eat on our dime at their Congressional and Senate dining rooms, and fly their corporate jets from Washington to home at our expense.
Their draconian laws will not affect them and they know it. But go ahead and email or call your representative anyway. Let him or her know you'll be watching the vote. The one thing we can hold over them - some of 'em - is the threat of loss of incumbency.
Meet you at the ballot box.
32 comments:
"But our political class no longer serves America’s best interests. It is too short-sighted, too caught in the nets of political correctness about the environment, and beholden to too many people to do what they were hired to do: watch out for America’s interests."
What is consistently forgotten in this debate is the behind the scenes shenanigans which IS going on and they DID meet on March 23rd, 2005 and sign America away, passing control of:
a. defense
b. the judiciary
c. education
d. social security
e. opens the borders and creates access and egress via the state constructed NAFTA Superhighways
f. creates a free economic zone within NA shores
g is advised by the North American Advisory Council [CFR appointees - p53].
Naturally, the specifics have been altered, delayed etc. but the Great Work of Ages, socialistic in conception, proceeds apace and Obama is their man.
Not to worry. I'm sure everybody's friend, Mr. Ben Bernanke, will make sure enough money is created to satisfy the needs of all citizens.
As Dymphna noted in her closing:
"Their draconian laws will not affect them and they know it" . . .part deux:
Congress and the Unions Exempt from Obamacare
Do you have an alternative plan, Dymphna, to deal with global warming? Perhaps settling displaced Bangladeshi Muslims on the newly unfrozen tundra of Northern Canada?
Or are you a follower of the global warming-denier crowd? Or the religious fanatic crowd that things global warming will bring the rapture closer?
nodroG - I have an alternative; purchase and install coal stack scrubbers in China for free.
Have you ever heard of the concept of low hanging fruit? Well, the pollution in the industrial centers of China is hanging pretty damn low...
Cap and Trade is not only utter folly as all estimates I have read say that fully implemented it will lower (or cause not to rise) the earth's temp by less than a quarter of a degree. That is a pretty small return on driving millions of manufacturing jobs and heavy industry out of the country only to have these jobs taken by Chinese. And don't kid yourself, that is exactly where the jobs will go.
My husband is a manufacturing engineer. Ten years ago all the manufacturing for the high tech industry he works in, optics, was done right here in the USA. Now, my husband is either in China, Taiwan or Mexico for at least 4 months out of the year because, surprise!, that is where the products are being manufactured.
Having been to China and Taiwan myself I can tell you that the air pollution is absolutely horrible and the water is unfit to drink. They don't give a damn. They need jobs for their people.
A strong argument could be made that Cap and Trade will actually worsen the situation because it will drive manufacturing and heavy industry from an already environmentally regulated nation to one with virtually no environmental controls.
Try to think past your nose nodroG...
If our gov't were truly interested in curbing CO2 emissions they would be engaged in a crash program to build nuclear energy plants. To my knowledge, there has been zero encouragement for nuclear power. Cap and Trade is certainly about power but not the kind that turns your lights on.
Babs, I commend you for actually proposing alternative solutions to the issue of human-induced global warming. You are following the lead of those like Bjorn Lomborg, who acknowledge that global warming is occurring but argue that "the cure must not be worse than the disease." Your proposed alternatives are quite sensible. I too advocate the building of new nuclear power plants, and I would advocate their construction along the rivers and coasts of the Pacific Northwest, where I live, and where cooling water is readily available.
I'm still waiting to hear from you, Dymphna, as to whether you are in Babs' camp or in the camp of the global warming-deniers.
Heh! I guess I didn't mention that I am an AGW denier!!!!
I think it is absolutely rubbish that human activity is heating the earth up at an unprecedented rate vs sunspot activity or other natural events. One blow from Mt. St. Helens will wipe out in a second all secondary points of pollution in the area.
In short, I think AGW is a total hoax...
My position is that cleaning up the air and water is of primary concern to the humans living on this planet, NOT TO STOP GLOBAL WARMING.
My alternatives just happen to hand and glove nicely with the lunatics that think man can stop/reverse the so called heating of the planet which, BTW has been cooling for the past 10 years according to those that make their living dealing with this stuff. Never mind that they lost a sheet of ice as large as the State of CA recently... (OMG, the ice caps are melting, the polar bears are all going to drown! Funny thing about the polar bears, their pop. has increased over the last decade!) Is is nonsense, pure and simple.
Babs, (sigh). As a Gates of Vienna commenter, I guess it was too much to expect any common sense from you after all!
Well nodroG, you thought I was making a lot of sense before I popped your liberal bubble. You actually congratulated me!
Have YOU looked into sunspot activity and how it relates to global temps? Or, do you wish to avoid that subject because it doesn't fit into your "punish the humans" mentality?
You seemed to think that the actions I recommend were sound. As I said, they fit hand and glove with your agenda. Why fight it?
Can you refute the increase in polar bear population?
Thanks, Babs.
I don't agree that global warming is caused by human activity. In fact, I find such beliefs narcissistic in the extreme. Not to mention self-hating.
It is laughable to think that we are so powerful, or that our mission is to save obscure species of snail darter when obscure species of everything disappear at a fast clip. Always have.
The renewable energy sources are a scam. We haven't developed the technology yet to power everything we want to use. Yes, nuclear power is an excellent idea but it's not going to happen. There is a public will for such efforts, but no political will so we won't get what we need.
Killing coal use in this country isn't going to solve anything. The stuff will simply be shipped to India, China...well, the four BRIC countries, who don't have our holier-tahn-thou greenies to contend with. They're fortunate not to be bogged down in scams and unscientific, pie-in-the-sky ideas.
Go plant a windmill, nodrog. And then climb on your horse and go jousting.
@ James Higham:
I read that 2005 report. It had some interesting views on co-ordination among the three North American countries. I didn't agree with all of them, and one dissenter did not his or her concerns re sovereignty. They also said Mexico had to clean up its corruption and begin to create a middle class if things were going to change there. Without that, no agreement.
Obviously, Barry doesn't buy it because his "buy American" has teed off the Canadians, with good reason. Strange, for a man who doesn't appear to like his own country to appeal at that level as a response to our economic problems. The man is someone's tool, just can't figure out whose.
I'm still waiting to hear from you, Dymphna, as to whether you are in Babs' camp or in the camp of the global warming-deniers.
Glad to see that Dymphna showed up for the party. Nodrog, count me in as a GWD and you spin the liberal crap on this plan for smoke and mirrors. Even if you don't care about us G o V posters, who you assume to be lacking in common sense, here is what I would like to see. Use all of our domestic energy that we have. COAL, NUCLEAR, HYDRO, WIND, SOLAR,
and other up and coming energy possibilities. We need to build new refineries and nuclear plants. We have massive amounts of coal and screw you, if you do not like it. The fact that many Americans are in favor of most of the above, and not Crap and debt, as you so richly favor.
You want to come and pay for my utilities and gasoline after crap and debt gets passed and implemented? The earth has been cooling, polar bears increasing in numbers(damn, maybe we need a controlled hunt to level those numbers off, what say you? I need a
nice white bear rug for our dog to sleep on.)
GW is a bunch of crap.
I do believe that there
is a problem, and it is
the GW alarmists and cry babies screaming wolf. The riduiculous solutions proposed by the idiots in power will run this country into the poor house. I live in Oregon and we have had almost two terms of "sleepy Ted" Kulingoski as Governor. He is so blinded by the drive to push Oregon into the green aganda it has alot to do with why businesses are FLEEING Oregon at a record pace, plus the stupid democrats raised taxes to all the wrong businesses and citizens. The green, GW plans have contibuted to Oregon having the second highest "unenjoyment" rate in the country. Deschutes county, where I live is at 16% "unenjoyment." So thanks to all the tree huggers, earth muffins and PC correct at all cost liberals who have ruined this state for many years to come.
This Crap and Debt energy bill will
just add to the demise and ruination of the country. We will be able to lay the blame right at the feet of morons like you, and the politicians who crammed this garbage down the throats of the American people.
Dymphna: Killing coal use in this country isn't going to solve anything. The stuff will simply be shipped to India, China...well, the four BRIC countries, who don't have our holier-than-thou greenies to contend with.
With all due respect, where were you when I was arguing against the BRIC's obvious efforts to destroy America's economy? They can't buy our coal without paying some sort of price of admission. Or can they?
While coal represents the least desirable method of power generation, the fact that China will be using it at levels that makes America look like a rude beginner must have some meaning.
(Current estimates of China's coal use make its emissions reach a par with that of the worst emitters of the Western world, IF NOT WORSE.)
Please, let's all of us find some common ground.
Interestingly, I don't consider myself a downright GW denier. But the measures suggested and taken by our Dear Leaders are so drastic they'll run our economy in the ground before we even get a chance to find out if we have solved the problem.
China is the big player here. They build so many new coal-based power plants, airports etc. etc. that they'll dwarf the US soon, if they're not doing so already. They have coal enough for centuries.
Personally, I think we should go to nuclear power. And examine if electostatic fusion has merit or not. It's just a splash of $200 million.
BTW, I don't think the BRIC countries are trying to destroy the US economy. Why should they? Mr. Ben Bernanke and the other stimulus/inflationist idiots are doing much better anyway than any outsider would be able to.
I find such beliefs narcissistic in the extreme.
D - The word I was thinking of was arrogant...
As I said in my first comment, the manufacturing of the optics products my husband is involved in was done right here on Long Island 10 years ago. The people that did the assembly were American High School graduates that earned a good living and were able to buy a small starter home, have a family, pay taxes and basically lead a reasonable life. The supervisors of the lines usually had an associates degree. My husband's company laid off 380 assemblers and sent the manufacturing first to Mexico and then on to Taiwan and China. I often wonder what happened to the Americans that used to work for the company. It makes me very sad.
Two nights ago I attended a town hall meeting of my congressman. He stood in front of us and told us that Global Warming is man made and that Cap and Trade is a necessity. I was very surprised by the anger of those attending the meeting! Generally, in my heavily Democrat district, people just sit around agreeing with each other. Not so the other night! In addition to a totally packed house, there were at least 100 protesters outside!
Never mind all those that have been layed off from good paying manufacturing jobs in this congressional district, even working stiffs are having a hard time paying the energy costs. I currently pay over $6,800/year for oil heat and electricity while my husband, in order to continue his employment, spends 4 mos/year out of the country! I wonder if we will be able to hang on to the house if Cap and Trade passes and raises our energy bill by 90%. This is actually a big concern of mine.
Two things: Certainly the congressman should be aware of how many middle class Americans have been thrown out of work in his own congressional district due to environmental and other regulations imposed by the gov't . Second, maybe the congressman should be made aware of our consideration to move out of the country to somewhere like China or Taiwan due to the impossibility of leading a reasonable lifestyle under the greater onerous of the Federal Gov't. BTW, Beijing is actually a very nice place if you don't run afoul of the police and are able to put up with the air pollution! Certainly, my husband's commute to his primary job site would be shorter, LOL! I actually wonder if my congressman realizes that people like us are considering a radical change based on his feel good policies.
This last winter our themostat was set at 63/day 53/night and we walked around fully dressed with large double fleece robes on, a hat and sometimes even gloves INSIDE OUR HOME! We do not have air conditioning for the humid/hot summer months.
I defy anyone to tell me what else we should do to lower our energy use without investing tens of thousands of dollars in "green solutions," money that we don't have...
Next winter we will be burning a lot more wood (until the gov't deems it illegal) We will be belching smoke into the atmosphere, unfiltered, because we wish to stay warm...
We live in an antique home, having been built in 1890. Up until 3 years ago I was proud to be the current shephard of this historic farm house. Not any more. The house is like a chain around my neck, the maintenance never stopping...
Cap and Trade might finally be the economic straw that breaks our backs. Our wages have been flat for many years, our costs for property taxes, food and energy increasing well beyond the rate of inflation. I am not sure what the gov't expects us to do. Maybe we are considered the lucky ones as we haven't been thrown out of work, yet...
I knew that when Obama and the Dems took control of our economy we were in for a real sleigh ride. I had no idea what a nightmare it would be.
Babs,
Could not agree with you. We have supllemented our heat with woood but will go full tilt now and f--k them if they try and ban wood as a home heating source. I have watched as most of the people we know here in Central Oregon has left due to job loss and high cost of living. Utilities are very high here and Oregon has one coal plant our comrade Governor is trying to shut down and force the utility that owns this to convert to natural gas, again much more expensive.
The active movement to kill the coal industry is stupid and short sighted. But the Obama administration obviously does not care if the people of this country are going to be forced to pay $5.00plus for a gallon of gasoline and have our job and industry losses continue to mount ever higher. This is part of the "plan" to slides toward socialism and force the American people into obamamobiles, little piece of crap green cars. Those in power are so out of touch with the common persons reality it truly is a tragedy, a disaster just over the horizon, one after another.
Just as an aside, the last group of engineers to go down to the factory in Mexico ended up lying flat on the bottom of the van because they came under gun fire! Can you imagine a bunch of geek engineers fearing for their lives because they are trying to make it to a factory 30 miles south of McAllen Texas? What a way to earn a living. I told my husband to absolutely avoid working on any new product that would be manufactured in Mexico.
Thank you environmental nuts who have driven these jobs out of the country. Thank you state and federal gov't that have placed such huge taxes on the manufacture of products in the U.S. and, thank you again Federal Gov't for your insane border policy...
If you find my comments to this issue to be inflamatory, I guess that is because they are personal. I wonder what nodrog does for a living... Ever had to lay flat in a van to prevent yourself from getting killed in order to manufacture cell phones, bar code scanners and RFID devices? Can you imagine anything more geeky than that?
Babs, your story heard and noted. Enviromental zealots are focusing on wood-burning here in Denmark, too. I'll merrily break any rule they come up with, as I have access to quite a bit of firewood and will use it to cut down my use of imported energy.
For the economy, I think we'll have to give them enough rope to hang themselves. I'm doing some serious reading on Austrian Economics, and encourage everyone else to do likewise, that we may be able to see through the myriad of fallacies presented to us as 'stimulus', 'bailout' or 'solutions' to this mess. Anything involving the Federal Reserve can be assumed to be flawed and inflationary, and the same goes for the 0bama administration, and pretty much every European government, too. They simply do not have a coherent understanding of the problems and are groping in the dark for solutions.
Oh. The Mises Institute decided that copyright is a Bad Idea, and put their complete library (it seems) for download at Mises.org, as they believe their ideas increase in value from being wider known. Good starter books are Economics for Real People and Americas Great Depression. They'll provide lots of intellectual ammunition.
There is a terrific BBC (amazingly), Channel 4 documentary entitled "The Great Global Warming Swindle" which is available on YouTube. It beautifuly presents the science behind the global warming hypothesis in a clear, concicise way. It very clearly shows that the science DOES NOT SUPPORT the hypothesis of human-caused global warming. Instead the science supports an entirely
different hypthesis.
I will try to paste the link below, but due to lack of computer skills, may not do it correctly. If this link is not correct, perhaps someone else can go to YouTube and post the link.
Please, please pass this on to friends, enemies, liberals, leftists--anyone who might watch it. It deserves wide dissemination. Here is my attempt at a link:
GlobalWarmingSwindle
Watchful--
Your link worked fine. However, I did find a short version summary, at 13 minutes or so. I'm going to put that up for viewers.
I'm also going to bump this post since the bill is under consideration now.
Babs, your Congressional representative sounds clueless. People need to use his contact number to call, or go to Thomas and look him up and write an email.
They are all vulnerable when it comes to their incumbency. Thus, the more they hear personally from their constituents -- e.g., the ones at the meeting -- the more they will carve their voting trail to resemble what people seem to want.
Occasions arise when a truly wonderful and successful civilisation turns on itself, critising itself while lauding other cultures castly inferior. It is a suicidal impulse. This then leads to policy measures that destroy the very culture on which its success rests.
Here is a lesson from the past - Via EU Referendum.
Death of a Civilization by David Deming
There is ofcourse another more mundane reason -power, money, and the patronage that comes with it.
The entire political establishment has too much political capital invested in averting a manmade warming globe. Their intention, as far as I can make out, is to increase taxation allround, till it strangles industrial output. This will have the effect of reducing energy generation, and thus slowing down the "warming". This strategy has the very desirable effect of garnering lots and lots of money in the hands of politicians, to do with as they please.
All politicians take advantage of a crisis - the recent financial one being a case in point. If none exists, then one has to be manufactured. It is unlikely that after investing so much political capital, politicians are going to turn - and thus lose the chance of getting their hands on vast amounts of money.
If after robbing the people blind, as well as strangling industry (killing the cattle), global warming does not happen, politicians will hail their strategy a resounding success. Its win win. Unfortunately, most of the industries by then, would have relocated to a more sane part of the world - Asia, and in particular China. I hope the Chinese will be as generous as the British were.
Perhaps the obstinacy of the Left regarding climate change isn't due to their belief in the truth of AGW but rather on their totalitarian desire to control the masses.
The Left is littered with Ivy League elites who truly believe that We the People aren't fit to govern ourselves and that our interests as a nation and a people are better served if we are ruled by them.
It isn't that they have a maternal instinct to nanny us, it's that they have an irresistible urge to assert their superiority over us by trying to micromanage our lives.
I believe that if nationalized health care, cap & trade, and amnesty all pass the Democrats will be wiped out in 2010 and 2012.
Conservatives like myself will not submit to becoming slaves to the state.
I loathe big government Leftists and won't hesitate to support, with arms if needed, a secessionist movement to split this country down the middle with Liberals to one side and Conservatives to the other.
I'll revel in schadenfreude at their slide in to Marxism and eventual collapse.
We will need to build a wall to keep the refugees out lest they infect us.
Plants need CO2 to grow. The whole AGW is a means to ruin western economies - even more than they are now.
I have to go but before I do, the IPCC was set up by a guy called Maurice Strong.These scientists are all "bought and paid for".
(Ezra Levant wrote a good piece on him a long time ago).
Cap and Trade will not change the weather. If man thinks he can control the weather he is kidding himself!
350 parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere - what joke! Ask your local nurseryman if he has ever pumped CO2 into his greenhouses.
Methane and water vapor are more dangerous.Carbon Monoxide is the pollutant - not CO2.
Google Ian Plimer's book "Heaven and Earth".
Yeah, Charlemagne--
That's it in a nutshell. Here's more from a site DP111 suggested:
A New Way Forward?
The inevitable politicization of climate policy–call it government failure–should lead well-meaning, open-minded environmentalists to check their premises and consider a nonpolitical approach to what they see as market failure. After all, the imperfect government must be weighted against the imperfect market. Perhaps a revolt against political capitalism, or what in this area is called the climate-industrial complex, will bring about the end of not only Waxman-Markey but the futile crusade to “stabilize climate.”
See: What's Up With That
They won "best science blog" in 2008. Deserved it, too, from what I can see.
According to a report in Environment & Climate News,(1) James Hansen, astronomer and director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) has been caught doctoring temperature data from California “to make a long-term cooling trend look like a warming trend.” The article explains that the temperature history (as reported by the U.S. Historical Climatology Network (USHCN) for Santa Rosa, California) was examined by California meteorologist Anthony Watts and found to show a long-term decline, especially since the 1930’s. Watts then examined the temperature history for the same town as reported by GISS; the GISS report was completely different, reporting a long-term increase in Santa Rosa temperature. “USHCN reports a decline of nearly one-half degree Celsius during the twentieth century, while GISS reports a temperature increase of one-half a degree.”(1)
The article goes on to explain that the USHCN measures temperature by “taking daily readings from an immobile temperature station,” while GISS collects the USHCN temperature readings and then subjects them to adjustments (using methods which Hansen will not reveal), allegedly to correct for artificial influences such as land-use changes. The urban heat island effect (as Santa Rosa’s population increased from slightly more than 10,000 in 1905 to about 158,000 today) would have been expected to result in warmer temperatures (unrelated to global influences) and, hence, to adjust for the urban heat island effect would require the long-term temperature record should be adjusted downward, not upward. Yet, GISS is adjusting the raw temperature data upward instead of downward.
In the article on the facing page,(2) it described how “[i]n 2007, statistical scientists showed GISS had been artificially inflating U.S. temperatures by 0.15 degrees Celsius since the year 2000.” Furthermore, “[i]n 2008 statistical scientists showed GISS had falsely reported October 2008 was the warmest October on record when, in fact, it was a quite normal temperature month.” NASA later admitted that the “Warmest October” claim had been wrong.(3)
References
1. Taylor JM. GISS, Hansen Caught Doctoring More Data. Environment & Climate News Feb. 2009
2. Taylor JM. GISS, Hansen Frequently Report False Warming. Environment & Climate News Feb. 2009
3. ‘Warmest October’ Claim Was Wrong, NASA Admits. Environment & Climate News Jan. 2009
Global Warming is religion to its supporters. No matter the cooling trend for the last ten years which we know about in spite of all attempts of the government, scientific hierarchy, and media to suppress research and data that contradicts the GW dogma. In fact, like politicians they spin the cooling trend to say it proves GW. This is what happens when the religious function infects thinking.
The US economy is tittering on the edge. Cap and Trade will push it over the edge into Depression. This is similar to what happened after the 1929 crash. Hoover raised taxes over 50%, and then Roosevelt further raised taxes driving what should have been a bear market and recession into a Depression.
The politicians and media are a pack of fools leading the US people straight into a train wreak.
Charlemagne wrote The Left is littered with Ivy League elites who truly believe that We the People aren't fit to govern ourselves and that our interests as a nation and a people are better served if we are ruled by them.
Quite.
And who are these "betters"? Why they are MPs, congressmen, Beeboids and people whose sole provider is the taxpayer. People who did an easy subject at university - like sociology, politics, or studying their own mother tongue. These are the "betters"; they never did a day’s real work in a wealth-producing sector of the economy. It is to these people we must defer to on weighty matters such as - thermodynamics, gas laws, heat exchange, solar hydrodynamics, Mankovitch cycles, cloud formations and precipitation and its dependence on pollutants. In other words expertise on climate.
The subject of climate is far too complex for anyone to be an expert. These days it is impossible to be an expert in even one subject. All one can hope for is some recognition in a tiny subset of a discipline. The study of climate can only be a study, and it is false to name it as climate science, thus giving it an aura of respectability that it does not have.
Well, Cap and Trade passed the house by 7 votes...
I hope nodrog is happy about it.
I think this is the single worst piece of legislation I have seen in my adult lifetime.
I guess we shall se how many people are thrown out of work and how many people cannot pay to heat their homes next winter.
Believe me, I hope I am wrong.
I hope nodrog is happy about it.
I think this is the single worst piece of legislation I have seen in my adult lifetime.
Who gives a rats ass if nodrog is "happy." This is the one of the biggest swindles in the leigislative history of this country. I hope we are both wrong, Babs. I do not think we are and we are now rapidly gaining on the massive stupidity that this administration truly represents.If this proves to be the massive failure that many think it is going to be then the leftards and comrade Obamaites will have REALLY shot themselves in the foot. The end result could be a wholesale cleansing of the left from American politics that this country is so badly in need of. Years and years of wrong headed, blind political correctness and multiculturalism have left a trail of devastation from coast to coast that will take decades to repair, if we are even able to do so.
As mentioned before, I live in central Oregon, the cost and wreckage from this bill will be horrendous. I will never buy a "car" nor will I ever vote for any politician who supports GW and all the crap that comes with it. I hope the mullah obamaham and his bastard fiends has a plan on the burner to assist all average, struggling Americans in the very near future with their energy bills we will not be able to afford. Darn, I forgot he gave that
money back to the unions, Akorn
and his palestinian friends. F--k this administration.
Babs and PatriotUSA--
Obviously, I think your worst fears are probably correct.
Go to the top post and click on the links there to see
(A) How *your* congress person voted;
(B) Heritage Foundation's breakdown by Congressional district on what it's going to cost each of your areas,
(C) A link to the place to tell your Congressman what you think of his vote.
I put my letter to Perriello, our "yea" voter, in the post. Scum.
Oh, and Babs, look at the bit I got off C-SPAN about what you'll have to do if you want to renovate your old house.
Congress to America: Eat Dirt and Die
Fascinating! And thanks a lot Dymphna for the video: I hadn’t seen it before.
I have just posted a comment about this very thread in my own blog.
It’s about the unconscious psychological drive behind the West’s self-hate, including the lunatic greens.
Oops!
Writing in a second language can lead sometimes to dramatic errors.
(I've just changed "apology" for "vindication" --had in mind "apologetics" but I still think in Spanish-- in the phrase "deMause's original discovery is in fact the most potent vindication I’ve found for the West in general and the U.S. in particular" of the above-metioned blog entry.)
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