Cap and Tax, do or die…
by AlexinCT
As congress gets ready to rush through the biggest tax ever passed in America’s history - the hurry because congress can not afford more people to read their disastrous 1201 page bill, including their own members, for fear of the backlash - it needs to be point out that as we in America are heading for an economic disaster tied to this “Cap and Tax” bill, others are backing off.
Steve Fielding recently asked the Obama administration to reassure him on the science of man-made global warming. When the administration proved unhelpful, Mr. Fielding decided to vote against climate-change legislation. If you haven’t heard of this politician, it’s because he’s a member of the Australian Senate. As the U.S. House of Representatives prepares to pass a climate-change bill, the Australian Parliament is preparing to kill its own country’s carbon-emissions scheme. Why? A growing number of Australian politicians, scientists and citizens once again doubt the science of human-caused global warming.
Among the many reasons President Barack Obama and the Democratic majority are so intent on quickly jamming a cap-and-trade system through Congress is because the global warming tide is again shifting. It turns out Al Gore and the United Nations (with an assist from the media), did a little too vociferous a job smearing anyone who disagreed with them as “deniers.” The backlash has brought the scientific debate roaring back to life in Australia, Europe, Japan and even, if less reported, the U.S
In April, the Polish Academy of Sciences published a document challenging man-made global warming. In the Czech Republic, where President Vaclav Klaus remains a leading skeptic, today only 11% of the population believes humans play a role. In France, President Nicolas Sarkozy wants to tap Claude Allegre to lead the country’s new ministry of industry and innovation. Twenty years ago Mr. Allegre was among the first to trill about man-made global warming, but the geochemist has since recanted. New Zealand last year elected a new government, which immediately suspended the country’s weeks-old cap-and-trade program.
The number of skeptics, far from shrinking, is swelling. Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe now counts more than 700 scientists who disagree with the U.N.—13 times the number who authored the U.N.’s 2007 climate summary for policymakers. Joanne Simpson, the world’s first woman to receive a Ph.D. in meteorology, expressed relief upon her retirement last year that she was finally free to speak “frankly” of her nonbelief. Dr. Kiminori Itoh, a Japanese environmental physical chemist who contributed to a U.N. climate report, dubs man-made warming “the worst scientific scandal in history.” Norway’s Ivar Giaever, Nobel Prize winner for physics, decries it as the “new religion.” A group of 54 noted physicists, led by Princeton’s Will Happer, is demanding the American Physical Society revise its position that the science is settled. (Both Nature and Science magazines have refused to run the physicists’ open letter.)
The collapse of the “consensus” has been driven by reality. The inconvenient truth is that the earth’s temperatures have flat-lined since 2001, despite growing concentrations of C02. Peer-reviewed research has debunked doomsday scenarios about the polar ice caps, hurricanes, malaria, extinctions, rising oceans. A global financial crisis has politicians taking a harder look at the science that would require them to hamstring their economies to rein in carbon.
There is a reason Al Gore shouted down the “deniers”. There is a reason congress needs to push through this abomination, in a hurry and in the middle of the night, too. Remember that practically nobody in congress has even read this damned behemoth yet! And the reason is the same: people are starting to get real science that disputes the “consensus science” crap that has been used by people like Gore and the people that want to have government take more of our income and control our lives, and this AGW thing looks less and less like science and more and more like a cult.
Cross posted at Wasting time with Alex
Update:: This monstrosity is now up to 1501 pages because Waxman added another 300 pages and only 3 hrs to debate these changes. Here are the details:
* The original bill, H.R. 2454, approximately 1,000 pages, was reported out of the Energy & Commerce Committee.
* It was replaced this week by H.R. 2998, 1,201 pages, which will be voted on as an amendment in the form of a substitute.
* The Rules Committee, last night, released a committee report that includes a 300-page amendment to H.R. 2998. This 300-page amendment, the Waxman amendment (#121), is considered as adopted upon an affirmative vote for H.R. 2998, the amendment in the form of the substitute.
The description of what’s in the new amendment (#121) reads like a massive laundry list of special interest’s wish-lists, other such exemptions and goodies, and was likely added to make this sh*t sandwich palatable for some of the other democrats now on the opposite side. In the end though you can bet this went from a terrible idea to even worse than terrible.
Update:: We are hosed. So freaking hosed!
Democrats narrowly passed historic climate and energy legislation Friday evening that would transform the country’s economy and industrial landscape. But the all-hands-on-deck effort to protect politically vulnerable Democrats by corralling the minimum number of votes to pass the bill, 219-212, proves that there are limits to President Barack Obama’s ability to use his popularity to push through his legislative agenda. Forty-four Democrats voted against the bill, while just eight Republicans crossed the aisle to back it.
So the democrats know this bill is both destructive and will hurt the economy, as their attempt to protect the demco-rats up for r-election in 2010, and still they stick us with it.
Despite the tough path to passage, the legislation is a significant win for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Ca.) and the bill’s two main sponsors – House Energy and Commerce committee chairman Henry Waxman (D-Ca.) and Massachusetts Rep. Edward Markey (D) – who modified the bill again and again to get skeptical members from the Rust Belt, the oil-producing southeast and rural Midwest to back the legislation.
Yes, it is. And it is also a significant loss for the American people and the American economy in general.
“We passed transformational legislation which takes us into the future,” Pelosi said at a press conference following the vote, after she and other leaders took congratulatory phone calls from Obama, former Vice President Al Gore and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
They sure did. If the future is a weaker and bleaker economy, 12% or higher unemployment, more people with less money in their pockets, and the power of government, which will now control even more of our behavior, drastically increased. In short, the future is going to make the Carter years look good. Emboldened by this win I am now certain they will also push true the new healthcare plan they want, and America is now finally on the way to becoming that “has been” the left so desperately want it to be, one that makes Zimbabwe look good, so that they can feel good about being victims.
Comments
Hal, how many and what scientists does it take?
I’m seeing a lot of geologists, climatologists, physicists, meteorologists etc.
What would make this a non-farce and something to be debated seriously?
800 scientists, 900, 1000?
Can it only be climatologists or can we throw in a few other sciences?
I’m accused of being a denier in 3...2...1…
Hal would have been one of the ones trying to shout Eisntein down while defending the Aether theory.......
The economic impact of proposed AGW reduction efforts alone should make one skeptical of implementing them, let alone the unlikelihood that anyone can DO anything about it short of killing off billions of CO2 generating organisms....er....people.
Hal has been drinking the Kool Aid for years now - lead a horse to water, etc, etc, etc....
In a nutshell, Hal has shown that he doesn’t actually understand the basic physics involved and instead relies on the narrative which will produce oranges when apples are asked for. Hey, it’s still fruit....
With all due respect Hal, I think that is you that should take all the claims that AGW is scientific with less seriousness, man. To quote a buddy of mine: “Why do we take anyone that predicts an apocalypse 50 years from now seriously, when our science and knowledge of weather is so lacking that even the experts can’t forecast the weather accurately for the next day, let alone a few weeks in the future?”
Nothing should frighten people that claim to believe in science more than the concept of “consensus science”. In science you are right, after you provide reviewable and replicatable proof of course, until someone can prove your science wrong. The fact that the computer models used to predict “Waterworld” seem to be closely guarded and also never produce accurate results when anyone tries to run past weather in them, is a dead give away. At a minimum, accurate models, those not written to produce a specific results, should allow us to plug in data from say 1901 and then accurately mirror the weather in 1951. Yet we can’t ever get that. These models indubitably produce “Waterworld” in 1951 too. There is a name for this in the scientific community I think, but I don’t think I need to spell it out.
Why do we take anyone that predicts an apocalypse 50 years from now seriously
Not to mention that the AGW apocolypse has been ‘just ten years away’ for about thirty years now…
This is EXACTLY the same tactic as any doomsday cult where the event is claimed to be close enough to scare people but is put just far enough out that the ‘prophets’ can amass considerable power (Hansen) and wealth (Gore) before the are exposed as charlatans.
With all due respect Hal, I think that is you that should take all the claims that AGW is scientific with less seriousness, man. To quote a buddy of mine: “Why do we take anyone that predicts an apocalypse 50 years from now seriously, when our science and knowledge of weather is so lacking that even the experts can’t forecast the weather accurately for the next day, let alone a few weeks in the future?”
Why should you plan your skiing trip for December instead of July? No one can predict the weather six months from now! Why invest your retirement in the stock market? No one know what the Dow will be at next week? Why do the Cardinals play Albert Pujols when he could go 0-for-5?
Long term trends are far more reliable than short term because they are subject to far less chaotic processes. This is true in every field of endeavor. In any short span of time, trends are very difficult to predict. Over the long term, certain processes come to dominate. The “we can’t predict the weather” meme has to be the worst “refutation” of global warming ever.
As for the scientist rejecting global warming, they aren’t rejecting global warming, but questioning how bad it is and the doomsday predictions of Algore. As such, I agree with them.
As for Inhofe’s list of 700 “scientists” and how many he needs? He can have a million bloggers and creationists on his list of “scientists” for all I care. Science is not a matter of opinion or voting (or, as Inhofe would have it, divine revelation). If 6000 scientists think the world is flat, it’s still round. You have to base your opinion on what is provable and what is measurable - such as a century long warming trend that correlates to CO2 levels but does not correlate to solar activity or radiance.
Who exactly is it who is acting on unthinking faith here? I’ve posted numerous articles questioning the impact of global warming. I specifically called the second IPCC report a piece of speculative shit. I’m severely critical of the Waxley bill, which is a money-grubbing garbage. I’ve derided “green jobs” repeatedly. And my response to GW is that we should take reasonable steps to mitigate it. If GW is wrong—and it could be—then all that’s happened is we get off fossil fuels sooner than the supply forces us. But if we’re right and do nothing…
Whereas you guys *know* global warming is BS. You’re convinced of it. Nothing will persuade you. Even as temperature have continued to rise for the last decade, your faith is unshaken. Every report, every piece of data, every article is greeted with a chorus calling it scientific fraud.
I was skeptic until a few years ago when I realized that I was doubting global warming not because of facts or data but because I didn’t want it to be true. But the last IPCC report was overwhelming. When the facts change, I change my opinion. What do you do? Apparently, stick your head deeper into the sand.
Disproving AGW is irrelevent. That would only matter if the supporters of cap and trade were really interested in the environment.
Really it’s about paying off their supporters and remaining in power. Why would something as trivial as trillions of dollars being wasted, high unemployment and no net benefit deter them?
I was skeptic until a few years ago when I realized that I was doubting global warming not because of facts or data but because I didn’t want it to be true.
That’s the difference between us then. I do not doubt either global warming or cooling. Anyone that says they do not believe that the planet warms and cools, often in cycles, is deranged. The evidence is there. But I know I am right to think I am being lied to by the church of AGW. The proof for that is ample. Have a look at the treatment and attitude towards anyone with even a bit of doubt, no matter how much proof they may have that leads to the doubting. Couple it with the same ridiculous and blatant power-grabbing, ultra-collectivist, wealth redistribution scam, solutions that get recycled over and over. Like this Cap and Tax farce. And all while real technological and technical solutions, which is what would actually make a difference, are marginalized or demonized.
I am seriously not a skeptic of global warming, and might even be willing to entertain the idea that humans might need to adapt to the changes. I am however also a believer that AGW is nothing but the usual collectivist scam of epic proportions. Big difference, dude.
I agree, Smith. Alex’s update is just outrageous—1500 pages of shit?! I could put together a carbon tax in two pages. Is it possible to get simple legislation out of Washington anymore?
There is one thing we probably can agree on, it’s that this bill has nothing to do with science, AGW or otherwise. It’s a tax hike, a power grab and a pork barrell all in one.
Is it possible to get simple legislation out of Washington anymore?
HERETIC!
There is one thing we probably can agree on, it’s that this bill has nothing to do with science, AGW or otherwise. It’s a tax hike, a power grab and a pork barrell all in one.
And the sad part is that some people actually think it will make some kind of difference. I wonder how angry they will be when they realize that the difference it makes doesn’t help anyone but greedy politicians and their donors..
Henry Waxman is a despicable little troll.
Even as temperature have continued to rise for the last decade
Except that they haven’t.
Look at the raw HadCRUT data and it shows that we are essentially flat since 2000. Look at the raw UAH MSU data and it shows that we are essentially flat since 2000. Look at Hell, even the GISStemp surface data shows that we are essentially flat since 2000.the raw NCDC data
Now a decade of temperatures does not a climate trend make but, as noted by Alex, none of the models currently used can explain why there has been this stall of the warming trend. Not one of them. So, if the models do not explain actual data then how can the models be trusted?
Global warming has occurred and may continue, but the models which say it is due to increases in CO2 do not work. I am your polar opposite Hal. As with you, when the facts change, I change my mind. The facts have changed (i.e.- the fact now is that the CO2 based models are crap) so I have changed my mind. I used to buy into AGW, but not for the last 2 years when these discrepancies from prediction became to large and regular to ignore. The only conclusion I can come to is that the current hypothesis of CO2 concentrations being a significant driving factor in climate change is dead wrong.
I never bought into the BS - I knew that their “science” was junk from the start.
Why should you plan your skiing trip for December instead of July? No one can predict the weather six months from now!
That is a ridiculous argument and you know it.
Why invest your retirement in the stock market? No one know what the Dow will be at next week?
Good point. That’s why I don’t put my money in the market or 401ks.
The “we can’t predict the weather” meme has to be the worst “refutation” of global warming ever.
So it’s “ridiculous” to point out the fact that the same people who can’t tell me if it’s going to rain next week, are somehow capable of predicting the future 50 years from now? And HAL, what 50 year old weather prediction has come true to justify your faith in it? How many predictions of the weather 50 years ago have come true?
such as a century long warming trend that correlates to CO2 levels but does not correlate to solar activity or radiance.
Did you know that ever since radio broadcasting began to appear about 100 years ago the world has gotten warmer. That proves radio broadcasts are interfering with the weather and making the place warmer.
hen all that’s happened is we get off fossil fuels sooner than the supply forces us.
If you honestly think that the “worst case scenario” is us getting off fossil fuels early, you are bigger fool than I thought. You really think the government is taking all this power and money so that it can “get us off fossil fuels”? Then what, the governments just going to stop regulating industry? Tearing away our personal freedoms? They are going to stop telling us what temperature to keep our houses, or allow us to eat the foods we want?
Even as temperature have continued to rise for the last decade, your faith is unshaken.
Again I ask the question, how many decades can the temperature increase before we declare it to be human’s fault? Even if the world was warmer than it was 10 years ago (it isn’t) why does that automatically mean its man’s fault?
When the facts change, I change my opinion.
Except for one small problem HAL, facts don’t change. If it changes, that means it wasn’t a fact. Either what you believe is a complete lie that never had a real shred of evidence only conjecture and misinterpreted data, or your right. It’s all or nothing.
such as a century long warming trend that correlates to CO2 levels but does not correlate to solar activity or radiance.
Again, wrong. The sun has been extremely active in the last century, far more so than any time in recent centuries. Also, you need to get off this red herring of “radiance” and start looking at solar wind and the amount of radiation emitted in various spectrums. The sun is NOT the static power source that the GW crowd wants you to believe it is.
Seriously, your attempts to defend this are pretty laughable in the face of the cold hard data that debunk every single point of the hypothesis. As a scientist you should already know when a hypothesis has been flushed and a new one is required - why are you still on board with this junk?
why are you still on board with this junk?
Al Gore and the Weather Channel know where he lives.
I’m with HAL on this. Global warming happens and is probably man made, but Cap And Trade is still a steaming pile of shit.
Fact is, the CO2 content of the atmosphere is something like 350 ppm.
At our current levels we account for a yearly increase of 5ppm.
That’s 500ppm over a century.
I wouldn’t take Inhofe’s list of 700 “scientists” too seriously. His list is a complete farce
You mean like this guy?
MIT Climate Scientist Dr. Richard Lindzen, former UN IPCC lead author and
reviewer and an Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology, Dept. of Earth,
Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, called fears of man-made global warming “silly” in
January 31, 2007 CNN interview.
You mean like this guy?
Dont even bother. Hal will just tell you those guys really doesn’t understand science, like he does, because they don’t agree with the current scientific “consensus”.
Fact is, the CO2 content of the atmosphere is something like 350 ppm.
At our current levels we account for a yearly increase of 5ppm.
That’s 500ppm over a century
And that will increase the global temperature by almost nothing at all. Go back to school…
At our current levels we account for a yearly increase of 5ppm.
That’s 500ppm over a century
It may be 5PPM this year and the last, but i seriously doubt that that number is consistent. What was it in 1909, 1939, 1949, 1969, 1989?
Also, please account for the following:
Massively higher historical levels of CO2 with roughly the same global average temperature
The lack of temperature correlation with CO2 dispersal from emission sites
How CO2, which barely even qualifies as a greenhouse gas and exists only in trace amounts, overpowers water vapor, which accounts for at least 95% of the greenhouse effect
How human produced CO2 is more of a danger than what is outgassed by the oceans in far greater quantities
Why the global temperature is the same as it was in 1979 (along with ice packs) even though all this CO2 is still being produced. Remember, the solar cycle is being used to explain this away, but the greentards have also said it has no effect at all - so make up your mind.
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I wouldn’t take Inhofe’s list of 700 “scientists” too seriously. His list is a complete farce.