The Coming War Over Climate

But Kevin, you INSISTED we needed cap and trade because a carbon *tax* would never get passed while many of us said, that it's going to be called a tax, the Republicans aren't as stupid as you would like to believe, and we'd be best off getting the simpler to understand, more honest, and actually more effective approach.

You don't like Cap and Tax? Well, maybe you're an idiot.

Well, FactCheck says that the GOP is wrong about the $3100 per year additional cost, but they seem to estimate a cost of anywhere from $340-$1800...both numbers over the $25/mo tolerance polling seems to indicate. I see another month of Obama's numbers DIVING as he champions one unpopular initiative after another. Honestly if the Democrats try to push both health care and cap and trade, there is a good chance that they lose on both.

"That legislation is a particularly lurid illustration of why no serious person nowadays takes seriously Washington's increasingly infantile bandying of numbers. The point of cap-and-trade is to impose a ceiling on the nation's greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions—primarily carbon dioxide. The legislation endorses the goal of holding the global carbon--dioxide level to a maximum of 450 parts per million by 2050. That. Will. Not. Happen.

Steven Hayward and Kenneth Green of the American Enterprise Institute do the math. The 450 level is less than the 2030 projected level for all countries other than the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's 30 developed nations. Which means the global goal would be unreachable even if in 2030 those 30 disappear—if they have zero emissions. Waxman--Markey endorses the goal of reducing all of this nation's GHG emissions 83 percent below 2005 levels by 2050. In 2005, the United States' carbon-dioxide emissions were 6 billion tons, so an 83 percent -reduction would permit about 1 billion tons—what America's emissions were in 1910, when the population was 92 million and the economy was one twenty-fifth of today's. But by 2050, the population probably will be about 420 million, so per capita carbon-dioxide emissions would have to be 2.4 tons—one quarter of 1910's per capita emissions.

Hayward and Green say that historical data indicate that the last time emissions were that low was 1875. And even before that, before widespread use of fossil fuels, wood burning by Americans may have produced more than 2.4 tons per capita. Today France, which generates approximately 80 percent of its electricity by nuclear power, and Switzerland, which generates most of its electricity by nuclear or hydropower, have per capita emissions of 6.59 and 6.13 tons, respectively."

-excerpt from an opinion piece by George Will

You have GOT to be KIDDING ME! There are still people that think CO2 produced by man is causing global warming? There are people that STILL believe the forecasts put forth by the UN? Here's the unequivocating fact: The same people that brought these dire predictions of a warmer Earth 100 years from now can't BACKCAST the weather. That's right: Taking the known parameters and using the same models they're prognosticating weather 100 years from now, they can't accurately tell us what it was in the PAST! Their ability to predict the past is nill, nada, zero.

Just to expand your field of view, consider several aspects not included in their "models": Sunspot activity (lowest in 100 years; next sunspot maximum predicted to be from 30 to 50% of the last one); the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, which influences the weather way more than anything humans can do--typically runs in a 25-30 year cycle of warm/cool and now in it's second decade of a cool cycle. And finally, we're getting ready for the next glacial push--it could be 50 years or 500 years from now, but we're overdue. I'd much rather have a tad bit warmer weather than a glacier in my front yard, but I can absolutely guarantee someday it will be the latter. And in most areas it will lower the average temperatures from 12 to 18 degrees--both highs and lows. Try growing anything in that kind of weather.

The point is that there is not a consensus among scientists that CO2 emissions affect the climate. Thousands of climate scientists now agree that much more research must be done and many agree that the position of the sun is affecting the rise in temperature where there is one.
Many scientists now say that the temperature has not risen at all this decade but has in fact dropped.
Australia - one of the first on the GW bandwagon just repealed all their cap and trade laws because of doubt that CO2 even affects the temperature.
Let the scientists (not politicians) do their research and then after they can 'prove' that if we do not enact these laws there will be harm to the environment - I would be willing to listen.
People do not like theories shoved down their throats - and at this point - that is all GW is!

Wake up people, AGW is being used as a means to transfer wealth, technology, and technological know-how from developed countries to both developing countries and to least developed countries. The goal is to have all the nations per-capita GDP's more or less equal by 2100. What they want to do is use these billions of dollars/year to build infrastructure in countries that need it so that they can enter into a more modern lifestyle.

Now ask yourselves this, once they get nice new infrastructures (electricy, sewer, water, roads, etc.), what are they going to need to maintain them? Jobs. And guess where most of the jobs will come from? Outsourcing from developed countries. We already lost over 3 million jobs to mainly China during the last 8 years. Do we want to pay to have more countries take more of our precious fewer jobs? I don't.

If I were an honest scientist who found some contra-indicating data about man-caused global warming theory, I would hesitate to speak up knowing that leftist McCarthyites would immediately accuse me of being a shill for "big oil".

This atmosphere of career assassination and political correctness gone mad is anti-science, and anti-intellectual.

There are many such under-the-table scientists - but more and more of them are summoning the courage to speak out with their doubts.

Too bad the left has tied most of their provable and legitimate environmental concerns to the global warming wagon. That means they have every motivation to continue playing politics instead of letting the science continue to play itself out.

BTW - Global cooling is the real long term threat to humanity as we approach the end of the interglacial period. And keep an eye on the disappearance of sunspots. Last time there was an extended spotless period it ushered in global cooling and severe crop shortages - unlike global warming, which up to a point, increases crop yields.

You'll need more than smoke and mirrors. No one (including scientists) are convinced that man-made global warming will result in a significant calamity for mankind. To boot, scientists are in universal agreement that carbon emissions are not one of the primary sources of man-mad global warming.

No one is convinced that a U.S. program that targets carbon dioxide will make even a tiny dent in man-made global warming. The American people see it as utter misdirection and see it as a power grab to effectively socialize even more of the private economy.

Even if CO2 were the cultprit the government claimed, instead of through horrendous tax penalties, the people see emissions easily reduced by "cutting-edge" technologies like nuclear power, or the next-next-generation of electric cars that should be ready for market by 2035.

They also look at this cap-and-trade system as a new vehicle for mafia-style corporate corruption as the government gives carbon credits worth billions to its "friends."

On top of that, there is the problem than utlity credts will be used to execute robin-hood style highway robbery of everyone with the good fortune and work ethic to make enough money to comfortable support a family.

The mantra "green-yourself" is so confused that any clear message will crush it. No one can even resolve shopping bags. Some prefer plastic because they save trees and energy, others paper because it keeps plastic from disolving in the ocean, still more insist on reusable shopping bags, but others push back because you need to use a reusable bag 12,000 times before it is as energy efficient as a plastic bag.

The environmental movement is a snake feeding on itself, not a scientific endeavor based in fact. Environmentalists want to have the very best of everything. The very best meat, the very best cheese, the very best fruit, but they want instant absolution for their conspicuous consumption. They want forgiveness for flaunting the excess of their wealth almost as flagrantly as a Roman vomitorium, and how do they get it? They forgive themselves because they think their "green", and can sleep sound drunk-fat on their own smug self-righteousness, knowing that their excess is justified by their "greenness".

Only by indoctrinating the youth that the emperor has clothes can they perpetuate the myth, that they are contientious, righteous, concerned, and noble, when in truth they only seek to fulfill their own gluttony.