Climate Bill: Hot Temperatures in Washington

NewYorkJ – Heck, 600 billion is cheaper than an unnecessary war. We could have had it done already!
I guess killing people is more fun.

A tax is just a tax. JUST a tax. People will not change their lifestyles because of a tax. It will only make people feel self-justified in using more energy and creating more CO2 – “I paid for it, I’m gonna use it” mentality. CO2 will still be here. Hey! Let’s tax all those dairy cows for generating greenhouse gases…

So NewYorkJ, do you pay extra for green energy from your power company? Probably not, you are most likely like every other Democrat, including Gore.
You are concerned about global warming…concerned that someone else pays.
BTW, VA costs are already in DoD requests for the WOT, including Iraq. You just have to look at the Congressional reports. The latest is $526B spent for, and projected spending on Iraq, though fiscal year 2008.
Figured you guys would have learned your lesson on biased reporting with the Lancet report…guess not.

Where Ms. Boxer??
Where in the Bill does it say anything, anything at all about becoming independent from foreign oil or fossil fuels??? Big Oil??? Wow I didn’t know that she has declared war on companies that own oil wells and refineries. Making way for what, ‘little’ oil? Whatever that might mean.
It doens’t. Read the purpose of the Bill. It is nothing other than taxing anything that creates ‘greenhouse’ gasses. Then by hope and magic, maybe reducing them.
What a joke! Her statements are why the whole topic of AGW are tainted. The subject has been politicized. She states misinformation and propaganda just to get ‘her/their’ way. When in reality, she has had two years to actually do something and has done nothing.
Since when has a tax reduced anything. It hasn’t. Companies just slide it in as more overhead and raise their prices accordingly. We consumers end up getting blind sided by it. Further costing us to buy the other things in life that we don’t associate with gas/oil. From food to everything on the shelf at Wal-Mart or Target and everything in between. It is the consumer, the average American citizen that will foot the bill of such a tax. We need products. Making them more expensive will not take my needs away. It makes my paycheck smaller.

OK! We get it! Conservatives hate Al Gore! Unfortunately for conservatives, global warming is not about Al Gore. It’s not about politics at all! It’s about the thousands of scientists from over one hundred countries who agree that we are headed towards a global climatic catastrophe and that we have about ten years to address the situation. It’s about the fact that humans pumped 23,000,000,000 tons of green house gasses into the atmosphere in 2007. It’s about the fact that an area the size oh Rhode Island was deforested in the Amazon, in the second half of 2007 alone! It’s about record breaking floods, droughts, wild fires, and hurricanes across the globe. It’s about Earth’s Polar Regions and glaciers melting faster than anyone thought possible.
In the mean time, political pundits pretend to be scientists, proving once again the old adage that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing! The population in general refuses to be persuaded by mountains of evidence and succumb to the mistake thinking that the Bush administration and big oil lobbyists understand science better than say, scientific researchers do. Science is after all, an objective quest for the truth. The only exceptions are the scientists who keep badgering us about global warning. They are surely money-grubbing careerists conspiring to fool the public.
But take heart people! The party has barely begun! Wait a few decades and the fun will really get started. The fact that your children and grandchildren will suffer the same fate as mine is cold comfort indeed!

Decreasing greenhouse gases by 70% over the next 40 years is like practicing birth control after you’ve already gotten pregnant … the train has already left the station folks. At this point in the game, we should probably be focusing on survival techniques and trying to save what we can of our society. That’s the ugly truth of it … I doubt our so-called “leaders” will ever acknowledge that though because they would fear a panic. So we’ll just keep on speeding down the track ignoring all the flashing warning lights … there’s a bridge out up ahead.

“The weight of scientific data and the consensus of climate scientists are on Gore’s side. There is no way global warming deniers can win this argument.” Posted by: Jose C.____
Great Jose! Since there is no way you can lose to the “deniers” why not tell me what the average temperature of the earth actually is, how much the temperature has actually risen, and how much CO2 is really in the atmosphere.
These are the things I never hear from you geniuses. I DO hear the slogans and the anti-Republican rhetoric as though they control the climate but I never hear actual numbers.
And by the way, another scientist, the head of NOAA has just jumped OFF the bandwagon. He, along with MANY others are jumping ship and now claiming global warming IS a myth. Why is there now a deep division among the scientists Jose?

Lawrence – People have been looking at all of those things. Everyone seems to agree that the key is to attack the problem on ALL fronts. Use every possible solution in the areas it will be the most efficient. See what works.
If we work on this together and do it the smart way, we can fix the problem with a minimum of pain. While there will certainly be significant transition costs in the short term, in the the long-term it should make our economy more efficient and productive, AND our environment safer.

Ok, 650,000 years. This earth is over 4,000,000,000 years old. Do you know how little of a percent that is that we are basing this on? Now use the 50 year and the 100 year figures that you stated are used to determine the ‘average’.
Nobody has to be a scientist to understand that this earth has changed in the past and will change in the future. It is natural.
Selectively picking a super-short window of time over this planet’s lifespan for promoting a free-for-all tax, fees and otherwise is foolish.
Now, I am for some other energy source, don’t get me wrong. It isn’t invented yet and this Bill doesn’t invent it. I am talking about the kind of energy that powers George Jetson’s car, or that of what we see on Buck Rogers and Star Wars. You can pretty much assume that in those fictional movies, that they are not using oil. What are they using? It is unknown and not invented. In the meantime, we shouldn’t bankrupt ourselves and the world for something we are stuck with using, oil.

GTA – Of course the Earth’s atmosphere has changed radically over the billions of years. Both CO2 and temperature have made major swings, usually correlated with each other. In fact, that is exactly how scientists know how the atmosphere works. They study the past changes very, very carefully for evidence in predicting future changes. That’s how science works.

I recommend reading the science of solar cycles and climate sensitivity:
“Is climate sensitive to solar variability?” by Nicola Scafetta and Bruce J. West (Nicola Scafetta is a research associate in the Duke University physics department. Bruce West is chief scientist in the mathematical and information science directorate, US Army Research Office, in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina.)
“Phenomenological reconstructions of the solar signature in the Northern Hemisphere surface temperature records since 1600″ by N. Scafetta1 and B. J. West2, Received 18 January 2007; revised 4 May 2007; accepted 5 June 2007; published 3 November 2007.
“Reply to Lockwood and FrÄohlich -
The persistent role of the Sun in climate forcing” by Henrik Svensmarky and Eigil Friis-Christensen; Danish National Space Center, Copenhagen, Denmark

Jock, it is clearly stated in the IPCC report and others that the average temperature of the eart rose TWO degrees F, not 0.2. I don’t think these reports lie. I DO think that moving the decimal point to make it seem small in comparison to the rise in this century IS kind of a lie.
You ADMITTED that the rise was 2 degrees F and then changed your mind later on and moved the decimal point.
When I did MY reading the amount of CO2 was 0.00323, however, let’s assume that its 0.00380. I hardly believe ANYTHING that close to 0 poses a threat to an entire planet. How much heat can something that small really absorb? perhaps about 0.00380 units of heat.
And since we DON’T know how much it was before, we have no standards to compare it to. We simply can’t make the conclusion that (1) the amount of CO2 has risen or (2) we caused it.
And I’m extremely glad you admit that corn based ethanol is a stupid idea. The bill that Congress is going to debate this week is every bit as stupid. When the price of gas is already at or near $4.00 a gallon, a rise of 53 cents for global warming purposes that will surely cause a recession is about as boneheaded as an idea can get.

Jock, I would say the second page of the IPCC report says this along with another report on Google. Go on Google and look up the history of the average temperature of the earth.
These two reports will also show that it takes a rise of at least 10 degrees F to cause the greenhouse effect. Yes, Jock, THAT’S there too.
The IPCC report only shows maybe a page or two of numbers and the rest of the report is entirely speculative. Global warming is a speculation on the part of the Climatologists, or an educated guess. The graphs you mentioned are also part of the speculation.
The question here is are we going to subject our country as well as others to tremendous economic hardship based on a speculation, educated or not. You said yourself “there is much we don’t know”.
And how much of the global warming movement is really about science and not about hatred toward a certain political party? So far, from ANY global warming activist, all I hear is anti-Republican rhetoric. You bashed that party several times yourself. Is bashing a political party scientific? This sort of thing does not add to your credibility.
Now I have a question for YOU. What do you base YOUR belief on that anything that is as close to 0 as the CO2 rate CAN cause harm to an entire planet?
If I were to light a match, I would cause more heat than I would with a molecule of CO2 coming from my breath. I think even a physicist would agree would that.
We also DON’T don’t what the amount of CO2 was in centuries past so we don’t know enough to make the conclusion that it either rose or can cause global warming.

Wow! There really are a lot of well-educated, opinionated people posting here. All those who are Global Warming scientists, please raise your hands…? I am not knocking your right to debate the issue but, I really am questioning the way several of you are repeatedly scanning the ‘Net for info to back up your side of the argument. That’s what this is. An argument. I personally, as a conservative Democrat(an oxymoron, I know), combat veteran and self-described patriot would like to hear some IDEAS. Not rhetoric. Not politics as usual. Ideas. How can we make a comprehensive change that will allow big business to continue to employ all of us “little people”, reduce the effects of Global Warming and allow us to economically travel from point A to point B without paying a quarter of our weekly paychecks. So, all of you “smart” people that are fighting to convince the other person of your truth and rightness…? Try applying that to the problem and not arguing about whether there is one. Anyone who isn’t positive that the wild polar bear is going to be extinct in 25 years at the rate we’re going is a self-deluded moron. And if you don’t think that’s not a harbinger of things to come…

jfm123 I never said any such thing. There already IS a greenhouse effect, and always has been. Life on earth would be impossible without the greenhouse effect.
As for the matches, it was a silly analogy in the first place, but there are an astronomical number of molecules of CO2 in the atmosphere. The point is that we are not talking about one molecule, but all of them together.
John McCain agrees that AGW is a serious problem. Which party is he bashing. Many, many conservatives are smart enough to figure this out. It doesn’t have to be a partisan issue.

Jock, I know that YOU are VERY partison. I have read your posts. You HAVE based Bush and Bush was the very first President ever to sign the Kyoto Treaty. In time you WILL be bashing McCain. McCain was actually absent during the actual voting on global warming.
And yes you DID say “we’re going to reach that 10 degree mark very soon if things keep going the way they’re going” in an earlier post a few months ago.
Your logic seems to be that if something isn’t written in one document, it must be dismissed if it is written in another document. Yes, Jock, it IS documented that it takes a rise of 10 degrees to reach the greenhouse effect.
The “greenhouse effect” cited by the activists is that apocalypse where the North Pole melts and nations are all underwater. I’m not referring to a natural greenhouse effect. I am referring to the apocalypse.
And Jock, isn’t that what the global warming issue is all about? The apocalypse that the activists all talk about? If what I read was wrong and it doesn’t take a rise of 10 degrees F to cause it, just how many degrees does it take? About TWO maybe?
The issue of global warming is 20 years old now. It was first reported in the summer 1988. Why hasn’t the apocalyptic greenhouse effect happened yet? I’m still waiting. Maybe it’s because it really DOES take a rise of 10 degrees to have it.

Jock, you warned of the apocalypse all the time in almost all of your early posts. You wouldn’t be warning us of the danger of global warming all this time if you didn’t believe there was an apocalypse.
The things you describe in THIS post, “seacoast flooding, drought and lack of drinking water, crop failures in the tropics, spread of insect-borne diseases, extinctions of species that can’t adapt fast enough, etc.” are natural events that have been occurring since the dawn of time.
The entire point of the global warming movement is that there is an apocalypse that is unnatural and WE cause it. That’s what the slogan “Save Our Planet” is all about.
Yes, there might have been a global warming theory in 1896 but global warming did not truly become an issue until the summer of 1988 when the fear of nuclear war subsided. Evidently we need a fear of some kind.
And if you remember, Clinton did NOT sign the Kyoto treaty. Clinton signed a different treaty on pollution. Global warming was nowhere near the scare it is today and was not talked about that much.
Bush WAS the first one to sign a revised version of the “global warming” Kyoto Treaty.

tacticalguy
The polar bear issue actually has nothing to do with AGW as AGW is not the cause of north polar warming. The AGW is insignificant compared to what is actually occuring. The polar issue is a combination of solar warming and volcanic activity. Neither is the fault of mankind and neither is curable by mankind. This past winter we had the perfect example of just how powerful the earth actually is and how puny we are by comparison. The world saw record cold temperatures in many places while the area of normal temps was at a minimum. Record storms in asia followed by rapid warming. Where did that sudden heat originate? At the north polar area!
Many parts of the lower latitudes were actually much colder in March than the arctic circle. If we actually had any impact this could not have happened. What it did prove was heat convection from the ocean from a thin crustal area near and under northern Greenland. This is not something we can correct but that we can plan for, but its not going to happen until the AGW crowd stops denying the power of the earth.

Jock
The revision does exist (we wrote a revision that was acceptable to Bush) but was not accepted by the original signatories, hence it was not revised.

Ned
The title should be “Climate Bill: Hot AIR in Washington”

Quietman -
I don’t think there are any volcanoes in Glacier, dormant or otherwise. It’s pretty much all uplift. There might be a cinder cone on the east side somewhere; i can’t remember for sure; but nothing significant.
I certainly hope you are not implying that all the glaciers in the world are melting due to volcanic activity

Jock
Sorry but I just realized that because of the way the sat photos zoom in, I may not have been looking in the park itself. I made the assumption because of the glaciers visible in the photos.

Jock
This might help explain what I mean:
From: “Mountain ranges rise much more rapidly than geologists expected”
“Tectonic theory may need revision in light of new study in Science”
Public release date: 5-Jun-2008
“When oceanic and continental plates come together, geologists believe the continental crust buckles. On the surface, the buckling manifests itself as a rising mountain range, but beneath the crust, the buckling creates a heavy, high-density “root” that holds the crust down like an anchor, says Garzione. Conventional tectonic theory says that convection of the fluid mantle deep in the Earth slowly erodes this heavy root like a stream wearing down a rock, allowing mountains to gradually rise as the crust shortens and thickens.”
Contact: Jonathan Sherwood, University of Rochester