Apr 03 2009
Senator Thune (R) Kills CO2 Cap & Trade
All right! Another win for the GOP in a little noticed senate amendment battle – and it wasn’t even close:
An Amendment was introduced by Senator John Thune (R-SD) on the Budget Resolution and its text is as follows:
To amend the deficit-neutral reserve fund for climate change legislation to require that such legislation does not increase electricity or gasoline prices.
What is this? Climate change legislation cannot increase electricity or gasoline prices? The entire purpose of cap and trade is in fact to increase the costs of carbon-emitting sources of energy, which dominate US energy consumption. The Thune Amendment thus undercuts the entire purpose of cap and trade.
What was the vote on the Thune Amendment? 89-8 in favor of the Amendment, 48 Democrats and 41 Republicans.
Since Global Warming has stalled and reversed itself in the last decade, now is a good time to finish the science investigations (which is not settled by a long shot), especially investigating why the UN/IPCC models keep producing wrong answers, and make sure that capping CO2 actually will do anything more than hurt the planet’s plant life. Right now the science shows it will have zero effect.
Update: More here on the amendment and its implications.
Oh, I wish it were true that this amendment will kill cap and trade, but I’m not so sure. The way these people think, they will argue that the “greedy”energy producers should absorb cap and trade as a cost, after all, they’re believed to be making disproportionate profits. I wouldn’t put it past them to regulate prices.
AJ:
“Since Global Warming has stalled and reversed itself in the last decade”
I’ve been trying to figure out how you’ve managed to convince yourself that the planet isn’t getting warmed, and that quote puts it into focus quite clearly – if you start your observation with 1998, which was an EXTREMELY warm year, than you can convince yourself of this. Of course, this seems rather scientifically dishonest, since it means you necessarily have to ignore the previous decades of data, which show the exact opposite.
I’m just going to steal a quote from Jon Chait, who wrote about George Will recently:
“[Will] fails to understand a very basic concept in data that you don’t need any particular social science expertise to grasp, which is that trends don’t always move in a perfectly straight line. The planet has been getting warmer, and there was an extreme spike in 1998. Both these things can be true.”
Are you saying that they can’t be?
GuyFawkes,
Show me any global climate models which show a decade-long cooling trend. The fact that such a verification would be a HUGE win for a particular model would be trumpeted in the journals and the media.
All I know is that the members of the global warming crowd is busily changing their letterhead to global climate change.
Guy,
Dude – just go to the data
Good for that. Now that is what I call “true bi-partisan support” (hope Obama takes note).
Is it getting warmer or is it getting cooler—who really cares the question is can we do anything about it and the resounding answer is no. We simply no not have the technology to change the earth’s climate. If its warming, it not our fault. If its cooling its not our fault. And if we think we can change the climate, then that ignorance is our fault. Cap and trade is a fools dream, and a realist nightmare. Obama is simply using the politics of fear and many are buying his snake-oil.
Seems to me that if these climate chicken littles were really serious about there being such an imminent disaster, they’d be much more focused on nuclear. Newer generations of much safer and efficient fission reactors and research into fusion/fission and fusion hybrids.
If there really is disaster around the corner due to man, you’ve got to go here, in order to make any substantial difference in CO2 output, especially given ever increasing energy needs all over the planet.
At least that’s what James Lovelock says. An environmentalist who also is apparently a realist:
http://tinyurl.com/8bfnk
The almost complete lack of interest in nuclear, the mother of all CO2 killers, from the green crowd and Obama, tells me they have other agendas on their minds besides simply cooling down the Earth to save mankind.
This is like the embryonic stem cell research issue when Obama signed some executive order for federal funding of additional research completely oblivious to the Dickey Wicker legislation that made it illegal.
Moron.
These guys like Guy spout this stuff thinking the rest of us are going to sit here decade after decade, year after year waiting for the end of the world. We will assume that every storm, every hurricane, every blizzard is a direct result of all those horrid coal plants and cars and just fall all over ourselves for the opportunity to freeze to death in the dark and the cold.
Meanwhile the proponents of this theory continue to fly around the planet in toxic airplanes, going to meeting in toxic air conditioners, taking toxic money from toxic governments to do their endless studies.
Please, this whole thing has become a joke.
Data? Warmists don’ need no steenkin data!!!
You know the rules:
1: If it gets warmer, it’s proof of global warming.
2. If it gets colder, it’s proof of global warming.
3. If it gets wetter, it’s proof of global warming.
4. If it gets drier, it’s proof of global warming.
(As proof of # 2, I submit all the claims that the North Dakota floods are evidence of global warming – floods that were caused by a heavy north american snowpack)
The Goreacle has spoken! All praise the mighty Consensus of the Goreacle!!
For people who do care about data (obviously heresy to the followers of the Goreacle) the most significant recent piece of data is that Janary of 2008 was the snowiest month ever recorded in the northern hemisphere. (oooh, something changed, that must mean it’s due to global warming!!)
In fact, 9 of the last 11 January’s have had above normal snowfall. Boy, that global warming sure is tricksy!
http://climate.rutgers.edu/snowcover/png/monthlyanom/nhland01.png
I forgot the most important rule of all for the warmists:
#5 – COMPUTER MODELS SHOULD ALWAYS SUPERCEDE OBSERVATION!!!
If that pesky data doesn’t conform to the theory, just write a model to give you the data you want. Simple as that!!!
Cap And Trade Will Need 60 Votes It Doesn’t Have
The WSJ tells us that Obama’s cap and trade for carbon emissions is dying a slow death:
Please pass Al Gore a Valium — and better make it a double — because his cap-and-trade dreams just took a dive in the U.S. Senate. In a vote late Wednesday, no fewer than 26 Democrats joined all 41 Republicans to insist that any new cap and tax on carbon energy would require at least 60 votes.
http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2009/04/cap-and-trade-will-need-60-votes-it-doesnt-have.html