Steve, over at nuggets of logic (http://www.nuggetsoflogic.com/) believes that John Boehner (R-Ohio) encapsulates truth about the current Climate bill. The article referred to reports that Boehner thinks the bill is a 'pile of shit'. The left are acting like fundamentalist Christians when reading Revelation (looking to Al Gore for answers) when it comes to climate change and the right is just down right absurd. More and more Americans are concerned with the Climate and how we treat Mother Earth. Many just want to be good stewards and aren't too caught up in the lefts hysterics and the rights silliness. So my charge to you is this: How do we move forward on this issue? Do you think that caring for the environment really matters? If so, why? If not, why?
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I tend to side with moderate conservatives regarding the environment – certainly not Al Gore! However, pollution is bad and generally a health hazard regardless of its effect on “global warming”. We can’t keep on the same path, with the same tired arguments, and expect new results. I’m just glad there is finally forward motion in the battle for environmental policy. I may regret the bill later (higher taxes) but if it works I’m willing to pay for it.
Besides, Republicans need something to rally against. That’s the only reason Boehner is making such a fuss. If they really wanted a conservative approach to environmental policy – and policy that works not a ”pile of shit” in its own right – they should have moved on it while they had the majority.
I agree with Dustin. However, I am for environmental stewardship for the stewardship part. Why can't we take care of the earth simply for the sake of taking good care of what we have? Why do we have to be on the brink of disaster to do it?
Whether or not you believe that we have what we have because of God (I do), the earth and everything in it is still our most prized possession, and we can't let indifference to nature keep us from maintaining that.
Josh: I think that's Boehner's (conservative) point; there is no imminent threat to our plant as Al Gore and the Dems suggest. Repubs hate it because it assumes "global warming".
The bill is expansive and will probably lead to tax hikes, which is why Repubs are lashing out seeking a platform for to win future congressional seats.
Thanks for the link and for bringing this up Cody. Yes, I have many problems with the Cap & Trade bill and apologize in advance for the length of this reply.
I too believe in good stewardship of the earth and don't know of anyone who doesn't. That said, I take issue with the fact that using the natural resources given to us by God constitutes a lack of stewardship.
I also find it absurd and highly arrogant to believe that we as humans 1.) know what the earth's optimal climate should be (it's been dynamic for all of earth's history) and 2.)have the power to control it. We're not God (no, not even Obama). Furthermore, this bill forces you to also accept the premise that carbon dioxide, the gas we all exhale, is a pollutant. This is as idiotic as saying that the oxygen "exhaled" by plants after they take in our CO2 is a pollutant.
Dustin, this bill was not sold as a pollution bill. We don't need one. Sure, there's still pollution out there but the fact is that this country has steadily been improving in that area already for some time. There are some stats posted on the "green living" blog below from the EPA that support this.
greenliving.lovetoknow.com/Air_
Pollution_Statistics
This was sold as a way to stop "man-made climate change", which is why they brought in the big gun, that overstuffed douche bag from Tennessee, Al Gore, to work the phones and try to help get votes. Is there anything in this bill that will help stop the earth from warming (or cooling as it now is)? To be honest, there's no way for you to know. What's an even bigger problem is that there's no way your Congressman could know either!
There was no time given for them to read the 1200 page monstrosity. My understanding was that a 300+ page amendment was added Friday morning! The way this was shoved through the House is another HUGE problem I have, and I touched on this last Thursday with the following post:
http://www.nuggetsoflogic.com/2009/06/cap-and-trade.html
Doing something stupid just for the sake of "doing something" is simply dumb in my opinion, especially when it's going to be this expensive.
Josh, why do you say we're on the brink of disaster? Again, the earth has been cooling since reaching it's peak in 1998.
Mari, what can I say, we pretty much agree! :) This is definitely something that will be added to the Republican party platform, along with nationalization of car companies, plans to take over health care, a nearly $2 Trillion budget deficit in 1 year, and a $700 billion stimulus package that didn't do anything.
Ahhh, I feel better, how 'bout ya'll? Time for bed.
Hey guys-- just a note, that was actually Dustin commenting last night, unaware that I was still logged in.
I do not know enough about the bill to weigh in myself, but I will say this: I have a tendency to lean toward agreeing with restrictions on industry's negative environmental impact. I do not accept that irresponsible output is just part and parcel of the process. As we are talking about the capitalist system, that means one thing: some people, albeit the few at the top and, yes, even through this recession, are making piles of money. I have zero sympathy for the barons of industry whining about the cost of regulation. In a way, they have been getting away with status quo for at least the last three decades, with their lobbyists in Washington beating submission out of Congress. They are certainly due for regulation, and if such regulations had been imposed, say, twenty years ago, not only would further limitations be much less painful, but it's quite possible that the global levels of pollution and--dare I admit that I believe in--global warming would be much abated now.
That being said, I of course do not know the details or impacts of the "pile of shit." But I do know what I think about those who value competitive edge and profit margin over all else.
I recently embarked on a personal quest to understand the science behind climate change. For the record, I've never seen Al Gore's movie and never intend to - I wanted to look behind the B.S. and hype and really understand the science, and importantly, the science behind the "skeptics".
The more I learned, the more I'm convinced that the science has it right. The connection between CO2 and temperature has been observed for thousands of years, to pretend that we can continue to pump it out at this rate with no consequences is a fantasy.
As to the "skeptics", I have yet to be shown a single one who has a coherent alternative theory based on real data. I know that's a big claim, but it's true. Check a blog like http://realclimate.org/ for some of the dry, scientific counters to "skeptics".
Steve: the earth has no "optimal" climate, BUT the life that lives on it is not built to withstand such rapid changes in climate. That's the worry, not the temperature we end up, but how fast we're getting there. In the geological past, the earth fluctuates say 4 to 7 degrees between an ice age and a warm spell ... but that happens over thousands of years. We're on track to rise 2 to 4 degrees in a few HUNDRED years.
And Steve, it's not arrogance to realise that humans can change the climate - after all, we punched a big fat hole in the ozone layer after only a few short decades, before realising what we'd done.
As to what to do about it, I reckon a carbon tax is a smarter move than a cap-and-trade scheme. If you tax it, you can keep close track on it and adjust the tax as necessary. And in the meantime, you can reduce other taxes to make up for the carbon tax ... say, increase the income tax thresholds so the lower incomes get a break and the higher incomes with their Hummers and plasma screens can tighten their carbon belts.
By the way the UK already has an emissions trading scheme AND a carbon tax! The USA is already behind the curve.
I forgot to link to this image. We've already emitted more CO2 than has been in the atmosphere for at least 400,000 years. This graphs shows this, as well as the amount we're headed to pump out by 2100, if we do nothing.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/myths/Atmos-CO2.gif
To put this in perspective in another way, humans have released and extra 80ppm CO2 in the last 100 years. At the end of an ice age, it usually takes 5,000 years for CO2 levels to increase that much.
Hi there Alexa, nice to hear from you again. If you'd like to go back on forth on the merits of the man-made climate change BS, we can. I was simply speaking to the climate bill that was just forced down the throats of those of us living in America.
First off, are we talking global warming or cooling? It wasn't that long ago the same global-warming hysterics were warning of another ice age from global cooling. That turned around. Then we heard about global warming...until the temps started to come down again in 1998. Now they're saying "climate change", so no matter what happens, they're right. Also, if you call our side "skeptics", does that make yours "gullibles"? I don't know, but I like it, so that's what I'm going with.
Fact is, you cannot prove there is such a thing as man-made climate change. I cannot prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that there isn't. Only difference is, if public policy goes the way of the gullibles, billions if not trillions of dollars of wealth will be transferred from the people to the government to redistribute to their constituency groups. If policy goes the way of the skeptics, our citizenry will actually have the liberty to decide what type of light bulb we prefer in our house.
By the way, you say that the science has it right. Which side? I can find you hundreds of very well-respected meteorologists that disagree with your position, and more are jumping ship every day. Gullibles cannot claim a monopoly on "science".
Again, I'll have to ask for specifics. A coherent alternative theory for what? On a side note, my local weatherman can't predict accurately what the temperature will be in 3 days. How can you say with a straight face that you trust anyone to say definitively what the temperature will be in several hundred years?
As far as the UK emissions taxes, who cares? The average family in Britain is currently paying an additional $1300 annually for "green taxes", and that's only after a few years. They live in small apartments, pay roughly twice our income tax, and have a crappy health care system that won't fix their teeth. Yeah, they're living the dream over there. Why start with the assumption that we should follow the UK? We fought a Revolutionary War so that we don't have to live as they do.
I'll make one concession to you. Maybe I spoke too soon about the arrogance of believing humans can change the climate. In fact, I think that if Al Gore went to eat at his favorite Mexican restaurant, he'd be able to raise the earth's temperature a degree about an hour later. What do you think?
I warn you now Steve. I wasn’t kidding when I said I’d been researching this for a while now. Prepare to be inundated. I only wish I could post live links in comments.
First, the myth of Global Cooling. And I do call it a myth. Someone did a review of the climate papers published from 1965 to 1979, and out of 71 papers published, 7 predicted cooling, 20 were inconclusive, and 44 predicted warming. Even back then. The media had a few articles asking “are we going into an ice age?” but the truth is, few scientists thought so and by the end of the 70s the majority of scientists were already predicting warming. Source here: http://mind.ofdan.ca/?p=1771
As to the term “global warming” versus “climate change,” use whichever you prefer. It didn’t change to “climate change” as a PR exercise but because whilst we’re warming overall, that change has greater impacts than temperature, such as rising sea levels and coral reef bleaching from increasingly acidic oceans absorbing increased levels of CO2.
Yes a range of natural factors influence the climate, including solar cycles, ozone, volcanic eruptions and sulphates – all of those have been quite well studied and they all go into the models along with greenhouse gases. But solar cycles work in steady, 11-year cycles, and only change average temperatures by about .1C either way – they simply cannot account for a .75C increase across the last 100 years. Only by taking into account the rapid increase in CO2 output in the last 100 years, can you create models that account for these temperature increases. The relationship between CO2 and temperature is as well understood as the relationship between germs and diseases; it is undisputed by legitimate climate scientists. You seriously have to be living in a fantasy land to believe that CO2 does not increase temperature. Here is a bit of basic Wikipedia on the relative impact of greenhouse gases versus solar output on global temperatures: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiative_forcing
As to 1998, yes it was a record high temperature due in part to the most extreme El Nino on record – as I said, natural forces still have an influence on climate, it’s just that CO2 is also having a strong influence on top of that. Global warming didn’t stop in 1998, the long-term trend is still up, especially when you take into account sea temperatures, satellite records, ice cap shrinking and sea level increases.
Ocean temperatures increasing: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/309/5732/284
Ice cap shrinkage: http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/
Sea level increase: http://sealevel.colorado.edu/
I ask you for a coherent alternative theory to explain the .75C increase in temperature over a short 100 years. Fluctuations in climate that extreme (yes, it may sound small, but that is “extreme” in the geological history of the earth) do not just happen by chance, they are caused by something. If it’s not driven primarily by the sudden increase in CO2 output, what do you propose has caused it? You’re welcome to post one of your “hundreds” of climatologists (not meteorologists m’dear, they don’t study climate they study weather) or their alternative theories, I can assure you that if you look at their science you will find that it’s based on false assumptions or a lack of actual data.
At the end of the day, in a policy context climate change is a risk management strategy. Scientists have told you that there’s an over 90% risk that climate change is real and it’s man-made, and you as a citizen have to decide if that risk is big enough to act upon. Look at other risks, such as swine flu – what were the chances that swine flu would have been incredibly deadly? 10%? 20%? Lucky us it turned out not to be deadly, but governments around the world still decided it was a significant enough risk to act on it. Yet folks like yourself look at a 90% risk and say, balderdash, we don’t believe you silly scientists! Keep your hands off my tax dollars!
I'm stunned by your brilliance.
I just turned on a light bulb for you.
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