Global warming is not the opposite of snow (Limbaugh, parade, environmentalist)
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The remedies for that were quite easy to achieve, for example coal from the powder river basin that is lower in sulfur has greatly expanded. Production from this area in the early 70's was almost nil but accounts for about 40% of the coal used today. Other things like increasing efficiency which is something they would want to do anyway also helped.
Ironically because of the lower BTU's of this coal you need to burn more of it producing more CO2. In addition it also causes a lot of wasteful practices such as shipping higher sulfur coal from from the east west and vice versa. The coal literally passes each load going each way. This is a cheaper practice than installing the pollution controls in the eastern plants to get under the caps.
Getting back to CO2 this is whole other ball game because of the volume and many other issues. For example sequestration is one method being suggested but in many areas of the country this won't be possible because of the geology. They would either need to pipe it elsewhere, find another method, cut production or pay the fines.
Bottle it and sell it to indoor greenhouse operations.
When I saw Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth standing upright out in the snow just outside the Fox broadcasting studio, it occurred to me that Fox News is truly evil and anyone who watches it is beyond stupid.
More snow simply means more moisture. It does NOT mean it's colder. In fact, the South Pole, the coldest spot on the globe for the most part, gets 0.1" of snow a year, if that. Colder means less snow because colder air contains less moisture. So the snow that fell on the Mid Atlantic states this February does not detract from the global warming argument. But Fox News watchers don't get that fact because their brains are fried by the blue glow of their televisions. More snow could indicate warmer air instead of colder air. But why waste my time trying to convince the millions of Americans who watch Fox News? Let the stupid perish.
So it snowed in the Florida panhandle on Friday because of more moisture and not because it was colder? It snowed because it indicated warmer air instead of colder air? That seems to be your arguement above.
Who actually believes CO2 absorption spectrum can even hold a candle to that of H2O?!?! The people who believe in Global Warming caused by excessive CO2 emissions, failed middle school chemistry.
^ Forest, C. E.; Wolfe, J. A.; Molnar, P.; Emanuel, K. A. (1999). "Paleoaltimetry incorporating atmospheric physics and botanical estimates of paleoclimate". Geological Society of America Bulletin111: 497. doi:10.1130/0016-7606(1999)111<0497:PIAPAB>2.3.CO;2. edit
^ Sagan, C.; Chyba, C (1997). "The Early Faint Sun Paradox: Organic Shielding of Ultraviolet-Labile Greenhouse Gases". Science276 (5316): 1217. doi:10.1126/science.276.5316.1217. PMID11536805.
^ Crooks, S. A.; Gray, L. J. (2005). "Characterization of the 11-Year Solar Signal Using a Multiple Regression Analysis of the ERA-40 Dataset". Journal of Climate18: 996–821. doi:10.1175/JCLI-3308.1. edit
^ Adams, Nancy K.; Houghton, Bruce F.; Fagents, Sarah A.; Hildreth, Wes (2006). "The transition from explosive to effusive eruptive regime: The example of the 1912 Novarupta eruption, Alaska". Geological Society of America Bulletin118: 620. doi:10.1130/B25768.1.
^ Oppenheimer, Clive (2003). "Climatic, environmental and human consequences of the largest known historic eruption: Tambora volcano (Indonesia) 1815". Progress in Physical Geography27: 230. doi:10.1191/0309133303pp379ra.
There's no connection between CO2 and air pollution. Air pollution and global warming are two separate topics but the media and environmentalists have successfully intertwined the two. Don't confuse them as they are not the same.
It wouldn't surprise me if there was a lot of people that thought CO2 being was toxic. For clarification it is toxic at very high concentration but there isn't enough fossil fuel on the planet to even begin to approach those levels.
Edit: sorry but cutting and pasting a Wikipedia article is irrelevant to this debate. I can look that information up there myself and it's far from reliable
How Wikipedia’s green doctor rewrote 5,428 climate articles (http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2009/12/18/370719.aspx - broken link)
You're going into the problem with the difference between mining bituminous (soft) and anthracite (hard) coal. Soft is always less efficient and more problematic for the environment no matter what. BTU efficiencies beween the two mitigate against soft coal and I can't see that changing. The shale oil industry will advance quicker than any effort at really making soft coal economically sound.
The problem between the Reagan version and Obama is motivation. Then we didn't have a Reagan who was seeking to use cap and trade to get 'control' of the economy for ulterior motivation. You may disagree that Obama is, but I and many others judge people on their proven beliefs and behaviors and he has done EVERYTHING conceivable to prove he's of ill-conceived motivation and a control freak, latter-day socialist.
The argument in the Reagan era was which would be fairer and more effective to implement, a cap and trade version or straight tax on polluters. I find it ironic today that in the era of the rule of the party of "fairness" that secrecy and expediency became the hallmarks of political practice to enabling legislation into law. Ironically Obama could become a national hero in an instant by doing one thing. If he told these Republicans who believe he's seducing them into a trap,as the spider to the fly, with his offer of a meeting that he's willing to completely scrap Obacare and start from scratch with an open and bi-partisan reform of FIXING WHAT IS BROKEN. He, of course, a prisoner of his own selfish ego and political desires, cannot bring himself to see and act upon that obvious course.
The people opposing cap and trade knew that it was not such a simplistic legal document to construct and would leave it open to great subtle abuses by political/lobbying influences on both pro and con sides with little subtle legal wordings here and there to be used as loopholes for contrived abuse. To not understand that based upon 'past' experience is to be criminally naive! Witness the fate of the Oba-CapAndTrade version. It almost mimicked Oba-care as to being a complexity of legal shenanigans and is now doomed and going nowhere fast. If we were NOT so politically polarized it would have sailed through and created more abuse and worse financial distress for the nation. On the other hand an emissions tax could be written to phase in gradually for 'smaller' size polluters so it wouldn't be an imposition that forced them out of business in trying to comply. Large companies could have it written completely differently. Probem is doing that now in the face of the Gore global warming scam distraction and polarization of public opinion. The Euros have already started to finally recognize it for what it is. I hesitated to even mention it, because such will be an invite to all to step forth and open up that sorry can of contaminated worms and the thread will be beset with all manner of polarized comments and stats that in the end will satisfy noone.
To get back to the cap and trade matter, all this though pales in the face of the comparative economic-political environment then and now. May I remind all...3.7 TRILLION DOLLARS of budget of which, as I recall, about 40% is deficit spending. Now that's being smart isn't it? That is one reason I asked people to read this article prior to commenting. For those who read ALL parts to the end they would have seen this excerpt (below) right at the end. Not my words of course, but the author's voicing the valid concusions that are now only greater. Imposing WHATEVER cost would occur and encouraging a trading in this volatile marketplace could have many unforeseen ramifications. NOBODY could put together law to prevent abuses. Laws are written by congressman/women who are lawyers and lobbyists who have deep and abundant pockets. This administration so committed to being anti-lobbyist in the campaign has employed more lobbyists than any other in position of high importance and power and even granted some waivers of the rues to do so. Real Obama transparency, lies easily seen though. There is NO way getting around that reality except a step by step appoach that deals successfully with a minimum of issues openly as a long-term phasing in plan. A "reasonable" first step might be dealing with a successful way to reduce bituminous sulphur emissions chemically prior to the air filtering process, IF that industry is something worth the effort of saving. I'm no expert in coal, so wouldn't broach that in specifics. Point being to address one major issue at a time.
Once profitability is entered in the from of carbon credits, despite all the best laid intentions the corruptors will make money-making off such a plan the vehicle for ruining any potential for environmental end gain. It's just the nature of the beast. The more complex any bill is, the more you know the lawyers with the politicians and lobbyists have been burning the midnight oil to bury their dirty little secrets. The ObaCare bill and methodology for crafting an passage was an education and testament to that.....Amen.
If you thought that "derivatives" as a speculating device were bad and contributory to our economic mess now compared to what shenanigans speculators turned loose by lawyers and sc*mbag politicans can do with "carbon credits" you ain't seen nuthin' yet. Naive goals must always be tempered with the reality of how to best economically bring them into fruition. Some potentials for abuse that come to mind and that could be buried in legal loopholes to overcome any real restrictions in any law are transactions with no other apparent justification than to increase/decrease the price of, or to increase the volume of trading as a market manipulation; how about those circuitous transactions which result in no "real" change of beneficial ownership of a block of credits by funelling through dummy "tunnel" corporations set up for that purpose; insider trading in credits with knowledge aforethought that will effect pricing, etcetera. Only one's imagination and understanding of the marketing abuses possible, limits the abuse potential. In a volatile marketplace such as we have now with a government in collusion with The Fed where nobody trusts the motivations of anyone else one thing is guaranteed and one thing only. The end-use consumer...translate... YOU AND I..., as usual gets the shaft in the end.
Bottom line is what true conservatives have always understood. The Founding Fathers wrote our Constitution convinced that a growing, uncontrolled central government would soon grow to be tyrannical upon those it was intended to only 'serve' and control would gradually swing from the people to the government. Well-intentioned people crafted our Tenth Amendment to the Constitution to attempt to slow that abuse down and reiterate a right of the states to assert themsleves as a MORE direct representative of it's people. We've come so far in the wrong direction, enabled by the progressives through the years, that now the minutia of legal detail wrangling in the courts to effect change means all change will eventually go to SCOTUS for resolution. That begets even more problems and delays. Change to the beast must now come from the top. Why? Easy., because over the years the high court has granted more and more powers to the Executive Branch of government. Ask any constitutional expert of note. The Presidency has been consistently deemed to have great "inherent" powers, not "stated" or "granted" powers granted by the Constitution. The high court has with great consistency come down on the Executive Branch side in rulings not wanting to appear to handcuff the a President, especially as pertains to national security. Since the President controls the AJ and by extension his legal staff's attitude there is great latitude for abuse, which we who have non-partisan eyes open to now can easily observe. There is also great opportunity for REVERSAL of such abuse by a change of attitude and direction at the top. That is the way a representative democracy in a sovereign republic works...when it works.
Look over your shoulder at the debris of our history and see that the founders were right. Man's inherent weakness for power and profit and control trumps all when not held in check from the beginning. Those who composed the founders were no innocent babes in the woods and all were tainted and far from perfection with the same feet of clay, but together with a serious eye to the future they gave us a founding document that was better than any that any peoples in any other land ever produced. That's what the strict constructionist view of the Constitution is all about. Respect for the intended integrity AND the flexibilty built into our Constitution as an 'article of faith' from the founders to the future generations. We have abused their 'faith' and trust in us shamefully.
I have no doubt that the simple minds will come forth with all their poredictable ranting against a partisan view...blah..blah..blah, when I've laid out anything but that. The only partisan view is we discuss this in the context of WHO is the CURRENT sitting President! And as my old pal Willie the Speare, late of Avon by the Sea, said..."there's the rub."
"No one knows whether the United States can apply the system as successfully to the much larger problem of global warming emissions, or at what cost to the economy. Following the American example with acid rain, Europe now relies on cap-and-trade to help about 10,000 large industrial plants find the most economical way of reducing their global warming emissions. If Congress approves such a system in this country—the House had approved the legislation as we went to press—it could set emissions limits on every fossil-fuel power plant and every manufacturer in the nation. Consumers might also pay more to heat and cool their homes and drive their cars—all with the goal of reducing global warming emissions by 17 percent below 2005 levels over the next ten years."
This attitude today MUST be considered, regardless of any success in the past, in TODAY'S REALITIES. The REAL effect, not the Gore inconvenient truth scam, that beyond being good stewards for the environment we pass on to future generations, that man can alter a warming or cooling change in the earth.
If one forgets all the global warming hype and accepts that we are a planet cooled down from an original molten mass, then all basic sense says that we will continue to cool down despite man's worst or best activity here. The best we can do is to reduce our impact on the environment that directly effects us and be cognizant that a greenhouse effect of some degree does exist and deal with it sensibly.
That about states my case. Just a suggestion that as this is lengthy there is no need to lift the entire post to make comment about parts, which is why I selectively broke it down in many paragraphs. You'll excuse me if I ignore the mere ranters who have naught to contribute to serious debate.
While some may be suckered by "faith" in the argument, I simply think many of them do not care if the facts support their position because they support the movement simply because the "result" means environmental laws and regulations that side with their personal stance on basic environmental issues. That is, they have no problems lying and manipulating if it means they get their way.
I find this a rather curious statement and must have missed it before. While I can sympathize with your standpoint (somewhat) I also see the folly in it.
You immediately think of "TAX" and all rational thought going forward also goes out the window. No longer does the possibility of man made pollutants matter because the argument is no longer even focused on science, it is no focused on economics. The same shysters who know nothing of science, people like Senator Inhofe of Oklahoma, who I believe is 2nd in the Senate in campaign contributions from the fossil fuel industry to Cornyn of Texas (another denialist) then go on FOX News to trumpet propaganda about climate change and even have the audacity to use a recent snowstorm as a good example that the planet must not be getting any warmer. In effect, the anchors who cast doubt on science at FOX and their accomplices in the GOP who go on air to discuss this with them (as well as crackpot "scientists") are assuming their audiences are not going to dig into the science of climate change and will instead focus on the potential economic impact of curbing pollution. They would be right. I know that and so do they.
So it should be noted that the aggressive business agenda pushed on FOX is not going to ever delve into actual science, not ever going to delve into whether or not the overwhelming majority of scientific research on the issue is correct or not. They are going to only cast doubt and try their best to cast doubt, and one of the best ways to do this is to ignore the science altogether, and remind viewers to not believe their lying eyes.
Focusing on the benefits of "Cap And Trade" or the liability it may place on American contributions to a warming planet (the worst contributor to this problem in a race to the bottom with China) is a separate argument. It's fine to have these doubts of the effect attempts to regulate our contributions to climate change will bring, but it does nothing to change the science.
And ignoring the problem will allow it to become greater. And accusing the science of being falsified only provides you and the other denialists the opportunity to not take responsibility and dismiss the science of decades of research and copious evidence of a changing , warming planet. You have no proof ANYTHING has ever been falsified. Someone (who remains anonymous) tried hard to discredit science recently when they STOLE personal emails and then made them public as if they are "proof" of a vast conspiracy that stretched around the entire world. All these thousands of scientists from decades past, all lying and making things up.
How absurd. That they were this desperate to cast doubt confirms my suspicions of the denialist crowd: They are powerful and have lots of money. They also have their very own propaganda network on cable.
Science has been measured, recorded, and no one is going to change these measurements. The models can predict change, and the change will NOT be beneficial to mankind. That is climate change at its very core. And we are likely causing it. Something innovative must be done unless we are to allow the corporate offenders and our own lifestyle choices (many forced upon us over the years) to destroy or otherwise render unrecognizable multiple ecosystems that, once gone, will never return.
How absurd. The very air we exhale is a pollutant? The element that plants thrive on, thereby growing the planet?
A Ripleys believe it or not factoid
In his war on the American taxpayer, Obama and his merry band of progressives had the EPA classify it as such.
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coalman
