Dr. James Hansen, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, is telling us the real “inconvenient truth” that Al Gore won’t touch. The Waxman-Markey bill, aka The American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES), will help Wall Street billionaires but it won’t stop global warming. The bill is 948 pages long, and is so loaded with goodies for special interests and Blue Dog Democrats that it’s worse than doing nothing. A House floor vote is expected today.
Waxman-Markey’s so-called “cap and trade” scheme would introduce pollution trading on commodities markets.
“Politicians may have to advocate for halfway measures if they choose. But it is our responsibility to make sure our representatives feel the full force of citizens who speak for what is right, not what is politically expedient,” Dr. Hansen says.
Dr. James Hansen, being arrested on Tuesday at a West Virgina coal mine.
What’s wrong with the Waxman-Markey bill?
- It allows 2 billion tons of carbon offsets each year. That’s way too much, and it may actually increase emissions instead of capping them.
- The goal by 2020 is a paltry 17 percent reduction below 2005 levels.
- It allows for 85 percent or more of pollution permits to be given away free to the private sector, including oil refineries and coal companies –a subsidy worth tens of billions of dollars.
- Worst of all, the bill would eliminate pre-existing EPA authority to address global warming under the Clean Air Act.
Last November, the American people voted for change. Unfortunately, while the party in power may have changed, the process through which this bill was negotiated makes it clear that the overwhelming influence of corporate special interests has not. This exercise in politics as usual is a wholly unacceptable response to one of the greatest challenges of our time, and it endangers the welfare of current and future generations.
Greenpeace also opposes Waxman-Markey.
Yesterday, Arianna Huffington delivered what could be a eulogy for this or any other bad bill:
The media like to pretend that something’s at stake when a big bill is being debated on the House or Senate floor, but the truth is that by then the game is typically already over. The real fight happens long before. And the lobbyists usually win.
They’re used to administrations and newly elected Congresses that come in with big plans for the future. But, as Obama and Congressional reformers are finding out, the future doesn’t have a well-funded lobby. The past, on the other hand, is extremely well represented.
There are some good provisions in Waxman-Markey, but these should be offered as stand-alone legislation instead of being bundled with lobbyist-written special interest giveaways.
UPDATE: I should have mentioned that climate change denialists and hyperpartisan Republicans are also against Waxman-Markey. Politics is strange, ain’t it?
UPDATE: DailyKos discussion on the bill’s merits, or lack thereof.
UPDATE: If I was not already against his bill, Rep. Markey would have lost my support with his defense of so-called “clean coal” today:
“It’s not an oxymoron. It’s not like jumbo shrimp or Salt Lake City night life,” said Markey.
Say what???
Oh, and the same article follows the Sierra Club’s oleaginous executive director Carl Pope as he tries to get progressive members of Congress to betray their principles and support this stinker.
UPDATE: Waxman-Markey passed tonight by a vote of 219-212. After they added 300 pages of amendments. It’s a safe bet many House members didn’t read the whole bill.
UPDATE: The eight Republicans who voted for ACES are now being tagged as “traitors” by hyperpartisan Republicans.
UPDATE: As the Waxman-Markey bill heads to the Senate, it gathers a new opponent. Senator John McCain campaigned for cap-and-trade legislation a year ago, but opposes it now as “cap and tax.”
UPDATE: Glenn Greenwald tells how the President bullied progressive members of Congress to urge them to vote for Waxman-Markey.
#1 by Kevin Owens on June 26, 2009 - 10:37 am
Instead of “Cap and Trade,” perhaps we should call it “Pay to Pollute.” But even that wouldn’t be accurate, because a lot of the polluters won’t even have to pay for the privilege.
#2 by Ken on June 26, 2009 - 2:08 pm
While the media is preoccupied with Michael Jackson, Congress is voting on the biggest tax increase in the history of country. The “cap and trade” bill, if passed, will effect every aspect of our lives. Electricity, gas, and food will become unaffordable for millions. Call or email your Congressman and tell them to not destroy our country’s future.
#3 by Larry Bergan on June 26, 2009 - 2:47 pm
A nice sounding bill that does the opposite of what it’s title says. Are we still living in the Bush days?
#4 by brewski on June 26, 2009 - 4:36 pm
Brace yourself, I am actually on the foaming-at-the-mouth-environmentalist side of this one. I, like many independent economists, are in favor of a simple aggressive greenhouse gas tax that would be on CO2, Methane, etc. So yes, that would make coal, beef and lots of other things more expensive. That’s the point, it’s supposed to make things more expensive so you use less. You know, that whole downward sloping demand curve thing you were supposed to have learned in Microeconomcs 101. It could be made revenue neutral by lowering other taxes, such as FICA.
The funny part about watching this and reading some of the posts here are that the Obama lovers and Pelosi lovers are actually surprised. Why? They should not be surprised given their actual records and not their speeches.
Obama has consistently said he does not want to raise the cost of energy to consumers (since he knows it will piss some voters off, and sort of unrelated, voted for subsidies for farmers of genetically modified corn and soybeans which Illinois-based ADM loves), Markey has fought against the propsed wind farm off Cape Cod since it gets in the way of yachting Democrats named Kennedy, Pelosi consistently receives the most contributions from big polluters.
So this is what you get and also what was very predictable. So while it is fun to just blame Bush for everything from the extinction of the dinosaurs to male-pattern baldness, you should do a little more homework and look at people’s voting records and find out what is really going on.
#5 by Richard Warnick on June 26, 2009 - 4:58 pm
Oh, maybe I forgot. What was in the Bush administration’s climate change bill?
#6 by brewski on June 26, 2009 - 5:28 pm
So what’s your point? Since I have said over and over that Bush was not my first choice and you cannot quote me anywhere on this site as advocating Bush. So what I think your point is that you prefer two-faced liar hypocrites about climate change vs. simple honest deniers.
That’s your choice. Pick one.
#7 by Ken on June 26, 2009 - 5:52 pm
Congress just passed a bill they were not allowed to read, or even debate that will cost millions of jobs, make energy a luxury for the rich, and sewed the seeds for the enslavement of the rest of us. If you want electricity, gas, and even food you will be dependent on the government for it, and they will severely ration it. We now have the “violence of faction” that James Madison warned us about.
This global warming hoax will go down as a crime against humanity.
#8 by Richard Warnick on June 27, 2009 - 9:35 am
There’s no way to top the “simple honest deniers.” Pat Buchanan was on MSNBC this morning proclaiming that climate change was a hoax in support of a plot to establish a dictatorial world government.
#9 by Richard Warnick on June 27, 2009 - 9:39 am
Congress didn’t pass the bill, just the House of Representatives. Now the Senate goes to work on it, and their version will be pure “drill baby drill.”
There’s no reason to worry about a “global warming hoax,” the idea that Congress is going to pass a law that can bring down carbon emissions is the real hoax.
#10 by .45 on June 27, 2009 - 12:03 pm
Absolutely Richard, we will not bring down carbon emissions, and very likely with the newest data, the global warming paranoia will change. Climate change isn’t just coming, it is here. For the Great Basin it means the monsoon, and big time flooding in the pan of the valleys, if it follows other warming trends, the Salt Lake Basin can fill way past the city level in a very short period of time. Have to give it a few years to see if it maintains.
Ever wonder how Egypt became a desert? What happened to the Fremont, and Anazasi? We can surely exacerbate the changes in a negative way we humans, but the changes come whether we begin them or not. Without the last melt off, humanity would quite likely not be here in the numbers we currently are. That was warming we could agree with.
In fact, warming is better than cooling, periods of cooling come with a high price in human mortality. Warming has it’s own dangers but is more preferable than cooling. Of course their are local consequences, one of them could be a bigger, deeper Salt Lake, at the city’s expense.
#11 by brewski on June 27, 2009 - 1:47 pm
Again!! I have never defended Bush or certainly Buchanan. I didn’t think that the Obama Kool Aide drinkers were setting the bar that low. So much for Change we can believe in.
So, Richard, I will take your non-answer as a “yes” that you prefer the hypocritical lairs.
Just say it.
#12 by .45 on June 27, 2009 - 2:10 pm
Like a warm Busch on a summer’s day, the mind prepared for the shock of that watery amalgam striking the unprepared gullet….yes Brewski, this is absolutely where the Obama Kool Aid drinkers live.
Anyone not in reverence of the naturally infected sticky sickly sweet barley malt Obama concoction is to be assumed to be a Bush/Buchanan supporter. Long live the orthodoxy!! Pogroms to follow, if only such a thing were possible in armed America.
Never mind that Buchanan’s prognostications have been spot on too many times to count.
Bar?, what bar? Limbo lower now Brewski…speaking of bars, can we have another Busch please?
The best part is when this pile of shit and tissue paper Obama has created comes unglued, it will be quite something to see who the O’bots blame then.
What is an absolute riot is that “cap and trade” was engineered and the method of the scam lain out, by no other than Enron scammer and Bush buddy, Kenny Boy Lay during the W years.
Who says there is no continuity in American government?
#13 by .45 on June 27, 2009 - 2:25 pm
Here is the link on Kenny Boy and the upcoming “crap and ‘fraid” scam. Prepare to be poorer, or freeze.
I don’t think in this phase of evolution of the American public our people are keen enough to understand that those that ripped us off once, are about to do it again. Great business plan if you can get it. good job Obot’s nothing like doing your homework.
Oh Obama…Viva la difference!
How do we know this is true? Gore the “inventor of internet” denies it. Imagine, a guy that uses 10 times the energy of an average American and flies around in a kerosene spewing jet lying to us about the real agenda.
The agenda never changes with the elite. Howe can we feed off the masses some more? What brand of claptrap WON”T they believe that we can use to fleece them? That is the questions our leaders ask themselves upon waking every day.
#14 by Larry Bergan on June 27, 2009 - 3:02 pm
Despite the fact that right wing trolls are trying to turn Obama’s public idea website into a farce by entering what might be hundreds of posts trying to get people to demand Obama produce his birth certificate, to cast a shadow on the legitimacy of his presidency, there was a post which asked people to vote on the idea that every bill in congress would involve ONE ISSUE.
Sounds like a great idea to me!
Aren’t trolls wonderful? Sitting around on their asses, collecting stock market dividends, eating potato chips and screwing up our society. God Bless you all; nobody else ever will and besides, we don’t know who you cowards are.
#15 by .45 on June 27, 2009 - 3:29 pm
Big hit of the jenkum, eh Larry?
What does any of that have to do with “Afraid and Crap” agreements?
We may as well call it the “so scared we shit” agreement.
What is to become of toilet paper under “crap and ‘fraid”?
#16 by .45 on June 27, 2009 - 7:41 pm
When you come down, have a look at this. Appears that as the human induced global warming science is falling down, some people around the world are simply not buying it.
Human induced global warming theory dies in 2000 and nein. Yet its adherents cling to the faith of the New Church of the Warmed up(and over) Redeemer.
This fascinates me, I have always wanted to be on hand for a founding of a new religion, and now I get to watch and test my assumptions. Going to be great!
#17 by Larry Bergan on June 27, 2009 - 11:29 pm
I don’t need jenkum, trolls give me an adrenalin high.
#18 by .45 on June 28, 2009 - 12:01 am
Trolling is how you catch the fish, and as long as it isn’t commercial, it’s all recreation.
Adrenalin? Oh, uh huh.
#19 by .45 on June 28, 2009 - 12:08 am
Some more good reads from down under. The Aussie engineer member of parliament demands to know why as our carbon emissions are increasing year to year, global temps have been falling since ‘98?
Put the question straight to president Moonbeam’s staff.
Australia is not going to go with cap and trade without irrefutable PROOF.
#20 by Larry Bergan on June 28, 2009 - 1:54 am
OK, I was joking about the adrenalin high, it’s probably more like a downer; maybe a contact high of some kind.
Thanks, glenn
#21 by Larry Bergan on June 28, 2009 - 2:41 am
If I may reply to myself
That last two words may have seemed sarcastic, but I’m not saying everything glenn says has no merit – to the extent that we have no idea who he is.
#22 by .45 on June 28, 2009 - 7:23 am
Apparently the ghost in the machine here, you surely seem to place a great deal of stock in him. I’m not him. What is sure is when you insist on talking to those who really aren’t there, traditionally you become a candidate for the funny farm.
#23 by Richard Warnick on June 28, 2009 - 9:25 am
Will climate change denialism stop climate change from happening? Now THERE’S a scientific experiment.
#24 by Ken on June 28, 2009 - 11:40 am
Richard
“Congress” can be used to refer to just the House of Representatives, or both the House and the Senate. In this case I am referring to the House.
#25 by Larry Bergan on June 28, 2009 - 2:06 pm
He he he!
#26 by Richard Warnick on June 28, 2009 - 3:55 pm
And here is Dr. Hansen’s reply to Martin Parkinson, Secretary, Department of Climate Change, Government of Australia (PDF).
Note: Australia has a Department of Climate Change. Their government recently issued a white paper that concluded:
#27 by Dwayne Axelrod on June 29, 2009 - 8:27 am
Australia has suffered worse droughts before the age of technology, their hottest summer being in the 1850’s.
I personally am thrilled about global warming. Problems like Utah will solve themselves, much like the last time the climate changed here and caused the Fremont and Anazasi to “disappear”.
The future lies north, as there is nothng we are going to do to change climate trends. Better question is why people don’t want warming. The better part of useable land in the northern hemisphere is north of 45 degrees latitude, and warming can only make life in these vast lands (Russia and Canada) easier and more productive. As the southland fries, adaptation will force humans north.
#28 by Richard Warnick on June 29, 2009 - 8:35 am
You need to consider positive feedback mechanisms such as the release of massive amounts of methane from melting tundra, and the the ice-albedo mechanism. Climate is more complex than you think.
#29 by Dwayne Axelrod on June 29, 2009 - 8:43 am
Can you imagine the volume of methane released when the glaciers melted back and vast areas of land in what is now Canada and Russia were released? It isn’t that complex. The world has been warming, with cooling interludes, and we are not the cause of it.
We need do nothing, the climate goes to its state before we were here, and will continue to do so.
The Earth has experienced iceless periods, and periods when the
Earth was but an iceball. This has all happened before, and our consideration and speculation is hardly required for events to transpire.
#30 by Richard Warnick on June 29, 2009 - 9:44 am
You’re right, and you’re wrong. The extreme changes you are talking about took place over tens of thousands of years, sometimes millions of years. Climate models are now predicting sudden changes in a hundred years or less.
#31 by Dwayne Axelrod on June 29, 2009 - 10:04 am
Wrong Richard. You have no idea what you are talking about. The rise of sea level of almost 400 feet have occurred within the last 15k years. That is not a long term prospect. The increase and release of carbon and methane from the rotting Earth due to thaw has happened in the same time period. It is simply ongoing. However, as that may be, there has been no rise in Earth temps since 1998.
There was a rise of 200 ft of sea level in a very short period of 2000 years within the last 15k. That is no doubt what all the myths of the “Great Flood” are based on within just about every culture in the world.
No need to model, the description of what has happened in this great period of extremely rapid warming is part of accepted geologic record. It could be revised as wrong like so much “science” but for now that is the litany.
What is a new twist on geologic thought is that these changes are being thought of as possibly occurring “overnight” and not on the order of great spans of time.
#32 by Richard Warnick on June 29, 2009 - 10:18 am
Dwayne–
Your head is full of half-truths and misinformation. Please read the report prepared for the Governor’s Blue Ribbon Advisory Council on Climate Change (PDF). The authors concluded:
Based on extensive scientific research, there is very high confidence that human-generated increases in greenhouse gas concentrations are responsible for most of the global warming observed during the past 50 years.
In the report, “very high confidence” is defined as 90 percent or better. Please read this, it’s short and written in easily understandable language.
#33 by Dwayne Axelrod on June 29, 2009 - 10:33 am
That is crap, as there is now cooling, and we are exactly back currently where we were in the 50’s. Get with recent data, not some politically driven garbage.
There was a “very high probability” that we were headed into the next ice age in the 70’s. That garbage was tramped into “science” classes when I was in grade school.
Bottom line stick with the geologic record. What was the warming from that melted ice to such an extent that sea level rose 400 FEET? “Scientists” cannot answer this, and as such the speculations of elements of the Religion of Human Induced Global Warming have no bearing on what is the reality. Sure makes for good press though.
Why is it that as carbon inputs have increased dramatically there has not been the predicted rise in temperatures predicted by the alarmists?
Anyone can publish unprovable nonsense. Even you Richard, you have compiled quite a pile.
#34 by Richard Warnick on June 29, 2009 - 10:46 am
Anyone can publish unprovable nonsense? Read the Governor’s Blue Ribbon Commission report. Or you could read the IPCC report, too. Then tell me.
#35 by Dwayne Axelrod on June 29, 2009 - 11:12 am
None of those are proof, or provable. They are theories. Now back to the geologic record.
The last 3 years have seen 0 rise in sea level, the gross indicator of warming. Since the Earth has been warming consistently for about 15k years, with cool interludes, this fact describes a world that is in fact no longer warming for now. Data from Boulder Colorado, 2009. See, if a thing is cooling, it is no longer warming. I know, a very tough concept for those of religious bearing to accept.
Please Christ, we have your own misguided followers, legions of other believers in that which is not provable, yet now we have another plague of
misguided faith, one that cannot see itself, and uses “data” politically/ religiously driven in the same manner your followers used, picking up decaying human remains, and unverifiable items, and calling them the “relics” of the religion and its Saints. Oh please protect us from all these lunatics.
#36 by Ken on June 29, 2009 - 11:12 am
Check out my latest PhotoShop on Cap’n Trade. It says it all.
#37 by Richard Warnick on June 29, 2009 - 11:34 am
Dwayne–
Wait, are you one of those people who don’t believe in evolution because it’s “only a theory”? What about the Big Bang theory? Theory of relativity? Atomic theory? Plate tectonics? All “unprovable nonsense” according to you?
You’re using three years of data to discuss climate? Do you even know the difference between weather and climate?
#38 by cav on June 29, 2009 - 2:40 pm
There’s a loser in the house who doesn’t yet undertstand that our economy / environment is already FUBAR, and that a little captain crunchiness is the only thing between the criminals and the noose. I just wish he’d get past that.
On another note, and perhaps more on topic, the low-tides here in the oceanic Northwest low-tides have been registering in the negative numbers lately. Can’t really say what that means, but…
#39 by Dwayne Axelrod on June 30, 2009 - 1:27 am
It means it is summer, and there are always big tides in June. That is physics. Atomic theory is currently undergoing complete revision. Big Bang theory IS creationism. Theory of relativity does not account for all manner of recently discovered particles and wave behavior. So use this as a guide as to elements of faith required to believe in science as an absolute.
The study of reality as humans know it, is completely incomplete. This is why faith exists, otherwise there would be no need for as we would all believe what science tells us to be the only truth. Even if it is incorrect for a while.