CM
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Post by CM on Jun 30, 2009 9:34:07 GMT -5
Certainly both side of the aisle used their numbers to push bills through but this bill tops them all. 1,500 pages of legal mumbo-jumbo over 150 pages more than Atlas Shrugged, try reading that in 6 hours. More than railroaded, more than ramrod, this is Dictator Pelosi and Obama’s broken promises. Obama promised 5 days not 6 hours, this is not about our country it is about power and lack of regard for our country. The significance of cap-and-trade will impact past our generation. Even if this were a good bill the method of Pelosi and gang is nothing short of un-American. Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) had a few choice words about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's (D-Calif.) landmark climate-change bill after its passage Friday. When asked why he read portions of the cap-and-trade bill on the floor Friday night, Boehner told The Hill, "Hey, people deserve to know what's in this pile of shit." thehill.com/leading-the-news/boehner-climate-bill-a-pile-of-s--t-2009-06-27.htmlObama’s EPA blocked reports that debunks global warming sources, the report could have changed Friday’s vote. Obama not the first president to hide facts, no change, not railroading, criminal. A top Republican senator has ordered an investigation into the Environmental Protection Agency's alleged suppression of a report that questioned the science behind global warming.
The 98-page report, co-authored by EPA analyst Alan Carlin, pushed back on the prospect of regulating gases like carbon dioxide as a way to reduce global warming. Carlin's report argued that the information the EPA was using was out of date, and that even as atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have increased, global temperatures have declined.www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/06/29/gop-senator-calls-inquiry-supressed-climate-change-report/thesaloon.net/blog/_archives/2009/6/29/4240089.html
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Post by jdredd on Jun 30, 2009 12:06:16 GMT -5
Sounds like climate change is dueling climatologists, just like fixing the economy is dueling economists. So I guess it's just a matter of who had the juice to get their way. But since even the watered-down House version of Cap & Trade may not pass the Senate, I suppose the special interests who are dedicated to Business as Usual may prevail. I guess Big Oil does not even need one of their boys in the White House to torpedo any action on global warming.
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CM
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Post by CM on Jun 30, 2009 12:09:44 GMT -5
Obama’s promised change is business as usual bury reports, critical reports that should have been available before Friday’s vote.
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Post by johng on Jun 30, 2009 12:15:51 GMT -5
The scientist who specializes in "Polar Bear" research has been banned from the World Climate change forum this week. He stated with the "Al Gore Polar Bear Stranded on an iceberg" photo that the Polar Bear population is indeed increasing not decreasing and the photographer who was fortunate to be in the right place at the right time to catch a pair of bears hanging out on a small iceberg was being used as a false support. FOX news.
I know it has no value as it is FOX and not news! Just sharing useless information as it seems to be the only argument anyone has for the whole discussion of "Climate Change" and regulation of Nature's process!
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Post by ♥Fem Dem♥ on Jul 1, 2009 9:27:46 GMT -5
We've had cap and trade since 1990 to control acid rain. How is this different?
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Post by johng on Jul 1, 2009 13:40:36 GMT -5
We've had cap and trade since 1990 to control acid rain. How is this different? Fortunately the "acid rain" scare of the 90's did not come with MEGA-TAX to all users of energy and was not designed to bring business to its knees. You would be well advised to pay attention to the COST factors in these things, especially since it comes hard on your clients and really taxes the shit out of a Stretch Limo!
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Post by jdredd on Jul 1, 2009 16:18:54 GMT -5
Funny, I remember "acid rain" as a serious problem in the Northeast that was made much less so by added environmental controls ("scrubbers") on industry smokestake emissions. Am I wrong?
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Post by johng on Jul 1, 2009 18:22:55 GMT -5
Funny, I remember "acid rain" as a serious problem in the Northeast that was made much less so by added environmental controls ("scrubbers") on industry smokestake emissions. Am I wrong? If you say so, sounds reasonable to me but what to hell do I know as I haven't seen any in quite awhile. In fact I would gladly accept a little acid or not!
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Post by dj on Jul 1, 2009 19:20:35 GMT -5
This EPA report that "debunks" global warming does nothing of the kind. And it wasn't "suppressed". And the "scientist" who wrote it is an economist. And what it says has been radically mischaracterised by Hannity and others - you know, the anti-science types who in fact were in cahoots with George Bush's anti-science agenda and who in part led the Republicans down a path which led to them being voted out of the White House and the Congress in no uncertain terms. This is typical politicization of science. It's the kind of trouble that comes along with scientific illiteracy and a willingness to believe hysterical claims by such scientific luminaries as Sean Hannity in opposition to the general consensus of the community of real scientists the world over. Let's start at the beginning. The EPA has prepared information regarding global warming, anthropogenic causes, and the economic impacts of possible mitigation policies. So far so good. This EPA guy Alan Carlin has gone around ringing bells saying EPA should dismiss the scientific consensus and rethink the whole thing. I believe he even makes the silly claim somewhere in his report about global temperatures going down in the last 11 years, which by the way is absolutely wrong. People, he is an economist. He has a political/economic issue here. He did ZERO "debunking" of science, unless of course I and the rest of the world have a different understanding of the word "debunking" than Hannity and this EPA guy. He just has trouble with the EPA's position on the USA's culpability in the whole issue. The "11 years of cooling" claim: Good lord. 1998 was the hottest year on record (by far), according to world mean average records kept since around 1850. 1998 was eleven years ago. Since none of the last eleven years have been quite as hot as 1998, someone got it into his or her terribly non-scientific brain that this equates to "temperatures have been declining for eleven years". But let's look at real numbers. In the ten years recorded since, eight have been hotter than any other recorded year besides 1998. The other two were the hottest since about 1990. Let all that sink in for a second. How about this. The 24 hottest years on record have been recorded in the last 29 years. In other words, since record-keeping around 1848 began, not a single year in the first 135 years was as hot as 24 of the last 29 years. If you're interested, see the charts here: hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcrut3/diagnostics/comparison.htmlNow, question is, how much does human-caused CO2 emission have to do with all this?? In a normal and naturally balanced system, the earth contains "CO2 sinks", basically the things that absorb CO2 and take it out of the atmosphere. Other things produce CO2, and although these things fluctuate, so do the capacity of the sinks, and so the amount of CO2 in the air, by parts per million, remains somewhat stable. While volcanoes, forest fires, and various other sources of excess CO2 exist, the earth's ecosystem responds with an increase in greenery and ocean algaes and ocean water absorption, and so on, and the system smooths out such that there are not many more parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere than normal, at least not for too many years at a time. And temperatures fluctuate for many other reasons besides the CO2 greenhouse effect. Sunspot cycles, etc. But at least it's cyclical. What has been proposed by scientists for a great number of years, and what is nowadays a general consensus amongst a VAST majority of scientists and science groups around the world, is that those "CO2 sinks" have maximum capacities. Once you get to the point where peaks in the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere can't go anywhere, ANYTHING over capacity stays in the air. Increasing the level of CO2 in the atmosphere even by a few parts per million, may increase the mix by .4% or 1% or 2%, and will naturally increase the greenhouse effect. In science, if there are plausible alternate causes or supplementary causes that can be identified to explain an observed phenomenon, then the task would be to see how much each cause is responsible for the effect. If NO alternate cause can be found for the observed effect other than the one which most obviously exists, then all the rogue EPA scientist in town can't counter the science by simply waving his hands around saying we need to wait for more results. It may be quite true that humans account for only 1.5% of all the CO2 emissions in the world. But understand that it is that 1.5% extra CO2 going into the atmosphere above and beyond what the earth's recycling sinks have been naturally optimized to handle for eons. Imagine I have a bucket which holds 100 ounces of water. Imagine it has a hole at the bottom which over the course of a year leaks 100 ounces even though the speed of the leak appears to increase or decrease ever so slightly throughout the year. Imagine I have a hose dripping into it at a rate of 100 ounces per year, with similar speed fluctuations. So far so good. Let's say I can't see into the bucket very clearly and I don't know if it's 1/3 full or 2/3 full right now. What if I start adding 1.5 ounces every year? It may seem to "absorb" my pitifully small contribution quite easily, for years on end. Decades! If my uncle comes by and says every time I add a little more, it's more than the bucket has been optimized to handle for as long as he and grampa and great-grampa can ever remember. Someday, if I don't stop adding 1.5 ounces it will overflow. Regardless of whether or not we know exactly how full it actually is, the general consensus of the entire family and all the neighbors, and simple math, tells us that we are increasing the amount of water in the bucket every year. Even if there is a little disagreement as to exactly how fast the hose is dripping, or how fast the bucket is leaking, we all agree that my adding 1.5 ounces every year should be increasing the volume. If scientists come by and do some calculations like looking at the shadows cast into the bucket and recording estimated water levels and tell me that 24 of the last 28 readings have been higher than ANY of the previous 130 years' readings... ...do you think I have a valid argument if I say "Hey, that hose adds 100 ounces per year to this bucket. It's not my 1.5 ounces that's going to overflow it. Besides, your highest reading was eleven years ago so as far as I can tell the level is going DOWN" ? No.
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Post by johng on Jul 1, 2009 19:55:01 GMT -5
Dj I am forced to "Exhalt" your anology and story telling capacity, as for the bucket other than abortion how do we control the population of man to reduce the CO2 levels to that which Mother Earth was designed to handle? I am not sure the science is quite as exact as your bucket but it is the best explanation I have read.
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CM
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Post by CM on Jul 1, 2009 21:12:22 GMT -5
DJ I’m not going to speculate on speculation but Google Alan Carlin EPA - I got 656,000 hits, of course I did not scan even 1% but I did not find anywhere the man is an economist. The EPA’s official job title for Alan Carlin is “Research Analyst”
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Post by Tired in CV on Jul 2, 2009 2:27:52 GMT -5
EPA May Have Suppressed Report Skeptical Of Global Warmingwww.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/06/26/politics/politicalhotsheet/entry5117890.shtmlExcerpts: The Environmental Protection Agency may have suppressed an internal report that was skeptical of claims about global warming, including whether carbon dioxide must be strictly regulated by the federal government, according to a series of newly disclosed e-mail messages. Less than two weeks before the agency formally submitted its pro-regulation recommendation to the White House, an EPA center director quashed a 98-page report that warned against making hasty "decisions based on a scientific hypothesis that does not appear to explain most of the available data." The EPA official, Al McGartland, said in an e-mail message to a staff researcher on March 17: "The administrator and the administration has decided to move forward... and your comments do not help the legal or policy case for this decision." The e-mail correspondence raises questions about political interference in what was supposed to be a independent review process inside a federal agency -- and echoes criticisms of the EPA under the Bush administration, which was accused of suppressing a pro-climate change document. Alan Carlin, the primary author of the 98-page EPA report, told CBSNews.com in a telephone interview on Friday that his boss, McGartland, was being pressured himself. "It was his view that he either lost his job or he got me working on something else," Carlin said. "That was obviously coming from higher levels." E-mail messages released this week show that Carlin was ordered not to "have any direct communication" with anyone outside his small group at EPA on the topic of climate change, and was informed that his report would not be shared with the agency group working on the topic. "I was told for probably the first time in I don't know how many years exactly what I was to work on," said Carlin, a 38-year veteran of the EPA. "And it was not to work on climate change." One e-mail orders him to update a grants database instead. For its part, the EPA sent CBSNews.com an e-mailed statement saying: "Claims that this individual’s opinions were not considered or studied are entirely false. This Administration and this EPA Administrator are fully committed to openness, transparency and science-based decision making. These principles were reflected throughout the development of the proposed endangerment finding, a process in which a broad array of voices were heard and an inter-agency review was conducted." Carlin has an undergraduate degree in physics from CalTech and a PhD in economics from MIT. His Web site lists papers about the environment and public policy dating back to 1964, spanning topics from pollution control to environmentally-responsible energy pricing. After reviewing the scientific literature that the EPA is relying on, Carlin said, he concluded that it was at least three years out of date and did not reflect the latest research. "My personal view is that there is not currently any reason to regulate (carbon dioxide)," he said. "There may be in the future. But global temperatures are roughly where they were in the mid-20th century. They're not going up, and if anything they're going down." The EPA's possible suppression of Carlin's report, which lists the EPA's John Davidson as a co-author, could endanger any carbon dioxide regulations if they are eventually challenged in court. "The big question is: there is this general rule that when an agency puts something out for public evidence and comment, it's supposed to have the evidence supporting it and the evidence the other way," said Sam Kazman, general counsel of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a non-partisan think tank in Washington, D.C. that has been skeptical of new laws or regulations relating to global warming. That appears to conflict with an e-mail from McGartland in March, who said to Carlin, the report's primary author: "I decided not to forward your comments... I can see only one impact of your comments given where we are in the process, and that would be a very negative impact on our office." He also wrote to Carlin: "Please do not have any direct communication with anyone outside of (our group) on endangerment. There should be no meetings, e-mails, written statements, phone calls, etc." "All this talk from the president and (EPA administrator) Lisa Jackson about integrity, transparency, and increased EPA protection for whistleblowers -- you've got a bouquet of ironies here," said Kazman, the CEI attorney.
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Post by johng on Jul 2, 2009 11:08:12 GMT -5
In the 80's we installed thousands of Halon 1301 Fire Extinguishing systems throughout the US and I myself sold and installed 100's here in California. Halon 1301 is a "flourocarbon" which under pressure from Nitrogen creates a gas 5 times heavier than air and was chemically designed to smother a fire without removing Oxygen. This of course made it safe for personnel in large computer centers and clean room enviroments which were prevalent during the time. Halon replaced major use of CO2 as the extinguishing agent of choice because of the "Life Safety Concern" as CO2 floods a space and removes all Oxygen and will kill the employees.
The world ban on flourocarbons has removed Halon from the available extinguishing agents and has been replaced with CO2 and some less affective new products. Now What?
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Post by dj on Jul 2, 2009 13:31:53 GMT -5
Carlin has a Bachelors in Physics, and a PhD in Economics.
I want to make sure my points aren't lost in my dissertation above So of course here's another :-)
The first point is that Carlin's paper does not "debunk" any science. It doesn't even really try to. What his paper supposedly does is suggest that the EPA consider "new" evidence on the subject. This kind of comment is typical of anyone who believe global warming doesn't actually exist.
Gosh, "three years out of date". The scientific literature stretches back decades and includes data points going back 150 years. That's NOT including observable human reports going back hundreds of years, and science on ice cores and ocean bottom cores going back 100's of thousands of years.
There is nothing in the last three years that can contradict the comprehensive look at the general body of science that the EPA was considering.
The typical denier is someone who is NOT an expert on the subject but is close enough to it or is interested enough in it to believe their alternate viewpoint has just as much validity as the scientific community's consensus. Holocaust deniers call themselves historians but their only research credentials are an overriding opinion that the numbers put forth are somehow political exaggerations posited by people with an agenda. Alternative medicine people point to anecdotal evidence and say the reason their preferred treatments are not medically accepted as valid is - what do you think?... - the big bad pharmaceuticals motivated by greed, quashing legitimate research into their magic and their sugar pills. It couldn't possibly be simple science, it must be a conspiracy to quash other viewpoints.
Notice I used "quash" twice. Alan Carlin says his report was quashed. But his report is an unsolicited opinion which is not scientific and which comes from someone working in an unrelated department, at the 11th hour. It's simply skepticism of a denier. Notice he says . Terrific. That's a personal opinion and really, the EPA's presentation to the government really does NOT need to be delayed based on the personal opinion of an economist whose professional position at the EPA is in a working group on species endangerment.
The problem is when someone with a personal opinion suggests they know the science and can interpret the data better than the scientists actually working on it.
To the general public this person might look like a renegade who is being censored and bullied, but that's because the general public knows even less about the science than he does. Of course it looks like controversial infighting.
But the decision by the EPA to not at the eleventh hour delay their presentation based on an uninformed paper written by the guy down the hall, is not "quashing" or "burying" opposition.
I saw this in the article and this alone is tells me Carlin has no idea what he is talking about:
They're not. Simply not close. Let's understand global temperatures. A single degree (Celsius) is a big change for a global average. Perhaps he said what he said because global temperatures about about 1 degree away from the mid 20th century. But either he doesn't know what he's talking about, or he is cleverly twisting the reality.
From 1850 to 1950 the temperature fluctuated within a range of about 1/2 degree, peak to trough. Up .5 over about 30 years, down .5 over about 30 years, and so on. In 1950 (mid 20th century) the temp was about 10 years into a down slope, where it then leveled off. It climbed again for about 30 years, and then instead of going down AT ALL at that point, it continued up, breaking through the top of the previous 100 year range, and since 1980 has continued climbing ANOTHER 1/2 degree, ABOVE the entire half-degree-range it came from.
So then, the last 25 years or so have been the highest average global temperature going back not just the 150 years we've measured, and not just the 100,000 years we've extrapolated from ice cores and ocean bottom coring, but actually the highest global temperatures in roughly 400,000 years.
Thanks for that, Alan.
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Post by johng on Jul 8, 2009 19:02:28 GMT -5
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