Cap & Trade barely passes House - another abomination

An abomination, typical of ObamaNation ...

Open Government [Iain Murray]

The stink surrounding the Pelosi-Waxman-Markey cap-and-tax bill has become vomit-inducing overnight. Representative Waxman has decided to replace the 1091-page bill with a 300-page bill that will be debated for no longer than three hours today. So your elected representatives will have virtually no time to debate the merits of an economy-spanning bill they will not have had time to read. Speaker Pelosi and her sidekick Waxman are displaying nothing more than complete contempt for the democratic process.

If you're as utterly disgusted by this as I am, you can send a message to Pelosi and her cronies by telling your Congressmen to vote against this bill. You can e-mail them, call them (202-225-3121), or text the National Taxpayers Union on 54608 and they will help.

And would anyone like to help push the Constitutional Amendment I suggested around the time of the stimulus?UPDATE: The e-mail link is now correct.


The Shrinking Consensus [Jonah Goldberg]
Kim Strassel:
Among the many reasons President Barack Obama and the Democratic majority are so intent on quickly jamming a cap-and-trade system through Congress is because the global warming tide is again shifting. It turns out Al Gore and the United Nations (with an assist from the media), did a little too vociferous a job smearing anyone who disagreed with them as "deniers." The backlash has brought the scientific debate roaring back to life in Australia, Europe, Japan and even, if less reported, the U.S.

In April, the Polish Academy of Sciences published a document challenging man-made global warming. In the Czech Republic, where President Vaclav Klaus remains a leading skeptic, today only 11% of the population believes humans play a role. In France, President Nicolas Sarkozy wants to tap Claude Allegre to lead the country's new ministry of industry and innovation. Twenty years ago Mr. Allegre was among the first to trill about man-made global warming, but the geochemist has since recanted. New Zealand last year elected a new government, which immediately suspended the country's weeks-old cap-and-trade program.

The number of skeptics, far from shrinking, is swelling. Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe now counts more than 700 scientists who disagree with the U.N. — 13 times the number who authored the U.N.'s 2007 climate summary for policymakers. Joanne Simpson, the world's first woman to receive a Ph.D. in meteorology, expressed relief upon her retirement last year that she was finally free to speak "frankly" of her nonbelief. Dr. Kiminori Itoh, a Japanese environmental physical chemist who contributed to a U.N. climate report, dubs man-made warming "the worst scientific scandal in history." Norway's Ivar Giaever, Nobel Prize winner for physics, decries it as the "new religion." A group of 54 noted physicists, led by Princeton's Will Happer, is demanding the American Physical Society revise its position that the science is settled. (Both Nature and Science magazines have refused to run the physicists' open letter.)

The collapse of the "consensus" has been driven by reality. The inconvenient truth is that the earth's temperatures have flat-lined since 2001, despite growing concentrations of C02. Peer-reviewed research has debunked doomsday scenarios about the polar ice caps, hurricanes, malaria, extinctions, rising oceans. A global financial crisis has politicians taking a harder look at the science that would require them to hamstring their economies to rein in carbon.


http://www.nypost.com/seven/06262009/postopinion/opedcolumnists/stifling_science_to_fight_warming_176156.htm


The Cap-and-Trade Stampede [Victor Davis Hanson]

It was somewhere around 3-4 years ago that "global warming" suddenly morphed into "climate change" in vernacular speech. Soon previously antithetical events, from floods to draughts, forest fires to ice storms, record lows and unprecedented heat, windless days and violent gusts — hitherto known by our parents as "the weather" and "stuff happens" — suddenly became symptomatic of the horrible middle-class habits of burning carbon to go places and keep either warm or cool. One could not lose an argument, since on any given day something other than clear and 75 degrees was attributed to carbon footprints and global changes. When undetectable the problem was "insidious," when a Southern California canyon went up in wildfires it was, "You see! We warned you!" — as if the newer "climate change" fulfilled some deep-seated psychological need in many in the media.

In the methodology of phrenology or astrology, any natural disaster was hyped in magnitude (the locus classicus was Obama's claim in May 2007 that "10,000" had died (actual death toll: 12) in a tornado in Kansas (apparent proof, he further claimed, of what happens when Bush diverts the Kansas National Guard to Iraq and leaves the depopulated state short-handed while thousands perish).

I just spent a few days in the Sierra in May during freezing cold temperatures and snow; a week ago it was quite cool and raining in New York; each time I have passed through Phoenix this spring it seemed unseasonably cool; and just gave a talk on the Russian River and about froze. Meanwhile the grapes look about ten days behind due to unseasonably cool temperatures. Any empiricist would be worried, as Newsweek once was, about global cooling. Will the planet boil, if we slow down a bit, review the science and dissenting views, and consider the wisdom in a recession of allotting nearly a trillion dollars to changing our very way of life (while the Chinese absorb market share)?


The Visual Display of Quantitative Information II [Jim Manzi]

Conor Clarke accepts that:
I think Jim Manzi and others are right to say — if you believe the IPCC and CBO — that the U.S. won’t experience a climate-induced decline in GDP until 2080 or 2100.

But Conor goes on to argue that the costs that Waxman-Markey is expected to impose on American consumers by 2050 — about $1,1,00 per household per year, or a little less than 1% of total consumption — are pretty trivial, because we should expect to be so much richer by then. (I’ll note in passing that, as per my posts on this, there are very good reasons to believe that the EPA cost estimate is low, and also that costs are also virtually certain to rise between 2050 and roughly 2100 when we would expect to start getting some offsetting benefits.)

He then shows a chart making the point, basically, that 1% is a small fraction of 100%. But of course, this cuts both ways. We hear constantly about the existential threat posed by global warming — Cities underwater! Drought! Famine! Think about his graphic. The expected benefits don’t even outweigh these costs. That ought to make you stop and think.
Keep reading this post . . .


Open Government, Part II [Iain Murray]

This week, CEI released evidence to the public, by means of a filing of comments with the Environmental Protection Agency, that the EPA was suppressing science skeptical of the harmful effects of global warming. By taking this action, Obama's EPA demonstrated its hypocrisy when it comes to the role of science in its decision-making. Shortly before assuming office, EPA administrator Lisa Jackson declared: “As Administrator, I will ensure EPA’s efforts to address the environmental crises of today are rooted in three fundamental values: science-based policies and programs, adherence to the rule of law, and overwhelming transparency.” Jan. 23, 2009. This followed the president’s own January 21 memo to agency heads on “Transparency and Open Government.” And in an April 27 speech to the National Academy of Sciences, the president declared that, “under my administration, the days of science taking a back seat to ideology are over.”

What is particularly interesting is the way the EPA has tried to brush this under the carpet. Rather than take my word for it, as an interested party, best to follow the work of the San Francisco Examiner's Thomas Fuller. He reported the story, then, faced with a dismissive response from EPA, decided that there was no story there. However, as you'll see from the link, further investigation proved that there was indeed a real story, and two further updates confirm this. Despite the administrator's and president's declarations, political considerations are clearly dominating scientific discussion at EPA. Now, this is in many ways to be expected as part of the political process, but not when the EPA head and her boss have told the public otherwise.
What is also interesting is that so far, it seems that the traditional media read our evidence and the EPA's denial and stopped there, without further digging. Thomas Fuller, however, did go further, turned over the stone, and found the worms wriggling there.

CEI released the actual suppressed study last night, which it did not obtain from the scientist concerned. You can read more at Watts Up With That.

So add this to the attempted railroading through of the cap-and-tax bill and you can be left with only one conclusion. Democrats currently in government aren't just incompetent, they are contemptuous of the American people.


Bringing in Patrick Kennedy from Rehab [Kathryn Jean Lopez]

Pelosi delivers on a Friday night (210-212). Via the DCCC:

Kathryn —Today is truly a day for the history books! A short time ago, the House passed the historic American Clean Energy and Security Act. In doing so, we took a monumental step to get America running on clean energy, create millions of new jobs, strengthen our security, and reduce pollution in the air.This legislation was masterfully written by two longtime champions for building a clean energy economy in America and aggressively fighting climate change - Chairman Henry Waxman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and Chairman Ed Markey of the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. Most of all, this victory belongs to you. It is directly because of your grassroots support and the leadership of President Obama that progress on climate change is indeed happening in Washington. Thank you for making this good news possible.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi



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