News-Record.com

Do ya think! I believe that what Gore is doing to young school children is child abuse. He's scaring these kids witless, telling them their parents are destroying the earth, and that places like Florida and Scandanavia will SOON be under water.

Gore began this hysterical lunacy of predicting the "imminent" catastrophic consequences of global warming more than 30 years ago. His rants now are even more ludicrous since the planet has been COOLING for the past 12-15 years, which we are told is a "surprise" to the "experts."

Of course they're surprised as they've been consistnely wrong for the past 115 years! The ridiculousness of the Gore hysteria is exhibited every time he tries to tie an event, like a hurricane, to global warming. That's ridiculous as most honest scientists have told us, and explained why.

When is Gore going to be forced to present some emperical evidence of his outlandish claims? He has become wealthy demagoguing this issue just as other Charlatans like Jesse Jerkson, and Twana Sharpton have gotten rich demagoguing the race issue! Dishonest demagoguery is bi-racial!

If parents continually frightened their children as Gore is doing, the children would be removed from the home. Gore should be sent to a "home" with the other mentally disturbed!

Newt Gingrich tells the House Energy and Commerce Committee the obvious: a carbon cap-and-trade bill will cost average Americans a lot of money in higher energy costs.

And Chairman Henry Waxman accuses him of using "scare tactics."*Doug

The only other thing that is much more scary is having Newt discuss his 4 failed marriages. And where does Henry get off about using scare tactics when he predicted in 98 that the planet would crease to exsist in 2004 if the American people didn't stop smoking and eating in McDonald's?

I have no clue weather the earth will be under water are not.
I asked this question a dozen times and have yet to get a answer. If NO is going to be underwater, why rebuild it?
I fill like the stockholders at NBC, the global warming folks, cut my mike off.

Hey Dog, the planet is already 87.5% under water! Besides, if we're talking about New York, and Krazyfornia that will be a plus for the rest of the country!

Tony, as you can see from this graph (that's a link on "this graph" but I don't think it's showing unless you mouse over it), global temperatures have been rising over the past decade. This graph shows that we're warmer than the medieval warm period you like to talk about. We also have recent data of ice breaking up in the antarctic and the fact that the Arctic Ocean ice is the thinnest it's ever been recorded at the end of winter. I'm sorry you have the arrogance to believe that you understand this more than those scientists who study it, and the gullibility to be fooled by those who pick and choose outlying data points to prove their false claims. Remember there's not a straight line, so you can't just take a fluctuation and say that negates a trend. It's like me saying that it's a myth the stock market hasn't done well over the past year because the DOW went up on Friday.

Andrew, let's say for the sake of argument, that your chart is correct (it's not). It stops with 2004, at which point the planet was about half a degree warmer than the Medievel Warm Period. The panet cooled by ONE degree in 2007, and I suspect by at least that much in 2008 when the figures are released.

A simple question. If things were nearly as dire as the hysteric's contnetions wouldn't it be almost criminally irresponsible for our president to have taken 500 people in two jumbo jets, plus another plane filled with "green" journalists flying many thousands of miles recently, then loaded them into caravans of SUVs, then pigged out on dead farm animals that are said to be 4-5 times more problematic than MAN!

Then on EARTH day, use more then 9000 gallons of jet fuel to fly to Iowa to tell us that we must cut back! Does common sense EVER enter this debate!

Friday, October 17, 2008

Plans to implement a worldwide carbon tax in the name of saving the planet from global warming have taken another blow after it was revealed that Alaskan glaciers have grown for the first time in 250 years after an abnormally cool summer.

Temperatures 3 degrees below average caused winter snow to remain for longer, prompting the increase in glacial mass, reports the Daily Tech.

“Since 1946, the USGS has maintained a research project measuring the state of Alaskan glaciers. This year saw records broken for most snow buildup. It was also the first time since any records began being that the glaciers did not shrink during the summer months,” according to the report.

The biggest shrinkage witnessed in the region occurred between 1741 and 1900, during which the glaciers lost about 15 per cent of their total mass as the earth began to exit the climatological period coined the Little Ice Age.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but CO2 spewing cars and jumbo jets were not too prevalent in the 18th and 19th centuries.

And now that the planet has naturally exited a warming trend and is heading towards a new “big chill,” as evidenced by the near complete halt in sunspot activity, the glaciers are expanding once again.

Years more growth in the Alaskan glaciers “might mark the beginning of another Little Ice Age,” notes the report.

The expansion of the glaciers follows a similar occurrence in the Arctic, which has undergone an ice cover growth twice the size of Germany in the past year, a gain of about thirteen percent following a colder than usual year.

Man-made global warming adherents have attempted to downplay such instances as aberrations that defy a wider warming trend, but in reality no global warming has been observed since at least 1999 or even 1995, as University of Finland professor Jarl R. Ahlbeck maintains.

Does common sense EVER enter this debate!* tonymo

Nope! Only when Andrew enters the discussion.

Then on EARTH day, use more then 9000 gallons of jet fuel to fly to Iowa * tonymo

No doubt you have no idea who is spraying those Chem-Trails all over Iowa, in fact, when was the last time you look up at the sky in downtown Detriot and thought it was a movie being made by Al Gore skywriters?

It's generally best simply to ignore tonymo.

Gingrich is correct that cap-and-trade a la Obama will increase costs. For what it's worth, this isn't the only way to do cap-and-trade; it's possible to structure it so it doesn't raise costs across the board. It comes down to how one distributes the permits. For the market in SO2 permits at the Chicago Board of Trade, the permits are given out to polluters (mostly electric utilities). The polluters trade the permits back and forth, with the result that dirty plants are net buyers and clean plants are net sellers. Some utilities make money from the system and some don't, but it balances out so the aggregate transfer from polluters to the government is zero. As a result, some consumers pay more but others can pay less. And the government's goal for the aggregate level of emissions is met.

What Obama wants to do is auction off the permits. The end result is the same as when they're given away, but now there's a transfer from polluters to the government because polluters must pay for each permit. The aggregate transfer is equal to the aggregate tax proceeds if there'd been a carbon tax instead. And that, of course, gets passed on to all consumers.

So the Obama approach is equivalent to a tax, except that a tax communicates a price to polluters (you must pay an extra $X per ton of emissions), while a cap-and-trade-with-auction communicates a quantity (we're allowing only Y tons of emissions), with the market for permits arriving at a price. Choose the tax level correctly and you'll end up with the same aggregate emissions. The advantage of the Obama approach to cap-and-trade (relative to a tax) is that you can be sure of the quantity of emissions you'll end up with.

Speaking of the market for SO2 allowances, it's worth reminding ourselves of a couple of things about it.

First, it was part of the 1990 Clean Air Act and promoted by the Bush I administration. Because it was favored by a Republican president, the concept was seen by environmentalists as the work of the devil, because of course all markets are bad. But the SO2 program allowed Republicans to say look, we care about the environment too, but we're going to implement environmental policy that makes economic sense. For some reason, there's no room for that type of Republican in the GOP of 2009.

Second, the objections of the business lobby was strenuous, and utilities in particular predicted that the cost per ton of SO2 would be sky-high, well over $1000 per ton. But the business lobby had an incentive to be aggressive in making those predictions, and in the event they were way off. Trade in SO2 allowances led fairly quickly to prices around $75 per ton. When push came to shove, the polluters were actually quite ingenious about finding cheaper and cheaper ways to reduce their emissions.

The implication for us is that while Gingrich is right about costs being passed on to consumers, the cost might not be as high as he fears, at least in the medium term. Of course, he has every incentive to be aggressive in making his claims.

Okay, one last word on the two antagonists in the original story, Gore and Gingrich.

I've always thought Gore overstates the catastrophic aspects of climate change. Or rather, whether it'll be catastrophic depends on where you live, and to what degree you care about others. For people in the developing world, climate change will very likely be catastrophic. For us in the U.S., it'll be more of a cost factor. We'll have to incur higher costs to deal with warmer climates, shifting rain patterns, rising seas, but the simple fact is that we have the resources with which to deal with such things. In Bangladesh, not so much. The question is whether we (as a country) give a damn about Bangladesh.

Gingrich supported the 1990 Clean Air Act, the one that created cap-and-trade, version 1, for SO2. That 1990 bill had certain deadlines and goals for 1995, but soon Gingrich started claiming that sticking to those deadlines would create "an economic catastrophe of the first order." I don't recall an economic catastrophe in 1995 or 1996, do you?

I have yet to hear why we are rebuilding New Orleans. Gore said it was going to be under water.
Correct answer, it was another way for liberals to bash Bush.
Tonymo keep up the good work, liberals hate facts.
Except for the ones the liberal; media makes up.

Doug Johnson, which liberal said this back in September 2005?

"And all who question the future of the Crescent City need to know: There is no way to imagine America without New Orleans, and this great city will rise again."

Here's the answer:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/15/AR2005091502252.html

But I do agree with you that Al Gore should have strenuously opposed the rebuilding of New Orleans.

Wouldn't Gore opposing rebuilding New Orleans be saying that the catastrophic effects of climate change are unavoidable? In fact, that's not at all what he's saying. Indeed if it were he certainly wouldn't be advocating emissions reductions. It seems to me if he opposed rebuilding New Orleans it would be pretty hypocritical.

Also, two years ago Newt Gingrich said this: "I think if you have mandatory carbon caps combined with a trading system, much like we did with sulfur, and if you have a tax-incentive program for investing in the solutions, that there's a package there that's very, very good. And frankly, it's something I would strongly support."

Unless it's possible to bring climate change to a screeching halt almost immediately, I don't see how Gore can't believe New Orleans is doomed. He attributes intense hurricanes to global warming that's already occurred and says this is accelerating. What about all this melting of the polar ice and Greenland glaciers causing rising ocean levels? What actions are on the table that Gore believes would begin to cool the planet within just a few years and cause ocean levels to recede?

Even if given that there were more hurricanes of higher intensity, there'd be no reason to assume another Katrina will hit New Orleans anytime soon. It's not like he's saying New Orleans will be hit every year. Also, had the levies been up to standard there wouldn't have been significant flooding. Certainly he's arguing areas like New Orleans will be at risk, but I think it'd be difficult to make the case that it's the highest risk area.

I'm not going to go over all of Gore's policy recommendations but he's been quite clear about them. His organization has a website wecansolveit.org that has many of his policy ideas, for example. His arguments are that the planet will soon, but has not yet reached what's often referred to as a "tipping point." Therefore he believes that the worst effects can be avoided. Now, you may disagree that the effects will be irreversible or as severe as he says, and many scientists believe we've already passed the tipping point. The point is, as is obvious by Gore's activism, he believes that if nothing is done climate change will have catastrophic results, but steps can be taken to avoid them.

Doug:

As for me, I have a real problem giving any credence to anything Al Gore says (remember "I took the initiative and invented the internet" and his claim that the movie "Love Story" was based on his romance with Tipper?) If he were not a leftist supporting a very progressive cause I feel certain he would be relegated to the status of a Lyndon Laroushe and either ignored or ridiculed.

Cap and trade will be very expensive and would be yet another broken promise by Mr. Obama who promised that no one with incomes of less than $250,000 would see their taxes go up.

Paul, it seems likely to me also that most Americans will pay energy taxes of a much greater magnitude than any tax cut we're going to see. Probably health-care taxes, too.

Here at America’s Power, we know not everyone is following what’s happening in Washington, but right now there’s a hotly debated bill in Congress called Waxman-Markey that deals with the issue of climate change.

We need a climate plan that’s affordable and effective. North Carolinians should support a plan that:

* Achieves emissions reductions
* Creates jobs
* Preserves fuel diversity as a means of promoting greater energy independence
* Protects consumers against unnecessarily high energy costs

We support a federal plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but the Waxman-Markey bill needs to do more to guarantee that consumers are protected from unnecessary increases in energy costs. Because without these changes the bill is not affordable – and therefore, not effective.

Get involved by telling Rep. Butterfield to fight for a bill that’s affordable and effective.