UPDATE: This bill has been pulled by Senate Democrats see CBS News story
Sources inside the U.S. Senate tell me that this cap and trade bill is “unofficially” defeated, based on a head count of likely votes. All that remains is a formal vote tomorrow, but sources say this bill has little, if any, chance of passing given what transpired today.
Sen James Inhofe, a sharp critic of the bill, issued a short press release tonight:
“This bill was doomed from the start,” Senator Inhofe said. “The committee process was short-circuited, the floor debate was circumvented and the amendment process was derailed. I do not see how the Democrats use this failed bill as any kind of model for future success.
As I suspected, reality hit the U.S. Senate when the economic facts of this bill were exposed. When faced with the inconvenient truth of the bill’s impact on skyrocketing gas prices, very few Senators were willing to even debate this bill.”
You can safely bet this bill will return in a new form next year.
Thank God. Unfortunately its just a brief respite though. The Dems are looking like they’ll get a 60 seat Senate and a bigger House majority. So, like the undead, this will be back.
The unfortunate aspect of all this, is that the only things that will put and end to this nonsense are not too appealing and could be downright tragic. Either world economies must be so bad that governments will not dare impose this kind of stupidity on the citizens or global temperatures must continue to drop to the point that the empty science of AGW is completely discredited by everyone.
Unfortunately this whole AGW silliness is making me skeptical to the belief that truth and common sense will always win out. I still believe that, but the whole “climate change” cancer has so infected the psych of political, media and the body politic of the world that its removal I fear will be long and painful.
Thank you Anthony for all you do to help in this, it is greatly appreciated more than you probably realize
Jerry
Good news and good riddance.
Hopefully, the weather will cooperate and next winter will be colder yet. Maybe a good dose of cold weather will overcome the hot air produced by Congress.
I sent my thank you note to Senator Inhofe.
Senator Inhofe and Congressman Rohrabache would be doing some of us a big favor, if they would provide Senator McCain a crash course on “AGW”. (also now known as “Global Climate Change” by some)
Inhofe: ““The committee process was short-circuited, the floor debate was circumvented and the amendment process was derailed. I do not see how the Democrats use this failed bill as any kind of model for future success.”
I’m not the most astute political observer, but I’m not sure Inhofe’s message is the right one. Words like “short-circuited”, “circumvented” and “derailed”, spoken while energy prices go ever higher, might give the wrong message. I suspect it might cause the GOP to be perceived as the obstructionist party.
That might make sense if it appeared it was working. But considering how things have gone since the GOP started accusing the Dems as the “do nothing party” last year, I’m not sure it’s such a hot idea.
Then again, what do I know?
I hope it goes down. That bill is evil. It would damage the economy..
http://www.heritage.org/Research/EnergyandEnvironment/cda08-02.cfm
Rico,
you DO understand that debating this bill would have brought out a reasonable estimate of how badly it would affect the economy??
The Dems can not afford this until AFTER they have control of the presidency.
Sen. Inhofe and the other Conservatives WANTED the Bill on the floor for full debate so that all the warts would be seen. The Dems didn’t. Sen. Inhofe’s comments are quite appropriate.
I should also reiterate that the cost of energy is a direct result of the Dems obstruction of any reasonable energy policy. They will run from any confrontation on these issues until AFTER the elections!!
Just to be crystal clear, the DEMS Leadership SHORT CIRCUITED, CIRCUMVENTED, and DERAILED to get the bill passed under the radar!! It was abandoned when Sen. Inhofe and team brought it into the light of scrutiny with the cameras rolling.
Socialism and Statism always have to be disguised to be appealing. If exposed for their real effects, they can never win. But you can be sure the Socialists will be back at it again next year. Freedom requires eternal vigilance.
Thanks to Anthony and all the rest for keeping the spotlight on this economic hydra masquerading as a polar bear.
“Leiberman-Warner cap and trade climate bill: unofficially defeated”
Let’s all hope this is true.
This proposal is nothing but a hyperinflation-bill.
Inflation is reported at 3.6% for last month here in the Eurozone. The big unions here are already gearing up for huge pay hikes. The vicious inflation cycle is taking hold…all thanks to unaffordable energy.
The green monster will no doubt rear its ugly head again. And I doubt we will have to wait long.
Remember this is our future should this bill and others like it pass:
http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/05/31/tv-network-tells-kids-when-their-carbon-footprint-says-they-should-die/
In the pursuit to Control thought the first task is to coral the use of resources. The carrot on a stick is very powerful.
Not so unlike the mythical “Sherwood Forest in Nottingham-shire” story, there is connective tissue in this current AGW World wide plan to the very origin of the United States. The struggle of the three groups of North American colonists presented a new beginning of mans thought process that is known as “American” values. These three groups in that struggle were (and are present today) Independence, Loyal to the King, Neutral-without commitment (go with the flow). Through tragic, personal sacrifice, and some luck, the Independence group prevailed.
Man is at a cross road that has confusing signals perpetrated by devious agents of centralized government.
Without participants of Senator Inhofe’s intellect, would this bill have silently become law? Is there only one Inhofe in our legislative branch?
The Independent thought process within Watts Up is encouraging.
Unfortunately the camel has his nose in the tent with California gleefully setting its own international policy and imposing its own internal AGW legislation. It’ll be a long time before the makeup of the Congress is such that the Federal Government reasserts its Constitutional authority and halts such nonsense.
Good riddance… at least for now. But it will be back regardless which nitwit gets elected president… and they both are total nitwits!
However, the better news is that it gives the “realists” a “time-out” during which they can continue mustering their forces against this scam. If it’s any indication of interest, “The Mysterious Climate Project” subscriber list has now grown to over 110,000 since its inception in May 2007.
BUCKO36 wrote: “Senator Inhofe and Congressman Rohrabache would be doing some of us a big favor, if they would provide Senator McCain a crash course on “AGW”.”
I don’t know Bucko! It’s almost impossible to get any sort of intelligence into McCaca;s skull and Osama… well forget it!
Jack Koenig, Editor
The Mysterious Climate Project
http://www.climateclinic.com
“AGW”, “socialism”, “deniers”, and similar terms smell like “stinkin’ thinkin'” to me – a huge and poisonous groupthink mentality, heavy in closed-mindedness and fueled by unscrupulous pundits, that is blocking constructive discourse in this country. How about thinking for yourselves? How about getting down from those high horses? The truth is out there, somewhere behind the clouds of rhetoric and BS, but it will emerge eventually, though that might be a bit late … In the meantime I’d rather not add to that stinking cloud …
MSNBC says that Reid will pull it and wait for the arrival of the new Congress next year before retrying.
KuhnKat:
I believe your analysis is flawed. The bill was bound to pop up in the media as soon as the Democratic Primary fiasco wound down. Inhofe and company played a game of dirty politics, making unsupported and sunsubstantiated claims about the economic impact of the bill. They defeated the bill by playing in to the notion that our economy is hurting and this (according to them) would hurt it even more, not by showing any flaws in the science.
Good , cap and trade is a stupid way to make rich people like Gore richer.
I saw a documentary yesterday on a proposal I would support strongly were I an AGW believer. Cheap and rational, non destructive, easily controlled.
http://www.planetwork.net/climate/cooling/index.html
“Global Cooling is an informal group of collaborating scientists from the US and UK examining an idea for creating a controlled global cooling to balance global warming resulting from burning fossil fuel. This group is organized by Dr John Latham, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colorado, who first published the idea, which involves seeding marine clouds to increase their reflectivity.
We propose to assess and develop a scheme for mitigating global warming by producing a controlled enhancement of the reflectivity of low lying maritime clouds for incoming sunlight by spraying into them seawater particles from a fleet of wind-powered satellite controlled unmanned vessels. These particles will create additional droplets in the clouds, thereby increasing their albedo.”
They seed clouds with salt water with a method they are developing of ingenious unmanned sailing vessels whose motion shoots fine clouds of sea water. The water dries on the way up and the salt seeds the clouds increasing the albedo. As the sensitivity to albedo is great, a 1% change drops the temperature by degrees, this is a good handle.
They need about 50 ships to achieve this, cost minuscule in comparison to cap and trade. If too much cooling easy to stop applying and effect stops, contrary to other seeding proposals of dust etc. No pollution because salt over the oceans is normal.
It may be good to propagate this proposal to the scientific community for wide support, because it will pull the rug out under the warmers, as efficiently as a real cooling trend.
It is more important not to catapult the world economy into a wild goose chase that will kill millions, than to prove oneself right about CO2.
Here in NH, Sen Sununu (R) is under attack as a supporter of ‘big oil’ for not supporting this economically destructive legislation. It’s very likely he’ll lose his seat to a AGW moonbat this November. Both of NH’s congressional seats went D last election.
Either world economies must be so bad that governments will not dare impose this kind of stupidity on the citizens or global temperatures must continue to drop to the point that the empty science of AGW is completely discredited by everyone. – Jerry
My bet is on the former. Unemployment numbers were just released a few minutes ago, and they are far worse than I could have imagined. I am sooo glad I pulled everything my wife & I have out of the stock market last year.
As Terry Dunleavy aptly stated in an article last month, let’s use this cooling off period to re-examine the facts on climate change. And adding to that, let’s use this economic downturn to re-examine the potential economic consequences of proposals like Lieberman-Warner. Lower- & middle-class Americans are going to be struggling over the next few years as it is. The last thing we all need is more legislation unnecessarily increasing our cost of living.
Washington has got to get its priorities straight.
This debate is really interesting…as a concerned citizen i think this book really helps environmentalism (link to ebooks version)
timprosser:
We’re a bunch of back-pew agnostics. You invite reaction when you feign independence while employing notorious tropes.
We back up our heresies with citations, data and dialogue. Every single one of us came here due to our independent-mindedness. You can incite a pique of frustration by making broad statements that belie a particular bias.
Take a closer look at the evidence, the Aqua data finding no net increase in water vapor, the Argo data finding no large reservoir of latent heat, other related data. Take a look at the similar findings about tropospheric soot causing a net heating effect that had falsely implicated CO2 for 40% extra heating effects b/c it had heretofore been relegated to “masking” CO2. Or that 90% of the ARctic thaw has been caused by dirty snow caused by snow-darkening & snow-melting sootfall. see my blog: http://www.scientificblogging.com/blog/258
These are all studies and data from main-line climatologists. So it turns out the best skeptics, climatologists like Lindzen, Spencer, Singer, Christy and countless others, were right after all.
Drop the rhetoric and we’ll be very patient with you in explaining why we think you, and many others, have been intentionally duped into thinking the world is going to hell. It’s a long discovery process, but if you want to hear the entire apostate’s brief, we have good data & information to share.
If you value your open-mindedness, here’s an interesting opportunity.
The very last thing we need is a half-baked ‘climate intervention’ like the Global Cooling group. We do not know what is really going on, we have a handful of equations with a zillion variables. None of the models can predict today’s climate patterns, let alone what might happen in 30 or 50 years. The Law of Unintended Consequences says anything like this will only make matters worse.
The problem stems from the bureaucrat’s need to ‘do something’. Which is not surprising, as they usually ignore real problems and focus on hysteria.
How about we look at developing economical alternatives to fossil fuels, safe nuclear power, things that can work and make sense at the same time?
I’m just a grumpy old engineer these days…
Counters, 7:29:32. You should read Rohrabacher’s speech. He showed plenty of flaws in the science. Next year will be colder and the case against CO2 even less compelling.
====================================
Anthony,
It doesn’t make any difference if BO or JM is elected president this fall; either idiot is going to support this bill and the odds are it will be BO so we will see the most extreme Socialist version in 2009. We are dealing with a religious cult and there are only two things which will stop such as cult.
1. They run into another religion which is crazier then they are.
2. They run into a reality which they only ignore at the risk of their lives.
At this point the only thing which is going to stop these nut cases is a full Maunder Minimum and that is going to take years, if it occurs. Unfortunately the people doing the dying will not be the ones doing the lying. I am very sure that Al Gore will be snug in his mansion irrespective of climate change. If the American people support this bill they deserve their reward which is the grave! I for one don’t plan to share it with them.
After ten days of a blank sun we just had another short-lived Cycle 23 sun-speck which I don’t believe was even assigned a number. The sun continues to do absolute nothing. You insight about sun-specks during the Maunder Minimum is proving to be all too correct.
Meanwhile an NGO by the name of the “International Energy Agency” http://www.iea.org/ is advancing nuclear power which will never be supported by BO and his fellow travelers.
$45 trillion needed to combat warming
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080606/ap_on_bi_ge/japan_iea_climate_change
Mike
retired engineer:
“The very last thing we need is a half-baked ‘climate intervention’ like the Global Cooling group. We do not know what is really going on, we have a handful of equations with a zillion variables. None of the models can predict today’s climate patterns, let alone what might happen in 30 or 50 years. The Law of Unintended Consequences says anything like this will only make matters worse.”
No. That is why it should be pushed. It cannot make matters worse than cap and trade, and as others are observing here, the inertia of this nonsense is too great.
This seeding proposal can stop warming according to the IPCC models, since it will modify the albedo, but will be working on a daily basis, again , H2O is very variable on a 24 hour basis, so it can be a switch that can be turned off if not needed and on if needed on a daily basis. Real weather control.
The cap and trade damage is expected and will be huge on a global scale and all for nothing, according to me, but this proposal addresses the fears of the warmers effectively.
anna v. you say “As the sensitivity to albedo is great, a 1% change drops the temperature by degrees, this is a good handle.”
Good point. This is exactly why understanding cloud processes is so important to understanding climate. A 1% shift in averaged albedo has a huge impact on surface temperatures (change in surface forcing of 5-10 W/m^2), yet our current understanding of clouds can’t begin to predict cloud dynamics to an accuracy of 1%. Roy Spencer has been pointing this out for years.
Hansen has given Andrew Revkin over at NYT’s DotEarth permission to post an email he sent in regarding the climate bill. It is definitely worth a read, as it clearly presents Dr. Hansen’s positions on climate tipping catastrophes and social engineering. Anthony, you might want to start a thread on this. Note Hansen’s ability to lobby and alarm Congress in *his* alligator shoes to gain ever-increasing financial support for his modeling center at NASA over the past 25 years.
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/06/james-hansen-tax-c02-emitters-pay-citizens/
Via IceCap, must read:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121269184525849383.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
Well in 09 they’ll have an Obama Prez, a Gore Climate Czar, a Dem Congress and muffled dissenting media. This bill is far from dead.
Hopefully some of you will understand why I hope the sun stays quiet for awhile longer. The damage stupid politics would reak would be far greater than what another 0.5 – 1.0°C of cooling could possibly bring.
Here in NH, Sen Sununu (R) is under attack as a supporter of ‘big oil’ for not supporting this economically destructive legislation. It’s very likely he’ll lose his seat to a AGW moonbat this November. Both of NH’s congressional seats went D last election.
I may be in the minority, but I, for one will be switching my longtime Dem party allegiance, and voting for Sununu. With both pres. candidates on the AGW bandwagon, it is all the more critical we vote for Congressional candidates who are willing to stand up to the AGW monstrosity. Unfortunately, it is no longer enough to simply look at which party they are in. They each need to be scrutinized on their stance on AGW. Being politicians, of course, they have a tendency to waffle, so it’s a matter of choosing the least worst.
Just like Kyoto. When the moment of truth arrived, even the democratic socialists knew a bad deal when they saw it. In the case of Kyoto, even with Algore carrying water for the IPCC, even with the Slickster as POTUS, it was trounced, soundly.
counters (07:29:32) :
“MSNBC says that Reid will pull it and wait for the arrival of the new Congress next year before retrying.”
Sounds like good timing. It will be the middle of winter and we can talk about capping the CO2 put out by home furnances. Of course, it might be a Cold winter, but them’s the breaks. Given the price of heating oil, it will likely be a cold winter inside no matter what the weather does.
kim:
I listened to it. Simply put, it sucked. Nothing but a bunch of debunked arguments.
“a bunch of debunked arguments.”
Such as?
info for Fred Middleton (05:40:53)
FYI Sherwood Forest in Nottingham – shire while much reduced from its former size is real, alive and well. I know because I used to live in that neck of the woods – pun intended.
The AGW brigade are also still out there, they haven’t gone away and they will be back. Bogus as their religion is.
Like retired engineer, I give a resounding thumbs down to the Global Cooling idea. The earth is beginning to cool now, and will very likely be cooling significantly in the future. Much as I dislike warmies, and want to see AGW go down in flames, that is not how to go about it. The ends never do justify the means.
“… because it will pull the rug out under the warmers, as efficiently as a real cooling trend.” anna v
Great idea! But I predict it will be rejected because it would involve human manipulation of the environment. Something would be invoked such as the possibility of one of those boats bumping a porpoise or something.
Silliness is an expensive luxury. But America does not know yet that it can’t afford it anymore.
KuhnKat (20:34:15) : Rico, you DO understand that debating this bill would have brought out a reasonable estimate of how badly it would affect the economy??
I welcome that debate. I hope EVERYONE would. To be perfectly honest, I don’t know how the machinations of congress work in any sort of detail. And to be perfectly honest, I don’t think the B-L-W bill was a particularly good one. But from where I sit I think a vigorous discussion of the ways it was weak would have been far more preferable to sandbagging it. Instead, we’re likely to be accosted with YouTube videos of the Senate clerk droning on for 13 hours reading the bill, wasting everyone’s time, with voice-overs about who is really responsible for the “do nothing congress”. If I were a Dem I’d jump on that big time. And for what purpose? After all, Bush was going to veto the thing anyway. Let him take the fall. That’s what I’m saying.
“Global Cooling”
Don’t you dare fiddle with my climate until you can demonstrate that you know what the hell you are doing. And a computer model is NOT a demonstration (especially an IPCC one).
Bruce Cobb and Peter Lloyd
But, but but, there is no reason not to build such a prototype and demonstrate that it works in changing the albedo of a specific cloud. This will not affect world climate one iota and it will prove feasibility. It can shut up cap and trade by saying : if necessary we cool the climate artificially instead of strangling the world economies and killing millions.
If cooling continues it can just be shelved until and if it is needed. If warming picks up, world community builds the 50 necessary to control world albedo.
It is really the only thing I have seen in this climate business that one can experiment with in real time and not decades ahead, without dire consequences, and get a good weather switch on hand. This will buy time until fusion comes commercially on line and CO2 is no longer released, which will show in real numbers the nonsense of the anthropogenic CO2 band wagon.
continued:
I have thought of a catchy slogan for this:
“Cap the clouds and trade the winds” .
The whole AGW IPCC business is not about climate, but about control of the world populations ( because millions if not billions will die if these foolish plans of carbon limits are implemented) and of the economies.
By providing the world with a climate control switch the urgency of AGW slogans is undermined and rational thoughts can prevail. If it is in our hands to stop warming by seeding clouds, within a year, carbon projects which need fifty years to take hold, (and that only if the Indians and Chinese sign up), have no chance.
cap the clouds continued:
In fact, I do not see why the Indians and the Chinese do not make a collaboration to build one such prototype. How expensive can one ship be for two huge countries that have thriving economies.
In a year they can take pressure off their backs and say they really care about warming and it can be stopped.
anna v
My guess is that even many good scientists would oppose cloud seeding or climate intervention. Beside the obvious dangers, it is a no-brainer for them that a reduction in life-style is a good thing. This is the simplest and safest approach to the GW “problem” in their minds.
What they seem to not realize is that a strong economy brought about by the freedom to innovate is our best bet to solve any problem.
Unfortunately, Anna, mild reductions like changing light bulbs and driving hybrids won’t make a lick of difference. Only extreme changes, like getting rid of all industry will make a difference in CO2 concentrations. And of course that’s what many environMENTAL leaders want, as long as it’s not them who have to sacrifice.
Any legislation that casts CO2 as a pollutant seems misguided and, to the extent that it hampers businesses, potentially damaging. This bill isn’t dead yet, as I understand it, and it seems likely every state will have its own version, so claims that this is a critical moment in our political history don’t seem overblown. In a June 2 debate with Joe Lieberman on the Jim Lehrer New Hour, Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander said that the problem with this energy bill is that it doesn’t put priorities on real pollutants such as sulphur, nitrates, and mercury. How to recast the debate on realistic reductions of these pollutants seems to me a far better use of time and money than chasing the CO2 chimera.
This is my first visit to this blog. What strikes me most is the absolute degree to which most of commenters believe their own opinions. Grumpy old “retired engineer” excepted.
There are many problems with Leiberman-Warner. I oppose it because of its $544 Billion subsidy to the nuclear industry. Though I disagree with many here, I appreciate your cooperation in helping to “kill” this bill.
The Concept of CO2 Cap and Trade is Absurd
The real reason Cap & Trade is being foisted on the world is it creates a 3 trillion dollar commodity market for you guessed it: hot air. Finally politicians have found a way to put a price on their most abundant resource! And for politicians there is no downside as nothing has to be actually produced. The real beneficiaries are the rich special interest who will get wealthier setting up and trading in this new commodities market.
The cost will be past to citizens who will pay more taxes to operate new regulatory bureaucracies and more for goods as business passes the cost along to them.
All this based on the premise that operating automobiles is resulting in global warming. Question: did Fred Flintstones truck fleet cause the last period of global warming or is global warming a cyclical event that is more affected by sun spot cycles. The Earth has had multiple tropical and glacial ages over the millennia. The most recent news is that the oceans of the world will be cooling for the next 25-30 years.
Furthermore, it is my understanding that the most prevalent hot house gas is water vapor. Should citizens of earth try to stop the rain cycle?
And if we are going to implement Cap and Trade who will decide what the optimal CO2 carrying capacity of Earth is?
And there are questions about how to implement financial controls and reliably audit such a system. Will every person and business on the planet be issued C02 permits? Is the permit an asset a business can liquidate when it goes out of business? If a business in California goes out of business and sells its CO2 permit to a company in England, will a new company in California have to find another seller to open his business and replace lost jobs? After all, if there is an optimal CO2 carrying capacity then an increasing population of people and businesses means a lower standard of living and reduced CO2 allotment for each new person or business.
Upon their death can Mom and Dad leave their CO2 permits to their children? Should Mom and Dad be limited to having two children?
What about the countries that do not subscribe to Cap & Trade. Will multi-national companies export new construction and jobs to 3rd world non-subscribing countries? And the flipside, will the people of the Amazon miss out on new opportunities because an American company bought 1000s of acres to be left unused to acquire carbon sequestration credits.
please lets get real about this as i and my familiey has kept records of weather for many hundreds of years. the mass hysteria caused by sandal wearing green leftist anarchists that are trying to be the voice of opinion in this world should be put in the trash can where they belong. climate has allways changed as time goes on, i live in scotland and it was covered in ice thousands of years ago and just a hundred years ago we had fog in our cities that we could not see more than a few yards but now it is clear. remember the earth is just a pin prick in universe
Not to be mean, but I hope your record-keeping is better than your grammar and punctuation…