What that means is that raising temperatures cause CO2 that is naturally trapped in the world’s oceans to be released into the atmosphere. The one and only reason to CAP and TRADE CO2 emissions is for the companies that sell CO2 offsets to make money. Like the business Al Gore is in.

What is causing the warming? Well there is a debate as to if we are still warming or starting a cool down. But the single largest contributor is our closest energy source, our own Sun. We have tracked these cycles over the past few hundred years with observations and record keeping. Analysis of tree rings confirms the human observations, just in case anyone thought that our ancestors were too dull to possibly perform this task. But listen to the Geoscientists, they have tracked the record back millions and millions or years, far before any human intervention. These things are natural.

But hey lets get everyone excited about this phony Climate Change by human activity and loose sight of the real issue. Pollution, that is something we cause and it is up to us to control it. But these grandiose schemes that will not fly will also kill the smaller steps needed to control our pollution. And that is something we can do unilaterally.

Pick your fights more carefully.

So if CO2 in the atmosphere was eliminated altogether, the temperature should drop without limit.

George

Ron (12:35:12) :

So, if a Democracy is a form where the Minority Rule (i.e. Gov, banks, etc) then, you DO have a Democracy in the USA and not a Republic. “”"

Please feel free to consult the US Constitution; Article IV, section 4. The US is NOT a democracy; it is 50 sovereign Republics.

George

An interesting bit of information has not made it into this discussion, but
always bears repeating.

The US is a net carbon sink. As a nation, we remove the CO2 added
by China and India. Since our contribution is negative, what more should
we be doing? “”"

Way to go Frank; not only are we a net carbon sink; but we are the ONLY sizeable land mass that is a net carbon sink; the rest are either carbon sources or about neutral; and yes with 5% oft he world population we consume 25% of the world oil ; we also make about 25% of the world’s goods and services; Maybe we need to be using more of the world’s oil.

George; who’s tired of hearing what polluters WE are.

Of Course EPA Administrator Jackson´s statement is correct.
This can be shown easily:

Every year the atmospheric CO2 increase is about 2 ppmV/year (Mauna Loa measurement). In 15 years this sums up to 30 ppmV globally.>> I measure 0nly 1.8 ppm/yr, as the rate that has persisted since 1990; nowhere near 2 ppm/yr.<<>> I assumed your logarithmic relationship; even though I have never seen any formal proof of that relationship, and I projected it back to where we had around 8000 ppm of CO2 which is 4.3 doublings, so that gives a 12.9 deg C rise over today’s +15 deg C; or 27.9 deg C for way back then. I can find no peer reviewed evidence for the world mean global temperature ever exceeding about +22 deg C; which is way short of the 27.9 predicted from your logarithmic theory. Does that 3 deg C “climate sensitivity” persist all over the earth’s surface; regardless of what the surface temperature actually is ?<<<

I'm not able to find any peer reviewed papers which derive this logarithmic CO2 versus temperature rise formula from basic physics, nor am I able to find papers which prove that climate sensitivity is a global constant regardless of local surface temperatures; seems counterintuitive to me; maybe I should get a PhD too !

Disinformation re the oil industry in the U.S.

We in the U.S. do not have a shortage of refining capacity, instead existing refineries are expanded incrementally to meet demand. This is the cost-effective way to increase capacity rather than building new, grass-roots refineries. There was a temporary capacity shortage due to hurricane-induced outages, and the BP refinery at Texas City was shut down for safety upgrades following a serious explosion in March of 2005.

Refiners deliberately do not build grass-roots refineries based on economics, not environmental concerns.

We also have imported refined products, primarily from Europe (Rotterdam area) for many years into the New York area. Importing products was less expensive than expanding domestic refineries. However, the USA has surplus refining capacity currently, with refineries running at a historically low rate of around 87 percent, and imports are essentially nil.

The supply is not choked off, instead we have nearly overflowing storage tanks and thus the decreasing price of oil, gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel.

All this is factual information, readily available on http://www.eia.doe.gov.

This is not a blog where such blatant disinformation will go unchallenged.

Environmental controls in the USA have not only prevented the building of new refineries but also blocked the import, lifted in extremis, during the shortage last year, of refined products from elsewhere.

If you insist on refined products meeting your specific requirements which you cannot supply from your own refineries then you must be prepared to pay the price.

There is plenty of oil but if you choose to choke off the supply with your environmental regulations then expect to pay for it.

You have plenty of oil in your own territories but if you won’t use it you must import it at the ruling price.

Kindest Regards

appreciate,
spiderpoman

” Barkmor (11:11:12) :US Middle east oil dependency is a myth/lie/crap. Less than 6%.”

“That’s not really all that relevant to the topic at hand, but such a statement just cries out for comment.

With a fungible commodity like oil, what counts in our sensitivity to Middle East supply disruptions are 1) the percentage of oil that the US uses that are imported, and 2) what percentage of total worldwide exports are from the Middle East.”
Hey Charlie, Canada is by far the biggest suppler followed by Mexico to the USA,

http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/data_publications/company_level_imports/current/import.html

“The top five exporting countries accounted for 59 percent of United States crude oil imports in April while the top ten sources accounted for approximately 80 percent of all U.S. crude oil imports.”

And the list goes,

Total Imports of Petroleum (Top 15 Countries)
(Thousand Barrels per Day)

Country Apr-09

CANADA 2,281
MEXICO 1,289
SAUDI ARABIA 1,021
VENEZUELA 891
RUSSIA 779
NIGERIA 733
ALGERIA 612
IRAQ 484
ANGOLA 462
UNITED KINGDOM 424
COLOMBIA 347
VIRGIN ISLANDS 290
BRAZIL 278
ECUADOR 237
LIBYA 118

“I remember the oil boom andbubble that became an oil bust in the 1980′ Shady and corrupt oil companies hired CPA’s to be controllwers so banks wouldn’t question their financial statements.”

That’s not quite what happened in the 1980′s. OPEC had trouble maintaining oil prices because member states over-produced beyond their agreed quotas. Saudi Arabia increased production, lowering prices, to administer a lesson to the smaller OPEC members. No bubble, no bust, nothing to do with CPAs. Remarkably, OPEC discipline has been much better in the past 20 years since Saudi Arabia’s flexing their power.

As a side benefit, USSR lost so much revenue when oil prices dropped in 1985-86 that they could no longer afford to keep up in the Star Wars arms race. Reagan won the cold war without firing a shot, all on the strength of the price of oil. Peggy Noonan wrote about all this, it is a very good read.

THIS is the crux of the matter. AGREED 110%