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.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
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.
====================================