I get letters, I’m not sure how I ended up on this list. Looks like Harry Reid and John Kerry have some competition for a “Climate bill”. It seems like the public can attend, see how to register below. A video follows.
Sen. Cantwell Left, Sen. Collins, Right
Please register for this event online at: http://www.aei.org/event/100268
Controlling Greenhouse Gases: The CLEAR Act Option
With Remarks by Senators Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) and Susan M. Collins (R-Maine)
Thursday, July 29, 2010, 2:00–3:30 p.m.
G11 Dirksen Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20002
Senator Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), the chair of the Senate Subcommittee on Energy, and Senator Susan M. Collins (R-Maine) will explain their proposed approach to control greenhouse gases: the admirably concise, 39-page Carbon Limits and Energy for America’s Renewal (CLEAR) Act. This act follows the House’s passage of the 1,428-page* Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act and the introduction in the Senate of the 987-page* Kerry-Lieberman Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act, both of which would strictly control greenhouse gas emissions via cap-and-trade. Alan D. Viard and Kenneth P. Green, resident scholars at AEI, will comment briefly after the senators’ remarks.
*as of July 19, 2010
Agenda:
1:45 p.m.
Registration
2:00
Introduction:
KENNETH P. GREEN, AEI
2:10
Address:
SENATOR MARIA CANTWELL (D-Wash.)
SENATOR SUSAN M. COLLINS (R-Maine)
2:40
Respondents:
ALAN D. VIARD, AEI
KENNETH P. GREEN, AEI
3:00
Question and Answer
3:30
Adjournment
_______________________________________________________________________________________
I will attend the Controlling Greenhouse Gases event on Thursday, July 29.
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Please register online at www.aei.org/events or by faxing this form to 202.862.7171. Shortly after the event occurs, a video webcast will be available on the AEI website at www.aei.org/video.
For more information, please contact Hiwa Alaghebandian at hiwa.alaghebandian@aei.org.
For media inquiries, please contact Véronique Rodman at vrodman@aei.org.
Visit AEI’s new blog at http://blog.american.com.
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Here’s YouTube video from Cantwell’s website explaining her view of it:
Some links to documents:
Legislation
Documents
- How Does the CLEAR Act Work?
- Goals, Framework and Advantages of the CLEAR Act
- Extended Overview Memo
- Clear Act PowerPoint
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Detailed CLEAR Act Q&As
- CLEAR Act side by side with Waxman-Markey, H.R. 2454
Paul Jackson says:
July 20, 2010 at 5:38 pm
“[…]It’s also a pretty blatant wealth redistribution scheme”
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DirkH says:
July 20, 2010 at 6:04 pm
It should be noted that the net redistribution effect will be from poor to rich as rich people do not have to use their entire disposable income for consumption …
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Your forgot getting mega rich on the carbon trading derivatives market. Approximately 95% of the total volume in the European carbon market are seen in derivative trades (forwards, futures and options) with the remaining in spot trades. and of course getting out of the market before the whole thing collapses.
“You’ve heard of credit default swaps and subprime mortgages. Are carbon default swaps and subprime offsets next? If the Waxman-Markey climate bill is signed into law, it will generate, almost as an afterthought, a new market for carbon derivatives. That market will be vast, complicated, and dauntingly difficult to monitor. And if Washington doesn’t get the rules right, it will be vulnerable to speculation and manipulation by the very same players who brought us the financial meltdown….” click Even some of the Greenies can see WUWT.
This does not include all the corporations sucking down government grants, subsidies or what ever for going “green” or producing “green” products.
Yes it is the typical wealth transfer from the poor to the rich, luckly only some of the activists wearing green colored glasses do not see that.
280 ppm is natural. Best not learn anything about the history of CO2 levels on this planet and just listen to a proven fraud artist. SSheesh
Redistribution of wealth with a 25% vig.
[snip, sorry, funny but off color]
The fools are in the process of creating thousands of Enrons. Al Gore will be an Enron. There is going to be a market in “AGW credits.” Yet there are no reasonably confirmed hypotheses which explain the so-called “forcings” in cloud behavior and related matters that are necessary if warming is to exceed the harmless level of one degree this century. There is no confidence among the public in the claims of AGW. As public confidence waxes and wanes, so will the values of the shares on the market. Al Gore will be really busy making new movies to shore up public confidence and keeping the bucks rolling in. If public confidence plummets, and we are likely to learn in November that it has, then the market crashes. So, who will be to blame? Won’t it be our Senators and Congressmen?
This situation is truly extraordinary. It is as if a nuclear weapon hits Baltimore, a bunch of senators are yelling that it came from Russia, so on incomplete evidence we nuke Russia. The point here is that this situation is unprecedented yet senators are willing to take irreversible risks. There has to be a bigger story behind this. This is not expected human behavior by a legislative body, not in all of human history.
You mentioned negative feedbacks yourself, so be careful. CO2 causes a measurable change in down- AND upwelling LWIR; whether this results in a warming depends on the system dynamics. Especially the nature of the temporal response of the system depends nearly entirely on the feedbacks and the associated lag times.
All quite arguable. Arguing about the effect of CO2 is quite reasonable. But I think it very probable that a.) it’s there, and b.) it’s anthropogenic.
Yes, the feedback question is still very much open (as is the radiation budget question).
But I think is is not productive, sans startling new evidence, to argue that CO2 measurements are way off or that the current rise in CO2 is mostly “natural”.
Gail Combs says:
July 20, 2010 at 6:51 pm
‘Yes it is the typical wealth transfer from the poor to the rich, luckly only some of the activists wearing green colored glasses do not see that.’
And more control by “crony politics” on an international scale, promoting one world governace and making the U.S Constitution more irrelevant. To bad it is illegal to tar and feather.
Again I ask: Since we are trying to become independent from foreign oil, why would we want to become dependent on foreign carbon credits?
Henry Kissinger declared in the 1970’s, ‘If you control the oil you control the country;(which is being done not only with the input side, but with the output of a byproduct, CO2) if you control food, you control the population;
I have just done a web search for recent public opinion polls on global warming and I find that the most comprehensive surveys are reposted echoes of much older studies such as an April 2007 New York Times/CBS survey reporting that 90 percent of Democrats, 80 percent of independents and 60 percent of Republicans believed that immediate action was required to stop global warming. Given that the Senate is seriously considering action on this problem, I find this recent silence rather curious.
I did, however, see a Reuters’ report of a study by conducted researchers at Yale and George Mason universities indicating that the Gulf oil disaster has convinced a majority of Americans that government should take a more active role in energy management and pollution control.
Kill all the Cap’N-Tax bills and anything related.
China is now the worlds largest energy consumer, and it’s 70% coal, and it’s rising fast ( at 11% / year for electricity in a ‘recession’ year…).
NOTHING we do can reduce CO2. All it can do is move it to China where more will be made as they are less energy efficient that we are and use more coal vs oil and gas than we do.
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2010/07/20/china-makes-western-co2-control-pointless/
If you really care about Global CO2 production, keep it in the west.
The bill shall not pass, and neither shall personal carbon trading of any kind. Try harder to stifle our liberty and development in the name of your dumb UN religion.
Oh, and on the UN and Maurice Strong issue: Maurice now lives in China, as does his $Millions ( $Billions?). So as China benefits…
George Sorros made his $Billions betting against the British Pound when the UK first started playing with socialism and wealth redistribution. So now he’s advocating socialism and wealth redistribution all over the place…. Hmmm…
The list goes on from here, including Elk Hills Navel Oil reserve and papa Gore’s holdings in the oil company that got it for a song from the US Government, but that’s ancient history now. I’m sure baby Gore paid no attention…
The bottom line is that an awful lot of the folks advocating and funding all this AGW charade have ‘made their bones’ off the manipulation of government actions. Kind of makes me a mite suspicious.
Oh, and this interesting link (thanks to Luis in comments in my linked article):
http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/6700
As neat graphs of coal consumption and growth in China. Seems that China is now 50% of world coal consumption. Yeah, that’s world coal consumption…
So, you want to stop CO2 growth? Talk to China. Nothing else will make any difference at all.
It’s presently 50%, and it’s growing at 10% / year minimum, (so call it 5% of global per year). That’s 10 years to equal ALL present coal consumption.
Clearly something is going to hit the wall here, but CO2 production is NOT going to go down. Even if the rest of the world consumes NONE.
Hmmm…
In one company I am involved with, we are discussing the eventual production site of a new construction product.
Our product consumes by-products of natural gas production.
If we are hit with a CLEAR tax, it looks as if the production will go to one of the following: China, Canada, or Mexico. If NAFTA is allowed to work, we will get our product into the US without the CLEAR tax.
Too bad for the people we would have put to work in Denver, Atlanta, and two other locations in the US.
” E.M.Smith says:
July 21, 2010 at 3:10 am
It’s presently 50%, and it’s growing at 10% / year minimum, (so call it 5% of global per year). That’s 10 years to equal ALL present coal consumption.”
If you are saying that the Chinese consumption of the year 20xx will be what the whole world consumes today, the correct time would be 7.5 years of less (“minimum” growth).
Oil companies love cap and trade.
See http://www.nytimes.com/cwire/2010/06/17/17climatewire-conservatives-work-to-tar-cap-and-trade-bill-42785.html
Now why would BP want cap and trade? Because it will increase the cost of oil and no one will notice the little price hikes included for additional profits after the taxes have been added.
Greenpeace and BP sitting at the table and breaking bread.
Sounds almost Biblical.
E.M.Smith says:
July 21, 2010 at 2:02 am
“[…]George Sorros made his $Billions betting against the British Pound when the UK first started playing with socialism and wealth redistribution. […]”
Not exactly right; Soros forced the Sterling down in 92 or 93. The Brits had much more socialism in the 70ies before Maggie ruled; up to 95% income tax if i am informed correctly.
Richard Telford says:
“Hansen has advocated stabilizing CO2 levels at 350 ppm. That’s 70ppm above natural, and 350ppm above zero.”
You suggest a contest – Let’s have one! You assert 280ppm CO2 to be the “natural” level for our earthly atmosphere. I challenge you to provide a definition of “natural CO2 level” that meets a statistically rigorous measure (something approaching at least +/- 5ppm), as derived from historical CO2 levels over the last 600 million years, and is agreed to by a majority of scientists skilled in paleogeology, ice core gas measurements, and the necessary related fields to determine CO2 levels over this entirely natural time span. If we really want to determine the “natural” CO2 level, we need to establish a strong baseline before anthropomorphic interference. Anything less would be cherry picking, of course. Hansen, Jones, and the ClimateGate cabal et. al. and all of their unreliable work are excluded from consideration, due to their established participation in various “nature tricks” to hide the decline” schemes, etc.
Show your work, include measures of accuracy and precision, and cite your data sources. Extra credit will be provided for any rationalizations attempting to show the derived “natural CO2 level” to have relevance to today, the last century, or any century within the last 600 million years of natural climate and atmospheric change.
Then we can move forward to the “natural” sea level height, the “natural” height of mountain ranges, the “natural” amount of precipitation, and the “natural” amount of cloud coverage for the planet and get these stabilized as well. I’m sure Jim Hansen would agree……….
evanmjones says:
July 20, 2010 at 4:39 pm
“But let’s not kid ourselves about CO2. It does cause a modest warming (with diminishing returns). We are responsible for the extra 30% or so of the current amount. If we do not concede (nay, embrace) these facts (and most of us here do), we skeptics will never get anywhere. Unless some evidence shows up — and stands up — that proves otherwise, and I very much doubt that will happen.”
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Well said and I completely agree.
Whether CO2 from the deep oceans released centuries after the warming period is contributing to the rise is largely irrelevant. We have only to look around to see the inefficient systems that waste resources future generations will need. The conversion waste (lost energy during power generation) is due to poorly designed equipment and antiquated thinking.
If our goal is to eliminate pollution and preserve resources in the most efficient way, then our solution should include decentralization of power generation. Every home should generate the power it needs and sell the excess.
We will never eliminate the need for oil as a resource. But should we use it as petrochemical fertilizer?
We already have the technology to do address the issues. Water heaters should be point of use water hammers that do not waste resources in the off chance that someone needs to take a shower. High voltage storage systems in the home tied to solar, wind, or natural/biogas fuel cells or used to level peak grid loads.
The problem with this political approach is that we have been taxed for the research since the last oil crisis and instead of implementing solutions we are to be taxed again in the HOPE that they can figure out what we already know. It also perpetuates pollution instead of eliminating it.
There is no question that we “should” eliminate pollution and preserve resources but is it too much to ask that it be in an efficient and insightful way that actually benefits taxpayers?
In the meantime, could your trim/refrain from such long, rambling, far/over-reaching posts? (In the future, could try to make your points simply, and succinctly without over-bearing NWO/UN/’Agenda 21′ references?)
Thanks in advance from a LOT of us (I suspect) …
.
John from CA says: “The scientific case for action to mitigate climate change grows stronger every day….”
I hate to tell you that there is no scientific case for climate change, hence nothing to mitigate. First, the so-called “anthropogenic global warming” has never been observed as you will learn from “What Warming?” Second, it has not been observed because it is physically impossible as Ferenc Miskolczi has shown. Using NOAA’s database of weather balloon observations he has demonstrated that the “… the global average annual infrared optical thickness of the atmosphere has been unchanged for 61 years, with a value of 1.87.” Sixty one years of constantly adding more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere has not changed the transparency of the atmosphere one whit or the optical thickness would have increased, and it did not. This is actual observation of nature, not theoretical values like IPCC computers use. The carbon dioxide hypothesis of global warming is the chief input to these computers. But these modellers quickly found out that carbon dioxide alone does not cause enough warming to worry about so they invented the concept of positive feedback from water vapor. Only this way can they get warming of five pr six degrees out of their computers. And these computers are the sole source of their predicted climate catastrophe. Take that away and the entire global warming science collapses and is seen for what it really is: a pseudoscience without any experimental support.
Water Hammer Example:
Is it an example of overunity?
Arno Arrak says:
July 21, 2010 at 12:47 pm
John from CA says: “The scientific case for action to mitigate climate change grows stronger every day….”
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I never said that, I said:
“Whether CO2 from the deep oceans released centuries after the warming period is contributing to the rise is largely irrelevant. We have only to look around to see the inefficient systems that waste resources future generations will need. The conversion waste (lost energy during power generation) is due to poorly designed equipment and antiquated thinking.”
…
The problem with this political approach is that we have been taxed for the research since the last oil crisis and instead of implementing solutions we are to be taxed again in the HOPE that they can figure out what we already know. It also perpetuates pollution instead of eliminating it.
There is no question that we “should” eliminate pollution and preserve resources but is it too much to ask that it be in an efficient and insightful way that actually benefits taxpayers?
Okay, this is good news for the two senators. It’s something I am sure they care about;
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1292843/Could-carbon-dioxide-injections-skin-new-secret-young-face.html
Found this on the DOE website:
Residential Power Station idea mentioned above:
Well I think that we should file a law suit against the EPA; calling for them to control the emissions oa ALL greenhouse gases; not just CO2; on the theory (sound) that GHGs do nothing but heat the atmosphere through the capture of LWIR radiation from somewhere else; and that any global warming is a consequence of that warming of the atmosphere; and is quite independent of whatever GHG gas or mechanism caused the atmospheric heating.
The subsequent global warming contains no information of any kind about the GHG species that caused it; only that the atmosphere warmed up first.
In particular they should regulate human emissions of H2O as well as CO2, since all burning of fossil and other fuels and human respiration results in the emission of more H2O than CO2 (coal MIGHT be an exception).
The AGW crowd cannot have it both ways. They cannot claim as Stephen Schneider recently did; that H2O is a weak GHG compared to CO2; and at the same time claim that H2O acts as a feedback enhancer of CO2 induced warming. Both are permanent constituents of earth’s atmosphere and have been so since at least as long as anything that is any sort of Primate has been on earth; and moreover; there is nowhere in earth’s atmosphere where weather/climate occur (like say clouds); where CO2 abundance in our well mixed atmosphere has ever exceeded the corresponding H2O abundance.
The atmospheric warming induced by CO2 or H2O vapor can eventually result in warming of the ocean surfaces; and that in turn will add to atmospheric H2O vapor via evaporation and also to increased atmospheric CO2 due to Henry’s Law outgassing adjustment. So arguably either one is a feedback enhancer of the other and of itself.
So any distinction between CO2 and H2O based on primary atmospheric heating or feedback enhancement; is purely arbitrary; and has no scientific justification at all (for the distinction).
So let’s sue the EPA to regulate H2O Too.