I made it back to a computer in time today to get a copy of the State of the Union address, here are the relevant passages about climate:
“Now, one of the biggest factors in bringing more jobs back is our commitment to American energy. The all-of-the-above energy strategy I announced a few years ago is working, and today, America is closer to energy independence than we’ve been in decades.
One of the reasons why is natural gas – if extracted safely, it’s the bridge fuel that can power our economy with less of the carbon pollution that causes climate change. Businesses plan to invest almost $100 billion in new factories that use natural gas. I’ll cut red tape to help states get those factories built, and this Congress can help by putting people to work building fueling stations that shift more cars and trucks from foreign oil to American natural gas. My administration will keep working with the industry to sustain production and job growth while strengthening protection of our air, our water, and our communities. And while we’re at it, I’ll use my authority to protect more of our pristine federal lands for future generations.
It’s not just oil and natural gas production that’s booming; we’re becoming a global leader in solar, too. Every four minutes, another American home or business goes solar; every panel pounded into place by a worker whose job can’t be outsourced. Let’s continue that progress with a smarter tax policy that stops giving $4 billion a year to fossil fuel industries that don’t need it, so that we can invest more in fuels of the future that do.
And even as we’ve increased energy production, we’ve partnered with businesses, builders, and local communities to reduce the energy we consume. When we rescued our automakers, for example, we worked with them to set higher fuel efficiency standards for our cars. In the coming months, I’ll build on that success by setting new standards for our trucks, so we can keep driving down oil imports and what we pay at the pump.
Taken together, our energy policy is creating jobs and leading to a cleaner, safer planet. Over the past eight years, the United States has reduced our total carbon pollution more than any other nation on Earth. But we have to act with more urgency – because a changing climate is already harming western communities struggling with drought, and coastal cities dealing with floods. That’s why I directed my administration to work with states, utilities, and others to set new standards on the amount of carbon pollution our power plants are allowed to dump into the air. The shift to a cleaner energy economy won’t happen overnight, and it will require tough choices along the way. But the debate is settled. Climate change is a fact. And when our children’s children look us in the eye and ask if we did all we could to leave them a safer, more stable world, with new sources of energy, I want us to be able to say yes, we did.”
Obama did nothing. The good results are a result of private enterprise getting around his onerous regulations! Obama is like the mugger who claims credit for his victim recovering from the wounds HE inflicted!
michael hart says: @ur momisugly January 29, 2014 at 4:33 am
If “red tape” is preventing needed factories from being built, and if he is unilaterally able to sweep it away on a whim, then it really does beg the question of why is it there in the first place, and why hasn’t he already abolished it?
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You do not understand the real role of Red Tape. Red Tape is in place only to prevent the little guy from competing with his betters. With the Corporate-Government revolving door placing industry puppets in the bureaucracies that are supposed to police them it is just a giant shell game to show voters politicians are “Doing Something” while ripping off the tax payer and helping out favored corporations. See SHIELDING THE GIANT: USDA’s “Don’t Look, Don’t Know” Policy for an example of how the system actually works.
Also see E.M. Smith’s explanation of the system. He really clears up a lot of the deliberate misunderstandings used to obscure what is really going on.. link
What is the definition of an Honest Politician?
One who stays bought.
Who has the money to buy a politician?
Wealthy people and corporations.
How has the Supreme Court protected the rights of the individual?
The Supreme Court determine a Corporation was a “person’ and could therefore donate to political campaigns. “We [the Supreme Court] now conclude that independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.”
“Every four minutes, another American home or business goes solar”
I love this metaphor. It’s dark when most go solar.
What can you do or say about idiot Obama when climate knuckleheads who should know better like Jim Steele, say climate change is a fact? No, dummy, the fact is you don’t know what the heck you’re mumbling about. Climate change is an ad slogan, nothing else!
Talk about a God complex.
“Every four minutes, another American home or business goes solar”
And every week another power systems engineer runs screaming into the night pulling out his hair.
A power systems engineer commented on WUWT: http://
“Letting non-professionals get involved in the power grid is like giving the keys to the family car and a bottle of whiskey to a 14 year old boy and his pals. If the renewables were viable, we’d adopt them by the train-load and build them so fast your head would spin.”
Yes Sir, Obama is the greatest thing for the economy since the Wisconsin Glaciation.
The altering eye alters all; I give you Ed Mertin with The Insane Response.
“For the eye altering, alters all” (IOW he who cannot ‘see’ clearly cannot hope to report clearly)
. . . – William Blake.
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Darn I messed up the link again: link
Actually thinking about it the Wisconsin Glaciation would have taken out Chicago, Detroit, NYC, Boston so whats not to like? Glacial Maximum 15,000 years BP
There was also a part of the President’s speech where he implied that the drought in California is due to climate change [really global warming caused by man}. It is really strange that he should make those flawed comments as it is well known and documented in the scientific community with many peer reviewed papers that the drought is primarily due to the positive AMO and the negative PDO pattern like the period of 1945-1950’s and again 1905-1915 and a blocking. high which diverts the rains to the north. It is even stranger to pick this region to comment on during an evening when 90% of the country is in the coldest deep freeze since the late 1970’s and the winters have been getting colder in every state including CALIFORNIA for 15 years now . There has been no global warming in United States for 15 years . It is tragic when even the President participates in misleading the entire nation about the state of the climate in his own country for political gain..
And when our children’s children look us in the eye and ask “Why are we always so cold, grandpa?” you can point to my picture and shake your head. “Now, be a good boy and go fetch more firewood.”
herkimer says:
January 29, 2014 at 6:12 am
It is tragic when even the President participates in misleading the entire nation about the state of the climate in his own country for political gain..
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Don’t make the mistake of pinning this all on the President. He is not acting alone. Even if by sin of omission, this is the entire Democrat Party. Obama will be off the main stage soon, but the Democrat Party will still be still be front and center.
This is the risk of calling ACA “Obamacare.” Yes, the President is seriously culpable. But so are all the Democrats. Don’t let Obama take the focus off the Dems. Democare doesn’t roll off the tongue like Obamacare. Unfortunately.
The parallels with FDR (Franklin Delano Roosevelt) are astounding, IOW, we have been down this road before. A good read for those who are curious about the FDR era (The Great Depression) is http://www.mackinac.org/archives/1998/sp1998-01.pdf (pdf form).
The following excerpt is from the section titled: “Nothing to fear but fear itself” and the entire work can also be found in HTML form here.
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“Nothing to fear but fear itself
By Lawrence W. Reed, published on Jan. 1, 1998
Roosevelt did indeed make a difference, though probably not the sort of difference for which the country had hoped. He started off on the wrong foot when, in his inaugural address, he blamed the Depression on “unscrupulous money changers.”
He said nothing about the role of the Fed’s mismanagement [of the money supply – QE1, 2, 3 etc anyone?] and little about the follies of Congress that had contributed to the problem [punishing tariffs]. As a result of his efforts, the economy would linger in depression for the rest of the decade. Adapting a phrase from 19th century writer Henry David Thoreau, Roosevelt famously declared in his address that, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” But as Dr. Hans Sennholz of Grove City College explains, it was FDR’s policies to come that Americans had genuine reason to fear:
In his first 100 days, he swung hard at the profit order. Instead of clearing away the prosperity barriers erected by his predecessor, he built new ones of his own. He struck in every known way at the integrity of the U.S. dollar through quantitative increases and qualitative deterioration. He seized the people’s gold holdings and subsequently devalued the dollar by 40 percent.
Frustrated and angered that Roosevelt had so quickly and thoroughly abandoned the platform on which he was elected, Director of the Bureau of the Budget Lewis W. Douglas resigned after only one year on the job. At Harvard University in May 1935, Douglas made it plain that America was facing a momentous choice:
Will we choose to subject ourselves — this great country — to the despotism of bureaucracy, controlling our every act, destroying what equality we have attained, reducing us eventually to the condition of impoverished slaves of the state?
Or will we cling to the liberties for which man has struggled for more than a thousand years? It is important to understand the magnitude of the issue before us. … If we do not elect to have a tyrannical, oppressive bureaucracy controlling our lives, destroying progress, depressing the standard of living … then should it not be the function of the Federal government under a democracy to limit its activities to those which a democracy may adequately deal, such for example as national defense, maintaining law and order, protecting life and property, preventing dishonesty, and … guarding the public against … vested special interests?
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Because, this (the ‘dog and pony show’ you watched last night) is in the category of ‘Shell Games’ and Three-Card Monte … *you* aren’t meant to win, you won’t win, and __all__ the ‘con’ wants is your money…
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Shell games – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_game
Three card monte – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-card_Monte
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I would like to praise the noble climate scientists who have labored for decades and have finally succeeded in reaching a consensus that climate change is real. I would like also to praise the president who gives us hopey that he can stop that climate changey before it kills our children with fiery icy even if he has to use executive orders. Evidently he will do this by encouraging the production of fracking free gas which will reduce the CO2 and stop the changing while providing the fuel to keep us cool or warm as the case might be. All is right with the world.
The words uttered by this POTUS bear no relation to his actions, and vice versa. I am constantly reminded of Orwell.
“Choco rations have been increased to 25 grams per week, up from 30 grams per week.” (‘1984’) Orwell.
It works that way on one level, but, don’t go overboard. Michael Dell, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs managed to succeed in *our* lifetimes recognizing un-tapped markets. You aren’t going to strike it rich by sitting around posting randomly on websites (even good, top of the line websites!) … It takes work, effort, smarts and some amount of ‘dumb’ luck .. meanwhile going after successful enterprises in an “Ida Tarball” mode doesn’t really further any of us in our efforts (IOW, tearing down another in an attempt to get ahead or ‘equalize’ is playing into the hands of the socialists.)
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Gas production has increased despite Barry saddam hussein bin-laden Ob*stard. The only reason it has is ’cause it moved very fast (private industry) & he & EPA haven’t gotten their filthy handcuffs on it yet.
M Simon says:
January 29, 2014 at 4:39 am
Ron Paul was in the running, wasn’t he? And made a lot more sense than anyone in the rest of the bunch. But the MSM hardly ever even allowed their cameras to point in his direction. He was just the invisible man. What did Americans do? You gravitated to the man who most closely resembles the antichrist.
That’s the way it looked from Oz anyway.
Better research on the ‘reason’ is needed before jumping to confusions; look into the fact that 2MM (+2 million) voters with a presumed ‘R’ party voting inclination stayed home … conclusion: Rom failed to turn out the base (Rom was running some 2.5 million votes behind John McCain as of November 8th.)
Article in support of the above assertion.
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Alarmists have taken to depicting the current controversy as “those who accept that global warming is occurring versus those that deny it.”
The controversy is far more nuanced than that. The real question is not whether CO2 is a green house gas (it is), or whether there has been warming over the last 50 years (sure seems to be, although there is room to question the amouint). The biggest question is over how sensitive the climate is to CO2 forcing. The computer models assume a high sensitivity while the evidence seems to show a much lower sensitivity.
That Obama would so grossly ignore the real controversy in such an important topic is not worthy of a president.
_Jim says: @ur momisugly January 29, 2014 at 6:54 am…
I am old enough to remember when anyone could take in wash, clean a house, mow a lawn, baby sit kids or start any number of small businesses with ease. I also remember when a friend had to close his small business of cleaning offices because of changes in the regulations. another friend with a small vineyard was told the lees (seeds and stems) of his grapes were “Hazardous Waste” and had to be disposed of properly and he had to fill out forms that had to be turned into the state. Heck one state told me I had to have my horse manure inspected before giving it to a neighbor for her garden! One by one the simple easy businesses have become “regulated” Until now we have Police Bust Lemonade Stands Nationwide.
Jim I am semi-retired. I and my husband (70 years old) have been running a small business for 22 years. My father-in-law ran his business until he was 88 years old. So how long have you been running YOUR business BTW?
BTW William H. Gates Sr. was an attorney and founding partner at Preston, Gates & Ellis. He served as president of both the Seattle/King County Bar Association and the Washington State Bar Association. So Gates Jr. was not exactly from an impoverished inner-city family.
I prefer Herman Cain as an example BTW. :>)
@starzmom –
I have solar panels on my house, which cut my (nominal) electric bill by half. However, since I paid only 30 percent of the actual cost of my panels for them, and the other 70 percent came from taxpayer subsidies – and my other electric rates (PG&E territory, California) are at least double what they would be without “renewable energy” mandates – I’m not really saving any money by my solar panels, because I’m paying way more than the difference – the savings on my PG&E bill – in taxes for the panels.
If there were no renewables mandates and other artificial costs to jack up electric rates it would never make sense to have solar panels on your house.
It would seem that the whole rationale for “renewable energy” (except hydroelectric, which the envirolunatics don’t count as renewable) reflects some serious economic illiteracy.
If Obama were really committed to education (as opposed to Common Core-type leftist propaganda indoctrination), he’d see to it that economics and business management were taught starting in the first grade (something I’ve been advocating for a long time).
Economic illiteracy is a major element in global warming alarmism and “green” initiatives generally.
Finally, one wonders how this self-proclaimed champion of the poor can rationalize sticking it to the poor with high energy costs, which affect not only their electric, home heating and gasoline bills but the cost of all their necessaries that move by electricity or motor fuel. Oh, but in his Mobius strip-shaped path of logical thinking, he’ll find a way. (After all, it’s saving the planet for their grandchildren! Oh, but me grandma here, today, right now, trying to raise my three grandkids on a low income in a bad neighborhood – how will those higher energy prices help me both feed the grandkids and heat the house? Right now looks like I’ll have to choose between the two? My grandchildren are already here, today, now, bro, and the world ain’t bein’ saved for them!)
‘Show cause’ (IOW, justify the above response); other than instilling an indomitable competitive spirit in young Bill Gates, what does that have to do with anything? Are you even remotely familiar with young Bill Gates early years in his business pursuits? The second question would be: Do you understand the environment he was involved with when he wrote the simulators that executed on the various mainframes (computers) and minis he was using to develop his software on before having access to the actual micros (like the Altair 8800) his S/W would run on at the time? Do you grasp the fact this was ‘virtualization’ allowing development to take before actual hardware was available?
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Brian Sussman tweeted something about dictators signing autographs.
Immediately brought to mind this:
Ironic???
BO almost makes me wish for Al Gore. Almost