Guest nostalgia by David Middleton
When writing my last post on Nancy Peolosi’s Select Committee on the Climate Crisis, I ran across this gem…
CLIMATE
7 years later, failed Waxman-Markey bill still makes waves
Amanda Reilly and Kevin Bogardus, E&E News reporters
E&E Daily: Monday, June 27, 2016
It’s been seven years since the House passed major legislation to create a cap-and-trade system for heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions, and though that legislative attempt ultimately failed, the bill’s sponsors still say it sowed the seeds for other climate change efforts.As is well-known, the Waxman-Markey bill was not taken up by the full Senate and never became law. But looking back over the last seven years, the bill’s sponsors and their former congressional aides reminisced with E&E Daily in interviews that the unsuccessful fight was worthwhile and that it has had important repercussions.
[…]
Waxman-Markey squeaked by the House seven years ago yesterday on June 26, 2009, by a vote of 219-212.
[…]
Then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) never brought the climate legislation, which was championed in the upper chamber by then-Sens. John Kerry of Massachusetts and Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, to a vote on the floor. Many people close to the legislation have since blamed a number of factors, including Republican opposition and concessions to special interests.
[…]
Genesis of executive branch efforts
The collapse of the Waxman-Markey bill in the Senate in 2010 spurred the Obama administration to aggressively use the executive branch to issue regulations aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions. U.S. EPA issued its final Clean Power Plan for reducing carbon dioxide emissions from power plants last August and helped negotiate the international climate change deal in Paris last December.
[…]
And Markey credited the legislation for setting the stage for the Obama administration’s second-term actions by helping to create necessary alliances.
[…]
Clinton vs. Trump
Markey called a potential Hillary Clinton administration paramount to the United States “continuing to be the world leader” on climate change.
Obama promised the globe in the time before the Paris climate negotiations that the United States would reduce its greenhouse gas emissions between 26 and 28 percent from 2005 levels by 2025. In Paris last December, more than 190 nations agreed to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius and to pursue efforts to limit warming to 1.5 C. The agreement also commits countries to periodically revisiting their pledged domestic emissions reductions.
Both Waxman and Markey are optimistic that Clinton will become the next president of the United States.
[…]
Markey is harshly critical of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s inconsistent views on climate change. In 2009, before international climate talks in Copenhagen, Denmark, Trump signed an open letter calling global warming a problem; he’s since claimed that it is a hoax perpetuated by the Chinese to hurt American business.
Trump has more recently vowed to undo the Paris climate pledge…
[…]
If Trump is elected, Markey said, “every single promise we made to the rest of the world [on climate change] will be broken.”
A campaign issue?
Markey also predicted that climate change would become a more hotly debated issue this presidential election compared with the 2008 race, when both parties’ candidates expressed support for addressing greenhouse gas emissions, and the 2012 race between Obama and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R) when climate change was largely a nonissue.
“It’s going to become a larger and larger issue that goes right to [Trump’s] credibility as a leader in our country,” Markey said. “So the more he says it, the better for us because suburban swing Republicans and independent voters believe the science of climate change.”
Others have said the same.
“The Clinton campaign is going to push these issues, and their allies in the clean energy business sector are going to push these issues forcefully, especially in swing states,” said Paul Bledsoe, a former climate adviser for the Bill Clinton administration and an energy consultant. “I think they see it as a profound political vulnerability for Trump and the Republicans generally.”
[…]
At a recent hearing in the Environment and Public Works Committee, Markey said it was ironic that coal-industry allies who are complaining about EPA greenhouse gas regulations’ impact on jobs didn’t support the cap-and-trade legislation.
He complained that the coal industry rejected an offer of billions of dollars for carbon capture and storage technology via the Waxman-Markey bill. Markey argued that the bill attempted to help coal companies stay alive in a way that works “for all the interests.”
“We were trying to give them a bridge to the future,” he said. “Do you think they wish they could go back to 2009 and grab that money?”
Waxman said that he was hopeful that the dynamic would change in Congress to allow for more collaboration between the parties. He predicted a disaster for Republicans at the polls in November.
“I think it’s going to change because I think they’re going to go down the tubes in this next election, and that’s going to be a lesson to them,” Waxman said.
He added: “But I don’t know. I’m giving you my wishful thinking.”
Who thinks the coal industry wishes “they could go back to 2009 and grab that money… for carbon capture and storage technology”?
Let’s see… The Republicans took the House in 2010, the Senate in 2014, Trump crushed Clinton electorally in 2016, he killed the Clean Power Plan, he submitted our notice to withdraw from Paris, and he erased just about everyting Obama did with his “pen” and “phone.”
In 2018, the Democrats did manage to retake the House, but with a far smaller majority than they had when they barely passed Waxman-Markey… and set up a Select Committee on the Climate Crisis that is “toothless and weaker than the first Climate Select Committee from a decade ago.” However, the Republicans increased their Senate majority in 2018, have confirmed two Supreme Court justices hostile to regulatory overreach and Trump will probably get a third Supreme Court nomination while Republicans control the Senate.
Is there anything Waxman didn’t get wrong? Yes… He got this bit right:
“But I don’t know. I’m giving you my wishful thinking.”
Let’s have three cheers for Henry Waxman!
“We’re seeing the reality of a lot of the North Pole starting to evaporate, and we could get to a tipping point. Because if it evaporates to a certain point – they have lanes now where ships can go that couldn’t ever sail through before. And if it gets to a point where it evaporates too much, there’s a lot of tundra that’s being held down by that ice cap..”
Off topic question. Does anyone know what the Water Vapor Scale should be set at in MODTRAN for a foggy er very humid day?
Don’t know much about Modtran. Last time I looked it was going to cost money. I only like free stuff.
Keep in mind that fog and cloud are water droplets and not water vapour. Droplets will be broad spectrum blackbody-ish and water vapour will be lines.
Harry Reid was an unethical politician, but not politically suicidal. If Waxman-Markey had gone through, the consequences to the Democratic Party in the next election would have been fairly severe.
Fortunately, an exercise machine called Guido and Lenny showed Reid the error of his ways. By far Harry Reid’s biggest political blunder was not sitting on Waxman-Markey bill, but was his nuking the Senate filibuster on most Presidential nominees, a move widely cheered by the Liberal media at the time.
The arrogance of the Democrats in both cheering on Obama’s “pen and phone” separation of powers violations and his unconstitutional CPP actions was in their believing their own lies — lies that said a Republican would never again be elected President due to changing US demographics.
They believed that so much that it never occurred to them that nominating a felon to be their Presidential nominee might be a problem for voters.
First, the Guido & Lenny exercise machine and then pancreatic cancer…
Karma has finally caught up with Harry Reid.
She has not been convicted, and thus is not a felon… yet.
Another Paul below properly identified “unethical politician” as redundant. The only reason I voted for Trump. But turns out, he’s been able to keep far more of his promises than I expected.
“unethical politician” A bit redundant, no?
You just reminded me of how much I do not miss the human rat, Henry Waxman.
“If Trump is elected, Markey said, “every single promise we made to the rest of the world [on climate change] will be broken.””
and Thank God. I Thank God for that everyday. Thank You President Trump.
The climate scammer scientists knew they had a 30 to 40 year window of a warming world in which to blame CO2 and assist the socialists with the destruction of Western capitalism. 1980 to about late 2010’s. That climate opportunity window to fool the public with Climate Change/AGW babble is now closing rapidly by natural cooling.
No politician will want to discuss Climate Change and higher energy costs for the public in 2020 debates after the coming winter of 2019-2020.
I rather believe it’s an ideology and not conspiracy, at least as far as the scientists are concerned. Confirmation bias is strong.
So how do you categorize biasing the data deliberately to push back the nul hypothesis from falsifying the “theory? Confirmation-come-hell-or -high-water?
They believe the theory is perfect so the data must be wrong and adjust it accordingly. No question it’s wrong and dishonest in many cases.
When you have to keep adding more and more weight to one tree ring proxy over all others in order to get the desired result, that’s not confirmation bias, that’s fraud.
When results are forced due to willful intention, when bias is so strong that adherents are willing to lie, exaggerate, hide contradictory information, the bias rises to conspiracy. CAGW involves many small conspiracies, and the I would argue that the entire UNFCCC (parent organization of the IPCC) is a large one. Of course, the liars do deny their lies, and the lies are obfuscated and covered for by a complicit leftist mass media. But occasionally one of them belies their inner beliefs, as did Phil Jones when he infamously said he’d rather that the Earth’s climate and all it’s denizens would suffer a catastrophe rather than his “science” be proven wrong, or when Stephen Schneider said each “scientist” needed to decide the balance between being an effective public policy pimp or an honest, objective scientist, clearly believing that one could be both at the same time.
There’s no need to fear the word conspiracy. There is much danger to the public good if you soft-peddle it.
At the start of this 20 + years ago, I thought at best mistaken or at worse fraud. I have been convinced that it’s fraud and unfortunately a communist conspiracy. AGW and it’s agenda is prevalent in all western democracies. Do you know what the First thing out of the mouths of AGWer’s is when they have a meeting? Have to get rid of democracy for a communist government.
AGW is on record that global warming is so bad that only a North Korean type of government can save the world.
Which prediction, I mean actual, not the ” we see climate change right before our eyes ” when nothing has happened, … which prediction has occurred ? The length of failed predictions is rather long. Starting with the ‘canary in the coal mine’, the Arctic. It hasn’t melted. It invalidates all the math that underpins AGW’s fraudulent claims.
If all that heat was retained via AGW’s interpretation of the 2nd law of Thermodynamics, the retention of heat via latent energy release in water vapor, and the insignificant rise in co2 ( of which we may not be totally responsible for ), then according to AGW math, It would have happened 10 years ago. It didn’t, and it won’t…. the math is wrong.
The warming is or was caused by a different mechanism than co2.
+1000
“ … after the coming winter of 2019-2020 ”
Wishful thinking, perhaps?
As we get older, we dislike cold more. If, as you and many expect, it does get colder we may move to a warmer place.
We will know in a year about winter of 2019-2020.
We are told we need 15 in a row for a trend. Funny stuff, this climate science.
I live in Tucson Arizona… a climate refuge. About as warm a climate as one can get in the US. And its ~40 F (6 C) outside tonight. Far too cold for my liking. Winter of 2018-2019 is already too cold for me. And 2019-2020 will likely be colder. And I have lived in Edmonton AB, Germany, and Massachusetts through cold winters and cool summers in my life. They suck IMHO. Done with that.
And the Left wants us to pay more, lots more for the energy to stay warm in the winters and to cool our homes in the summer…. to them I say,… F U.
And in France the Yellow Vests are telling the Left climate socialists what they can do with their higher energy costs.
We have lived in Redding, CA for thirteen+ years and think this is the coldest winter yet. I haven’t checked the official records but we’ve had virtually no high 60s, low 70s days as we usually get in the winter. It’s been consistently in the 40s and 50s. Thanks to Moonbeam and his nitwit followers, we’re saving the planet with P.G. & E.s outrageous gas bills. Evil, elite scientific imbeciles.
We are retired, live aboard our boat in the eastern Caribbean. This is our third season of increasingly cooler winter weather and colder water. We left Michigan to escape cold, shoveling, heating bills. I think if the trend continues the “50 million climate refugees” will be headed south. BTW, I predicted a less intense hurricane season 2018 summer based on generally cooler conditions here and observed drop in temperature of the equatorial current at the end of June passing between Trinidad and Grenada. 34C in 2017 to 31.5C in 2018 using our crappy marine instruments. Diving this year is even cooler everywhere we have been.
Hey Joel, what do you think the socialists will come up with to replace the failing AGW meme?
The Global Cooling scare peaked in 1975-1976. So by 1985, Hansen at GISS and his environmental-socialist science pals around the Western world had to be sitting back thinking, “W-T-F just happened? It’s now getting warmer.”
And even any NASA/GISS bottom-tier physicist could clearly see in the climate records of the 1930’s and early 40’s that the world was indeed quite warmer then, and it cooled through the 1950’s to 1960’s to a 1975 “ice-age cometh” alarmism, and this in spite of a kick-ass Solar Maximum in 1957-1958.
Clearly something else was controlling global temps on a 60-70 year time scale, and an internal system oscillation was the obvious answer. El Nino’s were then known and all the rage but their time scale was far too short to be causal. They figured out the 60-70 yr internal climate system cycle was controlling +/- 1 to 2 degree C of global temperatures by 1986 and knew they had window for the next 30 or so years to use AGW as an environmental policy mechanism to curtail human impacts to the planet, and CO2 was their demon. In the 1990’s, they foresaw a peak fossil fuel (oil and easy coal) by the early 21st century bringing CO2 emissions down just in time to coincide with the natural climate cycle cooling, and if they timed it right, the duping of the ignorant public that Climate Action policy, overseen by the UN and the UNFCCC COP process, was the reason.
Unfortunately for them, they never saw an industrialized Chinese economic behemoth coming, and a massive ramp-up of coal burning to support it. China with its massive CO2 emissions and its self-stylized communism-capitalism hybrid economy would defy Western-style controls on output they envisioned. Communist China’s emergence as an economic superpower with massive CO2 outputs is indeed the fly-in-the-ointment that Hansen and his fellow traveler climateers never saw coming in the late 80’s and early 90’s when the first IPCC report was written.
It’s been a fast dance adjustment to their plans ever since, culminating with Obama giving China a pass on CO2 emissions until 2030 to get the West (hopefully) past the imposition and institutionalization of irreversible socialist controls on Western capitalism via the socialist COP process. Meanwhile, they’d pull a fast hood-wink on the public with Paris COP treaty and western democracies, led by Hillary, Macron, Merkle and the EU, some pretty boy idiot in Canada to guide the world to an enlighten socialism under the UN.
The other issue that brings up in of course our much discussed frac’ing and horizontal drilling delaying peak oil and now natural gas for many decades. Emissions are going to keep going up and while global temperatures are going to start falling, thus the wheels are about to come off the Left’s Climate Change bus.
All that has been torn asunder. Their best laid plans… gone, as easily as a wisp of invisible, odorless CO2 gas.
Eugenics of course was the hope of Western Socialists in the early 20th Century, but then the German Fascists came along and took eugenics to its logical conclusion and screwed up their plans to control Western society using genetic arguments — forever.
So BfT, I suspect it will have to be something to do with quite populous China as the Asia hegemonic boogeyman that will have to replace the CO2 boogeyman is my guess. But I really don’t know. It took Hansen and his pals 10 years to come up with CO2 after 1975, with the Montreal CFC protocol as their guide. So check back in/around 2025, by then they’ll show us their new strategy for their March to Western Marxist-Socialism.
Joel O’Bryan
Slightly OT.
“self-stylized communism-capitalism hybrid”
I’m glad someone else perceives this as a political phenomenon. I dare-say it’s a common term amongst the politically astute but I’m not very political so have doubtless missed it.
Dang! No wonder we have experienced the weeping Bill McKibben.
Great though processes as usual Mr O’Bryan.
One little item which I read a few days ago.
Malthusian plans are up and running.
There were 42 million abortions “performed” in the western world last year.
This does not account for ‘unviable’ unborn or the millions in places like China which are not part of the official UN figures.
So what was that about Herr Hitler’s plans being redundant?
Scott Adams, the Dilbert guy, is asking for people with cred to help inform him about climate change issues.
If others are interested, check him out and give him heavy duty links. Happy New Year everyone.
His recent podcasts all include climate change – he’s really starting from scratch (global temp adjustments, McIntyre vs Mann,…)
Available at
https://blog.dilbert.com/
I can’t see any way to contact him other than by live comments during a podcast (via Periscope). Perhaps a “Best Sceptic Arguments” thread moderated by someone sensible to keep the crazies out would be generally useful – a distillation to the essential and strongest points.
He has explicitly requested point-counter point, counter-counter-point, counter-counter-counter-point,…, and is having trouble understanding how the simplest of propositions (eg is warming/sea level rise accelerating) can be the subject of such vitriolic disputes.
“He has explicitly requested point-counter point, counter-counter-point, counter-counter-counter-point,…, and is having trouble understanding how the simplest of propositions (eg is warming/sea level rise accelerating) can be the subject of such vitriolic disputes.”
He should read WUWT every day.
If Scott Adams was as smart as he pretends to be, he’d have moved his butt out of the New Democratic People’s Republic of Kalifornia (NDPRK) a long time ago. As it is, he’s about to enjoy new, exquisitely painful levels of taxation that befit such lack of awareness by someone of financial means. He’s too busy sucking on his morning Cup of Joe to realize his bank accounts are about to be drained by the real Marxist, Gov Gavin Newsom. And if the people of NDPRK thought Gov Moonbeam was bad and things couldn’t get worse tax wise, they haven’t seen anything yet with Comrade Newsom now running Sacramento.
It makes me wonder what their world would look like if they had their way unrestrained. But then I remember we have Venezuela, North Korea, China, and a thousand other examples of what happens.
There is clearly a common blindness within people who believe they know the answers, even though they have no expertise and never looked into whether it’s been tried before. They just know it. Sounds like Michael Mann eliminating tree rings that didn’t represent the climate of the area in which the trees grew. They just know it.
I’ve been told a number of times that the only reason why those previous examples failed, was because the wrong people were in charge.
This time, the right people will be in charge and it will work.
The right people always being the ones who are pushing for socialism/communism.
‘Because if it evaporates to a certain point – they have lanes now where ships can go that couldn’t ever sail through before.’
I wish it were true. It would be a very good thing.
Beat me to it, Gamecock. I saw that and thought, “Dang! Wouldn’t that be great?”
It’s been the holy grail of shipping since forever.
Now, if we can just melt enough ice so we can sail to the South pole.
Oh… wait… continent… let’s forget I said anything, shall we?
Ahh, the icecap evaporates, the shipping lane opens up, the ships start to go through but then get stuck on the tundra that pops up. Something like that?
We have records of ships making the northwest passage from over 100 years ago.
So these “passages” have always been open.
What I loved was his comment about the ice caps holding down the permafrost.
Yep it is terrible, just like when you have two mechanics at the track.
One focuses on tire pressure, the other on rpm.
While it is all about the aerodynamic down force created in the last 200 yards, that keep those tires planted and pushing.
And even
“But I don’t know. I’m giving you my wishful thinking.”
is not true. When they’re reaching for straws he can’t give them their will his own fear for drowning before his very eyes.
And even
“But I don’t know. I’m giving you my wishful thinking.”
is not true. When they’re reaching for straws he can’t give them their will his own fear from drowning before his very eyes.
Per the provided 21 second Waxman video spot…
So the tundra that Waxman says the North Pole Ice Cap holds down is the same tundra that US Navy submarines have clinging all over them when they surface at the North Pole? Kinda like when the subs have sand on them when they surface in the Sahara. The Arctic Ocean is an ocean. Not sure how that would evaporate (and wouldn’t other bodies of water fill the void, if there was one). But if it did evaporate, how would ships be able to navigate it; just stating the obvious here, but ships require water in which to navigate. /sarc
Did Waxman also think that Guam would flip over if the US military put more housing, etc. on Guam? Who elects these people. No wonder the US is an embarrassment during a democrat controlled house. We need Jay Leno to go Jay-walking again to see how our ignorance index is doing these days.
SSN Waxman surfacing in the Arctic tundra, almost nine years ago.
http://i44.tinypic.com/2062dk0.jpg
Oh that’s a good one! LOL
David Middleton
I blame you now for reminding that leftist moron Waxman ever existed. I had completely forgotten about him and wish it had remained that way. 🙂
I thank God every day that the Climate Change Alarmists, chose CO2 as their villain.
A more innocent and socially positive member of the molecule community, it would be difficult to come up with.
The AGW/CCAlarmists are getting beaten up every day now by those defending CO2, those championing its positive attributes and its beneficial contribution to humanity.
The natural variation of climate was chosen, as the instrument to control society by the UN Left, because it was such a complex issue to argue. It allowed less than scientific pseudo science advocates, space to operate and room to spread their snake oil policies. Think Al Gore here.
What will they come up with next is the big question. It has to be something that crosses all international borders and is a product of capitalist activities.
I will leave others to guess what options, the one world order advocates come up with.
One has to only look at the great faiths. Both Christanity and Islam are about power via control.
Both use the offer of a Heaven, just as long as we behave ourselves and do what we are told.
So modern politics are only building on that example.
Remember Karl Marx was a economonest writing about 19th Century Germany, which was just like the UK, going through the growing pains of industrial development.
It was his friend Engal who saw the political possibilities in this difficult times for Germany.
The rest as they say is History.
MJE
My E mail address is vk5ellmje@aussiebb.com.au.
The present one is incorrect.
MJE
But the US continues ‘to be the world leader’ on climate change. It is the first country with a government that rightly considers ‘man-made climate change’ a hoax. Many countries will follow its lead.
not quite right.. the gov is run by the deep state..
and they got their climate opinions in schools as kids,
which is still going on…imagine the future…
It just gives them one more thing to rebel against when they hit adulthood.
Great though processes as usual Mr O’Bryan.
One little item which I read a few days ago.
Malthusian plans are up and running.
There were 42 million abortions “performed” in the western world last year.
This does not account for ‘unviable’ unborn or the millions in places like China which are not part of the official UN figures.
So what was that about Herr Hitler’s plans being redundant?
Sorry for double post.
2 many thumbs!
So the American people were never an issue in these cloak room strategies. I guess they learned nothing from the white hot phone lines calling in against the bill just like Macron in France today.
Waxman also got this right, David:
From the article: “If Trump is elected, Markey said, “every single promise we made to the rest of the world [on climate change] will be broken.” 🙂
Even that was incorrect… “We” didn’t make any promises… Obama made promises.
That is true and the distiction should be made, so thank you for doing it for me. 🙂
Here’s the best succinct explanation of Waxman/Markey I’ve ever seen: