Democrats are deeply divided on climate change legislation, and Republicans boycotted the hearings this week, which leaves little hope for passage of legislation this year.Â
The Senate Environment Committee held three days of hearings on the climate bill last week -Â it goes to committee debate today. Â
Democrats from the Midwest, South and Rocky Mountain West are concerned about the impact of the legislation on industry and consumersÂ
Democratic leaders, along with the Obama administration, are attempting to persuade at least six Republicans to vote in favor by compromising on nuclear plants. So far, not one Republican seems interested.
Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman Barbara Boxer (D-CA) says she will begin the mark up on climate legislation regardless of the fact that all 7 Republicans on the Committee plan to boycott the proceedings.
Republicans say Boxer can’t do a markup without at least two Republicans present. Boxer countered that a provision would allow her to proceed as long as a majority of committee members are present. Democrats outnumber Republicans 12 to 7.
“We urge Ranking Member Inhofe, with the utmost respect, to bring the committee Republicans back to work on this issue. We will give them the opportunity, as we proceed this week, to reconsider their decision,” she added. “We look forward to working with them if they decide to participate, but if they do not, we will move forward in accordance with the rules of the Senate and of this committee.”
On Monday afternoon, all six ranking Republicans on committees with jurisdiction over climate change legislation sent a letter to Boxer (PDF) asking her to delay consideration of the bill until a full economic analysis is performed. Two of the GOP senators Democrats have been eyeing as possible backers of a cap-and-trade bill — Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Richard Lugar (Ind.) both signed the missive, which states, these sort of “analyses are worth the time and resources not only to get them done, but to get them done right.”
“The EPW Republicans would like a markup of the Kerry-Boxer bill, but are disappointed that the majority seems intent on moving forward with a markup before receiving a full analysis from the EPA,” he said. “Given the sheer size and significant economic impacts of the bill on the American people, we feel it is our duty to insist on having the analysis before members are to vote on the bill.”
This is a pretty big moment for the future of the planet and the human race. Even though we humans have continuted to evolve (rather rapidly in the last 100 or even 50 years) I’m not optimistic that a good climate bill will be passed. If one is passed it will be so watered down that it won’t do what it was supposed to do. Oh well, that’s our choice I guess, and we will have to live (or struggle to live) with it and its ramifications. So be it, if we aren’t smart enough to survive then we deserve what we get. It’s just sad that those who want to continue evolving to a more positive and enlightned way of living are potentially being cheated out of that chance.
We would all do far better if government simply got out of this altogether. There is no legitimate scientific basis to any claims that humans have any discernible impact on global climate. None. There is not one scientific paper that has ever been able to discern a human component to climate change, not one!
The scare tactics, outright fraud, and blatant disregard of their own scientific panels by the IPCC renders their summary reports useless propaganda. The US surface station temperature record is a shambles, with the majority of reporting stations out of compliance with requirements for accurate temperature reporting (located next to brick walls, cooking grills, heat pump exhausts, blacktop parking lots, etc., ad nauseam) and almost all are biased toward warmer records because of changes in the surrounding areas over the past 2-4 decades! On top of the, the GISS is “massaging” their records (read: “cooking the data”) by “adjusting” some earlier 20th-century data downward to artificially create the appearance of warming in current years! It is beyond disgraceful!
NONE of the required results predicted by the AGW theory have happened. In reality, just the opposite has happened. AGW Theory predicts a mid-troposphere (8-12km altitude) tropical “hot spot” but there is no evidence from radiosonde or satellite measurements of ANY warming whatsoever in that region of the atmosphere. None! Predictions of polar warming have not come true. Antarctica has been cooling and building ice thickness over the vast portion of that continent for more than 50 years, but the press concentrates on some ice loss in a few places around the perimeter that are from processes begun thousands of years ago and are enhanced by expanding ice sheets on the continent pushing ice further over the end of land onto the sea surface! The north pole was open water in the mid-1950s when a US Navy submarine surfaced at the pole and took pictures. No panic then. The ice-free “northwest passage” over the top of Canada for shipping was discovered by wooden sailing ships over 100 years ago! Predictions of rising sea levels are completely bogus, according to the world’s leading sea level expert, Dr. Nils-Axel Mörner, who discovered that the IPCC had NOT ONE sea level expert on it’s staff of scientists writing about sea level changes! NOT ONE! His best estimate for the next 100 years of sea level change, zero to 8 inches! The insane predictions of James E. Hansen, NASA’s funding hero, have failed to come close to being accurate. Yet our insane Congress throws tens of billions of dollars at “climate change” studies based on the scare campaign of lying and deception by the AGW camp. Hansen could well be the scientific community’s “Bernie Madoff” as he has been responsible for bilking the American Taxpayer of tens of billions of dollars because of his bogus claims that carbon emissions are significantly altering climate. No such record of the power of greenhouse gases exists in the entire geologic climate history!
Fears for our future generations should be over the debt we are driving them into because we are too ignorant to know the truth about the climate change scam.
Please have someone from this site contact me at WEBCommentary.com (Editor, WEBCommentary) regarding Lord Monckton’s campaign to oppose the coming Treaty of Copenhagen. Thanks in advance.
RobNHood,
If they pass a Climate BIll you can bet that it will require good survival skills for everyone but the elite. It will cause an even greater redistribution of wealth upward.
And I disagree that man has evolved much in the last 50-100 years, we just have more toys. Our toys have evolved, but we haven’t, and that is why no form of government can long withstand the onslaught of a few against the liberty and sovereinty of the many.
Rob:
What is a “good climate bill”? What would it say? Let me guess: Shut down the oil industry, shut down the coal industry, shut down the natural gas industry, hell just shut down all industry. Redistribute all of America’s wealth to the rest of the world. Right?
The best climate bill is no climate bill. Period! THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH THE CLIMATE!!!!!!!!!!! As Mr. Webster stated above, and he is correct about this, THERE IS NO WARMING!!!!!!!!! GET OVER IT!!!!! The debate IS over, and you lose.
Neil, I could not have said it better. Kudo’s to you. The debate was over before it began. Fabricated it was, shut down it will be. I hope Gore sells short. If so, he will make a lot of money, poor soul.
Both Neil and Paul- as usual you exaggerate and use hypebole to ridicule anything that has to do with saner people tryng to manage a potential problem and even “normal” pollution issues. If all this had been up to you two, we’d all be swimming in garbage by now. (see how stupid hyperbole is? I just used it on you, doesn’t help anything does it?!)
Nobody is talking about shutting down anything. Settle down Neil and Paul, or we won’t let you sit at the big table…
It’s about change. It’s about the huge revulsion of a corrupt status quo, which I fully share.
The electorate is shouting from the rafters, screaming from the rooftops, like Howard Beale in “Network”: “We are madder than hell and we are not going to take it anymore!” And they believe that nobody listens. Nobody gets it. Nobody hears. Nobody cares.
Hard-hit voters desperately yearning for change see a president they like who fails to fight for transforming change, opposed by a party that opposes any change. Grassroots Democrats stay home. Grassroots conservatives revolt. Grassroots independents throw up their hands. The center cannot hold until someone stands up and fights for the change the voters demand.
Ladies and gentlemen of this capital, you can’t run, you can’t hide, you can’t bob, you can’t weave, you can’t dodge and you can’t spin, because nobody in America believes you anymore.
I don’t know if the president becomes the president he can be, or if the Republicans move so far right they self-destruct yet again. I don’t know if the president leads the way to a great Democratic realignment or the Republicans win a landslide victory in 2010, but I do know this:
There is a freight train headed for this town and incumbents of both parties will soon learn that the people demand real change and they must lead, follow or the people will push them out of the way.
BS Rob. Everything you just said is BS. And you know it is, yet you say it anyway. Your lopsided rhetoric is tiresome and your use of the of propaganda is flagrant and transparent.
And look up the word hyperbole. I was not exagerating anything. I said “the debate IS over, and you lose”. An hyperbole would be something like “the debate boiled over like a pressure cooker, and you melted like a popcicle in a blast furnace!!!!” Now that’s hyperbole.
If you’re going to insult me, try getting your grammatic axioms straight.
You know who likes to use hyperbole? Al Gore. The planet has a fever! Sea levels are going to rise 20 feet! Now that is hyperbole!
And I get a little irked when people say things like:
“you exaggerate and use hypebole to ridicule anything that has to do with saner people tryng to manage a potential problem and even “normal†pollution issues.”
There are several things wrong with this statement. First of all you say you’re trying to manage a potential problem. A potential problem? I thought the debate was over and the science was settled and that it’s supposed to already be a problem. So now you’re saying it’s not a problem but it MIGHT be, someday?
Second, I have never used hyperbole or ridicule to present my opposing view. I have used FACTS and DATA from various sources to REBUTT what has been claimed by AGW alarmists. I have used ridicule and hyperbole against you personally, and I apologise for that, and in the future I shall try to refrain from being too personal.
Third, you are taking a swipe at people who disagree with you by referring to people of the category that you place yourself as being the “saner”. This may seem to the casual reader to be an innocuous statement, but to me the meaning is clear; People like me are less sane than you, or insane. This is an indirect insult, but an insult nonetheless.
Fourthly, I have never mentioned anything other than CO2, and other so called “greenhouse” gases as a topic of interest. And never have I suggested not regulating “normal” pollution. You are suggesting that people with my view are all for pollution of the air, water, and soil with whatever anyone wants to pollute it with. This is a completely false characterization of our intentions, AND YOU KNOW IT.
Just in case you don’t know what my meaning is. I am calling you a liar.
You pepper your statements with false characterizations, and false premises to justify your feigned outrage. It’s a load of garbage, and I am sick of it.
You think everyone is a liar. Just shut up man
Neil, He has read Alinski yet he states not. Need I say more?
I think I need to keep breaking down what he says, and identifying the little tricks. A great deal of what he posts is founded on false premises. I think I have made the mistake of arguing with his overall points in the past, but that falls into the trap of accepting the false premise which I think is what the trick is. It’s actually very clever, but I will not fall for it again.
The rants of a left wing liberal when cornered with no definitive response always seems to hammer away at everything ignoring the issue at hand. Similar to a child caught with the hand in the cookie jar. That’s when all the excuses come out that have no bearing to what happened. Excuses, blame others etc. Never changes, nor will Rob or this Lance fellow. Life goes on.
Apparently not captain debate
All you guys do it rant (which you contstantly accuse me of doing). Neil, if you are insulted by the word “hyperbole”, well than I feel sorry for you. It must be tough hard world you live in if you are that sensitive. I said that beccause you wrote, and I quote: “… Shut down the oil industry, shut down the coal industry, shut down the natural gas industry, hell just shut down all industry. Redistribute all of America’s wealth to the rest of the world. Right?” End quote.
Now THAT is hyperbole. Webster should pay you to use that sentence as an example of it in their next edition.
Its the way they present their facts. It would be nice to post one thing on here without either Neil or Paul freaking out over stupid stuff
We do not “freak out” as you say, we speak with honest conviction without the below the belt hits that some others seem to enjoy when they cannot rationally discuss an issue. When confronted with facts/comments you two seem to go to a well planned book. Can I get a copy?
Lance, I sense silence? Can I get a copy of your manuscript? I doubt that will ever happen. I’m not PC. It is not “stupid stuff”, it is reality. That’s right, the left called anyone that disagrees “Stupid.” I don’t think so. Check the polls. America is finally waking up for once in my lifetime.
You “sense silence” because i go to other sites to debate issues like this unlike you and neil who think you are always right. Like godamn did your mother never love you as a child?
Lance is right, more or less. And it’s funny how suspicious you guys are (maybe even paranoid?) I don’t use “little tricks” or a book or anything. I do post things such as parts of articles without citing them mainly due to laziness, and becasue I just think getting info and other opinions into a site like this is important. As i’ve said before you guys are in tune to and angry about the loss of what America was supposed to be about (so am I)- but you blame the wrong people, and the fact that you still believe in the political process the way it is is alarming to me. It is a completely corrupt system via legal bribery, etc.
And I don’t blame you for what I’m doing (twist things around as Neil suggested). You just think that because you cannot see your shortcomings regarding rational thinking and the use of logic, or if you do, you deny that and maintain your safe and secure narrow-mindedness. I have shown compromise and interest in various things posted here- but you do not- you guys are the rigid unbending thinkers. I have even conceded that you may be right about global warming (but not about the conspriacy you attach to it- that’s just good old-fashioned American businessmen and women trying to make a buck at someone elses expense- it’s called Capitalism). But, like many other people, I hesitate to become rigid and certain about it since IT IS A FACT THAT THE MAJORITY OF SCIENTISTS STUDYING THIS ISSUE HAVE COME TO CERTAIN CONCLUSIONS ABOUT IT SCIENTIFICALLY, AND AS NON-SCIENTISTS WE FEEL WE NEED TO TRUST THEM AT LEAST A LITTLE BIT. Not to mention some of the possible environmental ramifications would make any sane peson stop and consider that thier arrogance may need to be toned down a bit, if not for themselves then for future generations.
And re: the polls that you mention, that is meaningless really, except that perhaps the propaganda against climate change is working. I understand why you’d be happy about that- but beware, polls and humans are fickle creatures.
I thought that you waited for your “directives.”
Propaganda V “Truth”, I will take truth any day Robby Boy!!!
Rob man just ignore these two dumbasses. Just a couple guys that act like 8 year olds because people dont see their point of view. Oh and supposedly we think from a “manuscript” because we “hit below the belt” trying to debate with these two tools.
Lance, you are just like Rob. You like Alinsky? I sense you do. Have an excellent evening.
You seem to sense alot of things. 100% of it is BS so far HENCE me not caring what you have to say about any issues at hand or in the future. And I will have an excellent evening thank you.
Right on Lance. Thanks.
How’s “climategate” going? Is that “100% BS.?”