Doomed

Gordon Brown tried to break the deadlock over climate change yesterday by proposing the creation of a £60 billion international fund to help poorer countries adapt to the situation. He also raised the prospect that higher air fares could play a part in the worldwide effort to combat global warming.

As you can see the real agenda of Combating climate change is to funnel money to devolping countries. Cap and Tax.

Meanwhile, the political climate for the cap-and-trade system remains tough in the Senate. Democrats hold a 60-seat majority thanks to the victory of Al Franken in the long-disputed race for a Senate seat from Minnesota. However, the cap-and-trade system makes even some Democrats nervous, especially those from states that extract energy and minerals and rely on heavy industry.

AS we can see even Democrats know the effects of Cap and Trade. It will HEAVILY penalize American industry and it will heavily penalize Americans. Yet the democrats/progressive continue to deny that Cap and Trade will do anything except be a NIRVANA for America and the world. When a country makes it economically unfeasible to maintain business in a country. They move. They find new places with cheap labor......... YOU KNOW...LIKE DEVLOPING COUNTRIES. The Democrats are doing and have done a mavelous job at Alinskizing the debate over Global warming, Immigration and Cap and Trade. Hopefully Americans and Americans in congress see the light and work to preserve responsible legislation and not some shoot from the hip feel good far left progressive VOODOO.

Michael Merritt

has many weaknesses

Pfft, "weaknesses?" Apparently you can't bring yourself to admit that this is the smoking gun that means anthropogenic global warming is a complete fabrication. What are you, a liberal!? :) By the way, I don't know why this is so surprising. Stewart might not be saying "Democrats suck," but from what I've seen, he's hardly far-left. Lest we forget that the political world isn't split into those who are far-left and those who are far-right. It's much more complex than that.

Roland The mistake that peeps on the right make about Jon is that he's not an ideologue. Satire makes fun of those in charge. Go back to 98, 99, pre 2000 election and while the tone of the show is still very young and not found its way as a political and MSM satire program..but shots are still taken at democrats. Jon was a huge McCain supporter in 00 and called out Bush for the cheap shots taken via robocalls in south carolina. TDS has been labeled as liberals, but from what I know of the writers---TDS and TCR are mostly libertarian types while leaning to the left--but first and foremost satirists and comedians. Jon called out self identified liberal jim cramer. He's also been one of the harshest critics of CNN (which conservatives label as liberal). Jon has actually had a much better relationships with FNC than CNN/MSNBC talking heads. Perhaps conservatives were just too quick to jump to anger over criticism that Stewart gave, and labels him as an ideological hack rather than someone who digests the news, attempts to understand what really happens and then mocks it.

scott dodds Climategate proves global warming is real. It's really telling that the climate change deniers have to look at these emails, a few flimsy emails from a couple of nobodies to try to make the case that climate change isn't real. If the deniers had a case they'd be looking at the mountains of research, the concensus of the scientific community, the thousands of hard facts backed by solid research that are referenced every day in scientific journals and media outlets with no political agenda and finding some problem with that, but they can't, because their isn't one. The fact that they have to stoop so low as to use these stupid little insignificant outlier tricks like climategate to try to make their points shows how flimsy their evidence is, and how truly desparate they are to try to find something, ANYTHING, to back up their idiotic position. It also shows that they have NO ability to honestly parse facts and look at data, or at least no desire to. van der Gallen = idiot.

scott dodds The "left wing" media ignores it because it's not a story. It doesn't prove anything other than the human interest angle of a couple of scientists acting stupidly. The left is being honest here.

Doomed Evidence shows that the Glaciers have NEVER totally melted away despite times when we have had 4000 PPM CO2 in the atmosphere. Gasp...say it aint so!! Yep..yep....we sorta drill down..you know a long way...carbon date the stuff and voilla there ya have the evidence...4000ppm co2. The cooked evidence they continually hide is that CO2 follows a warming event...it does not CAUSE one. EVER. Even when we had 4000 ppm in the atmosphere. 360ppm by the end of the 21st century is hardly going to cause the world to cease to exist. C02 has nothing to do with global warming. Its just another alinskization of a """"""""""CRISIS""""""""""""" These emails prove their is NO CRISIS and they are having to cook the books to make one in order to continue their personal funding as well as influence worldwide policy. If there was ever any 666. Antichrist. Devil.....it would be Global warming. Funnelling trillions of dollars from the industrialized nations to the poor and impoverished for one reason. Research constantly proves that developing nations have much more stable birth rates then do undeveloped nations. AGW is being driven by a hidden agenda to control population and remember folks.... There are more then just Americans involved in AGW. In fact a vast majority of the scientists are NOT Americans and they could give a flying flip about America other then an obstacle that stands in the way to funneling their trillions to developing nations. I think that if most progressive lefteners in the USA really understood what AGW is really all about they would be more opposed to it then are conservatives. Because in the end it means simply one thing. The LOSS of MORE jobs to overseas....devolping nations. Period...End of the USA er end of story.

Jay_C Interesting (I expereinced this myself with google lookup and then found this article" just thought it was interesting.. Is google censoring ClimateGate? http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/021306.html refers to this link. http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Web%20Search/thread?tid=25112ee0c29cbd01&hl=en#all

Doomed

The EPA said that the scientific evidence surrounding climate change clearly shows that greenhouse gases "threaten the public health and welfare of the American people" and that the pollutants — mainly carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels — should be regulated under the Clean Air Act. THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

Is there any doubt what Obama plans to do in Stockholm despite Climategate>? This president continues to undermine his own fairness and transparency pledge as he lowers his head, puts on his blinders and continues on a mission to destroy the economy of the United STates in what can only be surmised as a deliberate attempt to put forth policy that is designed to involk crisis and the Alinsky model for governing. I no longer have any faith in anything this president does or says. Sorry but there it is. My fall from the garden of Eden is complete.

Jay_C A good writeup as well as a very pragmatic approach to the Climate Change / ClimateGate debate.. http://mindyourowndamnbusinesspolitics.com/wordpress/2009/12/07/climategate-copenhagen-and-the-only-two-questions-that-really-matter/

Doomed Jay C I read your link. The guy tries but ends up in epic failure. 1st alternatives are great. Everyone keeps thinking if we just find alternatives we can rid ourselves of fossil fuels. No....we cannot. Alternatives DO NOT fuel the internal combustion engine. Oil combines for about 2 percent of all the power generated in the USA. Wind, solar, turbines, hydro, geothermal alternatives do not REPLACE anything that OIL fuels. Gasoline. Diesel. Jet Fuel. Rocket Fuel. Kerosene. We could build a 100000000000000000000000000000 wind generators and our dependence upon oil would still be there because wind generators do not EVEN REMOTELY do anything to curb the need for oil. Alternatives will destroy the coal industry. Okay perhaps we can have Wyoming and West Virgina start building wind turbines and we will just ignore carbon scrubbers that make coal more efficient and more powerful then a million wind turbines and put almost no co2 into the air because with a combination of scrubbing and co2 injection we can make coal the greatest thing since sliced bread. Understand. The destruction of coal benefits me. Im a geologist employed by an oil company. If coal goes...oil goes up in price and its demand is even further enhanced by the reduction of a very great source of power. COAL. Eliminationg coal would require massive amounts of wind and solar and geothermal and NUCLEAR POWER to even attempt to replace the massive amounts of energy that coal provides for the world, let alone America. Alternatives are great...but once again this author along with just about everyone else pissed at oil companies just dont realize that the generation of Electricity and OIL have almost nothing to do with one another. And if you convince stupid Human beings that building windmills will solve our dependency on foreign oil well then.... You guys all deserve what you get. A 30 percent unemployment rate and 30,000 dollar cars used for planters and a 15 mile walk to work. Because not even buses or trains get to move without oil and no amount of windmills is going to make them budge an inch.

Tully Gotta go with "fail" myself for that link. Doomed is spot on that our reliance on petroleum far exceeds what can be replaced with any alt-energy on the horizon, and has little to do with domestic electricity generation anyway. The only "alts" that could really fill that gap are other hydrocarbon sources. And the assertion that we don't have massive alt-green-energy yet because we've somehow failed to unleash the free market on the problem? PUH-lease. Alt-energy lags simply because it is not yet cheap enough to be a viable replacement, despite decades of subsidies and "free market" research. There are some up & coming techs that are beginning to be cost-competitive with oil anywhere north of $50-60 , but once again, they're hydrocarbons. (For the hardcore warmists that think CO2 is SatanSpawn, some of these techs are actually near-carbon-neutral, carbon-neutral or even slightly carbon-negative. But they're still internal combustion fuels.)

John D @scott dodds Scott, I can only surmise one of two things about you: either you haven't actually read the emails (and if you're willing to pontificate about things you haven't become familiar with this paints you as an idiot) or you just don't care (which is even worse). The emails from the climategate scandal *prove* (as Hadley CRU has confirmed the emails authenticity) A) That "scientists" at CRU manipulated data to "hide the decline" of global temps. MANIPULATION OF DATA! B) Scientists at CRU talked about disobeying FOIA requests to hoard data. The CRU is a government supported facility, and these scientists are employees of the taxpayer. These scientists have an obligation to share data so others can collaborate their findings. HOARDING OF DATA TO OBSTRUCT OTHERS PROVING / DIS-PROVING THEIR FINDINGS! C) These so-called scientists at CRU talk of deleting data and emails rather than obeying freedom of information requests. DELETION OF DATA! D) These people talk of ways in which to silence their critics, such as convincing editors at peer-review journals to stop publishing papers of GW skeptic scientists. CENSORSHIP! E)These GW nutjobs also talk of doing "whatever it takes...even redefining the peer-review process!" DESTRUCTION OF A FORUM FOR GW SKEPTICS TO PUBLISH THEIR DATA! Also, there are only 4 real data-sets from GW alarmist scientists that are maintained. CRU is the A) the biggest and B) the one most used and cited by the U.N. and the UN IPCC. The fact that you claim these are "nobodies" only shows your ignorance. lol IN addition to the CRU data, Michael Mann's "hockey stick" chart was debunked--so his data-set is suspect, and James Hansen of NASA got a black mark and admitted there was an error in his data that showed over-stated warming--so his data-set is suspect. That's 3 of 4! Not to mention that all of these emails regarding: manipulation of data, hoarding of data, deletion of data, silencing of critics, and destruction of a forum for critics to present their data went out to all the managers of the other three data sets and all the other leading GW alarmist scientists! These don't sound like the writings of brave intelligent scientists proud of their work and holding them up to free debate. In fact these emails smack of totalitarianism and hiding the truth, because they know they are peddling snake-oil to the public and don't want the truth coming out! Why don't you try educating yourself a little before you have diarrhea of the mouth?

John D Also, it now appears that these emails weren't hacked, but leaked by somebody at the CRU who has a conscience (the leaker doesn't want trillions in new taxes based on cowdung). So the comment about going to low tactics doesn't even apply.

John D The funniest thing of all I think about this GW nonsense is this: I actually believe environmentalist activists have important uses for society (as do all activists really). Of key interest are things like: protesting against big agri-business when they: pump cows full of hormones to fatten them up, keep cows & chickens in stalls instead of free ranged so that they stew in their own feces needing tons of antibiotics (greatly increasing the chance that an anti-biotic bacteria will arrive), or importing grapes from Chile or bananas from columbia sprayed with ddt, the wholesale pumping of mercury into our rivers and lakes, or BPA's in baby bottles that mimic female hormones leading to adverse reactions in baby boys, or hundreds of other important things environmental activists protest--all of which is on hold while they fight the GW boogeyman! Let me ask you this: Since when do "ANTI-ESTABLISHMENT" activists get their marching orders from the government (i.e. *THE MAN*!) Talk about the primordial example of useful idiots! Not only are they fighting to help oppress all of the citizens of the USA, but they stopped doing all the important work they were doing.

Jay_C @Doomed As I said before, my main focus was his very pragmatic approach to the Climate Change / ClimateGate debate. Namely his loathing the AGW alarmist position, and the ignoring of Climate-Gate, while at the same time beieving there is a small place at the table to alternative energies here in the US that have been blocked by Regulations and taxes... However, if you want to get into the detals... Saying yeah, alternatives are great but (fill in the blank)... is just a copout. Most of you here know my stance on this subject, I loathe the AGW alarmist position, especially after climate-gate. But, I do lean to the environmentalist side, while at the same time being fiscally conservative, and being against governement intervention in MOST things.. So I say, let private businesses thrive making windmills, and solar panels, geothermal, etc... by loosening regulations and cutting the associated taxes to businesses for selling / buying materials for these. Whats the harm doing this alongside ever so slowly weaning ourselves off fossil fuels? So what is wrong with his statement here? He seems to be in agreement with you? "Yes, I know that no alternative energy available today comes close to providing the raw power of carbon based fuels. I also know that the cost of converting the world's transportation infrastructure to other fuels is enormous. Yet..In 1903 the Wright Brothers made their first flight. Those daring young men in their flying machines were certainly crazy. But just 30 years later, in 1933, the first airliner was launched and today if I want I can buy a ticket via something called the Internet, get on a flying machine and be on the other side of the planet in roughly 20-24 hours. Yes, I believe alternative energies have a future if we just get our governments out of the way. And Tully, like he said here... "We haven't unleashed the power of the free markets on alternative energy yet because....**** the U.S. which should lead the world in alternative energy development hinders development with myriad regulations and taxes (see wind turbines and biofuels)*******. The only place the 2 of you and I disagree I guess is that you say, that's great, but why bother? I say I agree with you that it is great why not? Doomed, you say: Alternatives will destroy the coal industry. Really? In private industry that usually happens only if the "new thing" offers more than what the existing thing (in this case coal) can produce. Not likely at this point. Why can't we at the same time work on carbon scrubbers that make coal more efficient and more powerful? I'm at a loss, not seeing the negative. Strange, it seems 99% of the time Doomed and I are in agreement, perhaps we'll just have to agree to disagree this time?

Doomed Jay_C

Obama claims a “stringent cap” on carbon will render it uneconomic to build new, traditional coal facilities and will discourage the further use of existing but “inefficient” facilities. Existing coal plants would be retrofitted with coal capture and sequestration technology if and when it becomes available.

This is dissected from Obama's campaign website. He is on tape Jay_C admitting that his plan will destroy the coal industry and that destroying the dirty coal industry is his goal. Scrubbers and CO2 injection cannot meet the stringent guidelines put in place by the Copenhagen agreement. To reduce our carbon footprint by 2020 we will almost certainly have to rid ourselves of COAL. Enter legislation to do that....its called Cap and Trade. The only conceivable way to replace the amount of electricity generated is NOT with Wind turbines but with Nuclear power. Come out west Jay_C. The landscape is dotted with Wind Turbines. Wyoming has gigantic farms stretching for miles and miles and MILES AND FREAKING MILES...guess what...all those turbines ONLY serve Los Angeles. Yes California is buying up land to service ONE CITY........ONE CITY....let me repeat that....ONE city. So going forward if you want clean, electricity to fuel Americas appetite for energy then wind power IS not nor has it EVER been the way forward. Nuclear is the only option and we all know where thats gonna end up. In courts for 100 years. NO power...NO jobs. NO jobs...NO cars. NO cars...NO Co2 emmissions. Remember the AGW's real goal is to ship jobs to developing nations....not be stewards of the planet. Jay_C I have worked in the oil and gas industry for 38 years. I have seen it all. CO2 injection is normally sent to active oil fields via pipelines. The oil and gas industry buys the co2 from these power plants and uses the co2 to inject into the holes in order to bring more and more oil to the surface. While it might be a nirvana as far as keeping some c02 out of the atmosphere it is immensely expensive to build 100's of miles of pipelines for each of the 1000's of coal fired plants that exist in the USA. Coal scrubbing works, but is very expensive and still DOES NOT bring the COAL plant anywhere near the guidelines the AGW and Copenhagen wants to meet. Hence what you are going to end up with is the destruction of coal in America. That quite honestly is the goal of the AGW crowd. Why? Coal is clean. The pollution from coal plants meets EPA guidelines. What it does NOT meet is some arbitrary CO2 emissions standards based upon faulty science. For that an entire industry is going to be destroyed forcing the PRICE OF OIL SKYWARD once again. Why would they want that? CRISIS. Oil prices at 5 dollars a gallon is a CRISIS. It brought about the current recession almost exclusively. Remember this administration believes that the only way people will act is if they are facting a crisis.

Tully Saying yeah, alternatives are great but (fill in the blank)… is just a copout. Jay C, noting that alternatives are not cost-effective is not even remotely a cop-out, it's the core of why they haven't ALREADY supplanted existing sources. "Unleashing the free market" rhetoric is a laugh in particular there in that wind and solar are two of the most heavily subsidized areas of alt-energy, and have been for decades. So I say, let private businesses thrive making windmills, and solar panels, geothermal, etc… by loosening regulations and cutting the associated taxes to businesses for selling / buying materials for these. Whats the harm doing this alongside ever so slowly weaning ourselves off fossil fuels? We already have and do, for decades, and the cost for that is borne by the taxpayers. Those technologies are still not yet cost-effective with current sources, despite those decades of massive subsidies and tax breaks. Yeah, Doomed, wind and solar still have that intermittent-generation problem, and therefore require backup on-demand production capacity that can be equal to their standard expected steady-load production. Wind boosters like to ignore that rather hefty dedicated start-up and overhead involved there. If you have to build a 1 MW natural-gas backup generator plant to cover for when the 1 MW wind farm isn't producing because there's not enough (or too much) breeze, why build the wind farm at all unless it's producing cheaper kWh's than the backup plant? And they don't. Yep, barring some massive new tech breakthrough (such as a radical drop in the kWh cost of solar production AND power storage tech) then nuclear is the only ticket leading out of the coal jungle. Utopian dreams are wonderful, but I live in the real world where making energy MORE expensive creates misery and costs lives.

Jay_C "This is dissected from Obama’s campaign website. He is on tape Jay_C admitting that his plan will destroy the coal industry and that destroying the dirty coal industry is his goal." Whoah, whoah, whoah..again, "Obama's plan" yes... I am not advocating anything close to "Obama's plan". THe author of the link is not advocating "Obama's plan" I disagree with ~96% of "Obama's plan".. I agree with you that Nuclear is an option as well, when did I say I didn't? I do want Nuclear. I want *all* the options on the table. Though I would like to someday see Nuclear phased out (waaaay in the future), it has its own merits/benefits that current alternative energy sources cannot beat or even meet. YOu said: "Scrubbers and CO2 injection cannot meet the stringent guidelines put in place by the Copenhagen agreement. To reduce our carbon footprint by 2020 we will almost certainly have to rid ourselves of COAL. Enter legislation to do that….its called Cap and Trade." Agreed, again that is "his plan" I Don’t want to rid ourselves of coal, I don’t care about cap and tax, or what they say needs to happen in Copenhagen.. What I do not want for sure, is to see us downplaying the possibilities of alternative energy sources (like wind, solar, tide, nuclear) going forward within the real free market system (not the progressive free market system). Will technologies fail? Sure, they always havev and will but that is no excuse for downplaying what can be possible. (or allow progressive big government control agendas to get in the way of what is possible) I Throw those leftist ideas out of the equation. Why invent new technologies if all we are going to do is deride them for their current miniscule abilities? Or harness them for leftist agendas? As the author of the article alluded, we went from the Wright brothers to putting a man on the moon in a fairly short amount of time. Let’s do the same with alternative energies.

Jay_C @Tully “Unleashing the free market” rhetoric is a laugh in particular there in that wind and solar are two of the most heavily subsidized areas of alt-energy, and have been for decades. Sure, in "buying" the technologies. I dont want subsidies anyway, I want tax cuts for businesses to build the systems and tax custs for alt energy businesses to buy the materials to build the alt energy systems, tax cuts for all aspects of their business (Marketing, sales, etc). (with as little as possible intervention with union workers of course). If these businesses fail? good, they should but for every 100 businesses that fail, 1 or 2 might actually have something worth taking to the next level, and then the next, and so on...

Doomed Jay_C I have read enough of your writing here to realize you are a conservative pundit who is mostly against most of what AGW stands for. However GREEN is a DREAM.....PERIOD. I was just making that case. If you actually look at the math behind backyard windmills. You can put one up for about 11,000 dollars...wow..super...Im green...Ive saved the planet. Wrong. The windmill generates about 125 watts of electricity. Now if you have the space and can put up a rather sizeable windmill with 5 meter blade proportion then you get a cube of the square surface of the wingspan. One of the more sizeable windmills are on the order of about 22,000 dollars and they will generate about 800 watts of electricity per hour. Green just doesnt have it. The technology is NOT there...the ability is NOT there and yet this nation is running pell mell into destroying COAL while having NO back up plan to replace it. Windmills and solar and geothermal technology is not there yet and is many years in the future if at all. Green is a scam designed to give the baseless argument of destroying coal legitimate footing.

Tully Jay C, you do understand that tax cuts and subsidies are interchangeable as to effect? Are much the same thing in the end? Yes? "Subsidies" includes existing tax cuts AND preferred tax treatments. Both solar and wind ALREADY get accelerated depreciation write-offs, an instant 50% "bonus depreciation" deduction, annual "renewable energy" tax credits and production incentives, and so on. There are already massive subsidies and tax incentives and grants for alt-energy all through the entire producer/consumer chain, and regardless of what you call them they amount to the same thing. Preferred tax treatments and bonus monies. What you desire is already there, in spades. And it still hasn't made wind cheaper than coal or nuclear. And won't.

Jay_C "this nation is running pell mell into destroying COAL while having NO back up plan to replace it." I'm with you there, and I dont like it, more nuclear would be nice... "What you desire is already there, in spades. And it still hasn’t made wind cheaper than coal or nuclear. And won’t." What I've desired all along includes Nuclear...with a dabble of the Alts, while at the same time only decreasing fossil fuel consumption at the same rate we ramp up the Nuclear and Alts, on a sliding, realistic scale. It.

Jay_C I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree for once

Tully Eh, I can live with that (referring to both comments...). (Go, nuclear!) I have the figures here somewhere on relative capitalized $/kWh costs w/out subsidy if you're interested. Coal and nuclear are very close. Everything else (including T. Boone's beloved natural gas) costs considerably more. I'm sure T. Boone's near-monopoly of natural gas transmission pipelines and generation in the southern US has nothing to do with that deep abiding love. :-) Wind could conceivably get stand-alone competitive in some areas with a 40% minimum capital-cost reduction (roughly the current capital-subsidy baseline) but is sharply bounded as to potential deployment and capacity, even if we near-blanket the continent with windmills, and doesn't solve the intermittency problem. Solar is an order of magnitude away from being competitive other than in specific limited applications. Lowering the cost of either requires a major breakthrough in technology. For wind I just don't see that. There is only so much you can do to boost the efficiency of generator turbines and blades, or lower their production cost. Solar efficiency advances are more likely, but high-tech efficiency-cost breakthroughs are unpredictable and may never happen. Oil substitutes are a different subject. Not just for vehicle fuel, but for all the other things we use it for. Some of the best alt-energy projects I've seen have been dedicated to using solar/wind energy to produce "portable" fuel, which could reduce imports through substitution. For stationary power I've also seen some very innovative usages of day/night temperature differentials for storing heat/cold, though that's efficiency improvements, not actual generation. But it frees up more power for other uses. Large-scale geothermal, BTW, is losing a lot of steam (snicker) as major projects fall through. That bit about causing earth tremors in populated areas is a bit off-putting, I hear.

Doomed

In a statement released last week, the Europol police agency said Europe’s cap-and-trade system has been the victim of organized crime during the past 18 months, resulting in losses of roughly $7.4 billion. The agency, headquartered in the Netherlands, estimated that in some countries up to 90 percent of the entire market volume was caused by fraudulent activities.

If skeptics are DENIERS. Then Believers are LIARS.

Todd "http://factcheck.org/2009/12/climategate/" Hacked e-mails show climate scientists in a bad light but don't change scientific consensus on global warming. Turns out people like Jay_C and MvdG, who claimed that Climategate was a "smoking gun", failed to be skeptical. Jay_C, you are ready to dismiss scientific reality out of ideological obsession. You have not shown enough skepticism to call yourself a "skeptic". I find you demand more good faith than you are ready to show, and someone who is willing to inject politics into an issue that is about science and economics. Also, Doomed, there is no such thing as clean coal. Or, rather, carbon capturing isn't cost effective yet. You need to drop that idea for the time being. Oh, and MvdG - it is insane to call Jon Stewart a leftist. Olbermann is a leftist, stewart is not.