Slow Fade Of Cap And Trade

From Bloomberg: 

Climate Change Measure Should Be Set Aside, U.S. Senators Say

Aug. 14 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. Senate should abandon efforts to pass legislation curbing greenhouse-gas emissions this year and concentrate on a narrower bill to require use of renewable energy, four Democratic lawmakers say.

“The problem of doing both of them together is that it becomes too big of a lift,” Senator Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas said in an interview last week. “I see the cap-and-trade being a real problem.”

That is an excellent idea that won't happen:

“Doing these energy provisions by themselves might make it more difficult to move the cap-and-trade legislation,” said Molinaro (Dow Chemical's Washington sage), who is based in Washington. “In this town if you split two measures, usually the second thing never gets done.”

Comments

[gmax]

I want to get behind this Molinaro dude's idea. Here here. Capital idea.

[Thomas Collins]

Let's have a Grand Compromise. Require folks to recycle at the Post Office when they go to mail letters and get their preventive medical care.

[Ignatz]

TC,

The Post Office could even have a recycle chute for Grannies, so we could each do our part to further control health care costs while simultaneously shrinking our family's carbon footprint.

[vinman]

thus begins the shift to save the 2010 elections.

[Original MikeS]

Some people misunderstand that 4% of the atmosphere is CO2. That is not correct. When they hear that there are about 380 parts CO2 to a million parts of atmosphere, their eyes roll back in their heads in confoundment.

The CO2 issue is easier to understand if you imagine 10,000 balls representing the atmosphere. Among those 10,000 balls, about 4 of them are CO2. Of those four balls, estimate are that 5% to 16% were caused by human activity. Taking the higher estimate, that would mean that just over 1/2 of a ball, out of 10,000 balls, is human caused.
There are plans to shave a few percent off of that 1/2 ball.

[Barry Dauphin]

Rather than close more post offices, re-open them as healthcare clinics that can serve Senators and representatives as an experiment. They can report back to us in 20-30 years on how that's going.

[MarkJ]

"The Post Office could even have a recycle chute for Grannies, so we could each do our part to further control health care costs while simultaneously shrinking our family's carbon footprint."

I'd like to leave my size 10 carbon footprints on Henry Waxman's and Barney Frank's pasty white arses.

[PeterUK]

"There are plans to shave a few percent off of that 1/2 ball."

Just a quick edit.

"There are plans to shave a few percent off of that balls."

[matt]

they are twisting themselves into pretzels now.This is the unprincipled, grasping, dishonest Democratic Party I remember! And the corporate weasels figure out one more way to exploit the situation. Business as usual in DC.

[ben]

Defeating cap and trade will embolden opposition to Obamacare, it's all about momemtum.

[Old Lurker]

"The Post Office could even have a recycle chute for Grannies"

Hmmm. Ignatz, let's mail Grannie's SS checks to PO Boxes and when Grannie steps up to open her box, a random number of them will fall through a trapdoor into the recycle grinder.

That's the ticket!

[Original MikeS]

Just because the threat of this insane cap and trade idea is fading, doesn't mean we should continue with the rest of Obama's fantasy energy plan.

When the world comes out of this recession we will have an energy crisis. There is a shortage of energy production. There is an energy component is the price of nearly everything we buy. Prices will trend upward. There is no spare electricity to put into electric vehicles. Solar and wind may provide 10% of our energy needs by 2030.

The coming shortages are part of the plan! Obama regards shortages as a 'stimulus' for conservation.

Energy production can't be turned on and off like a light bulb. It requires some lead time to get facilities and sources online.

[Pofarmer]

Sounds more like putting the pot on simmer instead of full boil.

[Bruce]

The residence time (RT) of Co2 is also in dispute.

"... RT for bulk atmospheric CO2, the molecule 12CO2, is ~5 years, in good agreement with other cited sources (Segalstad, 1998), while the RT for the trace molecule 14CO2 is ~16 years.

Both of these residence times are much shorter than what is claimed by the IPCC.

The rising concentration of atmospheric CO2 in the last century is not consistent with supply from anthropogenic sources. Such anthropogenic sources account for less than 5% of the present atmosphere, compared to the major input/output from natural sources (~95%). Hence, anthropogenic CO2 is too small to be a significant or relevant factor in the global warming process, particularly when comparing with the far more potent greenhouse gas water vapor. The rising atmospheric CO2 is the outcome of rising temperature rather than vice versa. Correspondingly, Dr. Essenhigh concludes that the politically driven target of capture and sequestration of carbon from combustion sources would be a major and pointless waste of physical and financial resources."

http://www.co2science.org/articles/V12/N31/EDIT.php

[Ignatz]

--when Grannie steps up to open her box, a random number of them will fall through a trapdoor into the recycle grinder--

OL,

That's the old partisan paradigm.

In the brave new paradigm Barry will dulcetly help us to recognize our duty to smilingly drop granny down the chute, even if she may not have grasped her duty to drop through compliantly quite as tightly as we have grasped her neck; all for the greater good of course.

[bruce]

falty cause and effect one co2,co2 does not cause the temp rise,increased temp causes more co2.there is nothing man can do or not do that will change the plants temp.

[RichatUF]

OMS-

When the world comes out of this recession we will have an energy crisis. There is a shortage of energy production.

Which would be mean most likely any recovery will be short lived and shallow as we tail off into another recession.

[PeterUK]

Cap and Trade. The first country which can fake it whilst going full steam ahead with industrial production will win. This is like going into a fight with one hand tied behind your back,the contestant that uses both hands will win.

[Fresh Air]

Bruce--

CO2 follows warming, not the other way around. Also, it's been known that CO2 didn't echo anthro combustion for a long time. There was a spike before the auto came into vogue.

OL--

How about we recycle the worthless ectoplasma standing behind the counters at the Post Office instead? Could be made into turtle food, for instance.

[Having been Inhofe's point man once.]

I'm impressed, Tom; you got this story up faster than Marc Morano did. And he's got connections to the Senate.

[Original MikeS]

When the world comes out of this recession we will have an energy crisis. Which would be mean most likely any recovery will be short lived and shallow as we tail off into another recession.

Yup. Kind of a "Catch-22" situation. If we have a recovery we will have a shortage of energy. A shortage of energy will prevent our recovery.

Thing of it is. Everyone know this. We are making a huge gamble that there will be just enough of a recovery to eek along for a few years. Obama must be hoping that after a few years of sacrifice our attitudes will be adjusted before 2012?

[RichatUF]

OMS-

We are making a huge gamble that there will be just enough of a recovery to eek along for a few years.

It isn't even a gamble. The experience in Spain shows that subsidized "green collar jobs" and "green energy" leads to unemployment and deindustrialization-just as every command and control economic experiment has shown. The Europe wide experience with carbon credit trading shows that the credits themselves are worthless because of declining industrial production and capracious allocations of credits by government. And while Brazil, and Greenland, and now Iraq are exploring and drilling for oil using 21st Century technology and methods to build a real energy policy, we are going back to the 17th Century with the cutting edge of the wind and sun, while we let sit idle some 80-120 billion barrels of oil in our offshore terrorital waters alone.

[Stephanie]

while we let sit idle some 80-120 billion barrels of oil in our offshore terrorital waters alone.

I believe China is planning on side drilling to relieve us of this troublesome burden.

[RichatUF]

terrorital -> territorial

[And the ones Obama gives you, don't cure anything at all.]

Heh, terrorital....that's the red pill.

[Stephanie]

The blue pill is a "Fukitol."

LUN

[When I saw that movie in 1982, I knew the boy had a future.]

Omigod, Conan the Munificent.

[Stephanie]

??? Lost me on that one.

[Pornographic pix of The Terminus.]

Oops, that's just a little too cryptic. It's #8 in the sidebar at Stephanie's link, 'We all grow old'.

[Stephanie]

Ewww... to both pics actually.

[AL]

Lets put things into perspective, folks.

Cap-and-trade is about putting 5% tax on energy consumption in US to be consumed by government/envirofreaks parasites.

Obamacare is about to control US health care industry, which is bigger than entire world oil&gas industry combined.

No mistake. It is WORLD oil&gas industry combined.

Think about it.