The Global Warming Lie Detector
The House's passage of the Waxman-Markey bill raises the possibility that the United States will finally do something on global warming. This prospect has the industry hacks screaming at top volume about the horrible fate that awaits the economy. Everyone should know not to take them seriously, as I will explain in a moment.
First, we should acknowledge the obvious: The bill is awful. It gives away permits to greenhouse gas emitters that should instead be auctioned. As a result, money that could be rebated to taxpayers or used to fund the development of clean technologies instead goes to the industries that are the source of the problem.
Second, the use of tradable permits rather than a tax is a rather questionable policy. Permits will almost certainly require more government enforcement bureaucracy than a system of taxes and subsidies. And, incidentally, permits will allow Goldman Sachs and our other Wall Street friends to make tens of billions of dollars on trading fees in the coming decades, a high priority for all Americans.
But a bad bill is almost certainly better than no bill. If Waxman-Markey doesn't get through, it is very difficult to see another bill getting through this Congress. And there is no reason to believe that the Congress that gets elected in 2010 will be any less indebted to the corporate lobbyists.
The Waxman-Markey bill should be viewed as a foot in the door. It is a modest first step toward reducing greenhouse gas emissions that both demonstrates a commitment and provides an opportunity to show the public that emissions can be lowered without imposing an enormous economic burden on the country.
Of course, the only reason that so many people believe that reducing greenhouse gas emissions will impose an enormous burden on the economy is that the oil and coal industry, and their friends in the media, have been pushing this tripe for more than a decade. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that the cost of the Waxman-Markey bill at $22 billion a year in 2020. That will be equal to less than 0.1 percent of projected GDP in that year, or about $70 out of the pocket of each person in the country.
The coal and oil companies are greatly anguished over this prospective burden on American families, but let's compare this burden to the burden posed by Iraq war levels of defense spending. Two years ago, the Center for Economic and Policy Research commissioned Global Insight to use its model to project the economic impact of Iraq war levels of military spending. They projected the effect on the economy of a sustained increase in defense spending equal to 1.0 percent of GDP, an amount slightly less than the increase sustained in the years following the start of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.
Global Insight was selected because it is one of the oldest econometric forecasting firms in the country. Its model has been widely used for a wide variety of analyses and it certainly is not associated with progressive or anti-defense politics. Its model is also very much in the mainstream of the economics profession. It will not produce results that are qualitatively different than any other mainstream model.
The model projected that after 10 years of higher spending, GDP would be down by about $17 billion from baseline levels. After 20 years (2021 if defense spending stays high), GDP would be down by more than $60 billion from baseline levels, approximately three times CBO's projection of the cost of the Waxman-Markey bill.
Of course, these projections don't show the full loss to households, since they don't include the money that must be diverted from taxes or obtained by borrowing to support the higher level of defense spending. These figures are just the lost output.
Global Insight projected that after 20 years of higher defense spending, annual car sales would be down by more than 700,000. Housing starts would be almost 40,000 lower. Exports would be 1.8 percent lower and imports would be 2.7 percent higher, leading to a trade deficit that would be almost $200 billion larger. The model also projected that there would be nearly 700,000 fewer jobs as a result of the higher level of defense spending.
In short, the economic harm projected from high levels of military spending is far larger than the damage projected from the Waxman-Markey bill. Given this situation, we would have expected that all the oil and coal industry folks, who are now so concerned about the average family's well-being, would have been screaming about the economic pain that would result from sustaining the Iraq war levels of military spending.
Did anyone ever hear them raise this issue? Does anyone recall members of Congress giving speeches about how the job loss from the Iraq war levels of spending would be devastating? Does anyone recall any newspaper columns or editorials making this point? How about a news story that analyzed the economic impact of higher levels of military spending?
For some reason, job loss and economic pain associated with the military are just not worth mentioning. These items only become newsworthy when the issue is saving the environment. And the elites wonder why the public has so little confidence in the country's institutions.
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A bad bill is better than no bill at all? That's like saying bad government is better than no government at all.
This bill creates revenue, Obama needs revenue to support his social agenda. That's why this bill is being progressed thru Congress. It does nothing but, as you state, increase federal bureaucracy, increase costs to us all, and creates revenues for the fed'l government. It is indeed a bad bill and hopefully it will be squashed in the Senate.
It's great that we're finally doing something, but the cap and trade approach leaves much to be desired. It's extremely complicated, and the carbon market it will create will cause wild fluctuations in the price of energy.
A simpler, more effective approach is a tax on carbon, with revenue returned to consumers through income or payroll taxes. The Citizens Climate Lobby makes an excellent case for this in an oped that appeared in the San Diego Union:
http://www3.signonsandiego.com/stories/2009/jun/28/lz1e28saunder214918-better-way-slow-global-warming/?&zIndex=123419
None of you skeptics has responded to one salient point in this article . Did any of you read it, or did you just read the title and think to yourselves, 'yuk yuk, now I can use all of my talking points. Just let me turn on my tape recorder...now I'm ready.'
Yes we did, we agree the bill is awful. Secondly what a ridiculous argument to make in support of a BAD bill. To summarize, we spend more on our military therefore it's okay if we spend less and take less out of the GDP for a bad bill. What kind of a conclusion is that? Let's pass a bad and ineffective bill, "to get our foot in the door" because it will cost us less than what the military is costing us to protect our country.
Why pass anything that is "awful"? To try to somehow make it sound better because it is less than the military costs still doesn't make it a good bill.
Carbon Credits: A Scam
http://market-ticker.org/archives/1171-Carbon-Credits-A-Scam.html
"We're 1/15th of the population in question and nearly all of the rest of the people involved are going to dramatically increase their per-capita CO2 output whether we like it or not.
Herein lies the problem: While we emit more CO2 per-capita than anyone else today, we won't be emitting the most CO2 for very long on an aggregate basis.
To actually stop the increase in CO2 emissions we would have to find some way to compel the Asians and Africans to not increase their CO2 emissions.
But all possible means for them to improve their standard of living inherently involve significant and even dramatic increases in CO2 emissions per-capita.
The math is simple: Within a few years China will emit more CO2 than we will. A few years after that both Africa and India will surpass the United States. None of these regions will agree to stop emitting CO2 because to do so is to agree to keep their people perpetually poor and agrarian while we enjoy the fruits of a westernized, industrialized economy."
This argument holds no water, do you really think that any country will be able to hold out against the kind of pressure they will face once the US joins the rest of the world in taking climate action? Not likely.
Their argument that the US should go first is far more valid, since the largest single emitter of greenhouse gases now accumulated from human sources has come been the US, you (and my country as well) entered the industrialized and petroleum age a century and a half ago. The total amount in the atmosphere today from China and India is a mere fraction by comparison.
Do you really think China and India (to name a few biggies) are going to be pushed around by the USA ... especially since we owe THEM money?
Funny! China, Russia, North Korea, Cuba, and many others, have held out for decades against international pressure in the human rights arena. What on earth gives you any idea that this may be different? If we won't go to war over human rights, support for terrorism, and other reasons, why would we go to war over this? And if we won't go to war, what pressure do we have that hasn't already been tried?!?!
Semper fi
I was told there wouldn't be any math involved.......
One of the problems with this bill is that it makes it more expensive to refine gasoline in the US, and makes it more attractive to simply import refined gasoline from other countries to avoid the carbon taxes. So, forgetting about all the lost jobs at these refineries, this will add to the CO2 levels being emitted since gasoline will now have to be shipped (I believe ships use fossil fuels to power themselves) to the US. This is another "unintended consequence" of the government interfering with the free market.
Remember when those really smart people in Congress and in the Clinton Administration and in ACORN (led by a community organizer named Barack Obama) pushed banks to lend to people who could not afford to re-pay them? This led to the housing bubble (excess demand pushed prices to artificial highs) which led to more mortgages being packaged and sold to FNMA, who then re-sold them to the market with so-called government backing, which led to credit default swaps, which led us to the place we are now.
And yet, here we are again, about to create a brand new market of "air", which will mostly only benefit Goldman Sachs (by far the biggest representative in the current administration) and GE (by far the biggest contributor to Obama). Pay-to-play was the way it was done in Chicago (see Blago), and now we are nationalizing this strategy?
Mr Reasonable is very right in his responses.
The cap and trade Emmissions schemes are a scam, also perpetrated here in New Zealand.....and Australia.
When I first heard about them I laughed.... obviously a trick to build mutual debt. And control via a powerful bureaucracy which will have huge search powers since you could have a pet cow that is threatening world security by belching too much !
Yes folks, here in New Zealand - Lord of the Rings country - the methane emmitted by our dairy cows is apparently a carbon disaster for the planet !!
The real aim is to tie up economies in red tape and despair, enslaved to central world credit/currency scheme. First, a universal World Emmissions Unit, but soon defaulting to a normal currency - eg the Euro....or a new world currency. It's all based around Europe, perhaps run off the Euro self-programming computer in Brussels. - nicknamed 'The Beast'.
All in the bid for world control, via currency and trade, of the transnational Merchant banks and the Corporations, Pols and academics that travel with them.
So no surprise Goldmans and GE will be creaming the ridiculous Carbon Credits market. No surprise America and its Dollar are being sent down, to allow a new world Default currency.
The world's been cooling, by test, since 1998-2000. The issue has been Sunspots - also causing the wild weather ( so say NASA scientists ).
For more on the global credit plan/scam see HuffPost blogger Ellen Brown.
~ OT ~
ben and billy jean keep playing in my head..
I am getting a global warming lessons from my fortune 500 company con call. Corporate Culture is changing....
the polar bear even came up...
does a polar bear poop in the woods?
So, it is suggested that taxing the co2 creators will be ...what? fair? effective? do-able? What? I have to admit that I don't think co2 is the culprit, if a culprit there is at all, but I will concede that maybe the co2 is adding to warming, but why taxes on the producers of the energy we need? Do you really think that this somehow hits the bottom line of investors and the rich? With the current tax systems most widely in use, the costs of production are passed onto the consumers one way or another, and the threat of an economic slowdown is not just about some rich guy buying fewer yachts or private jets but the guy who has just left the coutryside, goes to a factory job to make the money needed for survival. When they loose their jobs they do what? Maybe they go back to the country side, start cutting down trees and eating all the wildlife and selling what they can to just maintain any standard of living.
I think capitalism must work to bring about a safe non-polluting energy source, and the incentives should be in research and prizes for successful commercial endeavors. It's in everyone's favor whether co2 is an issue or not.
Bingo! To think that something, all by it's own, that makes up .015% of the atmosphere has that much influence on the atmosphere really seems like a stretch. You pick that one because you regulate it and tax it. Does everyone here really think that CO2 alone can do this damage? Now imagine that you double the quantity to .03%, still minuscule yet somehow the IPCC takes the sun out of the equation. The Sun that gives us all of our heat is discounted. Now that just doesn't make sense to me and shouldn't to most.
Also, until the areas like Asia etc. that have 3/4ths of the population decide to do the same, then the only thing we are doing is hurting our own economy and people.
IPCC most certainly take sun into account.
.015 is small. So is .5. Yet that is the amount of ghg that they say are responsible for much of our climate/.//
Why not read up on the subject, read what real scientists have to say?
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/05/start-here/
I was in denial myself until about 10 years ago when I made a concerted effort to learn about the topic.
This is all just a huge distraction.
The Bill is a Bankers Carbon Derivatives trading bill, complete with Credit Default Swaps that brought down AIG and the banks!
Read it!
80% of the text is banker jargon.
The conservatives, the DLC, the GOP and Obama
are bought and paid for by the Banker.
Welcome to the plutocracy.
An inconvenient fact:
Ever heard of Dr. Will Happer? In 1991, Happer was appointed director of energy research for the US Department of Energy. In 1993, he testified before Congress that the scientific data didn't support widespread fears about the dangers of global warming, remarks that caused then-Vice President Al Gore to fire him. "I was told that science was not going to intrude on public policy."
If Al Gore was so concerned about global warming, he would not have a house that uses 20 times the electricity of a normal house. He would not fly around the world in a private jet, but would use commercial air travel or mass transit or stop traveling so much. He would travel in small economical cars as opposed to the SUV's and limousines he currently uses. And he would agree to debate the subject with someone, anyone. When he last appeared in front of Congress, he requested that no one who disagreed with him be allowed to speak. He got his wish. If he thought we were in such a crisis, he would do his part. But yet, he still has a carbon footprint perhaps 100 times greater than the average American. If Al Gore doesn't even believe what he is saying, why should I?
i know!
those hand-wringers who are truly scared of agw should go to any airport and stand in the way of any jet taking off just like that brave soul did to tanks in tiananmen square!
http://gizmodo.com/5055160/24-hour-air-traffic-around-the-world-blows-minds-eyeballs?autoplay=true
1991? might as well be 1970. The scientific community was no where near a consensus on global warming like they are today.
.Al's home is an example that we all don't have to live in a one room shack and bike everywhere in our society. We can still pursue the American dream and get rich and live in a mansion, you just still have responsibilities. If you actually read about Al's house, he lives and advocates a "carbon neutral lifestyle" by buying energy from renewable sources and implements many energy saving techniques.
You guys need to find another straw man to pick on other that poor old Gore. I mean he already invented the internet. Pick on the IPCC, a panel of the world's leading climate scientists.
You asked and I shall deliver. The IPCC is a biased, mainly political organization that has a vested interest in its findings. Many of the actual scientists on the IPCC do not agree with their reports, and some have even resigned or asked that their names be removed over them. The link below will lead you to 50 articles that seriously question the credibility and integrity of the IPCC's activities and claims:
http://mclean.ch/climate/IPCC.htm
Oh please. Gore puts himself out there with a movie and speakign appearances, so he's fair game to get blasted for his epic hypocrisy. His behavior with regard to energy and fuel use is akin to Sarah Palin having an abortion it's so hypocritical.
As for the IPCC, it's a panel of the world's leading bureaucrats. Maybe you should see the report written by the non-governmental arm of the IPCC (the NIPCC) basically calling AGW a hoax.
http://www.heartland.org/policybot/results/22835/Nature_Not_Human_Activity_Rules_the_Climate_pdf.html
For any deniers posting here (asuming you aren't paid to post), please provide a link to ANY studies done in the last decade that even SUGGEST there is no gloabl warming.
I'll wait.
Crickets!
That's a loaded question. As a trend, we have been warming since the "Little ice age" with the last decade or so trending downward. So is the globe warming, probably but slightly. Now the question I think you should be asking is "is this anthropogenic?". To think that a gas that makes up .015% of the atmosphere would create a climatic catastrophe is a reach. There a plenty of sites and scientists that don't buy into the whole notion that the science is in on this and the debate is over. Temperatures have dropped recently and the models have completely missed this, as well as ice recovering.
The bigger question is, "is it worth trillions of dollars taken out of our economy, and millions of lost jobs to make a bill that will make very little difference if at all?"
nobody denies global warming silly..
the earth was once 9F warmer and will be again with or without you!
''Scientists who probed two kilometers (1.2 miles) through a Greenland glacier to recover the oldest plant DNA on record said the planet was far warmer hundreds of thousands of years ago than is generally believed. DNA of trees, plants and insects including butterflies and spiders from beneath the southern Greenland glacier was estimated to date to 450,000 to 900,000 years ago, according to the remnants retrieved from this long-vanished boreal forest. That view contrasts sharply with the prevailing one that a lush forest of this kind could only have existed in Greenland as recently as 2.4 million years ago. The existence of those DNA samples suggests the temperature probably reached 10 degrees C (50 degrees Fahrenheit) in the summer and -17 °C (1 °F) in the winter. They also indicated that during the last interglacial period, 116,000–130,000 years ago, when temperatures were on average 5 °C (9 °F) higher than now, the glaciers on Greenland did not completely melt away.[34]'' from ''greenland'' @ wiki
You're so right. I can't wait til this global warming thing speeds up. It's about 5 to 10 degrees colder than I would like where I live so that would be great!
All those silly scientists believing in anthropogenic global warming, what loons! We all know scientists can't be trusted for anything because they're only in it for the money.
I would only trust them, or any one else, if they did their work for free. Only then could we completely trust their motives. The exception is, of course, the Oil companies who only have our best interests at heart and who are shining examples American (and British) capitalist enterprise that we all aspire to.
Do you mean ANY warming or man-made warming? And do you mean currently ongoing or ever at all?
If you mean that there was warming of unknown cause from the late 70's until the late 90's, I'm fine with that. Since the late 90's, that same temp curve has been creeping down. No study to cite, just look at temp data.
http://www.junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/UAHMSUglobe.html
That link shows temp anomaly as tracked by UAH along with CO2 levels. It clearly shows a warmign trend in the 1990's, but also a dip in recent years.
PS: I'm not paid to post, do not work for any oil or utility company.
My problem with this Global Warming stuff goes beyond the tit-for-tat 'this study says this' and 'this one says that'. I'm sure you have a comment prepared for any study anyone sites for you. Good for you. You must have a lot of time on your hands. Take some of that time to compare how this issue is debated and how 'normal' scientific issues are debated. Do you really think the Global Warming debate is based on scientific evidence? It's politics, money, power, control etc. There are thousands of scientist that openly question Global Warming (especially man-caused Global Warming) and thousands more that quietly question it (they don't have tenure). Should they be heard? No, not by folks like you. You put your fingers in your ears and go 'la la la la'.
When you want to honestly debate this topic let us know. We'll wait.
Crickets!
second!
BINGO!
Actually, the scientists have had their debate and the consensus has fallen on the side of AGW.
The other debate you speak of is being held between the energy companies, the politicians, and everyday people who fear that their wallet is going to be affected. Their is not a whiff of genuine scientific debate going on here. They cling to those scientists who are in the minority for validation.
indy, here's a variety of opinions that you might find interesting.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scientists_opposing_the_mainstream_scientific_assessment_of_global_warming
http://www.planet-warming.com/4.%20The%20Skeptical%20Viewpoints.htm
http://folk.uio.no/tomvs/esef/ESEF3VO2.htm
http://paulmacrae.com/links/?p=97
I have dozens and dozens. I would also commend you to the book "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming" by Horner, which includes point by point refutations of the IPCC Reports and An Inconvenient Truth.
Wikis list is pretty short. The list of scientific ORGANIZATIONS who agree with AGW is almost as big as that.
read the bill! It's 80% banker talk. This is not a climate bill, it does nothing for Cheap 3cents per KWH rooftop solar. It's a investment bankers paradise of Carbon credit derivatives.
"a bad bill is almost certainly better than no bill"
Since when? Bad bills become bad laws. Is a bad law better than no law? Were Jim Crow laws (certainly bad) better than not having them? Was the nation better off with Jim Crow laws than without?
Bad laws (arising from bad bills) have consequences. This bill will impact our economy and take money from taxpayers. It's a money grab plain and simple. The WH budget assumes $645B in revenue from cap and trade for next 10 years. That's ~$2k per person over those 10 years, but Obama's own guy says he expects it to ramp up much more - to maybe $300B in revenue annually by 2020. That's $1000 per man, woman, and child in this country per year in added taxes.
All that for no impact on the climate.
Mr. Baker you admit this a terrible bill. It deserves to fail. How is setting up a new derivative instrument at this time even considered a viable idea?
Why not a clean bill that regulates pollution and fines polluters. Why this? I took my foot out of the door a long time ago when I became aware of just what vermin we were allowing to scurry through the crack.
Start over Washington! I can wait until you get it right.
Don't you people realize that they're not going to start over? That Washington has become Chicago on the Potomac? Lobbyists run the government, along with the bankers and now the high-dollar environmental power brokers like Al Gore. Why did 8 Republicans pass W-M? Because they were paying back huge enviro-donors.
It's time to move the national capitol to Topeka, Kansas, away from New York and Washington. The House of Representatives should be chosen by lottery, like jury duty, with the chosen individual serving for two years as a public duty. Senators should again be appointed by the state legislatures as the Constitution envisioned. Paid lobbying should be criminalized.
Waxman-Markey bill is for money and control only. Try something our US Congress people didn't do before they passed the climate control bill, read it, it is: H.R.2454 It has every ear mark of George Orwell's 1984. If this passes the US Senate, we as a free people as we know it will cease to exist. Don't take the word of others, eucate yourself. Do your chldren and grandchildren a favor, read it and when you get to Smart Grid portion, that's when it really hits home.
I had no idea that Al Gore was single-handedly responsible for perpetuating Global Warming. It's simply amazing how a portion of our population is so willing to be spoon-fed absolute nonsense. I continue to fear for this country, as it appears vestiges of neoconism continue to block progress and reason. I fail to see any critical thinking skills in comments coming from the rightwingers. Willful ignorance nearly brought this country to its knees, but apparently, there are people who will say and do anything to stay the course that was so disasterously laid out for us by GWB and his corrupt minions.
Nobody is saying Al Gore is single-handedly responsible. But he has made millions off global warming, and stand to make hundreds of millions with this bill. When examining any issue, it is wise to follow the money, and some of those who stand to gain the most include Gore, GE, Goldman Sachs, among others.
The people being spoon-fed nonsense are those who simply believe what the media tells them. Those who actually research the issue, and study the facts, are increasingly coming to the conclusion that GW is not the crisis we are being told it is. We learn that the earth has cooled over the past 10 years, and that 2008 was one of the coldest years in quite a while (where I live, it was the coldest year in my lifetime, and I am Obama's age). Those who actually research the issue know that pro-GW research outpaces contrary research by a factor of 100 (again, follow the money). They know that the IPCC reports were written by politicians, not scientists, and that many scientists on the IPCC disagreed with the findings, some even resigned and asked that their names be removed from the report. Those that actually research the subject know that the number of climatologists and scientists who are skeptical of AGW outnumber the scientists who believe it.
Finally, the fact that you blame Bush for global warming tells a lot about your critical thinking. Stop the hatred, and do some research.
We learn that the earth has cooled over the past 10 years, and that 2008 was one of the coldest years in quite a while"
Riiiiiiiight!
Maybe you could point me to what we should research with a link to the study your above statement comes from. For that matter give us a link to ANY study that even suggest there is no gloabl warming.
Crickets...
Bam!
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