The junk science based carbon cap and tax bill is one of those boondoggles that may bring republicans back into power sooner rather than latter. First item of business will be to repeal carbon cap and tax.

Hansen just got arrested at a celebrity protest over coal mining, incidentally. Mr. Voice Of Independent Science and Assistant Grand Poohbah of Global Warming Scaremongering just lost whatever credibility he had left.

Hansen pretty much lost all credibility when he accepted that $250,000 bribe/payoff from the Heinz foundation - the "Heinz Environment Award" - a few years back.

Update: The House has put a hold on the vote on the Caps and Trade bill. The Capitol switchboards were jammed with people calling in and saying no

Burn up that fucking switchboard!

Hansen is a hack!

Hansen should have been fired when he was caught falsifying data. Honest mistake my a@*.

Frankly, I know that some are inflating the numbers of what it's going to cost the individual if this legislation is passed. But probably not by much. Any time the government tells you what something is going to cost, you need to double, or even triple, the numbers before consideration.

"Hansen just got arrested at a celebrity protest over coal mining, incidentally."

Doesn't surprise me at all. Hansen's always seemed to be a bit on the edge of something. And Daryl Hannah too. I was shocked at her photo. At one time she was the hottest babe in Hollywood. Now she's gotten all .... slovenly. It seems to happen to all those who are "perpetually offended". The ugly inside comes out.

Oyster
Do you think that Letterman would call that her slutty look?

The problem for the global warmers is that their phallic symbol of global temperature prematurely climaxed in 1998, stopped going up like some stud on viagra and started deflating.

Or as the actress said to the global warmer:

"A pity ... it looked so promising".

Looks like the bill passed the House -- by 7 votes. Cap and trade will be dead on arrival in the Senate.

As we have discovered recently here in Australia, government email can be faked and when this happens there can be confusion, chaos and the rolling of heads.

Our only hope is for a transparent and bullsh*t free examination of the facts, with appropriate action taken on the strength of those findings. Anything else is political football.

I know I've said this before, about the certitude some have on global warming, but, here goes again...

Let's try for some perspective, time-wise.

For those comfortable with the metric (S.I.) system, imagine a line about 4.6 kilometers long (a bit under 3 miles). That would represent the 4.6 billion year age of the Earth at 1,000,000 years/meter; 1 mm (about the thickness of a paper clip) would represent a THOUSAND years.

That line would span the downtown area of quite a few large cities, with some to spare.

Here in Houston, the downtown streets are 16 to the mile, making their spacing about 100 meters. Thus, that line would be about 46 blocks.

The reign of the dinosaurs ended around 65 million years ago (65 meters, about 2/3 of a city block down that line from today).

The first of our ancestors verging on intelligence may have emerged from 2 to 4 million years ago (2 to 4 meters, say 6.5 to 13 feet; your living room could be around 4 meters in one of its' dimensions).

What we call "modern" man may go back 40,000 years or so (40 mm, TWO finger-widths on that line).

Written history goes back 6000 years (six millimeters, 1/4 inch on that line).

Fahrenheit's thermometer is around 300 years old ( 0.3 mm, you're approaching the thickness of a business card now, or the diameter of a grain of salt).

The portion of that time-line during which precise temperature measurements were recorded would be literally microscopic.

And from that portion, we dare to make really long range climate predictions, and mandate actions based on them?

I live about three miles west of some of Houston's major downtown buildings, so I can easily visualize that line.

Looking at that time-line of Earth's history (the universe's may be four times that), and the flyspeck of our own existence upon it, the notion of asserting that ANY science has been "settled" strikes me as arrogance beyond comprehension (as in "only a politician could possibly believe that").

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Obama claimed that the average American would not bear the brunt of this historic tax-increase: he stated that instead ""It is paid for by the polluters who currently emit dangerous carbon emissions."

Just compare this outrageous falsehood to Ronald Reagans' famous quote:

"The most dangerous myth is the demagoguery that business can be made to pay a larger share, thus relieving the individual. Politicians preaching this are either deliberately dishonest, or economically illiterate, and either one should scare us.

Business doesn't pay taxes, and who better than business to make this message known? Only people pay taxes, and people pay as consumers every tax that is assessed against a business."

And after the way the rammed this through the House with little debate, without legislators even reading it... and while quarantining the GOP from any meaningful input whatsoever, any foolhardy individuals who still believe Obama's threadbare "bipartisanship" spiel ought to have their head examined.

http://reaganiterepublicanresistance.blogspot.com/

An economist "hobbyist" at the EPA who took up Global Warming study as a side project/hobby isn't exactly what I'd call "scientific". Just me though, I also don't believe that Intelligent Design is "science" either. But hey, science is just whatever theory supports your own opinions anyway, right?

" and while quarantining the GOP from any meaningful input whatsoever"

You mean input like "I'll vote against it no matter what it says"? Let's be serious here - like it or hate it, it's a joke to think that the Republican party would offer anything ANYTHING "meaningful" at this point. They've used their minority opinion since January 2009 to do nothing other than slam ideas, rarely offering any of their own.

I wish we'd have more debate about this too. I wish the REpublicans would push back with facts and ideas and philosophy and alternatives. But let's be serious: the political game at play is the Democrats working to send out their own ideas after being out in the cold for so long, while the Republicans are owning the "if it's their idea it's bad and we'll hate it on general principle" angle.

Jake,
How long were the democrats out of power?
They've had the majority now since 2006.
And your argument is what, the republicans
resisted going along with a bill being passed
that has not been read by the democrats who
passed it? So. They should have been as
attentive and responsible as the democrats
in voting?
Do you sign contracts without reading? If so
then I can understand where you're coming from.
Apparently you believe there are never any
unintended consequences.

Highly entertaining...

But Al Carlin is not a scientist or expert in any sense of the word on climate or global warming. He's a number-crunching economist at the EPA, has been for 37 years.

By his own admission, global warming is a hobby of his, and he wrote a MEMO (not a report), unrequested by the EPA. Dispite this, it was passed on to EPA climate scientists for review. His memo was, to say the least, panned a just so much wasted paper (which is why he was told to go back to doing his job, not climate science). It was never suppressed, and was never included in any reports as it's just meaningless material.
FYI, dispite solid evidence (ie. from NASA's Goddard Science Center) the earth is warming (based on global average temps, not one year taken out of context) Carlin thinks the earth is getting cooler...

Oh well...better luck next time at finding something "suppressed"...