Posted on 06/19/2015 8:46:02 AM PDT by Sir Napsalot
Whitehouse: "I extend an open hand, or an olive limb, to conservatives everywhere."
Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) have proposed a bill that would establish an economy-wide tax on carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions.
My bill sets the fee for a ton of carbon at $45 in 2016, the central range of the social cost of carbon as estimated by OMB, and would increase it each year at a real 2 percent. When emissions fall 80 percent below 2005 levels, the annual adjustment would fall to inflation, Whitehouse said at the American Enterprise Institute when presenting the American Opportunity Carbon Fee Act.
Whitehouse, who makes regular speeches on the Senate floor warning about climate change, said the nonpartisan group Resources for the Future has concluded the carbon fee would reduce U.S. CO2 emissions 40 percent by 2025. He explained it is difficult to estimate the impact of the bill internationally. Despite this, Whitehouse told the audience the U.S. should take the lead by reducing emissions.
(Excerpt) Read more at pjmedia.com ...
The competition to out-idiot the next guy in Congress is pretty much getting to be like reality TV staging its longstanding race to the bottom.
Good question, recent AEI not as good as “before”.
Maybe Chamber of Commerce bug got to them.
Is Beohner a cosponsor of this bill?
The first problem with this bill, if I understand it correctly, is that the Senate has no constitutional authority to originate revenue raising bills. The Founding States gave the power to originate revenue raising bills uniquely to the House of Representatives (1.7.1), not to the Senate.
And more importantly, even if global warming was an established scientific fact, proven by the consistent results of repeatable scientific method-based experiments, the bill ignores the Constitution in the following way.
Regardless what FDRs activist justices wanted everybody to think about Congresss Commerce Clause (1.8.3) powers, state sovereignty-respecting justices had previously clarified that the states have never delegated to the feds, expressly via the Constitution, the specific power to regulate either environmental issues or intrastate commerce. This is evidenced in part by the following excerpts.
State inspection laws, health laws, and laws for regulating the internal commerce of a State, and those which respect turnpike roads, ferries, &c. are not within the power granted to Congress [emphases added]. Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States. Justice John Marshall, Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
Getting back to the 17th Amendment, by making a bill which not only steals 10th Amendment-protected state powers, but which also steals state revenues associated with those unique powers, Senators Whitehouse and Schatz are not doing their jobs to protect their states as the Founding States had expected senators to do.
The 17th Amendment needs to disappear, and Constitution-ignoring senators like Senators Whitehouse and Schatz along with it.
A tax by any other name is still a tax, and this one is based on a scam.
Carbon fee? Not no but hell no,. not now, not ever.
I wish. But I think it will happen. Sadly many are falling for the Global Climate lies. It will be attached to your car registration or electric bill or some way that choice will not be allowed to be taken. We are screwed.
Senator Whorehouse is off his meds.
5.56mm
I extend an olive branch to “progressives.” We will start cutting carbon usage out of the most inefficient parts of the economy, the government. There is no need to have all these IRS agents when a flat tax can be collected. There is no need for all of these Obamacare bureaucrats when people can pay for their own insurance. Air Force One can be downsized to something less carbon burning.
Schatz is well named.
How can an ice cube (co2) make a flame (earths ground) hotter ?
You have been pinged because of your interest in environmentalism, alarmist wackos, mainstream media doomsday hype, and other issues pertaining to global warming.
Freep-mail me to get on or off: Add me / Remove me
Please ping me to all note-worthy threads on global warming.
Obama, Pelosi mend fences at fundraiser hosted by billionaire activist Tom Steyer
Pope Francis preaches the gospel of global warming
Obama moves to slash truck pollution
Global Warming on Free Republic
"We extend an upturned middle finger to liberals everywhere."
How does the flame (ground) ignore IR photons sent from the ice cube (CO2). A related question: what impact does the earth have on the sun’s temperature? You may say none since the sun is much hotter. That’s almost correct, there’s almost no impact. But it is not zero.
The Earth is the ice cube. The sun is the flame. The sun is heating the Earth. The Earth is cooling the sun. Although it is more or less insignificant. Put some food under an infrared warming light. Is the food making the infrared bulb hotter ?
Yes, it is, although the warming is very small. The problem is you are applying second law in an open system. Although you might not be applying the second law with "excitation state" theory. Here is a test for the food situation with an open system. Point the IR lamp out into space. Now put the food in front of the lamp. The food absorbs some IR from the lamp, the food warns. We both agree on that. The food emits IR photons. We agree on that. The wavelength of those photons is a spectrum dependent mainly on the temperature of the food:
But the emittance and absorption spectra are the same. Notice that the 500K heat lamp has plenty of overlap with the 300K food. Therefore the food warms the heat lamp a tiny bit. The peak of the food's emission is an order of magnitude weaker than the heat lamp.
This does not invalidate your "excitation state" theory, but that theory must cohere with the fact of the emission spectrum which is measured and depicted above. Your theory also has to cohere with the strongly supported theory (law) that the emission and absorption spectra are the same.
Your mistake is applying conservation of energy to an open system. It only applies to closed systems. If the earth is cooling the sun, then we should be able to remove the earth from the solar system and the sun will get warmer. That is impossible.
How would you know ?
Here is an easier example. Take three metal rods being warmed by constant independent sources. You have a metal rod warmed to 80 C in a room at 30 C. You take two other metal rods warmed to 50 C and connect them to the 80 C metal rod. That will not increase the temperature of the 80 C metal rod. It will decrease the temperature of the 80 C rod and increase the Temperature of the 50 C rods. Exactly as the flame and ice cube example. Or exactly as the Sun and Earth example. Energy flows from warm to cold. Always. From high excitation to lower excitation. Not the other way. Used to think it could, but have recently been convinced it cannot.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.