Beam me to Planet Gore !
Posted on 05/20/2008 11:39:53 PM PDT by calcowgirl
"Instead of idly debating the precise extent of global warming, ... we need to deal with the central facts of rising temperatures, rising waters, and all the endless troubles that global warming will bring. We stand warned by serious and credible scientists across the world that time is short and the dangers are great. The most relevant question now is whether our own government is equal to the challenge"
With that, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain threw his support -- again -- to a complex government program to reduce carbon emissions. He claims he can do this, without causing economic hardship, by using the power of the free market.
As The Wall Street Journal commented, "His plan is 'market based' insofar as it requires an expensive, invasive government bureaucracy to interfere with the market".
McCain's cap-and-trade system would have a bureaucracy set a limit for CO2 emissions and auction tradable permits to carbon-emitting companies. McCain says the revenue would be "put to good use." Specifically, "We will add to current federal efforts to develop promising technologies. ... We will also establish clear standards in government-funded research, to make sure that funding is effective and focused on the right goals."
We've heard that before. You'd think McCain would have learned that government isn't cut out for this sort of thing.
For all his lip service to markets, there is no getting around the fact that McCain will use force -- that's what government is -- to accomplish his goals. There are only two ways to do things: voluntary or forced. The market is voluntary. No one is ever forced to buy or sell anything.
Cap-and-trade sounds good. Trade is good. But "cap" is force. Government will make arbitrary decisions about how much CO2 will be permitted in a thousand different situations. I can only begin to imagine the bureaucracy that will be required. Will chimney police go to every business and home telling you how much you can emit? Will armed officials from a Department of Global Warming raid your house and jail you if you run your air-conditioner too much? I assume friends of Al Gore will get special dispensation because they are working for the good of the nation.
How much will McCain's plan reduce global temperatures?
He doesn't say -- probably because even the most radical climate-change policies promise no more than a negligible reduction.
As Fred S. Singer, president of the Science & Environmental Policy Project, told the Heartland Institute in 2007, "All these schemes are quite ineffective in reducing the global growth of atmospheric CO2 -- never mind in having any effect on climate. The schemes do have one thing in common: They will damage the U.S. economy and hurt the pocketbooks of every consumer..."
In other words, economic growth will be stifled -- for what?
Roy W. Spencer, a research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and author of "Climate Confusion," says he's "increasingly convinced" that climate change has far more to do with natural phenomena like El Niño and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation than carbon dioxide. "Maybe the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is higher now than it has been in hundreds of thousands of years. So what?" he wrote in a recent article for the National Review.
"Even though there has never been a single scientific paper published that has ruled out natural variability for most of the warming we've seen since 1850, Big Science has managed to convince politicians and much of the public that the science is settled. Apparently, our addition of nine molecules of carbon dioxide to each 100,000 molecules of air over the last 150 years can now be blamed for anything and everything ... Hurricanes, tornadoes, heat waves, floods, glaciers flowing toward the sea ... these used to happen naturally, but no more".
Spencer is one of many scientists who doubt the "consensus" that CO2 will cause a global warming "crisis." But politicians still want to act. McCain's hero is Teddy Roosevelt, a hectoring, activist president. To justify government interference in our lives, it helps to have a crisis. In Islamic extremism, McCain has his foreign affairs crisis. In global warming, he has his domestic crisis.
ping
Short and to the point.
Bob Barr is starting to look better every day....
Someone forgot to send the memo to the Senator. Glowball Warming is over.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
Somebody probably sent him some stock options in a Global Warming profiteering business.
When the troops come home from fighting the war in the Middle East, they’ll find that great leader McCain has stationed a UN communist and a federal fascist bureaucrat on their doorstep to steal their money and tell them how to run every inch of their lives.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
Perhaps if it were to be repeated to him in Spanish...? ;)
I said that yesterday on another thread. All hell broke loose among McCainiacs. They made fools of themselves trying to one-up each other in denouncing me. It was fun.
The only two points made (besides calling me all kinds of names) were 1) Anyone not voting for McCain was insuring a Democrat victory, 2) Not voting for McCain was a vote against the troops.
It seemed there's a lot of fear within the McCain camp (at least among it's proponents here on FR.
Obama is a better argument for McCain than McCain is.
Duke Cunningham
, John Murtha,
the other "Kerrey" Bob Kerrey,
Jim Webb , ,
John R. Warner,
Arlen Specter,
Bill Nelson .
Daniel K. Akaka,
Christopher J. Dodd,
Lindsey Graham,
Tom Harkins,
Daniel Inouye,
and of course that old Army veteran Edward Kennedy
just because you served doesn't mean you conservative as the above list indicates....Global Warming, can this guy be anymore of an end point of the large intestine....?.
There can be no other reason why we do not pursue realistic energy solutions, do not pursue realistic economic solutions that keep jobs within U.S. citizens' grasp and tank the dollar against other world currency.
Most politicians' talk today is the equivalent of what would make my dad throw traveling salesmen out the door back in the day.
McCain has been in D.C. over 20 yrs. He is part of the problem, not the solution.
Yep. That is the sad truth.
To heck with a third party. We need a second one.
Yep. Wealth redistribution and global governance, all in one fell swoop!
I think this article summed it up quite well:
... global warming ... a long-term program designed to push several separate agendas -- political control, economic centralization, and the Green worldview -- under the umbrella of "saving the planet".The communists would have been proud of this scheme as it accomplishes so many things under one label.
Most politicians' talk today is the equivalent of what would make my dad throw traveling salesmen out the door back in the day.
Government mandated snake oil... a requirement for every home. ;-)
Thanks. It’s been around awhile. Haven’t seen the need to trade it in yet. :)
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