Shark jumping in America
The loony “cap and trade” (unless you are exempt or privileged or have a pal in Congress) comes up for a vote today in Congress. There is every chance it may lose which would be a very good thing for the American economy and good news for Canada as well. The Wall Street Journal considers how the momentum has shifted:
“The collapse of the “consensus” has been driven by reality. The inconvenient truth is that the earth’s temperatures have flat-lined since 2001, despite growing concentrations of C02. Peer-reviewed research has debunked doomsday scenarios about the polar ice caps, hurricanes, malaria, extinctions, rising oceans. A global financial crisis has politicians taking a harder look at the science that would require them to hamstring their economies to rein in carbon.” wall street journal
There is a very real possibility that the US cap and trade bill – notwithstanding the last minute (literally) addition of 300 pages of extra material the legislators have not had time to read, much less consider – may pass. But the combination of global cooling, the failure of assorted doomsday predictions to materialize and the horrendous economic cost of addressing what may very well be a non-problem will likely ensure that the political will to make the law’s provisions actually bite will be lost.
Which would be a good thing for the United States and the world in general. We need much better science before embarking on a course of economic destruction which is unlikely to have much, if any effect on a “problem” which may only exist inside overly simplistic models of climate.
June 27th, 2009 at 1:11 pm
The Cap-and-Tax Bill was past Friday by the US House of Reps, with about 25 Democrats against it, and believe it or not 8 Republicans voting for it.
Rumor has it, some serious arm-twisting(read that hand-outs and give-aways)were made to certain states Reps, like agricultural, to pass it.
It will have a very rough time in the Senate. Much more handouts and givaways required, but not enough IMO.
June 27th, 2009 at 3:17 pm
So temperatures have flat-lined since 2001? That strikes me as somewhat amusing since last year the argument was that they were decreasing since 1998.
But, for fun, lets take a look at some of the other points. The first is that CO2 is increasing but that the temperatures are “flat-lined”. John Cook has a good post on this.
The next part confuses me somewhat since I was not aware that there were all these doomsday scenarios. However I will note that most the peer-reviewed science they talk about has been included in the latest IPCC report and in fact were written by scientists who contributed to the IPCC.
Now, let me take a page from your book. A while back you had a post about Jennifer Lynch where you claimed that her critics included (and you provided a list). Well, in Canada there are a number of critics of the position on AGW you promote. They are Royal Society of Canada, The Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society, Canadian Academy of Engineers and the Canadian Physics Association, Canadian Association of Physicists.
So what I see these days is a group of people trying to promote the idea without anything really solid behind them.
Regards,
John Cross
(John is, for some unknown reason, still having trouble posting. As ever I am delighted to post his comments.)