Two Gripes From an Online Poll

Here's what Dr. Hansen thinks (0.00 / 0)

about cap and trade:  http://wattsupwiththat.com/200...

Cap-and-trade is the temple of doom.  It would lock in disasters for our children and grandchildren.  Why do people continue to worship a disastrous approach?  Its fecklessness was proven by the Kyoto Protocol.  It took a decade to implement the treaty, as countries extracted concessions that weakened even mild goals.  Most countries that claim to have met their obligations actually increased their emissions.  Others found that even modest reductions of emissions were inconvenient, and thus they simply ignored their goals.

Why is this cap-and-trade temple of doom worshipped?  The 648 page cap-and-trade monstrosity that is being foisted on the U.S. Congress provides the answer.  Not a single Congressperson has read it.  They don't need to - they just need to add more paragraphs to support their own special interests.  By the way, the Congress people do not write most of those paragraphs - they are "suggested" by people in alligator shoes.

The only defense of this monstrous absurdity that I have heard is "well, you are right, it's no good, but the train has left the station".  If the train has left, it had better be derailed soon or the planet, and all of us, will be in deep do-do.  People with the gumption to parse the 648-pages come out with estimates of a price impact on petrol between 12 and 20 cents per gallon.  It has to be kept small and ineffectual, because they want to claim that it does not affect energy prices!

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by: Craig Moore @ Wed Feb 17, 2010 at 18:13:38 PM UTC

Nice cherry picking, Craig. (0.00 / 0)

Guess you must agree with Hansen. So I suppose you agree with his statement further down in the article calling for a carbon tax:

"What is it that does not compute here?  Why does the public choose to subsidize fossil fuels, rather than taxing fossil fuels to make them cover their costs to society?  I don't think that the public actually voted on that one.  It probably has something to do with all the alligator shoes in Washington.  Those 2400 energy lobbyists in Washington are not well paid for nothing.  You have three guesses as to who eventually pays the salary of these lobbyists, and the first two guesses don't count."

What is even more humorous is the Google Ad that popped up at the bottom of the article:

Ads by Google
Profit From Cap & Trade
Get the lowdown on how you can get a piece of Cap and Trade.
www.greenchipstocks.com

Now you know another reason to hate cap and trade:

February 17th, 2010
The New York Times recently ran an article claiming that "carbon will be the world's biggest commodity market, and it could become the world's biggest market overall."

Rest assured, it will be.

Currently valued at over $30 billion, the carbon trading market is set to skyrocket to over $1 trillion as the price of carbon becomes more and more valuable.

And it's possible to get a piece of this infant industry right now.

Early investors can play the burgeoning carbon market by:

1. Investing in carbon credits themselves, or
2. Investing in companies that are making extra cash by reducing their emissions.

There's no telling just how lucrative this market will become. Why else would huge companies like GE, DuPont, and Johnson & Johnson be racing to reduce their emissions?

It's because of the huge profits that stand to be made.

Sorry about the double post.  

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by: JC @ Wed Feb 17, 2010 at 18:39:23 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

JC, once again I implore (0.00 / 0)

you to learn to read.  

First, Matt S, inter alia, was talking about cap and trade, his support for it, the poll, and the inability to have a discussion without the BS.  You see, apparently unlike you, I am able to discuss an issue without having an entrenched position.  I don't have to agree with Dr. Hansen to see how strongly he believes cap and trade is dangerous.  He even wrote an opinion piece at HuffPo about his concerns:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...

For all its "green" aura, Waxman-Markey locks in fossil fuel business-as-usual and garlands it with a Ponzi-like "cap-and-trade" scheme. Here are a few of the bill's egregious flaws:

   * It guts the Clean Air Act, removing EPA's ability to regulate CO2 emissions from power plants.

   * It sets meager targets -- 2020 emissions are to be a paltry 13% less than this year's level -- and sabotages even these by permitting fictitious "offsets," by which other nations are paid to preserve forests - while logging and food production will simply move elsewhere to meet market demand.

   * Its cap-and-trade system, reports former U.S. Undersecretary of Commerce for Economic Affairs Robert Shapiro, "has no provisions to prevent insider trading by utilities and energy companies or a financial meltdown from speculators trading frantically in the permits and their derivatives."

   * It fails to set predictable prices for carbon, without which, Shapiro notes, "businesses and households won't be able to calculate whether developing and using less carbon-intensive energy and technologies makes economic sense," thus ensuring that millions of carbon-critical decisions fall short.

JC, if like Matt S., you support cap and trade, why?

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by: Craig Moore @ Wed Feb 17, 2010 at 22:22:54 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

I don't support cap and trade (0.00 / 0)

I support a carbon tax. You on the other hand offer no solutions but to kill whatever attempt the democrats put out.

What is your solution to replace cap and trade with, if you don't like it? Or are you happy with the status quo?

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by: JC @ Wed Feb 17, 2010 at 23:04:28 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

"Incentivize?" (0.00 / 0)

Is that really a word?  Not to mention, this has to be one of the lamest poll questions I've ever seen.

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by: pete talbot @ Wed Feb 17, 2010 at 19:41:48 PM UTC

Yet Another IR Absurdity (0.00 / 0)

No, Matt, you are not taking an unfair swipe at the IR.  This rag is locally renowned for its absurd weekly polls.  Either they are totally irrelevant (Are you planning to buy Sarah Palin's book?), or they take a complex issue and try to reduce it to a Yes/No answer.  Even if the poll is about a substantive issue, the author clearly has little understanding of the complexities.

The IR is dying by degrees for not understanding that the purpose of a local newspaper is to report local news.

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by: Curmudgeon @ Wed Feb 17, 2010 at 20:19:40 PM UTC

I just saw where US (0.00 / 0)

companies are withdrawing from the Climate Action Partnership.  See:  http://online.wsj.com/article/...

Three big companies quit an influential lobbying group that had focused on shaping climate-change legislation, in the latest sign that support for an ambitious bill is melting away.

Oil giants BP PLC and ConocoPhillips and heavy-equipment maker Caterpillar Inc. said Tuesday they won't renew their membership in the three-year-old U.S. Climate Action Partnership, a broad business-environmental coalition that had been instrumental in building support in Washington for capping emissions of greenhouse gases.

The move comes as debate over climate change intensifies and concerns mount about the cost of capping greenhouse-gas emissions.

In my opinion this signals that climate bills are going nowhere for now.

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by: Craig Moore @ Wed Feb 17, 2010 at 22:31:44 PM UTC

If you only look at them (0.00 / 0)

as "climate bills" then you will always come to false conclusions.

This country needs legislation to discourage the use of carbon-based fuels, and encourage the development and use of alternative, non-carbon-based fuels.

There are many reasons for this, not the least of which the fighting of oil wars in the middle east is serving to drive this country into financial ruin.

Energy security using non-carbon energy sources is reason enough pass a carbon tax. If it has the by product of reducing the amount of non-cycling carbon into the carbon cycle, then that is a good thing, wouldn't you say? Or would you rather that America purchases it's energy future from Chinese technologists that are years ahead of us because they weren't and aren't afraid to invest heavily in things like high speed rail, solar and wind power, and efficiency technologies?

Or are you one of those that thinks the more carbon in the atmosphere and cycling, the better, because, gee, trees and plants breathe it and all?

And do you even understand the difference between cycling and non-cycling (stored) carbon, like the vast majority of people don't?

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by: JC @ Wed Feb 17, 2010 at 23:16:23 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Question (0.00 / 0)

When did you stop beating your wife?

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by: troutsky @ Fri Feb 19, 2010 at 14:13:24 PM UTC