Thanks for the great links. Not a Chem. Engineer or anyone atmospheric. Physicist. I think Isabel may be a Chemist. I heard about the scrubbers one year ago at a Gordon conference on science policy -- great stuff. Regarding your note in who's lining up against the technology... I've noted in the Bay Area that the far left is by a great margin the most science and technology negative group in the spectrum. For a while there it seemed like both extrema of the spectrum were equally science-negative, but now the lefties have nudged out ahead. From tree sitting to home-bombing, etc. Scary. Whatever I ever type about the far right, they are not typically luddites.
Grizzled, I haven't viewed any of your videos, are you talking about scrubbers to remove SO2 emissions from power plants? Yes, a lot of those have been installed on plants in the MW and SE region of the US. It has cleaned things up considerably. SCRs have been installed side-by-side on many of those plants to clean up NOx emissions. Activated carbon cleans up the mercury emissions. The days of coal being a 'dirty fuel input' are coming to an end. Of course, once that happens, the lunatic fringe enviro-kooks will just move on to the next protest to stop coal. Mountaintop removal mining is their latest gambit. Never has the state of WV seen so many out of towners, until the hippie protests started on all the strip mines. This is truly an uninformed group of morons. If you've got nothing better to do with your time than to protest something that you really don't know much about, you should just go take a minimum wage job somewhere.
How can you be a denialist when you havent even studied into the topic that much to begin with? Fascinating vids and graphs. The accepted aspect of it all is increased CO2 into the atmosphere shouldnt be considered a good thing, got that point loud and clear.. Its more the debate of the amount of effect its actually having, or if the sources presenting you the issue are too slanted any one way. Thing is all we can do as people is choose a side and raise a big stink about it to the powers in charge, as a show of support for better climate. And be up for lending them our tax dollars to do it. As I CONTINUE to drive my car the same way I always have. I don't see anyone around me abusing their lifestyles increasing their carbon footprint without care actually...I also dont see many (besides my next door neighbor, due to cost) intentionally swapping their cars for bicycles and not traveling by airplane, even if you tell them its the proper thing to do. I also dont see every job in the private sector switching over to telecommuting anytime soon. The absolute ultimate solution is stay locked up in the house, take no risks and dont go anywhere ever. Have a food van deliver your goods (and staying in minimizes exposure to disease and accidents, it keeps the community safe, etc etc....) Or a worldwide change reverting back to the lifestyle of pre-industrial times. Or massive depopulation without genocide. Citizens are still accountable, but the manufacturers that enabled all these innovative carbon emitting instruments are the ones that need to un-enable it. Until then, I'm still planning a fall road trip in my smoggy gaz guzzler
I agree with most of this and have heard the science before but the original article stated: [rquoter]Hoenisch and colleagues investigated the role of the carbon cycle in climate change and concluded that CO2 was probably not responsible for lengthening the time between major ice ages to 100,000 years from 40,000, countering a supposition that massive ice sheets grew and receded because of gradually decreasing levels of carbon dioxide. [/rquoter] If what the article says is correct then CO2 role in climate change might not be as pronounced as the standard Global Warming theory holds. At the moment I'm not saying that we should rule out CO2's role in global warming but merely that we don't fully understand how the climate works. In that case it still doesn't make sense that we continue what is essentially an vast experiment on the climate by dumping in tons of greenhouse gases.
The original article doesn't support that: [rquoter]Carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere has risen to its highest level in at least 2.1 million years, according to a new investigation of the greenhouse gas’s role in ice ages over the millennia. [/rquoter]
Good news...more resistance in Congress to this bill... I think people are waking up to the very harsh economic hardships that this bill will create -- and they are unwilling to make the trade in order to lower temperatures by 0.18 degrees by the year 2100. What about you? Are you willing to give Congress $4,000 per year in exchange for lowering temperatures by 0.18 degrees in 90 years? Seem like a prudent use of your dollars? In the House, It's Peterson vs. Climate Bill By STEPHEN POWER WASHINGTON -- The fate of the leading proposal to curb U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions is in the hands of Rep. Collin Peterson, a Marlboro-smoking free spirit who scoffs at warnings about climate change and says the Environmental Protection Agency is "in bed with" corporations opposed to the ethanol industry. Mr. Peterson -- a Minnesota Democrat whose chairmanship of the House Agriculture Committee gives him sway over Farm Belt lawmakers -- has forced Democratic Party leaders to slow their drive to pass climate legislation and to consider amending it in ways that some environmentalists worry will lessen its effectiveness. Mr. Peterson on Friday asked White House officials and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack to intervene in negotiations between him and the climate bill's main sponsor, Rep. Henry Waxman (D., Calif.). "I'm getting tired of going around in circles," Mr. Peterson told reporters. Mr. Waxman has said he is "very close" to an agreement with Mr. Peterson that would clear the way for a vote on the legislation. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D., Md.) said the House is unlikely to take up climate legislation this week. The resistance to the climate bill from Mr. Peterson and other farm-state Democrats has exposed divisions within the majority party over whether Congress should attempt such far-reaching and potentially costly environmental legislation at the same time it is trying to overhaul the U.S. health-care system. Mr. Peterson, who was first elected to Congress in 1990, wants the party's leaders to soften the climate bill's impact on coal-burning power plants, scale back existing regulation of ethanol, and make other changes that, if adopted, could steer huge sums of money to farmers who engage in environmentally friendly practices. With Republicans expected to oppose the measure en masse, the votes of Farm Belt Democrats are critical to the House climate bill's future. But some of the changes Mr. Peterson wants could make it less palatable to Democrats who are more liberal. Mr. Peterson wants the climate measure changed to allow coal-burning power plants to get free of charge more of the permits they will be required to hold in order to generate carbon dioxide. Mr. Peterson, who represents a rural district where 10% of the population lives in poverty, says the bill's current formula for allocating free permits would result in some states getting more permits than needed, while leaving electricity users in districts such as his facing higher energy costs. "If they want to pass [legislation], something's going to have to change," Mr. Peterson says. An accountant by training with a well-creased face and a fondness for cowboy boots, Mr. Peterson shows little enthusiasm for passing climate legislation. After the administration released a report last week by government scientists warning of increased heat, pests, water shortages, disease and other impacts of climate change on crop and livestock production, Mr. Peterson laughed and said farmers in his district would welcome warmer temperatures after a recent cold spell. "They're going to be able to grow more corn," he said. Mr. Peterson has a testy relationship with environmentalists. In May, he accused the EPA of being "in bed with the oil industry" after the agency proposed rules that could undercut the perceived climate-protection value of growing corn to make ethanol in the U.S. by counting the increased greenhouse gas emissions that would occur overseas when farmers or governments clear land to grow food in response to higher food prices. Mr. Peterson is pushing an amendment to the climate bill that would eliminate a requirement under the law for the EPA to measure such overseas emissions, and he wants the Agriculture Department -- rather than the EPA -- to decide what kinds of agricultural practices will qualify as "offsets," activities that avoid or reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The legislation would allow businesses to pay farmers to engage in activities like injecting the soil with seed rather than plowing the ground and causing the release of carbon. The Energy Information Administration has estimated that the market for such agricultural activities could be worth as much as $24 billion annually. A recent EPA analysis suggested the market could be much smaller. —Ian Talley contributed to this article. www.wsj.com
^ Keep in mind that Rep. Petersen represents a district that has both farming and mining interest and that he has supported many programs that have been considered unsound budget wise and economically such as corn subsidies.
I agree that some of these groups have gone too far in opposing technological solutions but there is good reason we should be cautious about things like geo-engineering. If anything the global warming debate should show how complicated the climate really is and how difficult it is to predict. The problem with a geo-engineering solution is that since its practically impossible to accurately predict what the climate will do there could be other affects of a geo-engineered solution that might make things worse.
OK. You keep in mind that decimating our manufacturing industry and raising consumers' electric bills during a recession is considered unwise.
Not always. There are many members of Congress who think about wider issues than their district. Rep. Colin Petersen doesn't seem like one of those and he if he thought restricting greenhouse gases helped his district he would quickly vote the other way.
Obama is telling outright lies at this press conference. Let me get this straight -- clean energy will be profitable? HA! The only way for clean energy to be even remotely cost competitive is to dramatically raise the price of conventional sources, which this energy tax bill would do. Clean energy will create jobs that can't be shipped overseas? HA! Once he kills the manufacturing industry with heavy CO2 taxes and bolsters unions with their high wages, then why on earth would wind turbines or solar panels be produced in the US??? They are ALREADY being produced overseas. How many millions of oil, gas, and coal jobs will be lost? The policy is just a total loser. Higher energy costs, marginal (if any) environmental benefit, lost jobs, and a crippled manufacturing industry. All of this can be yours for $4,000 per year. Any takers? Now he's trying to give credence to the Huffington Post, as if that's a legitimate news source. Unreal.
Well, my instinct was right (again)... they aren't even good at hiding it... Obama calls on HuffPost for Iran question In what appeared to be a coordinated exchange, President Obama called on the Huffington Post's Nico Pitney near the start of his press conference and requested a question directly about Iran. “Nico, I know you and all across the Internet, we've been seeing a lot of reports coming out of Iran,” Obama said, addressing Pitney. “I know there may actually be questions from people in Iran who are communicating through the Internet. Do you have a question?” Pitney, as if ignoring what Obama had just said, said: “I wanted to use this opportunity to ask you a question directly from an Iranian.” He then noted that the site had solicited questions from people in the country “who were still courageous enough to be communicating online.” “Under which conditions would you accept the election of Ahmadinejad, and if you do accept it without any significant changes in the conditions there, isn't that a betrayal of the — of what the demonstrators there are working towards?” Reporters typically don’t coordinate their questions for the president before press conferences, so it seemed odd that Obama might have an idea what the question would be. Also, it was a departure from White House protocol by calling on The Huffington Post second, in between the AP and Reuters. CBS Radio's Mark Knoller, a veteran White House correspondent, said over Twitter it was "very unusual that Obama called on Huffington Post second, appearing to know the issue the reporter would ask about." According to POLITICO's Carol Lee, The Huffington Post reporter was brought out of lower press by deputy press secretary Josh Earnest and placed just inside the barricade for reporters a few minutes before the start of the press conference. http://www.politico.com/blogs/michaelcalderone/0609/Obama_calls_on_HuffPost_for_Iran_question.html
Just to clarify - Drudge doesn't actually produce any news. He just serves as an effective and efficient clearinghouse to bring lots of conservative news sources together and bring attention to them. HP is a multi-million dollar company with both regular news and investigative reporters, etc. It certainly has an intentional liberal bias, but it doesn't aim for simple shock headlines or repeating what's said elsewhere. They do research and get quotes, etc. I think they are both very useful in different ways if people recognize their bias.
