Lawmakers start work on global warming bill

Source: Associated Press

Hearings this week could revolutionize how U.S. produces, uses energy

The last time Congress passed major environmental laws, acid rain was destroying lakes and forests, polluted rivers were on fire and smog was choking people in some cities.

The fallout from global warming, while subtle now, could eventually be even more dire. That prospect has Democrats pushing legislation that rivals in scope the nation's landmark anti-pollution laws.

Lawmakers this coming week begin hearings on an energy and global warming bill that could revolutionize how the United States produces and uses energy. It also could reduce, for the first time, the pollution responsible for heating up the planet.

If Congress balks, the Obama administration has signaled a willingness to use decades-old clean air laws to impose tough new regulations for motor vehicles and many industrial plants to limit their release of climate-changing pollution.

Read more: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30284017/

Huh? What? You thought it was shrinking due to Global Warming? Nope.

I think it is time to go back to the Global Cooling scare. I don't like to stick with one fad too long.

You have to wonder who is funding the The Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research. Exxon-Mobil?

Next we will be told the ice cap on Mt. Kilimanjaro which is what first alarmed everyone is still there. We just can't see it for some reason. All our mountains are still ice-capped. We just can't see it.

No one disputes the phenomenon but no one disputes the fact that part of the ice cap is disintegrating and moving towards the ocean and will melt and increase mean sea level. Some believe it already has. Mean sea level means many things. It is not "level" as we think of "level." A mean sea level rise of 5 feet might be 2 feet in Miami and 7 feet in Tahiti.

Some wonder about the tremendous storm surge of Hurricane Ike which may have been the result of a slight rise in the sea level in the Gulf of Mexico which produced the tremendous storm surge as the hurricane pushed a wall of water towards the coast.

Lots of things we don't know. Lots of things we do know. One of which is that our government, and our governments collectively, tend to lie.

So true. They seem to be pushing this global warming thing pretty hard. I wonder why.

The vast majority of scientists understand that global warming, or more accurately, climate change, is real and happening much faster than we feared only a few years ago.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/14/AR2009021401757.html

What's your scientific background that you can dismiss it?

There is only tentative explanation for phenomena. What matters his how much evidence supports the explanation and how long the explanation has succesfully withstood scientific attacks. Scientific discourse is not even allowed anymore, and that right there removes it from the realm of science. You know something is wrong when someone like Freeman Dyson, who believes in global warming, gets excoriated simply for questioning the reliance on models as accurate predictors.

Sad thing is, I'm an environmentalist, having suffered the smog of 70s Los Angeles pollution disgusts me. But this kind of thing almost makes me want to abandon my belief because of the company I am now keeping. The realization happened right here on the Democratic Underground, where someone asked how I could be an environmentalist if I don't believe in global warming. There is a LOT more to environmentalism than this pet theory that is more politics than science.

But aren't all theories pet theories when they become politicized as this has been?

Even the term climate change is reflective of a theory. All we know for sure, really, is that there are changes occuring - the question is are they natural or the result of our "messing" with Mother Nature.

We have disrupted Nature as we have attempted to conquer it and control it. "Don't mess with Mother Nature..."

There are many theories. I believe one Russian scientist has predicted that global warming will in fact produce another Ice Age. As contradictory as it sounds.

As for pollution, obviously pollution is not good for living things. Including the Earth.

I do mind when governments dictate my actions and take my money based on a pet theory.

I like a bent on George Carlin's theory. How do we know nature's end goal wasn't to get so much CO2 at once? Nature made the dinosaurs, killed them off so it could get a bunch of oil, then involved an intelligent species that could quickly convert all that oil into a bunch of CO2. Thus we are messing with Mother Nature if we stop putting out so much CO2. Maybe trying to stop the impending ice age/heat wave will kill the world.

Me, I just try to live my life in a relatively environmentally-friendly way. I would do more if I had the money. I'd love to have one of those electric cars for my commute and a massive array of solar panels on my roof. Until then I use CFL, etc., and my commuter car has a 1.5 liter engine, there being no decent public transportation here. My earlier "I'm in my 20s and want a fast car" phase got me up to a 2.5 liter engine.

There is no 'belief' in science. You either understand the science or you don't.

And of course scientific discourse is allowed; it's alive and well now that Bush/Cheney are gone. They suppressed any scientific information that didn't agree with their viewpoint.

My belief that I should be kind to the environment in general has exactly what to do with my statement on science?

"And of course scientific discourse is allowed; it's alive and well now that Bush/Cheney are gone."

Bush tried to silence a small subset that worked for the US government. The new regime silences all dissenters worldwide. Did you see the attacks on Dyson? Did you see Gore responding to Lomborg saying "It’s not a matter of theory or conjecture"? If it's not a matter of theory then it's not science.

Yes, that is the same Lomborg who had a witch hunt pursued against him for daring to publish a book that challenged the religion. Luckily in the end the witch hunters themselves got the smack-down. The great thing about Lomborg is that nobody can claim he's part of the right-wing machine since he's further left politically than probably most people on this board.

There is no 'belief' in science. It's fact based, subject to study and replication. Either you understand it or you don't.

'The new regime'. Wow, another tell. You sure you're in the right place?

I said my personal belief about protecting the environment. Either you understand it or you don't.

Yes, new regime. It's not specifically about Obama, it's about the larger quasi-religious movement gaining power overall. I hate religious movements. When they get power, kiss your rights goodbye.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0520-08.htm

""It is an effect that has been predicted as a likely result of climate change," said David Vaughan, an independent expert on the ice sheets at the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge, England.

In a region known for the lowest temperatures recorded on Earth, it normally is too cold for snow to form across the 2.7 million square miles of the ice sheet. Any additional annual snowfall in East Antarctica, therefore, is almost certainly attributable to warmer temperatures, four experts on Antarctica said.

"As the atmosphere warms, it should hold more moisture," said climatologist Joseph R. McConnell at the Desert Research Institute in Reno, who helped conduct the study. "In East Antarctica, that means there should be more snowfall.""

As for the myth that there was any scientific consensus on global cooling:

http://www.usatoday.com/weather/climate/globalwarming/2008-02-20-global-cooling_N.htm

"But Thomas Peterson of the National Climatic Data Center surveyed dozens of peer-reviewed scientific articles from 1965 to 1979 and found that only seven supported global cooling, while 44 predicted warming. Peterson says 20 others were neutral in their assessments of climate trends.

The study reports, "There was no scientific consensus in the 1970s that the Earth was headed into an imminent ice age."

No matter what happens, you're right. That's why you call it "Climate Change" now instead of "Global Warming." They realized people might call BS on their new profitable industry, and weapon of immense political power, if things started cooling.

That we're supposed to take these climate change computer models on faith. They can't tell us with any certainty 5 days out where the eye of a hurricane will make landfall (i'd settle to predicting within +/- 5 miles), but supposedly the computer models CAN predict the climate of the entire Earth 10, 20, 50 years out. Obviously one hurricane and the weather patterns acting upon it are much more complex than the climate of the entire Earth :sarcasm:

Are you familiar with the Ideal Gas Law? It's a way we can make fairly accurate statements about the behavior of a very large system of molecules without knowing the details of that system (where, for example, each molecule is at a particular instant). Climate models are similar. We can't predict precise local behavior very well, but we can at least get an understanding for how the earth's climate behaves in the long run, given certain inputs.

:rofl:

Enjoy your conspiracy theories of evil climate scientists and massive global cover-ups :crazy:

Sometimes it makes me wonder if I'm really still on DU. :shrug:

They go where the money is, and right now that money comes from power-hungry politicians who know a good boogey monster when they see one. Those making millions off of carbon credits are laughing all the way to the bank.

The Antarctic ice sheet is expanding, not contracting, and this expansion will help to deflect more heat back into space, thereby mitigating some of the effects of the positive feedback loops that some scientists expect to see as a result of global warming. Maybe this is one of the Earth's ways of regulating the climate :shrug:

The increased snow is falling on top of existing ice sheets, not on otherwise dark areas of land or water. That means it has no effect on the planet's albedo, since that area has already been reflecting heat into space for millenia.

This effect was predicted by current global warming climate models. These same models show increasing losses of ice in the Arctic and global temperatures climbing by several degrees C by the end of the 21st century.

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,25348657-401,00.html

"Ice core drilling in the fast ice off Australia's Davis Station in East Antarctica by the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Co-Operative Research Centre shows that last year, the ice had a maximum thickness of 1.89m, its densest in 10 years. The average thickness of the ice at Davis since the 1950s is 1.67m.

A paper to be published soon by the British Antarctic Survey in the journal Geophysical Research Letters is expected to confirm that over the past 30 years, the area of sea ice around the continent has expanded."

It may be too late according to some who say the accelerated disintegration of the ice cap in Antarctica signals the point of no return. They may be right. The ice cap in the Arctic is basically an ice cube. When it melts, it merely melts. There is no increase in water volume. But as the ice cap in Antarctica melts as the glaciers move towards the ocean and then break apart, there will be an increase in water volume. The ice cap sits on top of land. It is not an ice cube.

But there are parts of the ice cap in the Artic that also sit on land. Northern Canada and Greenland in particular. And they are melting.

There are other ramifications. Particularly the infusion of fresh water into our salt water ocean streams. That will affect our weather. Some say it already has. We are seeing more severe storms. And the weather patterns are changing. Many point to Australia as a model of what may lie ahead. And Australia is not a pretty picture at the moment.

Maybe when some of our coastal cities are under a couple of inches of water Congress might finally get the picture. Until then I doubt it will. But then most Americans don't get the picture either.

It's actually less dense as a solid than as a liquid. If submerged ice melts, there will actually be a decrease in volume, not an increase.

well, that is my prediction.
sadly, let the regional warfare begin

I think the planet is having hot & cold flashes, rapid mood swings , uncontrolable crying causing floods, volcanoes,hurricanes. no more mother earth i think it's grandma earth.need to put an estrogen warhead on one of those korean missles and ram it deep into the earths crust. That will get the old girl on an even keel.